SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, and go ahead and take your Bible again to Acts chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: Acts chapter 10 and on the account of Cornelius.
SPEAKER_00: This is a pivotal chapter in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: It's been called many, many different things, but probably the best term that I've come across is it's a hinge.
SPEAKER_00: Everything begins to turn on Acts chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, why?
SPEAKER_00: What is it about this chapter?
SPEAKER_00: What is it about Cornelius that makes it a hinge?
SPEAKER_00: I'm borrowing the title for today's sermon from Willie Jennings.
SPEAKER_00: In his commentary on Acts chapter 10, he says, and I quote, in a quiet corner of the Roman Empire, in the home of a centurion, a rip in the fabric of space and time has occurred.
SPEAKER_00: As if God has taken his cosmic hands and just ripped apart space and time.
SPEAKER_00: You and I have not experienced anything as powerful and as consequential as this event in Acts chapter 10, aside from the birth, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This passage has rightly been called a second Pentecost or a Gentile Pentecost within the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says at one point near the end of this chapter, he says, Can we not, should we withhold water for baptizing these people who received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
SPEAKER_00: Most likely in Peter's mind, that's a reference to the Pentecost event where they received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: The events that occurred in Jerusalem among Jews from many parts of the world now occur in a Gentile community, in a Gentile home on the very edge of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So link, Luke links, there we go.
SPEAKER_00: Luke links.
SPEAKER_00: Don't say that quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Luke links what happens in Pentecost with what happens in Cornelius's home.
SPEAKER_00: But what is Pentecost really about?
SPEAKER_00: Peter tells us in Acts chapter 2, verse 21, after relating the events of Pentecost to the prophet Joel and his declaration of what God would do, Peter says, quoting Joel, he says, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Who's left out of the word everyone?
SPEAKER_00: That may be a simple question for you and me.
SPEAKER_00: For a first century Jew, it was, well, everyone but Jews is left out.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very controlled group.
SPEAKER_00: But here, Peter refers to that.
SPEAKER_00: Later, the apostle Paul will tell the Philippian jailer, another Gentile, believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Those who heard the gospel from the mouth of Peter on this day in Acts chapter 10 are the products of the gospel proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: Like Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, Cornelius and his family and their guests believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and were saved.
SPEAKER_00: So Luke illustrates the gospel's progression, not just geographically from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and now to other parts of the world, but he's also illustrating it ethnically, moving from Jews to those not quite Jews who are called Samaritans to the Ethiopian and now to another Gentile person.
SPEAKER_00: But Luke is also doing something else with this account.
SPEAKER_00: If we ask the question, what place does this have in the entire Bible?
SPEAKER_00: We're asking a much bigger question and a much harder question to answer.
SPEAKER_00: Within the context of the entire Bible, Acts chapter 10 has been described as a parallel to Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: In this chapter of Acts, Luke recounts a Trinitarian act of creating a spiritual image bearer through the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: God is at work.
SPEAKER_00: He's acting.
SPEAKER_00: Now if you look carefully, you will see that Luke does not recount the act of believing.
SPEAKER_00: He only recounts the evidence of faith, not the act of believing.
SPEAKER_00: Let me break that down for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Cornelius already possessed a kind of faith.
SPEAKER_00: He's called a devout man in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: He's a devout man who fears God.
SPEAKER_00: And his faith was shared by those in his household.
SPEAKER_00: And it's even extended beyond that, apparently, to some of the soldiers under his command.
SPEAKER_00: But his faith is in the God of Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: So Jews called them God-fearers.
SPEAKER_00: A God fearer was not a full proselyte.
SPEAKER_00: A full proselyte was somebody who would go through the process of becoming a Jew in every way except for birth.
SPEAKER_00: Cornelius didn't fully convert to Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: However, he believed in the Jewish God and he upheld many of Judaism's moral expectations, but he still remained entirely Gentile, but with a special appreciation for the Jewish God and the Jewish faith.
SPEAKER_00: So Cornelius and his family, and it seems as though even at least one of his soldiers possessed genuine faith.
SPEAKER_00: They believed in and lived out that faith in genuine acts of kindness and prayer to God.
SPEAKER_00: But genuine faith can still be insufficient.
SPEAKER_00: Let that sit for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But if it was sufficient faith, he would not have needed angelic messengers to arrange a meeting with Peter to hear something that was missing.
SPEAKER_00: See, Cornelius' faith was missing something, but more particularly someone.
