Bible Guys Classics: Acts 10 Part 1

Well, today we're going to talk about somebody who may

or may not have been the first gentile convert.

I think he was, but we're not gonna argue about

it today. I'm Jeff, He's Chris, and we're the Daily

Babble guys.

Okay, Chris, Yep, we're gonna We're gonna this for this segment,

we're gonna read this.

It's one of my favorite segments. By the way. We

did this before and I just enjoyed it, but it

felt like I came unprepared this time. You're going down. Okay, okay,

So what is this segment?

Dead jokes?

Dead jokes? Okay? And the goal is to do what

make the other person laugh? Okay, So we're going to

dial in and not laugh. We're gonna do our best

not to laugh. Yes, okay, do you want to start it?

Do you want me to start? You start? Oh, you

want me to start? Okay. I read that by law

you must turn on your headlights when it's raining in Sweden.

But how am I supposed to know when it's raining

in Sweden? Okay, go ahead. I think that's a funny one.

It is funny. You know it's funny. You're trying hard

not to laugh.

A skeleton walks into a bar and says, hey, bartender,

I'll have one beer and a mop.

Okay, a root beer. I'm sure it was a root beer.

Isn't that what all of our kid listeners? Oh yes,

it's definitely okay. How many telemarketers does it take to

change the light bulb? How many? Only one? But he

has to do it while you're eating dinner.

Wow, you're really enjoying these.

That's a funny one.

Okay, what do you call a poor Santa Claus? I

don't know, Saint nicol Less.

I'm not laughing at that one. Okay. So my dog

ate a whole bag of scrabble tiles yesterday. We had

to take them to a vet. We just got a

call this morning and the vet said, no word yet.

It was actually good. I think that's a I think

that's a good place to end.

Is that no good? I think I laughed at everyone

except your your root beer joke?

No, no, no, no, the Nicholas yea, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah that one.

Yeah, that's funny. Okay. So hey, here's the man.

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I've got the giggles. Now I have to be careful

about not laughing too much.

Well, listen, we're going to jump into acts chapter ten.

And so this is the first recorded gentile convert, which

means the person who is non Jewish who actually you know,

becomes a Christian. It's recorded that he is not only

just a Christian, but a strong Christian. Yeah, and has

major influence because he happens to be a Roman army

officer and a captain of the Italian regiment.

Yeah, so this is a big deal. So we're going

to start in Acts, chapter ten, verse one. We're going

to read the first sixty verses or so, and then

we're going to jump a little ways and finish up

the story. So here's what it says. In cesarea there

lived a Roman army officer named Cornelius, who was a

captain of the Italian Regiment. He was a devout, god

fearing man, as was everyone in his household. He gave

generously to the poor and prayed regularly to God. On

one afternoon, about three o'clock, he had a vision in

which he saw an Angel of God coming toward him Cornelius.

The angel said, and Cornelius stared at him in terror.

What is it, sir, he asked the angel. The angel replied,

your prayers and gifts to the poor have been received

by God as an offering. Now send sa Menda Jappa

and some of a man named Simon Peter. He's staying

with Simon, a tanner who lives near the seashore. As

soon as the angel was gone, Cornelius called two of

his household servants and a devout soldier, one of his

personal attendants. He told them what had happened and sent

them off to Joppa. The next day, is Cornelius's messengers

were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat

roof to pray. It was about noon and he was hungry.

But while a I was being prepared, he fell into

a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like

a large sheet was let down by its four corners.

In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles and birds,

And then a voice said to him, get up, Peter,

kill and eat them. No, Lord, Peter declared, I've never

eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared to impure

and unclean. But the voice spoke again, do not call

something unclean if God has made it clean. The same

vision was repeated three times, and then the sheet was

suddenly pulled up to heaven. So then it kind of

goes through a little bit more of that, and then

picks up in verse twenty eight and says Peter told them,

you know, it is against our loss for a Jewish

man to enter a gentile home like this or to

associate with you. So those men that Cornelis had sent

finally come up to Peter. And then Peter's like, you know,

Jews aren't allowed to go in Roman homes. But he says,

but God has shown me that I should no longer

think of anyone as impure or unclean. So I came

without objection as soon as I was sent for. Now

tell me why you sent for me, And Cornelius replied,

four days ago. I was praying in my house about

this time, three o'clock in the afternoon. Suddenly a man

in dazzling clothes was standing in front of me, and

he told me, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and

your gifts to the poor have been noticed by God.

Now send messengers to Jappa some and a man named Simon. Peter.

