The Unifying Power of the Gospel

The psalm that we just sung together in some ways picks up the theme of this section,

the idea that God had always promised that he would bring together as his people

those from a variety of nations.

And so what we're thinking about today is the unifying power of the gospel.

There's something about the good news of Jesus that breaks down barriers.

But connected to that, there's something about the gospel that at the same time then confronts

our cultural or social prejudices, perhaps those blind spots we have towards the way that we treat other people.

And so at a recent conference in the States, Together for the Gospel Conference,

two leading pastors both found themselves confessing a blind spot in their lives.

They were blind to the reality of the racism around them, whether that be in the context of the theological training colleges

or whether it's a failure to strive for ethnic diversity and leadership in a very diverse church.

Both of them confessed that they never saw the problem of racism around them.

Now for ourselves, psychologists will tell us that our brains are wired to make snap judgments on the people around us.

Within a very short period of time, we will look at someone and we will have all kinds of categories and labels

that we will place on them, perhaps based on race or gender or class or appearance.

We instinctively do that.

Now that was certainly true for a first century Jew.

They were brought up to know that there were certain people who they would regard as clean

and others who would be unclean.

Those who they would choose to associate with and those who they would tend to avoid.

And Gentiles, non-Jewish people, would certainly be unclean.

Mixing with them was one of the great taboos of the day.

And that leads us into the second part of this story of Peter and Cornelius and God bringing them together.

And just as we saw last week, God was at work in these visions.

So we see God is at work in the power of the gospel, tearing down barriers and creating unity.

And so a quick recap, because this is one of those really big, important stories in the book of Acts.

It takes up a lot of space.

Last week, we discovered God sending through his angel a vision to Cornelius to go and send for a man called Peter.

And then at the same time, or slightly after that, we had Peter having a vision where from heaven,

there was a sheep came down with clean and unclean animals and he was told to kill and eat.

And he said, no, that's against the law.

And the voice from heaven saying, don't call anything unclean that God has made clean.

And so then messengers arrive from Cornelius.

The spirit comes to Peter and says, go with these men.

And so Peter now arrives at Cornelius's house, directed by the spirit of God.

And he begins with a question, why have you sent for me?

So here is what happens next.

And I want us to continue to see that God is at work.

First of all, in the fact that Cornelius is ready to hear the gospel.

So we said this last week that Cornelius was in an elite regiment.

He is in the equivalent of the special forces of his day.

So again, he is a surprising convert to the Christian faith.

But we see that when Peter arrives at his house, he is ready.

He's even desperate, we could say, to hear good news from Peter.

Why can we say that?

Well, look at verse 24.

The following day, it says, Peter arrived in Caesarea.

Cornelius was expecting Peter and his friends and the messengers and had called together his relatives and close friends.

So he's thinking of everybody that matters to him, everybody who is important in his life.

He wants them all to hear this message of God that's going to come through Peter.

And then we see his attitude.

As Peter entered the house, this is verse 25.

Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence.

Now, we see this sometimes when people met with Jesus.

Roman soldiers, sometimes when they met with Jesus, would take that position of humility, would bow at the feet of Jesus.

It seems surprising, given his prominent status, that he will adopt that low position.

But he does.

He reveres Peter.

Indeed, that posture is like the way many people welcomed a visitor from heaven.

An angel would come with a message from God and people would fall at their feet.

So he is ready and he reveres and is humble before Peter, the servant of God.

Of course, Peter, it discourages him in verse 26, tells him to get up.

He's only a man.

What's important is his message.

Peter is not the important one.

And then one other thing that we notice in verse 33.

So in verse 29, Peter asks Cornelius, may I ask why you sent me?

And he begins and he explains about the vision that he saw, telling him to go and send for Peter.

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.

This is a preacher or a Bible teacher's dream audience.

Here is Cornelius saying, I understand that I stand with you in the presence of God.

He understands that Peter, as an apostle, is going to speak the word of God to all the people gathered in his household.

And he and they are both ready and eager to listen and learn.

God has been preparing him.

And so he's got this sense of humility and sense of privilege.

It's really obvious as we read it.

I really love getting the Bible Society newsletter because almost in every issue you get these wonderful stories of,

it doesn't matter which community it is around the world,

but you'll get these stories of people coming with Bibles to hand out to people who can't afford them.

And you'll hear stories of people trekking for miles, spending days coming to receive the word of God.

