“God’s Grand Opening”
Acts 10:34-48
September 16, 2007
It came to be known as “Black Sunday”. Following a 15-day heat wave, the thermometer on that July day registered 110 degrees. The asphalt, laid only the night before, was still steaming, and thus the ladies who came attired in high heels found their shoes literally stuck to the pavement. Added to this misery was the fact that local plumbers had been on strike, and thus most of the water fountains weren’t working.
Black Sunday, you see, was a Grand Opening that wasn’t all that “grand” after all. Yes, there were dignitaries, like Ronald Reagan, who would one day be president, as well as Art Linkletter, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., and Debbie Reynolds. But there were also traffic jams galore; the food ran low due in part to the fact that many counterfeit tickets were used, running the opening-day crowd well over 28,000. A gas leak gave folks a scare, and a falling chunk of glass crashed down on the head of a state senator. Off to such an inauspicious start, this enterprise, launched with a gala Grand Opening on July 17, 1955, would seem to be doomed to failure. And yet, somehow this place managed to attract 50 million-plus guests within its first ten years, because despite its rocky start, some folks called it a “magical” place, and despite the fact that Peter Pan’s Flight kept breaking down that fateful day, somehow, Disneyland has managed to make a go of things!
Grand Openings aren’t always that grand, to be sure, but they are special, and today’s Grand Opening here at Red Oak is a special day that we’ll long remember; thanks for being a part of it. The Bible speaks of what may be seen as a “Grand Opening” of sorts in the 10th chapter of Acts; the text is on the screen, or you can read along in your Bible.
Peter, one of Jesus’ twelve apprentices and the leader of the first church in Jerusalem, is in the living room of a man named Cornelius, a military captain who had issued an invitation to him to come and tell them God’s good news. God had given Cornelius a vision that led him to issue that invite; one big problem, though: Cornelius was not a Jew—and Peter was. Jews thought that the fact that they were God’s chosen people had made them God’s only people, that only Jews could have first-level access to God. Non-Jews could come in, but only after submitting to certain rituals, even painful ones, and even then, they’d be second-class citizens, not really accepted by the pious Jews at all. But then, God gave Peter an object lesson to convince him otherwise.
I. The Good News: God is Open to Everyone! :34-35
We might call this “God’s Grand Opening” of the gospel to every person in the world. We can almost picture the big bright light bulb above Peter’s head; “I get it! God doesn’t play favorites after all!” In a sentence, Peter sweeps away centuries of racial and ethnic prejudice. This may not be revolutionary to us, but it was tremendously so for pious Jews of that day. It shouldn’t have been; the prophets of God who had spoken to the Jewish people had made it clear that it was God’s grace, and not the fact that the Jews were more deserving, that had motivated God to choose them as His covenant people. Further, in the address God gave to Abraham at the very inception of the Hebrew people, He said that it would be through the Jews that everyone on earth would be blessed. And yet the Jews had so prided themselves in their connection to God that they’d dismissed non-Jews as being beyond the possibility of God’s favor.
Here was a man named Cornelius, whom the Bible describes as a man who genuinely feared God, a man who prayed, a man who gave to the poor, a man who sincerely wanted to know God. He was a seeker of truth.
Table Talk
Why do you think some people really seek to find the truth, and other people seem not to care as much? What keeps people from being seekers of truth?
Cornelius was a seeker of truth, but he didn’t know God in a personal way. There are lots of people in that same boat:
• “Religious”, upstanding citizens, the “salt of the earth”, if you will.
• Believe that God exists (vast majority of Americans profess this)
• Have a healthy respect for God
• Pray, and do “religious things”
• Do good deeds to help people
Cornelius did these things—but they were not enough. Romans 10: How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
If it were enough to be a good person, or to believe in the existence of God, then this whole episode in Acts 10 would make no sense whatever. Cornelius did those things, but still, Peter had to come and speak the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ to Cornelius and his household.
