Introduction
The book of Acts tells the exciting story of the earliest church; an unstoppable force, growing every day, seeing conversions and miracles, despite severe opposition.
Jesus said that the angels rejoice every time one sinner repents.
So just think of all the fun and partying in heaven as all this unfolded! It must have been insane up there 24/7!
But spare a thought, if you will, for how this relentless advance of the gospel must have gone down in the corridors of hell.
At the cross, as Jesus dies, Satan thinks he’s strangled the movement at birth. But just as he toasts victory, Jesus rises from the dead and, like a Formula One champion, hilariously sprays a mighty magnum of kingdom of God Champagne all over hell saying, “Take that, you suckers!”
So, after drying off, Satan says, “Well, his followers aren’t up to much. If I target them, they’ll all run off, just like before.”
But by this time, the disciples have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and are made of stronger stuff. You can beat them up, lock them up and tell them to shut up but it just gets them all the more fired up! So even more people get saved.
Satan goes back to the drawing board. “Maybe we can destroy the church by infecting it with deceit from within” he says.
But that backfires as well. Two verses after the story of Ananias and Sapphira it says, “More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.”
“Right,” says Satan. “Let's kill one then. Let’s actually murder Stephen.” Which he does.
But this persecution simply thrusts thousands of Christians out of Jerusalem and instead of fighting one church, Satan now has a whole network of them in his in-tray.
Satan, by this time, is really ticked off. “I know”, he says, “I’ll get Saul of Tarsus. He’s a nut case. Saul will turn the tide for us.”
But even Saul gets converted and becomes the most productive evangelist and church planter of them all.
Satan goes berserk. “This is not working!” So after a massive brainstorming session, Hell comes up with a new strategy.
“From now on,” they say, “we will concentrate all our resources on limiting the spread of this vermin to just 0.2% of the world’s population; the Jews – if we can make sure it stays Jewish, the other 99.8% will be ours.”
Satan’s last resort is to ensure that Christianity stays a minority Jewish faction.
And that brings us to Acts chapter 10.
At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.
The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts
to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to
Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with
Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”
When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.
About noon the following day as they
were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to
pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was
being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like
a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds
of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds.
Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate. They called out, asking if Simon who was known as Peter was staying there.
While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.” Peter went down and said to the men, “I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?” The men replied, “We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.” Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.
Prayer…
When Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon in July 1969 he said, as I’m sure everyone here knows, “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
It was a
milestone in human exploration. But, special as it undoubtedly was, Acts 10 is
far more significant than the lunar landings in eternal terms.
It describes the pivotal moment, about 7 years after the church began on the day of Pentecost, that the gospel broke into the non-Jewish world. The toothpaste was now out of the tube and there would be no way back.
A fortnight ago, Michael preached on two jaw-dropping miracles in Acts 9; the healing of a paralysed man and the raising to life of a dead woman. Amazing scenes!
But Luke devotes just ten verses to those two incidents while this one story about Peter and Cornelius takes up sixty-six verses. That’s how big a deal this is. This is the moment Christianity goes global.
Acts 10 is the giant leap that would transform the lives of billions of people over thousands of years. All because of one small step taken by two individuals; Peter and Cornelius.
Let’s say a bit more about these two.
Peter is a minimally educated fisherman with a small business on Lake Galilee. He grew up as an Orthodox Jew with strict rules about who you associate with, what you eat, what you wear, when you work and who you worship.
Everything in Peter’s mind has to be put into a category; either clean or unclean, kosher or unkosher.
Peter has learned that from birth. It has been ingrained into him that his people are set apart from everyone else.
But unlearning something is always much harder than learning it in the first place. Have you noticed that?
In chapter 9 Peter has no bother dealing with severe disability and death. He’s learned about both from Jesus.
But in chapter 10 he flinches at the very idea of touching an unclean animal or eating forbidden food because it goes against everything he’s ever learned.
In fact, it takes five miracles (a vision, an angel, a trance, the audible voice of God and an impossible coincidence) before he reluctantly agrees to enter the home of a non-Jew and meet with him.
