Acts 10
You may be seated. Turn in your
copy of God’s Word to Acts chapter 10. Our reading today will be
the entire chapter, verses 1 through 48. While you’re making your
way there, I’ll tell you a little bit about today and a little
bit about next week. Next week, we’ll add to this passage, chapter
11, verses 1 through 18. So you’ve got two significant
things taking place in the early church. Remember, Jesus, the
risen and exalted Lord, is ruling his church from his throne of
glory. And he’s doing that through the
apostles. So the book of Acts, the Acts
of the Apostles, tells us how Jesus’ church continues. And
there’s two big things Jesus is doing, particularly through
the apostle Peter. Number one, big picture, the
gospel is going to the Gentiles. This is huge. This is a major
breaking, a major breakdown of a wall between Jew and Gentile. And we see it happen in the life
of the family of Cornelius. He’s a centurion of the Italian
cohort, a devout man, a devout man who’s not yet found Jesus.
And so we’ll find Cornelius coming to faith today. And then next
week, when we add chapter 11, verses one through 18, we’ll
be thinking about how the significance of the gospel going to the Gentiles
is for redemptive history. Before we read God’s word, let’s
ask for God’s help and blessing. Pray with me. Lord, still our
minds, our hearts and our souls now so that we can be attentive
to your word. May we receive the reading and
preaching of your word as what it really is, a word from you.
We thank you that you speak and your servants may hear. And so
Lord, unstop our ears. Help us to tune out the noise
of the world and all that makes us busy and anxious. And help
us to hear the great voice of our shepherd as he means to teach
us good things from the stores of the riches of his eternal
word. Bless us now, we do pray in the strong name of Jesus,
amen. Here now, God’s word, let’s give our attention to Acts chapter
10. At Caesarea, there was a man
named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian
cohort. He was a devout man, he feared
God with all his household, he gave alms generously to the people,
and he prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of
the day, he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say
to him, Cornelius. And he stared at him in a terror
and said, what is it, Lord? And he said to him, your prayers
and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now
send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. He
is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside. When the angel who spoke to him
had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier
from among those who attended him. And having related everything
to them, he sent them to Joppa. The next day, as they were on
their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop
about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted
something to eat. But while they were preparing
it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something
like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners
upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals
and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to
him, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, by no means,
Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.
And the voice came to him a second time, what God has made clean,
do not call common. This happened three times and
the thing was taken up at once to heaven. Now, while Peter was
inwardly perplexed as what the vision that he had seen might
mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made
inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate and called out to
ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering
the vision, the spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking
for you. Rise and go down and accompany
them without hesitation, for I have sent them. And Peter went
down to the men and said, I am the one you are looking for.
What is the reason for your coming? And they said, Cornelius, a centurion,
an upright and God-fearing man who is well spoken of by the
whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you
to come to his house and to hear what you have to say. So he invited
them in to be his guest. The next day he rose and went
away with them and some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied
him. And on the following day they
entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them
and had called together his relatives and close friends. When Peter
entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped
him. But Peter lifted him up saying,
stand up, I too am a man. And as he talked with him, he
went in and found many persons gathered. And he said to them,
you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate
with or to visit anyone of another nation. But God has shown me
that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I
was sent for, I came without objection. I asked then, why
you sent for me? And Cornelius said, four days,
four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at
the ninth hour and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing
and said, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms
have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask
for Simon, who is called Peter. He is lodging in the house of
Simon, a tanner, by the sea. So I sent for you at once and
you have been kind enough to come. Now, therefore, we are
all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been
commanded by the Lord. So Peter opened his mouth and
said, truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but
in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is
acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent
to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ,
he is Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened
throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism
that John proclaimed. how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good
and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with
him. And we are witnesses of all that
he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging
him on a tree. But God raised him on the third
day and made him to appear not to all the people, but to us
who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank
with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to
preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed
by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. To him,
all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in
him receives forgiveness of sins. through his name. Amen. The word of the living God for
us. Well, I think we have all learned
that if, um, if we ask a question, particularly in Sunday school,
uh, Andre’s always got his hand up, right? I’m picking on you. Uh, so I got, I got a question
for us and I think he’s the only one that can answer this. Um,
how many, how many of us are Jewish? None of us, all Gentiles,
right? Except you by birth, right? Are we not amazed at a passage
like this? That we Gentiles have been added
in. I mean, I’m speaking for me here. What an amazing thing,
but isn’t it amazing that God has brought in all nations to his church? What a privilege
that is. I think of, Oh, what’s the story? The C.S. Lewis story. My mind is really
not going so great this morning. The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe,
and Lucy and her family, their siblings, they go into the Narnian
world, and they see how dark it is, how depraved it is, how
awful it is, and there’s a little statement that says, Aslan is
on, can you fill it in? Oh, you can’t, Aslan is on the
move. This is a passage that shows us God is on the move.