Stories where the Bible is clearly so precious to them, where Jesus matters so much that they will do anything to have the chance to hear.

It's a wonderful thing when people suddenly find themselves, maybe you've had this, a friend or a family member,

suddenly they want to read the Bible.

They are asking you questions about Jesus.

It's a wonderful thing.

And it's a sign that Cornelius is ready to hear the gospel.

And again, that's not from himself.

This is a God thing.

God is doing something in his heart and in his life to make him realize his need of God

and give him this desire to hear the good news of Jesus.

And that's a great thing.

And praise God if we've seen that in our own experience in the lives of others.

And let's keep praying that we would see that among the people around us.

So Cornelius is ready to hear the gospel and that shows us God is at work.

But we also see that God is at work as Peter preaches the gospel.

We see that God uses his words to great effect.

From verse 34 all the way to verse 43, Peter presents the good news of Jesus to Cornelius for the very first time.

It's really interesting how full his gospel message is.

It's very similar to the same themes that we find in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

He presents a lot of information and all centers on the person and work of Jesus.

But as he begins in verse 34, there is something that Peter has come to understand.

So verse 34, I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.

So he'd been brought up in a system where you were to think of some people as clean if they were Jewish

and other people to be unclean and outsiders if they were not Jewish.

And now that's being broken down.

Something about the coming of Jesus has brought a change.

So he can say to Cornelius, I now understand.

God doesn't show favoritism.

There is no partiality based on what race a person belongs to or what they look like

or what class they're in or what gender they belong to.

Why not?

Because the gospel, the good news of Jesus is all about grace.

It comes to us as a gift that we do not deserve.

Therefore, it is impossible for any type of person to say, this belongs to me.

It's loving kindness to the undeserving.

That means that the good news of Jesus is open to all.

It's wonderfully inclusive, draws people in.

And Peter will go on to say that God accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.

So we sang in Psalm 87, this list of foreign nations who would make up the register of God's people.

And now Peter in the New Testament is saying that God accepts people from every nation,

fulfilling this promise that God gave to Abraham way back in Genesis 12.

That God was calling Abraham as one man to be a blessing to the nations of the world.

That through one of Abraham's descendants, through Jesus,

the good news of God would spread through the whole world.

And that good news and that acceptance from God is for everybody who responds to God in the right way.

Here it's described as those who fear him, those who worship and honor him,

those who do what is right, those who respond with faith and obedience

as children to a father in the family of God.

God will accept people regardless of their background.

And then after that introduction, Peter moves on to the content of the gospel message.

What is the good news that he's been sent to bring?

And we see he goes through the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

That's the center of our good news.

That's the distinctive of Christianity.

We're not about morality.

We're about being saved through what Jesus has come to do for us.

So he begins with the life of Jesus.

In verse 37,

So he begins with the ministry of John.

And we know that Jesus was baptized by John.

And as Jesus was being baptized, the spirit came on him in power in the form of a dove.

And there was a voice from heaven saying,

This is my son who I love.

So from the beginning of his public life,

Jesus was marked out as the son of God and this perfectly spirit filled man.

And what Peter says about Jesus is that he went around doing good.

And as we read the gospels, isn't that what we discover?

Here is a man who cared for the poor.

Here is somebody who had time for the outsiders,

who gave dignity to whoever he came across.

Peter focuses attention on the healing ministry of Jesus.

An emphasis on the power of God over against the power of the devil.

That Jesus' miracles are a sign of God's kingdom breaking in,

of the power of God being greater than the power of the devil.

And so as blind people were able to see,

and as people with leprosy were able to be made clean,

as those who were dead were given life,

it was a sign.

Here is God's kingdom.

Here is God's king.

And so the message of the church includes the wonderful and the perfect life of Jesus.

Sometimes we hurry on to the cross,

and we understand the cross is so vital,

but the life of Jesus is so important because we see there his perfection.

We see what it means to be truly human,

to be truly obedient to God.

There is something wonderfully compelling about his love and his power and his words.

I was speaking with a non-Christian this week,

and they were saying to me exactly that.

One of the reasons why they began to be interested in faith,

having been brought up in it,

and then leaving it behind for a number of years,

was the life of Jesus,

the quality of his life.

And so we celebrate,

and we want to represent that to the people around us.

And having spoken about his life,

Peter makes clear that he is an eyewitness of everything.

