The Prejudice That Felt Like Holiness | Acts

In this message, Pastor Cameron walks through Peter's vision and his encounter with Cornelius in Acts 10, tracing how God had to break through Peter's deepest cultural conditioning to open the gospel to the Gentiles. It's an honest look at how our own prejudices can quietly feel like faithfulness — and an invitation to trust that the table was never ours to gatekeep.

Acts 10:1-11:30 | additional: Leviticus 20:24-26

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Good morning. It's so good to see you all this morning. My name is Cameron, one of the pastors here at Conduit, and so glad that you're here. Hope you had a fantastic week. I have one announcement for you, and then we're going to jump into our word this morning from Acts chapter 10. So many of you may have heard this or known. Our sister, Julie, is currently beating leukemia, in Jesus' name, and getting regular treatments, and we're waiting for the day that we can celebrate the report of her full healing in Jesus' name. And we celebrated already. But one of the ways that we were kind of asked, we said, "Okay, as a church, how can we support you? How can we help? What can we do?" This is one of the ways that Julie recommended for a long while, or in a lot of cases, if there is not sufficient blood for individuals who are going through these types of treatments to receive either blood transfusions here in the area, they have to travel kind of long distances. And that's really all about supply and demand. And so one of the ways that we can help support Julie

And support others who are going through situations or other medical issues like this is donate blood. And so we're teaming up with the Red Cross to host a blood drive here at the church on Thursday, July 23rd, from 12 to 4 p.m. The Red Cross is doing that. They're going to be here downstairs, right below us, all set up. Have you ever given blood before to be just like you've always experienced? We're trying to get as many people signed up in as many slots as we can. You have to, when you sign up, this takes you to the Red Cross website to sign up. So just be aware that if you scan that QR code, it's going to take you to the Red Cross website and help you get signed up there for a time slot. So if you're able to do that, you're willing to do that, it's one way that we can show our continued support to Julie and to others who are facing some of these things. So the goal is 44 people. We are at, you said 20. So that's open to anyone in the community as well. So

You don't have to, it doesn't have to just be from here. So we're trying to get other people signed up for this as well. So we're going to actually, we'll throw this up on our Facebook page again today. And if you follow conduit on Facebook and you want to share that to your page, that would be great. That would be great as well. We'll leave it, leave this up here for just a minute. If any of you want to scan that again, we'll also throw it in Facebook later today as well. Okay, Bryce, would you like to, would you pray for us before we jump into the Word? I don't have a mic for you, but just come down here. Yeah. Father, we thank you for what you are doing in this place, what you are doing in our lives. And Lord, I, we've seen you heal leukemia before and we think that you're doing it again in this community. Father, we celebrate that. We lift our eyes to you in worship and gratitude. And I thank you for the word that you've put, your word that you've put on Cameron's heart and that it would come out of his mouth with your authority, with your truth, with your power to strike our hearts. Thank you in Jesus name.

Amen. Amen. Thanks, brother. All right. So yeah, we've been walking through the book of Acts over the last couple months here. And we're getting to the point, we're getting to the point in the book of Acts where kind of the trajectory switches a little bit. And what I mean by that is in the first eight or nine-ish chapters or so, you're seeing the early formation of the Christian community, of those who have decided to trust Jesus as Savior. But it's happening in kind of a really, in a pretty narrow like geographical area. And what I mean by that is that Jesus came as Savior and Messiah of and to the Jewish nation. And so primarily at the beginning of his, or at the like the beginning of the church after Jesus ascended back into heaven, it was mostly Jewish people who were coming to faith in Jesus and they were doing so out of the ministry or in the ministry of the, of the apostles, but like Peter, right? And then in chapter nine, this guy Saul comes along, right? And is, has been persecuting these new believers in Jesus, these Jewish believers in Jesus, but he has a radical conversion

Experience on the road to Damascus as he's on his way to persecute more Christians. He is a radical encounter with Jesus, transformation, and God tells Ananias, right? The man that we talked about last week, God tells Ananias, I want you to go pray for this man named Saul. He is my chosen instrument to take the gospel to the Gentile people. So God, God was all was, was, was initiating then in, through Ananias into Saul's ministry. Saul would later become Paul who wrote two thirds of the new Testament, right? Initiating the movement of the gospel, the truth of the gospel, the access to the gospel, the awareness of the gospel past even and outside the Jewish nation to Gentile people. Now, you need to understand how big of a deal that is because I don't know all of you super well, but I'm fairly certain that all of you are Gentiles. I don't know that we have any ethnic Jewish people here. If so, glory be to Jesus. Like I love it. However, Paul's ministry or Saul's ministry, the extension of the gospel to the Gentile people, we, you, us are the fruit of that.

