God Shows No Partiality

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith.

Alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the 15th chapter.

Glory to You, O Lord.

Jesus' Farewell Discourse and the Command to Love One Another

Jesus said, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be.

Full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.

These things I command you, so that you will love one another. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. God shows no partiality. Have you noticed that a lot of us are not like God in that sense?

Racism, Wokeness, and the Christian Response

We're going to talk a little bit about racism today, it's a hot topic, and it is absolutely out of bounds for anybody who is a Christian to show partiality towards anyone based upon how dark or light their skin is.

And you're going to note here that the world's solution to this is to become woke, but being woke is a poor substitute, in fact it's a tawdry substitute for being regenerated by the work of the Holy Spirit and brought to penitent faith in Christ.

And through the power of the Holy Spirit, obeying Christ's command to love one another. So with that, we're going to take a look at Acts chapter 10 in the fuller context of our first reading today, and we're going to note a little bit of history, we'll go back in time a smidge, shall we?

And we're going to note that Jews didn't really like Gentiles. And one might argue that they had really good reasons not to. And we'll see in our text today that not only did Jews not like them, they had laws that required segregation.

Jews were not allowed to eat with Gentiles. So let's go back in history a little bit, shall we? Remember that the kingdom of Judah, they persisted in idolatry, God sent prophet after prophet after prophet, calling them to repentance.

After Isaiah came Jeremiah, and Jeremiah, well, he was the last prophet before they were hauled off to 70 years of cooling off, a really long time out, if you would, in Babylonian captivity. And their time there didn't really go so hot, all right?

You had King Nebuchadnezzar demanding that everybody in Babylon worship this image that he had made in kind of glory to himself. And then you had, well, that edict by the king that they had to pray to only the king for a certain amount of time.

And then, don't even get me started on the whole Esther affair and Mordecai and things like that. Things didn't go so well. But when Israel finally was able to return to Israel, to the promised land, to Judah, well, let's just say it this way, that they were a mere shadow of their former selves.

And as a result of it, they were not in any position to fight off the historical empires that were about to rise in the time after the Babylonian captivity. Most notably, God raised up, well, none other than Alexander the Great.

And Daniel prophesied about Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great came and he conquered everything. And when his armies showed up outside of Jerusalem, let's just say that Jerusalem and Judah were in no position to put up a fight.

And so they sent out, according to Josephus, they sent out the high priest, dressed in all of his high priestly garb. I mean, with the ephod and the urim and the thumim and all the stones and everything.

He came out and met with Alexander the Great in parley. And his words pretty much to Alexander the Great were, we've been expecting you. And he opens up the scroll of Daniel and says, he prophesied that you would come.

And so here you are. And so we surrender without even a shot needing to be fired. And from that time on, the nation of Israel, kingdom of Judah, was a vassal state to other larger empires. First to Alexander the Great.

Then after his kingdom was chopped up and given to four different generals, one general had control over them. And then, well, of course, we all know how things went after that. You have the rise of the Roman Empire.

And with the Gentiles came what? Even more idolatry. The Greeks worshipped the Greco-Roman deities. So did the Romans. They just borrowed the same deities and they worshipped them. And so you had temples springing up in the Holy Land to Zeus, to Athena, to Venus and Mars and all these false gods.

And let's just say that tensions kind of got a little high, a little hot. In fact, one of the rulers of Israel, Antiochus Epiphanes, he didn't get along with the Jews so much that he thought it would be a good idea to sacrifice a pig on the altar in Jerusalem.

That didn't go over very well. If you want to read more about it, you can read the story of the War of the Maccabees in the Apocrypha. It's well enlightening, to say the least. And so by the time we get to Jesus Christ and his life, you'll note that there was a group of fellows called Zealots.

And Jesus, one of his 12 disciples was called Simon the Zealot. You might as well just put in Simon the Terrorist because that's really what the Zealots were. They didn't like the Romans so much that they were really skilled at like making distractions out on the streets of Jerusalem.

And then some poor unsuspecting private in the Roman army would go and investigate and then next thing you know, his throat would be opened with a knife and he'd be dead on.

The ground.

They were just terrible that way. And so you'll note that when it came to the Jews, the Jews didn't like them. And so we get to the book of Acts and you'll note after Pentecost, all of these Jews believe in Jesus Christ.

And then God cracked it open just a little bit more and the Samaritans heard the gospel and God chose from among the Samaritans people who would confess and believe in Jesus. But up to this point, there are no bonafide Gentiles in the truest sense of the word as Christians.

And of course, there are laws that prevent the apostles from talking to them, from being in their homes and stuff like this. And so at this point, God the Holy Spirit has said enough because Jesus said, go and make disciples of how many nations?

You know, all of them, every single one of them. When it comes to Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins, we recognize a couple of things. Number one, each and every one of us, we were all born dead in trespasses and sins.

