Peter Was Not the First Pope

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While you're standing, let's open the Word together.
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We're going to today continue what we started last week, and to open the Word, I'd like to open the Word at Acts 10, and I know your worship folder says verses 44 to 48, but really the attention today is going to be given to verses 17 to 33, so if you'll turn to that portion, and we'll remain standing as we read, and then we'll close with prayer.
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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 and called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was watching there.
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And while Peter was pondering the vision, the Spirit said to him, Behold, three men are looking for you.
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Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.
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And Peter went down to the men and said, I'm the one you are looking for.
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What is the reason for your coming? And they said, Cornelius, 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 his house and to hear what you have to say.
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So he invited them in to be his guests.
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The next day he rose and went with them.
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And some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him.
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And on the following day, they entered Caesarea.
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Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.
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When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him.
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But Peter lifted him up, saying, Stand up, I too am a man.
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And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered.
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And he said to them, You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate or visit any one of another nation.
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But God has shown me that I shall not call any person common or unclean.
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So when I was sent for, I came without objection.
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I asked them, Why you sent for me? And Cornelius said four days ago about this hour, I was praying in my house 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.
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Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon, who was called Peter.
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He is lodging in the house of Simon a tanner by the sea.
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So I sent for you at once and you have been kind enough to come.
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Now, therefore, we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error, as I certainly am capable of preaching error.
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And I pray also, Father, that you would open the hearts of your people to the truth, that you would use this opportunity of the preaching of the gospel to convert sinners to Christ, to convict believers of a closer walk with him and to draw us all closer to you through an understanding of the expansion of the gospel to the Gentiles, from the Jews out into the whole world, that we might understand the extent of your mercy and grace.
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In Jesus name, amen.
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Please be seated.
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We began last week looking at the story of the conversion of Cornelius.
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And as I realize every week we have visitors and every week we have folks who were not here the week prior, it is important that we at least all come up to speed as to where we are in the story to understand what is happening.
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So simply by way of reminder, I want to go over some of the things that we talked about last week, you'll notice in your worship folder, I've given you the whole outline of chapter 10.
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I didn't tell you how many weeks it would take because I didn't know.
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But I know this, we want to do the whole thing, because even though we haven't been doing a verse by verse exposition of acts, we've been sort of moving along quickly and we've jumped over some portions in the book of Acts, I did not want to jump over one verse of this portion, because this particular portion is a watershed moment in the history of the gospel.
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Because this is the moment where the gospel goes from being an ethnocentric Jewish thing to being a worldwide global thing where it would encompass not only those who are physical descendants of Abraham or those who have become descendants of Abraham by circumcision, but this will encompass all people, whether they be descendants of Abraham or not, because it will encompass a new spiritual descendant from Abraham, those who are children of Abraham by faith, as the Apostle Paul tells us.
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It will change the entire understanding of the Apostle Peter, for he was one who was concerned about his Jewish heritage because that was the word of God that he had been brought up with, that was the law of God that he knew, and he feared the law.
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He believed that the law was important and it was, but he didn't have a full understanding of how the law works.
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The Apostle Paul would later tell us that the law is the schoolmaster, the tutor, the one that drives us to Jesus Christ, because when we look at ourselves in the light of God's law, we cannot look at ourselves as anything but unholy.
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When we look at our lives in the light of God's law, we can't look at ourselves as anything but unclean.
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And yet the Jews had twisted the law, they had made their own understanding of it so that they could find cleanness in the law, even though it was not a true cleanness.
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Peter, now having found his salvation in Christ, Christ having called him as an apostle, regenerated his heart, changed his life.
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Peter, now understanding real salvation, still had a problem because he was still tied to this old understanding of the administration of the covenant of grace, this old administration from the old law where he felt like there was still this important connection.
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So God gives him a vision and the vision was simple.
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It was a vision of all kinds of animals brought down in a sheet from heaven.
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And God gives to Peter the great, and we called it last week, the hunter's verse, arise, kill and eat.
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All the hunters like that one.
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Arise, kill and eat.
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And he said, no, I can't do that, Lord.
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I cannot kill and eat these animals because nothing has ever entered my mouth that is unclean.
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You know, it's funny about Peter, he would say nothing has ever entered his mouth that was unclean.
