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Good morning. My name is Ruthie. The Old Testament reading is found in Deuteronomy ten, fourteen through seventeen. Clearly, the Lord owns the sky, the highest heavens, the earth, and everything in it. But the Lord adored your ancestors, loving them and choosing the descendants that followed them, you from all other people. That's how things still stand now. So circumcise your hearts and stop being so stubborn because the Lord your God is the God of all gods and Lord of all lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who doesn't play favorites and doesn't take rides. The word of the Lord.

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The New Testament reading is found in Acts chapter 10, verses 34 through 36. Peter said, I really am learning that God doesn't show partiality to one group of people over another. Rather, in every nation, whoever worships him and does what is right is acceptable to him. This is the message of peace he sent to the Israelites by proclaiming the good news through Jesus Christ. He is Lord of all. The word of the Lord.

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If you are able, please stand for the gospel reading found in Matthew 12, 18 through 21. Look, my servant, whom I chose, the one I love, in whom I find great pleasure. I'll put my spirit on him and he'll announce judgment to the Gentiles. He won't argue or shout. And nobody will hear his voice in the streets. He won't break a bent stalk. And he won't snuff out a smoldering wick until he makes justice win. And the Gentiles will put their hope in his name. The gospel of the Lord.

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Please remain standing with me as we pray this morning, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We do pray that you would continue to fall among us as we even sang that song earlier. As we're saying I'm thinking of that old hymn, Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us. Whenever there is hardness of heart, would you melt that away in us? Would you mold us? Would you form us into the image and likeness of Jesus? Would you fill us with the very presence of the Holy Spirit? And would you employ us for your service, kingdom participation in the world, we pray? And all God's people said, Amen. You may be seated. Good morning, everybody. My name is Jason. I'm one of the pastors here. Again, welcome if you're new or newer or visiting. And hello to everybody that's watching online or watching later or watching this alongside pre-coverage of the World Cup final game. Uh, for those of you that are doing that. Uh, but it happy World Cup final day. Uh go Spain. Go Argentina. Go Minnesota Twins baseball game this afternoon. Just that's probably what I'll be watching just in full honesty. Um, just a reminder, we do have a short congregation meeting right after service today. I do realize that it is World Cup Sunday, but I've been told the game doesn't start until one. Um, so we're gonna retry to finish with that that meeting by around 11. So that should give you two hours, uh, which hopefully will be uh plenty of time. We're gonna dive right in today. We're in a series uh called Kingdom Movement, where we are working our way very slowly through the book of Acts. Today we're gonna be at the end of chapter 10 and the beginning of chapter 11. Uh, Acts 10, and then in a couple months we get to this chapter, Acts 15, are two of the most important chapters in this whole book because they really begin to narrate the movement of the gospel from Jewish followers of Jesus to Gentiles, to the nations, and begin to address the questions that come up about Gentile inclusion. What does it mean for Gentiles to now be included in the people of God, in and through Jesus? And that actually can be a place for many of us where there's some confusion because of the categories that they use are from a different time, a different place, a different culture. You know, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. So we're gonna try to unpack some of that today. But a quick summary first of the beginning of chapter 10, which Pastor Stephanie did a beautiful job unpacking for us uh last week. But the beginning of chapter 10, we're introduced to a man by the name of Cornelius. Cornelius is a Roman military officer. So he is a Gentile in every sense of the term, but he's also described, excuse me, that was embarrassing. Um he's also described in the middle of this passage as a righteous man, someone who is a person of prayer and of generosity. He's described in the categories of the first century of a God fearer. In other words, he is a Gentile who has made the decision to worship Yahweh, to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, a God fear is different than a Jewish convert. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but the basic idea here is that Cornelius is still uncircumcised. Now, it's during this passage that he has a vision in prayer where the angel tells him to send for the apostle Peter, one of those early followers of Jesus. At the same time, Peter is praying, and Peter gets his own vision. Peter's vision is of this large sheet coming down with all these unclean animals on it. So, what that is suggesting here is the image is of animals that Jews were forbidden to eat according to Old Testament dietary laws. And then in the vision, what Peter is told is he's told to get up to kill and to eat. And Peter's like, no way. I have never done that before. I have never broken these dietary laws. And so I'm not going to do that. And then he hears this voice say, never consider unclean what God has made pure or what God has made clean. This then happens