God Shows No Partiality

Remain standing, if you would, and we'll be reading from Acts chapter 10,

Acts 10 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 10, and we'll be reading the whole chapter.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

Do listen and give attention because this is God's holy and inspired word.

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 of the day, he clearly saw in a vision an 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 house is by the sea 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 housetop about the sixth hour to pray, and he became hungry

and wanted something to eat.

But while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens

open 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 again to him a second time, What God has made clean do not call common.

This happened three times, and the thing was taken up at once to heaven.

Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen

might mean, behold, the man who was sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry from

Simon's house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon,

who was called Peter, was lodging there.

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 am the one you're looking for.

What is the reason for your coming?

And they said, Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man who is

well spoken of by the whole 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 to be his guests.

The next day he arose and went with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa

accompanied him. And on the following day they entered Caesarea.

Cornelius was expecting them, and he called together for his relatives and close friends.

When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him.

But Peter lifted him up, saying, Stand up, for I too am a man.

And as he talked with them,

he went in and found many persons gathered and said to them,

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 why they sent for me

and Cornelius said four days ago about this hour I was praying on the house

at the ninth hour and behold a man stood before me in bright clothing,

And Cornelius said, 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 tenor by the sea.

So I send 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 to him.

And as for the word that he sent to Israel preaching good news of peace through

Jesus Christ, he is the 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 witnesses of all that he

did Both in the country of the Jews and Jerusalem To 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 the people But

to us who have 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.

While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on them who

heard the word and all 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 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 Holy Spirit just as we have?

And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Then they ask him to remain for some days. This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.

Let's pray. Lord, as we do week by week, we now ask for your Holy Spirit to

be with us, to illumine and give light where we needed to.

Open our ears, O Lord, where they have not heard correctly, and open our eyes

that we may see, even Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

God shows no partiality. That seems to be the central point to which both Peter's

vision, Cornelius' vision, and their meeting, where he's asked, what does it all mean?

And Peter makes a statement that to us may not seem too shocking.

God shows no partiality. In fact, I thought about this. from an American perspective,

we would say, well, yeah, he's God.

He shows no partiality. This is not a big deal to most of us because it's in the air we breathe.

From the time we're little, we always hear, all men are created equal and are

endowed by their creator with certain and alien. We hear this whole idea of no partiality.

A judge is supposed to treat everybody equal before the law.

So to an American ear, this doesn't sound that revelatory or apocalyptic or shocking.

Of course, God shows no partiality.

But to the Jewish ear, to the people who are listening to this,

and this is where we have to try to get our minds around this,

this is Peter and the Jews who had long been hearing, in fact,

God does show partiality.

He does. He says so.

Israel is God's chosen people. Maybe you hear that today by many of your dispensational

friends. Israel's God's chosen people. He says it all over the place, and he does.

For Peter to hear God shows no partiality, and then to go on to say,

every nation, in every nation, anyone who fears the Lord and does what is right is acceptable to him.

And we know from Cornelius' situation that we'll look at, that wasn't the case.

Everyone was not acceptable to him unless they went through the nation of Israel.

Israel was a unique, special chosen nation. Listen to the titles that God gave them.

They were set apart. They were circumcised. They were special. Exodus 19.

He says this, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.

See, Deuteronomy seven, and this is all over. I just chose a few.

Deuteronomy seven says the same thing. You shall be my treasured possession

among all peoples for all the earth is mine, okay?

But you are a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The word holy means set apart over and over.

Deuteronomy 14, you shall be my treasured possession. This is like a,

this is like, first thing that came to mind was a pirate who has a treasure chest of gold.

Once he gathers it, he hides it. He puts it away. No one's allowed. He guards it.

It's the thing that he's longing when he finally ends his years of piracy.

He's going to go and find that treasure. And you always have the treasure map, X marks.

It's that thing that this guy is obsessed with. He loves it.

He treasures it. He guards it. This is us, or this was Israel.

So Israel was told that you are a special chosen people. my treasured possession.

Malachi, the prophet says, you are my treasured possession among all peoples

for all the earth is mine, but you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Special titles given for Israel. God did show partiality.

And the nation to which he was partial was Israel, the Jewish people,

the descendants of Abraham.

But things are changing dramatically with the coming of Jesus as Messiah,

as Peter's vision showed you last week.

Now I made, I think a slight miscalculation last week on my illustration of bacon and lobster.

Sometimes a preacher takes a risk at giving an illustration.

