There is a professional American football team called the Denver Broncos, and I am a fan of this team. I've really liked them for a long time, and they used to be super good. They're a great legacy team, but they've been real bad for a long time. And during this real bad stretch, I've noticed the fan bases become divided and angry at each other because everybody has a plan for how to make things right, and not all of the plans line up. So for me, I'm kind of one of these where I just want to see my team win every week. And I know that that isn't always strategically best for the long term because of the way the league is set up. The worst teams every year get the top picks the next year of the new players, the new talent coming into the league. And so having a worse record if you know you're not going anywhere on a given season can actually be maybe good for your team because you get a higher draft pick. But I can't bring myself to root for my team to lose. I like for them to win. That's the fun of it. But then you got other fans of the Denver Broncos who, once they decide, yeah, the season's over, this isn't going to work out, we should just try to lose all the rest of the games. And then they get mad when the Broncos win. On top of that, when you're not winning a lot, people become loyal to certain players, and then they want to prove that they were right in their critique of a player or loyalty to a player. And so the team will win a game. And I go over to the internet all naive and childlike. Denver Broncos chit-chat, and I look it up and I expect to see happy things, but everybody's mad because the wrong player did too well. And that makes this commentator look bad or whatever. It's really frustrating. I like it better when the team's doing well because there's more goodwill and everybody's rooting for you to win. Because it's such a sour thing when you have a big win and you're excited about it, and then you go to celebrate it with other people who should like the win as well, and they're all grumpy that you won or that you won the wrong way. Likewise, Acts chapter 10 and 11 tell a story of really a great win, an amazing win that everybody should be really excited about. But then we discover that not everybody is really excited about it because the win didn't happen quite the way they wanted it to happen. Things aren't looking the way some people on the team or in the fan base wanted it to look. And it's going to take a lot of work to get everybody excited and fired up about this win. What is the win about which I speak? Well, let me tell you. In Acts chapter 10, we got this guy we were talking about yesterday, Cornelius. He's a centurion. That means he's a leader of men, a commander of something called the Italian regiment. He is not a Jew, but he's open to the idea of the Jewish God. And he even thinks the values of the God of Abraham are really good values. So he is generous to other people and he prays regularly and he's doing meaningful redemptive things with his life. And then this centurion, Gentile Roman guy, Cornelius, has a vision saying, go send some servants to get this guy, Peter. It'll all make sense. And Cornelius is like, okay, I'll do that. You send some servants, and the servants go to Joppa, where Peter is hanging out. Peter is up on a rooftop praying, and then he goes into something that is described as being something like a trance. And this sheet is lowered from heaven, like a bed sheet or a canvas sheet or something. And it's full of all the different kinds of animals, both kinds that in the Old Testament were viewed as clean and kinds that in the Old Testament were viewed as unclean. And a voice from heaven says, Get up, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter says, Surely not, Lord, I've never eaten anything impure or unclean. So he's very worried about his perfect track record. He doesn't want to violate that, and in doing so, make himself maybe unclean for the work that Jesus has commissioned him to. But the voice spoke to him a second time. This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon's house was and stopped at the gate. They called out, asking if Simon, it was known as Peter, was staying there. While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the spirit said to him, Simon, three men are looking for you, so get up and go downstairs. Don't hesitate to go with them, for I've sent them. Okay. Peter went down and said to the men, I'm the one you're looking for. Why have you come? And the men replied, We've come from Cornelius the Centurion. He's a righteous and God-fearing man who's respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to have you come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say. Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests. Now that part's probably going to slide by for most of us in a modern audience, but if you pinch zoom in on that, you realize even that is a pretty big deal. Peter just invited some Gentiles into the house to apparently eat food and be his guests. The curtain of separation between the very isolated devout Jewish types and all Gentiles, and especially Roman occupying Gentiles, was a very thick curtain of separation. This was a pretty wild thing that happened right here, and it is possible that if these guys had showed up, whatever, 20 minutes earlier, before Peter had this vision, that he might not have even let them in. And I offer, as support for that, an anecdote that comes up that we're going to look at later on in this season, where Peter wasn't feeling real great about eating with Gentiles and to try to look cool to Jewish Christians, was avoiding sitting at tables with Gentiles and was causing an issue in this newly integrated early church that is made up of, well, people like Cornelius, who's about to become a Christian, and people like Peter, who's been a follower of the God of Abraham all along and became a follower of Christ. This integration is