Intro/Outro: You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
DarrenRouanzoin: Hey, grab your bibles. Let's jump in. Acts chapter 10. But God bless you with the sneeze. Did I see you?
Is anyone burnt burning incense over here? I was smelling incense over here. I'm like, what's going on? No? Someone's got oil?
No? Alright. I'm a I'm a Hey, know we're live streaming. I'm gonna come down. I wanna say hi to all the foreign people.
Okay. Acts 10, let's go. Let me see your bibles. I wanna see the wave. I'm gonna I'm gonna come under the wave of bibles.
Let's go. Now just I know you brought them for show. Make sure you read all week. How many of you did your bible studies this week? Let me see them hands.
Oh yes. I knew you would. Look at you. Your bible's all falling apart. As my friend says that means your life is not.
That's good. Right? That's a good line. You like that one. You're like, okay.
I can tell. I like hearing the chatter. Alright. Acts 10. Check this out.
Last week, we broke it up. Peter has this vision. He's hungry. Right before that Cornelius, a centurion soldier has an encounter with an angel. The angel says, your prayers and your almsgiving is like a memorial offering to God.
He could have preached the gospel but instead he says, go to church, call for Peter. So he sends some men to go find Peter and Joppa. Peter has a vision of these unclean animals and and God says, eat and he's like, no way. God says, don't call something unclean that I've made clean and then they The Gentiles show up to his door, they spend the night with the the the house, at the house and then we pick up right there in Acts 10. So, if you missed last week's sermon, can go online and watch it.
Verse 24, the next day, Peter started out with them and some of the believers from Joppa went along. The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Remember geography is theology. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet and gave reverence.
Peter made him stand up, stand up. He said, I'm only a man myself. While he was talking with Peter, while we're talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them, you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.
So when I was sent for, I came without raising my objection. May I ask why you invited me? And then Cornelius gives him a reason, he saw this angel. And then he ends in verse 33. So I sent for you immediately and it was good of you to come.
Now, we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us. Can I just say as a preacher that line, last line is my favorite? We are here in the presence of God to listen to everything you have to tell us. Come on church. I was on a little 11 out of 10 for 08:30AM.
I knew it was gonna get crazy at 09:30 because I can't help contain it right now. This text is insane. And, what I love about it is how how how relevant it is for this moment in our lives as Christians. Okay. First of all, Cornelius is expectant.
Can I just say right now, if you look at history, if you look at when God moves, God moves in hungry gatherings? Doesn't matter the size. He is looking for people that want him. He's And I love this. Cornelius calls his friends.
Hey this guy's coming. You gotta get in here. He calls people. He gathers in expectant room. We're here for what God has for us.
I saw an angel. He said to get you so let's go. I would love for that to be the norm of the church. I would love for us to be waiting all week for the expectation that when the saints gather in the name of the Lord Jesus, his presence comes. Look, I know there are base hits.
I know there are Sundays that feel like buns. I know that you just show up out of obedience but there is there is something emerging where God is stirring amongst the hungry. And what I love about this story is that the seeker is moving faster than the apostle. Your friends who don't know God, who are seeking for God, are moving faster towards him than you as the messenger are willing to walk. They're making themselves more inconvenient and uncomfortable.
They're they're doing things out of this desire and they don't know yet where that desire needs to go. And you are not wanting to get uncomfortable by being awkward in a text. Oh, I don't know if I should I'm a run it through chat and AI to make sure it sounds better. God. God moves in the hungry.
Intro/Outro: Yes. That's good. The
DarrenRouanzoin: present, the prepared, those who are desiring. I believe Gen Z will be called Gen Zeal. Yes. And they will help lead Gen Alpha to be starting where they've taken off now. They will take off from where they are because that's my kid's generation, gen alpha.
I believe the zeal of the Lord will consume a generation that's tired of being relevant and comfortable and they're the marker of the next move will be the hungry ones, the burning ones. But then, I was like, you know what? That's not a new thing. I was doing some digging. 1727 on 08/13/1727 on count Zisendorf's property, a Moravian prayer meeting started that lasted one hundred years.