SPEAKER_00: In terms of faith, Cornelius was on par with the religious Jews of the time.
SPEAKER_00: He believed in the God of the religious system of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But like those Jews, Cornelius and those with him needed to believe in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: See, for thousands of years, the Jewish expectation, their faith was in the coming Redeemer, the promised one that God would send.
SPEAKER_00: That was the grounding of their faith.
SPEAKER_00: And the fabric of that expectation was ruptured with the tearing of the temple veil when Jesus died.
SPEAKER_00: And three days later rose again.
SPEAKER_00: And the command is now to believe in God's incarnated, crucified, buried, and risen Son.
SPEAKER_00: The message is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: But Luke doesn't show Cornelius or anyone in his household doing that.
SPEAKER_00: They did.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, they did.
SPEAKER_00: That's a requirement for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's a requirement to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And we see the results of that faith.
SPEAKER_00: The results of that faith are the Holy Spirit comes and indwells them and they are baptized.
SPEAKER_00: They follow through on that.
SPEAKER_00: They hear the gospel, the Spirit comes and they are baptized.
SPEAKER_00: But Luke doesn't tell us anything about Cornelius believing.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say he trusted in the message.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say that he exercised his faith.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't tell us that.
SPEAKER_00: So what is Luke trying to get at?
SPEAKER_00: But suggest to you that Luke is pointing out to us the Trinitarian work of bringing salvation to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: This is not about Cornelius coming to faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's there.
SPEAKER_00: This is about God's work of completing God's program of bringing in the nations of the world to worship him.
SPEAKER_00: Luke wants us to step back from the details and see what God did.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's remind ourselves of Luke's greater intent for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: You'll remember, going all the way back to the Gospel of Luke in the first four verses, and then the beginning of Acts chapter 1, Luke was writing for his friend and most likely supporter, Theophilus.
SPEAKER_00: And he told Theophilus that he wanted him to be confident about what happened in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: So he wrote him a story, a narrative of all of the events that happened, so that Theophilus could be confident in the historical recounting of events and to be able to see and to believe with certainty in what God had done to include the nations in his salvation plan.
SPEAKER_00: And to do that, Jesus in the Gospel of Luke starts with his people.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: John tells us in John chapter 1 that Jesus came to his own people, but they did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: By the end of the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul will say to the Jewish people who rejected the message of the gospel, he says, okay, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: You're under judgment for that.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: This is the work of God.
SPEAKER_00: And this chapter in Acts chapter 10 is the hinge point at which things now start to turn drastically from the people of Israel to the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And even though this is a long chapter to read, the events are quite succinct.
SPEAKER_00: Two men are brought together through angelic visions so that Cornelius and those in his house will hear the good news of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Acts chapter 10 is.
SPEAKER_00: From a very far high level perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly that happens.
SPEAKER_00: And the genuineness of faith in Christ is confirmed through the Spirit and baptism.
SPEAKER_00: Now we know from other scriptures that God says that those who genuinely seek him will find him.
SPEAKER_00: Those who genuinely seek God will find him.
SPEAKER_00: And what Luke is recording for us here is how God orchestrates that event down to the very minute.
SPEAKER_00: At the time that he should be eating, because he's hungry, Peter's praying.
SPEAKER_00: And God uses those two elements, being hungry and praying, to bring this apostle Peter to his Jonah moment.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Jonah, you'll remember, was told to take God's message of judgment to Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah, however, was afraid that God would not exercise judgment, but instead would be merciful and gracious.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah wanted harshness.
SPEAKER_00: He was afraid that God would not be harsh.
SPEAKER_00: And so at Joppa he got on a boat and floated away in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: And now Peter is in Simon's house by the sea in Japan.
SPEAKER_00: And at the very moment that the delegation from Cornelius approaches the community limits of Joppa, God challenges Peter's perception of Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: This time it isn't the horrible, terrible Nineveh.
SPEAKER_00: This time it's a despised Roman soldier.
SPEAKER_00: Will Peter go?
SPEAKER_00: Or will he pull a Jonah?
SPEAKER_00: This is where Luke begins to show us the unfolding work of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: And he shows this by developing four aspects of God's work that strengthen our confidence and our faith in God's work.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah was commanded to go.
SPEAKER_00: But a divine shift in God's program now challenges Peter's cultural perceptions and convictions.
SPEAKER_00: And that challenge of Peter's cultural perceptions and convictions changes the direction of the church from Acts chapter 11 on.