three times. Now, what as often happens is we hear this passage or this vision, we think that, oh, this is just God changing dietary laws. God is now pro-bacon and pro-lobster, and that's all this really is about. But we have to remember that visions in the Bible are largely symbolic, that there's something else going on in the passage. And typically in biblical visions, animals are representative of nations. We see this in Daniel and a lot of other places as well. So what we're going to see as this passage unfolds is this really isn't about our plates. This passage is about people. And that's confirmed in the very next scene because the scene ends and Peter doesn't go, finally, bacon, I'm off, and goes immediately to go and eat things he's never eaten before, going, I wonder what that tastes like. Instead, he's confused. He's wondering, what do I do with this? And then as he's pondering, three men come to him. Remember, he saw the vision three times, and now there's three men that come to him. And then the Holy Spirit tells him as they visit to go with them to Cornelius' house. And so he opens up this conversation with Cornelius. And he said to Cornelius and his crew, You all realize that it's forbidden for a Jew to associate or visit with outsiders, forbidden to associate with Gentiles. Now, that's not forbidden anywhere in the Torah. It's not forbidden anywhere in the written law of God. This is oral tradition for that time period, which we'll talk about again in a little bit. And he says, however, God has shown me that I should never call a person impure or unclean. Other versions of your Bibles might say common and unclean. I should never call a person impure or unclean. For this reason, when you sent me, I came without objection. I'm going against what would have been normal protocol. Because I want to know then, why did you send for me? Why is all this happening? Why did you get the vision? Why did I get the vision? Why am I here? And this is the place though we're already, we're maybe starting to come into a place of a little bit of confusion. Why all of this emphasis on clean and unclean? We're dealing in this text with categories that are maybe a bit unfamiliar for us because they come from everyone's favorite Old Testament book. That book you read every morning in your devotions, uh, and just can never seem to escape out of it. That wonderful, bloody book of Leviticus. And so I thought, as just you know, challenged by choice, um, I would try to explain the logic of Leviticus this morning to give us some background for this passage, because we really cannot understand what's happening unless we can understand the logic of what was going on in the background. So if you can just go with me really quick all the way back to Genesis. I'm skipping from Leviticus back to Genesis already. Genesis chapter one and two, God makes the whole world, and then his presence is with people. They're walking together in the cool of the day. And so we have people in God's presence as the normative sort of experience until that whole tree incident. And then the people are exiled from the garden and they are barred from entering into God's presence. And so from this point forward, God's presence is not accessible for people, save for in a few moments where we have a theophany, God appearing, like the burning bush or Sinai. But there is not a place where there is God's concentrated presence within the world until we get the Exodus and then covenant and Sinai, the construction of the tabernacle, and at the very end of Exodus, the glory of God comes and fills the tabernacle. God's concentrated presence has returned to the earth. But now there's a major question, which is what Leviticus is all about. How do humans draw near to the holy God and live? How is it we haven't gone back to the garden? Something different's happened. God's now here, but we're still in the same condition. How do humans draw near to the holy God and live? And we get a snapshot in Leviticus is how this logic worked out. And the key is really Leviticus chapter 10, verse 10. Are you still with me? I mean, we're Leviticus already, like a couple minutes in. Okay. Uh Leviticus 10, 10 says this distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean. So in the logic of Leviticus, there are two realms. There is the holy and there is the common. The holy is God's realm. This is that center point in the tabernacle and the things really close to it, and the things that are going to be placed in there to dwell in God's presence, the one space that the priest goes into once a year. This is holy space, wherever God's realm is. Everything else is common space. The world is kind of divided up into those two categories. The common can come into contact with the holy if it's been sanctified. But if the holy moves into the common, something's removed from the temple and now it is profaned. So we see some movement between that. But within that common world, it's subdivided into two categories, the clean and the unclean. So there's holy and there's common. Within the common, there's clean and unclean. Now we hear those words and we immediately start thinking about dirt. Maybe just me and my vacuum and how quickly can I get the house cleaned. Or we think about hygiene and soap and shampoo and X body spray or whatever it is that I use for hygiene. Or maybe if you eat clean, like you're immediately sort of going into those places. But when the Bible uses those terms, that's not the categories that it's thinking in. There's some correlation with washing and some of those things, or some hygienic benefits, but that's not the way that Leviticus is thinking about those terms. The way that the Bible is using clean and unclean is