God's Heart For The Lost | Acts 10:34 - 48 (Feb 27) Mike Armstrong

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Lord, we come before you this morning recognizing that your name is in fact powerful.

Lord, you are powerful.

Lord, that has been made so abundantly clear through the cross, Lord, through the resurrection, through what Christ has done for us, Lord, and in that we rejoice, Lord.

We know that to make it through this life, to be effective, to please you, we need your spirit, Lord.

We need your power.

And so we come before you once more and ask that you would meet us here in this place.

Father, that you would grant us weak people what we need, Lord.

We need more of you.

And so, God, we cry out to you, believing and knowing that you hear those cries and answer those prayers and deliver what we need each and every week, Lord.

As we get into your word this morning, I pray, Father, that you would illuminate our eyes, Lord.

Give us a sense, a glimpse of the heart that you have for us and the unbelieving world.

God, in the process of that, of teaching us that, Lord, I pray that you would transform us.

God, I pray that you would give us the same heart that you have, Lord.

I pray that you would chip away at all of the unredeemed areas of our own soul, Lord, of our own lives that need sanctification, Lord.

Encourage us in that battle.

Help us to believe what is true and to cling to you.

Lord, I also want to make mention of the GCC church that meets in Kiev, Ukraine, Lord, and with the conflict that is happening over there, Lord, we want to pray for Pastor Alex and his wife Anna, who uh literally have tanks and gunfire and bombs exploding around their home, Lord, as they try to encourage their church and provide practically in many ways and figure out even how do we meet this morning, God.

I pray uh that you would give them much, much grace, Lord, as people who have been uh at different points along the way frustrated with what's going on in our own country, Lord, it pales in comparison to what's happening over there right now.

Where we pray your protection for physical safety, for spiritual safety, uh, for their family and their church, and pray that this would be an amazing opportunity for them to continue to proclaim Christ and uh and hold firm.

So God bless them this morning, bless us too as we gather.

We pray this all in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

We'll go ahead and uh grab a seat.

I'll be giving you updates on uh Pastor Alex Terasov uh and his family over there.

I've never met him, I don't know uh him personally, uh, but got an update this week as to what's going on.

I just kind of shared that through prayer uh with you.

And so again, I'll let you know how things go as we know.

We're gonna have opportunities if you'd like to be able to give and support the work that's happening there.

So just stay tuned for that in uh in the coming days.

All right, well, if you would get your Bibles open to uh Acts chapter 10, as you're doing that, I'm gonna pop a halls because uh I'm still dealing with a cough.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

I had the audacity of saying to my family on the way to church today that, oh, my cough is feeling a little bit better.

And all through the singing, I'm like choking and holding it back.

So, anyways, uh maybe that's what I get.

Um, thanks for continuing to work with me on that.

But uh, but I don't know about you, it's your getting turned there.

I don't know about you, uh, but I I really enjoy movies, TV shows, books, that kind of thing, uh, with a lot of twists and turns in the plot.

I like it when things are unexpected.

I I love a complex yet brilliantly told story.

Where you're not altogether sure.

Where where is this all going?

What's this gonna culminate in?

Or who's the bad guy exactly, or you know, the surprise ending, whatever it is.

Okay, where it really only comes together uh or becomes obvious at the end when it's all finally explained to us.

I love that.

Now, I I believe I firmly believe that that the Bible is the you know is the most brilliant story ever told.

Okay, and then that should be no surprise to us.

God authored it, okay, and and then that structure, that that framework, the design of it is something that that that movie writers, story writers have been imitating ever since, if you think about it.

Like, you know, when you watch that that thriller, that that mystery type movie, and how how often at the very end, when they're explaining it all, they'll do flashbacks to earlier parts along the way, where where um again to kind of help you put it all together and to have it all make sense, where they explain they explain those scenes, they explain those those comments that you didn't really catch at the time.

Right?

Maybe it kind of struck you slightly as a little bit odd, but now at the end, you're kind of like, ah, like, okay, now I get it.

It all makes sense.

It wasn't obvious at the time, but it is now.

