Acts - Week 9 (10:30-48)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Well, friends, good morning. It is.

It's so good to be with you. I really mean that it's it's

wonderful to be worshipping with you.

And I was just, you know, there's something fun that

happens when I I have the opportunity to exit my own

thoughts and just worship and certainly able to do that this

morning and in the freedom that God gives us.

It's incredible. It's amazing.

I I can't get into all of that because we'll just be here

forever. But thank you for worshipping

with us. I really mean that.

And it is just a gift to be with all of you.

As we get started this morning, I I wanted to bring up an idea.

Oh, did I lose it? I think I'm OK.

Can you guys hear me in the back?

Yeah. OK.

One second, JT. There it is.

OK. I could have just yelled.

I tend to do that anyway because I get excited, but it's probably

not great for you. Well, anyway, I wanted to bring

up this, this man who I've been kind of thinking about and

researching a little bit. His name is Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And the interesting thing about him, he, he lived in the 1800s

and he was an American philosopher and essayist and

writer and all these kinds of things.

Well, Ralph Waldo Emerson, he wrote this really interesting

essay. Oh, I lost it again.

Wait for it. Hey, there he is.

He wrote this really interesting essay called, Now I've Just Lost

it, self-reliance. Yeah, excellent.

So he wrote that essay called self-reliance.

And I'll tell you what, if you go and read it, it's, it's worth

your time. But I'll tell you one thing for

sure. It's flawed.

It's flawed because in his philosophy, one of the things he

does is he brings forward this very humanistic perspective as

if like we're the real deal, Like we're everything on Earth

that matters. And the other thing that's kind

of flawed about his philosophy, I think, is that he finds that

humans are the deciders of ultimate truth.

Now, I think there's some problems in that, but rather

than get into all that, let me tell you the one thing that I

read in that philosophical essay that I think is really

important, that I think is really spot on.

He says something along these lines.

In order to be truly free, I have to be able to full stop

disagree with my previous self. In order to be truly free, I

have to be able to full stop disagree with my previous self.

Now that previous self could be a month ago, a week ago or two

minutes ago. But I need to have the freedom

to look at my former self and say I was wrong.

And that's real freedom to to be able to not be held back by my

pride in all those things. Now why is this really

important? Let me get to that.

If we are not willing friends to take a hard look at the words

that we choose or the, the lifestyles that we live, or even

the greater culture that we live in, if we're not willing to take

a hard look and criticize those things, ultimately where we end

up is we end up just kind of being a cog in the wheel of our

culture. We, it's so easy to be

influenced by what the rest of the world around us says is true

and right and good and the things that we should prioritize

and do and all those kinds of things.

And when we don't stop and examine that and examine

ourselves and be willing to say, hey, I'm wrong.

Sometimes we just, we become a robot of our culture.

And that's not actually terribly helpful for any of us.

So, and I thought about this too for myself.

Here's the thing, I'm not above like those cultural norms and

I'm certainly not above being influenced by them.

And, and to be honest with you, like confession time of my own

accord, Here's what I would do without, without God just

working in and through me. Here's what I would do.

I would justify all of my bad choices.

I can find a way to do that pretty easily.

I'm smart like that. I'm sure you are too.

But I would justify all my bad decisions and, and quite

honestly, what my priorities would be, how can I find the

greatest comfort for me at the least amount of resistance?

How can I do that? And I think honestly, that's

where a lot of us are. We're like, I need to be

comfortable, I need to be happy. I'm going to prioritize that and

I need the least amount of resistance in order to do those

things. And anything that does get in my

way for those things, I'm going to just kind of like, see you

later, right? But do I have the strength?

Do I have the courage to admit that I'm selfish and I'm wrong

and that me, myself and I is not what's important here?

Do I have the courage to say that?

I don't know. I don't know.

I think with God's help we can have that courage, But outside

of that, probably pretty difficult.

We look at that, we look at ourselves, or at least maybe I'm

just talking about me, and all of you are just fine.

But then on the other side of the coin, there's God.

There's God who's never considered his own comfort, as

in his own happiness, as the primary reason for him to do

anything. No, this is the God who gave up

his only Son, who sacrificed his only Son so that we, the

unrighteous, could become righteous.

That's what he did. Comfortability and happiness was

not in his plan for his son. Now those things aren't bad, but

man what if? What if we could be just a

little bit more like him each day?

What if we could come to the end of ourselves and through what I

would call blessed self forgetfulness, start thinking

about other people and start saying I was wrong.