Aslan is on the move. He’s taking his gospel from simply
the Jewish nation to all the ends of the earth. And how have
we seen that thus far in the book of Acts? Well, we have seen
Philip the Ethiopian, converted or Ethiopian unit converted by
Philip. I told you my brain wasn’t working
today. You’ll have to understand what I mean, not what I say.
Um, Philip, uh, the evangelist goes, uh, to the Ethiopian eunuch
and he’s converted and baptized. Uh, Peter and Philip also go
up onto the Mediterranean sea and they’re beginning to evangelize. And now this is a big, big, big
shift in the life. of the church. Remember Jesus
had told his apostles when he gathered them, you’re going to
be my witnesses in Judea or Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends
of the earth. And now we see the gospel going
to the ends of the earth, which will include, uh, the Gentiles. If you’re sitting here today
and you’re not, um, uh, Jewish by, by birth, This ought to knock
you in the head. This ought to poke you right
between the eyes and say, wake up, child. You who were far off
have been brought near. You who are not in the family
of God have been grafted in. We have a couple apple trees
in the backyard and you know how it works. If you wanna make
a hybrid apple, you break a limb off and you break another limb
off and you bind it, right? You tape it up, right, good.
And you cross the trees, the types. And so God, in his great
mercy, has brought us in to the household of faith. But this
is a rather significant event, not just in the life and the
history of the church, but you see, as we read this passage,
how troubling it was for Peter. Now, Peter has said, by no means,
Lord, before. Do you remember when Jesus told
a couple of disciples, hey, I’m gonna have to go to Jerusalem.
I’m going to have to suffer and I’m going to have to die on a
cross. And what did Peter say? No, not going to happen. And what did Jesus say? He said,
get behind me, Satan. So here’s another passage of
scripture, not too many years later, where Peter says, no God,
no Lord, no Christ, no Jesus, not going to happen. So he’s.
Serving the Lord, we saw a little glimpse of what was coming last
week. It says, Peter is staying at the seaside in the house of
one named Simon the tanner. Now, what does a tanner do? Well,
we shoot a deer, right? We want the hide so we get it
tanned so it doesn’t stink and all the rest. It’s a taxidermist,
right? Okay, we read how many verses of Leviticus? What does
that tell you about God’s Chosen people, Jewish people and animal
skins, not good. That’s not a field you take up.
No taxidermy, no barbecue restaurants, right? Animals unclean. And so you can
imagine when Peter has this vision, this sheet full of all the things
we read about in Leviticus and the voice says, eat. No, I’ve
never done it. I’m not about to. You think of,
Or is it Samson, a razor, you know, shouldn’t touch his head?
You know, we get into these commitments, these vows we make. No, no, Lord,
I won’t break my vow. And God is saying to Peter, look,
this is a paraphrase, you’re gonna go preach to the Gentiles,
so let’s go ahead and get this straight. I call the shots. If I made it and I call it clean,
then you recognize me creator, me clean caller, and you just
get with the program. What God has made clean, do not
call common. Now this whole idea of the Gentiles
being brought in, it shouldn’t be so foreign to us because we
know the story of Rahab. You Sunday nighters, Joshua,
Battle of Jericho, Rahab says, we’ve heard about your God. We’ve
heard what he did to Og the king of Sihon and the king of Bashan. We heard what he did at the sea
and the crossing and the water coming back on the Egyptians.
