Series: Resolutions Worth Keeping
Title: Love Knows No Boundaries
Text: Acts 10:9-15, 22-23, 28-29a, 34-36
Truth: God’s love is not prejudiced; therefore, we will identify and overcome our own
prejudices.
Aim: To confront and overcome our prejudices.
Life Question: How does God’s love confront and overcome our prejudices?
INTRODUCTION
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American, is shot to death in an altercation by police officer Darren Wilson. A grand jury clears the officer of wrongdoing. Rioting, looting, and burning follow the decision. The pundits who weigh in give us the familiar narrative: slavery, discrimination, stereotyping, joblessness, lack of education, absent fathers, and profiling. The authorities sound off with, “We are a nation of laws.”
Man’s answer to help people live with one another is the enforcement of laws. The hope of laws is to help people live orderly and civil lives. You see this in Scripture: for people to live in harmony, Moses’ teaching was outlined in six hundred thirteen laws to build community among the Hebrews. About four hundred years later, David, in the fifteenth psalm, reduced them to eleven. Isaiah, in the opening chapter, reduced them to six. Micah, in chapter 6 verse 8 narrowed the laws down to three: “To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before your God.”
Then a religious professional asked Jesus which was the greatest law. His intent was to get Jesus into trouble with the political and religious leaders who controlled social and religious practices by imposing dozens and dozens of laws. Jesus’ answer was a surprise. He did not reduce the laws to one, though he could have. Instead, he reduced them to two. In Matthew 22:38 He said,
"(22) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. (38) This is the greatest and most important commandment. (39) The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. (40) All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments."
If Jesus had only said “Love God” people could be deceived if it was not true of us. But this second command to love people is not so easy to fool others. On the other hand, if you exalt the second command without having the first, you have no reason to love people.
When will we learn that laws will never change the racism or prejudice which is in the heart? What irony that one of the most hate-filled terrorist groups in the world goes by the name “The Muslim Brotherhood.” The “brotherhood” is actually devoted to the death of those who disagree with them.
I know this is unimaginable, but what if the newscast showed Officer Wilson meeting with the mother of Michael Brown? The officer is deeply moved and upset that the events led him to shoot to death this mother’s son. With remorse choking his words he asks for her forgiveness. With tears wetting the face of this grieving mother, she places both hands on the face of this young police officer and kisses him on the forehead. She looks in his eyes and whispers, “I forgive you.” In that moment portrayed before the world are two hearts filled with grace and forgiveness.
We must have laws because man is fundamentally sinful and bent toward harm. That is powerfully dramatized in the current movie Selma about Martin Luther King, Jr. But it is love which has produced the real change in society toward others. The next time you hear someone in authority say we are a nation of laws, whisper a prayer that God would make us a nation of love. Only our love for God and people has the power to change our bigotry and prejudices.
In Acts 10 Peter the racist learns that God’s love is not prejudicial. God loves all people. As a follower of the Lord Jesus, Peter is forced to identify and overcome his own prejudices. What is true for Peter will be true for every follower of Jesus. If you are serious in your resolve to be more like the Lord Jesus, it will involve identifying your prejudices and looking for ways to overcome them, because God’s love is not prejudicial.
How does God’s love confront and overcome our prejudices?
I. GOD CHALLENGES YOUR ASSUMPTIONS (ACTS 10:9-15)
God chose the Israelites out of all the people in the world to share the message that God has thrown open the doors of heaven to sinners. Instead they took this privilege and made it exclusive to them. They became prideful to the point of viewing non-Jews as being as low as scavenger dogs. When a rabbi walked through a bazaar he gathered up his robes so they would not brush up against a Gentile. Jewish midwives were forbidden to help a Gentile woman give birth because it brought another Gentile dog into the world.
The Jews were not alone in their bigotry and racism. The ancient Greeks divided up the human race into two categories: Greeks and barbarians. The barbarian was literally a man who could not speak Greek, and so his words sounded to the Greek ear like “bar bar.” One Greek historian asked rhetorically, “How can men who can only bark ever rule the world?”
Aristotle was brilliant but he was prejudiced. He said those who lived in the cold lands of the north had plenty of courage and spirit, but little skill and intelligence. Those who lived in the warm south had plenty of skill, intelligence, and culture, but little spirit and courage. Only the Greeks lived in a climate designated by nature to produce the perfectly blended character.”
What I am saying is, despite Peter’s conversion to Christ, he was still a deep-seated bigot and racist. Everything in his life reinforced his prejudice. God powerfully challenges Peter’s assumptions about people of another race:
(9) The next day, as they were traveling and nearing the city, Peter went up to pray on the housetop at about noon.
