Sunday, August 13, 2023 AM

The Spread of the Gospel in Acts 10

Turn with me to Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 10. And we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 18 this morning. We're still in this section of the book of Acts where the command to rise echoes again and again, passage after passage.

And everything going on here in this section of Acts just shows the spread of the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of Jesus spreading to new places, impacting new people. And it's clear that it's happening because Jesus Christ is indeed risen from the dead at the right hand of the Father and has indeed sent forth His Holy Spirit.

And so, things are changing. They're changing in Lydah, they're changing in Joppa, they're about to change in Caesarea, they're changing all over the place, and there's going to be even big changes in Jerusalem.

And so, we see that even though Christ is enthroned in heaven, His kingdom makes big waves here on earth. And we've seen in the first two passages how the power of the risen Christ makes Sharon to bloom like a rose.

This wilderness is now full of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the news of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead moves swiftly like that of a.

Gazelle.

And His voice reaches forth and calls His bride to Himself unfailingly. And now we come to a passage that focuses our attention upon the son of Jonah, a man named Simon. We know him best as Peter, but here in this passage, we've been told time and again his name is Simon.

His name is Simon. His name is Simon. No, not Simon the tanner, the other Simon. This is Simon, the disciple of Jesus, the son of Jonah. I invite you to stand with me as we read God's holy word, Acts chapter 10, beginning in verse 1.

This is the word of the Lord. There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian regiment, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always.

About the ninth hour of the day, he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God coming in and saying to him, Cornelius. When he observed him, he was afraid and said, what is it, Lord? So he said to him, your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God.

Now send men to Joppa and send for Simon, whose surname is Peter. He is lodging with Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea. He will tell you what you must do. And when the angel who spoke to him had departed, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier from among those who waited on him continually.

So when he had believed all these things to them, he sent them to Joppa. The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour.

Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat. But while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners descending to him and let down to the earth.

In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.

And a voice spoke to him again the second time, What God has cleansed you must not call common. This was done three times, and the object was taken up into heaven again. Now while Peter wondered within himself what this vision which he had seen meant, behold, the men who had been sent from Cornelius and had made inquiry for Simon's house and stood before the gate.

And they called and asked whether Simon, whose surname was Peter, was lodging there. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. You know what makes a ghost town a ghost town? There's movement, but there's no life.

Old drapes in the windows barely hanging on go fluttering in and out of the house. Old screen doors blown by the wind come open and closed, open and closed. There's movement. There's no life there. Windmills go round and round.

You hear the squeak of them. They don't pump water anymore. There's no cattle. There's no horses. Ghost town. Ghost town has movement, but it didn't have any life. Well, the old covenant was a ghost town.

There was a whole lot of movement, but there wasn't any life. When Jesus came to the temple, he discovered a lot of movement, but there wasn't any life.

There.

It was the same thing as that fig tree he passed on the way to the temple. Oh, there were all the leaves full in the wind, waving and catching your attention. Hey, over here, I'm a fig tree. You could tell it from a distance.

He goes up to the fig tree, and what does he find? He finds no figs. And he curses that fig tree, and it dies. What did he do when he get to the temple? Oh, you could see all the activity. It looks like there's a lot of life there, but there wasn't.

And he cursed the temple, and it withered and died within that generation. The old covenant was a ghost town. Ichabod was its name. The glory had departed. Oh, they had a temple, and they had traveling proselytization.

They had Pharisees who'd go long ways away to convert someone and make them twice as son of hell as they were, Jesus said. They had a temple. They had travel. They had a tale to tell, but they were just not the same anymore.

Post-resurrection, all of these tenants of this old covenant, after the resurrection, they were just silversmiths in the age of Solomon, and they were obsolete. The new covenant had movement, but it was according to life.

He said, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Well, there's activity there, isn't there? There's motion there, but it's unto life. He said to his disciples, go unto all the world and make disciples of all the nations.

Well, there's movement there, and it's according to life. And he has sent forth his servants, and here in this section of Acts, we see Peter going forth and preaching, and look at Sharon, blooming like the rose, and the voice of Christ moving as fast as a gazelle, calling home his bride.

