Pastor Steve Cooley Sermon

Bethlehem Bible Church

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But this week, before Brian texted me,

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I received a friend request. And you know, you get a lot of bogus requests if you have a

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Facebook account. You get bogus requests from, you know, all these single five -star generals and, you know, different...

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I mean, it's really weird. And usually, you know, it's just delete or block and delete or whatever.

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But this one, this one was different because we had many friends in common.

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I think it was like 70 some odd friends in common. And one of them, if you can believe it, has a doctorate in theology, right?

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He's a good friend of mine. And I thought, well, this guy's got to be safe. No problem.

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So I accept. Little problem though. He already had 5 ,000 friends.

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I've never had anywhere close to... I don't want 5 ,000 friends, if I could be honest. He already had 5 ,000 friends.

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So I sent him a message. I said, hey, sorry, you know, you've already got 5 ,000. You're maxed out. That's it. And he said, not a problem.

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I'll make room for you. Hey, I'm special. The Tuesday guy.

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Big score. Then he asked me, he said, would you be willing to subscribe to my

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YouTube channel? He goes, we talk about a lot of things that are really, you know, spicy.

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I'm like, what is it? Is this Mike? Does he have an account? You know, is this NoCo Radio or something? He has a lot of things that no one is willing to talk about.

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Interest peaked. So I looked at, you know, some of the screenshots he was sending me of the channel.

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Said things like, Christianity walked away from scripture in 80

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AD. Interesting. Provocative.

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Eye -opening. I said, okay, self, this looks like trouble.

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On the other hand, I could unsubscribe and how bad could it be, right?

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He said that the Romans, which by that I thought he meant

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Roman Catholicism, had hijacked and corrupted the biblical truth or the biblical faith.

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And that the Bible, Christianity, was and is to be, listen,

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Hebrew. And I thought, okay, this could be really dangerous.

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So I thought, well, maybe I'll just ask a question. And, you know, keeping in context where we are in scripture,

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I said, so are we to keep the dietary laws, right? I mean, I learn things as I'm reading, right?

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I'm like, it seems like dietary laws should be right out. And he said, we are to keep them.

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And he said, you know, 700 ,000 people, 700 ,000 Americans every year die from heart attacks.

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And he goes, a leading contributor is the consumption of pork. And I thought, dude,

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I'm not giving up bacon. Can I get some amens?

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Yeah, sure. But here's where it really got twisted.

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He said that everyone from Adam to the Messiah to Revelation, by which I took him to mean that everybody in scripture, everybody who was obedient, of course, now if you know anything about the

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Bible, you have to think, okay, was Adam obedient? Did Adam have dietary laws other than don't eat from the tree, right?

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I mean, that was it. He could eat all the bacon he wanted. Okay, we don't have any. I'm making that, well, there might have been a bacon tree.

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You never know. But he said, we're not to eat pork and we're to keep the dietary laws.

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And I said, you know, I'm in Acts 10 and 11 right now. And I don't think Peter would agree with you.

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I actually said that, you know, given his vision. So he says, well, that vision is a parable.

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And it's just talking about, you know, the wideness of the need for the gospel and that, you know, now

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Gentiles can be saved too. And there's truth to that. But I said, you know what,

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I'm not going to be subscribing to your YouTube channel. So listen, in all humility, he responded to me and he said, okay, you can't say you weren't told on a silver platter.

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I don't know. You know, that sounds like a hashing of metaphors. But he says, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes answering to the

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Father. So I said, well, do you believe in the

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Trinity? I mean, I'm looking for anything, you know, positive. And he says, no. And then

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I said, well, what about, you know, do you believe our personal obedience is necessary for us to get into heaven?

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Do we have to obey the law, in other words, to get into heaven? He said, of course, yes.

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So at that point, we exchanged very courteous anathemas. And there's nothing quite like, you know, well, you know, you're cursed and on your way to hell, have a nice day.

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So it was a little nicer than that, but only slightly nicer, you know. But my momentary friend had one thing right.

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Acts 10 and 11 do teach the Gentiles were to be incorporated into the church.

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But it was not by first becoming Jews, by submitting to dietary laws, by subjecting themselves to Old Testament laws.

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It was by the grace of God alone. Let's turn to Acts chapter 11, Acts chapter 11.

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And we'll conclude what really is kind of has been like a three part series.

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Let me read our text beginning in verse one of Acts chapter 11. Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout

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Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when

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

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But Peter began and explained it to them in order. I was in the city of Joppa praying and in a trance

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I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners.