We’ve heard how big and bad your God is and we don’t want to mess
with him. And so Joshua, the spies of Joshua
say to her, here’s a scarlet cord, you hang it in your window.
When we come, tear down the city. You and your household, you who
have faith in the God of Israel, will be rescued and spared. And
so that’s what happened in Rahab, covenants with the people of
God. And we see that also with Ruth. Remember Ruth, our favorite
love story in the Bible, Ruth and Boaz. What was Ruth? She
was a Moabite. Anybody with an ite? In the Bible,
except Israelite, bad, right? Gentile, pagan, not good in the
sight of God’s people. Ruth comes to faith in the God
of Israel. And it ends up, she’s the grandmother
of who? King David and Jesus, that’s
right. That’s why those genealogies aren’t all that boring when we
read them around Christmas time. And so we have Rahab, we have
Ruth. These are Gentiles coming in.
These are glimpses of God doing this mighty work. How about Naaman,
the foreign king who’s got leprosy? And he ends up over in the promised
land and the command from God is to dip yourself in the Jordan
River How many times? Seven times. And he says, well,
we got this nice river back home that’s clean and, you know, the
mills haven’t polluted it. He goes on and on and no, it’s
the Jordan River. Do as God says. And so he finally
comes to his senses. He puts his faith in God. He
dips himself in the Jordan seven times. He’s now a clean man,
not a leper. It isn’t that symbolic of what
Jesus teaches us about our spiritual leprosy. We come to faith in
God and he can cleanse us. And so this whole idea of Gentiles,
foreigners coming into the temple of God, coming in to be his people
is not all that strange. Now, the context here is the
early church. Jesus has just died and risen from the dead.
He ascended to heaven after 40 days, but during those 40 days,
he spent it with His disciples saying, you’re gonna be my witnesses,
Jerusalem, Judea, to the ends of the earth. They spent a good
bit of time in ministry on Solomon’s colonnade until the persecution
struck and now they’ve been scattered to preach the gospel elsewhere.
We’ve looked at Stephen’s ministry and then his death. We’ve looked
at Philip’s ministry and then he moves on and we don’t hear
from him. Then Saul’s conversion, now Paul the apostle, he’s up
in Damascus for about 10 years at this point in the history.
Now here’s Peter. And he’s lodging at Joppa with
Simon the tanner. And then at the same time, Cornelius
is, Oh, if you look at your map, it’s about an inch up the road,
which I calculated to be about 45 miles. You look at your Bible
map and he has a vision from almighty God. And I want us to
just think about three, three ways to think of Cornelius that
will help us. Um, first thing about Cornelius
is he was a good man. Um, I think about this a lot in pastor
world, pastor talk. What kind of people do you want
in your churches? Well, theology says you want Christians, right?
You want a company of Christians who worship God, grow, and fellowship
together, and go witness to the world. Well, what does the world
say? If you wanna have a successful church, you need a bunch of doctors,
lawyers, and professionals, why? So you can pay the bills. That’s
rather worldly, don’t you think? Well, from a worldly view, Cornelius
was a good man. I mean, doctors, lawyers, professionals,
oh, centurions. You need a good centurion in
the church. Chief of security, right? As long as he’s there,
you’re gonna be safe and sound. But no, what we really need to
see from this passage, it describes him as a good man. He’s devout. He’s dedicated, he fears God.
In fact, his whole household fears God. You can say this man,
this centurion, he’s got his soldiers in order, he’s got his
life in order, and he’s got his family in order. He fears God,
he gives alms to the poor, and he’s a man of prayer. Now, there’s
a little statement here that means more than we might just
read on the surface. He fears God. In those days,
a God-fearer was a person who identified with the Jewish faith. They were seeking and searching
and said, okay, of all the smorgasbord of gods, on the menu, I’m going
to pick Yahweh. I’m going to go with the Jewish
faith. I’m going to go with the religion of Judaism. I’m going
to go with, uh, all that. Now there’s one thing they wouldn’t
do. They wouldn’t become circumcised. Uh, they would not follow, uh,
the ceremonial law. And so they were called God fears.