II. The Good News: Jesus Opens the Door to Peace with God :36-42
Peter says that there is peace with God to be found through Jesus Christ, Who is the Lord, not merely of Jewish people like Peter, but “Lord of all.” According to Peter, the good news begins with the fact that God took the initiative to bring about a state of peace between man and Himself. God took the initiative: hold that thought. The issue is peace with God. This isn’t a “peaceful, easy feeling”, or “peace of mind”, or some ethereal warm fuzzy. No, the peace Peter is speaking of involves being in a settled state of peace with the God of the universe. This is a condition that only comes, according to Peter, through Jesus Christ; if you are religious, but you don’t know Jesus Christ as Savior, you are not at peace with God. If you do good things, but don’t know Jesus Christ as Savior, you are not at peace with God. In fact, the Bible says that we are by nature the very enemies of God, and folks, there’s no worse position in the world to be in than to be the enemy of God.
• Jesus had stood in the synagogue and read the words of the prophet Isaiah (61) where the prophecy is given that the Spirit of God would be upon God’s chosen Servant to preach good news to the poor, and deliverance to the captives. Jesus had said that this particular Scripture was being fulfilled right before their eyes, and He was its fulfillment. And He did exactly those things that the prophecy, written hundreds of years before his birth in Bethlehem, said He would do.
• To the people of Israel, but for the entire world; this is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Peter says that
o God the Father was with Jesus, putting His stamp of approval on Jesus
o Power of the Holy Spirit attended Christ’s work
o Doing good and healing people
They killed Him; God raised Him - :39-40
They didn’t just kill Him; they killed Him in a way that rendered Him cursed, because hanging on a tree, such as happened when He was crucified, represented the most shameful way a person could be executed. He not only suffered physically for our sins; He bore the shame of our guilt when He died on the cross. But this didn’t catch God the Father off-guard; it wasn’t some kind of monkey wrench in the plans; to the contrary, when we look at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, while there were human actors who bear their share of the guilt, it was in the eternal plan of the Father for things to go as they did. Christ Himself was well aware that the reason for His living would one day be His dying for the sins of every person in the world. But as surely as He knew He would die for our sins, He knew that the Father would raise Him from the grave, conquering death, paving the way for our reconciliation to God.
Verified by many witnesses, the fact that Christ had risen and was alive. He had eaten and drunk with many of them; He had spoken to them, walked with them, taught them about God’s plan and His central place in it. All of these things had happened after His crucifixion and resurrection.
The actual events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ matter very much. Some folks today will try to suggest that it doesn’t matter if Jesus actually did the things He’s spoken of as doing; all that matters is some deeper spiritual significance. Poppycock; whether or not these things are actual history makes all the difference in the world. It mattered that there were credible witnesses to Christ’s resurrection; God ordained for there to be, because the truth matters. If Jesus Christ today didn’t actually, physically rise from the grave, then we are wasting our time and spinning our wheels. If I were not confident of that fact, I wouldn’t be standing here speaking today; if I didn’t believe that there exists solid, credible evidence for that fact, we wouldn’t have a church.
Everything hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Everything. If the story of the gospel is true, and Jesus Christ bodily arose from the grave, then He has established forevermore the credibility of His message, so that
• When Jesus says, “you must be born again”…you must be born again!
• When Jesus says, “no one comes to the Father except through Me”, we can be sure that no one comes to God the Father except through Jesus!
• When Jesus asks, “what does it profit a person if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul”, we have to agree that if profits nothing.
• When Jesus tells us not to lay up treasure on earth, but to lay up treasure in Heaven, we agree that doing things that last forever trumps the things that die when we do.
:42 – Witnesses are people who must tell what they know
We have no problem doing this with so many things; we sing the praises of the Yellow Jackets and the Bulldogs, and the Falcons…well, we sing the praises of the Yellow Jackets and the Bulldogs. We report all the juicy details of the events of our lives, sometimes embellishing, of course, but again, we love to talk as witnesses of the things we’ve seen take place.