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He never said nothing ever came out that was unclean.
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Peter was a fisherman.
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He was a sailor and he probably had at times in his life used sailors language, salty language.
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So he never said he didn't say nothing unclean ever came out.
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But he did make the argument that nothing unclean ever went in.
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But do you remember what Jesus said? He says not what goes in the mouth.
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But what comes out that matters, it's what comes out that shows the heart of the man.
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So even Jesus early on in the Gospels had begun giving us an understanding that this idea of the of the food as being necessary to to make one right with God would soon go away by Jesus saying it's not really what goes into the mouth that matters.
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And here Peter gets this new vision.
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And the vision is this take eat of all these animals.
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And Peter says, no, I can't do that.
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And the Lord says, what I have made clean, do not call and the ESV says common and the other translation, of course, unclean.
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What I've called clean, do not call debased.
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What I've called clean, do not call unclean.
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And so Peter.
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Understands the vision as we all understand the vision, his first thing God has done as he has lifted the ceremonial restrictions of the old covenant law, the ceremonial restrictions on food.
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And those of us who like pork sandwiches are glad that he did.
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But it wasn't the focus.
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The food was not the focus.
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The focus was the understanding of the veil that had been lifted, the taint that had been lifted from the Gentile community, that community, which up until this time was the the lowest of the low.
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They were the dogs.
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In fact, we remember last week we said even Jesus said that.
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Because a Gentile woman came to him and he says, why would we take food from the from the master's table and serve it to the dogs? And of course, he was referencing the fact that she was a Gentile.
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This is this is an important understanding that in Jewish culture, Gentiles were outside.
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They were the they were the dogs.
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They were the animals.
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They were the pagans.
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They were the ones who worship many gods.
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And the Jews worship the one true God, the God Yahweh, the true God of the world, the one who created all things out of nothing.
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The one who had established his covenant with Abraham, the one who had established and reestablished his covenant with Moses by giving Moses the law.
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And they stood on that law.
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They stood on that commitment.
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They stood on those principles.
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And they said, we are the only true clean ones.
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And everyone else is dirty.
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Everyone else is outside.
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Everyone else is is is is is so dirty that if we go to their nations, when we come back, we've got to wipe the dirt from our feet because even taking Gentile dirt onto Jewish property was unclean.
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And the other side of the coin is that the Gentiles didn't think much of them either.
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The Gentiles didn't like the Jews either.
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There was a divide there historically.
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And so.
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Here is this man named Cornelius.
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Cornelius is a centurion that if you remember last week, that means he was in charge of 100 men centurion, the 100.
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So he's in charge of 100 men.
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He was part of a cohort, that's 600 men, six centurions, over 600 men.
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And then that was part of a legion, which was 6000 men.
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That was part of a larger group.
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And he was in charge of those men.
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And Cornelius was a God fear.
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Cornelius was one who actually believed in the God of the Old Testament.
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He believed in Yahweh, but he did not and would not receive circumcision and thus become a Jew.
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So the very best he would be called is simply one who feared God.
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He wouldn't be called a proselyte because he had not accepted the ceremonial cleansing of the Jews, which would have been circumcision and some other rights that they had to go through.
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He didn't accept that.
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So the very best he could be called is a God fear.
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He's still a Gentile and still unworthy to be counted among the people of God.
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And yet God hears him.
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God hears his prayer because it is a prayer of genuine faith.
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And we talked about last week how that prayer of genuine faith does not arise from a heart of man, because man's heart is wicked from birth, man's heart is sinful from birth.
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And so that prayer of faith comes from the work of God who works within the heart of men to open their hearts to be able to believe.
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The Bible says that faith itself is a gift that comes from God.
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It is not something that we that we bring about on our own, but it's something that God enables us to do.
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The only thing the natural man can do is what the natural man can do and what the natural man can do is this.
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He can rebel.
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And that's what he does.
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That's right.
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So God opens the man's heart to believe and he believes and he calls upon God and God hears his prayer.
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He recognizes his works of service towards him as being ones that are good works.
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And the only good works are those which are wrought in the heart of one who has been changed by God.
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So we see Cornelius as one whom God is already working in his heart.
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But there's this need for the gospel, there's this need for Cornelius to hear the truth.
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So God sends to him a vision.
