The Book of Acts | They Fell Silent - Acts 11:1-18 (Dec 31) Todd Dugard

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

A church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists.

Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Miles is excited that I'm here today because he didn't have to do sermon prep between Christmas and New Year's, let's be honest.

Extra family time.

Just one Joel story since you set me up for that.

Just one Joel story raising him.

He was a good kid for the most part, but he was also a typical firstborn who kind of knows more, thinks he knows more than he really does.

And after we'd had his two siblings, his sister and his brother, the thirdborn, you know, if you've had three kids, you just know the thirdborn's a wild card.

You think you're an expert after two.

The third one just sort of challenges you in a way that uh you didn't expect, and you realize you know nothing about parenting.

So we were we're having a rough go with Joel's brother and just kind of raising him.

And Joel was about, I don't know, nine or ten at the time.

And one day he just came to me and Cheryl.

Cheryl's sitting right here, just came to me and Cheryl and said, Mom, Dad, I don't feel like you're doing a very good job raising Luke.

And we didn't disagree with him.

We actually affirmed, we said, We actually we agree with you.

We feel like we're not doing a very good job raising Luke.

So if you want to take over, Joel, you just have at it and uh we're out.

So that's just one Joel story.

There are many, but I'm here to bring the word, and uh it's good to be able to share uh this with you.

We do feel, thanks, Miles, for that, we do feel a strong connection to redemption up in Barrie.

We we uh love you guys, and it's awesome to have Joel and Megan here with you and Wesley and uh to be able to hear the regular reports, what God is doing here at redemption.

So we're excited for that, and we're more than interested in what God is doing here in this city through you guys.

We are gonna be in Acts chapter 11, and uh we are on a uh multi-year odyssey through the Luke Acts uh books in the New Testament.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

We took six years to get through the book of Luke, and we are several years into the book of Acts for our church.

The message that I'm gonna um uh bring to you uh this morning is like message 28 in the book of Acts, and it's the first 18 verses of chapter 11.

Uh but I wanna um but I want I want to start with a survey today.

Do we do surveys here?

People raise their hands here.

You're good to do a little survey, just answer one question.

Uh who here would say that they're good at keeping their mouth shut when it's obvious that that's the thing you should do?

So here who here would say, like when when it's obvious I should keep my mouth shut, I'm good at that.

I keep my mouth shut.

Okay, while some of you think you're really good at that.

I wonder if the people around you would agree with you as to whether or not you're good at keeping your mouth shut.

But I'm glad there's a few of you here, and I'm glad that there's many of you who didn't put your hand up because you recognize that that's a problem.

And I would say that that's something maybe I've grown in at my more advanced age, um, to keep my mouth shut at certain times.

But the Bible knows just how tough this is because we're encouraged with this.

This is in Proverbs 17.

Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise.

When he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.

That's a great verse.

How many people would just agree that's a great verse?

You know, like that's a print it out and put it on your refrigerator verse so that other members of your family will see that, you see.

But the thing is they won't, because people don't read stuff on the refrigerator.

So, so that's a great verse, and that kind of sets us up for what we want to look at in Acts 11 today, because in this passage, some some Christians are opposing the very obvious work of God, the thing that God was doing.

And in the face of it, even though they were in a place where they were kind of looking at what was going on and go, we don't get it, and we're we're a little upset by it even, they still knew to fall silent.

Verse 18 will say, when we read this in a moment, you're gonna see, they fell silent at what the apostle Peter was sharing with them about what God was doing.

And that's gonna be the challenge for us as we examine this narrative this morning to see how we ought to push through hesitations, how we ought to push through even opposition that we might have in our heart or mind, and to respond appropriately when it's pretty obvious that God is at work in a certain situation.

And so let's read the text together and then we can follow along as we uh work through these verses.

So this is Acts 11, first 18 verses.

Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.

So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.

But Peter began and explained it to them in order.

I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheep descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners.

And it came down to me.

Looking at it closely, I observed animals and birds of prey and reptiles and birds of the air, and I heard a voice saying to me, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

But I said, By no means, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.

But the voice answered a second time from heaven, What God has made clean, do not call common.

Now this happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven.

And behold, at that very moment, three men arrived at the house in which we were sent to me from Caesarea.

And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction.