A group of people convicted by the book of Romans, reading it out loud began to pray and they didn't stop for a hundred years. Their zeal spread to a a a new revivalist who was terrified of this storm that he was in on his way to The Americas. Himself being a Christian, he couldn't understand why these Moravians were so at peace in the storm. So they prayed for him. That was John Wesley.
Which led to the great first great awakening where we had a man who was faithfully preaching passionately to his local church in the in America. A guy named Jonathan Edwards who his hunger brought revival to the first great awakening in The United States. And then, was that was before The United States in America. And then, the second great awakening was marked in eighteen o one while people would travel for days to get to a camp meeting where they set up outside and fire fell in a desperate gathering. And then in New York in '19 I'm sorry.
In 1857, a man named Jeremiah started a a lunchtime prayer meeting that spread with six people. It moved to 10,000 within a year in New York. There was the men's business meeting revival. And then in nineteen o four, Evan Roberts prayed outside of a church gathering with a bunch of teenagers. The spirit fell and gave birth to the Welsh revival which some say gave birth to what happened in nineteen o six when a man who got fired from his first, after his first sermon in LA, he moved from the Mid Midwest to Los Angeles.
He got fired from his church. He gathered some seekers, some hungry people in an upper room and the Azusa Street revival began. My favorite is 1949 because two elderly sisters, one blind and one with arthritis, prayed for two years in a stone cottage that God would bring revival in The Hebrides and Duncan Campbell showed up and preached and the spirit of God fell. It didn't fall because they coordinated it online, it fell because their hunger drove them to their knees. A W Tozer writes, Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people.
He waits to be wanted. Yes. Too bad that with many of us, he waits so long, so very long in vain. Revival is gonna come to the hungry. Let's just be the ones that stay hungry folks.
Yes? In the words of a controversial campaign, stay thirsty friends. Look it up. Yeah, I'm talking about Jesus. I wanna read the next section of scripture and this one grips me so much.
The first point I wanna make is just that God moves with the hungry because he fills the hungry. The second point is the gospel is always preached in a context. I'm gonna make this compelling case for this moment but this is the first time that the gospel is preached to the Gentiles. Would you stand as I read the word of the Lord today? It's verse 34.
Then Peter began to speak, I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message of God, the message God sent to the people of Israel announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and how he went around doing good and healing all who are under the power of the devil because God was with him. We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.
He was not seen by all people but by witnesses whom God has already chosen. By us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach the gospel and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him and everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. The word of the Lord.
Go ahead and grab a seat. Right? I can just stop now. Peter begins, I now realize. This is this is a Greek word that means, let me make sure I get it right.
The Greek word for I now realize is is a confession about something. It's this Greek word that means to grasp or to finally seize what was always there. The truth did not change. Peter changed. God's impartial impartiality is not a new policy.
It is who he's always been and this is the this is the truth. What we see is that a fresh move of God that happens in your own life is almost always the the church realizing something that's always been there. Right? So, isn't new theology. This is an old message that Peter realizes from a dream but then probably on that 30 mile hike realizes this is what the prophets were speaking about.
This is what was whispered when when Abraham was promised to have a a a seed that would bless the nations and Isaiah would would say that the light would would speak to the Gentiles and he's he's putting together a theology as he's walking with these gentiles going to a gentiles home. He's realizing this was in God's heart from the beginning. This message isn't just for Jews. This is for the whole world. He's missed what was always there and then he preached the gospel.
Now, what I love about the book of Acts is it preaches The gospel is preached eight to 10 times depending on how you count it and each time it's different. Acts chapter two, when the spirit falls, there's a bunch of Jewish people and Peter stands and gives a case for what's happening as they witness the coming of the Holy Spirit. He shows them this fulfillment that's taken place through the prophet Joel and the other prophets. This is what was promised. And then, the gospel is preached in Acts chapter seven by Stephen as he's standing at the Sanhedrin, the people in charge of the temple who are missing the spirit.