Like we, we have come, we have come to know Jesus because God's spirit poured out, not just on the Jewish believers on the day of Pentecost, but we're going to see today it began to pour out on Gentiles as well. Those who placed their faith and trust in Jesus. Now, the, the switch kind of today, or what, what kind of happens now is you're going to see kind of like this gradual transformation in the book of acts where the primary ministry in the first eight or nine chapters is happening to Jewish people. And now you're going to see Paul, the apostle Paul, or formerly known as Saul kind of come on the scene and he's going to carry the gospel is missionary journeys to, to the Gentile world and the rest of the book of acts kind of catalogs that and tells that story. So I'm also going to say that I am, going to be working really, really hard to get through a lot of material in a relatively reasonable amount of time this morning. Okay. We are in acts chapter

10. Is it that one that needs a hammer to it? Do we have any HVAC texts sitting next to it? Do we need to turn it off? Okay. Yeah. Check the drawer might be in that top drawer. I would like, I don't want to turn the air conditioning off on you guys, but if like it's Stan doesn't hear it's fine. You guys are fine back there. You don't hear the ticking up here, right? Okay. Well, we can't find the remote to turn them off either. So, oh, there it is. You have to get closer to it. Okay. Now it's not piercing through my brain like a thousand nails now. Okay. So we will be in acts chapter 10. Okay. And we're gonna, I'm going to read, I'm going to read a good chunk of this for us now. Maybe the first 35 verses of acts chapter 10. Okay. At Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people and prayed continually to God. About

The ninth hour, Cornelius here, listen, Cornelius was a Gentile. Okay. Not a Jew, but it says he was a God fearing, a God fearing Gentile. We'll get to that in a moment. About the ninth hour of the day, he saw clearly a vision and a vision and angel of God come in and say to him, Cornelius. And he stared at him in terror and said, what is it Lord? And he said to him, your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner whose houses by the sea. And when the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him. And having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa. The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the house top about the sixth hour to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending being

Let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him, rise Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said by no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. And the voice came to him and said a second time, what God has made clean, do not call common. This happened three times. And then the thing was taken up at once to heaven. Now, while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what this vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon's house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking for you, rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them. And Peter went down to the men and said, I'm the one you're looking for. What's the reason that you've come? And they said, Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God fearing man

Who was well spoken of by the Jewish nation was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say. So he invited them in to be his guests. The next day he rose and went away with them. And some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him. And on the following day, they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. And when Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up and said, stand up, I too am a man. And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered. He said to him, 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. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I asked then, why have you sent for me? And Cornelius said, well, four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house. And behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said,

Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon a tanner by the sea. So I sent for you at once and you have been kind enough to come. Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord. So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable for him. As for the word that he sent to Israel preaching good news with the peace through Jesus Christ, he is the Lord of all. Okay, so listen, we have a lot going on here, right? We have two men. We have a Gentile man who is a centurion, which means he's a soldier. He's not like part of a forward or a frontline like army. Centurions usually were like security. They were like a security force and they were in groups of like 500 to 600 in various provinces and areas of the Roman government. And they were very important to help keep the peace

Of the Roman provinces and to protect the Roman, like the Roman officials in their empire. So Cornelius was this centurion. It seems to be that he was a pretty important man. He says that he was God fearing. Now it's interesting to hear or like to understand what it means to be God fearing. To be God fearing was a term that was used to describe Gentile people who lived in this form of kind of like adjacent faithfulness to Jewish religious, cultural and societal customs and beliefs. Meaning they would do things that the Jews would also do. They would practice the Jewish faith, but they were not a part of the Jewish nation or the Jewish people, primarily because they had not received the sign of the covenant of the Jewish people, namely what? Circumcision, right? They had not been circumcised and so they had not become part of the people of God or part of the nation of Israel. They did all of the basic things that they were allowed to do or that they were allowed to do, but there was no sign of the covenant. So they were also outside of the promises