He's staying in the home of Simon, a tanner who

lives near the seashore. So I sent for you at once,

and it was good of you to come. Now we

are all here waiting before God to hear the message

of the Lord that the Lord has given you. So

we're going to pause there because tomorrow we're going to

finish up the story of Cornelius. But on the front end.

Let's deal with the issues that Peter was struggling with

and that, you know, and let's deal with who Cornelius is.

Tomorrow we'll talk about the salvation and the Holy Spirit

and all those kinds of things. But here Peter really

has to overcome a hurdle. And I think it would

be easy for our listeners to not understand how great

of a hurdle this was. Yeah, without a miraculous intervention.

Yeah, So we sort of talked about that just a

little bit yesterday, and we talked about how the fact

that you know, Peter's ability or inability, whatever he chose

to do to get over his issue, has a direct

connection to you and I sitting right here. The fact

that Peter had a lesson to be learned and God

knew it, and so God sends him a vision. Now,

a lot of us, you know, we may not get

a vision directly from God. But again, these are pretty

supernatural times in the early days of the church, and

Peter was the guy. He was God's, you know, Jesus's

number one messenger moving forward, performing miracles and making a difference.

And so God sends him this unbelievable vision that had

to untrain his thing that he had believed his whole life,

and his whole life, the Jewish custom says, you know, hey,

these animals are unclean. You cannot touch them. And by

the way, that's still true today, isn't it. So people

already know that Jewish people, I mean, it's pretty commonly

well known. People think pigs are an unclean animal and

they won't eat.

Pork because of this, because of Moses' law, right, So you.

Know this this tradition. You know, that's another reason why

we realized the Bible is real. It connects us directly

back two thousand years ago where they were still talking

about the same things. And so Peter hears from God.

And by the way, I think that God's statement is

actually pretty telling for a lot of Christians who believe

certain things, because think about this. If you're a Jewish

person and your religious leaders and your church of the

Synagogue has told you your entire life, God has declared

these things unclean, and all of a sudden, God's sort

of making this announcement, and He's sort of admitting those

things didn't come from me, they came from your religious leaders.

Because don't you dare call anything unclean that I have

called clean. Now, think about what was in front of Peter.

Just normal animals, right, animals, reptiles, words, all sorts of them.

And Peter's like, no, those are in clean. God's like,

who told you they were in clean? Don't call anything

unclean that I have called clean. And so there's so

many lessons to be learned there. Here's the first one.

Number one, It's okay to question your religious leaders, right,

so just just stack it up to the Bible. Don't

ever believe something that I say, or Jeff says, or

a person on television says, or something that you google

and just take it at its word. You have to

question and say, I wonder if this is true. I

wonder if it's true. And you have to be able to,

you know, find out whether or not it's true from

either a trusted friend that you believe, researched it, from

God's word especially, But don't take it as at face

value just because a religious leader says itself.

Yeah, So to be clear, he's saying God is using

the food to teach Peter a lesson about people.

Yes, yes, so the food.

Had been declared unclean in the Book of Leviticus, and

in the Book of Deuteronomy, God had listed don't eat

these reptiles, don't eat these kind of birds, don't eat

the heat. There's a whole list of stuff they're not

allowed to eat, and so they would view that as unclean. Well,

then what had happened was they had built up these

rules about, you know, the gentiles. Then all the gentiles

would be unclean as well, and so they wouldn't fellowship

with them, they wouldn't go into their homes, they wouldn't

do any of that kind of stuff. Well, God had

just said, be careful, don't intermingle in marriage with the

people from other lands or other nations. But the religious

rules had gone from you know, man, we don't touch

these kinds of foods. We don't do these kinds of

behaviors too, we don't even go around these kind of people.

We won't even let them touch us or be near them.

And they had taken a rule for purity, and they

had pushed it all the way into how they were

dealing with other human beings. And God says, no, you know,

let me do this. So God is suspended the rules

about these foods with Peter that they had been previous rules,

but suspending them now, in my mind, I was just

of the human connection.

Yes, in my mind, I was referring to all the

rules that the Pharisees had made up to not come

close to breaking the rules.

That's right. They made rules in order to keep the rules,

in order to keep the rules.

That's right. That's right. So and so I remember one

of my favorite speakers, Annie Stanley, talked exactly about this,

and he talked about guardrails, and he said, if you

think about it, you're driving along, you know, the shoulder

of the road, there's like a there's a yellow line,

then there's the shoulder, he says, and then there's a

guard rail, right that was supposed to keep you from

going over the cliff. Right. And he was talking about

how it's okay to have healthy guardrails. But the Pharisees

were the ones who put like three guardrails up, right,

And they're the ones that said, you know, there's all

these different rules. And so by the time it had

you know, been passed down from Deuteronomy and gotten too Peter,

you know, Peter had been you know, taught was under

the culture of rules upon rules upon rules upon rules,

is what I was thinking when I send that.