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And it came to me. And when it came down to me, looking at it closely,

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I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, rise,

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Peter, kill and eat. But I said, by no means,

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Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth. But the voice answered a second time from heaven.

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What God has made clean, do not call common. This happened three times and all was drawn up again into heaven.

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

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And the spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man's house.

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And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, send to Joppa and bring

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Simon, who is called Peter. He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.

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As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as on us at the beginning.

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And I remember the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with fire, but you will be baptized with the

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Holy Spirit. If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? When they heard these things, they fell silent and they glorified

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God saying, then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.

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Now Acts is Luke, the physician's account of the early church.

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He's working his way through the early years of the church. Now it's important, and as we go not through just through today's message, but all of these,

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I was reading, for example, that it may be as many as 10 years from this point until the council in Jerusalem, just a few chapters down the road.

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So it's not like a daily log of everything, you know, captain's log.

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It's nothing like that. I mean, if you think about it, if you read a book about the Civil War, there are whole months or years that might, well, maybe not years, but there are months that might be skipped over.

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Why? Because nothing's happening. Nothing of significance. So Luke is choosing the elements of church history that he wants to emphasize.

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And the previous two messages in this, the longest narrative in Acts, and by the way, some people say it's the longest narrative in Acts.

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Why? Because Luke being not just a physician, but also a

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Gentile, this is very important to him. This is how the gospel comes to the Gentiles.

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This is kind of, if you can think about it this way, when Luke thinks about his own salvation, he says,

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I wouldn't be saved if it wasn't for this. So he talks about it rather extensively. But in the previous two messages, we saw that God sovereignly brought together the apostle

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Peter and a centurion named Cornelius, a Roman soldier named

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Cornelius, a Gentile. Two men who had no reason whatsoever to come together, except God brought them together.

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And God brought them together so that Cornelius, a man of faith, a man who believed in the

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God of the Old Testament, might come to know Christ. Because Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation.

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Being faithful to Old Testament laws doesn't cut it. The Holy Spirit brought these two men together for three purposes.

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One, the glory of the triune God. Two, the salvation of Gentiles he had elected before the foundation of the world.

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And three, that the church might understand and fulfill the full scope of the command

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Jesus had charged her with, to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Not to the ends of Israel, but to the ends of the earth and to all people groups.

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They didn't get that in the beginning. So this morning I've broken this passage, if we just kind of think about it as a bit of a legal drama.

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I've broken this into, sorry, three acts. Three acts.

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First act, the church's accusation. Second act, Peter's account or Peter's defense.

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And third, the church's acceptance, or we could call it the church's acquittal.

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They're no longer accusing Peter, but they're believing what he says. This passage teaches far more than the simple truth that ethnicity is no barrier to membership in the body of Christ.

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But it does teach that. It also teaches more than just about the sovereignty of God and salvation.

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But it does teach that as well. It also teaches us about the nature of saving faith, about the nature of repentance, and the nature of eternal life.

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So first, first act, the church's accusation. I mean, you know, in any kind of drama, any kind of play, you've got to have what?

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Some sort of crisis, some sort of problem. So we have this, the church's accusation.

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First, there are rumors, words gotten to Jerusalem. Look at verse one.

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Some scholars, again, this is a little bit speculative, but given the nature of how

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Luke writes, there's no reason to really doubt this, that it took Peter some time, maybe not years, but certainly weeks maybe, to get to Jerusalem.

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He's in no particular hurry. And in the meantime, you could just imagine what's going on.

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That from synagogue to synagogue, as people traveled around or whatever, word of Peter going to this centurion's house, preaching the gospel and having

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Gentiles get saved, that gets around, that gets buzz. It was unprecedented.

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And the question comes about, why would Peter do such a thing? Has Peter erred or erred?

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Has he stumbled? Is this old Peter falling down again?

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Get behind me, Satan, as I read earlier in Mark. What possible reason would there be for Gentiles to come to faith in Christ?

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This was a Jewish religion. The truth had come to the

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Jews. But the fact of the gospel, believing in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, that's what's meant by this term, receiving the word of God.

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Not just the Bible, but the truths about Jesus. So there are these rumors going around.

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And here's the charge in verses 2 and 3. Basically, they accuse Peter of being unclean.

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So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying,

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You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.

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I like this understatement from commentator Waters. He says, Not everyone is enthusiastic about Gentiles entering the church on precisely the same terms as Jews.

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Not everybody's excited about having these uncircumcised Philistines, as it were, entering the church.