Imagine what could happen. It would change our communities,

I'm sure of that. Well, anyway, we've been in the

book of Acts now for the summer, and we're going to continue all

summer. And today we arrive in chapter

10. And in chapter 10, we're going

to see this interesting story where the two primary people,

you would say, are Peter the Apostle and a Roman centurion

named Cornelius. Now, the thing about all of this

is that the things that we've already kind of brought up and

talked about today, this story of Cornelius meeting Peter, it's

going to be kind of the maybe the kind of the penultimate

example of these truths that I've already brought up.

And so as we do that, I'd love for you to be able to kind of

see where we're going. And we're going to, we're going

to look at this through the lens of three different things.

We're going to see that good is not good enough, and Cornelius

is going to teach us that. We're going to see that freedom

comes in God's truth, not our own.

We're going to learn that through Peter's experience.

And finally, we're going to see that belief changes everything.

And that goes for all of us. Are you ready?

Yeah. I got some nods.

That's, that's better than the last week because as you know,

I'm going to do it. I'm going to, I'm going to keep

going anyway, So be ready. It's fine.

All right, Well, we're going to read Acts chapter 10 verses 30

Acts 10:30–48

through 48. And we read all these things in

the name of Jesus. And Cornelius said, Four days

ago about this hour, I was praying in my house at the 9th

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

said, Cornelius, your prayers have been heard, and your alms

have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa, and ask

for Simon, who is called Peter. He is lodging in the House of

Simon, a Tanner by the sea. So I sent for you at once, and

you have been kind enough to come.

Now, therefore we are all here in the presence of God, to hear

all that you have been commanded by the Lord.

So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly, I understand that

God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears

him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

As for the word that he sent to Israel preaching good news of

peace through Jesus Christ, He is Lord of all.

You yourselves know what happened throughout all of

Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John

proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy

Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and

healing all who are oppressed by the devil.

For God was with him, and we are witnesses to 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 appear, not to

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

who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.

And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that

He is the one appointed by God to be the Judge of the living

and the dead. To Him, all the prophets bear

witness that everyone who believes in Him receives

forgiveness of sins through His name.

While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit

fell on all those who heard the word.

And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with

Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was

poured out even on the Gentiles, for they were hearing them

speaking in tongues and extolling God.

Then Peter declared, Can anyone withhold water for baptizing

these people who have received the 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. Here ends the reading of God's

Word. I have had, I believe, the good

fortune of being around what I think by most standards are

really good people the majority of my life.

And I say that because as, as I've lived, it has been apparent

to me that the vast majority of people that I've known have

tried very hard to do the right thing in any given circumstance.

Rarely have I met somebody who is just outright looking to harm

somebody. That hasn't happened a lot.

It has happened, but it's it's not super often.

So again, I feel very blessed to be able to say that like, I've

generally been around very good people.

And even as I thought about our congregation here, man, what a

gift. I don't say that lightly.

It is a gift to be able to live with people who are actively

trying to do the right thing. And we don't get it right all

the time. I understand that, but it's

worth the effort. Now, I was doing some research

this week and what I found because I was curious, like,

what makes a person good? Like, how do we, how do we even

grade or judge that? And so I did all sorts of

research and I end up finding this this doctor, this

psychologist. And I actually thought this list

was pretty good because based on everything that I've read like

this, this summed up things pretty well.

So our modern Western idea of a good person looks like this.

You have empathy, you're compassionate, you're kind, you

exercise altruism, which is thinking about others more than

you think about yourself. You have integrity and you have

an inclusive attitude. Those are the things that our

modern Western society says, OK, do these things and you'll be a

good person. Do those things.

Now, what I find interesting about this especially, and we

talked about this recently, we tend to live in a very me first

culture. But if you pay attention to this

list, those things that people say are good, five out of six of

those things have to do with how I treat other people.

Interesting, right? So there seems to be like a

cognitive dissonance here. There's some, there's some logic

that's not hitting because again, in ourselves, it's like,

make me, me, me, me, me happy. I live for that, right?

But at the same time, we consider good people ones who

think about others more than they think about themselves.

Interesting, right? It's almost like there are a lot

of hypocrites in this world. Weird.

I can't believe it. I'm shocked.

I'm shocked. Well, to to get us moving

forward towards Cornelius. Here's the thing.

Cornelius we learned in the text, if you read all of chapter

10, he's a really good person. He really is.

By the standards of his day and even the standards of our own

day some 2000 years later, this is a good guy.

Like you can rely on him. And so let me just give you a

couple of things. We didn't read all this, but

I'll give you a, a short list of the qualifiers that make

Cornelius good. First and foremost, he feared

God and he prayed. That's a great start.

Now, in a, in a very secularized world, we might go, OK, big

deal. But from my perspective, man, he

checks a really important box for me if he's going to be

considered a good guy. He fears God and he prays.