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And Cornelius obeys the vision, you know, I've never had a vision.
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And if you have, we should probably talk, but but but it's interesting that he didn't even wince.
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He just did it.
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He saw the vision of the angel and the angel said, send for this one Simon called Peter.
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He's at the house of Simon of Tanner.
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Go send for him and bring him back.
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And Cornelius, this man of faith, he didn't miss a beat, just did it, just just send it out.
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And you got to think what the guys who he's telling this story because they didn't apparently get the vision.
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This is him.
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You got to imagine he came out of his meditative study.
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Maybe he had a prayer closet that he went into and he came out and he said, guys, I just saw an angel.
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I mean, this isn't normal.
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This isn't something.
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In fact, one of the things that often I try to get across to people who are really into miracles, there's a lot of people who really focus their whole ministries about miracles.
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They won't talk about miracles.
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Miracles are not the norm in Scripture, which is why in Scripture they're such a big deal.
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It's not as if every day these things were occurring.
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This was this is years into the ministry.
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This is different.
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This is this is a new thing.
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And this angel appearing to Cornelius is a huge deal.
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So he comes out and he says, look, I've seen an angel and, you know, the guys are obedient to him because he's the centurion.
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He's in charge.
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He's a very wealthy man.
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He's he's a man of power.
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And he says, go and do.
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And these men are under authority.
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If he said stand on your head and say that Greek alphabet backwards, they'd had to do it because they're under authority.
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That's what they do.
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But you got to think in the midst of all this, Cornelius is also influencing the people around him.
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He's already been influencing the people around him.
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It's very likely that many of these people that are in his house are already God fears because he's already been proselytizing them for the faith of the scriptures that he's already been talking about the scriptures to them.
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But now we're going to see that he sends these three men out to bring back Peter.
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And when Peter gets back, Cornelius has got his house filled.
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He wants people to hear this message.
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Cornelius has an evangelistic heart.
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He wants to bring people in to hear what Peter has to say.
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So that leads us to where we get today to verse 17, the messengers that Cornelius sends arrive at Joppa.
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This is where Peter is.
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And we'll begin again at verse 17, it says now, while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision he had seen might mean.
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And we can stop there just for a second and make a quick comment.
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He didn't yet understand it, even though it says in verse 16, he saw it three times.
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He didn't yet understand the full ramifications of it.
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All he knew was God just took that which is unclean and made it clean.
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And from his perspective, it had a food context.
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But he will see in the time to come that it had more than food as a context.
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He goes on, it says that 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 and called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was lodging there.
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And while Peter was pondering the vision, the spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking for you.
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Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation, for I have sent them.
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And Peter went down to the men and said, I am the one who you are looking for.
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What is the reason for your coming? And they said, Cornelius, 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 his house and to hear what you have to say.
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So he invited them in to be his guests.
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Let's look at that portion, because the messengers have now arrived in Joppa and Peter is now being confronted with the real meaning of his vision.
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Because the unclean Gentiles would not normally, at this particular time, have been welcome into a Jewish home.
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They would have not been welcome because they would have still been considered to be unclean.
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And now he's he's going to do the unthinkable.
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Come in.
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Come in and stay here, come in and be here with us.
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Totally unthinkable at the time.
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And let me just add this thought.
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Peter is is a little bit in impropriety here.
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He's inviting someone into his house.
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It's not his.
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He's staying with, it'd be like me staying at your house for whatever reason.
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And then I invite somebody over to stay.
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And they're the people you dislike.
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That would probably not go well.
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And yet there's confidence in Peter.
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That's what I'm trying to get across to you.
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Peter's been given this message and he's now beginning to understand what this is all about.
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Inviting them in would have been unthinkable.
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Inviting them into a home that's not mine would have been doubly unthinkable.
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And inviting them into a home that's not mine, that is a Jew and they're a Gentile, totally unthinkable.
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And yet this is what's happening.
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And the most important phrase in this little section here is in verse 20.
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He says, this spirit says, rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation.
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Now, I want to the reason why I say that's most important is because it would be very easy for us to overlook that.
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And it would also be very easy for us to misunderstand that.
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Often when we read that, we think the term without hesitation means in haste, like don't wait for anything.
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And then some people might say, well, he was a little disobedient if they came to the door.
