Think about how many things you "just know" because you've heard them presented as true multiple times in your life. After 30 years of listening to sermons, I have a massive list of biblical nuggets that I have heard multiple preachers teach. The vast majority of them are true or at least based upon reasonable inferences from multiple scriptures (in the mouth of two or three witnesses – 2 Corinthians 13:1). Every so often, someone will repeat something that they've heard and haven't confirmed. This is something that particularly bothers me, because the Word of God is truth and doesn't need us, even accidentally or without malice, passing on incorrect teachings. I like the principle that former U.S. president Ronald Reagan used: "trust, but verify". It behooves those of us who preach and teach to take this principle to heart, so that we do no harm to our listeners theological condition.

This came up for me today as I sat in my favourite coffee shop researching for my commentary on the book of the acts of the apostles, or just "Acts" to its friends. I'm still early in the process - working on chapter three and verse eight: the lame man at the gate Beautiful has been healed and enters the temple. I have heard multiple preachers claim that because of his physical condition the lame and the broken could not enter the temple, so this would have been his first time being able to enter the temple. This sounds so reasonable when backed up with scriptures like Leviticus 21:18. My preaching style, and especially my writing style, is that I back up my statements with scripture. Yes, I have been told before that I use too much scripture, but that person went off of the theological rails and sadly is now not doing well, so I'll stick to using "too much" scripture. I went looking for scripture to properly clarify the point and that's when it got interesting.

The Lord has always held called men and women of God to a higher standard than the regular believers. (Obligatory media reference – "with great power, comes great responsibility".) When the Lord established the priesthood to care for and run the tabernacle (and subsequent temple) processes, he added a requirement (Leviticus 21:16-21) that no priest could be lame or broken and still serve in the tabernacle. They were not denied entry, nor were they excluded from the provision that all Levites received from the offerings, but they were ineligible to serve as priests in the temple making offerings to the Lord. These instructions do not apply to non-priests in any way, so we cannot use them to back any assertion that the lame man was not allowed into the temple.

So far, so good. But then David gets involved. Except that he doesn't, but it takes a bit of digging to realise that. In 2 Samuel 5:6-8 we have the account of David taking the city of Zion (subsequently referred to as Jerusalem) from the Jebusites. The Jebusites seemed so confident in the strength of their walls and other defenses that they taunted David that even their blind and crippled men could defend it from David's forces. With hindsight, this was not wise, but boys will be boys and pride comes before a fall, as they often misquote (Proverbs 16:18). In verse eight we see that David hated the Jebusites (although no reasons are given here) so much that he dispatched his men to kill both the regular soldiers as well as the lame and the blind. From this command, the scriptures tell us that the teaching that the blind and the lame could not come into the house was derived. Here, the word house refers to the city, but when the Hebrew was translated into Greek for the Septuagint, it was worded as the house of the Lord. The likely reason for this translation choice seems to be a combination of David's hate for the Jebusites, especially the lame and blind ones (never underestimate the influence of David on the Jews) and the general perspective that the lame and broken (including blind) were less spiritually clean and therefore ineligible to enter the temple. These teachings were enshrined in the rabbinical writings and once there, took on the same effective weight as the Law. This teaching was not in the scriptures, but might as well have been from the perspective of the Jews.

Now we know that the lame man healed at the gate Beautiful was not excluded from the temple. There does remain the question of why he was at the gate instead of inside? I suspect that as the Real Estate folks like to say it had something to do with location. By being at the gate, he had more traffic going past him as the gate served as a funnel to those entering the temple. This enabled him to ask for alms from more people in a given day than if he'd just sat somewhere inside the temple.

I'm glad that I took the time to dig into this a little more. The first miracle of the church is already impressive enough (healing and delivering the instantaneous ability to walk and dance) and doesn't need any human efforts to make it bigger and better. Next time you hear something taught across the pulpit that sounds just a little more miraculous than usual, switch into "trust but verify" mode and in the manner of the saints in Berea, search the scriptures as to whether these things were so (Acts 17:10-11).