Of the covenant and they were considered to be outside of the, like the future inheritance of the people of God. They were separate from, not as good as, okay? But as we read Cornelius was well liked by the Jewish people. He has this, he has this vision and in the, he'd down the vision, an angel visits him and the angel says to him, he's very unclear. He's surprisingly unclear for how definitive and confidently Cornelius responded. The angel says to him, I want you to send some men to this city over here and there's a guy named Simon Peter. He's staying with another Simon. I want you to send for him and have him come because there's something that he needs to tell you. Has anyone ever got a text from someone and they're like, hey, can we talk tomorrow? Me? Sorry. Hey, can we talk tomorrow? How many of you are like, how about we talk right now? Yeah. How about we talk right now? Yeah. We're not, there's no tomorrow, right? And so imagine, imagine Peter, okay? Or I'm sorry, imagine Cornelius when the angel of the Lord is like, Peter has

Something to tell you. Go get him. How about you're an angel of the Lord who resides in the very presence of God, the father. How about you just tell me, how about, how about you just like let it out of the bag. So I don't got to die a thousand deaths waiting for this guy named Peter to come. But in kind of like this radical sense of faithfulness, Cornelius is like, all right. Hey guys, go get, go get, go find this guy, bring him back. He's got something to say, apparently. Right. At the same time, the story goes, Peter, the one who Cornelius is supposed to go get and bring back, Peter goes up to the rooftop at the time of prayer while they're downstairs preparing a meal. He's hungry, right? It's time to eat. And he's, he's praying and it says that he fall like your translations vary, but sometimes it's like he had a vision or he fell into a trance, right? We're not talking about like this, new agey hypnotic state. Okay. We're talking about like an, a supernatural encounter that defies the laws of like modern science, a miracle in the moment of having

A vision supplied by the Lord. Okay. For Peter's sake. And what does the vision say? Or what is, what, what is the vision? Well, he was already hungry and in the vision he sees this big sheet being held by the four, this sounds like a typical dream you have after you have bad Chinese food or something like that, right? This sheet gets lowered from the, from the heavens by its four corners and on it are reptiles, birds. Yeah. Four legged hooved animals says, okay. What's going on here? And, and he hears the voice of the Lord say to him, Peter, get up, kill and eat. Strange, right? By our, in our eyes, like very, very, very strange. The way that Peter responds is like the most contradictory statement probably in all scripture. He says, surely not Lord, right. The two most contradicting things, right? You can say like, if you address someone as Lord, there's no such thing as saying no. Right. But, but Peter decides that this is what he's going to do. He says, surely not Lord. And then he gives his reason for why he's like, I have never

Eaten anything that is impure or unclean. Or like some transition says uncommon. Same thing. I have never eaten anything that is impure or unclean. So I'm not, get up, kill and eat. I, I will not do it. And the Lord responds to him and he says, Peter, don't call anything impure that I have made clean. Don't call anything impure that I have made clean. We still don't have any idea what's going on inside Peter in this moment, other than like, I can't eat those animals. Are you kidding me? They're impure. They're unclean. I'm a Jew. Can't do this.

We still don't have any indication of like kind of what's actually, what is this actually all about? What is the point of this vision? What is the, what is the point of this intersection of, of life? And it wasn't just like, did I hear the Lord right? Did he tell me to get up, kill and eat? But the text says that, that both the vision and the word from the Lord came how many times? Three. It's like, let me, let me make sure you get it. And then let me make sure again that you got it in the first time. And just in case, let me make sure that you get it the third time, right? Certainly a biblical number of completion there. It says that while Peter was kind of, it says in two ways. He was like, and Peter was perplexed about this vision and he was thinking about, while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision was that he saw might mean. So he was internally like,

What in the heck was that all about? Why did I see that? Why did I hear that? What is God doing?