They, they were attracted to God’s people, but would not fully
commit to being God’s people. So they were unlike Rahab, unlike
Naaman. Unlike Ruth, they were interested
but not willing. And this tells us something I
think we ought to be careful of in the world. If you read
the statistics about church today in America, and I’m talking pre-COVID,
church attendance in America was on a 7% decline. You do the
math, how many 7% does it take to decline to get zero? It doesn’t
take many if you do your math, right? Then COVID hit and everybody
quit going to church because churches decided not to have
church. And then the statistics say that about a third of the
people who were in church pre-COVID probably won’t ever come back.
Part of it is because you can watch it in your pajamas eating
crepes with your iPad, which is not what Christ calls us to
do. The other part of it, though, is I think the respectability
of attending church has gone away. If you if you grew up in
America during the Puritan settlement early days, Sabbath breaking
was a crime, right? You kept the Sabbath and you
likely went to church. Didn’t matter if you were a Christian
or not. Didn’t matter if you love God or not. It didn’t matter
if you had Jesus in your life or not. You just went to church.
And you trickle that down through the years of American life. It was respectable until recent
years, I think, to go to church. And you might find lots of Corneliuses
in church. Devout. fear God in some way, do good
things, prayer, family in order, life in order. And you might
say of that person, boy, they really are a good person. But this leads us to think about
the second thing about Cornelius. Yes, he was a good man, but he’s
an unsaved man. And you ask, how do you know?
Well, that’s easy. I can read the hearts of people,
right? No, that’s not it. How do we
know? Well, because Peter went and preached the gospel and then
he got saved. That’s how we know. But here’s
an unsaved man. His life and maybe even his profession
seem to say about him, yes, I’m part of the church of God. This
can be the case in our churches. We can show up, we can have our
pew. You know, we can have our tie on straight or come over
just right. You know, we can put something
in the offering plate and make sure a few people see it, that
sort of thing. I read obituaries first to make sure I’m not in
there. Second, I kind of read the community obituaries to make
sure that our church doesn’t need to reach out to somebody
who hasn’t, you know, who was a part of our church life in
the past. But it’s interesting when you
read obituaries, You read about their stature in the church.
And, you know, you can do this and that in the church and, you
know, people recognize you. But this is the key thing. Do
you love Christ? Do you love his appearing? Do
you love that he saved you and that he bought you with his precious
blood? Do you do you come to church not for what you What
esteem you get from others, but simply to say, oh, Christ, I
am so glad I have been brought near by your precious blood. Well, Cornelius was an unsaved
man. And we know that he’s an unsaved
man. Because Peter goes to preach to him and he gets saved. But
there’s something about Cornelius that’s interesting. He’s searching. Saint Augustine, the great fourth
century theologian, said something in his confessions or his autobiography.
He said that our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. And
so if we don’t have Christ, if we don’t have faith in the God
of the heaven and earth, the God who saves us through Jesus,
our hearts are going to perpetually chase things and reach for them
and attempt to fill that God-sized hole in our heart with something.
And we do it through money, we do it through sex, we do it through
relationships, we do it through a career, we do it through how
big and fat our bank account is, we do it through exotic vacations,
or life experiences. We have all kinds of things that
we try to do to fill that God-sized hole, and God makes it clear,
I can only fill it. And Cornelius is a guy who’s
searching for those things, and he’s headed in the right direction.
He goes to the God of Israel, and he goes to Yahweh, the great
I Am. He goes to this God, and he just
hasn’t found Christ yet. And so God is, doing a mighty
work in Cornelius life when he sends Peter to him. Now I wanna say very clearly
to you, being devout will not save you.
Giving alms to the poor will not save you. Sitting in your
pew in church will not save you. Having a good reputation or stature
in the community, especially with religious credentials, that
will not save you. No, it will actually condemn
you. The only thing that will save you, and we’re going to
see this in the life of Cornelius, is to go from being a good man
and an unsaved man to being a converted man. Our catechism says this,
what is required of us that we may escape God’s wrath and curse
that is due to us for sin? And the answer is that we may
escape God’s wrath and curse due to us for sin is that we
embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel.