These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house, and he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, Send to Jopp and bring Simon, who is called Peter, he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.

And I began to speak.

And the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as on us at the beginning.

And I remembered the work, word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way?

And when they heard these things, they fell silent, and they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

Can I grab my bottle of water there?

You can see in your notes, and uh and perhaps on the screen, uh, when God is at work, this is what we want to look at.

Excuse me.

When God is at work, I will, first of all, expect the unexpected.

And what we read here is really an unexpected happening of God.

What's my response going to be when God works in such a way, when God is at work?

Now, Peter's giving a report to the church.

Chapter 11 really is the second part of chapter 10 and 11.

He's giving a report to the church leaders after this unusual occurrence had happened to him.

And verses 1 to 15 is essentially a briefing of what happened in chapter 10.

And considered to this point in the book of Acts, if you were to go and just say, you know what, this afternoon I'm going to do a cruise through the book of Acts up until this point, they had experienced, the apostles had experienced, the church had experienced over and over again the unexpected.

God was working in an extraordinary way.

But this incident with Peter, Peter is a Jewish apostle of Jesus Christ.

And Cornelius is a Roman soldier, a Gentile.

This shook them because the theory of the gospel, the theory that the gospel was for the whole world, was no longer a theory in this moment, but had become a reality to them.

And they, frankly, many of them, didn't know what to do with that.

Verse 1, they heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.

What are we going to do with this?

Like we know that this message was to go to the end of the earth, but now it's actually happening.

And in fact, in verse 2, the circumcision party, this group of people within the church, criticized him.

And the circumcision party are Jewish Christians, so they're people of Jewish descent who had become followers of Jesus Christ, but they were retaining all of their Judaism along with their Christianity, still committed to the old way, still committed to the Old Testament law.

And they were in this fledgling church believing, in essence, that Gentiles had to become Jews before they could become Christians.

Or to say it another way, they believed that you would have to get circumcised, speaking of the males, you would have to get circumcised before you could get baptized.

Now, you guys are interested in church growth.

You want to reach more people in your creation in Newmarket, I'm sure.

But can you imagine how church growth would be slowed here in Newmarket if you said to people, before you can get baptized, you have to become circumcised?

Okay, people at home laughed more when I said that.

But you don't know me, I get it.

That's just my humor.

But that would slow church growth, not to mention it wasn't biblical.

So these Jewish Christians thinking this way, you had to become a Jew before you could become a Christian.

They go after Peter for going, verse 3 says, going to uncircumcised men and eating with them, having a meal with these Gentiles.

Now, to be fair, it's not just the circumcision party that is struggling with this because the Apostle Peter himself is also struggling to grasp how God was working among the Gentiles.

And what's ironic about this is that there are clues throughout the Old Testament and into the Gospels and in the words of Jesus Himself.

What's ironic about this is that God had always wanted to include, and included in the mission, the idea that the Gentiles also would be saved in the very same way.

By grace, through faith, and not through adherence to the Mosaic law.

Not that anyone was ever saved by the law.

In fact, if you go all the way back to the Abrahamic covenant, go back 2,000 years before Jesus, we're 2,000 years from the birth of Jesus, go back 4,000 years for us to the Abrahamic covenant, Genesis 12, 1 to 3.

And you see there that God said, I'm gonna bless your family, and through your family, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed.

Gentile inclusion was always part of God's plan.

And so what happened with Cornelius shouldn't have been unexpected.

And yet it was.

This is all the forbidden stuff.

So if you can imagine just contemporizing the sheet, the sheet is filled with lobster, shrimp, bacon, and pork chops.

That's what he's seeing.

Things he couldn't eat.

And he hears a voice crying, verse 7, saying, Go ahead and eat.

Now, my apologies to all the vegans and vegetarians here today, but this is the scripture, it's the word of the Lord.

Okay.

Peter responds, verse 8, no, can't do it, Lord, can't do it.

I've never eaten bacon and I won't start now, Peter says.

That's a paraphrase of the text.

Verse 9.

So God explains it further that the old rules are out because they're fulfilled in Jesus.

He fulfills the law.

And that basically the Lord is saying to him, the next time you're at Wendy's, order the baconator.

That's what he's saying to him.

