Are You a Christian...Really? (Part 1)

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Acts.

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Make your way to chapter 11.

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Now as many of you know, I have not preached a sermon in this church in over a month.

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And that for me is a long time.

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It really, it has been, I have appreciated the men who have preached for me, given me the opportunity to take a sabbatical with the birth of our new son.

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It's good to see, I'm glad he's here today, back there with Jennifer.

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I'm glad, her first time in church in over a month too, so that's nice.

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So you get a nine point sermon and three points of application.

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That's what happens when I take a month off.

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If you look at the back of the bullets and you'll see it's a pretty long outline.

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And as I was thinking about it this morning and kind of, this has been on my mind all week, kind of wondering what I was going to do with all of this material, is I do think it's going to be more than one week.

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Byron has been on my mind.

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As you all know, Brother Byron moved to Tennessee.

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He's doing well.

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I talk to him via text message quite a bit.

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And one of the interesting things is he used to tell me all the time, don't rush.

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Don't go too fast.

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You can slow down.

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And I'm not good at that.

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I kind of run real fast into stuff.

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But I'm going to try to take his whisper in my ear this week and just go slow.

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Not try to go too fast.

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And when I think we've covered what we need to cover for today, we'll stop.

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So you'll have the same outline maybe next week too.

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But I want us to begin with a question that's really been on my heart and mind as I was reading this text.

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And I've been studying Acts 11 now, well, for the last month, because I've been thinking about the fact that I was going to go back to Acts.

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We started in the book of Acts last year.

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We went through a lot of it.

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And then we took some time off during the summer, and then the other men preached for me.

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Well, now we're back.

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It has not been a verse-by-verse exposition.

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It has been more of an overview of what's happening in the book of Acts.

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But as we come to chapter 11, I want us to slow down a little bit.

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There's no need to rush.

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And I want us to ask this question.

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What comes to your mind when you hear the word Christian? What comes to your mind when you hear the word Christian? Well, some of you may undoubtedly be thinking, well, that's a pretty simple question.

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Christian is a person who follows Jesus Christ.

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That's pretty simple.

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That didn't take too long.

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But what does that mean? And what does that look like? Or maybe a better question, what is that supposed to look like? You look around our country.

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We won't go around the world, Giuseppe.

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We'll stay right here in America.

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You look around our country.

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You see people claiming to be Christians who are obviously not.

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And you say, oh, now, pastor, you're being judgmental.

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Well, let me say this.

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The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians that we are not to judge the world because they essentially act like the world.

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The world is sinful, and it's going to be sinful.

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And to not do business with the world or to engage with the world because they're sinners would be silly because we would never be able to engage with the world.

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But we are allowed to look in the church and make some distinctions.

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In fact, in 1 Corinthians, it tells us, it says there must be divisions among you because that's how those who are true are separated from those who are false.

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There's a reason why we don't worship with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

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There's a reason why we don't worship with the Mormons.

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There's a reason why we don't worship with the Catholics.

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There's a reason why we don't worship with the liberal Protestants.

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You see groups and institutions claiming to be Christians, and they are obviously not.

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You see churches that identify themselves with the word Christian, and they are obviously not.

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Thus, the term Christian in America has become somewhat ambiguous.

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You don't really know what it means anymore.

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To say a person is a Christian in our modern culture is not really to say much at all.

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Politicians support all kinds of evil, yet, hey, he's a Christian.

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People live in perpetual, unrepentant sin, yeah, but they're Christians.

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Celebrities practice all sorts of idolatry, immoral acts, adultery, they don't care.

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He's a Christian.

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One famous comedian, I'll never forget this, he was joking about his sinful lifestyle.

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He was joking about all the things that he does that are sinful, and how much he enjoys his sin.

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He says, but I'm a Christian.

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He said, at the end of the day, all I've got to do is this, and it's an etch-a-sketch.

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It all goes away.

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By the way, if you're on the recording, I just made the sign of the cross, if you didn't see what I did.

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He said, all I've got to do is go one, two, three, four, and it's like an etch-a-sketch.

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I shook it up, and it's all blank again.

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And that's the way people see Christianity.

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And that's why America has really brought a reproach upon the name of Christ in the world.

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And don't get mad if you, you know, don't tell me about your patriotism.

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Because let me tell you this, in many places, America and Christianity go together.

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People think, if you're a Christian, you're an American, if you're an American, you're a Christian.