At that time, at that same time, he was like, I wonder what this vision about impure, unclean animals would be. Cornelius's messengers knock on the, they find him, right? So you had Cornelius had this visit from the angel, go find this man named Peter. And while they're on their way, Peter's up on the roof, having this weird fever dream of a vision, right? And when he's finally coming out of it, there's this, like the knock on the door and they're here. The men that Cornelius sent are at the door. And the spirit, it says, tells Peter, there's men downstairs. I have sent them. You are to go with them. So now Cornelius has no idea why he needed to send for Peter. Peter has no idea why he's being sent to Cornelius. Neither of them know what's going on, but just as like, it's not so much an aside as it is like a holy cow, is that they are both just operating in this pure trust and faith that wherever God is taking them is where they should go. Right? They're not questioning why they're not questioning what they're not questioning when they're not questioning. They're just like, the Lord is sending, the Lord is calling.

My understanding of why is not part of the equation or the formula. I don't need to know all the steps. I don't have to have all of the answers. I don't need to know what's going to come next. Right? All we need to do is what do we talk about last week? One step, right? The one step of faithfulness. So the men, they get Peter. Peter agrees to go with them. They go back to Cornelius's place. And it says in verse 24 that Cornelius was expecting them and that he had gathered his whole family and his friends, which is interesting because he still doesn't know what Peter's coming to say. For all he knows, Peter could, could be coming to speak the judgment of the Lord. But Cornelius is just so full of anticipation for whatever it is that the Lord has for him. He's like, I don't know. Even if it sounds bad, if the Lord's bringing it, I want everyone to be a part of it. I want everyone to hear it. So he fills his house. Peter gets there, opens the door, sees that the whole village is there and he's like,

You guys know that it's actually not right for me to come in there. Like it's, y'all are unclean, but he comes in anyway. And in verse, it says in verse 25, Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up and said, listen, you got the wrong guy. I'm a man. And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered in verse 28. And he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with, to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation. This is so important here, the second part of verse 28. But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. When did God show Peter that?

The sheet that got lowered was full of these animals. There was no people on that. There was no sense of like what, like, so the question then is like somewhere between Cornelius arriving when Peter was sitting on the stool, trying to be perplexed and wondering what this vision could all mean. And then getting into Cornelius's house, Peter had come to, or had been given some sort of revelation as to what the meaning of the vision was and how it was now applying to the situation that God had him in. So what about this vision then? What is actually happening here? Because just a kind of like a cursory reading of it, you're like, this gives me nothing. I've got no idea what's going on here, but there's got to be something more than just birds, animals, reptiles, like, and a sheet and like, what is going on? It's helpful for us if we have a little bit of context and a concept of the things that were strong identity markers for Jewish people and the Jewish nation. What were the things that made Jews, Jews?

What were like, for lack of a better term, what were kind of like the patriotic flags of Jewish faith and culture? That they're like, this is what defines who we are as a people, right?

Americans have that, right? Canadians, they have like hockey and canoes, they have that, right?

Tim Hortons, but it's kind of ours now too, so like, everyone has kind of like their own, every country, every nation kind of has like their own kind of like nationalistic identity markers. Like, these are the things that Americans do. Now I'm gonna move on quickly. And the Jewish nation was no different, okay? And one of the primary identity markers of Jewish people were their food laws, their dietary food laws. They were very, very, very distinct markers that gave Jewish people an identity that was different than the people around them. It is one of the primary ways that Jewish people separated themselves from unbelievers around them was what they ate and what they considered pure and impure, clean and unclean, able to be eaten and not. Dietary laws, you can find these like in places like Leviticus chapter 11, Deuteronomy chapter 14 in the Old Testament, they existed in service of making the people of God distinct from the nations around them. They were, I'm going to hear this, in their purest forms,

In their most basic delivery from God to the people, they were a helpful tool, okay? They were not meant to be like, this is dumb and weird and strange. They were meant literally, they were given by God and were good and were given for the purpose of saying, hey, look, it is so easy to get consumed with culture, with beliefs and with practices of pagan, unbelieving nations and people. So quickly, my people can assume stances and practices and habits and adopt cultural values of pagan people and they become intermixed and intermingled and creates all kinds of darkness and issues. So what God is saying here is like, I want you, my people, to live so radically different from the world around you that they, that you are like distinct among any other people. Those people follow the one true God. Those people are so radically different than the world, than all of us, than all of these, all of us pagan nations. It's very clear who follows Yahweh. Very, very clear. We can see it perfectly. They won't even eat a reptile or a bird or for like an animal, right? Those animals are unclean. We know who they