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We've got hundreds, thousands of years of animosity between Jew and Gentile.

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And you mean to tell me you're just going to let them into the church? You went to them, you ate with them.

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What is wrong with you? Now, that's not the whole church accusing

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Peter, but it is a group of some size that complains. So even the church in Jerusalem had members with the spiritual gift of disputing, of complaining, of accusing.

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I don't think you'll find that listed among the spiritual gifts, but some people.

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And I think it's interesting the way he phrases it here. Now, we don't know this, but I don't think it's crazy just in the way that Luke has written this to think that there might have been some apostles wondering, were they part of this party of this circumcision?

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We don't know, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. Now, if you think about it, what might they have asked?

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You know, you've heard this story and you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. So why not ask something like this?

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That kind of thing. But immediately, they're on the skeptical side. They should be interested in hearing what

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God did, right? In saving people. I mean, don't you just think to yourself, when you hear about somebody getting saved, do you think, man,

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I am grateful that God saves sinners? Or do you think, I don't know, did you guys have, you know, anything good to eat?

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I mean, who would even think like that, right? They're more concerned with Peter's alleged failings.

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The details. Not the deeds of God, but the details. They're indifferent to the most important thing that can happen in life, which is the salvation of souls.

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The charge is plain. Peter had not just traveled to the home of a Gentile, an uncircumcised non -Jew, but he had eaten with the occupants of the home.

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There's very little chance that the food he ate was kosher. Therefore, he was defiled.

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He was unclean. He needed to be outside the city somewhere, going through the rituals of purification, not coming into Jerusalem.

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How could Peter have failed on something so basic? I mean, he even baptized them.

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Did you at least have the courtesy to circumcise them before you baptized them? Ultimately, is

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God—here's the question—ultimately, is God able, as Longenecker said, to bring a

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Gentile directly into relationship with himself through Jesus Christ, listen, apart from any prior commitment to Jewish beliefs or lifestyle?

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In other words, did somebody have to become a Jew before they could become a

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Christian? Is Christianity inherently a Jewish religion?

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To them, what Peter did just seemed wrong. It's almost inexplicable. Not even

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Peter, the leader of the apostles, should be allowed to ignore the accepted way of salvation.

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There was one way to Christ, and that was through the law.

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Obedience to the law. So that's first, the church's allegation. Now Peter's account.

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We have the crisis, and now we have the answer to the crisis.

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First notice that Peter's account is very orderly. He doesn't—I mean, it's interesting to me because today, if somebody launches an attack or makes an accusation against a church leader, so often the response is what?

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Touch not the Lord's anointed. Well, Peter was the Lord's anointed. He was really, you know, upon this rock

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I will build my church. He was really kind of the preeminent Christian of his time.

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But he doesn't berate anyone. Instead, he just gives an explanation.

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Look at verse 4. But Peter began and explained it to them in order. Now, he cuts out a lot of details.

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You don't read Cornelius's name or Cornelius's position or that Peter was staying with Simon the

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Tanner and that there was a lot of water, you know, all those kind of things. You don't get any of that. But he gives them the basics, and he does it from his own perspective, right?

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He's not talking about Cornelius a lot. He's just saying, this is what happened to me. This is what

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I saw. This is what I observed. So first, we have the vision in verses 5 and 6.

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I was in the city of Joppa praying. Doesn't say that he's hungry.

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He doesn't give—like I said, he leaves out a lot of details. And in a trance, I saw a vision.

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Something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners. And it came down to me.

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Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. Now, we remember this.

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But now just imagine you're one of the accusers. You're part of the party of the circumcision.

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You're thinking that this is not right, that he shouldn't have done this. And he says he's got this vision.

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Well, maybe he had some bad falafel. You ever had bad falafel? I did.

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I was in Israel, and I ate some falafel, and it made me feel awful. But—yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Moving on. But they would know the party of the circumcision.

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If you're sitting there and you're listening, you'd be thinking, well, wait a minute. That description of animals. Some of those animals are unclean.

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There's a problem here with this vision. Yeah, there's a problem, except, contra what they might have thought initially, the source of this vision isn't

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Peter's bad dietary habits. It's God. Look at verse 7.

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And I heard a voice saying to me, rise, Peter, kill, and eat. But I said, by no means,

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Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.

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Well, that's what they would be thinking. Right? Now you're talking, Peter. But notice verse 7 again.

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I heard a voice saying to me. What's the source of that voice?

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Peter addresses it right away. He says, by no means, Lord. He knows that it's a heavenly source.