And typical of Peter and all of his interactions with the Lord, because if you tracked anything about the Apostle Peter, typical of his interactions with the Lord, it took him, verse 10 says, it took him three tries for the Lord to get the message through to him.

He sees the vision once, he has a guy, he says, not me, Lord, says a third second time, a third time, until Peter finally got it, and the whole thing gets dragged up to heaven, and he understands the vision that he's just seen.

And as soon as the vision was done, verse 11, the messengers knock at the door.

These messengers from Cornelius, from a Gentile.

The timing is impeccable and it's of the Lord, and we can see that.

And verse 12, and the Spirit told Peter to go with them, and that he was to be done with, and this is the word in the text, he was to be done with any distinction between Jew and Gentile.

Go e with them.

And immediately I think about if you're if you're jotting down notes, jot down this reference from Ephesians chapter 2, verse 14, where Paul tells us that the dividing wall of hostility has been torn down.

Ephesians 2:14

And there are various applications for what that dividing wall of hostility is, but in the context of Ephesians 2, at least in part, that dividing wall of hostility refers to the relationship between Jew and Gentile.

That is now torn down.

So Peter went with them.

Took six guys with him, took a posse to witness everything so that they could stand with him in Jerusalem as they were in chapter 11.

And he entered this Gentile's house.

Again, no big deal for us.

We could go to anyone's house.

I could cross the street, and you know, Muhammad and uh Ali and Muhammad live across the street from us.

I could go over to my Muslim neighbor's house.

I've had many conversations with them.

I could go into their house and have a meal, and none of us would think anything of that.

I could have their family into our house, we could have them in, we would think nothing of that.

A Muslim and a Christian having a meal together.

This is a big deal for a Jew.

To go into a Gentile's house and sit down and have a meal with him.

So Cornelius told his side of things, verse 13.

This is now Cornelius, the Gentile, how he had seen an angel.

The angel had told him to send to Joppa and bring Peter so that he would hear a message by which, verse 14, that he would be saved.

Again, which is all explained back in chapter 10.

So if you have your Bibles open, just look back into chapter 10, verse 49, or 39, sorry, 39 to 41.

He says, We are witnesses of all that Jesus did.

They put him to death.

This is the gospel.

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 the people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses.

And he told these Gentiles the good news, verse 43, that everyone who believes in him receives the forgiveness of sins through his name.

Not only the Jews, but notice verse 43 there.

Everyone.

Everyone.

The good news is for everyone, just as God had said to Abraham, not through circumcision, but by faith.

And then sure enough, as he spoke, back to chapter 11, verse 15, as he spoke, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as it had on us at the beginning, Peter says.

Now, this is what, I don't know if you've thought about this as you've read the book of Acts in the past, but this is what scholars call the Gentile Pentecost.

And we know that in the book of Acts, there are three Pentecosts.

And I use that word in a more generic sense to refer to the coming of the Holy Spirit.

So three Pentecosts in Acts, I think we have this on the screen.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 4, we have the original Pentecost or what we would call the Jewish Pentecost.

Acts 2:4

This is when the Holy Spirit came in chapter 2 to that great crowd of people, and there was evidence that the Holy Spirit had come and had baptized them all.

Jesus had told the apostles to wait for that very event to come.

And so that's the initial first Pentecost.

It happened during the Feast of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem.

And then chapter 8, verse 14, we have what's called the Samaritan Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Samaritans.

And Jewish Christians, like the church could accept that because Samaritans were half Jews, and for them it was like, oh, that's the homecoming for these half-Jewish brothers and sisters who are now coming and being included in the church.

So they could kind of get their head around that one.

And that one wasn't such a big big deal.

But that was the coming of the Holy Spirit to Samaria.

And then in chapter 10, verse 44, part of this whole narrative here, we have the Gentile Pentecost coming to Cornelius and his family.

Now notice this about these three Pentecosts.

This is the coming of the Holy Spirit to each of these people groups.

Notice, first of all, I'm going to give you three little notes here about this, but this follows the mission outline of chapter 1, verse 8.

You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

That's the mission mandate that Jesus gave to the apostles and to the church.

And it follows that pattern.

The Holy Spirit came first to Jerusalem, Judea, then the Holy Spirit came to Samaria, then the Holy Spirit has come now through Cornelius to the end of the earth.