about proximity or access. Can this person or this thing come into proximity to the holy God? Only what's common and clean can draw near. What's common and unclean cannot. Because if the unclean comes in contact with the holy, things will not go well. Think of Uzzah touching the ark and dying. Think of Nadab and Abihu offering an illegal sacrifice in the temple and dying. If the unholy unclean comes in contact with the holy, death ensues. Now that is applied in two different ways in Leviticus. There is a ritual or ceremonial sense of being clean or unclean. That category has nothing to do with sin. It's about mortality. It's us coming into contact with death or losing life fluids. Those kinds of things, it's not related to sin. It's just that anything that is symbolizes death can't enter into the presence of life. And then there's another category of moral impurity, of things related to sin. And then depending on why someone was unclean, then if they were ritually unclean, they're supposed to wash and wait, and then they can come back to the temple. If it was uh in the moral landscape, it depended upon if it was intentional or unintentional, whether it was property damage. There's all kinds of different ways, different pathways for people to follow to get back into contact with the holy. Now, what we see happen in the first century, are you still with me? Okay, you're like Leviticus for that long. Like I cannot believe I came this morning. Um, so in the first century, those categories of like ritual and moral impurity began to collapse on one another, especially as it applied to Gentiles, as those that were outside of the covenant. What began to be perceived is that Gentiles were inherently unclean, that their customs were ceremonially unclean, and their lifestyle, particularly their idolatry, just made them morally unclean. And so that was their sort of permanent status. That was even architecturally worked out in the Second Temple, uh, where a court of Gentiles was added, separated by a wall that had signs on it and told Gentiles, do not enter or die. None shall pass. Gandalf just sitting there going, like, you're not coming in here. And so that led to these other traditions that if they are inherently unclean, then we probably shouldn't eat with them, and we probably shouldn't go into their homes, and we probably shouldn't do any of this. And you began to see this greater and greater and greater distance. And so a Gentile's only pathway to the presence of God was to become Jewish, to be circumcised, to go through a ritual immersion similar to baptism, and to make a sacrifice. That's going to come up in Acts 15. But if a Gentile was a God fearer like Cornelius, they worshipped Yahweh, were considered righteous, obeyed the law, they were morally clean, they were still considered ritually unclean. Even if they followed the practices, there was nothing that they could do. They were not circumcised, they were not part of the covenant, they were considered an outsider and permanently unclean. And there was no pathway from unclean to clean to come in contact with the holy without that kind of conversion. In other words, there's no pathway to forgiveness. They could not make the jump from unclean to holy. There's no way. And so that's the sequence that you move from unclean, no access, no drawing near, no proximity to clean, access. Now you can draw near to the holy. And of course, the perspective then becomes well, God is just showing partiality to Jews. There's no space for Gentiles within this world. And so Acts chapter 10, verse 34, Peter said, I'm learning something. I'm learning that God doesn't show partiality to one group of people over another. Rather, God's desire is that in every nation, whoever worships him and does what is right is acceptable to him. And this is the message of peace, reconciliation that he sent to the Israelites, proclaiming the good news through Jesus that he is Lord of all, Lord of all. It's the theological basis from our Old Testament reading. It's the theological basis for what Peter's working out here, that all of creation, all nations are meant to be under God's king, the God as King and in his kingdom. And so what he then begins to do is tell them what they already know about Jesus. That Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power, that he was going about doing good and healing, and then he was crucified, but resurrected, and then raised and ascended and appointed as the one to judge, the one to make distinctions between clean and unclean. And then whoever believes in him, forgiveness of sin is now available in his name. Not just through the system, but through his name. Not through becoming Jewish, not through sacrifices, but through Jesus. And then while Peter was still speaking, he hasn't even finished his message. And the Holy Spirit fell on everyone who heard the word. Everyone. And Peter said, These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have, surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water, can they? And he directed that they be baptized in the name of Jesus. And then Peter stayed with them for several days. So Peter's mid-message, before he can finish his beautiful articulation of the gospel, before he can say everything that he wants to say, these un before these unclean Gentiles can even say that they believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit falls on Cornelius and his crew in the same way it fell on the apostles in the upper room. This is a second Pentecost kind of experience. Than the unclean becoming clean so that they can access the holy, the whole sequence is reversed. The holy comes to the unclean, and the unclean don't die. The unclean become clean and