And there's a reason for that. Every one of us has common ancestry. Doesn't matter if you're Norwegian, Polish, African, you have Asian descent, we all come from the same family. And that same family takes us right back through Noah and his family and then all the way back to Adam and Eve.

In other words, there is only one race. It's called the human race. And Christ died for all. And his love and his mercy and making people clean is something that he does for everybody. God shows no partiality.

Cornelius, the God-Fearer, and Peter's Vision

So here we read in Acts chapter 10, a story, at Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius. He's a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort. Now Caesarea, this is a town north of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea, in ancient times known as Caesarea Maritima.

Let's just say it was a really nice zip code. I mean, if you lived there, you were doing really well. Right by the ocean. And Cornelius, he's got a pretty good assignment. He's part of the Italian cohort.

Dude, as far as military posts go, this is one that you really want to get excited about and he's chosen to serve in the Italian cohort. But we also learn this about him. He was a devout man, and listen to the words, who feared God.

Now if you read your New Testament and you ever hear about people who are described as God-fearers, what those are, those are catechumens, people who are studying to become Jews. These are catechumens of the Jewish faith.

So Cornelius has not yet been fully brought into fellowship as a Jew, but he comes to the synagogue, he hears the word of God, he also gives alms and he prays. And so he's a devout man. He and his entire household.

So he's catechizing his children too. He gave alms generously to the people, prayed continually to God, and about the ninth hour of the day, and I'm going to point this out too, since we're not having Sunday school, I'm going to do a little longer sermon, if you haven't figured that out.

I always cheat when I can.

Okay.

Okay, little bit of a note here. What time of the day is the ninth hour? Three in the afternoon. All right? So you're going to note that throughout the New Testament and the Old Testament, there are specific times of the day when people normally pray.

And in the early ancient church, if you confessed Jesus to be your Savior and you didn't at least pray three times a day, at nine in the morning, which is the third hour, at noon, which is the sixth hour, and at 3 p .m., which is the ninth hour, you were suspect.

Is that person really even a Christian? Who ever heard of a Christian who doesn't pray three times a day? And so you'll note that Cornelius, he's praying at the ninth hour, which is 3 p .m., which is the time of the evening sacrifice and is also the time when Jesus died on the cross.

That's when Jesus died. And so the reason why we pray as Christians at nine, noon, and three is, well, it's a good way to remember at nine, Christ was nailed to the cross. At noon, the sun was darkened.

And at three, he died. So he said that that's a good time to pray. And so you know, people are praying during these hours, and you'll see this with Peter.

Too.

So about the ninth hour of the day, Cornelius clearly saw in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, Cornelius. And he stared at him in terror and said, what is it, Lord? Now by the way, that's the normal response when you come in contact with a holy angel,.

Terror.

So if you ever see somebody on YouTube or on so-called Christian television talking about the fact that they had coffee with an angel last week and it was the best experience ever, they're lying to you.

The normal reaction when humans are in contact with holy angels is they are on the verge of losing control of their bladders because they're so terrified. That's the idea here. So Cornelius says, what is it, Lord?

And the angel said to him, your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before.

God.

Ah, what a great sentence, all right? Have you ever felt like your prayers just bounce and ricochet off the ceiling? You feel like you're praying and whether or not God hears you.

He does.

Prayer isn't nothing. Prayer is almost everything. And so here we have this beautiful, beautiful revelation that God hears our prayers and he sees our good works that we do for our neighbors. And so he says, now send a Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter.

He's lodging with one Simon, a tanner whose house is by the sea. And when the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.

Have you ever stopped to think, well, why didn't the angel just preach the gospel to.

Cornelius? Why?

Because God has chosen that the gospel goes out by human beings. And so you'll note, Cornelius is sent to go hear the gospel. That's what he's sent to do. In other words, don't expect an angel to show up and preach the gospel to your neighbor.

That's your job. It's my job. Every one of us, we believe because somebody, another human being came to us and preached the gospel to us. So that's the normal way Christians are made. So the next day, as they were journeying and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray.

What time is it?

Noon.

Note, there are standard times to pray. It's a good idea to embrace these concepts. So he became hungry and wanted something to eat. That's normal at lunchtime. But while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and he saw the heavens open and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the.

Earth.

And in it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him saying, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But he said, by no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.

I'm looking at this going, dude, there's lobster in there. There's bacon. What are you thinking?

All right.

What's what's wrong with this picture? Well, if you remember, the Jews in the Mosaic Covenant, they were given strict orders about animals that they could eat. There were animals that they are to consider clean and animals that they are considered to be unclean.

And all of that was to teach them to look and to make discerning decisions regarding those who are idolaters as opposed to those who are worshiping the one true God, clean and unclean. These are categories that you have to think in, but the types and shadows point us to something a little bit different.