Are. They were identity markers. It was not meant to distinguish the Jewish people as having more intrinsic value or being superior to other people in terms of like their worth before God, but rather it was just a mark of their set-apartness, their holiness, their consecration to the Lord. For example, Leviticus chapter 20 verses 24 through 26 reads this,

"But I have said to you, you shall inherit their land and I will give it to you to possess." Like what are these? These are the promises of the covenant that God has made with the Israelite people. "You shall inherit their land. I will give it to you to possess a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from unclean, the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine." The purpose of those dietary laws was to bring separation to the pagan nations and pagan people around them. Strict Jews, this was such a strong identity marker for Jewish people that strict Jews would rather go hungry. Sometimes they would literally starve to death before eating something unclean because to eat something unclean was to deny their identity as a child of God. It was to turn their back on what

They believed was their faith. But listen, in its historical context in the time of Jesus, these food laws had morphed into something that God did not intend. They became not something to keep them holy and humble before their creator, but it became something that they used as a lever to promote an ethnic superiority, a way in which they were not just holy and set apart for God for the sake of his mission, but they would say literally they would say prayers like, "Lord, thank you that you have not made me born to a Gentile woman." There was this sense of like, "We are intrinsically better than these people. God has made us better than these people." Not the point at all, not the point. So Peter, uttering these words to God when he's like, "Peter, get up and kill and eat these animals." Peter's like, "I would never deny my faith. I would never sacrifice my identity as a son of Yahweh. I would never turn my back on this." It revealed just how deep this sense of identity and current cultural conditioning had formed and affected him so that the God of heaven stands before him and says, "Peter, I want you to get up

And I want you to eat these animals." He's like, "I don't think you understand the law that you gave back in Leviticus chapter 20, God." I don't know where and I don't know how. But what we can see from the text is that somewhere between wondering what the vision meant and Cornelius, him actually showing up at Cornelius' house, Peter recognized that the vision was never about food at all.

It wasn't actually about the food. The vision and the food was just a mechanism that the Lord was using to take Peter from the place of what he had been conditioned in religiously to what God was doing now in the Gentile people. And Peter's response to Cornelius shows us that this is true. Peter shows up to Cornelius' house and says, "God has shown me that I shall call no person unclean or impure." Peter recognized somewhere in that journey from his house to Cornelius' houses that the vision was never about the food. It was about the people. It was about the people that Peter was being sent to see, to talk to, to say something to. Still had no idea what was happening there.

But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.

So Peter's vision was, yes, a vision of food. But it was actually Cornelius that it was that we don't get this idea. We don't know where Cornelius—geez, where Peter's idea, where his understanding of it changed. But it clearly did. That it wasn't—he understood. Wait a second. This actually isn't about the uncleanliness of food at all. Here I am standing in this Gentile's living room, a place that I'm not supposed to be, a place that should change my, like, challenges. Every form of, like, spiritual identity, faithful—this radically is challenging all of my pre-held theological beliefs about what it meant to be a son of the Father.

And I think I got it wrong, Peter says, basically. It's not about food. It's about people. There's something happening here in the people.

See, what goes on in the story here is that the message that Peter is supposed to bring to Cornelius is the message of the Gospel. It is the message that Jesus Christ, the Savior of the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, has come and offered forgiveness through his body to all who would believe in his name, Jew or Gentile. It says later in the chapter, where we didn't—it's later in verses between 34 and 42. Actually, 34 through the rest of the chapter, Peter begins to preach the Gospel to Cornelius. Let's just, I mean, let's just look at, we're here, right? Acts chapter 10, verses 34, starting with verse 34. It's not on the screen, so you're going to have to follow in your Bibles, okay? So Peter opened his mouth and said, "Truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea. Beginning from Galilee,

After the baptism that John proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. And we are all witnesses of what he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name, period, right? What was Peter sent to tell Cornelius? That, exactly that. The story of Jesus Christ, once again, his ministry, his work, his calling, the forgiveness that is offered in his name. And so like Europe, we're kind of like preparing ourselves for this big invitation moment, right? Where Peter is like, do you want to believe this, you Gentile believers?