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He should have got right on the on the horse's back and went right with him right then.
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The word without hesitation in the original language, it's got more of a nuanced meaning.
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It actually means without distinction.
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It means without distinction, not so much hesitation in the sense of time, but hesitation in receiving them.
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Go with them without hesitation in receiving.
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And let me kind of explain what I'm saying.
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He's being told to accompany them without making a distinction between the fact that they are Gentiles and he's a Jew.
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Do not make a distinction between yourself and these men.
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You remember last week what we talked, this is a problem for Peter, Peter was bad about making the distinction between Jew and Gentile, and this is a problem that he would suffer from throughout his ministry.
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The Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter two, we read this last week, if you want to write it down, it's Galatians 2, 11 to 14.
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The Apostle Paul had to challenge Peter for what reason? Because when Peter would have Gentiles in his presence, he would eat with them.
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But when the Jewish people would come around, Peter would back away from the Gentiles and he would pretend, oh, I never met them.
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Have you ever seen kids do that? You know, they have the they have the cool kids, you know, that will come around and they'll separate from their friends to be with the cool kid.
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Well, that, you know, not not a little bit of a kind of a silly way of looking at it.
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But this was Peter.
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He was OK with the Gentiles so long as this other group, the Jews, wasn't around.
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And when they came around, he would separate himself.
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And the Apostle Paul, the book says he confronted him to his face.
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I like that because we often don't do that.
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Oftentimes when we confront people, we confront them behind their back, which is not confronting them at all.
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We confront people to someone else, which is not confronting them at all.
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It's gossip.
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But Paul didn't do that.
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Paul didn't go to James and say, hey, James, look, man, look at what Peter's doing.
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What a jerk.
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And you know what? That's what we do.
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You laugh, but isn't that what we do? You know, instead of going to someone, we'll go to someone else and say, look at what they're doing.
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They call themselves a Christian.
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You know, we do that.
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That's not what Paul did.
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Paul went straight to Peter's face and said, you stand condemned.
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Galatians 2 says you stand condemned, not condemned to hell, but condemned under the discipline of God.
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You stand condemned because you've made a distinction between Jew and Gentile.
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That distinction has been erased and you're making it again.
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You stand condemned.
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So again, going back to Acts 10, when he says, go with these men without distinction, Peter is being commanded to treat these men as good as he would treat his Jewish Christian brothers.
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Even traveling with them would be a big deal at this particular time in history.
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What would have happened most likely is that if a Gentile needed a Jew to go somewhere, they would travel separately.
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The Jew would give the Gentile time to go ahead.
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And that way they weren't sleeping in the same place or staying in the same place or eating in the same place.
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They both might have to arrive at the same place for whatever reason, but they wouldn't go together because such was not done.
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But at this particular time, God speaking to Peter through the Holy Spirit says clearly, do not make a distinction.
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And all this is happening at a very important location.
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And again, there are certain things in this story that be easy just to read over and miss.
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But all this is happening in a very important location, because where is Peter staying right now at Simon the Tanner's house? You know what a tanner is? Well, they're not a person who sits out in the sun all day.
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That's a terrible joke.
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I've been waiting all week.
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No, a tanner was a person who tanned hides.
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That doesn't mean he spanked his kids a lot either.
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No, what he did was he would take the animal skins and he would and he would essentially make goods out of them and he would tan them.
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So basically, his was a house that was filled with carcasses.
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So his house was already a house that would have been ceremonially unclean.
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So Peter has already stepped out of the bounds of the normality by staying at someone's house who is perpetually, continually, ceremonially unclean.
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So God is already working on his heart.
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God's already teaching him things about this ceremonial law and how it's been abrogated and how the things have moved from being demands to being things that demonstrated the coming of Christ in the ceremonies of the old covenant.
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So we see all this.
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We see God is is teaching Peter to put off the traditional trappings of the clean and the unclean and accept that God has made the ceremonial laws which were fulfilled in Christ no longer obligated on the believer.
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Now, we see in verse 23, they're rising and leaving.
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Let's read verses 23 to 27.
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It says the next day he rose and went away with them.
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And some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him.
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And on the following day, they entered Caesarea.
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Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.
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When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him.
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But Peter lifted him up, saying, Stand up.
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I, too, am a man.
