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Starts as Conrad turns to Acts 10. Ends as the closing prayer begins. Words that could not be made out are marked [unclear].
Today we're going to be in Acts chapter 10. Hold your breath. We're going to be in Acts chapter 11 as well. So, we've been picking verses, sections, in the book of Acts, and we've been selectively going through them. And we've been choosing a narrative in Acts 1. We've been choosing a narrative in Acts 2.
And so on and so forth. And today, we're actually looking at the entirety of Acts 10, and even the first part of Acts chapter 11. Why? Because this is a single narrative. There's no breaks in the narrative. This is, in fact, the single longest narrative in the book of Acts. It is 66 verses. It is longer than the book of Jonah. It is a long passage, which I believe shows to emphasize something. There was an emphasis from Luke, the author, as he wrote this passage.
[unclear] this section as he shared the narration of the events. We're not going to read every single verse. We're going to read quite a bit, and then where we skip over, I'll just share the narrative. You can follow along with your Bibles or pick it up in your own devotions throughout the week. But once again, that's just 10 questions we're going to be looking at. As you're looking at it, as you're settling in, I want you to think about a word.
Stereotypes. We all know that. Stereotypes. A stereotype is a fixed, sometimes unhelpful, sometimes rigid, standard or belief when you think about people or things. Stereotypes can come in many different shapes and forms. Stereotypes are simply what we know to be categorical of person, places, or things. Thinking about our global mindset, this last week I had a lunch with somebody from the country of Russia.
They live there presently and that's where they grew up and that's what they know. And with this message in mind and kind of in the midst of our conversation, I was learning more and more about the largest country in the world. I was learning more and more about Russia. And I asked him this kind of like pseudo mirror question. What do you think us as Americans think of you? And he thought [unclear] second, and he said, I think that Americans think that Russia is very cold.
To which I responded, oh, so it's not cold? And he nodded his head and said, no, it's cold. So, there are some stereotypes which I guess to some degree or another do connect, but the thing that you lose with a stereotype is nuance, right? It doesn't rain 24-7 in the Pacific Northwest. or six. It doesn't, you know, it's not always 115 degrees in Arizona. Sometimes it hits the 111, right? So there's ideas of these stereotypes which can be fixed, can be categorical, but you lose nuance and sometimes it can be unhelpful.
You know, it's funny to think of stereotypes of places, but it can be a little bit more damaging when you think of stereotypes between different types of people, right? When you put people into boxes, when you put people into categories, when you put these borders around this is who you are, this is your identity. You know, I was thinking to myself, like, the stereotypes in our world, and I thought, well, to play it safe, you share about the stereotypes with you and yourself all day too, and so let's just talk about surfers.
For a second, there's a stereotype about surfers, not just in California, but, you know, around the country. They think that anybody who There are stereotypes that we can put people into boxes and that can be common at times and yet totally unhelpful and maybe damaging at other times. In scripture, we see these stereotypes. We see these things that keep people away from one another. And today, we're going to see how God sometimes seeks to smash those stereotypes all together.
This is a very unique passage of scripture. And again, we're going to go through it rather quickly. But the idea is this two people groups being united into one. That's what we're going to be looking at. You know, to blow up our stereotypes, we need paradigm shifts. We need shifts in our perspectives and we need shifts in our paradigm. And that's why I call this message, The Gospel Paradigm. Because as we think about the gospel, as we live with the gospel, it will expand the way that we view the world.
It will expand how we view people. And that's what we're going to see this morning. Would you pray with me as we dive into our text? Heavenly Father, expand our paradigms. Help us to understand you, your love for others, more and more. We confess to you any biases or prejudices that we come into this room with. Lord, we pray that you would break those down in our own hearts and lives. And not only that, would you just reveal to us those unconscious things, those things that are there that might keep people out of this life.
Lord, draw us close, help us to pursue you, help us to unpack this text, and let it transform our lives and what we see in this. Thank you. Praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. So once again, this is a long passage of scripture. There's a lot of nuance there. And we're going to just dig in. And we're going to start in verse 1 of chapter 10. We're going to look at the first eight verses. We're going to look at the first eight verses.
A centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort. A devout man who feared God with all his household. He gave alms generously to the people and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day, he saw clearly in a vision the angel of God come in and say to him, Cornelius. And he stared at him in 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 sea. When the angel who spoke to him departed and called two of his servants, a devout soldier from among those who attended him, and having related everything to him, he sent them to Joppa. So this is our setting. We're introduced to several different things here, but just really simplistically, we're given this unique man named Cornelius.