They're missing the move of God As he stands and condemns the temple, he says, God's always been moving outside of the temple. Context matters. And now, preaches to Cornelius. A centurion soldier wearing a costume, a uniform dedicated to Caesar. In Caesarea, a city built by Herod dedicated to Augustus Caesar with two statues, one dedicated to the goddess of Rome and the god Caesar Augustus.
Every coin had an image of their deity, Caesar on it. He goes into that home, into that city to preach the message of Jesus and what I love is every single phrase is loaded with language that would have been offensive to Cornelius. He says, we are announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ who is Lord of all. That word, good news is the Greek word, euangelion. It's where we get the word evangelism, it's where we get the word gospel.
And the first time it's used in history is for Caesar's as they would go to a new territory and conquer the territory and dominate through military power a new city. They would spread the announcement of that territory. They would spread the announcement to that city. Propaganda, we bring you gospel, good news. Caesar is in charge.
Yes, your your husbands are dead and your military men are now slaves. Good news, you now have Pax Romana, peace. Because Caesar, his title is Lord of All. Peter comes out swinging. Verse 38, he says, he went around doing good.
Another phrase used for Caesar's benefactor, that Greek word is for good is the benefactor. He's taking the titles of Caesar and saying applying them to Jesus. And then he says, he is the one appointed, God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. That was first used as Caesar's claim after he died Augustus and Peter steals that again. He gives three political grenades in seven verses because he preaches the gospel by dethroning the rival Lord whose uniform Cornelius is wearing.
Peter preaches treason and simultaneously preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ. He takes the titles of Caesar and gives them to a crucified carpenter and a Roman officer's house in a city Rome built to honor Augustus. You can't make this up. And, here's the discipleship moment for all of you Christians. Remember, Luke writes this as a history not so you know what happens, so you know why it happens, so you live differently.
The wall comes down. The wall between the uncircumcised and the circumcised, the the Gentiles and the Hebrews. The wall comes down not because of nuance, not because of clarifications, not because of relevant contextual messages. No. The gospel is what tears down the wall And he doesn't take down the wall by quietly adjusting things to his message to make sense for the He preaches Jesus as the rival deity and he says, there's only one because if Jesus is Lord of all, Caesar cannot be Lord of all.
And this is so important for our context because what we've done is watered down the gospel. We don't wanna offend people. Yeah. Yeah. We think we we can worship Jesus and all the other things in our lives that are God's.
So, or Caesar's in our lives. I'm not talking about salads. We think we can come to Jesus and keep on with the crystals in the tarot cards. You're like, yeah, go after it. Go after the new age.
We think we can worship Jesus and keep on with our mindless consumerism, with our greed, with our lust, with our self identity as the deity of Southern California Where our self expression is the Caesar we worship. We've been handed a throne with freedom on top of it and self expression being my truth is the truth. Therefore, whatever I desire is gospel. Only that's a lie and I gotta tell you Jesus is Lord. That means your body is not.
That means your feelings are not and I I get it. And here's the thing, that means your job is not. That means your career is not. That means your platform is not. That means your ideas are not.
It submits to the lordship of Jesus. Yes? Amen. Well, I'm not done. Let me just keep going.
A couple more things that I thought are nuanced for this moment. Nuance for the context of SoCal. One thing I see today, what I see regularly is our past has become a Lord. And, in our efforts to grow and mature and seek therapy and heal the traumas and the triggers and the shame in the past, We have been been held captive by our past and I'm here to announce that Jesus is Lord of your past. Yes.
And he can liberate you from the triggers that are in the present and heal you from your past. They don't have to be the thing you live strapped to every day. I'm all for therapy. I'm all for health. I'm gonna dive off this stage.
But, I believe we've been held captive by these idols of the age that are waging war against the gospel that Jesus gives And it says it gives us peace. And that peace doesn't happen because you worked your way through your past. You should do the work. It happens because you receive grace. From a a carpenter who lived two thousand years ago and died on a cross and raised from the dead.
And if that doesn't make sense to you, well, let me explain this. You were designed to live in perfect, loving relationship with God. That's where everything went wrong. It didn't get wrong when your parents abused you. It started way before that in the garden when we rebelled.