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And what that has done is the world sees Americans celebrating divorce, celebrating greed, celebrating political corruption, celebrating homosexuality, celebrating adultery, celebrating abortion, celebrating racism, and everybody says, well, that's what a Christian is.

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No, it's not.

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But because the two have become, in some people's minds, inextricably tied, America has brought a reproach on the name of Christ.

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And what has happened? Well, what do we see in our land? Massive political corruption, massive sin being glorified.

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We see people imprisoned for their faith.

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And you see the world around us going, well, Christianity is bad.

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In fact, the word Christian has become a negative term even among some believers.

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There's a very popular quote.

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Maybe some of you have said it.

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Please don't say it to me.

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But you may have said it and you may say, well, it's a good quote.

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No, I'll explain later why it's not.

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They'll say, I hate religion, but I love Jesus.

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I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but I know some of you have probably said it.

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Maybe even put it on Facebook.

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And I understand that essentially what you're doing by saying that is you're associating, you're trying to disassociate those with those Christians who only see their faith as ritualistic.

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And within that group, some would say, well, Christian is a religious title, and I'm opposed to the religious expressions of a lot of people who call themselves Christian, so I don't want to be associated with that group.

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Rather than seeing the connection to the name of Christ, the group sees it in association with the larger culture of Christian, and they don't want anything to do with that.

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And whether that's right or wrong, they've rejected the term Christian for what they think it has become.

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And they say, I don't want to be called Christian anymore.

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Well, I want to talk about that some by looking at Acts 11.

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Because by the way, the term Christian is in the Bible, but it's not in the Bible that much.

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We're going to talk about that in a little while too.

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How many times is it in the Bible? Anybody know? Three times.

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It is only in the Bible three times.

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The word Christian is only in the Bible three times.

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Every time it's used, essentially, outsiders calling the church that.

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It's not something that the church identified itself with from the beginning, but that doesn't mean it's not good.

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That just means that is what it is.

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But ultimately, my point in all this is to ask the question, what does it mean? Where did it come from? And should we, as followers of Christ, embrace this? Should we give it to the larger culture that's misusing it? Or should we demand it back? And say what it really is, rather than just saying, well, people have misused it, so I don't want it anymore.

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It's an important question.

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If we are Christians, what does that mean, and what does it not mean? Well, today we're going to read in Acts 11, and we're going to see where the believers were first called Christians, and then we're going to give an overview of this chapter, and we're going to start digging into it.

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And we're going to ask ourselves this question.

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I hope you ask yourself this question before the end of today, and if it does move into next week, I hope you continue to ask yourself this question throughout the week.

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Are you a Christian? Really? So let's stand and read Acts 11.

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We're going to focus on 19-26 as the passage.

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Even though we're going to be looking at the whole chapter, I want to focus on 19-26.

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Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.

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But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists, also preaching the Lord Jesus.

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And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

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The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

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When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them to all remain faithful to the Lord with a steadfast purpose.

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For he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit, and of faith.

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And a great many people were added to the Lord.

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So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul.

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And when he found him, he brought him to Antioch.

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For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people.

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And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians.

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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

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I thank you for the truth of the word.

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I pray that as we seek to give an exposition of it, that you would glorify yourself in the preaching of your word.

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Lord, I know I'm unworthy to grab this word and speak it in and of myself.

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So I rely fully and completely on your spirit to speak.

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Please God, keep me from error.

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For the sake of your people and the sake of my own heart.

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I pray that what is preached today will be truth.

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In Jesus' name, Amen.

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I noticed something while I was listening to everybody.

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I didn't miss a Sunday.

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Even though I didn't preach the last five Sundays, I came and listened to all the guys preach.

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I noticed something.

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I shout a lot more than those guys.

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And people probably wonder why I shout.

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You know, am I just one of these hellfire brimstone? No, but...

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There's just so many real things going on in this world that we really need to be...

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We need to be moved by.

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And...

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I don't know.

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Just kind of on my heart.

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Because when we look at the book of Acts, we see what was going on here in chapter 11.

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There's so many corollaries today and to today.

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And if you remember when we started this series, it was called Beyond Our Borders.

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And that's still the overarching focus of our study in Acts.

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The goal in studying Acts for me as your pastor was to remind you of the missionary spirit of the early church.

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It's to remind you that the purpose for why we are here is to reach out and reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We cannot become insulated and we cannot become separated.

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We must infiltrate and affect.

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Salt and light are meant to make a difference.

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And you are the salt of the earth.

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You are the light of the world, Jesus told His followers.