Verse 39,

we are witnesses of everything Jesus did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.

And this is a thing that we see in the book of Acts,

that they're very clear that they are presenting eyewitness evidence of historical facts.

Our faith rests on the facts of history and on the historical Jesus.

And we'll see that again as he continues to speak.

So he speaks of his life,

and then at the end of verse 39,

he turns his attention to the death of Jesus.

Last sentence of verse 39,

they killed him by hanging him on a tree.

Now the choice of language there is significant,

not a cross,

but the tree.

In the Old Testament,

if a person was hung on a tree,

it was a symbol,

a sign that they were under the curse of God.

And so here is Peter making a deliberate theological point

as he speaks about Jesus hanging on a cross to say that Jesus dies under the curse of God.

Jesus dies facing the curse that you and I as lawbreakers should face

so that the curse can be lifted from us.

That Jesus on the cross is regarded as the worst sinner who ever lived

so that we might be forgiven.

He takes all of our sin and he bears it on the cross

and so goes under the curse of God

so that we might be welcomed and accepted by God.

There's this wonderful truth in the gospel

that God sees us at our worst.

That Jesus takes the worst of our lives.

The stuff that we try and keep secret

and if other people knew about we'd be so deeply ashamed of.

Jesus goes to the cross willingly

to be punished on our behalf

for those sins

so that we might go free.

And then having spoken of his death

he then moves on to his resurrection.

So the gospel speaks of the life and the death

and the resurrection of Jesus.

Look at verse 40.

They killed him by hanging him on a tree

but God raised him from the dead on the third day

and caused him to be seen.

He was not seen by all the people

but by witnesses whom God had already chosen

by us who ate and drank with him

after he rose from the dead.

Here is a reminder with that but God

that behind the human actions to kill Jesus

lay the eternal plan of God's salvation.

Just as he said to the crowds in Acts chapter 2

Acts 2 · chapter mention

he said to a crowd of Jews

you with the help of wicked men put Jesus to death

but it was all part of the plan of God

the eternal plan to save people

and the sign of that is the resurrection

that God accepted the son's sacrifice

that he is raised in victory.

And it's a sign for us that by faith

we too can enjoy new life from God

through faith in him.

And again notice how Peter deliberately highlights

historical reliability.

There's dating.

When did this happen?

Happened on the third day.

There's eyewitness.

He says that the disciples were chosen by Jesus

to be eyewitnesses

and notice that his eyewitness is to a physical Jesus.

He talks about Jesus eating and drinking.

Jesus was resurrected to a perfect physical body.

A reminder that our future as Christians

will be to have perfect physical resurrection bodies.

And having stated the facts

Peter then begins to draw towards the significance

of the facts of Jesus.

Verse 42

He commanded us

Jesus commanded us to preach to the people

and to testify

that he is the one whom God appointed

as judge of the living and the dead.

This risen Lord Jesus

who Peter is speaking about

is the one who sits in heaven as king

the one who will return from glory

to be the judge of all.

So he draws Cornelius' attention

to the second coming

to the fact that there is a life beyond this one

that Jesus will come back as judge

to make everything new

and all of the people who are trusting in him

will go to be with him

to live in this perfect world forever.

And because that's true

because Jesus is the judge

we need to respond in time.

Just as Cornelius we will see

responds in time to the message

so we too need to respond in time

so that the judgment that we receive

might be well done

good and faithful servant.

Come and enjoy the master's happiness.

And then in verse 43

we read Peter saying

all the prophets testify about him.

So you can read the Old Testament

and it speaks of this

that everyone who believes in Jesus

receives forgiveness of sins

through his name.

Jesus has authority

to forgive sins

and everyone who believes

is forgiven.

Again a reminder that this is inclusive

this is open to all

just as the prophets had always said.

So that's Peter's remarkable message

that he brings to Cornelius

and it's all about Jesus.

And what we see is that

the message that he brought to the Jews

is now the same message

that he brings to this non-Jewish person

to this Gentile

that the only way to know God

the only way to be reconciled to him

is through God's grace

in sending his son Jesus.

I was reading some snippets

from a book called

Overcoming Katrina.

It was a collection of writings

by a variety of African Americans

writing about New Orleans

around the time of the hurricane

in was it 2005 or 2006.

Well one story in particular

was written by a lady

and she was writing about

the retirement complex

that she found herself in

at the time that the storm came.