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And he talked with him.
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He went in and found many persons gathered.
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And he said to them, You yourselves know how unlawful it is for you to associate with or to visit any one of another nation.
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But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.
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So when I was sent for, I came without objection.
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I asked them, Why you sent for me? So let's just stop there very quickly and sort of get a bird's eye view of what we've learned, what we're seeing here.
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The Apostle Peter goes, he accompanies the men and he takes with him some other Jewish believers to go with him as his associates on this journey.
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Now, if you want to make a note, Acts 11, 12 tells us six men went with him.
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So Peter took six men with him.
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So there are the three that came from the house of Cornelius.
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The two servants and the soldier came to get him.
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They get him.
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He takes six with him.
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Now, here's the question that is an important question to ask.
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Why is it that Peter is taking an entourage with him to go to the house of Cornelius? Well, here's the answer, and it's very simple.
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These men are coming as witnesses for what God is about to do, because what God is about to do is change the face of the entire religious culture of that group.
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And that is going to need some witnesses.
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Now, I say that because later in the chapter 11, the Apostle Peter makes a defense to the Jewish Christians about this.
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In fact, if you read chapter 11, it's a reiteration of chapter 10.
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Why? Well, the reason why it's got two chapters is because it's such an important subject.
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It's so valuable in the history of the church.
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It's a watershed moment, as I've said a couple of times.
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But the other reason why it's reiterated is because once Peter is done bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, he's got to go back and convince the Jews of the propriety of his act.
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And one of the things he does in chapter 11 is he points to the fact that there were other men with him.
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I'm not the only one who saw this happen.
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There were other men with me who saw this happen and they can corroborate and confirm to you all that I'm saying to you.
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These men come along as Peter's witnesses.
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Now, why am I making such a big deal about this? Well, I believe that this seriously and you might think I'm taking a right turn here and somewhat I am, but I'll come back, I promise.
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This seriously calls into question the Roman Catholic doctrine of the pope.
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Now, why would I even bring that up? Seems like that's out of left field.
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Well, why? Here's why.
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In Roman Catholicism, Peter is the head of the church, which is untrue because Christ is the head of the church.
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The Apostle Paul tells us that.
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But in Roman Catholic theology, Peter is the head of the church and every man who has succeeded Peter as the bishop of Rome, which Peter was never the bishop of Rome, but that's a whole other argument.
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But the fact that every man who has succeeded Peter as the bishop of Rome has been called.
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Pope, which means father, that word simply means father, vicar of Christ, vicar meaning shortened vicarious, one who stands in the place of Christ, that's what the term vicar means.
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He's called Holy Father.
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He's called vicar of Christ.
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Two terms which are exclusive to deity because the Holy Spirit is the vicar of Christ.
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He's the one who comes as Christ ascends.
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The Holy Spirit descends the spirit.
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Jesus said, I can't go away.
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If I go away, the spirit will come to you.
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So he comes to be in my place, not the pope.
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So so that's an important.
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I could spend a lot of time on this.
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Let me just simply say this.
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Peter did not express his own authority in this situation as the pope in any way, shape or form.
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He brought witnesses with him and he brought the witnesses back to corroborate his testimony, to demonstrate that God had done what he said he was going to do.
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The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the pope is infallible.
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Except when he's not, that may sound funny, but that's exactly the doctrine that the pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra.
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Ex cathedra means from the seat.
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But what's the seat? It's the cathedral of Petri, the seat of Peter.
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When the pope speaks from the seat of Peter, he speaks infallibly.
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When do we decide he spoke in ex cathedra? Well, when we decide he has.
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And that's the problem is you'll ask him, well, what about this pope who contradicted this pope? Because there's so much of that throughout the history.
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They'll say, well, this one was speaking ex cathedra and this one was not.
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And they get to decide.
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It's a very seriously flawed system.
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The First Vatican Council says this, we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma.
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That means it's got to be believed that when the Roman pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church.
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He possesses by the divine assistance promised to him in the blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith and morals.
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Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not by the consent of the church irreformable.
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So then should anyone which, God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours, let him be anathema.
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That means let him be accursed.
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That's from the First Vatican Council.
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They said that the pope is infallible.
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He has the power of Peter to be infallible and thus you have to obey what he says or you will be accursed.