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And so when we go to Acts, we see in Acts chapter 1 and verse 8, Jesus tells His disciples, He said, you will receive the power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

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We've seen this happen already.

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Acts chapter 1 through chapter 10 has got us there.

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We've seen the gospel go to Jerusalem at Pentecost.

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We've seen the persecution which came as a result of Stephen's preaching and it sent the gospel out into Judea and Samaria.

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Because the church was what? On the run! Because now they're being persecuted.

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I remember one time, I heard some guy say, if there were people down the road shooting Christians, you should just walk and get in line.

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I said, well, the early church differed.

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They took off and chose to preach elsewhere.

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And now that's not to say that we shouldn't stand for truth.

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I don't want to necessarily impugn the person who said that, but it was just a funny thought.

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I thought, you know, the early church used the dispersion, in fact, later in 1 Peter, he actually talks to the elect who had been dispersed, sometimes called the dysphoria or the dispersed believers.

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They were dispersed by what? Persecution! And it was persecution that God used to force His church out of the bubble that they were in.

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I can see that happening more and more in my lifetime.

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The church becomes so insulated.

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The church becomes a culture all to itself.

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Divided and separated from the world.

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We become monastic.

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We create our own little entertainment centers, our own little monasteries, and we stay out of the world.

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So what happens? Can't do that anymore.

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Now it's coming at us.

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We've got to move out.

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We've got to affect the world around us.

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And that's what he said.

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He said, go out.

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So persecution comes.

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They go to Judea.

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They go to Samaria.

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Then God opens the door to the Gentile nations with the preaching of the gospel to Cornelius.

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Now the gospel is poised and set to go out to the world.

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It's made its way north from Jerusalem.

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And it's seated in Antioch.

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And Antioch will be a huge, important part of our studies in the weeks to come and in the months to come because Antioch will become the church that sends out Paul on his missionary work.

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This church will become a sending church.

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Mike Collier and I were talking about that this morning about the responsibility of believers as missionaries.

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We are all called to either go or send.

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But nobody's called to just be not part of the missionary work.

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We either go as missionaries or we send missionaries.

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But no one can say, I'm not part of the missionary endeavor.

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That's the problem.

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What has happened is we've divided ourselves from that.

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We said that's somebody else's job.

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That's somebody else's responsibility.

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It is ours.

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We preach the truth.

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We proclaim the truth.

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And we send out men to preach the truth.

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I've outlined the chapter for us.

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Kind of going off track now.

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I want to get back on.

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I've outlined the chapter for us.

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And even though I want to focus on the title Christian in verse 26 that was given, I want to look at the passages that lead up to it because this is a formative moment in the history of the church.

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So let's look first.

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If you have your outline, you'll notice I have it in nine points.

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They all start with an R just because it didn't have to be that way, but I decided to make it that way.

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And we look first at the reiteration of the gospel going to the Gentiles.

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Let's look back at verse 1.

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I don't know if you remember this, but before we took the break from Acts, we had just spent weeks studying the situation that happened with Cornelius.

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And here we have the story told again.

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It says, Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also received the word of God.

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

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Can you imagine? This is the apostle Peter.

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This is the man who was on the Mount of Transfiguration.

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This is the man whom Jesus said, Behold, thou art Peter.

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Right? Peter was a leader among the apostles.

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He's a leader in the early church.

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He's gone to preach the gospel to the Gentiles.

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And he comes back to what? Criticism.

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The text is criticism.

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Judgment.

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From who? Those who didn't think the Gentiles should receive the gospel as Gentiles.

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Now if they wanted to receive the gospel as Jews, meaning they had to first convert to Judaism through circumcision and the other rites, and then become Christians, that's fine.

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But these people didn't do that.

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They received the gospel as Gentiles, and so Peter comes back to a hotbed of criticism.

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I can't imagine a pastor being criticized.

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Just kidding.

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But it's real.

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This is such a beautiful thing.

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Such a powerful thing.

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And notice something.

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This is the third time, starting here, the third time you're going to hear this story.

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If you go back to chapter 10 and read it, and I encourage you to do that this week, the story is told essentially twice.

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First it tells the story of Cornelius receiving his vision.

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Peter receiving his vision.

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Then the two meet, and what do they do? They tell the story again.

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So it happens twice in chapter 10 that you kind of get the same thing twice.

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Now it's happening three times.

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What do we learn in hermeneutics about that? When something is said twice, it shows what? Emphasis.