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And then he states, as I said, the complaint that they would make, which is,

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I've never done anything like that. I'm not going to defile myself. Now, a vision including unclean animals.

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Peter complaining about it in the same way they would be complaining about it. What could it possibly mean?

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And he concludes this talk about the vision. He says this, the conclusion of verses 9 and 10.

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But the voice answered a second time from heaven. Listen.

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What God has made clean, do not call common. This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven.

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The repetition of the idea of heaven, heaven, heaven. What does that mean? It means this is from God.

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And Peter himself avoids using the term God. Why? Because Hebrews don't talk about God.

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They would talk about heaven. So he's saying, this is from God, this is from God, this is from God.

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And then he quotes God saying, what God has made clean, do not call common.

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Now, to call something common, when dictionary defines it this way, means to consider or declare something ritually unclean.

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In other words, God has declared all of these animals clean.

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They are fit for your consumption, including, may I say, bacon. Do not, do not take what

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God has said is clean and declare it to be unclean.

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A command from God to stop doing exactly what Peter or what they thought, the party of the circumcision, thought

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Peter should do, right? This is good and right to reject these unclean animals and to reject unclean things and to reject unclean people.

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That's the issue. You have the right to reject unclean food, they thought, but bigger picture, unclean people.

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Even the most ardent legalist would recognize that God is changing something.

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God is changing the relationship between Jew and Gentile. As I said before, weeks ago, if you look at Ephesians 2, there is an antipathy and animosity and enmity between Jew and Gentile.

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What's the resolution of that enmity? It is Christ. In Christ, we are all one.

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Galatians, neither Jew nor Gentile, we are all one in Christ.

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This is the very first teaching of this. Now look at Cornelius' group as they arrive here in verse 11.

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And behold, at that very moment, three men arrived. In other words, right as the vision is over.

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

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And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. Now, one thing should be very clear to everyone, the party of the circumcision, everybody listening, that this was not something that Peter sinned in or that Peter randomly decided to do, which, you know, given his history, it's good to have that just off the table.

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This vision was from God and the instruction about food was from God and the instruction to go see

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Cornelius, to go preach the gospel to Gentiles, was from God. He was to make no distinction, which meant do it without hesitation.

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All given to him by the Holy Spirit. Again, just driving home the fact that this is all of God.

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This is God's sovereignty in action. Now, moving on to Caesarea in the second part of verse 12.

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These six brothers also accompany me. And we entered the man's house. And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say,

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Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter. He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.

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Now, I think as we read that, as we listen to it, we can just sort of picture this, you know,

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Peter up in front of a large group of the church, right? And he says, these six men right here, these are the guys who went with me to Caesarea.

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They came with me from Joppa. They went down with me to Caesarea. Why is that important?

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I said it a few weeks ago, but now we really see these guys are witnesses. Now, if you think about what does the

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Old Testament teach? That any fact must be affirmed by how many witnesses? Two or three.

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So what's the significance of six? Well, if you had three, that would be good.

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But if you got six, that's twice as many as is required. You know, if it's two or three and you got six, you got either two or three times as many as you need, right?

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These men are kind of the seal of the deal. He's got twice as many witnesses as he would need.

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Now, it's believed generally that there was a lot of tension during this time period.

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I mean, this is no news. I mean, this happened a lot, that there was tension between Rome, Empire of Rome.

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Basically, they think that Caligula was the emperor during this time. Tension between Rome and the

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Jews. Caligula maybe wanted to put a statue in the temple kind of thing.

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So it's no surprise that Peter doesn't kind of muddy the water.

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What God has done by bringing in Cornelius the Centurion. Why? Because they'd be thinking, okay, it's one thing to preach the gospel to Gentiles.

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But does it have to be a soldier of the Roman Empire? Do you have to kind of do that whole thing? So it's just like he's just leaving out the politics.

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He's leaving out the secondary matters. And he's getting to the heart of this, which is

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God has saved Gentile sinners. And this really is the fulfillment of what

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Peter prophesied on Pentecost. And you say, well, how's that?

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Listen to Acts 2, 38 and 39. And Peter said to them, to this massive crowd, if you recall, and they come to him and they say, what must we do to be saved?

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And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, which means on account of the forgiveness of sins, because you've been forgiven of your sins.

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And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Verse 39, for the promise is for you, the

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Jewish people that are present there, and for your children, and listen, and for all who are far off.

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Who would that be? Well, for example, people in Caesarea, they would be considered far off.