I think the Bible's story of humanity's redemption unfolds a lot like that.

Okay, you know, where, for example, you get you know to all the way to the Gospels, and you know, and it seems like hope is lost.

Right?

Jesus, who it's promoting as the Messiah, the great Messiah of the Jews, he's all of a sudden crucified.

Right?

Raised dead, and then the disciples scattered.

But then, of course, we know this because we've heard it, many of us have heard it many times.

Three days later, he he rises from the grave.

Okay, but then then in that in that knowledge, in that that understanding, you start to kind of go back and read some of those passages throughout the Old Testament, like Genesis 3, for example, and you all of a sudden you have this aha moment.

Okay, where we realize that we might have missed what God had been telling us at the time.

In Galatian, or sorry, in Genesis uh 3, verse 15, I think is really one of those moments.

And this is where they've already eaten the fruit and they realized they were naked and they ran and they hid and they put fig leaves over themselves, and and and God has called them all together, and he's and he's explaining the consequences to Adam and Eve and Satan.

And you remember what he says there in verse 15.

He says that Eve's offspring would have his heel bruised by by by Satan, by the by the serpent, but her offspring was gonna crush the serpent's head.

Okay, all of that being a foreshadowing of the cross and the resurrection, and then even past beyond where we are now to this to the second coming.

Right?

Where at the time you're like, what?

Like there's a there's a bruising of a heel, a crushing of the head, like, okay, but you kind of just move past it.

And then after Christ rises from that, he rests, oh, that was a reference to Jesus.

God was telling us, He was bringing, breathing hope into the story at the darkest, but humanity's darkest moment.

Hey, don't worry, I'm coming, I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make right what was wrong.

I'm gonna undo the broken.

Okay, and as we start to kind of put all these things together, we really start to see that God's heart for broken people is actually pretty obvious.

The more that you read through the scriptures, you see it.

He's been planning our salvation from the very beginning.

Okay, and once you start to see that, and you look back and you recognize it, you can't you can't unsee it.

And it becomes this amazing, amazing story that we see.

Okay, well, our text this morning, I think, is another one of those passages where God's heart for the lost, it's it's obvious.

Where we looked at the first part of the story last week, right, with Peter and Cornelius, and and today we're gonna look at the rest of it, right, and see really how God's heart for lost sinners is to dramatically impact our hearts as well.

You know, as a as a church that is, you know, has been given a mission, that is on mission to reach lost people with the good news of Jesus Christ.

Alright, well, I already prayed.

Let's just jump into it.

We've got three things.

The outline kind of flows as one big sentence here today, but here's the first part.

Okay, God's heart for the lost is obvious.

He's ready to accept anyone who humbles themselves before him.

Now, I read that this morning.

I wasn't gonna mention anything, but I will anyways.

I realize there's a bit of a grammatical error in that.

It should be themselves, not themselves.

Anyways, something that annoys me, maybe some of you, uh, maybe not.

We're gonna just move past it though.

Okay, but here it is.

So, okay, so remember though, from last week, okay, that God had orchestrated this meeting, this coming together of the God-fearing, uh yet Gentile and as of yet unsaved uh uh Cornelius, right?

The the Roman soldier, the centurion.

Okay, so he so he came together with with the Jewish leader of the newly formed church, Peter.

And we know that that God revealed himself to Cornelius through a vision.

An angel of the Lord came to him and said, You need to go send for this guy named Peter, who's 50 kilometers away in this town called Joppa, send for him, bring him.

And so Cornelius does that.

He sends a convoy to go and and bring Peter.

At the same time, Peter is hanging out on the rooftop, he's getting hungry, he himself has a vision, and it's this vision of this sheet coming down with a bunch of animals on it, and this this voice saying, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

And Peter, he's rattled by this, because as a as a good, well-behaving Jew, he he wasn't eating things that were considered according to the law unclean.

And so he denies, he says, No, I've never eaten anything that's common or or unclean.

But this this vision happens three times, this descending of the sheet, and this voice says, Do not call uh common what I have called uh clean.