Earlier God spoke to a Roman soldier, Cornelius, in a vision. He instructed Cornelius to send for Peter. Cornelius, who lived in Caesarea, was ready to hear the gospel and be saved. The city to which Cornelius’ men were sent to find Peter is Joppa, 30 miles north of Caesarea. Joppa is where the Ninevite-hating prophet Jonah boarded a ship and sought to escape the commission of taking the saving message to his hated enemies. Cornelius’ message was so serious that these men must have traveled through the night to reach Joppa by noon.
Noon was not one of the fixed times of prayer for Jews, but many of the devout Jews prayed at noon. The first half of this chapter is all about God preparing Cornelius and Peter for this earth-shaking leap of the gospel across racial barriers to reach Gentiles.
(10) Then he became hungry and wanted to eat, but while they were preparing something he went into a visionary state.
Peter became starved, (an intense word), and probably called down to ask for something to eat. While the food was being prepared, Peter fell into a trance and had the following vision.
(11) He saw heaven opened and an object coming down that resembled a large sheet being lowered to the earth by its four corners. (12) In it were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, and the birds of the sky. (13) Then a voice said to him, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat!" (14) "No, Lord!" Peter said. "For I have never eaten anything common and unclean!"
He saw in this vision all sorts of creatures; clean and unclean. It would be disgusting to a devout Jew. The “voice” told him to eat from this selection, and Peter was horrified.
I wonder what would be your reaction if I opened up a box of cigars and offered all the men a cigar to smoke with me after the service out in front of the church? Well, I not only oppose smoking, I am not brave enough to do that to stress the shock Peter had when he was told to eat food he had been taught all his life was unclean.
(15) Again, a second time, a voice said to him, "What God has made clean, you must not call common." (16) This happened three times, and then the object was taken up into heaven.
We all know Peter was slow. He had to have this vision three times in order to get beyond the shock to hear the real message of what God was saying. The second time God spoke He gave the rationale for Peter to eat. Whatever it meant Peter knew that God was removing a barrier. He was about to learn that it was the distinctions he grew up making between Jews and Gentiles.
The late 1960s were filled with immense cultural upheaval in America. The changes were so huge between older and younger Americans that it received its own term: Generation Gap. During those years Hudson Armerding was the president of the conservative Christian college Wheaton. He was a World War II veteran and held the values of that generation, and was conservative in dress and grooming. President Armerding despised the counter-culture movement. To him it represented unpatriotic draft dodgers, flag burners, and rioters. He did not like it when students dressed in the grubby counter-culture fashions. Long hair for a man, he felt, was biblically inappropriate. Despite his opinions the staff at Wheaton was trying to permit a degree of liberty among the students on these matters.
One day Armerding was scheduled to speak in chapel. Right before the service, they gathered for prayer. Just before they began, a young man walked in who had a beard and long hair, and was wearing a sash around his waist, with sandals on his feet. The president looked at him and was sorry that he had come. Worse yet, the student sat down right next to the president. When they started praying, Armerding did not have a very good attitude.
Then the young man began to pray: “Dear Lord, you know how much I admire Dr. Armerding, how I appreciate his walk with you. I am grateful for what a man of God he is, and how he loves you and loves your people. Lord, bless him today. Give him liberty in the Holy Spirit and make him a real blessing to all of us in the student body. Help us to have open hearts to hear what he has to say, and may we do what you want us to do.”
As the president walked down the steps to go into the chapel, the Lord spoke to him about his attitude. After giving his message, he asked the young man to come to the platform. A ripple of whispering went through the students, many of whom thought the president was going to dismiss the young man from school as an example to the rest of the students. But rather than rebuking him or dismissing him, everyone, including the young man, was surprised when Dr. Armerding put his arms around him and embraced him as a brother in Christ. It broke up the chapel service as students stood and applauded, cried, and embraced one another. God used that simple act of one man laying aside his prejudice to turn the mood on campus to greater love and acceptance of one another. Dr. Armerding later learned this young man had adopted his appearance in order to reach some of his generation who were alienated from God and the church.
If you had this vision, what would be in your sheet? What are your prejudices? The food laws stopped Christians from being accepting of others and sharing the gospel. Who do you instinctively stand off from? Who do you instinctively think of and expect the worse?
Is your prejudice generational, be they young or old? Is it an economic class? Maybe it is the snooty rich or the unwashed poor. Perhaps the prejudice which God would show you has to do with a lifestyle: the sexually promiscuous or deviant. Maybe it is against the one with multiple divorces. Possibly it is a bias against physical appearance. Who of us does not have some racial prejudices which need to be challenged?
What is in your sheet? Who is your Cornelius? When you are honest with yourself is the refusal to mix with some people because you are biased toward a characteristic they possess? We have laws which prevent discrimination, but what our nation needs are Christians whose love is progressively removing the barriers between them and others.
How does God’s love confront and overcome our prejudices? He challenges our assumptions. Another way is for us to change our behavior.