When you give an illustration, everyone remembers the illustration and forgets

about the point of the illustration.

I was asked yesterday or last week afterwards, do you like your bacon crispy

or soggy? It's like, okay, I like it crispy, but that wasn't my point.

So as we ruminate about bacon and the fact that we're free to eat it and this

vision where things are made clean, we can't miss the point.

It's not just that we get to eat bacon and lobster, which I love,

it's the freedom we have now as the people of God to no longer be living in

a cursed world, to no longer have these designations of things clean and unclean,

that these Old Testament laws, remember, had redemptive purposes.

They were never intended to

be permanent because they were intended to guide us to Jesus as Messiah.

They symbolized, again, not just the freedom to eat bacon, but all those animals on those lists.

Remember the ones that rooted around in the dirt, you can't eat pork,

you can't eat lobster, you can't eat catfish.

It's that they had been associated with the fall.

And Genesis, remember, it says, cursed you'll be more than all cattle and every beast.

On your belly you shall go, you shall eat the dust, you shall eat the dirt all the days of your life.

So all the animals closely associated with serpents and dirt and carrion and

carcasses and death and decay were associated with this curse, this fall.

So the dietary laws, remember, were not about nutrition primarily, but they were about,

drawing the attention of Israel to the curse that they weren't under.

And so all the animals associated with the curse, they were to disassociate

them because they were associated with the curse.

So we see, if we lose sight of that, we lose sight of the whole point of the Bacon illustration.

We are now a people free in Christ, no longer cursed.

And as Galatians had said, or as Paul says, you who were not a nation,

Peter says this, sorry, 1 Peter, you who were not a nation are now the people of God.

And we saw in Galatians, and I wanted to read Galatians 3 because that Galatians

3 is so important for understanding the nature of the Old and New Testament

relationship, particularly the laws to the church and the laws to Israel and how they all relate.

The promise was given before the law and the laws are to be understood through those promises.

The laws don't annul or do away with the promises. The laws are to be understood

through those promises as they're pointing us to Messiah, who is Jesus.

That promise is, in fact, Jesus Christ. The law comes through the promise and

does not stand alone without connection to Jesus Christ. That's why we can eat bacon.

It's not just that we like bacon or lobster.

So we see now that the law guarded and led us to Jesus Christ.

And by the way, I'm aware that we live in times where a large number of evangelical

churches don't teach this or believe this.

You don't have to go to the book of Hebrews to understand that the sacrificial

laws are fulfilled in Christ.

We are seeing it in our very eyes in the book of Acts. As the church history

unfolds, the church you see is fulfilling the promises made to Israel through Jesus Christ.

There are no longer like future promises. When God says, I'll give you this

land forever, he meant it.

Because in Christ, the land has now expanded beyond the Tigris,

Euphrates, the Nile to the whole world.

As this curse is lifted from the world and Christ's kingdom will be moving out.

He's in Christ. We see that now everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

And Luke is crafting this narrative so that this newly created nation,

which remember I talked about that very first few chapters of Acts,

we're now a new nation, a new people, and our identity is in Christ.

Our identity is the beloved of God.

God is destroying the barriers that once separated all these people.

So we have in this story the messianic tearing

down of all those barriers That once separated

That once set apart That once we were

allowed to say you're a Jew and everyone else is a Gentile The laws that disallowed

women from going into the temple The laws that disallowed crippled people The

laws that disallowed or separated people Put people outside versus holy And

now we see how that fits perfectly with the great commission of the church We're

given this commission to what?

Make disciples of the nations.

Exactly what was promised to Abraham, you'll be the father of many nations.

So in our story, we see this man Cornelius playing a critical role in everybody now.

Everybody should see that the

nation of Israel is no longer going to be a specially designated place.

It's geography, it's ethnicity or anything. But now the promises made through

Israel to Messiah are now going to the world.

And so we have our man here. Caesarea chapter 10.

But I'm thinking, that was a long introduction. No, it wasn't. It wasn't.

So chapter 10. So at Caesarea, there's 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 his alms generously to the people and prayed

continually. He's a godly man.

Cornelius is a centurion. I was looking at this. It turns out that there's hundreds

and hundreds of Cornelius.

Cornelius is in the Roman army.

It turns out that Sulla in about 82 BC freed 10,000 slaves.

And many of those, his name was Cornelius Sulla. So many of those names took on the name Cornelius.

It's like after the Civil War, you know, all the freed slaves are like,

what's your name? Abraham Lincoln Jones.

