It’s a small detail, easily missed, but it shows the power of worship to energize discipleship. Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour (Acts 3:1). We are now living in the aftermath of the resurrection. The Spirit has descended. The church has been born. And still—Peter and John go up to the temple. Not to evangelize. Not to debate. But to worship.
Some might expect the apostles to have turned their backs on the old forms now that the veil has been torn and the tomb emptied. But they haven’t. At least not yet. They go, as they always did, to pray. To join in the sacred rhythm of the liturgical hours. To worship in the same house where their forebears brought lambs and psalms. It is, in its way, a striking image: the first Christians not as revolutionaries burning down the old, but as faithful Jews tending the wick of continuity. Christianity does not so much erupt from Judaism as it blossoms within it.
A Cappella and the Temple’s Echoes
Now, I should say plainly: I preach in an urban a cappella (non-instrumental) Church of Christ. I was raised among unaccompanied voices—voices that carried the gospel before anyone in the pews could read music. I love the simplicity of that heritage. I love what it teaches: that the human voice alone is enough to bear the weight of wonder, enough to shake the rafters with such affordable, democratic, portable, humble, pure and glorious praise—especially when done with excellence. I’m not ashamed of it.
But I am ashamed of how some of my a cappella brethren have handled it over the years. We’ve taken a beautiful practice—founded on reverence, history, and simplicity—and weaponized it. We’ve turned a spiritual discipline into a boundary marker. Some have treated faithful Christians—within our own Restoration tradition—as if they were compromisers simply because they worship God with instruments.
As a Christian committed to principles of Restoration, I long to recover the faith and practice of the earliest church—not just the parts that align with my preferences. And if someone asked me for a biblical moment that opens the door for instrumental praise in Christian tradition, I would take them here, to Acts 3.
“We’ve taken a beautiful practice—founded on reverence, history, and simplicity—and weaponized it.”
Worship in the Most Primitive Moment
This is as Spirit-drenched a moment as we’ll ever find: the apostles, freshly filled with the Holy Spirit, are on their way to the temple to pray. And what kind of prayer happened at the temple? Not quiet. Not solitary. Not stripped of art. It was musical.
The Mishnah confirms this, describing Levitical choirs and the daily use of cymbals, trumpets, and harps (Tamid 7:3; Middot 2:6).[1] Philo of Alexandria and Josephus, writing within a generation of the apostles, describe the temple’s worship as richly orchestrated and deeply resonant.[2] The Psalms command it: “Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp” (Psalm 150:3, ESV). The Chronicler goes further, crediting David with assigning musicians to temple worship “under the direction of the Lord through his prophets” (2 Chronicles 29:25–28, ESV).
The presence of Peter and John at the temple is not an endorsement of the entire Levitical system, but it is a striking witness: instrumental worship was not rejected in principle by the very men commissioned to inaugurate the kingdom of God. So Peter and John are walking straight toward this soundscape—not to protest it, not to purify it, but to join it. If we cling to Acts 2:38 for our soteriology and Acts 2:42 for our communal rhythms, Restorationists must also reckon with Acts 3: the apostles seeking God in a space filled with instrumental praise.
“This is as Spirit-drenched a moment as we’ll ever find.”
This doesn’t mean those with a tradition of a capella worship ought to abandon a cappella singing. But it does mean we abandon the spirit of condemnation that has sometimes accompanied it. A cappella can be a holy offering. So can humility—the humility to recognize God’s presence in a song we didn’t grow up with.
Yes, it’s true that as the church moved outward—beyond Jerusalem, beyond the temple, and into the Gentile world—instrumental worship faded. As Everett Ferguson observes, instruments didn’t reappear in Christian worship until the sixth century, and then only gradually.[3] In fact, that’s the meaning of the term a capella (in the way of the chapel). But the absence of instruments in early Christian worship was largely practical: instruments were expensive, associated with pagan cults, and ill-suited to house churches. Yet we are not bound by silence; we are summoned by Scripture. And here, in its most primitive form, the Christian movement is moving toward the music of the temple.
From Worship to Witness
And here’s the hinge: before Peter and John arrive at the temple—before they’ve even reached the gate—worship is already doing its work.
Just outside the entrance, they encounter a man carried there daily. He’s not a seeker. He’s not waiting for a miracle. He’s positioned, as he always is, in the economy of pity. He asks not for healing, but for money.
And what does Peter say?
“Silver and gold have I none, but what I do have I give to you.”
As a child, I misheard that line. I thought it meant the apostles were empty-handed—no coins, so they gave him a sermon instead. As if the gospel were a consolation prize. But that’s not what the text says.
There is a quiet reversal of values taking place. The man is asking for treasure. Peter replies: You’re asking for bronze, but we bear gold. You want scraps. We carry resurrection.
“You want scraps. We carry resurrection.”
I sometimes imagine an alternate scene. Suppose Peter did have a coin. A single denarius tucked in his sash. The man begs. Peter bends low. “Here’s what I have,” he says. “Enough to take my wife to a fish supper by the lake.” He lets the coin catch the light. “But what if I told you I had something better? Something not earned or spent but given freely: the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Rise up and walk.”
And he does.
Worship That Walks
The miracle isn’t just in the legs that suddenly work. It’s in the eyes that begin to see worth in something beyond money. It’s in the realization that not all treasure clinks.
That’s what worship is meant to do. Not an escape from the world, but an entry point into it—with new eyes, new power, and a new kind of currency. The apostles go toward the temple, toward prayer—and on the way, they meet a need. Worship doesn’t follow discipleship; it generates it.
This is the rhythm of the kingdom: go up to pray, come down to give. Liturgy should lead to love. Adoration should overflow into action. Too often we’ve reversed it. We seek first silver and gold and presume the kingdom will follow. But what if it’s the other way around? What if the gospel is not the lesser gift when the wallet’s empty, but the greater gift when the heart is full?
Acts 3 is not just a story about healing. It’s a restoration of priorities. A reordering of value. And it’s a challenge to every disciple: What I do have, I give to you. That is the posture of mission. That is the rhythm of the kingdom. That is what it means to worship with our feet as well as our lips.
[1] Mishnah, Tamid 7:3; Middot 2:6, translated by Herbert Danby (Oxford, 1933); Jacob Neusner (Yale, 1988).
[2] See Philo of Alexandria, On the Special Laws 1.199–200. Loeb Classical Library, trans. F.H. Colson, and Josephus, Antiquities 7.12.3; Jewish War 5.5.6. Trans. William Whiston; Loeb Classical Library.
[3] See Everett Ferguson, A Cappella Music in the Public Worship of the Church (Abilene Christian University Press, 1999).
