Sermon Notes
- Big Idea: The gospel expands how we see people: God sends us face to face with people unlike us, one step at a time, to be joined heart to heart with Jesus at the center.
Opening
- Acts 10:1–11:18 is one story with no breaks. Conrad called it the single longest narrative in Acts: 66 verses, longer than the book of Jonah, which shows Luke's emphasis.
- Stereotypes: A fixed, sometimes rigid belief about people, places or things. Someone from Russia told Conrad that Americans think Russia is very cold, and it is. What a stereotype loses is nuance.
- Stereotypes about places can be funny. Stereotypes about people do more damage, because they put people into boxes.
- The idea of the passage is "two people groups being united into one." Conrad said that "as we live with the gospel, it will expand the way that we view the world."
- He opened in prayer, confessing "any biases or prejudices that we come into this room with."
01 · Acts 10:1–8
1. The Narrative: Cornelius and Peter
- Cornelius: A centurion who gave alms to the poor and prayed continually to God, a man of moral character. But he was a Gentile, on the outside of God's people.
- The story of the angel's visit is told four times: in 10:3–6, by the servants to Peter, by Cornelius to Peter, and by Peter in Jerusalem in Acts 11.
- The one thing in all four tellings is the word send: "Send for Simon, who is called Peter."
- A relational gospel: An angel can deliver a message directly, as angels did to Mary and to Joseph. Here the angel told Cornelius to go and get somebody else. Conrad said, "we have a relational gospel."
- On a bench in Laguna Beach, a stranger told Conrad he had prayed for God to move a knot in a piece of wood, and because it did not move, he decided there is no God. Looking back, Conrad said God did not move the knot, but he moved the two of them together into a face-to-face conversation.
- "Moving a knot in somebody's heart is near impossible without God."
- Conrad urged the church to "never minimize the importance of a faith-based relationship." God sends us to face-to-face conversations with people who might be different from us, so that we can share the gospel in relationship.
02 · Acts 10:9–33
2. Stereotypes and Shifts in Perspective
- At Joppa, Peter saw a great sheet let down from heaven with all kinds of animals, reptiles and birds, and heard, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat."
- Peter answered, "By no means, Lord." Before we fault him, Conrad said, saying yes would have gone against his upbringing, his education, the Old Testament food laws, and the comfort and momentum of his life.
- One step: Conrad recalled Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings, at the edge of a field where one more step would take one of them farther from home than he had ever been. Each step after that opened up a bigger world.
- His charge: "Take one step. Get out of your culture. Get out of your comfort zone." One step at a time is "how relationships cross-culturally work."
- The Spirit told Peter to go with the men without hesitation, which suggests there was resistance to get past.
- Resistance and reverence: Peter first met God's command with resistance. Cornelius met Peter by falling at his feet to worship him, and Peter said, "Stand up, I too am a man." Conrad said neither is the way we should connect with one another.
03 · Acts 10:28–29
3. Desegregation vs. Integration
- Peter reminded the household that it was unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit anyone of another nation, but "God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean."
- Behind this were the food laws of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Peter understood that the vision about clean and unclean foods applied to clean and unclean people.
- Conrad told of wearing his red 2002 Angels World Series hat to a Dodgers playoff game in 2009, and of soccer fans kept in separate sections. We wear emblems that show who we identify with, and we hold on to those associations.
- We still separate over gender, race, class, background and ideology.
- Integration: Conrad read Martin Luther King Jr., who pressed past desegregation to integration: "It gives us a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together but hearts are apart."
- Our relationships, marriages and church need more heart to heart, not only elbow to elbow.
04 · Acts 10:34–11:18
4. Peter's Message to Cornelius's Household
- "Truly, I understand that God shows no partiality." Jesus Christ is Lord of all, not Lord of the Jews or Lord of the Gentiles (10:36).
- Peter's message tells of Jesus' life (he went about doing good), his death on a tree, his resurrection on the third day, and forgiveness of sins for everyone who believes in him.
- Jesus at the center: When people come together, they come together around a focal point. For the church it is Jesus. Conrad said it cannot be "I'll associate with you if you love Jesus, but you worship the same as me." "No, Jesus has to be at the center."
- Baptism unites: Circumcised and uncircumcised were terms that kept people apart. Baptism unites. Conrad pointed to Ephesians 4: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.
- The Holy Spirit fell on the Gentiles, and baptism was opened to them.
- Opposition in Jerusalem: The circumcision party criticized Peter for eating with uncircumcised men. Peter told them the story in order. They fell silent and glorified God: "Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life."
- Conrad said opposition comes because we have deeply ingrained ways of thinking, shaped by our background and our culture.
Closing
- "If we're believers in Jesus, our paradigms must be expanded." Our stereotypes must shrink.
- "Relationships are important." Go get Simon, who is called Peter: face-to-face connection is how the gospel is given, especially between cultures and people groups in conflict.
- "Paradigms can be expanded." As we take a step toward another person, and then another, our world begins to open up, as it did for Frodo and Sam.
- "Integration is the goal." Not only breaking down the wall, but "hearts that are connected to hearts."
- "Jesus is the center of every relationship." He closed with Galatians 3:28: in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV Bible, © 2001 by Crossway. Text Edition: 2025. Used by permission. Permissions. Prepared for this small group from the August 9, 2026 sermon; questions and applications are editorial study material.