And, significantly, it’s in Joppa that this happens. This is the port where, 800 years earlier, Jonah ran away from his calling to go to the Gentiles. This time it’s in Joppa where Peter accepts the very same mission.
Cornelius is
an officer in the Roman army. Not a Jew. He is a pork-eating, uncircumcised,
temple-excluded, sabbath-working gentile.
But the Bible says that he is devout and loves God, as does his household. He is generous to the poor and says his prayers every day. He is drawn to the God of the Jews.
The big surprise to many is that Cornelius, despite all his uprightness, all his good works, all his charity and all his prayers, is not actually a child of God.
Cornelius shows that you can have a fear of God, but still not be a friend of God. You can be sincere, but not saved.
I wonder if any of us today are, like Cornelius, basically supportive but still looking in from the outside? Is that you?
1) God reveals himself to those who seek him
Well, I’ve got three points today. First of all, I want to say that God loves to reveal himself to anyone who earnestly seeks him.
Jesus said, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
The world has many people like Cornelius. Kind-hearted, good-natured, hard-working, living a good life, doing the right thing, and even praying to a God they don’t yet really know.
The good news is that God reveals himself to people who never give up pursuing him with their whole heart like Cornelius.
Are you still searching for God? He so wants to be found by you.
I watched a YouTube video recently about a singer called Lacy Sturm from the band Flyleaf. And in it, she talks about years of struggle and unhappiness of her life. She says, “I couldn’t get away from my own depression.”
She got into various religions and tried different philosophies. She looked everywhere for answers – everywhere except Jesus. She said, “There were all these ideas but I never found any tangible healing.” She said, “I remember thinking I am tired of the pain in my heart. I am tired of going to bed and feeling this burden. Who am I? Why am I alive?”
She was on a restless quest for truth. One day, she woke up despairing that she would ever find release. She decided to take her own life by the end of that day. But that evening, by the grace of God, her grandmother whom she lived with at the time, said to her, “You are coming to church with me now.”
Lacy says, “I didn’t want to go to church, I despised it, I never went – but look, I’m going to commit suicide later; it can’t get any worse, so I might as well go.” So she went.
I wish I could tell you that she thought it was amazing. But no. “I hated it” she said, “especially the preacher.”
But this preacher, as he was speaking, heard a whisper from the Lord. He interrupted his own sermon and said, “There’s someone here tonight with a suicidal spirit.” That got Lacy’s attention.
But she hated everything else he said so much that she stood up and started to leave. As she approached the exit door a man with a goatee beard walked over and said, “I think the Lord wants me to say something to you.” She thought, here we go again.
Then he said, “God wants you to know that even if you’ve never known your earthly father, [which she hadn’t] he knows your pain and will be a better Father to you than any man could have been. He knows what’s in your heart. He’s seen you cry yourself to sleep. He wants to come and deal with it. He is called The Comforter.”
She says, “It was as if the God of the universe showed up right in front of me. I realised that God is holy and good. And that I am not. And that he loves me and he knows I am tired of the way I have been living and that he wants to make me new - if I would let him. And I said YES! I want that please. And I woke up the next day -alive- with incredible peace and such joy.”
Acts 10 shows that God reveals himself to people (like Peter and Cornelius and Lacy Sturm) when they are willing to unlearn everything they have learned.
God says, in Jeremiah 29, “In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you.”
According to a report on Al Jazeera a few years ago, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christ in the Middle East every day. I don’t know who did that research or how accurate the data is but that’s what they said on Al Jazeera which is a reputable news source based in the Arab world.
Conservative
estimates have been made that every day in China 20,000 seekers find new life
in Christ.
That’s a lot of people sincerely pursuing truth and seeking God. And a lot of people that God is graciously revealing himself to.
2) Jesus takes us out of useless religion
The second thing I want us to see in Acts 10 is that religion is useless.
Karl Marx famously said that religion is a drug; the opium of the masses. It just numbs you. But no book, not even by Karl Marx, is more contemptuous of empty and monotonous religion than the Bible is.
It surprises people to learn that God doesn’t like religion. This is what he says in the Old Testament:
“Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me… I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.”
And Jesus hated religion too.
He said to stay clear of the teachers of religious law who loved to ponce around in flowing robes and pretended to be pious by making long prayers in public.
