Acts 10:27-47 is read before the sermon.
There’s a powerful story tucked away in the middle chapters of Acts. Our story tantalizes us with angels & visions but at it’s essence it is the story about our 2 main characters to today’s story, Cornelius & Peter. Cornelius represents the power of Rome, a Navy Seal (if you will) of the great Roman nation. Peter represents the power of God, a preacher of the first rank, if you will. It is a really long story that we do not have time to read it in its entirety.
Now, I want you to watch for two conversions in our story today – a conversion for both Cornelius & for Peter. Each man had a powerful turning point & each man had a powerful story they would tell around campfires for years to come. If God had not intervened, the 2 men would have never spoken a word to one another. This morning we examine a story where the gospel and prejudice intersect. Be amazed at the power of the gospel.
1. Prejudice Comes Easy (Peter)
Have you ever noticed how many problems prejudice causes? Liberals despise conservatives (and vice-versa) & teenagers think their parents are stupid. Yes, generations divide us, ideology divides us, race divides us, & now even gender divides us. Few things unite us anymore. To correct some of this, our workplaces have often adopted political correctness forcing people to behave when inside we begrudge what’s being done to us. So many of us have developed antibodies to any talk about prejudice & race because of the sensational media attention in recent years. Yet, racism & prejudice are not going away. Nor, is it is uniquely an American problem. The Nazi’s slaughter 6 million Jews. The Japanese slaughter 6 million Chinese, Koreans, & Filipinos among others. Sunni versus Shiite Muslims, and Palestinians vs. Israelis. And while few of us will murder one another, all of us in this room have prejudice no matter who we are.
Now all this brings me to Peter, one of the most famous Christ followers in history. You will not understand the importance of Peter’s vision of the sheet until you understand that has prejudice as a Jewish person. When meet Peter in our story, we already see him working on his prejudice. Peter is staying in a tanner’s house in Joppa. Jews wouldn’t have stayed in a tanner’s house because of kosher laws. Jews couldn’t be around anything dead.
1.1 Peter – A Better Version of Jonah
Peter is in Joppa just like Jonah fled to Joppa years before. God’s command to Jonah was simple: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2) Why was Jonah so stubborn against God’s command? Jonah didn’t want God to show compassion on Israel’s enemies. Jonah wanted God to pulverize Nineveh, the last capital of Assyria. Jonah is rebelling because Jonah knows the true nature of God: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.’” (Jonah 4:1-2)
God’s has grace to people who sin against Him. Every Jewish person would have hated the mention of the city of Nineveh. Archeologists recently discovered an inscription on a local Assyrian temple. The inscription refers to the king of Assyria, Ashur-nasir-apli II (883-859) as flaying his enemies’ skins & draping these skins over a pile of human bodies. The inscription goes on to say that such skins were draped over the walls as well as placed on stakes around the pile itself.
This city inspired terror for Jonah and every Jewish city of Israel from the days of Jonah’s grandparents. Peter is the new Jonah. Where Jonah was forced at gunpoint, if you will… God is working with Peter to go willingly. What is significant about Cornelius’ story isn’t just the fact that one more person comes to know the grace of God, it’s the type of person Cornelius represents – Peter would have never been in his home.
1.2 Masada
Can we really appreciate how truly challenging God’s command to the early believers was? Allow me to take you away from the story of Peter & Cornelius to a time about forty years later. It’s a story of some of the first people who would read our account when Luke published Acts. The book of Acts was published during the time the Romans were conquering Jerusalem. Imagine if American Christians shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) shared a message something to effect, “Jesus died and rose again for Japanese people to experience the love of God.” Or, what if during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) when missiles where placed on Cuba, American Christians were to share a message something to effect, “Jesus died & rose again for Japanese people to experience the love of God.” While these Jewish Christians were reading this story about Peter sharing Christ’s love and mercy to the Roman Cornelius, the Romans were slaughtering Jews wholesale throughout Israel.
In fact, some of you know the story of Masada. Masada is a giant rock the size of an aircraft carrier near the Dead Sea & it is celebrated & immortalized today as place of Jewish heroism. The brutal tactics of the Roman army were on display when they killed 700 women & children at En-Gedi, near Masada in the area of the Dead Sea. Nearly 1,000 Jewish people escaped to Masada. Rather than leaving these few remaining people alone in peace, around 8,000 Romans encircled the mountain preventing anyone from escaping. It took them several months to build a ramp to scale the nearly 300 feet high where a battering ram was wheeled up to break down the Jewish wall of defense. Then on Passover April 15, 73 AD, the remaining Jewish people took their own lives rather than face the cruelty of the Romans.
Can you imagine your feelings if you a Jewish believer reading about your hero, Peter, sharing the message of God’s love with your enemies? Eating with Cornelius is a bold move by Peter.
1. Prejudice Comes Easy
2. It’s the Gospel that Brings Us Together (Cornelius)
It’s not your company HR department that brings us together. It’s the gospel that brings us together. Let me show you.
2.1 Cornelius
We are told four things about Cornelius: he’s devout, he feared God, he gave money to the poor, & always prayed (Acts 10:2). He would have been a powerful man but it is important for you to know he’s also a God-fearer. A God-fearer is someone who is interested in the Jewish faith but doesn’t go through their conversion rites of circumcision. Cornelius is important because we are taught we don’t all have to become Jews to become Christians. Cornelius is important because he isn’t forced to do circumcision to become a believer.
What if you were told you had to go to Jerusalem each year to become a believer? What if I told you had to eat only Kosher food to become a Christian? And what if all the men in the room had to undergo circumcision before God would accept them? “But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” (Acts 15:11)
2.2 This Story is About Prejudice
The Bible takes great pains to show this story is about how the gospel can unite people of different races, religions, and even those with built-in prejudice. The moment Peter gets back to Jerusalem, he’s in trouble: So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, 3 “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” (Acts 11:2–3) At the heart of the story, Peter realizes what’s happening because the first thing he says to Cornelius: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.” (Acts 10:28b) A few minutes later, Peter shows us how far he’s come: “So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34–35) This is exactly what God wanted from His church since the beginning of Acts. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). God has designed his church to circle up all the races & places to unite us under the banner of Jesus Christ.
It’s so vital you see this. There’s a forced version of diversity that often comes from the HR departments & from the FEDS but this is God above. We read in last book of the Bible how heaven will populated from people of every tribe and tongue and race. And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9) . God so prizes unity among all of His people that He ransomed His Son to accomplish this. Jesus Christ was slain for the purpose of bringing people of every race together under the banner of Jesus Christ.
1. Prejudice Comes Easy
2. It’s the Gospel that Brings Us Together
3. Old Habits Die Hard
“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. 13 And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.” (Galatians 2:11–13)
Notice how hard it is to erase racism and prejudice. After this mountaintop experience and after standing up to criticism from the Jerusalem church, Peter reverts back to prejudice.
14 But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:11–14)
Paul didn’t say you’re a racist, instead he says, “Racism is forgetting you are saved by the grace of God.”
Conclusion
Did you see how Cornelius and his house were baptized after they believed in Jesus Christ (Acts 10:47-48)?
Check the box to schedule your baptism in the communication card inside your worship guide..