And it says while Peter, verse 44, while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard them and all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles for they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, just as we have, and he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days. What happened? Peter couldn't even get to the point of saying, and that's it. What do you think? He couldn't, he couldn't even get there. And the Holy Spirit was already like, I'm in, I'm in falls on the people.

And just like this is often called this section of scripture is also called often called Gentile Pentecost because it mirrors so similarly what happened in Acts chapter two when the Holy Spirit fell upon the Jewish believers. Now the Holy Spirit is falling upon the Gentile believers and the circumcised believers, the Jews who are with them are like, what is going on here? The whole, you're telling me now the same Holy Spirit who has fallen upon us and filled us is now falling upon these unclean people in this impure house.

And Peter's like, do not call anything that God has declared as impure or as pure as impure.

Like everything is now just kind of like coming together. What I often find here is that like, or what I, what I see here is that the, how the, how the Jewish believers respond to the falling of the Holy Spirit and the Gentiles is really interesting. It says that they were astonished.

I don't read that as happy. It says astonished, not delighted. Not like, oh yes, Holy Spirit, like we got more like, no, like, no, it's like, how dare he? These impure, these impure people.

Listen, I am probably one of the biggest like theology nerds that you will find, but God moved so fast past their theology to save those people that they were, jeez, Lord.

I thought that like, we should probably circumcise these people first, right? Count me out for that, right? They were astonished, but not delighted. They were forced to reckon with what they had been conditioned and inculturated with and what they were seeing God do in that moment.

And I'm sure that there was this internal struggle of like, how am I going to respond to this? This is not in my, I don't have a category for this one.

Now there's a lot of things that this can mean for you and I. I think first there's like this lesson in court from Cornelius, who I think is like, I don't know, he like unsung hero of faithfulness for me. Like Cornelius is awesome. Okay. Just think about this. He gathered his whole family without actually knowing what the message was that they were supposed to receive.

And when Peter showed up, Cornelius was like chomping at the bit to experience whatever was that the Lord was going to do. He had no idea what the Lord was going to do, but he was like, I am so ready for this.

Verse 33 says, now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us. Peter's like, I don't even know what the Lord has commanded me to tell you yet. But there was this like radical sense of anticipation that the Lord was going to move, that the Lord was going to show up. Cornelius had developed and cultivated even in his impurity of Gentile belief, this expectation and anticipation that if I position myself in a place of readiness, God is going to show up in a big way.

Then if I come expecting that the Lord is going to be there, guess what I'm going to find? The Lord. Right? And if I come expecting like, oh, I'm just going to do this thing again.

I hope the sermon's good. There better be parking. It better not be too hot.

It better not be too cold. All right. They better bring, they better sing my favorite songs and it better not be too loud. And it also better not be too quiet.

Did you know that the way in which you show up, the faith in which and the, and the expectation in which you show up often determines your experience? You know that? Did you know that the faith and anticipation with which you show up to experience the presence of God often determines whether or not the presence of God shows up in your midst? Cornelius was like, he was so certain that the Lord was going to show up that he was like, hey, everyone get here now. Friends, family, everyone. He, Cornelius displayed this heart of like, Lord, I know you are going to be here. I know it. It is the kind of leaning forward faith that God honors. He, he, he was not clear on what was coming. He did not know what Peter was going to say. He did not know what God was going to do, but that did not matter to Cornelius. Cornelius, he was there to receive whatever it was that God wanted to tell him or ask of him.

And the question is, are, are you willing in the spirit of Cornelius to lean forward into whatever God has for you or asks of you, even if you don't know exactly what it means?

Man, I don't know. I don't know what's coming. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how God's going to show up and I don't know what God's going to say. But what I do know is I'm going to lean forward and expectation and anticipation because when he comes, it's going to be awesome.

It's going to be hard to and challenging and it's going to require faith, right? Faith.

But leaning into it, like we receive it, leaning away from it, we're like, lean into it. Let's be like Cornelius. Let's lean into what God is doing. Then we have the Peter lesson. There's so many Peter lessons in this little story.