In each case, it represents, as I've said, the initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit to each people group.

And thirdly, and this is curious, Peter was present at each one of them.

And as the kind of chief apostle, it was important that Peter would be there to authenticate with his apostolic authority each one of these comings of the Holy Spirit.

Now here's the thing: each time that this happens, each one of these quote-unquote Pentecost, this coming of the Holy Spirit, it came as a surprise.

It was an unexpected thing.

But in hindsight, we look back on it and we go, this is just God doing what God said he was always going to do.

And in order to get what God is saying here, to really understand it and not just kind of fill our head with all the history of this and go, well, that's super interesting, everything we learned about the church this morning.

But to really get it, we have to put ourselves in the place of these Jewish Christians who are struggling with accepting those who are different.

I mean, we could identify with Peter or we could identify with Cornelius as the ones who are being reached.

I get we can insert ourselves into various places in the story, but let's put ourselves in the place of those who are struggling to understand that this is actually the Lord who's working.

Struggling to accept those who are different.

And we're going to do this with the aim to root out any evangelistic prejudice that might be inside of us.

Later, Paul would carefully articulate this theology of the inclusion of Gentiles in.

In the book of Romans and in the book of Galatians.

And we can see how the mission to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and the end of the earth, we can see how it would not be effective if the gospel was become a Jew, observe the law, and then receive Jesus as your Messiah.

What it is in essence, then, is our evangelism would become a double conversion.

We would have to get people, you know, first to Judaism and then to Christianity.

And that wouldn't be helpful at all.

And again, it wouldn't be biblical.

It would be an unhelpful encumbrance to the gospel.

So why is this important to us?

Because it sounds like a first century problem that they were having, but how is this applicable to us today?

It speaks, it is a first century problem, but it also speaks to the value of each human life.

The value of each human being to hear the gospel and have an opportunity to respond to it.

We have to understand that underlying this division between Jew and Gentile was a Jewish assumption that the Gentiles were dogs.

We think about dogs.

How many dog people here?

Any dog people here today?

Lauren, you have your hand up.

I hope you're a dog person.

All these dog people you love, you have your fur family, your fur friends.

You spend all this time with your dogs and you just love them.

And so we think about dogs when we hear like something like that, like Gentiles are dogs, we think, oh, they're cuddly, they're furry.

We love them.

But that's not the way dogs were viewed in the first century.

They were mongrels, they were wild, they were dirty, people didn't like them.

And so the Jews believing that Gentiles were dogs was not a compliment, but a derogatory, defamatory type statement about them.

It was a slur.

And so now take that principle out of the first century to us and think about the people that you have a less than favorable view of for whatever reason.

Now we begin to apply it to any evangelistic prejudice that we might have, and we begin to think that maybe that person, that people group, that lobby group are not worthy of the gospel.

We can rank people in the very same way that these Jews are ranking them in the first century, deciding in our own minds who can be saved, who's worthy of our evangelistic efforts, who we should spend time praying for, who's worthy of our love, who's worthy of our attention and our service.

And even if we decide, sure, but anyone can be saved.

Even if we decide that, we still want to run people through our own set of laws, our morality, our way of doing it, so that they'll be cleaned up before they can be included in the community.

And we can find, in fact, that we're exactly like those first century Christians who are struggling with inclusion and acceptance.

God's intention has always been to include Gentiles in the offer of the gospel.

That every single person on earth would have an opportunity to hear the gospel, respond to it, and repent.

To identify with him and to be told that they belong to Jesus.

He sent us, Acts 1.8 says, to the end of the earth.

Newmarket is the end of the earth.

Berry is the end of the earth.

Geographically, when you think about where this is being written in the Holy Land, in Israel, and you think about where the gospel is gone, we qualify.

We're here.

This is where we live.

So let's really get into it.

I know it's this Sunday between Christmas and New Year's, and it's supposed to be a lighter, just nicer message, but I don't really know how to preach those.

So let's get into it.

Let's let's make this as helpful as it can be.

Let's remember that every human being we meet is an image bearer of God.

Check?

Everybody good with that so far?

Every human being we meet is an image bearer of God.

An individual whom God loves, an individual for whom Christ died, an individual who is able to be offered the gospel.