SPEAKER_00: And it begins to challenge us in what we think of God.
SPEAKER_00: How might he be working in our lives to challenge our perceptions, our convictions?
SPEAKER_00: Let's consider this unfolding of God's plan in chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: This is the work of the Trinity, and I think this will become clearer as we go on.
SPEAKER_00: We start here this morning with the Trinity's work being culturally powerful.
SPEAKER_00: This episode in the life of the early church shows God decimating cultural obstacles.
SPEAKER_00: The first cultural barrier demolished is the most obvious.
SPEAKER_00: Gentiles are no longer common and unclean, but cleansed and welcomed.
SPEAKER_00: Those are Jewish terms.
SPEAKER_00: That is, the words common and unclean.
SPEAKER_00: Those are Jewish religious terms marking the Jewish people as distinct, as set apart by God from the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_00: In that being set apart, they are sanctified, they are cleansed.
SPEAKER_00: So they are set apart and clean.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the world is common and unclean.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter's rooftop experience shows this demolition's beginning.
SPEAKER_00: God presents Peter with a religious and ethical dilemma.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's commanded to kill and eat.
SPEAKER_00: That means he has to touch unclean animals, which in the Jewish world would make Peter unclean.
SPEAKER_00: And then he has to eat unclean animals, which would make Peter especially unclean.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Peter, of course, being Peter, says, absolutely not, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's not about to defile himself.
SPEAKER_00: And I love the way that Webb emphasized this in his reading.
SPEAKER_00: Three times this happened.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, kill and eat.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're familiar with the gospel accounts, you know how important three times is in the life of Peter.
SPEAKER_00: That's God's wake-up calls, like God dinging the bell right next to sleeping Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, wake up, Peter.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking to you.
SPEAKER_00: Peter knows this is a divine communique.
SPEAKER_00: He's told that the Jewish food rules have been undone.
SPEAKER_00: Just like that.
SPEAKER_00: God abolished the Jewish ceremonial laws distinguishing between clean and unclean animals.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Christian is no longer bound to those ceremonial requirements.
SPEAKER_00: God dismantled those Jewish distinctions.
SPEAKER_00: They were appropriate to mark Israel as set apart and distinct before Christ, but now God's people is including all ethnicities, making that distinction needless.
SPEAKER_00: Now you would think that after three times Peter would wake up.
SPEAKER_00: But Luke tells us that Peter didn't quite get it.
SPEAKER_00: He was uncertain about what it all meant.
SPEAKER_00: But it becomes clear to him that the food elements were minor details.
SPEAKER_00: Because God was using the minor details to point to something much more significant, to a more incredible work of God.
SPEAKER_00: God declared that Gentiles, non-Jews, were no longer to be considered common and unclean.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because in Christ, even Gentiles become God's people through the cleansing of Christ's blood leading to forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Look at chapter 10, verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: Peter arrives in Caesarea and he says to the gathered group, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation.
SPEAKER_00: Let's clarify that.
SPEAKER_00: That's because they were still in control of the situation.
SPEAKER_00: They could control what foods were eaten, what was brought into the home, what wasn't brought into the home, but it was absolutely not kosher for a Jew to go into a Gentile's home.
SPEAKER_00: That was horrendous.
SPEAKER_00: This is unlawful, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.
SPEAKER_00: Now look back at verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: And the voice came to him a second time.
SPEAKER_00: This is why he's on the rooftop in Joppa.
SPEAKER_00: What God has made clean, do not call common.
SPEAKER_00: I really don't like to point out when our English translations leave something out, but I think it's important from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: Luke wrote a word here, a pronoun that doesn't get included in our English translations very much.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the pronoun you in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: It's there for emphasis.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, what God has called common, you do not call common.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, what God has called unclean, you do not, I'm sorry, what God has called clean, you do not call Call unclean.
SPEAKER_00: God has specifically narrowed his focus to Peter, and he's saying, Peter, you need to change.
SPEAKER_00: Peter needs to change because Peter's the representative of the whole apostolic community.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's the representative of the whole church.
SPEAKER_00: He's leading a group of believers to a Gentile area, and Peter needs to make sure that Peter has the right attitude before Peter goes and carries out God's command.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we get to Caesarea in verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.
SPEAKER_00: By the time he gets there, he gets the message.
SPEAKER_00: God is doing a work, and Peter has to get on board.
SPEAKER_00: So unlike Jonah, Peter immediately obeys.