And what she was reflecting on

was that as the hurricane broke

on the city

so all barriers of class

and race began to break down.

In her own words she said

we were united in a crisis.

And although in normal life

perhaps those distinctions

between black and white

and rich and poor

might have been really obvious

in a storm

they were all united together.

And then she said

that we were rescued

by a National Guard helicopter together.

And in the gospel

we discover this same thing to be true.

that on the one hand

we are all united together

in a great crisis.

The Bible will say

that we are trapped by sin.

That we are slaves to sin

leading to death.

And there is one way of rescue

for all.

Not a rescue helicopter.

Our hope of rescue

is through the Lord Jesus.

So God is at work

as Peter brings

the good news of Jesus

and we see that

because God is working

creating unity

through the gospel.

What happens next

causes amazement

for the people who are there.

So verse 44.

While Peter was still speaking

these words

the Holy Spirit came on all

who heard the message.

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

for they heard them

speaking in tongues

speaking in other languages

and praising God.

There is amazement

among the Jews with Peter

because this group of Gentiles

have received

the same Holy Spirit

that God's people

had received

back at Pentecost.

They've got the same ability

to speak other languages

that God gave

to the disciples

back at Pentecost.

And there's this wonderfully

rich symbolism.

You know,

why did the apostles

in Acts chapter 2

Acts 2 · chapter mention

when they received

the Holy Spirit

why were they able

to speak other languages?

So that people would get

to hear the good news

of Jesus.

And so here is a sign

for us that

as God is saving

Cornelius and his household

so he will use them

to share the good news

of Jesus

in their community

with the people

around them.

They get these languages

so that more

and more people

can hear the good news

of Jesus.

Peter clearly recognizes

God is at work.

Verse 47,

can anyone keep these people

from being baptized?

They've received

the Holy Spirit

just as we have.

So they get baptism.

Baptism is evidence

of Jesus having

washed them from sin.

This sign of publicly

being identified

with Jesus

and his church.

Just as happened

with the Jews

at Pentecost.

And then verse 48,

he ordered that

they be baptized.

Then they asked Peter

to stay with them

for a few days.

So here's another

expression of this unity

that the gospel creates.

Remember,

Peter was brought up

with the idea

that Jews and Gentiles

were to keep separate

because the Gentiles

were unclean.

Well, back in chapter 10,

Peter had welcomed

the Gentiles

to share hospitality

with them.

And now,

this time,

he receives hospitality

from the Gentiles.

Again,

a sign that barriers

are being torn down

by the grace of God.

And that's really

what chapter 11,

verses 1 to 18,

is about.

People hear

what's been happening

and they're asking

questions of Peter.

What's going on?

Why are you going

into the house

of uncircumcised people

and eating with them?

Why are you breaking

down that barrier

that's existed

for such a long time?

And Peter acknowledges

God's work

in breaking down

cultural and religious

prejudices

in order to create

a united church.

So as Neil read for us,

Peter recounts

for the people,

there was the vision

that was sent

from God,

teaching him

not to consider

other people unclean.

There was the command

from the Holy Spirit

to go with the people

to Cornelius' house.

There was the clear

preparation of Cornelius

to hear the gospel

because he had received

a vision from God.

And then God's action

of sending the Spirit

was a clear indicator

to Peter

that God's desire

was that Jews

and Gentiles together

be part of one church.

In verse 36,

Peter says,

in chapter 10,

you know the message

God sent

to the people of Israel

telling the good news

of peace

through Jesus Christ.

The good news of Jesus

is a message of peace,

a message of reconciliation,

a message that brings

down barriers.

First barriers

between us and God,

but then barriers

between other people.

And so this story

stands right at the center

of the book of Acts

to teach the first church

and to teach ourselves

about the grace of God

to remind us

that we must be careful

to identify

and get rid of prejudices

or blind spots

in our own lives

that would put up barriers.

the people

that we would say

they are beyond

God's help.

We don't want

to make the gospel

seem less powerful

or less beautiful

than it is.

The early church

celebrated the fact

that God had done

this remarkable thing

in bringing together

former enemies

into one church.

God's grace

does that.

And so let's be

praying together

that we would have

in our own day

and in our city

lots more of these

Peter and Cornelius stories.

Lots more examples

of God's people

being led by God

to break down

those barriers

of seeing all kinds

of people being

gathered together

in the worship of God

and His Son Jesus.

and His Son Jesus.