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I say this such doctrine is false.
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Such doctrine is the doctrine of devils.
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It is false.
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And I say that not to be ugly.
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People tell me all the time, oh, the new pope is so nice.
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Look at him, he's so philanthropic.
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Any man that will allow himself to be called the vicar of Christ is not humble.
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He is not nice.
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He is a false prophet.
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Ludwig Ott, the German Catholic scholar, wrote this about the pope.
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If anyone says that the blessed apostle Peter was not constituted by Christ our Lord, prince of all apostles and visible head of the church militant, or that he, Peter, directly and immediately received from our Lord Jesus Christ a primacy of honor only and not one of true and proper jurisdiction, let him be anathema, end quote.
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So what is he saying? Peter's word was law.
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If you don't agree with that, you're accursed.
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That's what Ludwig Ott said.
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Well, guess what? Peter didn't believe that.
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Peter brought witnesses to the giving of the gospel to the Gentiles and then confirmed his giving of the gospel to Gentiles through those witnesses.
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He didn't come back and say, I have apostolic authority.
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I have the authority of the pope.
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I am the vicar of Christ.
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He said none of that.
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And to appeal to Peter as the first pope is an appeal to foolishness.
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Have I been clear enough? I'm just curious because that's important.
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Because having said that, the next part is also equally important.
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Because Peter.
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Compounds this when Cornelius falls down at his feet, Cornelius bows down to Peter.
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And what does Peter do? He offers him a ring to kiss.
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No, he don't.
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I get a little emotional about this, I'll try to calm it down.
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He does not offer him a ring to kiss.
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He doesn't say kiss my toe or kiss my foot or bow at my feet.
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He said, get up.
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I am a man like you.
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And in saying that.
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There are some powerful words there, too, as he says, I, too, am a man.
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I, too, as to say I like you, am a man.
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What is Peter saying in that? There's equality here.
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There's equality where not just between men, but between Jew and Gentile.
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I, too, am a man.
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He's creating an equality between himself and this Gentile.
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I am like you.
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That's something Peter couldn't say before, but now he can.
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I am like you.
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Don't kiss my toe.
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Don't hug my feet.
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Don't kiss my ring.
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And by the way, the Pope gets that all the time.
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Just Google, be careful what you Google, but you can Google this.
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People bowing before the Pope.
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And just click images.
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And you will see picture after picture after picture after picture of people bowing down to the Pope.
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And he accepts this because the Roman Catholic Church has made a false distinction between something called Latria and Dulia.
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Two different types of worship.
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One that is only for God and others that can be given to people.
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And thus they give the kind that is given to people to the Pope and to the saints and to others.
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They made a false distinction.
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And it is, in fact, a breach of that second commandment.
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Remember we read from the catechism earlier? They have made an idol.
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They've not carved him out of stone, but they made an idol out of a man whom they worship instead of Christ.
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And that's the Pope.
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Serious, serious.
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Now, Peter is in the midst of a host of Gentiles.
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Let's get back to Acts 10.
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I'm done with my aside.
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Let's get back to the text.
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Because Peter is now in the host.
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He's in the midst of a host of Gentiles who are ready to hear his message.
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And one might think that this is an exciting thing.
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A throng.
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I mean, if I came in here today and it was packed to the gills and there were people standing up, you'd be excited, any preacher would, to see that many people eager to hear the word of God.
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And that's what he sees.
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But you still have to think, this is still, this Peter is dealing with an issue in his own heart here.
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This is all Gentiles.
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These are all non-Jews.
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A week before this, this room would have been out of bounds.
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And now here he comes into a room filled with Gentiles.
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And we see in verses 28 and 29, the apostle explains his vision.
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We just read that.
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It says, you yourselves know it's unlawful.
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For a Jew to associate with anyone of another nation.
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Now, it's interesting that word unlawful means it doesn't really mean to break God's law.
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The nuance of the word means it means abominable, unthinkable.
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It's not right.
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Customarily, it's wrong.
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So he's saying, you understand how bad this is, right? Now, you've invited me into the house.
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You've invited me in an abominable circumstance here.
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You've invited me into a situation of a group of people unclean.
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Do you understand what's happening? You understand the weight and the reality of what's going on right now? This is taboo.
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This is not done.