What else? The, the, the text says that

he's upright. That's that Greek word decayos,

which means fair. So get this, Cornelius is what

would be a modern day captain in the military and he's got

control or power over 100 soldiers underneath him.

And so he definitely as a Roman citizen and as a commander of

100 people, he absolutely has the right and the power to do

pretty much whatever he wants in his in his like little part of

the world. He can command them to arrest

people and do whatever. But he didn't do that.

Everybody around him said, no, he's really fair.

And, you know, if you've ever spent any time with little kids,

that's really important because that's not fair.

It's not fair. Oh, yeah, it is.

It is, but anyway, no, he's, he's really fair guy.

He it says the text says that he gave alms.

In other words, what that means is he was very charitable.

So the the downtrodden and the broken and the poor of the

mistreated. Apparently he used his financial

resources to help them. If we could all say that all the

time again, I think we would probably have a little bit

better culture than we do now. But he certainly did that.

He included his family and his friends in the things that he

found really important in life giving.

And we know that because he invited all of them when he knew

Peter was going to come and visit.

And he said this is going to be really good and I want to share

this. Good thing I'm not my faith.

It's personal, but it's not private.

I'm going to share it with you. And that's and that's a really

neat thing. And then finally, he was

incredibly humble again, for a person with this much power in

the position that he has, he's humble.

And we know that because when Peter shows up, he falls to the

ground. He falls to the ground.

Now come on, this is a Roman soldier who could have this guy

locked up for life. And instead of like kind of

lording his power over him, he falls down at his feet.

That's humility and that definitely is a sign of what we

would call a good person. Now, now that I've blown this

guy up and made him look like Superman, let me tell you that

good isn't good enough. How do we know that?

We know that because if good was good enough for God, here's what

would happen. God looks down on on a Cornelius

and he says, oh man, you're really nailing this thing called

life. You're so kind and you're

generous and you're and you're and you're humble.

Keep doing what you're doing and I have little doubt that you're

going to have salvation. You're going to earn your way to

heaven. Good job, buddy.

You keep it up. But God didn't do that, did he?

He didn't do that at all. Instead, he says in some way

you're not complete yet. You need to send for my servant

Peter so he can tell you the whole truth, so that this

goodness that you've been exhibiting can be complete in my

son. That's how that works.

That's how that works. And so we, we have to recognize

that good is just never going to be good enough.

Let me give you a story to prove that point.

There was a college and I actually brought this up in

Bible study a couple weeks ago, but there was a college ethics

class and I can't remember what the college was, so forgive me.

But in this college ethics class, the the professor had his

students go and read the Sermon on the Mount.

You can find that in chapters 5 through 7 of Matthew, the Sermon

on the Mount. I'll give you the short version

version of it, and it's this. Jesus takes the 10 commandments

and he puts them on steroids. It's insane.

So what happens to these college kids is in this ethics class,

they come back after the weekend and they're like, professor,

this is ridiculous. This is insane.

Nobody can live to this standard.

They're right. They're right.

And let me tell you, in Matthew 548, Jesus says, therefore you

must be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect.

How are you doing with that? Yeah, it's not great, is it?

I don't feel good about my chances if if the mark is

perfection. I'm not, I'm.

I'm telling you, man, it's not going to go well for me.

So what do we do? What do we do if the standard is

perfection? Well, the only thing that we can

do is we have to look at somebody who is perfect and that

somebody who is perfect also has to be kind enough and, and

giving enough to say, you know what, like I'm going to impute

my perfectness to you. I don't want credit for being

perfect. Let me give that to you.

That's Jesus Christ. That's exactly what he's done.

He's given us his perfectness because quite frankly, again,

there's just no way. The standard is ridiculous.

God expects perfection. Don't miss that because there is

an entire world of people out there who, who's looking at God,

quote UN quote. And they're saying, well, God

loves everybody all the time, no matter what you do.

So it's great. Go ahead and do whatever you

want. Blank check.

No, God expects perfection, but inside that perfection, He's

also chasing every single one of us.

And there is not a human on the planet that God is not going

after. There isn't 1.

And so in all of this, let me kind of sum this up so we can

keep moving forward in all of this, man, the standard is

lofty. It's ridiculously high.

But if we believe, and it sounds so simple, it sounds like I'm

trying to sell you a bridge somewhere.

If we believe that's enough, that's enough.

So let's keep moving forward and let's, let's look at let's look

at Peter and let's look at this idea of freedom.

Now, despite the fact that Peter spent three plus years walking

and hanging out with Jesus, his, his theology still wasn't quite

there. And that's OK.