And yes, your past matters. Yes, your pain matters. But your decisions to disobey God's path, to live outside of perfect loving relationship brought sin into the world and your life. And that means you vandalized shalom. And I realized that every self help, every spiritual formation that has, that doesn't have the gospel, every every podcast you listen to these days, every soul cycle class wants you to manifest your best.
That won't, that's a religion. That is all a form of ancient religious spirituality where you don't know where you stand with God. Let me tell you where you stand with God. You are dead in your transgressions. But by his grace, you have been made alive.
How? Not by works. By grace. That Jesus died for you on the cross and if you believe in him, you receive grace and you enter into the salvation and that's where peace begins to manifest. It doesn't manifest because you willed it, it comes because the power of God fills you with his Holy Spirit.
Peace has a name, it's Jesus Christ. Are you good? I can feel him moving. My heart is beating fast, I'm tingly, I feel his presence. Look, I Okay, you're listening.
I'm gonna get beat up online for saying that. The manifest presence of God comes in moments like these because the gospel is proclaimed. And I could just imagine as Peter was walking through his sermon explaining as he ends with all the prophets testify about him. From the Torah to Malachi, all of the prophets, the old testament point to who? Jesus.
And then he says, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. So if you believe in Jesus, you are set free from your past, set free from your idolatry and that's the reality. The Jews heard forgiveness and they're like, exile is over baby. I'm coming home. The Gentiles heard this message and they're like, we don't have to worship these idols.
I'm exhausted from the idols. And I just wanna say today, we're more like the Gentiles because we're exhausted because we think if we just do all these things, we're gonna get the peace we long for. But we're burnt out. We're tired. Even if this if we Sabbath, we have this mindset.
It's constantly causing us to think, where do we stand? Where do I stand in my relationships? Where do I stand in my career? Where do I stand with Jesus now that I come to faith? Let me tell you where he stands.
If you believe in him, you are his beloved. You can't do anything to earn a greater position. It says in Romans eight, you're more than a conqueror. There's no condemnation if you're in Christ Jesus. Not only have you been set free, but nothing can take away the love of God that you have right now except you don't believe it.
Because you're held captive by the idols of this age and you think they're just harmless ideologies and ideas. No. They are strongholds that you need to repent from and come back to Jesus today. 09:30, you're getting something right now. Some of you have never suggested the waters of baptism because you're waiting for the perfect time.
Today is the day of salvation. There's no convenient time to get into the water. Well, want grandma to come. I want nanny to be there. I want Forget that.
We'll livestream it. You can point to the livestream. We gotta change of clothes. I don't know how many people are signed up but the Lord is calling his church to faithful obedience. Let's start by being faithful to the waters of baptism.
Peter preaches the message and I love this. This is one of my favorite things. Verse 44, while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. Now, okay, I'm gonna keep reading this but listen, the circumcised believers, a category marked as unclean. Oh Lord.
Luke is writing a moment in history that God longed for since Genesis three. This is that moment where the categories are gone. My presence is with people again. Yes. He's uncircumcised.
The circumcised on all who believe it says, the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. How do we know the spirit of God is in them? Luke uses this as a literary tool to show you the marker of the power of God, the Holy Spirit. They heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. How did how The sermon gets interrupted with shouts of worship.
Lord, you're so good. I'm here. I don't have to go to the temple and sit outside in the parking lot. I get you now according to this message. I can't help it.
Spirit of God fills the room and we can't keep going. We have to pause and be like, what's going on? And, the believers, the Jewish believers, there's seven of them. I think that number is important. There's seven believers.
And now, they're witnessing this and here's what you have to see. Luke is doing this so intentionally. He uses two phrases that are directly tied to Pentecost, Acts chapter two. Acts chapter two, the spirit came upon the 120 praying in the upper room. Spirit of God falls on the church, gives birth to the church.
That's the same language now outside of the temple courts because acts two happens outside of the temple courts, in in the temple courts. Acts chapter 10 happens in Caesarea in a centurion soldiers house. He would have had artifacts dedicated to Caesar by requirement of the law and the spirit fills a bunch of uncircumcised believers and the believers are like, oh my goodness. The tongues and praises are happening. It's what happened at Pentecost which is exactly Luke's point.