Okay, and so he's got this vision, he's he he doesn't really understand it, and then Cornelius' men show up at the door and he goes with them.

And so he arrives at Cornelius' house, and Cornelius says, You've been kind enough to come.

We're waiting to hear what you have to say, and so here we are, we're finally at it.

Verse 34, pick it up with me.

This is what Peter's response is he says, so Peter opened his mouth and said, Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.

And no partiality, that's not really a phrase we use these days all that much, but it just means that God doesn't play favorites.

Okay, God doesn't have favoritism towards one person or one nation or one group of people versus another.

He doesn't play favorites, okay?

No partiality.

But in every nation, he says, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Okay, now understand that when Peter says this, okay, he's not saying that, you know, as long as you're a good rule follower and you avoid all the big bad mistakes in life and stay out of trouble or behave in a respectful way as a citizen or before God, uh, he'll accept you into heaven someday.

Okay, he's not saying that.

He's not saying that our salvation or God's merit can be earned.

Okay, we can't do that.

He's not saying that you can, if you just live a moral, morally scrupulous life, if you behave good, behave well, then you're saved.

That's not what he's saying, but it kind of looks like that maybe at face value.

But rather, when he says that that anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him, he means that anyone who who humbles himself before God through repentance, okay, through repentance, and trusts in the finished work of Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ the person, that person is acceptable to him.

That's what he means by that.

Okay, it's on the basis of Christ's atoning work and a person's humble and God-fearing response to that that determines whether a person is acceptable or righteous in God's eyes.

Okay, that's what it means to fear him and do what is right.

Okay, what Peter has just realized uh for himself here and is now proclaiming to Cornelius and Cornelius' family that have all gathered there is that this acceptance by God is available to anyone.

It's available to literally any person.

Okay, here's what uh I.

H.

Marshall uh says about it.

He says this, it's on the screen, he says, this does not mean that salvation is possible apart from the atonement wrought by Jesus Christ.

But rather that on the basis of his death and resurrection, the gospel is offered to all people who are willing to receive it and recognize their need of uh need of it.

Okay, so not just Jews, okay, which had been, again, the main focus as well, but rather Gentiles are able to receive this salvation that the Jews understood uh had been for them.

Okay, now next, what Peter does is he explicitly shares the gospel with them.

Now he proclaims it to them, starting in verse 36, and we'll read down uh to the end of verse 43.

Take a look.

He says, as for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all, you yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea.

So everything that Jesus did had that that news had spread like wildfire.

He says, beginning from Galilee after the baptism, that John, John the Baptist, 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 in Jerusalem.

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to j to be judge of the living and the dead.

For to him all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

Alright.

Okay, so we know from the message last week that Peter had this type of aha moment, right?

Where, you know, like we get when we're watching a movie with uh with a great ending.

Okay, he's just clued in, right?

He's just clued in that that salvation acceptance is available to everybody.

Okay, he's putting it together that the scriptures, right, that the prophets he mentions have have dropped these clues, these breadcrumbs along the way as they were writing over hundreds and even thousands of years.

And he's putting it together for himself that this is all God's plan, and how salvation for everybody was always gonna be the case.

You think of even just one spot, Isaiah 53, verse 6, it says, All we like sheep have gone astray.

Isaiah 53:6

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned, everyone, to his own way.

The Lord had laid on him, Jesus, the iniquity of us all, every single person.

It's like Peter saying, of course.

It's just it's so obvious now.

Christ's sacrifice was for all sinners.

God's heart is to accept every single person who bends the knee to him.

Okay, so my question then to each of us, whether you're here in the room or you're at home, okay, do you need to do this?

Do you need to put your faith in Jesus Christ?

Do you need to bend the knee to him?

Hey, maybe for you, you've had this, you know, kind of been in this mindset for a while that becoming a follower of Jesus isn't for you because you don't stack up in some way.

Well, if that's your mindset, according to the Bible, that's just simply not true because the reality is none of us stack up in any way.

None of us deserve salvation.

That's why salvation is a gift of grace.

Right?

And we see as we read the scriptures that God's heart is to give sinners like you and me salvation.