He was a centurion, which means he commanded potentially 600 or more men, who's probably wealthy. And the text says that he gave alms to the poor, those who needed it, which is fantastic. And he prayed continually to God for them. So this man was a man of moral character. And pray continually to God. There's only one problem with Cornelius. He wasn't a Jew. He was a Gentile. He was not connected to God's community of people, Jews.
He was on the outskirts. Although he prayed, although he gave, although we could probably term him as a God-fearer, he wasn't on the inside as one of God's people. Now what's unique is what we just heard was the narrator's explanation of the events that transpired. This, what we just read, to some degree or another, is repeated three more times. We're not going to read it each time we come to it, but I want you to see where they were and kind of just the passages.
So the next slide will show you exactly where that narrative was retold. So you see the original story, what we just read in Acts chapter 10, verse 3 through 6. The following, 22 verse 23, you see the servants tell that story to Peter. Later on, you will see Cornelius tell that to Peter when Peter arrives. And finally, you will hear that story retold one final time when Peter tells opponents or opposition to this inclusion, and that's in Acts chapter 11.
Four times we read of this narrative. A lot of repetition here, right? So this is a very important thing. And so I was curious, looking at all of the things, is there unity within all the stories? Is there something that's mentioned each and every time? In three of those, it refers to his upstanding moral character. Okay, that's great. It's not in the fourth one, but it's in three of them. In many of them, there's a message attached to it, which we'll get to as well.
But there's only one thing that I saw in four out of four that I could pinpoint, and it's the idea of the word send. Send for Simon, who is called Peter. There's some nuance to the word send there. There's two different words, pempo, apostello, meaning to send. Probably have slightly different nuance, but the idea is go get this man, Simon, who is called Peter. And then you'll see one where they're talking to the other.
This man, Simon, who is called Peter. I found that interesting, that that is the key of this connection here. And the one thing that I kept thinking about with that is, if the message was the only thing that was important, why didn't the angel just tell Cornelius? You have Mary, who was visited by an angel saying, you know, this is going to happen to you. You're going to be... You're going to be carrying the Savior of the world in your womb.
You have an angel appearing to her husband Joseph saying, it's okay. Mary is [unclear] by the Holy Spirit. Not, hey, somebody's going to come to you and then tell you a message. An angel can deliver a message directly, but in all of these stories, it was an angel saying, go get somebody else. Which brought me to this idea that we have a relational gospel. We have a relational gospel. And right here, we are going to see two different people that were segregated from one another, now coming into contact face to face.
The result of this, then, for Peter, is this relationship, this bring this person. It's not just about the message. The message is incredibly important, and we'll get there in time. However, the relationship of bringing one who's not like him to his house We cannot miss. So I just want to share a brief story. One time I was sitting in Laguna Beach. My wife and I lived there for a number of years. And I was sitting on a bench looking at the surf.
And I was there and I was probably reading or listening to something. And I was sitting on a bench by myself. Then a few moments later somebody else comes and sits down next to me on the same bench just at the other end. And begins to strike up a conversation with me. When we began to have a conversation about God, I can't remember what I was reading or how we got to the subject, but we began to talk about God.
He talked about philosophy. He talked about different modes of thinking, and I engaged him in all of these things. But we talked about God, and it came to his understanding that there is no God, and here's why. He said that he was in a room, and he was in front of a piece of wood, or maybe he was outside and there was a tree. I can't remember exactly, but wood was involved. And there was a knot in this piece of wood, and he prayed that God would move that knot to a different part of the wood or the tree.
Because that knot did not move, he concluded there is no God. Now, I sit there, and I'm thinking about this, and I'm And I look back on it now as well, in light of this passage, and I think, no, I did not move on a piece of wood, or I did not move on a tree. But here you and I are, Ron, I think his name was, face-to-face having a conversation about who the God of the universe is. I'm able to communicate with you.
I'm able to share with you my experiences. I'm able to reason with you from the scriptures about who God is. No, God didn't move a knot in wood, but he moved you and me together in relationship with one another. I also think now, back on it, and think then, moving a knot in a piece of wood would be really difficult. But moving a knot in somebody's heart is near impossible without God. So for us, I want us to never minimize the importance of a faith-based relationship.