And it would be an agonizing experience for a Jewish

Man to be considered unclean, because he's lived his whole

life clean, right, and so for him to be unclean

would be a devastating social and emotional experience for him

that he'd never experienced.

Before, which we don't ever think about.

Yeah, I don't know that there's any there, there's I

don't think there's hardly an equivalent for us right now,

you know, in our in our culture to deal with

on this level. But just understand, this is an agonizing

moment for Peter, and he's trying to honor God, and

God goes, you're dishonoring me by not reaching out to

you know, by by by dismissing other people groups, and

then God choose to use a guy like Cornelius. Cornelius

is unique. He's a he's a Roman. Is he a centurion?

Is that that he's a Roman office? It's just this

captain of the guard, well the Greek the Greek word

there in the note as the centurion. So so this

would have meant that he was in charge of a

hundred soldiers, give or take right, That's what centurion century.

That's that's what it would mean, is that he was

the head of a hundred soldiers. He probably was getting

ready to you know, these leaders would be on rotation

and maybe he was heading home or at some point

he's going to go back to Rome. Probably, So it's

very strategic that we get the gospel. We see the

Gospel going to him. But the Bible says that he

was he was the leader of an occupying army. But

the people loved him. This is this is a unique thing.

He was a devout man. He lived a good life,

he was generous, he prayed, he feared God, and so

even though he was an occupying leader that the people

had a lot of respect for this guy. He was

an upstanding kind of a guy, and the Jewish people would,

uh would respect him. I think what's really cool is

he got conquered by Jesus here in just a just

another couple of minutes, but uh, another couple verses. But

he is praying, and the fact that he's a good guy,

the fact that he's being generous, the fact that he

prays does not automatically mean he's right with God. It

just means he has an open heart. He's a spiritual seeker,

and so God says, Okay, I'm going to send Peter

to you. You're open to the gospel. Maybe he's one

of the very first significant gentiles that's open to Jesus

in this moment, or open to the gospel. And so

he sends Peter. But at the same time that Peter

has this vision three o'clock in the afternoon, Cornelius is

having a vision at three o'clock in the afternoon saying,

you guys need to meet. That's what this was. That's

only Peter didn't know that he was supposed to go

meet Cornelius. Peter just is having the walls torn down

in his life about things that he thinks is unclean,

and God is saying, hey, Cornelie sends some people to

go get Peter. And it's at the same time God

is making these two things happen, and neither one of

them know that God's doing it. In the other it's

pretty cool.

Yeah, it's very cool, and uh, you know, it's it's

also interesting how Peter immediately responds to Cornelius, and because

I'm sure it was strange. Another thing that we can't

wrap our minds around is that when somebody liked Peter,

especially he's the guy in the Jewish faith walks in

through the home of Cornelius. The verses that we skipped

says that for Cornelius actually fell down to worship Peter.

So so Carnaius doesn't have a lot of education as

to how to respond. Right, and then and so Peter,

Peter immediately addresses the fact that this.

Is odd for a Roman to bow down to a Jew.

Oh, my goodness, extraordinary, culture, extraordinary. And then and so

Peter says, stand up, I'm just a man like you.

And then he says, hey, let's address the elephant.

Which I say most of the time to you, right, Hey,

don't worry about it.

I'm just a man like you, to which I would

say I already know that.

But but the.

But but then Peter then and says, hey, let's address

the elephant in the room. Is it is not normal

for me to for any Jewish person to step into

a gentile's home.

He was clearly still uncomfortable about it.

Yes, I think that everybody was, which is something again

we can't wrap our minds around. But he's saying, but

God has taught me, you know, because just this idea that,

like the Gospel is for everybody. And so again I

think that's why it has a direct connection to you

and me and our listeners listening, because Peter's ability to

you know, just get over that. So here's another thing

I was thinking as well. I was thinking, like, you know,

God has made something pretty clear to Peter. You know,

he did it three times, right, and yet Peter's going

to continue to struggle. He gets challenged by Paul later on,

and and it's just really hard for him to you know,

just untrain his mind. So what things in our lives

has God made clear that we still want to argue about.