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What happens when it's three times? The emphasis is to the superlative degree.

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God is called what? Holy, holy, holy.

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Three times anything is superlative degree.

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This is the third time we're getting this story reiterated to us.

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For what reason? Because this is a watershed moment in the history of Christianity.

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This is a huge thing.

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This is an important thing.

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And yet Peter is being criticized.

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It says, you went up to uncircumcised men and ate with them.

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You see, here's the deal.

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Peter is not so much being criticized for giving the gospel to the Gentiles.

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Peter is being criticized for his fellowship with the Gentiles.

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And you realize that later, he will renege on this? Because in Galatians, it tells us that the apostle Paul had to actually rebuke Peter.

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For what reason? Because Peter would fellowship with the Gentiles until the circumcision party came around.

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Until these Jews came around.

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Then what would he do? He would remove himself from the Gentiles.

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Why? So as to not offend the offensive Jewish believers? It's amazing how the entire New Testament really deals with this issue of bringing together Jew and Gentile under one people called Christian.

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And we'll talk more about that word Christian later.

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But that's the thing.

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It's bringing together who were formerly divided into this one thing we call the church or the elect of God.

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And it goes on to say, But Peter began and explained it to them in order.

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I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet, descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me.

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Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air, and I heard a voice saying to me, Rise, Peter, kill and eat.

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But I said, By no means, Lord, for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.

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But the voice answered a second time from heaven, What God has made clean do not call common.

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This again is a total reiteration of chapter 10.

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It's just retelling the story.

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Verse 10 says, This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven.

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And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea, and the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction.

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Again, that word we focused on back in chapter 10.

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There is no distinction between Jew and Greek anymore.

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For we are all one in Christ Jesus.

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And it goes on, These six brothers also accompanied me.

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These six brothers bear witness to what happened.

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Remember I said this back in, I think, April when I was preaching on this.

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I pointed out the fact that this kind of flies in the face of that whole Pope thing.

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Peter being the quote-unquote first Pope, having all authority, not having to give any answer for his decision making.

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He actually said, I had witnesses come with me.

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These guys were the witnesses and they came with me to see what was happening.

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And he told us how he had seen an angel stand in his house and say, When I descend to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter, he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.

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And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as it had on us, as he had on us at the beginning.

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And I remember the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.

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If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? What a powerful question.

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Who am I to say no to what God is obviously saying yes to? Who am I to reject what God is obviously doing? So we see the reiteration of this entire story a third time.

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This moment is so clear, it's so important, it's so powerful, and yet it continues with controversy.

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Paul has to deal with it in Romans and in Galatians and in other books.

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Peter has to deal with it in his book.

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We see this over and over and over, this frustration of division that's happening in the church.

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They cannot see themselves as one person in Jesus Christ because of those who demand that their Judaism is more important than their allegiance to Jesus Christ.

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But what's powerful here is verse 18, and this is what I was trying to build up to.

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Because in verse 18, it says, when they heard these things, they fell silent.

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Now, they didn't stay silent too long because eventually this would all come up again.

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But at the moment of truth, when Peter tells them what happened, they fell silent, and then what? And they glorified God, saying, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.

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So in your notes, I put this.

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The first 17 verses is the reiteration of the gospel going to the Gentiles, but verse 18 stands out because verse 18 is the recognition of the work of God in salvation.

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It's the recognition of the work of God in salvation.

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It tells us that salvation is something that God grants.

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I want to focus on this for a moment.

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I don't want us to go past this.

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Again, I've spent so much time with this chapter, and every time I come to certain verses, they just really stick out to me.

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And verse 18 sticks out to me because I remember years ago I was trying to explain Reformed Theology to somebody.

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And not that everything has to come back to Reformed Theology, but every once in a while, it's important that we point out a few things.

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And here's something important.

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I remember talking to a man, and he was telling me that he didn't think repentance is a gift.

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And at the time, I was just surprised because I'd never heard anyone say that they thought repentance was something that we do on our own outside of the grace of God.

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But that is Pelagianism.

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If you don't know what Pelagianism is, it's a 4th century heresy that was debated and argued about with Augustine.

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There was Augustine and Pelagius, and they battled one another over the issue of the will of man.

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Does man, by nature, have the capacity to please God? No! And that was Augustine's argument.

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Man does not, by nature, have the capacity to please God.

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Outside of the grace of God, man cannot please God.

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In fact, Augustine's prayer was simple.