Can God send an angel to declare his message? Yes, absolutely. Can God move a knot in a piece of wood? Absolutely he can. Can God send a pillar of fire by day and a pillar of fire by night? Of course he can if you know who God will send. Well, you and me, to have a face-to-face interaction with people who might be different than us so that we can share the gospel in relationship with one another. I want to encourage us all, whatever that might look like in our lives, however we might be thinking about this,
Because ultimately, we see this relationship, send for Simon, who is called Peter, again and again and again. Well, let's continue on. We've got to keep moving. So let's look at verse 9. We'll look at the next section of the text. So Cornelius had this experience, but you know what? It takes, I guess the phrase is, it takes two to tango, right? Once you have the story ahead of you, you can get a message from this angel.
What's going on on the other side of things? That's what we'll see. The next day they were on their journey, that is the servant of Cornelius and approaching the city Peter, who went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray, he was hungry and wanted something to eat. But while they were preparing, 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 again 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. There's a lot going on here, and this is repeated once more in
So this too is a very important piece of this narrative. So one thing, we have Cornelius' vision in the street, now we have Peter's vision in the street. And what was Peter's reaction? Not going to do it. By no means, Lord. Right, Peter? No. And before we fault Peter, which I think it would be very easy for us to do looking back upon history, I think it would be super easy for us to just be like, yeah, I don't know what wrong to do.
However, that would be going against everything Peter knew about the world. It would be going against his upbringing. It would be going up against his education. It would be going up against the Old Testament dietary restrictions. We'll get to that just in a little bit. But it would be going against so much of the reality and comfort and momentum of his life to say, okay, great, the menu is open. And so,
He says, "What do you mean, Lord?" You know, this is a paradigm shifting moment. A paradigm expanding moment. I don't know if there's any Lord of the Rings fans out here. There's books and movies, if you watch the movies. You could probably read the books faster because the movies are incredibly long. Now in one of the movies, Frodo and Sam, the main characters are walking in a field on their mission and they get to the edge of a field.
One keeps walking. The other one stops where the field ends. And the one turns and says, well, why aren't you, why'd you stop? And the other one says, if I take one more step, I'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been. Which would mean that the next step would be even farther. And the next step would be even farther. And the next step even farther. Opening up a world, [unclear], but a world that is so much bigger
than his reality in his little Shire burrow. For us, this is Peter's marching orders. This was not only permission, hey, everything's on the menu now. Everything's open to you. Rise, Peter, kill and eat. There's all sorts of birds, reptiles, animals, all sorts of things. This was permission, but beyond that, he was meeting, there was some resistance there. And so I just want to say, our marching orders is
Take just one step. Take one step to expand your paradigm. Take one step. Get out of your culture. Get out of your comfort zone. Get out of the things that bring us peace that might unsettle us just a little bit. Peter's response is a lot like ours. By no means, Lord. I know the world to work this way. But one step at a time. And that's how relationships cross-culturally work. All right, like I said, we have to keep moving.
So Acts chapter 10, verse 17, and we'll take a break and then look at a few other things. But once again, taking steps are important, and that's kind of what Peter is experiencing. Now Peter's confused in verse 17. Now Peter was inwardly, what? Perplexed as to 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.
So all of these things are looking at each other. Cornelius' vision, this is actually certain. Peter's vision, they arrive at the same time. So all of this is kind of really coming together in this moment. So they stood at the gate and called to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was lodging there, according to the vision. 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. What's the next two words? Without hesitation. Which implies what? There was resistance, right? Finally, Lord, and the Spirit tells them, Go, We'll key in on that in just a moment. 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? Let's skip verse 22 and 23. Feel free to read it, though.
That's a retelling of the vision. Servants to Peter. Midpoint of verse 23. 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 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 them, he went in and found many persons gathered, and he said to them, this is Peter saying to the group, You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate or 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 them, why do you send for me? In verses 30 through 33, we see the retelling of the story from Cornelius to Peter.
So we've now seen that. Well, twice, but we've heard it there three times. Two responses to these two different visions, bringing two people groups, two individual people groups together This angel telling Cornelius, you have this vision for Peter. They come together. One response was reverence, worship, and the other was resistance, initial resistance. Both are not good. So we see resistance, right, in Peter.