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So Peter shares about his vision, though, he says, but I now understand the vision because the vision says I'm not supposed to call anything unclean.
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And a week ago, I would have called you unclean.
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But now that's changed.
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Everything has changed.
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And so in verse 30, Cornelius gets to tell his story.
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And this is where we're going to go through verse 33.
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It says, And Cornelius said four days ago about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour.
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And behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard.
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Your alms have been remembered before God.
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Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon, who is called Peter.
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He is lodging in the house of Simon a tanner by the sea.
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So I sent for you at once and you have been kind enough to come now.
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Therefore, we all here in the presence of God to hear all you have been commanded by the Lord.
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What we have here is two complementary accounts.
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Cornelius has been told by the angel, send for Peter.
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Peter has been told by the Holy Spirit, go to Cornelius.
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And so there's this corroboration.
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It kind of reminds me a little bit of the corroboration of the accounts of Mary and Joseph at the birth of Jesus.
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Remember, Mary and Joseph were both visited and both for different reasons.
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Mary is visited to be told, hey, you're having a baby.
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How can I have a baby? I have never known a man.
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And he says the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and the power of the most high will rest upon you.
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And that thing which is born of you will be called holy and the son of God.
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And so she receives that blessing.
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But what's the reason why he goes to Joseph? Because Joseph found out she was pregnant and was ready to divorce her, to break the betrothal.
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And so there's this separate reason, but they're complementary visitations.
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Same thing here.
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It's a complementary visitation, one by the angel, one by the Holy Spirit of God.
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The angel tells Cornelius, go, get him and bring him back.
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And then he goes to Peter and he says, go with them.
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Why? Because he wouldn't have wanted to go otherwise.
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So we see God working in the hearts of both men at a complementary time and a complementary place to bring these two men together to create this moment in church history which would change the world.
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And when we come to the last part of this, what we see is we see a church getting ready to be born.
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All they're waiting on is the word of God to be preached to them.
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And the church will be given birth in the house of Cornelius.
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A new church will be born.
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The house is filled.
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The people are waiting with bated breath.
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They cannot wait to hear what Peter has to say.
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And so he comes to them and they're ready to hear it.
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And he gets ready to preach.
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And that's what we're going to do next week.
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We're going to look at his sermon and their response.
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But before we do, let me bring today to a close.
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This passage, this last passage we read when Cornelius says, Now therefore, we all are here in the presence of God to hear all that you have commanded by the Lord.
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That passage, we should write that, we should put that on a banner because that's why you came today.
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This is the great church verse.
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We have all gathered to hear all that we have been commanded of by the Lord.
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And that's why I say we're about to see a church be birthed.
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But how is the church birthed? Through the preaching of God's word.
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Peter will preach.
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The church will be born.
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People will get saved during the sermon.
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We're going to see this next week.
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People are going to start getting saved while he's preaching.
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He didn't have to give 180 verses of Just As I Am and stand out there with his hands held out going, Please come, please come.
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He was preaching and they got saved in the middle of his talking.
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And the church was born and the Gentile church begins.
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In the house of Cornelius, praise be to the Lord who brought the gospel to us, who for centuries had been considered unclean, but have now been made clean in the blood of the Lamb.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for the gospel.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I thank you that Peter was able to preach with an unction that saw a church birthed by the power of your Holy Spirit.
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And I pray, Lord, that that same power and spirit would flow through the preaching of the ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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I pray that the congregation of Sovereign Grace would come weekly, ready to hear all that the Lord has commanded us to do and be willing to do it.
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I thank you, Lord.
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I thank you for all that you have done.
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I pray, O Lord, and thank you for the gospel.
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I thank you that you save every person who repents of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ.
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You saved Cornelius.
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You saved members of his household.
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And Lord God, you can save members of this place, people who are here today.
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For Lord God, you are able to do all things.
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So, Father, if there are those among us, and certainly there are who have not turned their hearts to Christ, Lord, we pray that you would turn their hearts.
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For we know it's impossible for us to do, but that which is impossible for man is possible with God.
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So we pray that you would bring conversion where it is needed, conviction where it is needed, and ultimately, Lord, that you would bless the preaching of your word to the furtherance of your kingdom.
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In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray.
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Amen.
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Let's stand together.