You know, I think that the it's it is such a historically complex relationship between Jews and Gentiles and Jesus and the apostle Paul and like the whole intermixture of the gospel coming and being coming through a Jewish Messiah, but being offered to the Gentile people. Like there's there's volumes of history and theology written about such things. So I don't want to oversimplify it. Okay. Recognize that it's that it is complex. But you know what it also is? It's also really simple.

It's also it's historically complex, but it's theologically pretty simple. All right. God offers eternal life to all those who trust in Jesus and declare him as Lord of their lives, whether Jew or Gentile,

Whether member of the covenant people of God or engrafted into the covenant people of God. You see, the Peter lesson could look from this story a little like this. Well, God loves everyone, and so we should be inclusive, too.

Okay. True. Yes. Here. I'm on it. I get it. But I think that type of like statement or deduction, it actually it kind of like jumps over the actual like mechanism that God uses to communicate that to Peter.

That's the point. Yes. But it actually is even more than that. You see, Peter had this kind of gut level conscience, deep aversion

To doing this thing that God was asking him to do. And he experienced his like the way that Peter the way that Peter experienced this kind of like, God, surely not, Lord. He experienced that. You know what he called that? Faithfulness and fidelity to God. I am doing, Lord, the thing that keeps me one of your sons.

These impure people, this impure food, I will not do it, Lord. I'm sure you're proud of me. Maintaining my holiness, not letting these dirty sinners or their bacon affect my soul for one single second.

Picture of holiness is Peter, right? And what did God do to that like inner sense of fidelity that Peter thought he was keeping to the Lord? God was like, he hopped right over it. He's like, okay, Peter, I'll just let my Holy Spirit fall despite it.

So it's not just that the story is not just God loves everyone, so we should be inclusive too. The story was that like even God has to overcome the obstacles that we put in people's way, that we declare are sometimes our faithfulness or our holiness. God's like, yeah, but no.

God is way, way, way, way, way more willing and active to see people saved than we are.

See, Peter's resistance to sharing the gospel felt like holiness to him. And it can to us too.

Maybe, you know, this is a fairly big church. There's a lot of diversity here.

And we also live in a small town. Generally, people know people's stuff, right? And so like maybe the experience is like somebody has been coming to church for a few months now and they're like, they're really, really trying hard. Like they're just like, I'm doing my best here. But everyone knows their story. Everyone knows the past. Everyone knows where they've been. Everyone knows what they've done. Everyone knows what they've gone through. They're here, but everyone kind of knows. You know, right? I'm like, yeah, I know. They're here. That's great. But we know, we actually know.

Maybe they, maybe, you know, because, you know, that person told you in a moment of honesty, maybe it's because this is a really small town and everyone already knew before that person even walked through the door. But there seems to be, or there's sometimes this kind of like this quiet calculation that happens in our guts where we look at a person. We know their story. We know where they come from. We were like, yeah, we'll see how this works out. We'll see.

We'll see if it sticks. We'll see if they stay or if it matters. We don't ever say that out loud. Very rarely do we say that out loud. We say the nice version of it, though. Ah, we're just praying for them. We just, we just want to give them space to heal. We are praying for them and we do want to give them space to heal. But like underneath all of that is kind of like this spiritual probationary posture that we can sometimes hold. Fellowship is being held in escrow until the outcome of their faith is verified.

And the difficult part about that is that often feels like wisdom to us.

Right. We dress that up in spiritual language all the time. We call it wisdom.

We call it faithfulness to the word fidelity to the scripture. While we may be waiting to see if the story, if their story ends well, that person, that person

Is having the experience of the Gentiles pre Cornelius. He's technically allowed near the temple courts, but never invited to the table. Never let in the home. See Peter doesn't shake Cornelius' hand and then leave. He eats in his house. He touches his children. See, if God moved on Cornelius before Peter had even finished his last sentence, maybe our job isn't to determine when someone's earned the table because it was never really ours to gate keep anyway.

I have literally, and this is not a figure of speech. I have literally watched people die

Waiting for a church to decide if they were safe enough to belong to it.

You know, there's other ways. There's other ways that we hold. We hold things. We hold beliefs that we think maybe are keeping us in the right spiritual posture, but are naturally creating obstacles to others. I mean, the real hot button topic one for most people in America, or a lot of people in America now is like a person's political stance.