By no means, Lord, I'm showing you, God is showing him what's available, what he has permission to do, and he's meeting this with a resistance. The Spirit tells him, go. Without hesitation. Go without resistance. On the other side, we have Cornelius who receives Peter into his house, and what does he do? He falls down and he worships him. Reverence. Resistance and reverence both, not the ways that we should be connecting with one another.
Let's be reminded here that Jew-Gentile relations was a strange thing. You kind of hear this in Peter's voice. You know, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate or visit any one of another nations. That's essentially what he says here. And the reason is, as I mentioned, Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. They won't be up on the slides. You can read those in your own devotional time.
And if you do, go for it. That would be awesome. But it's talking about clean and unclean foods. Here's what you can eat. Here's what you can't eat. And they can't eat pigs. They can't eat camels. They can't eat chameleon, that's what one of the texts says, which why would you eat chameleon? I'm not sure the nutritional value of that. They couldn't eat catfish, for instance. So all you southern Cajun catfish lovers, I'm sorry.
That would have been really hard for you. All of these dietary restrictions were in place Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14. But what Peter interprets here is this vision of clean and unclean foods found its application in clean and unclean people. Clean and unclean foods have the application of clean and unclean people. These associations of animals became associations among people. Segregation is a thing in our world.
Segregation is a thing in our nation. Segregation, whether it was at once a law or whether it's just a psychological thing, segregation takes apart the associations of people groups. We associate with certain things. There was one time where I was back in college, I think it was 2009, and I was summoned with a group of friends to go and go somewhere which I didn't really have any business going there.
But my friends wanted to go so I wanted to go as well. And this place was a, it was probably an October evening in 2009 when we drove up to Dodger Stadium and it was a playoff game and they were playing the Philadelphia Phillies. And I remember that game and it was a bad mood because the Dodgers ended up losing that game and I believe losing the series. But if there's one thing that would go back if I were invited to do this again, I would not do, is wear my red Angels hat.
Because you stick out like a sore thumb. I mean, red and blue don't even look remotely similar. And in the sea of a playoff atmosphere, blue and white, everywhere that I could see, I was wearing a 2002 Angels World Series hat. So we won't. And I take pride in that. I survived that ordeal, but there are associations between people groups. There are little tribalistic things which we do and we wear those emblems to show this is who I identify with and this is who you identify with.
We all know how unlawful it is to wear angel red at Dodger Stadium. We all know how unlawful it is to wear your team's jersey to an away game. You all know how awful it is to go into Costco without a membership, right? They'll bounce you right out of there. The associations we have, we stick to. They're very important to us. The World Cup just happened in Europe. They play soccer. They love soccer. They love soccer so much that they don't let opposing fans get next to each other.
They have separate sections for them. Why? Because they could get violent. I'm serious. You know, like hooliganism, like this idea of my tribe versus your tribe is so deeply ingrained in the culture. Segregation does that to us spiritually as well. Of course we segregate based on gender or race or class or background or ideology, what have you. There are so many things that keep us apart. I'd love to read
For you, it will not be up on the screen, but I would just like you to just to listen to it really quickly as we conclude this application and then we continue on in our passage. So Martin Luther King Jr., who obviously understood what segregation was and the damaging effects of it, he understood what segregation was in the civil rights movement, advocated for desegregation, but he took it one step further, not just to desegregation,
but to integration. Just a short quote. We do not have to look very far to see the pernicious effects of a desegregated society that is not integrated. It leads to physical proximity without spiritual affinity. Here's the kicker. It gives us a society where men are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together but hearts are apart. where we're not just elbow to elbow people but we're heart to heart people our world needs more heart to heart our relationships need more heart to heart marriages need more heart to heart cultures, races, politics need more heart to heart because ultimately these people who could not be more diametrically opposed a lawful association were now being loved
We're heart to heart in our world today. And I hope that speaking to your heart and who we want to be as a church as well. We have to continue going so we have these two different people, two separate visions, not just to desegregate, but now kind of kind of see integration here. So they ask, hey, Peter, what are you going to share? And Peter gives this message. We're going to read his whole message in verse 33 through 43.
Now therefore, we are all here in the presence of God, to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord [unclear]. So now 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.
Verse 37, you yourselves know what happened throughout all of 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. Verse 39, 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. That was Peter's message. We heard this idea of this vision coming, go get Simon, who is called Peter.