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God, command what thou wilt, and give us the ability to do what thou commandeth.

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Command what you would have us do, and then give us the ability to do it.

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And that was where Pelagius had the problem.

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He didn't like Augustine's prayer.

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He said, if God commands it, you must already be able to do it.

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And such a thing as foolish to think that we can do anything apart from the grace of God.

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Augustine argued with him.

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Augustine proved his heresy from Scripture.

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And for 1600 years, he's been known as the arch-heretic Pelagius.

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Because he taught a false view of the nature of man.

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That man is essentially without the need of the grace of God.

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He was considered a heretic even by the Catholics.

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Because even the Catholics believed that you have to have grace to start everything.

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So you got, I mean he really was.

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He was received as a heretic by the church in Toto.

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But getting back to the point of all this.

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The man who looked at me, he said, I don't believe repentance is a gift.

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I said, what is it? If it's not a gift, what is it? It's something we do on our own.

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And I say, well look here at this text.

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It says in verse 18, without doubt, God has granted repentance.

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That word granted is the word edokin.

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Edokin in the Greek means to give or to supply something.

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In the model prayer, you all pray it every Sunday.

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We say what? Give us this day our daily bread.

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That word give in Greek, edokin, it's the same root.

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Supply to us our daily bread.

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Give us what we can't give ourselves, oh God.

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It also carries the connotation of producing something.

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In James chapter 5, it says the sky produces rain.

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Same word.

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In Matthew chapter 24, it says the moon will not produce its light.

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Same word.

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So semantically, when the Bible says God granted repentance to the Gentiles, what it means is that God has given it to them.

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He's authored it among them.

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He's produced it among them.

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That which was not there before and that which did not come from within them.

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It came from God.

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Repentance is from God.

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And all I'm trying to remind you of, people, is that salvation is of the Lord.

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Repentance is a gift from God and the ability to repent is a gift from God.

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In fact, go with me to 2 Timothy.

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I'm getting excited now.

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Calm down.

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2 Timothy.

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Slow down.

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Byron's whispering.

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2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 25.

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Actually, start at verse 24.

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Remember, Timothy's one of the pastoral epistles.

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Paul is talking to Timothy about his ministry as a pastor in the church, an elder in the church.

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And he says in verse 24, And the Lord's servant, there, the bondservant or the slave, the person who is the minister, the person who is a servant, must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

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And then it doesn't say why, but the implication of the text is why should he be gentle? Why is all this important? Because God may perhaps grant them what? Repentance.

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Leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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This is why we don't take everybody and blast them for their errors.

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It's why we don't walk around with a chainsaw, like a chainsaw to a blade of grass.

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Just knocking everybody down for their errors.

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We go to them in love.

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And we say, brother, don't you recognize that what you're saying is wrong? Brother, sister, don't you recognize that what you believe is wrong? Don't you recognize that where you are in your faith and understanding of Christ is not correct? Why do we do that? We hope that God would show you so that you would come to repentance.

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We do that so that God may grant you repentance.

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It's the purpose.

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It's God who gives repentance.

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We see it here in Acts from the pen of Luke.

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We see it here in 2 Timothy from the pen of Paul.

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God is the one who gives salvation, is of the Lord.

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And He grants repentance to whom He chooses.

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And He at this moment in Acts 11, we can go back to Acts 11, verse 18.

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At this moment in history, God chose to grant repentance to the Gentiles.

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Who before did not have it, God now has granted it.

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So all that sort of sets the stage for verse 19.

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We're finally getting around to the passage that we actually read this morning.

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All that was the introduction.

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Let me say this.

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As I said, I'm going to find a stopping place because I don't want to continue too long.

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But I want you to see verse 19, what happens.

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The repeat of the failure to speak only to the Jews.

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Look at verse 19.

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Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen, traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to who? No one except Jews.

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Now here's the deal.

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I'm going to give these guys an out.

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Because in the narrative, it would seem like they're denying what just happened with Peter, right? Because Peter just told them the gospel's gone to the Gentiles.

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Peter just told them there's been revival at Cornelius' house and the Holy Spirit's fallen.

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And yet now they're just going to the Jews still.

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But here's the situation.

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When you read Acts, you have to remember you're reading things in a narrative and there are certain things that are happening in conjunction with other things.

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There's a very good chance, because of the writing in verse 19, it says, now those who were scattered because of what? The persecution of Stephen.

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What does that push us back to? Acts chapter 8, the persecution of Stephen.