SPEAKER_00: He not only goes to Caesarea, a primarily Gentile town, but he goes to the Gentile town, he goes into a Roman's house and he eats a meal with Gentile people.
SPEAKER_00: That would immediately result in exclusion from the Jewish community.
SPEAKER_00: He's unclean.
SPEAKER_00: He has taken a step too far.
SPEAKER_00: But God has demolished the barrier.
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter obeys.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, the gospel demolishes cultural barriers.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't remove cultural distinctions, but it removes all objections for disciples who are hesitant about reaching across cultural barriers to lead people to Christ by taking the gospel to them.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a second cultural barrier dismantled here.
SPEAKER_00: It's less obvious, and that is the dismantling of the perception of Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: It's surprising how political Peter is.
SPEAKER_00: But it's subtle.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Roman emperors were deified, beginning with Julius Caesar in 42 BC.
SPEAKER_00: That means that they were declared to be gods.
SPEAKER_00: Most often it was a post-mortem declaration.
SPEAKER_00: So after they died, people came together and decided, hey, they were a god because of this, that, and the other reason, and so they begin to worship the dead Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: By 37 or 40 AD, things began to change.
SPEAKER_00: Julius Caesar was the first deified Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: His descendant, Caesar Augustus, was the first Caesar worshipped as the son of God.
SPEAKER_00: And by about 37 to 40 AD, less than a decade after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, and perhaps pretty close to the time frame of Acts 10, Emperor Caligula demanded worship of his subjects as a living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Cornelius serves that Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: Cornelius is a leader of soldiers under a Caesar who expects to be viewed not just as king, not just as emperor, but as Lord, as the sovereign, as God.
SPEAKER_00: Later, Christians would be martyred for refusing to offer sacrifices to emperors.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in that setting, Jesus, the Son of the Most High God, the Word of God and fleshed, wrapped in flesh, was born, lived, and displayed his majestic glory and power, and then he was crucified by Rome as the king of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: But this small group of Christians proclaimed him as risen, saying, death could not hold this king.
SPEAKER_00: So put yourself in Peter's sandals.
SPEAKER_00: You're on your way, that's a fairly short journey, about a day and a half or so.
SPEAKER_00: You're on your way to the capital of the Roman province, named after the Lord Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: Caesarea.
SPEAKER_00: You will speak to a Roman centurion, a leader within Caesar's army who is called to obey Caesar's orders and to worship him as a god.
SPEAKER_00: How do you speak about Jesus in that situation?
SPEAKER_00: Carefully?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe discreetly?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you try to win him over as a friend first so that you can do this friendship kind of evangelism.
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at how Peter spoke of Jesus in verse 36.
SPEAKER_00: As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news, gospel of peace, through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: Implicitly, that's an in-your-face declaration to Caesar's centurion that Caesar was not the one to be worshipped and obeyed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He is the incarnation of the Jewish God.
SPEAKER_00: It is a demand for allegiance to Jesus and him alone.
SPEAKER_00: It is a call for this centurion to cast aside any thoughts that he may have about Caesar and to give all his allegiance to Jesus who is the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Dismantling cultural barriers.
SPEAKER_00: Now the first Jewish believers were already wrestling with changes in their faith.
SPEAKER_00: First was the acknowledgement that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And not just the Messiah, but Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: God with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so at this point in time, there's a kind of separation occurring between these disciples and the rest of their non-believing Jewish brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: But the exact nature of that separation is in flux.
SPEAKER_00: It's changing.
SPEAKER_00: And now you throw into that mud pit that these Jewish disciples of Jesus are being pushed to accept Gentile believers as one of their own with no distinction.
SPEAKER_00: Taken together, the work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are shown to be culturally transforming.
SPEAKER_00: The fabric of Jewish space and time has been ripped, and the Trinitarian God did it with power, with witnesses, and with proof.
SPEAKER_00: That shows us that the Trinity's work is spiritually transformational.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Luke recounts these events to ground the inclusion of Gentiles in God's people.
SPEAKER_00: That action is all done by the persons of the Godhead.
SPEAKER_00: The Father, the Son, and the Spirit all act to bring Gentiles into God's presence without a temple and without becoming Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Let me quickly cover two primary spiritual transformations here: one in Peter and one in the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Peter and his believing Jewish friends who are with him are spiritually transformed in the change of their belief about the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is suddenly, suddenly convinced that God's work is not limited to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he says that everyone can come.