I don't, I don't want to beat up on Peter.

Too many people do that from from the stage and and I don't,

I don't love that for him. So we're going to we're going to

give Peter a pass here and say, you know what?

It's OK, we mess up too. And so the relation.

So why is Peter the way he is? Why was this such a big deal for

him to go and see Cornelius? Well, here's the background.

The Jewish people, you know, of Peter's day, and for a long time

before that, they didn't always particularly get a well along

well with their neighbors. Why is that?

Well, Jewish people are monotheistic, meaning that they

love and Revere one God. Everybody around them is

polytheistic, meaning that they have a lot of different gods,

right? So that's a, that's a pretty

important difference. Also, of course, Jews have the

law. They have these very high,

ridiculously high moral standards, and they have pretty

strict food laws too. And so you look at their

neighbors and the neighbors are like, man, my standard of

morality is pretty much whatever I can get away with, right?

And, and some people still live like that.

So I'm only living within the bounds of like, you know what,

what's, you know, our civil society says.

But and I'm even going to push that.

I mean, come on. Like who doesn't go 70 in a 55?

Come on, man, you know, you do, you know, you do.

Now State Farm is tracking me, so I try not to do that.

But that's a whole different topic anyway.

But yeah, so of course, Peter, who grew up in this, in this

culture, in this society where Jewish people look down on

gentiles, that is all non Jewish people, they look down on him.

And they said, you know what? They're really kind of gross.

They're kind of, they're kind of dirty and they eat nasty food.

Like, come on, who eats bacon? That's disgusting, right?

And so like there's all these things that they would look down

on them. And so Peter's a, he's a product

of his culture. And so when God tells him like,

hey, you need to go talk to this guy, Cornelius, he's like, I

don't know about all that because if I go spend time with

him, I'm going to have to eat in his house.

And Lord, I don't eat unclean things.

I am far above that. You know, I am.

And God's like, don't call anything unclean or common that

I have made clean. Don't you dare do that.

Don't you dare use your cultural prejudice to look down on my

people. Don't do that, right?

And so Peter has to Peter has to admit something and, and here's

what he ends up admitting. Peter opened his mouth and said,

truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but in

every nation, everyone who fears him and does what is right is

acceptable to him. Do you know what's happening

here? Do you see that regardless of

socio economic status, regardless of race, regardless

of gosh, pick something under the sun, regardless of all those

things, God is chasing down every single one of us.

And it doesn't matter what I have done in my past and it

doesn't matter what I'm doing today.

God still wants to be in a relationship with me and He

wants a relationship with you. That doesn't change regardless

of what you've done. He is chasing all of us.

All of us are his people. All of us are made in His image.

And there's only one way. And we know that's true because

Jesus quite famously says I am the way in the truth and the

life. No one comes to the Father

except through me. So, so what's what?

What, what can Peter do? He has to, he has to say, you

know what? I was wrong.

Gosh, you went on. How hard must that have been for

Peter? He, he, he goes in this guy's

house and he's probably really uncomfortable and there's bacon

cooking or who knows what he's like, Oh, no, I could never.

And God says, don't you dare, Don't you dare look down on my

people. They are mine as much as you are

mine. Don't you dare.

Now here's the thing. Here's why it's emotionally

taxing to talk about this because we have a history in our

country of doing just that thing, of taking somebody made

in God's image and making them less than God says.

Don't you dare. They're mine and they are worthy

of your love and your respect. I am seeking all of my children

from every nation, from every corner of the earth.

Don't you dare call them unclean.

You probably have a person in your life or two or multiple

that you know and you won't say it out loud because our culture

wouldn't like that. But man, you don't like him and

you think you're better than them.

God has a word for you. Got to check your heart.

Now before I wrap up this point real quick, I do.

I do want to say something because you may have heard me

say something that I didn't say. So I'm going to give you a quote

from New Testament scholar NT, right?

And he's going to clear up any misnomers you may have heard and

what I just said. He says this God has no

favorites. That doesn't mean that God runs

the world as a democracy, or that he simply validates and

accepts everyone's opinion about everything or everyone's chosen

lifestyle. It means that there are no

ethnic, geographical, cultural or moral barriers any longer in

the way of anyone and everyone being offered forgiveness and

new life. This is a message that is far

more powerful than the easygoing, laissez faire

tolerance with which temporary Western society so easily

embraces. Cornelius didn't want God or

Peter to just tolerate him. He wanted to be welcomed,

forgiven, healed and transformed.

And so he was in his belief. I hope that makes sense.

And if it doesn't, we can get coffee sometime.

I'll explain it a little bit further through his belief.