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People who are far off spiritually, Gentiles. And listen to the rest of 39.

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Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. Not every

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Jew whom the Lord our God calls to himself, but everyone. Now we get the full sense of it.

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These Gentiles were in a far off place, and they were kind of a first fruits of those who were far off.

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Were they called by the Lord? Absolutely. He sent Peter to them so that they might hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Cornelius couldn't get into heaven, given that he was post

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Jesus. Just by believing in the God of the Old Testament, he had to know about his

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Savior. And we also had, and this is

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Peter's brief recounting of the Gentile Pentecost, of the Holy Spirit coming upon the

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Gentiles. Verse 15, as I began to speak, the

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Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remember the word of the

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Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the

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Holy Spirit. If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? Well, what's at the beginning?

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Beginning of the church, at the beginning of this ministry, as it were, day of Pentecost.

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And in Acts 1 .5, we see really the beginning of all this and the words of Jesus where he says, for John, speaking of John the

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Baptist, baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.

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What happened when they believed? What happened when they believed was they received the

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Holy Spirit. Signified famously by what? Speaking in languages that were recognizable, but that they had never studied and that they could not know.

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So that others who were watching were amazed because these rubes from Galilee were all of a sudden speaking these languages.

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And they believed, the Gentiles believed, and received the Holy Spirit, what? In the same way, signified by speaking in known languages that they had not learned.

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In this case, if you recall back to Caesarea, it was the six witnesses, the

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Jewish witnesses who were amazed watching these Gentiles go through the same thing that the

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Jewish believers had on Pentecost. They got the same gift.

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They had the Holy Spirit manifest himself in the same way. So, I mean, we could summarize it this way.

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If Peter had said, brothers, in light of all that God told me, all that he commanded me, and all that he did, and in light of what

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I saw and these other witnesses saw and heard, what else could I conclude other than God wants

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Gentiles in his church? And I'm not going to defy

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God, my Savior. I'm not going to do that. And he says, essentially, who am

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I? Meaning, God said it. I believe it.

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That's it. There's no argument. So we've seen the church's accusation,

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Peter's account, and now the church's acceptance. First notice that his accusers are silenced.

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Verse 18, when they heard these things, they fell silent. What happens when every objection, every question has been answered?

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You ever had that happen? You know, maybe your teenage child, for example, comes to you and starts complaining, and you listen to their complaints because you're a very patient parent.

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And then you say, you refute all their objections, and then what do you do? Or maybe it's an employee at work, you know, who starts with objections, and you refute them all one by one.

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And then what do you do? There's kind of like almost you want to just sort of fold your arms and just kind of look at them and go, yeah.

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You silence. Because every objection they had really were the objections that Peter had in the beginning.

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When he's even praying and he gets his vision, he says, I've never done this. And they were like, Peter, you ought not have done that.

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And they're like, oh, okay. All right then. Silence.

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And then they praise. Look at verse 18 again, the second half of it. And they glorified God. That's what it means.

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They praised Him. They thought to themselves, okay, now we get it.

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This is good and right. And we're thrilled that God has saved people.

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Look at what they say there. Saying, then to the Gentiles also God has granted repents that leads to life.

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The church universal must include Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles.

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Now, I'm not Jewish. I'm not Samaritan. Most of us here are not

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Jewish or Samaritan. Most of us don't even know what Samaritans are.

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So the good news is we're now included.

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The gospel is first sent to Jerusalem, then to Samaria, and now in Caesarea with the

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Gentiles. Now, just a couple of questions.

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First, we have to ask, what is repentance? What is repentance? Well, first notice that it is

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God granted. It says so right in the text. God has granted repentance. And you say to yourself, well, isn't it a command?

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Doesn't the Bible command repentance? And the answer is yes. Mark 1, 14 and 15.

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Just one example. Now, after John was arrested, John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.

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Listen, and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.

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So yeah, it's a command. Can anyone fail to repent and still go to heaven?

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No. But I would put it this way, that repentance,

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God granted repentance, is like a switch. Once it's turned on, it stays on.

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Our lives, one man said, you know, basically as Christians, consist of repentance. Why? Because it's like the apostle said.

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I believe. Help what? My unbelief. I repent, help my lack of repentance.

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Help my repentance be genuine. Help it be like it should be. But no one can repent of themselves.

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No one has the capacity. To repent is to have a change of mind about Christ and about ourselves.

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About our relationship to God. And that's impossible without a work of God.

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Jesus to Nicodemus, you must be born again. Why? Because it's a work of the sovereign

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Holy Spirit. Paul to the Ephesians. You were dead, but God made you alive.