He's willing to forgive us, to accept you and I into the family of God.

Listen, if you have not done that, if you have not recognized this for yourself, would you do that today?

I mean, that the offer is extended by God's word every single day.

Every time we read it, we see it.

That the invitation is to invite sinners to receive forgiveness and new life through Him.

And if you're wondering how is that done, is that done by coming to church and reading my Bible and behaving well and doing a bunch of good things?

Well, no.

It's by simply admitting that you've got sin in your life and that sin is against God, the holy God who made you.

We've all done, we've all sinned, right?

We've all sinned and fallen short of God's glory.

We've all transgressed his law, we've all broken all of his rules.

And we we we we can't fix that on ourselves because we are we're broken.

That's that's just the reality.

And so that's why God sent his son Jesus Christ to live the morally perfect life that you and I couldn't.

And he and he died on the cross as a sacrifice, he died in your place.

So if you if you would become a Christian today, it involves admitting your sinfulness, admitting that it's all against God, and that you deserve wrath and you deserve punishment, but at the same time recognizing that Jesus took all of that for you on the cross.

And that when he rose from the dead, he defeated sin, the power of sin.

And if you would believe in him, in what he did, and in who he is, you would be saved.

I've been praying for you this week that someone here would do that today.

That someone would, in fact, humble themselves and recognize that God is willing to accept you if you would admit these things and believe in him.

Listen, I think it's so good for us as uh as a church to have this reminder again for us here today that God's heart is for the lost.

Right?

It is.

Because you might notice just how easy it is for us.

It can be very subtle and sometimes not, but you can you notice how easy it is for this for us to have this very insular kind of overall focus as Christians.

We get so hyper focused on ourselves, right?

Caught up in me and what I want and what I'm doing, or or even in the ministry that's happening here within these kind of four walls, and we get very, very turned, our eyes turned in on each other exclusively, instead of being mindful and intentional when it comes to being missional, pursuing the lost with the gospel, armed with the knowledge and the heart of God to win people to Christ.

It's a very simple way to think about one person this week.

A one person this week that you can have a conversation with, that you can build a bridge with for the express purpose of sharing with them how ready God is to accept them through Jesus Christ.

Right?

Think about that one person.

It's probably the person's probably already come to mind.

Maybe it's uh a neighbor that moved in three months ago and you're like, man, I should have gone over there and introduced myself.

Just do that.

Start to build a bridge, start to build a relationship with them.

Bring a plate of cookies and just introduce yourselves and start that relationship up.

Maybe it's it's somebody else, and you've done all of that, but you haven't you haven't quite crossed the line into the end zone where you've actually shared the gospel with them or told them about your faith or what you believe.

It's it's that.

By proclaiming the gospel, by building relationships with, and show them who God is, what he is like, and how much he loves them.

Alright, let's keep going here.

God's heart for the loss is obvious.

He's ready to accept anyone who humbles themselves before him, and then this, and generously give them the good things that he's given to us.

You know, I think it can be common for uh for Christians to get, again, kind of caught up in the mindset here that there must be there must be hierarchies or or different classes uh or or categories of people within the kingdom of God, within the church, as Christians.

Like maybe, for example, you have thought, well, because that person knows the Bible better than me, or or because he's an elder at the church, or or because she grew up in a Christian home and doesn't have the same kind of gnarly past that I have.

God must therefore only really give good things to them.

He must extra bless them and really not give me much of anything at all.

Okay, some of us have the opposite view, and we're more on the elitist side, right?

Because I was homeschooled my entire life, or went to a Christian school, or whatever.

Therefore, I am highly favored above other people in God's eyes.

And we tend to look down at them.

So it's amazing how you can come kind of at either side.

But think about it, none of that is actually true.

Okay, just look at this, verse 44.

Okay, while Peter was still saying these things, okay, while it's happening, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.

Let me just mention that for or talk about that for a second here.

Okay, this is implying that all who heard the word had responded to Peter's gospel with saving faith in Jesus.

Okay, that's what this implies.

Now, how how can we make that assumption?

Right?

That the ver the verse doesn't tell us exactly.

