Acts 10:34-48
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 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 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 be 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 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.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We have been working our way through the book of Acts during this season of Easter, our first reading has been seeing the expansion of the Gospel throughout the world. The thesis statement for the book of Acts is, when Jesus says that to the disciples, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So we see, that happens. Amazing, right? It begins first with the apostles at Pentecost, in Acts chapter two, the Holy Spirit comes on them and they proclaim the message of the gospel, speaking in tongues, of the languages of the people who had been gathered, and the church grows to 3000. That day, 5000 A few days later, when they enter into the temple, and heal a man, we begin to see it expand even more. When Philip the evangelist, who is scattered after the killing of Steven, he goes to Samaria. The apostles follow it up to show that even though Samaritans get the Holy Spirit, and become one of us, X eight, we also see Philip go off to another person who would have normally been excluded from the power of the gospel, the Ethiopian eunuch, someone who wouldn't be allowed to enter into the temple. But someone who had received a promise from Isaiah, many centuries before, who says in Isaiah 56, to the Unix who keep my Sabbath, who choose the things that please me, and hold fast, my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. So this Ethiopian unic now becomes one of the fellowship with an everlasting name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in his baptism. And now, we come to the final barrier. The Gentiles in Acts, chapter 10. Now, we cannot read in this in our church service, the entire story, because it's pretty long. Now, if you went to our Bible study right before this, we actually did read the entire story, but you get to hear it again, like you you. So here, here it goes. Peter is in Joppa, where he begins to believe he gets a vision. This vision is preceded by a man named Cornelius. So Cornelius is praying. And an angel appears to him and says, Cornelius, your prayers and your gifts to the poor go up as a memorial offering before God. I want you to send for a man named Peter, who is living at the house of Simon the tanner in Joppa by the seat. So Cornelius sends a couple of messengers and a soldier to go to Peter. These messengers while they are on the way, Peter is hungry, and he falls into a vision, a trance. In this vision, a cloth drops from the sky, and on it are all sorts of animals clean and unclean. And the voice says, Get up Peter, kill and eat. Peter says no horrid. I have never eaten anything that is unclean. And the voice says do not call unclean what God has called us clean. has happened three times. Each time Peter says no. I would never the vision fades. Peter is wondering what is going on. And all of the sudden messengers show up at his house outside the door crying is this where Peter is staying? He finds out that these are Gentile messengers from a man named Cornelius and he goes down and he talks with them. They say we've been sent by Cornelius a God fearing man that all the Jews like he says Come with us. Peter invites them in. Later, Peter heads out with the men and goes to the house of Cornelius. Now, there are a lot of barriers that would be raised to keep Peter from doing this. The first one is the one that we already have seen. Peter does not want to be unclean. He has a good and faithful Jew doesn't eat anything unclean, doesn't touch anything unclean, and going to the house of a Gentile would definitely make him unclean. This is why the Pharisees and religious leaders would not go into the house of Pilate, when they were telling, asking Pilate to condemn Jesus. So the same thing would be true for Peter. But it would be more than that. It wouldn't just be the uncleanliness. It would also be Cornelius as a Roman soldier. an oppressor is one of the ones who was there to conquer and keep Israel out of its own control. We don't know whether Peter was the nationalist or not. But it certainly would have been on the minds of the the circumcised believers who went with Peter. But sometimes it's even more than that. Maybe this Roman soldier would just be a little weird, right? His food would be different. His home would be a little different. His clothes, his styles, his accent, pretty weird. He might even be hard to understand. It says he's from the Italian regiment, which means he came straight from Rome, probably. The barriers would not just be clean, and unclean, might be cultural, practical, maybe language, all sorts of things that would make it really uncomfortable to cross through and enter this house. And that's what Peter says right before the passage, we read this. Quote, he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation that God has shown me that I should not call any person common, or unclean. So when I was sent for I came without objection, I asked you, I asked then why you sent for me? These barriers were so high and so strong, that Peter needed a vision from God, and a word from the Holy Spirit to say, go tell them the word. Otherwise, he would have said no. That's a big deal, right? Can you imagine saying no to someone who wanted to hear the Word of God. But that's how powerful these barriers were. So what he does, is he travels with these men, he enters into the house of a Gentile in an uncomfortable and difficult situation. And he begins to speak the words that we read. He talks about Jesus, about his work, how he was killed, died on a cross rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and that forgiveness is given to everyone who believes in Him. As it says, To him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him received forgiveness of sins through his name. Peter did it. Put aside his discomfort is cultural barriers, spoke the word of God and watch what happens. The Holy Spirit comes down on these Gentiles and they start to praise God and speak in tongues. Hello, may amazing,