So he says, by no means, Lord, I've never eaten anything common or unclean. And then the voice came to him a second time, what God has made clean, do not call common. And this isn't about bacon and it's not about lobster.

It's about human beings. And here we got to pay close attention to who's doing the doing. Who is it that takes sinners like you and like me who were born dead and trespasses and sins? And who is it that cleans us?

Is it ourselves? No, it's God. God is the one who cleans us. And he cleans us through the blood of Christ. He cleans us by the sacrifice that Christ made, who stood in our place, bore our sin, was made to be sin so that we can be reconciled to God.

And every single sinner who is brought to faith in Christ is made clean. And therefore, among the saints, there is nobody who is common. Not a single one of us. And so that's an important distinction.

God shows no partiality. He's the one who's cleaned us. And you've heard the term saints, and I pointed it out before and I'll reiterate it again. The term for saint in the New Testament is hagios. And you are the hagioi, that's the plural form of it.

And the hagioi are the ones who are holy. That's what the saints are. You are the holy ones. None of us is common. Not a single one. And for us to fail to love each other is a failure to recognize that God has made us clean and that God has made us holy and that among us there is nobody who is common.

God is the one who has cleaned us. Now this happened three times and then that sheet was taken at once back up to heaven. Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon's house, stood.

At the gate.

Now this had to be a little bit anxiety causing, if you think of it this way, Roman soldiers with them. And so you're just thinking, uh-oh, there's a knock on the door and there's a Roman soldier there.

Uh-oh, I hope he has a warrant.

Right?

Did they even need warrants back in those days? So they stood at the gate and they called out to ask whether Simon who was called Peter was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking for you, rise, go down and accompany them without hesitation.

I have sent them. So Peter is left with no wiggle room at all. Direct orders from God, the Holy Spirit, go with them, I sent them. So Peter went down to the men and said, I'm the one you're looking for, what is the reason for your coming?

And they said, Cornelius, a centurion. And you can just see Peter going, uh-oh, a Gentile, it's, you know, one of them, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to this house and to hear what you have to say.

So he invited them in to be his guests. And already Peter is beginning to break some of the rules. The Gentiles have now come into the house of somebody who is a Jew. So the next day, Peter rose and went away with them.

And some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him. And on the following day, they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and his close friends. Oh, great, a whole household full of them, Gentiles.

Oh, man, how did the kids say it today?

Awkward, right?

Yeah, there are so many rules being broken here, it's not even funny, all right? So when Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him. But Peter lifted him up and said, stand up, I too am a man.

You'll note that Peter, the first pope, wasn't wearing a ring. He didn't expect Cornelius to kiss it either. Yep, he was just content to be like everybody else. I am a mere man. And that's what we all are.

We are all equals. And so Peter lifted him up. And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered. And he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation.

But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. In other words, all right, listen, I'm breaking all the segregation laws here. But God is the one who's responsible for this. And he's made it clear I should not call any person common or unclean.

It's a tacit, if you would, almost confession of his own bigotry that he in the past has called Gentiles common and unclean. And now in their presence, God having gathered them by the command of the Holy Spirit to hear the gospel, he recognizes his own shortcoming that he has shown partiality.

So when I was sent for, I came without objection. So I asked them, why have you sent me? And so notice he doesn't presume and he lets them explain the details as to why the meeting has been called. So Cornelius speaks up and says, four days ago about this hour, I was praying in my house.

And at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon who is called Peter.

He's 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.

Please share with us the message that God commanded me to hear. And Peter doesn't hold back. He preaches the exact message he preaches to everybody everywhere. So Peter opened his mouth and he said, truly, I understand that God shows no partiality.

What a great confession. God does not show partiality. You see, God so loved the world, every one of us, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.

So Peter says, I understand God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. To fear God is to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.

To fear God is to rightly believe that he is the one who has stood in your place and taken the wrath of God upon himself, and then bearing fruit in keeping with repentance is doing what is right and acceptable to him.

As Christ says, my commands are not burdensome. And what is his command? That we love one another. Now 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.

And here you can see Peter is making an appeal to the very history that took place there among them just not that long ago. They all remember that itinerant preacher, Jesus. And then beginning from Galilee, after the baptism that John proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.

What a beautiful picture of the works that Christ was doing. Healing all who were oppressed by the devil. That's you and me included. For God was with him, and we are witnesses of all that he did in both the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.

And 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 have 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 Jesus is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. And that statement in and of itself may cause a little bit of terror because, well, we all know we're going to stand before Jesus someday.

But here's the thing, if he's the judge, he's the one who also bled and died for you. In other words, this judge has cooked the books. He's taken your punishment upon himself so that the verdict that you and I, all of us, everybody in the world who trusts and believes in him will hear, rather than guilty, will hear, well done.