So when you see someone struggling with gender identity, with their sexuality in some way, we need to forget the culture war.

And Christians have been so great at the culture war, so intent on fighting the political battles for the culture.

Rather than seeing the people in the midst, the people at the center of this fight as image-bearers of God who need the gospel of Jesus Christ, who need redemption.

And as soon as we start fighting the culture war, we push the people to the side in an effort to win the culture, and we lose the souls.

While you cry, while you cry for justice, Christians cry for justice for Israel because of the ruthless terrorist attacks on civilians in the current conflict they're facing, conflicts that they've been facing for six decades, by the way.

Are we also crying out for Palestinians and Israelis as those who need Jesus above all else?

Let's pray for Jews and Muslims to hear the gospel.

There are Christians just like you and me who are in Israel today gathering to worship, seeking to reach their Muslim neighbors, seeking to reach their Jewish neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When you see a homeless drug addict in your city, do you look at them with compassion as a lost sheep or as a nuisance to your community that needs to be dealt with?

There's so many examples of all of this.

The gospel is offered to all.

Everybody good so far?

That was an exceptionally long first point.

Can we agree on that?

And I can tell you they get shorter as we go along.

But secondly, let's look at this.

Expect the unexpected.

But secondly, you and I are going to look to his word to discern when God is at work.

So what's going on here isn't arbitrary.

It's not just experiential, which those of us who are people of the book, one of the things we can be challenged by is the experiential.

When we see something happen and we want to line it up with God's word.

Peter says, in fact, when all of this is going down, he says in verse 16, note this, and if you're writing your Bible, underline this, I, Peter said, I remembered the word of our Lord.

He remembered the Bible.

He remembered the scriptures.

Now, what he's saying here is not printed scripture at the time, but it became printed scripture for us.

There was no New Testament at the time that Peter is saying this, except the Old Testament.

But he is quoting Jesus.

He's in fact quoting Luke, who's the author of Luke Acts.

He would be inspired, in fact, Luke would be inspired by the Spirit to include Jesus' quote in chapter 1, verse 5.

So we know it is scripture, and Peter instinctively knew this, or by the guidance of the Spirit knew this.

So Jesus said, this is what Jesus said, and Peter's quoting him John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

So everything that's happening, all this wildness, Cornelius' visit with the angel, Peter's vision, what's happening now, and the Jews and Gentiles getting together to have this conversation about the gospel, this whole thing that's upsetting to some Christians in the church.

This whole thing is rooted in the scriptures.

Peter's saying, what we're seeing here is exactly what Jesus had told us to watch for: a baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Distinct from John's baptism, which, by the way, John's baptism wasn't Christian baptism as we practice.

It was a pre-church, pre-resurrection, baptism of repentance to Luke 3, 4 says, prepare the way of the Lord.

So that was a water baptism in preparation for the Lord's ministry.

But what we're talking about here isn't even Christian water baptism.

We're talking about the baptism of the Holy Spirit that comes at the moment we become followers of Jesus Christ.

Now there's a temptation by some in the Christian world, there is a temptation to look not to the word, but to the Holy Spirit for guidance.

And um and it isn't one or the other.

I think this is the thing we need to know.

So if you have some preacher on TV or on YouTube who's spouting stuff that doesn't line up with Scripture and saying they got it directly from the Holy Spirit, if it doesn't line up with Scripture, it's not from the Holy Spirit, no matter what they say.

We need to be discerning and careful about all of that.

Because there is a temptation, again, by some to look not to the word but to the Holy Spirit for guidance.

And again, it isn't one or the other for the Christian, it's both at the same time.

We shouldn't look to the Spirit to tell us something that the Word has not already communicated.

I like this one commentator.

What he says here is uh this is Eckhart Schnabel, who has an awesome name, by the way.

Salvation, I mean, he just sounds like he's smart, right?

I mean, if your name is Eckhart Schnabel, it just guy has to be smart.

Salvation is given by God, it comes through listening to the message about Jesus.

That's the scripture part, and it involves the reception of the Holy Spirit and baptism.

It has to be both of those things.

So we believe in the sufficiency of scriptures, and evidently Peter believed in the sufficiency of scriptures.

And again, this is a this is a tremendous setup for us going into a new year.

What do you believe about the scriptures?