Okay. So everyone takes on the name of their captors. It's a very,

very common name among Romans, particularly Roman soldiers.

He's a Roman centurion, which Polybius said was the backbone of the Roman army.

He ruled over a bow or commanded about 100 men or so, hence the name Centurion.

The description of him as a religious man who feared God, giving alms to the

people, keeps coming up.

The Lord himself even says, I've seen your godliness, I've heard your prayers,

and I've seen the alms that you're a generous, kind God who loves me.

That keeps reoccurring. And so the baptism of Cornelius is important in the

events of the early Christian church, and it will continue to bubble up as a

controversy, even up to chapter 15 at the Council of Jerusalem.

When we'll say there, that's when First Presbyterian Church of Jerusalem met

in a presbytery meeting, kind of.

They met there to deliberate about this very issue.

What do you do with God-fearers who are baptized and have the gift of the Holy

Spirit? What are you supposed to do with them?

Again, he's a God-fearer, which means he loved the Lord.

He loved the scriptures. He loved the Torah. He loved everything about the religion

that had been given to Abraham.

And he longed for the promises. In fact, I can't say it for absolute certain,

but if I were him, if you were him, what would you be praying for?

Can Messiah please come and somehow

cause me to be introduced to him and brought into the people of God?

Because I'm far off, I'm outside, but I long to be inside.

And haven't you seen that in every person that we've seen healed,

the crippled man outside the gate longing to go in, the eunuch who is unable

to enter into the presence of God and now is baptized and brought in and now Cornelius.

It's the same longing, It should be the same longing we have as well in our hearts.

He's a God-fearer who loved the Lord, followed His ways, except circumcision.

A God-fearer in those days was just like this. They loved the Lord,

Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel.

They loved what he said. They followed what he did, except circumcision.

They weren't going to get the circumcision. So they were perpetually outsiders.

Even though they were close, they could never enter.

You see the same thing, by the way, and this is a parallel account that I keep

reminding you about, of what happens in the life and ministry of Jesus parallels

again with what happens in the life and ministry of the apostles.

Jesus himself had met someone just like this.

Matthew 8 says, When Jesus entered Capernaum, there was a centurion who came

to him, pleading with him, Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.

And he goes down to that story, you're probably familiar with it,

where he says, Lord, you don't even have to go.

Just send a word like I do.

And the Lord said, verse 10, Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such

great faith, not even in Israel. And I say to you that many will come.

Jesus is forecasting Cornelius.

Many will come from the east and west and sit down with Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom, but the sons of the kingdom,

Israel, will be cast into utter darkness and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

By the way, not exclusively Israel, but certainly the Israelites who rejected him.

Jesus said to the centurion, go your way for you have believed,

so let it be done for you. And his servant was healed the same hour.

Again, Jesus is highlighting this centurion and his faith and his hope in him.

And Peter encourages, or Peter, we see the same thing.

You'll notice again, and I just worth mentioning because I want you to see it.

We see that there's prayer going on.

There's prayer going on. Prayer is the context in which everything's happening in the book of Acts.

You see them praying and you see this happen.

You see them praying and then that

happens. He's praying and the coming of always the church is in prayer.

Cornelius himself was in prayer. Peter was in prayer. All of the church is in

prayer in the book of Acts.

If we want to be an apostolic church, we need to be a church of prayer.

We need to be praying for all the things you saw on the, maybe you forgot them

that were up there, the things we want to see happen this year,

we need to be praying for them and praying for them.

That's the context in which God works.

So in that context, Cornelius was probably even praying for, Lord, come.

Lord, come. And you see in the crippled's response, and definitely the eunuch,

because there's a specific reference, remember, to the eunuch.

It says eunuchs will not enter into the temple, into the presence of the Lord.

And now the eunuch is saying, there's water, baptize me.

So in Acts, we see God systematically deconstructing Israel's own perception of herself.

Israel had thought that these dolls were given to them because they were special.

They were ethnically special. They were special descendants of Abraham and their

specialness, you're special.

Mr. Robert Rogers used to say that, you're special.

They thought they were special and they started creating distance from other

peoples and animals and unclean things and all these regulations that separated

them from the nations that they were actually supposed to serve.

They were given all the law and all the promises so that they could take them

to the nations and call the nations to God.

And here we see that happening. We see it happening under the direct sovereignty

of God, which is also something we keep seeing in the book of Acts.

This isn't just the apostles going and doing their work. This is God.

Verse 10, chapter 10, 28. God has shown it to me that I should not call anything,

any man common or unclean.