Go get Simon, who is called Peter. This is the message attached to it. We have to keep moving. However, as I was reading this, I kind of found this kind of outline for [unclear] around something right when we integrate when we come together when we desegregate and integrate it has to be around a focal point right we talked about the Angels A and the Dodgers LA we talked about the memberships that we have but when we integrate there has to
The answer is in this servant, and it's above the slide. It's Jesus Christ. and unity with one another. Let's just break this down really quick. In this, it says Jesus Christ is Lord of all. That's what it says. Lord of who? Lord of all. Not Lord of the Jews or Lord of the Gentiles. It's Lord of all, verse 36. And then he goes into this. The story goes into his life. Doing good. I love that one. He went about doing
Thank you. His life, because it talks about his death, laying his life on the line. But Jesus Christ, for those who believe, Those who are in the church must be the central thing. There can't be anything even in the strategy here. It can't be, well, we can associate together if, you know, we love Jesus, but we also love the same. It can't be, I'll associate with you if you love Jesus, but you worship the same as me, or you think the same thoughts as me.
No, Jesus has to be at the center. All right. Then they asked him, So once again, we talked about segregation. And you hear it in these passages. They're subtle, but you can hear it. Circumcised versus uncircumcised, right? Those who are wearing the wristband of membership and those who are not, those are separating terms. [unclear] Jesus is Lord of all.
Here's his life. Here's his death. Here's his resurrection. Here's his people. And those who receive him receive the forgiveness of sins. Circumcised and uncircumcised. Separate. But baptism unites. You know, I think it's Ephesians 4, which talks about community. I don't have it in my notes, but it's there's one Lord One faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. I feel like that's a beautiful application, an outworking of this narrative that's happening in real time in the first century.
Baptism unites, baptism unifies. This belief in Jesus Christ brings people, strange people often, together for the first time. Alright, we're landing the plane, and we're going to glance, I say glance at chapter 11. We're going to glance at 1 through 3, and then I'll just kind of give you the narrative summary, and then we'll pick it up at 17 and 18. We're really only going to do 5 verses. So, at this moment, the Holy Spirit falls on the Gentiles, can anyone withhold water for baptizing?
The church is growing, this is exciting, right? Everybody's excited? Not quite. You'd think, but not quite. Now the apostles, verse 1, and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party, right, criticized him, saying, you went to who? Uncircumcised, circumcised, uncircumcised men, and you ate with them?
But Peter began to say, to them in order. You can read the rest yourself there. Verse 4 through 16, here's what it says. He told them the visions of the sheep. So he told them from his perspective. So his vision of the sheep first, rise Peter, kill and eat. After that, he told them about the arrival of the messengers, which happened almost concurrently for Peter, right? Again, from his perspective. The sheep, the messengers.
Then he goes to Cornelius' house and he tells them For a new side of the event, he tells them his story of the angel showing up saying, go get Simon who is called Peter. And finally he told them about the results that we just read about. The Holy Spirit falling on the Gentiles and baptism being available for them. Verse 17 and 18 says this, If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?
When they heard these things, they fell silent, and they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. There's opposition, because we have deeply ingrained ways of thinking. They've been informed to us by our background. They've been informed to us by culture. They're out there, and they're all over the place. But what's happening here is...
circumcision, uncircumcision separate, and baptism, belief in Jesus Christ, unites. Closing thoughts. We're concluding now. One is, if we're believers in Jesus, our paradigms must be expanded. Our paradigms must be expanded and our stereotypes must diminish. Those stereotypes can be unhelpful. They can be categorical. And we must approach people in these ways. Four quick things, this is where we end. One, relationships are important.
Go get Simon, who is called Peter. Go get Simon, who is called Peter. Relationships are important. Face-to-face connection is how the gospel is given, especially among conflicting cultures and people and people groups. Let's not minimize the fear that maybe Peter had, the original hesitation that he may have had. He went, he took, he stayed. The next thing is paradigms can be expanded. As we take a step towards another, as we take another step towards another, our world, like Frodo and Sam, begins to open up.
Our world of the universe. Yes, we see that integration is the goal. Integration, not just de-segregation, not just break down the wall, but not just elbow. We want to have hearts that are connected to hearts. And then finally, Jesus is the center. And if you hear one thing, it's Jesus is the center. Jesus is the center of every relationship. Thank you. If he is what? You're involved. Galatians 3:28 says, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
For those who believe in Jesus, Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much.