And that’s what Peter comes to do to Cornelius and his entire
household. I don’t know if you caught the
language, but. Cornelius, he seems to love his
family. He seems to love his household,
those attached to it. And when he sends for Peter,
don’t you imagine he’s got some food cooking and some punch being
made, and he’s going to all the family, all the household and
saying, tomorrow at noon, you need to be here. The food is
gonna be ready, but there’s this guy named Peter coming, and he
is coming, he’s coming to tell us some good things. Now, when
we have friends do that, we wonder, is this a timeshare? You know,
is this luggage? Is this Amway? Is this Mary Kay? Is this essential oils? We get
a little worried about this, but Cornelius is a serious man. And he wants everyone he knows
to hear this message and to come to faith in Jesus Christ. And
by the end of our story, by the end of this passage, Peter gives
them the gospel. He speaks of Jesus Christ, the
great lover of souls. And he alludes to passages from
Isaiah where it was promised that the God of Israel would
bring the Gentile nations into his kingdom. What an amazing
thing that is. You know how it is. You go to
grade school and they’re picking teens out on the court, you know.
And of course, if you’re tall, you get picked for basketball.
If you’re strong, you get picked for wrestling, all that. And
you know, most of us were the last one picked. Don’t we love
it when our name is called? And that’s exactly what Peter
goes to do. He says, God says you are clean. God says you’re not common. You’re a child. God says you’re
not a foreigner. No, you’re a, National, right? He brings you in. And this is
a mighty thing. We’ll think about this more next
week, but Peter is reluctant to do this until the Holy Spirit
says, no, you better. But this is a mighty, mighty
event, not just in the life of Cornelius and his household that
come to faith, but this is a mighty event where God says to the entire
world, and remember all of us Gentiles, you’re in. I choose you. You’re not too
short, not too tall, not to this color, not to that color, not
too poor, not too rich. Whatever all our categories are,
God here says in Christ Jesus, I declare you, I call you clean. I think it’s very interesting,
isn’t it? In the life of Peter, when God
says I’m gonna build my church and it’s gonna come through suffering
and the cross, Peter says, no, no way, by no means, Lord. And
then now when God says I’m gonna save all kinds of people from
all kinds of places, from all kinds of backgrounds. Peter says,
by no means, Lord, but aren’t we thankful that God’s will in
Christ Jesus is so much stronger and what we might resist. You
know, I think it said, and it’s probably still true. Um, they
say the 11 o’clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour in
our nation. And I imagine it’s still true.
Some of it’s birds of a feather flock together sort of thing,
but it’s, it’s a church of all God’s children, all God’s people. And we build up walls. Well,
you can’t come here unless you do this. You can’t come here
unless you do that. You can’t come here unless you, you know, measure
48 inches, like the ride at the park. So we just put up all these
rules. And what does Jesus say? What I have called clean. is
indeed clean. And if you have come to faith
in Jesus and he has washed away your sins, he calls you his saints. He calls you his holy ones. And there is no greater privilege
in this world. And it has come through the blood
of Jesus and his desire to reach the nations. Pray with me if
you will. Our great God and father, we thank you so much for your
love for us in Christ. In you there is no east or west,
there is no north or south. There is no color, no age, no
socioeconomic standing in your eyes. We are your children bought
with your blood. You see us as if we’ve never
sinned and as if we’ve always obeyed and how wonderful it will
be to worship one day in the heavenly host and to see people
of all nations to see people of all types serving. Lord, forgive us when we put
up walls, when we make barriers, when we call unclean. Forgive
us for all the things we do when we begin to make up the rules
and play church. Lord, help us to see others as
Christ does, as children of the living God made clean by his
precious blood. Lord, we ask that you would hear
us and help us in this hour to know you and love you, and to
know and love your people in a mighty and special way. May
the nations be glad for the cross of Jesus and his saving power.
It’s in his name we pray. Amen.