Good morning. Glad to be able to meet up again and remember our Lord together as a Body of Christ. We celebrate God’s goodness and lovingkindness despite the challenges.
• Let us praise God with Psalm 47 before we look into Acts 11.
1 Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy.
2 How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth!
3 He subdued nations under us, peoples under our feet.
4 He chose our inheritance for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loved.
5 God has ascended amid shouts of joy, the LORD amid the sounding of trumpets.
6 Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.
7 For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise.
8 God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne.
9 The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham, for the kings of the earth belong to God; he is greatly exalted.
Yes, Lord, we are here to praise and glorify your Name, our sovereign Lord who is seated enthroned above.
Everything can change, but you remain the same, faithful and true.
Your eternal Word is the foundation of our lives. We come with a longing to hear it and receive what you say today.
Help us understand your Word, this we pray, in Jesus’ Name, AMEN.
Let me recap last week message.
• We saw the salvation of the Gentiles when they received the message of the Gospel and believed Christ.
• Salvation is centred on the person and work of Jesus Christ.
• It has nothing to do with race, culture or status nor is it based on a man’s good works.
• Salvation comes to anyone who believes in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sin.
• We cannot live the Christian life until we receive a new life from God, evidenced by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Let's continue today from Acts 11:1-18 Message: Destroying the Wall of Hostility
1The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3and said, "You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them."
4 Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened: 5"I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of the air. 7Then I heard a voice telling me, `Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.'
8"I replied, `Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.'
9"The voice spoke from heaven a second time, `Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.' 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
11"Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man's house. 13He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, `Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.'
15"As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16Then I remembered what the Lord had said: `John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 17So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?"
18When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life."
The news of what happened at Cornelius’ house got around, but instead of scenes of celebrations at the conversion of the Gentiles, we saw unhappiness.
• We have to understand the context. This was not something acceptable to them.
• The Jewish believers have been brought up practising Judaism and believing the Messiah to be a Jewish Messiah. Foreigners have no part in it.
• If any non-Jews want to believe their God, they have to become proselytes (pros sir lite), that is, convert to Judaism and observe the Mosaic Law and Jewish customs.
The Jewish believers were unhappy about what happened and criticised Peter for visiting the Gentiles and eating with them, when he returned to Jerusalem.
• Until now, no Jew associates themselves with the non-Jews in such way.
• Even though Jesus had commissioned them to “go and make disciples of all nations,” (Mt 28:19) their thinking was still very much “to the Jewish people in all the nations”.
That’s why the Lord has to prepare Peter’s heart with a vision, repeated 3 times.
…AND the need for the miraculous sign, of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Gentile believers. It validated their faith and proved God’s acceptance of them.
• The fact that the 6 Jewish believers from Joppa who accompanied Peter to Cornelius’ house were astonished showed that the miracle was necessary. It wasn’t something they could accept.
• God received the Gentiles believers into the church because of their faith in Christ, even though they were of a different race. He has no favourite.
Luke highlighted the tension here: “The circumcised believers criticised Peter and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
• Luke, himself a Gentile, understood the dynamics that existed between the Jews and Gentiles, which explained why this narrative was given so much significance.
• The Jews see themselves as the chosen people of God and circumcision was the sign of the OLD COVENANT that God made with their ancestor Abraham.
• Gen 17:9-11 9Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.”
• That was with Abraham, with Israel, under the old covenant.
But with Christ’s sacrifice, we have a NEW COVENANT cut with His blood.
• Remember each time we take the cup at communion, we read what the Lord says.
• Luke 22:20b “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” Matthew’s version says, “…for the forgiveness of sins.”
• Heb 9:15 “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance-now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”
But for the Jewish believers, those from ‘the circumcision party’ (ESV), what Peter did was unacceptable.
• He should not have gone into the house of the uncircumcised ‘foreigners’ and ate with them.
• Peter has a lot of explaining to do, and that’s what he did, explaining to them precisely as it had happened (11:4).
• This is the second time we are reading this. Luke repeats it all so that his readers are clear about this. It’s not about Peter’s actions but the will of God.
Peter presented 3 pieces of evidence: (1) the visions of God, (2) the witness of the Holy Spirit, and (3) the word of Christ.
Peter related his vision from God and his own initial opposition to it, and how God challenged him and the Holy Spirit instructed him to go with the visitors.
• He shared how Cornelius had received a message from an angel directing him to find Peter. He preached the Gospel and the baptism of the Holy Spirit happened.
• Peter led them to see the works of God from the beginning to the end.
• 11:16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
11:18 (ESV): “When they heard these things they fell silent…” They quieted down (NASB), they held their peace (KJV), they had no further objections (NIV).
• Who could possibly deny this? God authenticates His own works and man submits.