So to him, all the prophets, they bear witness that everyone, Jew and Gentile, Samaritan, slave or free, rich or poor, everyone who believes in Jesus receives the forgiveness of sins through his name.

Oh, every one of us. When it comes to Jesus, he doesn't look at your skin. He doesn't look at your nationality. He doesn't look at the language that you speak and say, yeah, no forgiveness for you.

No.

Everyone who believes in him receives the forgiveness of sins through his name and peace with God and a right standing before the judge of the earth, Jesus himself. And while Peter was still saying these things, preaching the gospel, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.

And here's where we've got to pay attention to something here. God decided to do something a little out of order in order to make a point. You remember on the day of Pentecost, which, you know, in two Sundays, we're going to be observing the day of Pentecost.

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes on the church, the people who are in the upper room, tongues of fire descend on them, and they go out and they proclaim the wonders of God, some in different languages, others in the native language of the people there in Israel.

And Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost. He preaches this brilliant sermon. And who's the sermon about? It ain't about Peter. It's about Jesus and what he does. And after hearing that sermon, the people were cut to the quick.

Their hearts were just mowed down. They were convicted of their sin. And what happens? They ask this question, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And so you'll note that on the day of Pentecost, from that day forward, the normal way in which Christians receive the Holy Spirit is in the waters of baptism. And so you're going to note here, God does something backwards.

You see, it was the apostles who received the Holy Spirit, as we say, immediately, without means. And now, the Holy Spirit follows that old, that other pattern. And the Gentiles, they received the Holy Spirit immediately, just like the apostles did.

And Peter understands that exactly to be what it is, that God is making no distinction between them and us. They received the Holy Spirit the exact same way we did, which is God's way of saying, you got it, you go and preach now to everybody, every nation, every language, Jew, Gentile, make no distinction.

So as they were saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell, and all who heard the word, and the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter, they were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles.

Even on the Gentiles, whoever, what, what? For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. So Peter declared, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit the same way we have?

And then he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus. And if that wasn't enough, they asked Peter to remain for some days. Since you're going ahead and breaking the law by being here, why don't you go ahead and keep breaking the law for a few more days?

We can use a little catechesis. And so he stays on. Now, I won't get into chapter 11, but if you go and read chapter 11 this week, you'll note that Peter got in a lot of trouble. You preach the gospel to who?

You went into whose house, right? Segregation laws, man. No, there is no segregation in Christ at all. There is no us and them. There's only those who have been made clean by God. And it's in that context that we consider our gospel text.

Abiding in Christ's Love and Bearing Fruit

Christ says to his disciples, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and I abide in his love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. And this is my commandment. You ready? Love one another. In the same way Christ has loved you, love one another.

The church is the last place where there should be rancor, division, hatred, discord. People insisting and demanding that they get their own way, regardless of how much damage they do to others. This is the place where we recognize that because we have been made clean by God, there is no one common among us.

We are holy and we are to live our lives in holiness. And to live your life in holiness is to live your life in love. In love for your neighbor and even love for your enemies and even love for those who are not yet in the church who need to hear the gospel.

So greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends and you are my friends. Boy, does that seem odd. I mean, I'm comfortable and okay with the idea that Jesus is the Son of God and as the Son of God, I'm his creature.

I can even talk about a way in which I am a servant of God. But for the Son of God to say that he's my friend, I would never on my own speak this way. But yet Christ, he has deigned to call us his friends.

We are not mere slaves. We are his friends. He is our brother. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves. The slave doesn't know what his master's doing, but I've called you friends for all that I have heard from my father.

I have made known to you. The fact that Christ has revealed this all to us shows us that he truly is the friend of sinners. And he is the one who makes us clean and makes it so that none of us are common.

So much so that he has laid down his life and he calls us his friends. But I chose you, Jesus said, and I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask in the father's name that he may give it to you.

You see, it is God's will that we bear fruit. And there it is again. What's fruit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control. And yet you'll note that our sinful nature doesn't bear the fruit of the spirit willingly and fights the spirit all the way.

So Christ has commanded us to love one another. So brothers and sisters, I am saddened by the state of affairs in our world. I'm saddened by my own sin. I'm saddened by the racial tensions that are tearing our country apart in our world.

But more importantly, I'm saddened by the fact that far too few churches are giving the real solution that we need. We don't need to be woke.

We need to repent.

We need to recognize that God shows no partiality, that we are all bled for and died for. And we need to share the good news that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and that God wants to be friends with sinners, not at war with them.

And we who have the good news who've come to us, we should be on the apex, at the front, loving, serving, showing no partiality, but embracing each other as truly those who have been made holy by Christ and no longer see each other as common.

So let us repent of all the ways in which we've been partial and let us instead embrace what Christ is, the one who shows no partiality, who bled and died for the sins of the world so that we can continue the task of making disciples of all nations.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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