And are the scriptures going to inform everything about 2024 for you?

Listen to these verses.

Peter wrote this in his second letter.

No prophecy of scripture comes from the prophet's own interpretation.

These don't come from human origin, because no prophecy ever came by the will of man.

Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

So if you want to listen to the Holy Spirit, so you have some Christians say, Well, I just listened to the Holy Spirit.

Well, you should read his book.

He inspired this book.

These are the words of the Holy Spirit.

He inspired these words through human authors.

Read his book.

I also only listen to the Holy Spirit as I read the word.

That's what Peter's saying.

Or the Apostle Paul said this.

2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

All scripture is breathed out by God.

That's the word inspired.

Okay.

The original is breathed out.

It's breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Now, here's, I'll give you one exception.

Is this okay, Pastor?

I'm going to give you one exception when you can listen to the Holy Spirit instead of listening to the Scripture.

Ready for this?

You think heresy's coming.

When you have exhausted, when you have exhausted all that the inspired word of God has delivered to you, when you have obeyed every command that the scriptures have articulated, when you have repented of every sin, when you are holy, even as he is holy, when you are saturated with the scriptures so that it oozes out from you with every word you speak and every attitude that you show, then you may look to the Holy Spirit to give you extra revelation and a new word.

Until then, just stick with this.

And I think that'll probably do us for the rest of our lives.

And this has been modeled for us.

We think about this, and I have so many people in my background who were so faithful to teach me the word of God and disciple me in it, who lived it out and who are a great example to me, and so many different examples of this throughout history.

But I picked just one, and some of you will know the name Jim Elliott or Jim and Elizabeth Elliott.

And in the 1950s, Elizabeth Elliott and her husband Jim, along with four other couples, were missionaries to the Wow Downey people, the Alka people, the Aoka tribe in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador.

And in 1956, after first contact delivering gifts to the tribe, her husband and the four other men were speared to death at their base camp.

And she would later write, the only thing that keeps me, listen to this, the only thing that keeps me stable and settled in these days of uncertainty is the absolute dependability of God's word.

Committed missionaries.

We're going to give our life to share the gospel with these people.

Her husband dies.

They're a young couple.

And she says that.

And what's remarkable about how resilient she was, how strengthened she was by the word of God, by the Spirit of God, remarkably, she and her young daughter Valerie returned to that tribe a short time later.

And within four years, many of the Wow Dani were saved by the gospel of Jesus Christ, including the man who speared her husband.

She survived the devastating loss and returned full of faith to carry out the mission because she looked to the word of God.

And to come back to the first point that we made, I don't know if she expected the unexpected, but she responded in a biblical way, in a spirit-led way, in a word of God-informed way to the unexpected that came her way.

Though the deaths were unexpected and tragic, she saw how God would use that.

Now who knows?

Who knows what God is going to have for any one of us in 2024?

We don't know.

This is our third point.

And he testified, verse 17, if then God gave the same gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of salvation, if God then gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I?

That should be underlined in your Bible.

Who is I that I could stand in God's way?

Who am I that I would ever stand in God's way?

I mean, I feel like that little last part, who am I to stand in God's way?

I feel like that should be memes that should be posted on our social media that we should make t-shirts and banners and posters and coffee cups and who am I to stand in God's way.

That word, stand in the way of, the lexicon says, is it's to oppose God.

It's it's to prevent, it's to make an effort to prevent him from doing something or to hinder him.

And we ought to all have a desire to stay out of God's way in 2024.

Do you want to stay out of God's way?

Which begs the question how do I get in the way of God?

How do I stay out of God's way in my own life?

How do I stay out of God's way with respect to my family, with respect to my engagement in the life of the church, with respect to my neighbors and the community at large, my workplace?

How do I stay out of God's way?

So I like surveys, obviously.

So I I asked my staff and I just sent out a text.

I said, How do we get in God's way?

And here's the top eight responses to that.

The top eight ways I get in the way of God.

Number one is unrepentant sin.

I'm in the way of God when I have unrepentant sin, disobedience, living my own way, being in rebellion, even small rebellions against him.

If I have sin that's unconfessed, that I'm not willing to deal with, then I am in God's way.

Secondly, theological bias.

What I believe is more important than what God has said in his word.