Therefore, I came without objection. God is sending them there.

God is doing the work. And Peter, you'll notice, begins immediately to yield his prejudices.

Yield his prejudices and his personal feelings. Why? Because God has spoken.

Another aspect of the apostolic church is that the church listens to the voice

of their holy commander through the holy scriptures.

This young church is exciting. We should want to be apostolic, remember,

but not so much with the signs, gifts, and wonders that will be fading,

but with the basics of prayer and community and koinonia and sharing and respect

and love for the doctrine of the apostles and the word of God.

Peter now preaches the gospel, which is super powerful. You'll notice from verse

37 down to verse 43, Peter gives this summary.

And again, I draw your attention to it as you're going through Acts.

This is the same summary that Peter preached at Pentecost, something similar.

If you'll notice when I read through it, and I want you to listen to it again,

how closely it resembles the Nicene Creed or the Apostle Creed that we read every Sunday.

Acts 10, 20, 37, he says, 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 and went

about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

And we are witnesses of all that he did, both in the country of the Jews and Jerusalem.

They put him to death, 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've been chosen

as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose.

And he commanded us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed

by God to be judge of the living and the dead, okay?

To all of the prophets that bear

witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.

This body of doctrine that Peter goes over, Jesus came, he suffered,

he served, he died, he rose again on the third day, he ascended into heaven

and he rules and he's going to come as the judge of the living and the dead.

Very similar to the creeds that

we recite because this is the body of doctrine that we call the gospel.

The gospel, again, isn't just a small portion. Jesus died for you and died for

your sins and you get to go to heaven.

It's the whole body of doctrine that the apostles are going around constantly

preaching over and over again.

The apostolic church is very doctrinal, you'll notice. They have to emphasize

doctrine because doctrine is at the base of the gospel.

Peter cites the whole body of truth and begins to preach this and teach this now to the Gentiles.

Every Jew or Gentile who believes in him will be forgiven of their sins and

will be saved from divine wrath because Jesus is Lord of all,

not just Israel, not just a small group of people, but to all.

Everyone, Jew and Gentile, believes in him will be forgiven of their sins and

everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Acts chapter two, verse 22, citing Joel chapter two, verse 32.

And even again in Romans chapter 10, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord

Romans 10 · chapter mention

will be saved. In the Old Testament, God provided a temporary solution for the

ceremonial uncleanness and all the items of curse, a day of atonement, and so forth.

But now that Messiah has come, now that Jesus has come, he's fulfilling these.

He's accomplishing these things.

When Jesus came to earth, he could be expected to speak with reference to clean

and unclean. And he did so, but he was also forecasting that.

In Mark chapter seven, he says, listen to me all you and understand there is

nothing outside of a man which is going to cause him to be defiled.

But the thing which proceeds out of the man, those are what defiled him.

And when leaving the multitude, he entered the house. His disciples questioned

him about this parable. And he said to them, are you still so uncomprehending?

By the way, and they didn't get it even till afterwards. And in Acts, Peter didn't get it.

You saw last week, he said, no, Lord, no, Lord. And finally three times, okay.

Do you not see, it says, Jesus says, that whatever goes into a man from the

outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart,

but into his stomach and is eliminated.

And thus, it says, Jesus was beginning to declare all foods to be clean.

He was rebuking the externalism of the Pharisees. You guys have completely misunderstood these laws.

They're not about making you a special people with special robes,

special hair, special beard, special diet, special fields, all that.

These were intended to drive you to Messiah To guard you and bring you to him

And then as he's revealed to you To speak to the nations about him And call

the nations to the church Through his house Which is a house of prayer for what?

For all nations This actually took place at the cross Where Jesus cleansed us

from our sins And created for us a new nation A new people,

A new creation The new nation, the church This is why we hear in Colossians

Something interesting now About our situation in the new covenant He says do

not let anyone judge you By what you eat or drink Or with regard to a religious

festival A new moon celebration or a Sabbath date Now that's how Israel judged everything.

Don't touch this. Don't go there.

This is the day for that. You can't eat that. You can't go this far.

Rabbis, remember, had created rules about how many meters, how many feet you

could stand from someone.

One rabbi was bragging, I don't even go where I can smell. Aroma was the test.

If I smell a Gentile, if I smell a leper, if I smell a prostitute,

I can't go near them because of the aroma.

They created all these elaborate things to distance themselves.

But Paul's saying Those things were shadows of the things that were to come.