II. WE CHANGE OUR BEHAVIOR (ACTS 10:22-23, 28-29a)
After his vision from God, Peter had a chance to apply what he had learned. In verses 16-21 we are told that after seeing the sheet three times, God said there were three men at the door; they were Gentiles. Peter was told to go with them back to Cornelius.
(22) They said, "Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who has a good reputation with the whole Jewish nation, was divinely directed by a holy angel to call you to his house and to hear a message from you." (23) Peter then invited them in and gave them lodging.
Cornelius demonstrated a hunger to know God but he did not know the truth about Christ. The angel could have told Cornelius the gospel, but instead he directed him to seek out a believer in Christ. For Peter to meet with Cornelius meant that Peter had to cross barriers which were previously set in stone by his culture and religion.
Peter invited these Gentiles to stay at the home of his Jewish friend. They shared the meal being prepared for Peter; that was a huge taboo. He went with them the next day back to Caesarea and entered the home of the Roman soldier. Peter was so conscious of the social violations he was making that he took six witnesses with him. According to the Old Testament Peter only needed two; he tripled the number. The day was coming when he knew he would be called on the carpet; that happens in chapter 11. Peter wanted three times as many witnesses as he needed to support his testimony that God told him to go see Cornelius. This act of obedience demonstrates how God saved the Gentiles.
Peter’s prejudice was not just racial. The Centurion represented the oppressive, brutal Roman government. Peter probably knew people, maybe family members, who had been beaten or killed by Roman soldiers. The Jews hated the Romans for this. Look what he says in verse 28:
(28) Peter said to them, "You know it's forbidden for a Jewish man to associate with or visit a foreigner.”
(He was referring to the teaching of the rabbi’s but not the teaching of the Old Testament.)
“But God has shown me that I must not call any person common or unclean. (29) That's why I came without any objection when I was sent for.”
He made the connection that God was not talking about food but people. All people matter to God. That change in convictions was the motivation for the change in his behavior toward all people. What he had been taught about people was wrong.
Johnny Lee Clary patted his white sheets smooth as he waited in the radio station for his debate opponent; a civil rights activist. Clary expected Reverend Wade Watts, the uncle of Representative J.C. Watts, to hate whites as much as Clary hated blacks. But Reverend Watts stunned Clary when he walked into the broadcast booth, smiled, and told the then-Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan that he loved him. Clary, who had set Watts’ McAlester church on fire, could not help but shake the preacher’s hand, despite the KKK rule against touching blacks. Clary first began to doubt his racist convictions that night in 1979, a decade before he left the Klan as Imperial Wizard and a dozen years before he began his itinerant ministry against racism.
“Racism is a learned response,” said Clary. When he was five years old he remembered pointing out a black man coming out of a Del City, Oklahoma grocery store. His father used a racial slur to describe the man. When he was just eleven, he watched his father put a .45-caliber handgun to his head and pull the trigger. He was sent to live in East Los Angeles, where Clary said racism was even more prevalent than in Oklahoma. He was failing at school, involved in gangs, and no one seemed to care for the fourteen-year-old kid. Then he saw on television David Duke talking about the KKK. It sounded like the things he had heard his father say, and soon he was a member. He quickly rose up through the ranks until he was the Grand Dragon in Oklahoma and then Imperial Wizard. In the 1980s the Nazis and skinheads were making up more and more of the Klan’s membership and bringing in their violence. He grew disillusioned and quit in 1989.
A few years later he became a follower of Jesus Christ. He said he looked at himself in the mirror and decided it was time to change. He called Reverend Watts seeking forgiveness. The pastor invited him to preach in his all-black church, the one Clary had set ablaze. Reverend Watts had warned his members the week before that the former KKK leader was coming. Many stayed home. Reporters gathered for his first public appearance since leaving the Klan.
The church folks crossed their arms and stared at Clary with lowered brows. He got no “Hallelujahs” or “Amens” when he told the congregation about his reformation. Clary closed by asking if there was anyone who would like to know Jesus as their Savior. A teen-age biracial girl cried and ran to the pulpit to hug Clary. It broke the ice.
Reverend Wade Watts and Johnny Lee Clary teamed up and traveled all across the South preaching against racism and protesting at Klan rallies. Mrs. Watts said they came to love Johnny Lee like he was one of the family. Every time he was close to McAlester he would stop by to see the Watts.
We have been duped to think that the solutions to prejudice are writing laws or reeducating people, but that goes only so far. If Ferguson, Missouri has taught us anything, and it is only the latest example of a long list which could be cited, it is that our society always stands on the brink of violence at a hint of discrimination. Conservative commentators like to point out how much we have advanced and that we have elected an African American President. I do not dispute that. But the world’s answer is putting a band-aid on cancer. Our starting point is wrong. The answer is found in the Christian message.