SPEAKER_00: God's people now includes non-Jews.
SPEAKER_00: God makes believing Gentiles clean.
SPEAKER_00: That would have staggered Peter and the Jews with him.
SPEAKER_00: The long-ingrained cultural distinctions were demolished.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of the reason why this story gets repeated two more times in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: To help solidify it.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish Christians had to transform their beliefs about Gentiles, and it wasn't a quick or straightforward process.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even later, the Apostle Paul had to challenge Peter about his actions, saying, you're not acting appropriately here.
SPEAKER_00: This was a hard concept for them to grasp.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another spiritual transformation, and that's in the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Cornelius is all excited about this, and so he gets everybody that he can think of together.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just his family, it's his household servants who take care of the business of the house.
SPEAKER_00: Even apparently a soldier or two is present.
SPEAKER_00: There's a significant gathering of people who seem to share his faith in the Jewish God, and they're anticipating something unique from Peter's visit.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter doesn't say much, at least in Luke's record.
SPEAKER_00: But just like that, they're transformed.
SPEAKER_00: In an instant, they are spiritually transformed from God-fearing Gentiles to disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's instantaneous.
SPEAKER_00: The connection between God's promises and the fulfillment of those promises of Jesus occurs and they believe.
SPEAKER_00: But remember, Luke doesn't tell us that they believed.
SPEAKER_00: They did, of course.
SPEAKER_00: That's required for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: But Luke is taking a step back and emphasizing what God is doing because it's going to take God to move the salvation in Jesus Christ from the Jews to the world.
SPEAKER_00: Notice how Luke includes God the Father in verse 34, and God the Son in verse 36, and God the Spirit in verse 38.
SPEAKER_00: All of that is in Peter's speaking.
SPEAKER_00: Similarly, the Trinity is at work in converting these Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit appears in verses 44, 45, 47, the Father in verse 46, God the Son in verse 48.
SPEAKER_00: This is a Trinitarian rebirth, a divine recreation of people into the image of Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is the new birth that John spoke of in John chapter 3 when he recorded Jesus speaking to Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_00: You must be born again or born from above.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Luke is recording for the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: For the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: My brain wouldn't work.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastically refers to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesia is a term in the New Testament that means a gathering or an assembly of people.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, it's applied primarily to disciples, to followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So at this point in God's program, the church is still in its infancy.
SPEAKER_00: It's not very old.
SPEAKER_00: It's growing in numbers, it's expanding geographically, it's expanding ethnically.
SPEAKER_00: But that kind of growth and expansion naturally brings with it all kinds of problems, especially for a faith with a distinct Jewish background, to consider what the Jewish leaders were thinking.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish high court, the Sanhedrin, who mostly wanted Christianity squashed.
SPEAKER_00: They had to have been asking questions like is this new thing that's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Is it a sect of Judaism?
SPEAKER_00: Or is it something new altogether?
SPEAKER_00: Is it a new religion?
SPEAKER_00: If it's a sect of Judaism, is it Orthodox?
SPEAKER_00: Is it in line with what we believe?
SPEAKER_00: Or must it be eliminated?
SPEAKER_00: Does this group follow the Jewish law?
SPEAKER_00: Are they lawkeepers?
SPEAKER_00: Who belongs to this group?
SPEAKER_00: How do you join this group?
SPEAKER_00: What is necessary for belonging to this group?
SPEAKER_00: And of course, all the other questions will inform that one.
SPEAKER_00: You then add to those questions the demolishing of barriers, and tension is poured on, piled on to those kinds of questions.
SPEAKER_00: So it would have been incredibly difficult for a Jewish Christian to accept a Samaritan as an equal in the faith.
SPEAKER_00: But it was groundbreaking, rather, earth-shattering, cosmically rendering work to include Gentiles as co-heirs in Christ with Jews.
SPEAKER_00: That was unheard of.
SPEAKER_00: But God made it happen.
SPEAKER_00: But how does a Jewish group welcome a Gentile as an equal?
SPEAKER_00: This isn't bringing someone into your club or rejecting someone from your club.
SPEAKER_00: It's far more than dismantling a clique of people within a faith organization.
SPEAKER_00: And when you add the Roman soldier component to a Jewish faith component, you get closer to the notion of uniting a Jew and a Nazi soldier as spiritual siblings.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is what finally touches our innermost being as to what God is doing.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that would not happen by human accomplishment.
SPEAKER_00: God is creating his people.