And I may have these little pet doctrines that I embrace that are not backed up with scripture or that are that are tertiary doctrines or secondary doctrines that I've elevated beyond what they should be elevated.

And when I do that, I'm in God's way.

My theology doesn't let God work.

Third is entrenched tradition.

How I observe my faith trumps God's work.

I resist change.

I elevate my personal religion.

If I do that, I'm in God's way.

Fourth is complacency and comfort.

I don't really care.

I want a life of ease, and I don't want God to upset that.

If you're on the comfort program and I just want to cruise through my Christian life, you are in God's way.

Fifth is incompatible plans, saying things like, I'm good with God doing what he wants as long as he gives me exactly what I want along the way.

As long as God meets my expectations.

And if that's true for you, then you're in God's way.

Six, thinking I know better.

It's okay to question God.

We see lots of questions to God.

Questions that come by faith.

A desire to know.

But thinking I know better is to inappropriately question God.

To push back on Him.

Seven is doubt or a lack of faith.

And again, if your faith is weak, if you're new at this, if you have some doubts about things, you can search those things out.

And that's not what I'm talking about here.

But this is an entrenched belief that God can't save someone or that God isn't going to work in a certain way.

We need to believe God for more.

And then finally, this one being a control freak.

I wouldn't know anything about this one, but they offered it as a suggestion.

Being a control freak.

And this is, I just won't surrender to his will and his ways.

Just take a look at that list.

Just take it and think about it for yourself.

Am I in the way of things that God wants to do?

And then here it is, verse 18.

This is we've been driving right to this point.

When they, the Jewish Christians, the circumcision party, who adfronted Peter over their naive assertion that converts needed to become Jews before they could become Christians, when they heard these things, they fell silent.

This this is the moment for us to keep our mouths shut.

They shut their mouths, they zipped their lips, they said nothing, they dropped their objections.

Even a fool who keeps silent, they knew.

They knew they needed to just be quiet and see what God had been doing among the Gentiles and how God was going to work in a new and unique way with the church.

And an appropriate response to God at work is to simply give him the glory.

This is our last point.

It's super short.

It makes up for the first one.

Now I often pray on Sunday mornings before I'm getting ready or I'm prepping to go to the church up early and looking over my message and getting ready to go, and I often ask God to do things that are unexplainable.

I mean, you can explain a lot of things that happen in the church.

A lot of good people serve.

People came early here to set up, to prepare, to do sound checks, to rehearse, to make sure things were ready for your children.

Put out signs, to do all the things that need to be done in a church.

People will lead small groups and they'll do administration and all the things.

And you can look at the success of a church and go, you know what?

It's because all these people came together, because all these people served, because you have such a great staff, because the elders are empowering, because people are giving, and you can explain it all.

But there are things that happen in the church as a result of all of the people serving that can really only be explained by the Holy Spirit working in a miraculous way.

And that's the thing we want to see more often than not.

And that's the thing that gives God the glory.

Otherwise, we're just a well-organized machine.

We want to give God the glory.

We want God to do things that none of us can take credit for.

Verse 18, they shut their mouths and they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.

And so we need to see it his way.

We need to go with his plan.

We need to glorify God.

And we do so when we expect the unexpected, when we look to his word, when we stay out of his way, and when we serve him in this incredible mission to tell the world about Jesus.

And I hope that that's on your prayer list.

I hope that's on your heart as this new year begins.

Because the potential for the people who are gathered here who are called Redemption New Market, the potential is incredible to see miraculous, awesome, God-glorifying, unexpected things in 2024.

Amen.

Let me pray.

Father, I do commit this church to you.

I commit her leadership.

I commit these people to you.

Father, the number of people who live in Newmarket and York region in this immediate area who need you is counted in the tens of thousands of people.

The hundreds of thousands of people.

And Father, we have been given a mission and a mandate.

Forgive us, God, for sterilizing that, for simplifying it, for making it easier.

And I pray, God, that we would look to you alone in 2024 here and in Barrie and elsewhere, Father, to do a work that would surprise us, catch us off guard, challenge us, and ultimately cause us to give you the glory for what you want to do.

Father, this applies as much in the church and in this area as it does to each of our individual lives and to our families.

Father, do things that we can't explain.

And we will give you the glory.

In Christ's name.

Amen.