Soon after I became a Christian, my sister gave me a book as a present called The Lion Handbook of World Religions.
She wrote inside saying “…because you can never be sure if you’ve chosen the right one.” It was thoughtful of her and I’m not ungrateful but she didn’t get it and still doesn’t.
You see, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in belonging to a religion. It might seem weird to some, as I have been a Christian for decades now, but I never once considered myself “religious”.
I have to correct people when they assume I like religion. I really don’t. Nothing about religion appeals to me or even interests me.
Religion is about the many ways people try to reach God. Jesus is the one way God has reached us.
Religion says, “you have to bathe in this particular river." It says, “you mustn’t eat certain foods or drink any alcohol.” It says, “you’ve got to fast at certain times.” It says, this building or shrine is special so you should go there. It says, “you males have to be circumcised.” Just – no, thank you! It says, “you have to adopt a certain posture.”
It says, “you mustn’t cut your hair.” It says, “you must cut your hair.” It says, “you’ve got to face a certain direction to pray.” It says, “wear a turban,” “wear a skull cap”, “wear a full-length robe that covers everything but your eyes.”
None of it frees people who are weighed down by guilt or addiction. It doesn’t change hearts. It doesn’t bring life.
Peter’s strange vision in v9-16 is about him needing to leave useless religion behind.
Until that time, for Peter, belonging to God meant, amongst other things, obsessing about what he could and couldn’t eat.
Jesus has already told him that the only things that make someone unclean come from the heart; hatred, envy, lies, rage... It’s not about food.
But unlearning things is always harder than learning them.
The proof of that is in v14. Having had a fantastic spiritual experience and heard the voice of God, Peter says, “No way Lord! I’m not eating that! It’s against my religion. I’ve always lived this way.” God had to tell him the same thing three times – which must have rung a bell for him.
At the cross Jesus made clean everything that had been impure, and in doing so he abolished useless ceremonial and tedious religion.
You haven’t got to be slavishly bound to endless rituals and routines. It’s over! Christ sets you free.
3) Jesus destroys every barrier
The third thing is this. Jesus has removed every barrier between all people.
In Christ, God has no favourites.
There is no advantage or disadvantage in being rich or poor, Jew or gentile, male or female, leave or remain, black or white, socialist or capitalist, young or old…
Every racial, national, sociological, political, physiological and ecclesiastical dividing wall has been pulled down by Jesus Christ.
One of the things I love about Acts 10 is how God, in his sovereignty, weaves the stories of these two totally incompatible men into one.
They don’t know each other. They have virtually nothing in common. They would avoid each other. Their worlds never overlap.
One hour before Peter meets the men in v21 he wouldn’t have touched them with a barge pole. He would never enter a gentile home, even to shelter from a storm, but in v23 he invites them in and offers them hospitality.
Amy Orr-Ewing once talked about the day her atheist MP was a guest at her church. He absolutely loved it.
“Wow,” he said, “this is the only place in my constituency where such diverse people get together. You’ve got old people, young people, singles, couples, families, wealthy people and those of modest means, the well-educated and the barely literate, the able-bodied and disabled, people of every political persuasion and none. You just don’t see that anywhere else.” Then he said, “It’s just a pity about the God bit.”
But the God bit is not incidental. It’s like saying, “I like this cake; it’s just a shame about the sugar, butter, eggs and flour.”
Jesus brings people together, Jesus breaks down barriers and Jesus shows the world what community is like.
Ending
So as I come to a close, let me ask you; are you searching for God? Why don’t you let your quest, however long it’s been, come to a conclusion today?
Like Cornelius and Peter, have you been missing out on the full freedom of the grace of God? Jesus didn’t come from heaven to earth and die on a cross just to add a little bit of religion to our lives.
He came to set you free and give you life in abundance. He said, “If anyone is thirsty let them come to me and drink… [and] rivers of living water will flow from within them.” Is that your experience?
And finally, is there a barrier between you and someone different to you?
Do you need to renounce a prejudice you have against someone else?
Bring it to God today, confess it, repent of it and watch how your Christian life goes to a new level.
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 12 June 2022