SPEAKER_00: And it's destroying barriers.
SPEAKER_00: We don't fully grasp the shock of this event until we feel how astounding it is.
SPEAKER_00: And God did it.
SPEAKER_00: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Peter could not defy this act.
SPEAKER_00: And so Luke establishes this event with historical clarity so that the early church from this point on cannot ignore it.
SPEAKER_00: That's where witnesses enter in.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 36, Peter reminds these Gentiles of the Jewish events.
SPEAKER_00: He says, listen, you've heard about John the Baptizer, you've heard about the events with Jesus of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: And now he asserts that Peter and maybe his Jewish companions were witnesses of all of that.
SPEAKER_00: They saw John, they saw Jesus, they saw his death, burial, and resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: He declared that the risen Lord chose them as his witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: And now in the conversion of these Gentiles, Peter and his companions assumed the role of witnesses of God's saving work outside of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Let me go backwards.
SPEAKER_00: We've already seen how God converted a murderer.
SPEAKER_00: Saul.
SPEAKER_00: And we've already seen how the early church was scared to death of Saul coming into their gatherings.
SPEAKER_00: Is that him?
SPEAKER_00: Who let him in?
SPEAKER_00: And it took several steps for the church to be able to recognize that a Jew who was a murderer could be welcomed in.
SPEAKER_00: Now we need witnesses to confirm that God has cleansed the non-Jews to welcome them in.
SPEAKER_00: God is demolishing barriers in a few days with two visions, and Peter's telling them about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: God welcomed others into his people with Samaritans and Ethiopians, but now God is welcomed in those people.
SPEAKER_00: And not just those people, but Roman people, and not just Roman people, but Roman soldier people.
SPEAKER_00: And not just Roman soldier people, but Surians.
SPEAKER_00: The Father, Son, and Spirit are welcoming them, recreating them as clean images of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: But now the church has to adjust.
SPEAKER_00: And it would need witnesses to corroborate this unbelievable divine work.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Luke paints it as another Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: To a Jew, this event tore the established fabric of culture, of space and time apart, and the church is left to pick up the pieces.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter and his companions, witnessing the death, burial, and resurrection, become witnesses of God's cleansing of the Gentiles to corroborate what God has done.
SPEAKER_00: So by having witnesses present, including an apostolic witness, God provides certainty about the direction for his church.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you include them too.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, the Trinity's work is Christologically predominant.
SPEAKER_00: So I've already commented that Cornelius' faith was insufficient at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: He had a kind of faith, but it was not a saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's incredibly common.
SPEAKER_00: But Luke shows us here that the only sufficient saving faith is faith in that crucified, buried, risen Savior who is Lord of all, Jesus the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And so Peter brings the word of Israel to them.
SPEAKER_00: Going back to his arrival in Caesarea, he opens his mouth in verse 34 and begins to speak.
SPEAKER_00: I understand God shows no partiality.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 36, as for the word that he sent to Israel, this is the word you need to believe.
SPEAKER_00: That word is that the Jewish people put Jesus to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear.
SPEAKER_00: And he's the judge of the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Even your Caesars.
SPEAKER_00: God is stepping in and making the unclean washed, forgiven, and welcomed in.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard the testimony.
SPEAKER_00: Believe in him.
SPEAKER_00: No longer a group of messianic Jews, but a multi-ethnic assembly of saints called to trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So the message is distinctly Jewish in origin.
SPEAKER_00: It was sent to Israel and it centers on Jesus the Jew as the Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: The Father has declared the Son, his promised Messiah, and the Spirit is involved distinctly in his life and ministry to prove who he is.
SPEAKER_00: And the message of the church is now Jesus is risen and he is Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentile Pentecost was needed to confirm the astonishing move that God made to take people, people who were not his people, and bring them to faith in the Word of God through the preaching of the Word, so that Jesus, the Word, might be glorified and his kingdom expanded.
SPEAKER_00: And Luke says to all of us, you need to know that.
SPEAKER_00: Because it strengthens your faith and your confidence in God's work.
SPEAKER_00: May we learn from what Luke is saying here that you might even use us to cross a barrier, to break down some kind of barrier so that the gospel might go forward.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us not to be confused here, not to not to overlook what's primary and get focused on the barriers themselves, but the work that you are doing.
SPEAKER_00: That you are taking the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Use us to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: Give us sight that sees with faith beyond borders, beyond barriers, so that we might speak of you, everyone who needs to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.