Pentecost is not an event. It's a moment that spreads throughout Acts. And, it spreads throughout history. God's manifest presence sets believers on fire and the spirit of God is evident. We'll get to Acts 19 where it's the Ephesian Pentecost.
In Ephesian Pentecost, Paul shows up, he's like, what baptism did you get in? What kind of waters did you get in? Because I don't see the evidence of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. That's what Luke is using.
He's saying there's evidence. There's visible signs. Look, I'm all for the visible sign of fruit in your life. Of course, that's the fruit but also the power of God in you. And when we gather, Paul says in Ephesians five, keep on being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Before that, he's like, sing hymns. He'll go and sing songs, worship and give thanks. He'll give you manifestation of what a spirit filled community looks like. It starts with being filled, keep on being filled and then it ends with submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Isn't that amazing?
The fifth marker in Ephesians is that you would submit to each other out of fear of the Lord. Criticize each other in the name of purity. Spirit of God falls in the church and the church will never be the same because this is the moment where God includes the Gentiles. Peter sees it and I love it. He doesn't give permission for what happens.
Peter acknowledges what God's doing. He's like, oh my goodness, this thing is changing everything. He says, surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized that they're being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have, they're bearing witness now. So he ordered them, that they may be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and they asked Peter to stay with him for a few days.
So we see this incredible story of the holy spirit falling on the church and then getting baptized. The spirit settled the argument before the church could even start having the argument. And we read about this in the next passage in Acts 11, Peter goes back to Jerusalem and they're like, we heard that you ate with some Gentiles. Because remember, hospitality is theology. And he gives an account of Cornelius' dream of what he saw and then how he's preaching and got interrupted and the spirit fell.
And I love the last line in chapter 18 or chapter 17. So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that that I could stand in God's way? And then, the the the church, now I just want to build this for a moment. They were in the room. They didn't have this wild experience.
They're hearing about it and look at what the religious leaders of the church at that moment do. Verse 18 of chapter 11, when they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God saying so then, even to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life. They side with grace but they change their minds. That's the most profound thing I could say right now. That they had the ability to witness what God was doing and change their minds about what God was doing rather than dig in which I would say if there's something that you need to hear in our world of ideas, be open to your minds being changed.
Yes? So the church is born in the Gentile world and now the realization they have is this is gonna go to the ends of the earth. This thing is not for just the Jews, this now, what's what's our what's our landscape? Our landscape is the entire world and God begins to move. The wall didn't come down because the church voted on it.
The wall came down because Jesus is Lord of all and he confirmed it with the power of the Holy Spirit. And I love this, the Jerusalem church chose grace over exclusion. The gospel changes history and it needs to be preached by messengers in context and I wanna invite you for those that are believers to become people who proclaim the gospel in context. Gen a, gen z, there's a context that I don't fully understand that needs to be preached to them. Who's going to give them the message you are?
The workplace that you go to, God has uniquely designed you to preach the gospel, to live the gospel in that context so they could see that Jesus is Lord of all. That there is a mindset in the workout, in the gym that you go to that needs to be disrupted by the joy that you carry because it's not marked by the look that you have but by what's inside of you. There's so many ways we can contextualize this but brothers and sisters, can I tell you where it starts? It starts right now in this room with your hunger. It starts with hunger.
I don't need you to fabricate hunger. I need you to recognize that you've been filling yourself up with the wrong things all week. You you don't fabricate hunger when it comes to the spirit. The thing about the spirit is this, in the world when you eat, you're satisfied. When you get more of the spirit, you get hungrier.
You desire more. You welcome him and then you begin to rearrange the the the very nature of your soul around his presence. So can we stand and invite the Holy Spirit to fill this room like he did in Cornelius' house? Can we stand and invite God's presence to manifest? Can we stand and repent from our satiated ways?
Can we stand and repent from walking slow when our friends who are seekers and not Christians are running after God And may we run after God in the way that Cornelius is. Can we stand and wait on Jesus?
Intro/Outro: For more information, visit us at garden.church.