powerful word of God brought the Holy Spirit to them. And now, instead of being foreigners and stray jurors divided by culture and religion. They were brothers and sisters in Christ. How amazing. And it was simply the word of God. Peter spoke the message of Jesus Christ. Jen Gentiles believed they were saved, gathered together as one family. The Word of God still works the same way among us today gathered us. Carl, California is one of those places where people come from all over the country. Right? People come from crazy places like Chicago and remade one. We're gathered from all parts. In fact, it's pretty rare that I meet someone who was actually born and raised here. Right? You came for all sorts of reasons. And yet the Holy Spirit's with the Word of God has bound you together as one, and it works the same way. And it works the same way, with the people who are around us. And through the word of God, the Holy Spirit can make people who are different from us, one with us. It's through this message. Others become our brothers and sisters in Christ. Whether they are from the United States, or Cambodians, or fans, or Chinese, or any part of the world, the message of the gospel brings together people and makes us brothers and sisters in Christ. One of the great things about our church and our denomination that we send missionaries all over the world to make this happen. Our former pastor, Pastor Feder, that's what he does, right? He goes all the way over to Europe to establish Lutheran churches in places where they are not there to build and grow and spread the message of the gospel. And what a wonderful thing it is. And our congregation has a history of sending people on mission trips, all over the world, to share the message of Jesus. But sometimes, the world comes to us. Sometimes you don't need to board a plane and fly to another continent, to share the message of the gospel with people who haven't heard it before. Sometimes they land in our backyards and spend 1000s of dollars to come right to our door. Pretty cool, right? And that has happened here in El Cajon, Afghans, Kurds, and arrows. People from the Middle East have been flocking to our community for a couple of decades. Right? Now, many of them are Chaldeans and they go to their really big church right over there. And their other really big church right over there. Good for them. Well, let's, we don't need to reach them already believers. But there's a whole group of Muslims who have come to our community under the oppression of Islam, because that's what it is, can be freed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the power of God's word, does the same thing with them, that it did with the Gentiles, that it's done throughout history, to gather people together and make us one. For us, it's a challenge because there are a lot of barriers. There is a religious barrier. They believe something different than we do. There are cultural barriers and habits and clothing, and foods and things and just ways of being that are different from us. They are a language barriers. That's a big deal, right? That's huge. When you can't speak the same language. And yet, we know that the power of God through the word Word of God by the Holy Spirit. We can take people who are different from us in all those ways and make them one. God has decided in his infinite wisdom to drop them on our doorsteps. What an amazing opportunity. And the word does it. Now you might say, okay, Pastor, I get it. The Word of God goes out and it does its work. But Peter had some help. Right? There were visions, Cornelius was already primed as a god, fear of follower of God, before he heard the message of Jesus Christ. There was all these cool things that happened that made this take place. That's not happening now. A lot more work. Or is it? There's an article published in 2016, called, where Muslim dreams may lead by a journalist called Ooh, a seaman Neto, he writes about an interesting phenomenon that is happening all over the world. At the time. Muslims are seeing a vision of a figure in white, who calls himself Jesus and tells them to go to church. Kind of cool, right? There's a pastor, Pastor Gottfried Martins, who is the Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Berlin, one of the independent churches in Germany that we are in fellowship, and the article says that he has 600 converts from Iran and Afghanistan making up two thirds of his parish in one of the most secular cities in Germany. And you know what they do when they gather in worship? They it says, quote, they lustily chant 16th and 17th century Lutheran hymns that they have learned in Berlin. Pastor Martin says, former Muslims are particularly attracted to these hymns and our high liturgy because they are established in intimacy with God. They are not known in their previous faith. Another pastor, Pastor Michael Stone avec says, about an experience that he had, quote, I stood at the exit, still vested, bidding worshipers goodbye. When a veiled woman approached me. I fumbled through a slit in my robe for my wallet thinking she was a beggar. No, no. She said, I only have a question. Are you the Imam here? I answered, well, in a way I am. I am the pastor. She went on. In that case, you are the right man. God commanded me in a dream, to go to the big church on the market square and ask the imam for the truth. What continues, I taught her the catechism and baptized her several months later, as I have baptized many other Muslims in my ministry. Maybe just maybe, God is working. He worked there. Maybe he can work the same way in our community. This is happening all over the world. God is calling Muslims to the freedom in Christ, turning away from where they were, to the truth and everlasting life. Perhaps God won't send visions to the Afghans in our community, though I've begun praying that he would. Perhaps all we have to do it as the old fashioned way to open our hearts to them and proclaim the gospel and wait for the Holy Spirit to do its work. But what that means is, it'll be uncomfortable. Right? There will be people who wear different clothes, and eat different foods and speak a different language and don't know anything
about our practices and behaviors and activities might not know the ways of how we're polites or not what you do when a group or not these are big barriers. yours that we may have to deal with as the people who have freedom in Christ to share this amazing message. And it will take time should this happen for us to get used to it? But Isn't it worth it? Isn't the work and the the discomfort worth sharing the message of the gospel with people who so desperately need to hear it? I think so. We will have opportunities in the near future. I think, as the Afghan community begins to grow, continues to grow as the Kurdish community grows, the Arab community continues to grow in our neighborhoods, to build connections with people who are different from us. And the Holy Spirit will be there. Just like he was with Peter and Cornelius, just like he was with Gottfried Martins and Pastor Michael Michael Stone with Eric. Good German names. Holy Spirit will be with us as well. Because God is at work behind his word, gathering people who are different from us into one fan. In Jesus name, Amen. Please stand up
Transcribed by https://otter.ai