Well, once again, same guy uh that shared the quote last time, I Howard Marshall, this is what he says.

I think this is helpful.

He says, Since elsewhere the gift of the Spirit comes to people who repent and believe.

And he mentions chapter 11, verse 17.

We're gonna actually see that verse uh next week in next week's message.

He says the implication is twofold.

First, that the Gentiles present responded to the message with faith.

Okay?

And secondly, that God accepted them and sealed their faith with the gift of the Spirit.

Once Gentiles had been given an opportunity to hear the message, they responded and God received them.

I think that's well put.

Okay, so Peter, he shares the gospel.

Okay, it's assumed that they turned to Jesus by grace through faith, and then immediately, like again, it says, as he is speaking here, the Holy Spirit falls on them just as he did the Jews in the upper room back in Pentecost, right back in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

You might remember that.

Okay, so John, who's the author of Acts here, he doesn't skip the part where Cornelius and his family get saved because it's somehow not relevant or important.

Not at all.

It is.

But rather to emphasize what he wants to emphasize, and it's that God shows no partiality between saved Jews and saved Gentiles.

Okay, that the Holy Spirit is generously given to the Gentiles here as immediately and as epically as it was given to the Jews in the upper room.

And it was assigned here to Peter and his companions that were with him, and ultimately the Christian Jews as a whole, we're going to see that next week in chapter 11, that genuine salvation is available to literally anybody.

No matter who you are, no matter what ethnicity you are, all of that.

And God doesn't give Gentiles some kind of second-class citizen status within his kingdom.

Okay, we see that here starting in verse 45.

They were amazed.

Because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles.

Okay, but that's not all.

Okay, so the Spirit is given immediately to the Gentiles, you know, as a as a seal of their saving faith.

Okay, but but don't miss that they're also given the gift of the you know of speaking in tongues here as well.

Okay, to provide a sign to the Jews that were standing there that the Gentile Christians were legit.

Okay, they were legitimately saved, just like we were.

Okay, and that they were every bit as valued and as important as we are.

Okay, every believer is on the same level according to God.

Okay, do not be fooled, do not be tricked, do not be duped into thinking otherwise.

A line that my wife says all the time that I really like, we heard it from somebody else.

At the foot of the cross, the ground is level.

Okay, guess who's standing at the foot of the cross?

All of us.

Okay, there's not these different, again, hierarchies where some person is more important or better or whatever.

It just does not work this way.

And this passage shows us.

Okay, furthermore, he's showing that God, that the Gentiles receive spiritual gifts, just as the Jews did.

Okay, he's making it abundantly clear here that God gives good things to all who get saved.

Okay, all who get saved.

Because the Holy Spirit gives gifts.

Okay, there are no lower class citizens in God's kingdom and in God's economy like there are in earthly kingdoms.

Right, where people are viewed a different way based on how much money they have or where they live or what they look like or how they act, right?

All of the above.

It just does not work that way at all in the Lord's economy.

He gives us all good things, specifically status.

Okay, we're all sons of God through Jesus Christ, all of us.

And he gives us spiritual gifts, right?

He gives us power through the Holy Spirit, which we can't live without.

None of us can live without.

We can't hope to please God without the Spirit.

If we want to advance the kingdom, if we want to see the gospel be spread out, we're gonna need spiritual gifts.

And guess what?

God gives us gifts to use and to steward.

Now it becomes so important for Peter and the other Jewish Christians and leaders of the church to get this very thing locked down in their hearts and in their minds.

Right?

That they would they would have this understanding and take that understanding out into ministry because we already know that this would be a difficult thing for them to absorb.

Right?

It really would.

Later on in Galatians chapter 2, you can write it down and go read it later, but you remembered that that Paul, the apostle Paul, actually had to confront Peter.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

You remember that?

He had to call him out in the presence of all.

Why?

Well, because his conduct, the way that he was behaving, the way that he was acting, uh was out of line with what he had learned right here in Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

Right?

So he knew this, he learned it in Acts 10, but then forgot it and started to revert back into old living and old behavior, where he was starting to treat Gentiles as second-class citizens.