There are things in our lives that God has just

made clear. And I remember, for instance, I remember when

I was young and I just became a Christian, and

you know, everybody in my town at my age, you know,

being fifteen, sixteen years old, when they went out with

a girl, boys wanted one thing, and that was my

goal too. That's what I was trying to do until

I realized that God's words said that that's not what

you should do. And I remember thinking to myself, I

heard it, and here's how I heard it. My girlfriend

broke up with me, and she started dating a kid

from that youth group, and we were pretty new to

this youth group. Then we got back together and my

question to her was, so did you guys kiss? What

did you guys do? And she says, oh, he doesn't

believe in any of that stuff. He believes that all

that stuff's reserved for marriage, and that God's word says

you know, X.

Y and Z.

And I remember laughing and going, what a loser haha,

And then it hit me, I go, wait, does the

Bible say that? And I was angry. And I remember

going to my youth pastor. We were on a bus

on the way to Cedar Point, and I remember walking

up to the front of the bus and his name

was Jim Wolfke. We called him Wolf and I said, Wolf,

does the Bible say those things are reserved for marriage?

And he said yeah. And I was like, I am

so angry. I am so angry. But once I heard it,

I couldn't unhear it right right and and then and

I believed it. And I found out later that that's

what it says, sure, And that's very uncommon thought. By

the way, that's a very uncommon thing for people to

accept today, and they just they want to customize and.

Ignore that, right, Right, So.

What are some of the things and it's a perfect example.

What are some things that you know are really clear

from God that you want to argue about.

Yeah, I think that that's fair. Whatever, our favorite thing

is that we don't want God to be messing with

That's what we want to argue with him about.

Right.

So he loved his tradition, he loved his rules, and

it kind of gave him some comfortability because he's living

inside this box that he's come with and he doesn't

wanted to mess with it. The other part of it

is it becomes so ingrained. These biases, these racial biases

are so deeply ingrained because of their religious system. Right.

And so I think that where we all all humanity

naturally moves towards certain biases. And you know, there's a

big conversation right now about racism and things in our culture,

and I think it's important for us to have these conversations.

I just think that Christians need to be very careful

about getting sucked into the world's words and trying to

figure out how to use the world's definitions of things

as opposed to just looking at scripture, God says, hey, listen, everybody,

that the ground is level at the cross. You're all

equal in my eyes, treat each other in equal ways. Right,

So he had to overcome his normal biases. As a

matter of fact, The Notes and the Life Application Bible

for verses fifteen sixteen says steeped in Jewish tradition and

filled with certain biases, Peter was convinced his views on

gentiles were correct. It took a three part vision from

God that change Peter's mind. One of the most basic

and practical lessons from this encounter is that when God speaks,

we must not challenge what he says. Doubting God is

the rebellion of Eden. When God says something is so,

we must not debate with him. The right response is

humble submission to his revealed truth. Are you trying to

argue with God over some point that He's already made

clear which goes along with what you were saying? Yeah,

And I think it's when it comes to racial issues

like this, it's so important for us to go God,

if you love them, I have to love them. It's

not about race now, it's about human dignity. The fact

that God is the one who has loved them, and

God loves us, and God wants us to be brothers

and sisters in Christ. And so we should extend the

same value to those other peoples and those other cultures

that God does. And this is what Peter does, even

though it's uncomfortable for him. He steps out of his

comfort zone. He's in a cultural environment that is totally

foreign to him, and he's willing to do it. And

if Peter's willing to do it, it changed the world. Shouldn't

we also be willing to step out of our comfort zone,

out of our normal cultural environments and norms, and be

willing to make friends with and engage with people that

are socially and racially and economically different from us, because

if we will, as Christians, we have potentially changing their world,

changing the world around us.

Yeah, and that's a that's a very fair application. Because

Gentiles were viewed as like like a different.

Race sometimes depending on what group of gentiles you're talking about.

The Jews didn't have another word for them other than dog,

right right right? Yeah?

And you know we know that Samaritans, you know, they

would walk around Samaria. Gentiles were dogs. I mean they

were unclean, and so yeah, for for that application to

come out of that is a very fair application because

you know, to cross the boundaries and to realize, you know,

everything you just said is pretty important. Well listen, it's

it's we're right at time. So I would just say,

you know, all those things that we that we've talked

about today comes down to Peter's response, which is his

willingness to hear from God and say, you know what,

maybe it's time to unlearn so many things that I've

held to be true because God says this.

Up to this point, Peter heard from God and he

was willing to walk through the door. Right, So maybe

that's all guys, asking you to do, is what is

to be willing to walk through the door. Tomorrow, we're

going to finish up the story and talk about the

result and what really happens, and this is going to

be really powerful and Cornelius's life and thank god it

happened because I mean you're Italian, that's right. Yeah, So hey,

they spice, they.

Meet the ball. We'll see you next time on the

Daily Bible.

Guys,