not just clean, they become filled with the Holy Spirit. They become holy, they become portable temples, they become part of God's realm, part of God's kingdom. Later they'll be called holy ones or saints. And the logic is how is that even possible? The sequence doesn't work like that. The logic doesn't work like that. How is this even a thing? And so when news gets out, Peter's met with an incredible amount of suspicion and pushback. So in chapter 11, he goes back to Jerusalem and all the critics come after him. And he starts recounting the stories step by step. And at the very end, he says, I remembered the Lord's words that John baptized with water. That you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. And if God gave them the same gift that He gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Can I possibly stand in God's way and deny access? Once the apostles and the other believers heard this, this is my favorite line, they calmed down. They praised God and concluded, so then God has enabled Gentiles, the permanently unclean, to change their hearts and lives so that they too might have new life. Peter uses some really intentional language. God gave them the same gift. God enabled them to repent. In other words, this whole thing was not Peter's construction. This was all God's initiative. This was all possible. The change in the sequence, the change in the logic, because God had done something significant. God had moved in a way, he took the initiative and changed the whole game by doing something in and through Jesus. And if we think about Jesus' life through those same lenses, here Jesus, the Holy One, the divine Son of God, the member of the Trinity whose presence was confined to a place in a temple, became human. The holy became common without ceasing to be holy. And then when the holy one came in contact with the unclean, he didn't become unclean. Rather, the unclean were made well. He came in contact with the leper, and the leper was healed. He came in contact with the woman with the issue of blood, and the woman was healed. He came in contact with dead bodies, and those dead bodies came back to life. And then when he was crucified, what we have is the holy God, who became common, took on all of the uncleanliness of the world, took on all of the world's moral impurity, and became the one sacrifice that was required to make the unclean clean. He became the one pathway for forgiveness of sin. And because of his death and resurrection, the veil in the temple was torn, the wall came down, and the presence of God safely broke out into the world. It broke out. Why? To purify and to fill everyone who would repent and believe, regardless of their genealogical backgrounds. To bring everyone into new life and to make everyone who would repent and believe a carrier of his divine presence. A carrier of his divine presence. We continue to think, oh, well, I'm an outsider. I was born to the wrong family. I didn't grow up in church. I don't have the right pedigree. I don't understand the Bible. I don't know this thing. I don't know that thing. I don't know this or that. I feel like I don't belong in some way. I don't sort of check all of the boxes in my life when I meet this person or that person. They're like eight-generation Christians, and I come from this household or this family or whatever it happens to be. And we consider ourselves, well, I'm an outsider. And so these are all the things that I must do in order to gain access. Or like I'm not so much an outsider by fate or by birth or whatever it is that we might happen to be, but I'm an outsider because of all of the choices that I've made. I am unwelcome, I am unaccepted, I am not able to draw near. My life is marked by shame, it's marked by guilt, it's marked by fear. If this person only knew what I had done, if this person had known this part of my life or this part of my story, and until I live in a different way for a long enough time that I can then point back and say, no, no, no, no, that really is old. Then once I've sort of gone from feeling unclean to making myself clean, then maybe then I can enter into the fellowship of God's holy people, or maybe then I can pray, maybe then I can worship, maybe then I can receive communion, maybe then I can feel like God welcomes me and accepts me, and we continue to live according to old logic. But the logic of the gospel is this is that whoever we are and wherever we are, and whatever our life has been like, or whatever it's not been like, whatever regrets or fears or shame or whatever it is that we've carried, whatever we've done, or the things we've left undone, the invitation of Jesus is to say yes and allow the holy presence of God to come and invade our lives. And his power and his presence is what teaches us then to live in a new way. It's his power and presence that forgives us of our sin. It's his power and presence that then frees us from whatever it is that is ensnaring us. It's his power and his presence that then is what enables us to enter into a brand new life. It's not because we sort of earned our way into this or proved our way into this or whatever it was. Instead of working our way into the holy, it's the holy one that comes to us and makes us holy. He makes us saints. That's the good news of the gospel. And so as we come to the table today, this is the invitation before us is that the holy one became common and he took on all the uncleanness of the world, took on everything that might keep us from the very presence of God, and he suffered all of that for us so that the holy might break out and that we might then draw near to him because he is already drawn near to us as it was in the beginning, it's now and ever shall be. Amen.