Remember, he'd been ministering in, he'd been ministering to a bunch of believers in a church, and some of them were Jewish, and some of them were Gentile, and they'd all come together to form this church.

Okay, and so Peter, as a Jew, is ministering to all of them, but then a bunch of religious leaders, Jews, started to come in to see how things were going, and Peter was intimidated by them, and so he started to withdraw himself from the Gentile believers and started to give in to the pressure that they needed to follow Jewish customs in order to be true believers, in order to be elite, in order to be real Christians or truly loved by God.

So Paul he sees this behavior and he calls it out.

He's like, it's not right.

We're not accepted by God based on following a bunch of food laws.

Right?

It's not about circumcision, not circumcision, it's not about those things, it's about Christ alone.

Through Christ alone, we are accepted before God.

So stop acting as though it's any other way.

Okay, and so Peter, he himself would have to be reminded of this from time to time.

His his heart needed to relearn this over and over again.

I think we all understand what it's like to experience that.

We can all point back to, you know, the longer you've been a Christian, the more you can point back to, you know, various sermons that you heard a pastor say, or different moments where God has taught you something, and then over time it kind of drifts away from your conscious thoughts, and you kind of forget it, and you start to live like you used to or think the way you used to, and then you're reminded again of what is actually true.

Right?

We all understand this.

It's us too, right?

We do this.

We have, you know, many of us have kind of instinctively, without even like intentionally trying to do it, we've instinctively looked down on or judged other people simply because they're different than us.

Right?

We all do it.

Don't try and act like you don't.

We all do.

You ever thought, well, they they parent differently than me, and I have some feelings about that.

You know, or or they dress different, or they they think differently, or or they serve differently, or act differently.

Right?

In those self-righteous moments, we have to remember that that there are, no, again, no upper, middle, lower classes of Christians.

Are we all the same status in God's eyes?

We're all beloved sons and daughters, we're all just at different stages in our sanctification and in our growth.

We're all given different personalities, we're all given different strengths, we're all given different weaknesses.

We have to understand that.

But on top of all of this, we've all been given spiritual gifts.

Yours are not gonna be the same as mine and vice versa, but that's okay.

It's actually a good thing.

We need various gifts, we need various strengths to serve the church and to serve the nations effectively.

Okay, so remember that that status, you know, those gifts were bestowed to you and I by grace.

Okay, not because we were smart enough to learn them, not because we behave awesomely and we're so great, and therefore, you know, we deserve to get the gifts God given us.

No, we haven't earned it, we don't deserve it.

It's awesome to see that the heart of God is to be generous.

And we see that here in Acts 10.

Specifically towards the lost, you know, towards these brand new uh converts, right?

They haven't been Christian for 30 seconds, and the Holy Spirit falls on them, and they're exerting their gifts, they're extolling God.

Which of course we need to remember we were in that position at one point too.

Right?

Lost and newly saved, trying to figure it all out.

Other people, they're like that too, and again, we're all really on the same page.

Okay, final thing.

God's heart for the lost, it's obvious.

He's ready to accept anyone who humbles themselves before him and generously gives them good things like he's given to us, while expecting us to welcome them into the kingdom.

Okay, take a look at the very last part there of verse 46.

Okay, and again, keep in mind that all of this is happening in very rapid succession here.

You know, Cornelius and his family, they've you know, they've gotten saved, they've been given the Holy Spirit, they're you know immediately exercising their spiritual gifts, and then immediately again this.

It says, then Peter declared, you know, verse 47, 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 asked him to remain for some days.

Okay, so what we're seeing here is is you know this confirmation that Peter and his companions understood that these Gentiles are to be given the right hand of fellowship.

They're to be welcomed in, right?

Into the kingdom, into the church, accepted by the Jews, by Jewish believers, just as they've been accepted by God.

It's an amazing moment as you see this all kind of click and come together.

With baptism here, Peter goes right into baptism, baptism being the public sign or the declaration that they too have been saved by grace.

These Gentiles are identifying themselves as followers of Christ.