not going to be entirely smooth, which is understandable, but this is a big step that Peter invited them in. So then the next day, Peter and the Italian guys and some other Christians from Joppa, they go back to Caesarea to where Cornelius is hanging out. And Peter goes into the house and Cornelius met him, and he falls down at his feet, but Peter made him get up and says, Stand up, I'm only a man myself. So then talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. This is Acts 10, 28. He said to them, You're well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me? What a wild time in the history of Christianity. Peter doesn't even know why he's there. It's this totally open-ended thing. The Holy Spirit seems to be running the whole show in a very hands-on, overt way. Peter thought he was going to be in Joppa, I guess. I don't know where he thought he would go next, but now he's in Caesarea in the seat of power where the governor lives, who ordered the execution of Jesus, Peter's master, Cornelius works for that same governor, Pontius Pilate. What the heck is going on? But here Peter is, and Cornelius answers him. All right, well, four days ago I was in my house praying, and he tells the whole story of what we looked at earlier on about the vision and everything. And Peter's like, whoa, that's crazy because all the times line up here. But I had this other vision that was like this. This is clearly from God, even though it kind of feels like it breaks protocol. This is real. God is working in you, and you're supposed to be a follower of Jesus. That is the gist of what Peter communicates, and to confirm that this is true supernaturally, much in the same way that the Holy Spirit and God the Father showed up to confirm that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who John the Baptist was pointing to in Matthew chapter 3. So the Holy Spirit shows up here, and all of these outsiders suddenly are demonstrating the same linguistic miraculous abilities that the Jewish disciples had demonstrated back on the birthday of the church in Acts chapter 2. They can speak in these other languages that they don't speak. And the Holy Spirit dropping this miracle right here makes a ton of sense for a couple of reasons. One, this was fresh in everybody's mind. Everybody had heard the stories about this. It was a sure and inarguable miracle of God that it had a massive ripple effect already, but it happened among Jewish followers of Jesus. To have that happen among Gentile followers of Jesus in the same manner is very compelling. Two, think about what the miracle is. Materially, the miracle is multilingual, it's multicultural, it's multi-ethnic in nature. And now you've got a bunch of Italian people, Romans, who are participating in a miracle that theologically symbolizes or points to their inclusion in the new family of faith created by Jesus of Nazareth. This is a huge step in the unfolding of this story, and Peter says, Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They've received the Holy Spirit just as we have. So we ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days. Wow. Okay. Major sea change. This is one of our first real practical glimpses of what the prophets of the Old Testament envisioned, and even what God was hinting at with Abraham all the way back at the beginning of his relationship with Abraham when he said that Abraham is going to be blessed but also be a blessing to all the nations. Now we can kind of picture it. Is that what it's going to look like? But at the beginning of this conversation, I teased that sometimes people aren't always all happy about a clear and obvious win. And tomorrow we're going to talk about the reaction to this because there's some hesitation here about these non-Jews who do not bear the physical mark of the covenant with Abraham being included in the new family of faith, being received into this community. And it's going to be up to Peter to try to explain why this is a win. Again, these parts of Acts where we're spending extra time are the parts that are really important for setting up Galatians. The tension we're feeling here in Acts 10, and then with the lukewarm reception this gets among Jewish Christians in Acts chapter 11, all of that relates directly to what we're going to find in the book of Galatians. So Acts chapter 11, Manyana. Do you remember the second season of this podcast where we went one book per day through the entire Bible, and we did these lightning summaries. I mean, 10 to 15 minute episodes covering an entire book, just trying to get the gist of it, talking about it like normal humans, trying to understand what was in there. Well, I am doing a video series like that. And this is the first time that I have announced that into a microphone. So here it is. I guess is the beginning right here of going public with that. I've got Genesis done. And over a year ago now, I asked for editing help here on this podcast. Maybe you remember that. A gentleman named Hunter emerged as the right person for this particular project. And he and I have been working behind the scenes for really about a year now to figure out exactly what we want this series to look like, how we want it to sound. So somewhere in the next few days, you're going to see that Genesis video, which looks really different than anything I've ever done before, drop over on my YouTube channel. I think there's always a link below in the show notes for those of you who've never gone and checked out the YouTube channel. And as the week goes along, we'll talk a little bit more about what I'm thinking with that and what I hope happens with it. And in general, I'm just a bundle of nervous excitement about this thing coming out. I've never worked longer or more or more collaboratively on really about anything ever. So I hope it's good and I hope you love it. More to come on all of that soon. I'm Matt. This is a 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.