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God gave you spiritual life. Peter to the saints of the dispersion.

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God has caused you to be born again. You might try, but being born again is not the same.

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Or you might say, sorry, that being born again is not the same as repenting.

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In other words, being saved isn't the same as repenting, is it? Can you repent and not believe?

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Is there a worldly repentance, as it were? Yes. What is that worldly repentance?

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Spurgeon put it this way. He says, a sinner can no more repent and believe without the Holy Spirit's aid than he can create a world.

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Can't do it on his own. There's something that has to be done to them. Now, once it's done, do they believe?

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And the answer is yes. God gives you eyes to see. You know, what's one of the first things that happens when you get saved?

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When God causes you to be born again? Somewhere during that moment or two,

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I don't want to call it a process because then people are going to say he's a Roman Catholic. They're going to be like Peter, right?

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Or, you know, like the party of the circumcision. We must have the party of imperfect theology.

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At some point, you're going to say you're going to be broken by sorrow. You're going to be broken over the sorrow that you have over your sin.

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And that's good. That's right. That's the

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Holy Spirit's conviction. But if it's just sorrow over your sin, if you're just sorry over the circumstances, that's not repentance.

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Second Timothy 2 verses 24 and 25. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents.

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Our opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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That's what happens when they have, when people have a change of mind about Christ.

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It's so that they can believe. And this repentance also leads to life.

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It leads to life. I mean, does

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God begin a good work in you? Does he give you knowledge of the truth? Does he give you conviction and then just kind of leave you to yourself?

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The answer is no. Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

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Whereas worldly grief produces death. Thomas Watson wrote this. He said, many think that they repent when it is not the offense, but the penalty that troubles them.

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That's worldly sorrow. That's worldly repentance. But when

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God starts in you, he will complete it. Let me read one more quote from Spurgeon.

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He says, learn this lesson not to trust Christ because you repent, but to trust Christ to make you repent.

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Not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to him that he may give you a broken heart.

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So you really might see your sins for what they are, the offense that they are. Not to come to him because you are fit to come, but to come to him because you are unfit to come.

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Recognizing your unworthiness. Your fitness is your unfitness.

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Your qualification is your lack of qualification. In other words, repentance causes us to be humble, to understand our need.

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So he grants repentance that leads to life, that is to say, eternal life. When you come to Christ, Christ says, he will what?

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In no wise, cast you out. He won't cast you out. Now in conclusion, contrary to my would -be

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Facebook friend, dietary laws cannot save you. A right view of the

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Trinity, as wonderful as it is, cannot save you. Obedience cannot save you.

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In fact, as the hymn writer said, the strictest life would fail. That if you obey those things, you get into heaven.

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Simple things like, don't commit murder, don't steal, don't commit adultery.

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How hard could it be to keep such principles, to keep such rules, to obey them?

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What's the answer? It's impossible. Why?

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One of the reasons Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount wasn't so he could say, you know what? Good job,

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I'm so happy that you guys are obeying the letter of the law. It was to let them know, the hearers know, that everything they were being taught by the

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Pharisees, by the teachers of the law, was wrong. It wasn't enough to just not do

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X, Y, and Z, but one had to look at his or her heart. Are you really not murdering?

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Nope. If you hate your brother or sister, you've committed murder. Are you really not guilty of adultery?

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Well, if you looked on a woman or a man with lust, you're guilty. Have I really not stolen something?

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Well, if you looked on with envy, you've stolen it. You're guilty, guilty, guilty.

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The only answer is not your personal obedience.

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It's the perfect, perpetual obedience of another. It's the obedience of Christ.

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Augustine said this, God has promised forgiveness to your repentance.

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If you repent, he will forgive. But listen, he has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

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What does that mean? It means today is the day to repent, to believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, to trust in him alone for salvation, because there may not be a tomorrow.

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Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you that there is a broadness to your mercy, that you are no respecter of persons, rich, poor, black, white, male, female.

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None of those things matter. Father, you save all kinds of people, and we should and we ought to and we do rejoice in that.

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If you only save the obedient, if you only save those who keep your law, we would all be lost.

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But thanks be to God that in Christ Jesus, you save all who trust in him, all who are granted repentance by your spirit.

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Father, we pray for anyone here who is resting on their own laurels, who's thinking that they're good enough, or father even thinks there's no way

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I could ever be saved. To that person, I would say, trust in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, believe in him, get to know him, love him, and your eternity will be sure.