Okay, with Peter and his companions, right, the Jews facilitating their welcome, insisting on their welcome into the church, into the kingdom, into the family of God.

They're the ones, again, insisting that this take place.

I believe this is just so powerful here, what's taking place in these verses.

Think about it.

Deeply held discriminations are crumbling down in real time here.

It's incredible.

Right?

Peter, think about him, who had up to this point, you know, held these entrenched biases towards Gentiles.

Right?

He grew up as a fisherman and he kind of turned his nose up at them.

He had no problem thinking of them as common or unclean.

Right?

Even he even resisted God in the vision.

He went back at him and said, No, I cannot eat this food.

And he recognized this is that, whoa, this is how I'm treating Gentiles.

He had a heart that was soaked in elitism and snobbery from day one because of the religious laws that he sought to follow, that he thought made him righteous before God.

He would have had very little time for Gentiles, him and the other Jews as well.

And yet, what do we see?

We see God's heart transform his heart.

As God welcomed these folks into his kingdom, so would Peter.

Cornelius and Cornelius' family were made righteous through through Jesus.

They were given the same things that Peter and the Jews were given.

And so therefore, no longer outsiders in Peter's mind anymore.

Okay, so what did he do?

Well, he rolled out the welcome wagon, didn't he?

He received them as brothers and sisters, part of the same family.

This is the very heart that you and I are to have for the lost as well.

Right?

This is the attitude, the mindset, the approach that we're to have as we look out on a world that desperately needs Christ.

And I would really encourage each one of us here to take some time today, this week, to really kind of think about, consider, and then repent of the various ways that we have maybe been slow to have a welcoming attitude to outsiders.

A welcoming attitude or approach to other people, the lost.

Or maybe even here within our own church family.

And maybe for you, if you've got a pen there, you can even jot down a couple of things as they start to come to mind that you could confess to the Lord as He graciously brings them to your attention.

And then commit with the help of the Holy Spirit to growing in these things over the next season.

Lord, change my heart to reflect yours.

And maybe you just ask yourself, like, what are some of the attitudes or the mindset that I've allowed to creep into my thinking and into my behavior that have really gone against or done damage to this welcoming spirit that I'm supposed to have towards other people?

And I can give you a couple of ideas here that I've been kind of chewing on for myself and thinking that we probably all wrestle with one or more of these things.

How about political views?

Right?

Political views, I think, have become, you know, made made cause so much division in our country.

Cause so much division in our world.

Right?

Think about some of the relationships that you have with friends or family or or even people at church that are just different now since COVID struck.

And you notice how easy it is, no matter what side of the of the fence you kind of fall on, whether you are, you know, I'm resistant to the vaccine and I don't want to get it, and I'm not gonna get it, and I'm a protester of these things, you know, or you're on the other side of it, and and and you're like early adopter of the vaccine, and maybe even open to mandates, and and you're thinking through all that.

You notice how no matter what side of the ledger you stand on, how easy it is to think that the other side are just complete idiots.

It's funny, and it's it's not it's sad, really.

How it's easy to look at those people and just I have no time for them.

How do you think like this?

How do you behave like this?

And just think of them as like greasy, dirty vermin.

Right?

And maybe we wouldn't say it.

And maybe we don't have a Facebook account where we would post things like that, but in our hearts, it's it's there.

Right?

It's churning, it's swirling, it's that that's how we think of people.

And what does it do?

Well, it just completely upends this welcoming attitude that we're to have, especially to outside people.

Okay, maybe for you it's it's that, or, or perhaps it's just this general overall, you know, me first, me-centric attitude that kind of makes you blind to the needs of other people.

Right?

You're just always thinking about yourself and what you want and what you need, and what am I doing right now, and what am I doing in 10 minutes, and what am I doing tomorrow?

What do I, you know, all of those kinds of things.

Self-centeredness really creates a strong lack of awareness of other people, doesn't it?

How welcoming can we be if we're just thinking about ourselves all the time?

Maybe it's a lack of gratitude to other people, right?

And how God has used certain individuals to really bless you.

Okay, being ungrateful, unthankful makes it nearly impossible to have a genuinely welcoming spirit towards others.