Completely justified. And so let me get to the right

thing here. Make sure I'm there, this

belief, it's a, it can change everything.

And I don't mean to be like overly dramatic when I say that

I'm not trying to get a rise out of you or anything, but it

really does. Your faith in Jesus Christ.

It absolutely changes everything.

And if it's not changing some things in your life, I guess

what I would ask you is to examine a little bit further,

pray a little bit more and see what happens.

God is going to do some good work through you.

Now one of the things that happens here at the towards the

end of this story is that Peter, Peter talks, he opens up his

mouth as the Bible says, and he gives this, he gives this great

kind of overview of what the gospel is.

And he says this. 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 to

him. All the prophets bear witness

that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins

through his name. Preach.

Let it go. Peter, man, my guy, my guy.

Here's the thing. I think it's easy for the

original hearers of what Peter said to catch something that we

don't get in our in our modern culture, right?

It's 2000 years removed. Sometimes we miss things.

But here's the thing. When Peter says that they hung

Jesus on a tree that is going to perk up their ears in a way that

it probably doesn't ours. Let me explain.

For hundreds of years, the kind of worst people in in that

society, what would they do to them?

They're going to publicly execute them in such a way that

they believe that anybody who was hung on a tree was cursed by

the divine. That's why they did that,

because it's not enough just to kill you.

It's not enough just to humiliate you.

We want you to be cursed by God himself, right?

The the Biblical encyclopedia puts it this way.

A curse from the Lord often signifies divine judgment and

withdrawal of his favor and his protection.

So are you hearing what they heard now?

The withdrawal of God's favor and his protection?

Friends, if you're not picking up on this, let me help you out.

Because Jesus Christ as God's only son, man, favored by the

Lord, right? So favored, in fact, that God's

like, hey, why don't you take a vacation to earth?

And so favored, in fact, that he's like, hey, you know what?

These people, they keep messing up, They're worshipping idols.

They're, they're, they're, they're worshipping the created

things rather than the creator. And you know what?

I need that fixed. And you know how I'm going to do

it. Oh, favored one, you're going to

pay for it. See what's happening here?

The favor of God was taken away from His only Son, Jesus Christ.

And where was where did that favor land?

It landed on you and me as we believe.

And this is how belief changes everything.

As we believe we understand that God has given us His total

favor. Gosh, you know what the

implications of that are? That means that we are truly

free because of the creator of all the universe looks at me and

says, I know what you've done. But you know what, I love you

anyway. I you are my favorite child.

I don't I never played favorites with my kids.

I don't think they might tell you different, but man, imagine

being God's favorite. Imagine that if you can put that

into your heart and you can put that into your head, that

changes you and it changes you because it doesn't matter if

people criticize me. It doesn't matter.

Now I can say I'm wrong and I don't need to worry about my

pride because even in being wrong sometimes I know I'm

favored by my God, the creator of the universe.

That Oh my gosh, friends, you put that into your heart.

It will change you. I promise it will.

The other thing he lost God's protection.

My goodness, friends, it's not that just Jesus just lost God's

protection. It's that he took his full wrath

and he took his full judgement. There's a big difference there,

right? So he's beaten and he's scorned

and he's mocked. He's whipped almost to the point

where you can't tell he's a human anymore.

He's pierced and he's put on display.

That's not losing God's protection.

That's somebody's got a a beef with you.

That's somebody who's got a problem with you.

God took up a problem with his Son so that he can make you free

man. Get that in your heart and in

your head. Get that in your heart and your

head that that you have God's favor as you believe in Him.

You, you have God's protection as you believe in him.

And that doesn't mean that everything's going to go just

exactly the way we want it, Man, we feel that we hurt.

We go through hard things. But man, God has protected the

most important thing you have and that is your very soul.

He has protected it on to eternity.

Amen. Friends, I hope you walk out of

here feeling favored, protected and loved because you are all

those things as you believe in Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we are

humbled. We are humbled by your grace and

your mercy towards us, which Lord, I know for me I don't

deserve that. I have done nothing to earn your

favour, yet here you are giving your Son.

Lord, we cannot thank you enough for the gospel.

We can't thank you enough for changing our hearts and our

minds. Lord, help us to admit when

we're wrong. Help us to see people the way

that you see people. Lord, help us to freely give the

gospel to everyone who needs it, that we might speak the truth

about Your love and Your grace and Your mercy towards us.

Use Your Spirit to infect us and change our communities that we

might multiply for the Gospel. Lord, we lift up all these

things to you in the name of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord

and our King. Amen.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

To support the work God is doing and Emmaus Rd.

Church, visit emmausrdonline.org/giving.