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Acts chapter 8 set the stage for the conversion of the Apostle Paul and the conversion of Cornelius.

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Acts 9 and Acts 10.

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This may be happening at the same time that the situation with Cornelius is happening.

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These guys who are going to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch may not know that what's happening with Cornelius has happened and so what are they doing? They're limiting their conversations to who? The Jews! Because that's what they had all been doing.

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They had all been limiting themselves to the Jews.

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So again, I'm giving these guys some of an out.

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I'm saying, you know what, if they knew about the thing with Cornelius and they were denying the Jews, that would be pretty bad.

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But there's a chance they didn't know about the thing with Cornelius.

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But here's what they did know and this is what frustrates my heart as I read this text.

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They know what Jesus said.

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And you will be my witnesses to the Jews only.

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No.

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But that's the attitude.

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And that's why I call it the repeated failure.

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They are continually repeating the failure of not listening to the command of Jesus when He says, you will be, or actually I would say the prophecy of Jesus, when He said, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and where? Stop there because that's as far as the Jews have gotten.

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No! The ends of the earth.

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And that's why I see in verse 19 a problem, but in 20 there's a beautiful solution.

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This is where we're going to end.

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Because there is a readiness in some of them to take the gospel.

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Even though they may not have known about what happened with Cornelius.

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They knew what Jesus said.

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And read with me in verse 20.

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Verse 20 is the key.

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But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists.

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And by the way, that word Hellenist there simply refers to Greeks.

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It's the Greek speaking people, the Greek people.

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This is not the Jews.

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In fact, it's making a contrast between verse 19 which says they were speaking only to Jews.

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But some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, did what? They spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

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Do you realize something? That these men are the true missionaries.

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These are the men who are going beyond where they had normally been.

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And that's speaking only to the Jews.

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And they're speaking to people who've never even heard of Christ at all in any sense.

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No idea of the Messiah.

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Many of them, no idea of the Old Testament.

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No idea of the Old Covenant.

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No idea about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

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And yet they're going to them as missionaries of the Gospel.

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These men are the heroes of Acts 11.

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And you know what's the beautiful thing? Not one of them is named.

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Read it again.

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But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, we know where they were from, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.

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We don't know who these guys were.

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We don't know anything about them except where they were from.

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But we know this.

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They broke the mold that was around them of speaking only to the Jews.

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Likely in a situation where they didn't even know about Cornelius, they didn't even know about Peter, they broke the mold and they went out with the Gospel.

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In the history of the church, how many noble men have there been whose names have not been known, but have made a great impact for the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Here are to name but a few.

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Sometimes I think we often get caught up in the idea, well I'm not a pastor, I'm not a preacher, I'm not a book writer or a seminary professor, so I'm not going to make that big of an impact for Christ.

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Nobody is ever going to know my name.

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Let me tell you this, just because no one may ever know your name, doesn't mean that you're not going to make an impact for the Kingdom.

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These guys didn't have their name written in a book, didn't have their name remembered in history, but they ended up planting the church that would send out the Apostle Paul.

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May God commit to us all the same desire to break whatever mold we're in and reach the world with the Gospel of Christ.

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Let us pray.

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Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word, I thank You for the truth.

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I pray, O God, that we would have the readiness, as these few unnamed men did, readiness to take the Gospel to the whole world.

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And Lord, in the weeks to come, as we see the response to their efforts and the planting of the church in Antioch, the first time believers are called Christians, and then how that church operated in the world, may it be, O God, that we see in this whole chapter, example after example after example after example, of what we ought to be doing as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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And Father, as I know there always are men and women here who do not know Christ, I pray that the words today have been to them salt and light.

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That these words have been words that would make a change through the power of Your Holy Spirit in their life.

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And that they would be called today to repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ.

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And for believers, I pray that it would also be salt and light to them, that it would be something that would change their lives, that they would see their need to draw closer to Christ through reaching out to the world with the Gospel.

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We thank You, Father, for all that You've given us.

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In the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray.

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Amen.

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Now I want to say one more word before we begin the song.

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At the bottom of your notes, it says sermon application.

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I want you to write one thing in there, because next week we're going to try to finish this up.

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It says a true Christian is blank, blank, blank.

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The first one, missionary minded.

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Missionary minded, that's what today was about.

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Do we have a desire to see people come to Christ? Do we have a desire to be missionaries or to send missionaries out to see people come to Christ? Do we have that desire? Because that's what the early church gave us as an example.

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Let's stand and sing together.