You can see how these kinds of attitudes and these sort of beliefs really erode the foundations of a welcoming approach that you and I are to have towards other people as individuals and as a church.

But of course, we see here that you know God's heart for people.

Actually, it's quite obvious.

And we see it in this text.

And we also see that God's heart changes our hearts.

He changed Peter's, and he wants to change ours as well.

And so what I want to do is I want to pray for that.

I want to pray that the Lord would meet us where we're at and come as we always do, and just bring ourselves before him and lay our hearts before him and invite him to come in and transform and change.

Join me as we pray and then we'll let you go.

Lord, we we just thank you that as we open up our Bibles and look at Acts chapter 10 over the last two weeks, uh, we see something so awesome about you, about your character, about your nature, about your very heart.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

Lord, we openly confess and admit that our hearts are not like that far too often.

God, I pray that we would not instinctively just try harder to be nicer, just try harder to consider what other people are like or where they're at, or try to understand.

We wouldn't just try harder in our flesh.

But Lord, that we would confess our weakness and invite your power, your Holy Spirit to come in and do a work right down into our motives, right down into the very fiber of our souls and transform us there so that how we act, how we behave, how we live would reflect you and be legit, be real, be authentic.

God, would you forgive us for where we've got so wrapped up in ourselves and so focused on our own wants and desires and our own flesh and get our eyes just on the world and on our circumstances and our problems that we forget about you, that we get our eyes off of you, we don't care about or think about who you are and and what you would expect of us.

God, we we know we're not perfect.

We're not trying to crush ourselves over this, rather we're trying to admit it and then invite you to come and help.

So, God, would you do this, Lord?

And would you do this not to make us feel super awesome, Lord, about ourselves.

Okay.

But Lord, would you do it to bring glory to yourself?

Would you do it to mobilize and use our church in the town of Newmarket and beyond?

God, would you do this to your glory?

We pray this all in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, two quick things here before uh we let you go, and that is next Sunday is March 6th.

Significant for a couple of things.

First of all, it's our seventh anniversary as a church, which is pretty amazing.

I think worthy of a clap.

It is.

And so just keep that in mind for next week.

We're gonna celebrate.

We've we made a kind of a decision a long time ago that we're gonna go really go haul out every five years, and so this is you know year seven.

Uh, but it's gonna be a great year or a great day to just celebrate and worship the Lord and thank him for his kindness and his goodness, his faithfulness to us as a church.

And then, of course, the second thing being that uh in the province of Ontario, we know that restrictions are starting to ease.

And so the way that it works is the Ontario government will say, here's what's available, here's what's allowed now.

And then every region kind of takes that and morphs that and changes that to however they want to do it.

And so we announced in the Thursday email, uh, which goes out every Thursday, uh, here's what's gonna be happening next weekend, March 6th.

Well, we've since found out there are a few changes, it sounds like coming down the pipe a little bit.

And so we're still learning about what next Sunday will truly look like, and we'll we'll be sure to communicate that to you through the Thursday email this week, so keep your eye on that.

But know that starting next Sunday, we're not having registrations uh anymore for church.

You can just come uh as you are.

And so if you're looking to register this Sunday evening when they usually um when they usually go live, it's not gonna be there.

You can just come, you can show up.

Uh, but it sounds like we're gonna have to still be mindful of distancing and some of that kind of stuff.

And so we're we're gonna leave that more towards yourself to police.

What could go wrong, right?

And uh really leave that up to you.

And uh and just know that we're we're starting to, you know, we're moving into it finally.

I'm trying not to roll my eyes, trust me, I'm really trying not to.

Uh, we're getting there, people, and we're just gonna have to kind of work with this and uh go with it.

So, again, more details on that coming out uh on Thursday.

But again, really looking forward to uh next weekend with you, celebrating seven years of God's uh faithfulness and looking to hopefully see our world move a little bit more to a sense of normalcy.

Uh, but we praise God for what he is doing.

And uh again, excited to be back with you all.

Have a great uh rest of your Sunday and a great week as well.

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