The reality, however, is found in Christ.

Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you from the prize.

Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen.

His unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.

He has lost connection with the head from the whole body, supported and held

together by its ligaments and sinews.

God, sinews grows as God causes it to grow. So, since you died with Christ to

the basic principles of this world, why as though you were still belong to it,

do you submit to those rules?

Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. Think about that.

That was the life of the Israelites.

Don't, don't touch, don't handle, don't what? Don't get near it.

These things, Paul says, are all destined to perish with use because they are

based on human commands and teachings.

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed

worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body,

but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

The prophet Isaiah bears witness to what's happening here. I want to remind

you of what we read, if you forgot it, when we're going over the eunuch,

because these barriers are being broken down.

Those who are outside are being brought in. Those who are distanced are being

brought near. Just as Peter said in Acts 2, for all those who are what?

Far off. They're now being brought near.

The prophet Isaiah says, let no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord

say the Lord will surely exclude me from his people.

It's interesting too. and we're going to spend some more time developing this,

but this is the beginning of the church Catholic with a small c, right?

Not large C Roman Catholic, small c, which just means universal.

And it's also important for us as an apostolic church here in Wilmington.

Sounds funny, doesn't it?

Wilmington Reformed Apostolic Church.

To think globally, to think in terms of Catholicity and the universal character

of the church, to realize that we're not the only people here on the earth,

even in Wilmington or even in America.

Many nations come and go, but the kingdom of God is going to the ends of the earth.

So he says, and the foreigner, like the Cornelius and like the eunuch,

was always saying, I'm outside, I'm not being brought near to God.

And let not the eunuch complain, I am only a dry tree. Directly in relationship

to the story about the eunuch.

For this was what the Lord says, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and who

choose what pleases me and holds fast my covenant, to them I will give within

my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.

I will give to them an everlasting name and will not cut them off.

And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve them,

to love the name of the Lord and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without

desecrating it and who hold fast my covenant.

These will I bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in a house of prayer.

All forecasting exactly what we're seeing in our story this morning.

I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.

I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call upon

my name, the Lord said, here I am, here I am.

So the prophet says. On the basis of the prophets of Isaiah and all of the laws

and so forth, We see Ethiopians, eunuchs, crippled people, and now Gentiles, officially.

You could have said, well, the Ethiopian obviously was a Gentile.

He wasn't a Jew, or he wasn't able to be circumcised, so he couldn't be a Jew.

But maybe you say, I don't know. But now it's official.

Now the vision has come. The curse has been lifted.

And Peter makes a direct connection because he was going away a bit,

scratching his head, saying, what about the food?

How can I now say that you said it was unclean and now it's clean?

What does this even mean? And then when he met Cornelius, you see the light

bulb goes on. He said, I understand.

I get this. This food thing is

about Jesus reversing the curse of all the nations who were once cast out.

All the nations. You see this gloriously in the book of Revelation.

Constantly forecasting to us the church Catholic, where every tribe and every

tongue and every nation will be brought before the Lord. And they'll be singing in their languages.

And they'll be celebrating the Lord Jesus Christ.

The book of Revelation describes the new Jerusalem which descends from heaven

to earth where the temple is no longer in need of a son, but the glory of the Lord will illumine it.

And its lamp is a lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Here we're seeing, now, remember we go back to Acts chapter two.

We'll pick up this next week and develop it.

Do you want it to be developed? Some of you are looking kind of tired.

Amen. Are you with me? Are we together?

So we'll see this developed more, but we see the reversal of the Tower of Babel's curse.

We saw it in Acts chapter 2, but you could say, yeah, but those people,

Acts 2 · chapter mention

even though they were from Mesopotamia and Egypt and all these Persia and all

these other places, they were still Jews.

You could have said that. So maybe you could hedge your bets a bit and say,

it's still about Israel.

But now there's no doubt because now we see Pentecost and the Holy Spirit coming

to all these Gentiles, which stirs everything up from this point forward,

It takes us right to Acts chapter 15, where the council decisively says, no,

Acts 15 · chapter mention

you do not have to become a Jew first and then a Christian.

You become a Christian, period, from wherever you are.

And so the Tower of Babel and its curse is definitively being reversed here.

We saw it symbolically in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

We see it really happening now in our passage, where it says God is not a respecter of person.

God shows no partiality.

And this is a call, by the way, for us as a church, where Paul says we are reconcilers.

We're reconcilers. The church is to be a combination of all different people

from all different places.