Maybe you started a small group or a Bible study or you're out in the foyer having coffee and someone says something about the border, or about some mandate, or about a candidate, or about a headline that everyone in the room kind of has already made up their mind on. And there's like this half second, you know, there's like this half second where the whole temperature in the room just like, and everyone's like, where do we go from here? Not because of what was said really, but because of what it, because of what it signals.

You just found out which side of the line they're on. You just found out. Now you know. And once you know that something in you does what?

Closes. Shuts off. It locks up. You still smile. You still pass the coffee. But now there's a category that is running quietly under any conversation or interaction that you have. Can this person actually really be serious about Jesus if they believe that?

And what does it feel like? Discernment, wisdom, spiritual boundaries, good theology. It feels like you're just like kind of accurately reading a signal about someone's values, their information sources, their moral seriousness. Peter would have said the same thing about avoiding Cornelius's home that day. I'm not being narrow. I'm being faithful. I'm being faithful. This man is a Gentile who works for the Roman government.

See the vision that had come three times before he'd even considered that his internal alarm might be miscalibrated.

See, Cornelius was structurally speaking on the wrong side of everything, according to Peter's life. He was an officer of the occupying power. His listeners had every reason to resent. Peter did not get a version of Cornelius who'd already defected away from Rome, who had already apologized for his service to Caesar, who had switched teams completely. He got a Roman centurion still in uniform and had to sit at his table anyway. See, if the text just let that stand

Without clearing it up in any way, it has something to say to every line that you and I have decided is the one exception where exclusion of a person is the right and proper stance.

We do not get to pick and choose the type of people that God wants the gospel to go to.

We, like Cornelius, like Peter, like Ananias from the week before, we indicate our willingness to be used by God and God makes the arrangements. Maybe a heavy question to leave you with this morning, but we're just going to leave you with the heavy question. Maybe it's another question as much as it is a statement, but let's form it like a question. There may be a prejudice that God wants to transform in your life so that someone you encounter can hear the gospel.

The question is, will you allow God to transform it? Will you allow God to do in you what God did in Peter? Clearly, God did something in Peter because he went from surely not, Lord, to I now realize that God has revealed to me that no person should be declared unclean. Let me actually come into your house, even though I'm really not supposed to. And let me tell you the story of the gospel and like, oh, hey, there's the Holy Spirit. Well, I guess we're doing this now.

Just hopping over every single theological argument that Peter would have had. And God was like, let me show you my heart. Let me show you my heart. Let me show you my heart. These people are anticipating a move of my spirit and I'm going to give it to them.

Yeah. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we recognize or maybe we don't recognize that we often carry prejudices with us

That we have marked as just faithfulness to you. Lord, in those instances, Father, I pray that you would just reveal to us where our own opinions, preferences, beliefs, or cultural values have run aground, Lord.

And Father, that you would reveal to us your heart. Lord, we also know, I also sense in this moment

That, that our enemy would seek to distort even this word to make us believe a false gospel that says, you know what? Yeah, everyone is included. There's no need for transformation or change or sanctification of our heart and our lives. Jesus just calls us to be loving.

And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to avoid either extreme, the extreme that says, the extreme that holds prejudice against people needing the gospel, but also the extreme that says there is no requirement to believe to express faith. To be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Lord, somewhere in the middle there is the tension of your grace. It is your grace, Lord, and it is your truth that call people onto repentance, Lord, so that they may experience what we read here this morning, the outpouring of your spirit, a purposeful life, a vision for the future that includes the building of your kingdom.

Well, that's where we want to be as, as sons and daughters of you, our Father. We don't want to let our prejudice be baptized with spiritual language so that we put obstacles in people's way and call it faithfulness.

Lord, we want to recognize that the power of your gospel is, larger than our fear.

Lord, we pray for the people that over the next six months we'll come to faith in Jesus Christ

Here in this region. And that, Lord, I pray that you would put a conduit in their way.

That, that, that people in this, in this region, Lord, that you would, I know, Lord, that you're actively working to draw them to your son, Jesus. Lord, I pray in Jesus name that you would make them like just run into someone from this church and that they would find the grace necessary.

They would find the grace necessary to respond to the gospel. Not for us, Lord, but for your glory in Jesus name. Amen.