• They praised and glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” (ESV)
To see non-Jews or foreigners being accepted by God into the church was a complete paradigm shift for the Jews.
• They have to learn to drop their preconceived assumptions and submit to the revealed will of God, through the signs that God has given.
• How to know the truth of God? Through the revealed will of God, the witness of the Holy Spirit and the Word of Christ.
What do we do when the revealed will of God, the witness of the Holy Spirit and the word of Christ point us to a different path from what we have been doing?
• When the truth of God and our own understanding differs, drop the false notions and take up what God says.
For this group of Jewish believers, they submitted to God’s will and glorified Him.
• I said ‘for this group of believers’ because there remains in the church a circumcision party or fraction that insisted on the Gentiles observing the Jewish Law.
• The good ending here does not mean that everything will be smooth going forward because there are theological and practical issues that need to be addressed.
• Jewish and Gentile believers are now going to co-exist together in the same church, having the same faith but with very different traditions and customs.
Are the Gentiles going to observe the Mosaic Law, the festivals, the sacrifices, and follow the practices of the Jews? Are they going to be circumcised?
• We will see these issues surfacing and being addressed in Acts 15 and 21.
• We thank God for Paul. In later years, God uses Paul to explain with greater clarity the coming together of Jews and Gentiles as one body in Christ and what it means, and the place of the Law in their lives, when he writes to the Galatians, Ephesians, Romans and Hebrews.
Just because this is the will of God does not mean that it is going to be easy, that there won’t be any challenges.
• We obey God because it is the truth and the right thing to do.
• There are truths that we need to LEARN, false assumptions we need to UNLEARN, and some things to RELEARN, just like Peter.
• He has to be reminded of this truth about accepting the Gentiles when Paul reprimanded him in one incident, later on.
• Paul said in Gal 2:11-14 “11When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”
• Paul highlighted a principle we are to follow: Act in line with the truth of the Gospel.
This crossing-over of the Gospel to the Gentiles might seem like a radical thing to the Jews but it is not so to God.
• It has been in the mind of God. It was the will of God all along. God did not change course midway.
• When God first called Abraham and told him that He would make him the father of a new nation, God has this in mind. He said, “… all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:3)
• On Mount Moriah when Abraham was about to offer his son Isaac, the Lord said it again: “17I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (Gen 22:17-18)
• God repeated the same promise to Isaac (Gen 26:4) and Jacob (Gen 28:14), it’s a promise made over 3 generations.
So this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ - the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation of everyone who believes – the Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles.
• Peter has the privilege of seeing the baptism of the Holy Spirit upon all three - to the Jews at Pentecost, the Samaritans when he laid hands on them (Acts 8:17), and finally the Gentiles in Cornelius’ house. Jesus saves!
You might have heard of the ministry of HealthServe recently on TV, and their work among the migrant workers.
Dr Goh Wei Leong, one of the founders of HealthServe, shared this story of how he and some like-minded friends initiated the work among migrant workers to provide basic healthcare for them.
They found a place for a clinic in Geylang Lor 23 and opened it on Sat afternoons. But to their disappointment, not many workers turned up.
He was told that if he really wanted to reach out to the migrant workers, he needed to get to the other side of Geylang, to the even-numbered streets where sex workers ply their trade and where many migrant workers live above the brothels, where rental rates were cheaper.
They subsequently relocated their clinic to the other side of Geylang. To them, this was the ‘crossover’ that broke down the walls that divide.
Dr Goh shared, “By crossing the street, we crossed over to the side of the vulnerable and oppressed… We spent many evenings talking to them, telling them about the clinic. And after that, they started coming. It was a major lesson for us; we had to move into their community.”
Peter went over to the Gentiles. So will Barnabas, to the Gentiles in Antioch. And eventually Paul, to the Gentiles regions beyond.
The message today is best summed up in the words of Paul – Eph 2:14-18.
14For He [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made the two one [Jews and Gentiles] and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
The Kingdom of God is open to all who is willing to repent and trust Jesus Christ.
• The ground is level at the foot of the cross. There are no first-class or second class citizens in the Kingdom of heaven.
• Let us live to demonstrate this reconciliation we have with God in Christ, and the unity we have with one another.
• We do not erect barriers. We love and accept one another. We love those who are unlike us, who are different from us, with the love of Christ.
PRAY:
Our merciful Father, we come to you not by our own merit but by the grace extended to us through Jesus Christ. Thank you for opening the door of salvation to us.
Fill our hearts with your love and compassion, for one another and for the lost. Unite us Lord in your love and in your truth, so that through us, the world may recognise you as their Saviour. May we grow to be more like Christ with each passing day.
May your Name be glorified through us, wherever we are, this coming week.
May the abundant grace of Jesus, the unchanging love of God, and the constant fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and forevermore, AMEN.