I know it's hard for us to imagine. I looked at the stats in Clinton County.

I was just thinking, how ethnically diverse are we?

You know, how ethnically diverse? I think we're like 97 point some percent white middle class.

So it's not like we can feel guilty about having no ethnic diversity.

There's not much ethnic diversity in Clinton County. And that's not a bad thing,

by the way. It's just what it is.

But we do have to still stir ourselves up to think about the church globally

and Catholic in terms of all these different people.

And it is certainly a cry against racism of any kind in the church.

The church is the place by which we see all peoples reconciling,

all different languages, is all different tribes and all different cultures reconcile.

And we need to work on that, not because I'm not going to be one of these,

you know, whenever you hear racism talked about in our circles,

it's usually you white people need to recognize your privilege.

No, I'm not going that direction. But what I am saying, we do live in a culture

where everybody everywhere seems to be tribalizing us, dividing us.

Blacks against whites, Mexicans against all these divisions.

But in the church of Jesus Christ, we see the end of that in Christ himself.

There's no racial division. There's no ethnic stripe. There's no tribal division

because we're all one tribe in Christ. We're all one people now together.

It seems like an absolute impossibility, honestly, especially when we live in

a culture where both political parties, in my opinion, seem to even thrive on

these wedges and these divisions.

We're always being divided.

But we see here this glorious vision of the church where God will be bringing

people from everywhere into his temple, into his house of prayer.

We need to pray for that. We need to long for that.

We need to encourage that. And it will happen in Christ.

It will happen. Seems like it's not possible, but we don't judge what we see

in the scriptures with the circumstances around us.

It would be rather discouraging. It does seem impossible.

How could such anger and strife ever be resolved?

If you base your judgment on circumstances, we're a long way away.

But if you look at what Jesus Christ does right here, right in front of your

eyes in this very passage,

he establishes a people that are not based on tribes, ethnic groups,

or race, but has an identity in Jesus Christ.

And that's what I want to end with. I don't know if you remember,

it's not been that many months ago, but we started out a series in Acts reminding

us that as the church is formed, the church has a new identity of the beloved in Christ.

Our identity is no longer our race, our class, our standing.

In any sense, our identity is now in Christ as Jesus Christ people.

And I want you to remember what I said at the very beginning from Exodus and

Deuteronomy and all those other passages where Israel had once,

God had said, you're my special people.

You're my chosen vessels. You're a holy priesthood. It's amazing that in 1 Peter

1 Peter 2:9

2, verse 9, we now see an amazing reversal that takes place.

Those titles once designated for Israel ethnically, descendants of Abraham,

are now specifically given to you and to me.

Our identity is no longer with any people group, with any ethnic group,

not even your own family entirely.

But listen to what he says.

And 1 Peter says, you, the church, you are a chosen race. Isn't that amazing?

You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.

That's that word, a treasured possession.

So that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness

into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, this is for us, beloved.

Now you are God's people. Once

you had not received mercy But now you have received mercy This is for us,

we who are in Christ The titles that once were exclusive to Israel Are now given

to us We are the beloved of God That is our identity,

And it's our identity that we should be reveling in And praising the Lord in

And thanking God for in every way As we see Cornelius brought in We are brought

in And we can call the whole world to be brought in And called beloved of God

You beloved are God's treasured possession in Christ. And he's going to call more people.

We should be participating in this, praying for this, acting like this,

so that the words of the prophet Zephaniah would be fulfilled.

Where he said, then I will restore to the peoples of pure language,

that they all may call on the name of the Lord to serve him with one accord.

And this, again, to the Ethiopian, it says, from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,

my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering.

In that day, you shall not be ashamed for any of your deeds in which you transgressed against me.

For then I will take away from your midst those who rejoice in pride and you

shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain.

I will leave in your midst a meek and humble people and they shall trust in

the name of the Lord. Amen. Pray together.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you so much for all that you revealed to us in

the story given by Luke in the book of Acts.

Surely, O Lord, the joy of that centurion where his prayers had been answered

is the same as the joy of that Ethiopian eunuch,

and the same as the joy of that crippled man who was lame and outside the temple

and who, when healed, began to dance and sing and praise the Lord.

Surely, O Lord, our joy and our wonder and our awe should be the same.

Make it so, we pray, O Lord, and as we take this supper, help us to be encouraged

in that and strengthened in that we are your beloved.

No matter what our situation has been or even is we find our identity in the

love of Jesus Christ. We pray in his name. Amen.