But I want you to notice some sobering news that should make us pay even more careful attention to the good news. Peter says that this Jesus is the One Who will judge every person, living or dead. Let that sober you up a little bit: this Jesus, Whom some folks like to think of today as a pansy-picking, ukulele-strumming, peace-sign wearing Flower Child, is the One Person before whom you and I will give an account of our lives one day. Jesus, the Perfect One, the one who never once did anything wrong: He will judge you and He will judge me, and He’s not grading on a curve! The Bible says that to every one of us, there is an appointment awaiting after our time on earth is through, and judgment is the name of that appointment. I’m not going to get out of that with a note from my mom. I’m not going to be able to sweet-talk God into foregoing that judgment. I will give an account of myself to Jesus Christ, the only Perfect Person Who ever lived.
Now, this is not a popular message today; you’ll find preachers on TV go to great lengths to avoid any talk of the unpleasant and unpopular reality of the judgment of a holy God. The last thing we want as Americans is to be told that there are some lifestyle choices we can make that displease God, that offend His holiness, and that will incur His holy wrath. But that is exactly what the Bible teaches, and I am not being faithful to God if I namby-pamby or tiptoe around that inconvenient truth.
But beyond this, even, if we are honest, all but the most willfully blind among us believe that there should be judgment. We heard just this week on the news of a little first grade girl who was sexually abused and hanged in a sleepy little town outside Dallas. The natural, human emotion that we express is horrified indignation, and we want the animal who did this to this little girl to face swift and certain punishment, do we not? Absolutely, and we do not apologize for wanting justice to be done in the form of judgment and punishment of some type.
Similarly, there is judgment to be faced by those who transgress the holy standard that God has established—and we all have done that, if we are honest with God and with ourselves, on many, many, many occasions. Jesus Christ is depicted in the Bible as being the Holy, Righteous Judge! And the only real question will be the one that follows:
III. The Good News: God Opens Heaven to Those who Trust Jesus :43-48
If the Bible says that it is through faith in Jesus Christ that we receive forgiveness of sins, then the question is, “are you trusting in Jesus Christ alone for forgiveness?” You see, if you are an enemy of God, as the Bible makes clear; if it’s because of the sins that you commit, transgressing God’s standard, that you are His enemy; if Jesus will one day stand as your Judge, then what you need is to stand before Jesus with your account perfectly clear. What you need is forgiveness. And that’s just what Jesus offers you! And it’s what He offered Cornelius and the folks in his living room. And the Bible says that while Peter was talking about how sins would be forgiven through belief in Christ, God’s Holy Spirit fell on all of the listeners, and they began speaking in languages unknown to them previously. Now, sincere Christians have differences of opinion regarding this “gift of tongues” today, but it clearly gave evidence that God had worked a change in the hearts and lives of these non-Jews.
• They didn’t have to perform any religious rituals.
• They didn’t have to become Jews first.
• They didn’t have to be baptized first; that came later.
• This freaked out the Jews who accompanied Peter.
• But the fact was, these non-Jews were now part of God’s kingdom.
And it’s a good thing—‘cause that’s us! Cornelius was a seeker of truth, and God reached out to him and brought to him and his household forgiveness of sins, salvation through Jesus. Be a seeker of truth. The Bible has nothing to hide, the gospel isn’t afraid of your questions. Be sincere in your search. Be honest with yourself.
Heaven is open to all who will trust Jesus Christ by faith, not depending on their own resources or heritage or good deeds to somehow earn their place there. The “Grand Opening” of a church is a neat thing, but the greatest grand opening you’ll ever be involved in is that day that you submit yourself to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and God makes everything new in your life. Red Oak is here because we want to see God change people’s lives; the story here will be told in the lives that are changed. I invite you to allow God to change your life—eternally.