The Christian faith teaches there is something fundamentally wrong with our hearts. The Christian faith teaches that people are of inestimable worth because they are the creation of our Creator. That admission takes away any claim that you are superior to any other human being. The admission that there is something wrong with my heart which makes me reject another person’s worth points to my need to be transformed by Jesus Christ. You see, Peter got it right. Peter got it right socially when he got right with God vertically. That is what changed his behavior.
I have prayed this week that God would help you see what you call “unclean” and justify discriminating against. He has been answering that prayer in my life. I want you to remember that the reason He reveals your prejudice and bigotry is for you to change your behavior. Look how Reverend Watts’ love rescued and saved Johnny Lee Clary from a symbolic and literal hell. Change your behavior.
How does God’s love confront and overcome our prejudices? He challenges our assumptions. We change our behavior.
III. WE CLARIFY THAT JESUS IS LORD OF ALL (ACTS 10:34-36)
Cornelius told Peter the story of the angel’s visitation. He was so grateful he fell at Peter’s feet in worship. Peter lifted him up and amazingly stated that he and Cornelius were equals. I promise you Peter had not believed that before. This passage is the equivalent of Martin Luther King, Jr. standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial giving his famous “I have a dream” speech. In that moment Peter was sweeping away the religious and racial prejudice of centuries.
(34) Then Peter began to speak: "In truth, I understand that God doesn't show favoritism,”
It literally means “to receive the face.” When greeting a social superior, one lowered his face. If the one thus greeted raised the face of the greeter, it indicated recognition and acceptance. External matters of race, appearance, or social class did not determine whether or not God would accept a person.
“(35) but in every nation the person who fears Him and does righteousness is acceptable to Him.”
Peter did not mean that we are justified by works, but emphasized that a righteous, God-fearing Gentile is just as acceptable to God as a righteous, God-fearing Jew through faith in Jesus Christ. The whole reason Peter was at the home of Cornelius was because he needed to be saved since his good works did not save him. His pursuit of righteousness revealed he had a repentant and prepared heart.
“(36) He sent the message to the sons of Israel, proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ—He is Lord of all.”
For centuries God spoke through the prophets as they proclaimed the good news to Israel. In Jesus Christ, this message of peace is now available to anyone who earnestly seeks Him as Lord of all. In this day of religious pluralism we are told to leave people of other faiths and cultures alone. God did not see it that way with Cornelius. Apart from Jesus Christ this good man had no hope of heaven or the forgiveness of sin. God accepts all people, not on the basis of righteous deeds, but on the basis that all mankind has one Lord to whom they must yield.
I know you agree that all people have a right to hear the gospel; it is the explanation for why we have, at this point in 2015, seventeen people committed to go on international mission trips. One value of those trips is it confronts our narrow-mindedness and prejudices. We are reminded that God shows no partiality among the nations. He is and wants to be Lord of all.
It is fine to be patriotic about America, to love and defend America. I think patriotism is even a biblical belief. It is wrong to be a nationalist; a nationalist says, “My country right or wrong.” A nationalist believes his nation is a superior people. Hitler was a nationalist. But Christians are internationalists. We reach beyond our borders and our own citizens because God accepts all people; He does not play favorites. God’s love is not prejudicial.
God convicted me that people coming to our church seeking benevolence were in my sheet. I have been dealing with folks needing benevolence for more than three decades. I have listened to literally thousands of stories. I usually know how the story goes before they finish it. I came to resent them smelling of smoke and then asking me to give your hard-earned money to pay for their utility bill. Before I help someone I go through a list of questions which are basically the actions any responsible adult would do if they got into a bind and needed help. My attitude stunk, but I was kind to them; I know I represent Christ and our church. But I told Carol that I needed to hand this off to some folks in the church. I helped but I did not do it joyfully. They were the unclean in my sheet.
This week the Holy Spirit has convicted me. It was as if God said to me, “Ed, I love them as much as I love you. I brought them to you to show that love and share my message of love. You know what they need more than the church’s money? They need My love and Christ. You know Christ. I brought them to you to share Christ and My love. Ed, you don’t need to give up this job. You need to give up your stinking attitude.”
I hope you will forgive your pastor. I will change my attitude and behavior toward people God loves every bit as much as He loves me and you.
God’s love is not prejudicial, and if you are a follower of Jesus you should expect Him to challenge your assumptions about people He loves. You should expect Him to lead you to identify and overcome your prejudice because He is Lord of all.
1. Ravi Zacharias, “From Kiev to Ferguson: Stable Words in an Unstable World,” 12/3/14.
2. LifeWay, Life Matters Adult study guide, Winter 2011-2012.
3. Steven Lawson citing Wm Barclay. “Breaking Down Our Prejudice,” 4/1/01.
4. Steven Lawson, Hudson Armerding, Leadership [Tyndale], pp. 166-168.
5. Associated Press, “Former KKK Leader Now Fighting Racism.”