Cornelius, Peter, and the Gospel to the Gentiles

And now, there's a crisis in the life of Cornelius and a crisis in the life of Peter. And both of these are matters of faith. Will Cornelius respond in faith? Will Peter respond in faith? Let's look at this situation and consider what happens with Peter, with Simon, Simon who is in Joppa, Simon Barjona.

Well, in the first six verses, we're introduced to Cornelius, and he's living in Caesarea, and we see that he fears God, it says there in verse 2. He was a devout man who feared God. Now, a God-fearer in this time would be somebody who knew the Jewish Scriptures and was someone who prayed to the God revealed in the Jewish Scriptures, somebody who was obviously for the Jews having their place of worship, and he himself had not converted.

He had not been circumcised, he had not quoted the Shema and baptized himself and converted into Judaism proper, but he was certainly someone who was for those things, and we see that he prayed all the time, and he gave alms generously to the people, and so he was very much celebrated by the Jewish community.

He was for them, he was for the worship of God, and was doing his best to worship God as revealed in the law and the prophets and the writings. He feared God. His life was centered around the God of the Scriptures.

But then an angel arrives, and now he's fearing in a whole new way. Now God really has his attention, and he says the very same thing, notice, that Saul of Tarsus said on the road to Damascus. Very similar, isn't it?

Who are you, Lord? What is it, Lord? I don't know what's going on, but I know I'm in trouble. Now he didn't know he was in trouble beforehand, did he? He's a centurion, non-commissioned officer in the Roman army, in charge of a lot of men.

He has a lot going for him. He's a man of rank. He's a man of reputation. He is a man of religion. You just see the description of Cornelius. If we had that description before us today, somebody like that in our midst, we wouldn't give him a second thought, oh, he's fine.

Look at his reputation. Look how well-received he is. Look how religious he is, how careful he is in his life, and he's a man who has rank. He's very well-respected by everybody. Nothing wrong with him.

He's fine. I'm glad he's a part of our community. God sends an angel to him and says, there's something you need to do. I'm not going to tell you what it is. Lord, why is that? Because God has ordained the preaching of his word as the ordinary means to bring about the conversion of sinners.

And so, he's going to send Simon Peter to Cornelius to preach the gospel to him. He may know what he must do. He reminds me of somebody else, reminds me of the rich ruler that Jesus encountered. I've observed the law, I've kept the law, I've done everything I'm supposed to do since my youth.

What did Jesus say to him? One thing you lack. One thing you lack. What did he lack? He lacked Jesus Christ. Cornelius has his world in order. Here is a success story of Israel's mission to get the word out to the Gentiles that there's only one God.

This man believes it. They have told him and brought him in and educated him, and he's on board with the whole thing, and yet here he is, and he is not out of danger, in fact, he is in danger. So much so that God sends an angel to him and says, you've got to send servants down to Joppa and go look for Simon, whose surname is Peter, and he's going to come tell you what you must do.

One thing you lack, and Peter's going to come tell you what that is. Now, it's interesting that Cornelius is in Caesarea. We've already heard a lot about Caesarea already in the book of Acts. It is the place from which Saul, freshly converted, and with a target on his back, it was from Caesarea that he sailed on back home to Tarsus for a time.

He stirred everybody up there in Damascus, stirred everybody up in Jerusalem, and the believers said, we've got to get you out of town, you're going to get killed. And they sent him up to Caesarea, and from Caesarea he left and went on to Tarsus.

But before that, we heard about Philip. Remember Philip? Philip is the guy who went down up to Samaria and preached the gospel to the Samaritans. Who among the early church wanted to do that? Philip was one of the early deacons.

He was a Hellenist. He was more comfortable with that, and he went up to the Samaritans and he preached the gospel to them. Later on, we find him way south preaching to an Ethiopian. And Philip continues his travels, and he goes along the coast from port city to port city preaching the gospel, and we read in Acts chapter 8 that Philip the evangelist, that's his nickname, remember?

Philip the evangelist settled down in Caesarea where Cornelius is. Now, I'm not an efficiency expert, but if you've got Philip the evangelist in town, why is Cornelius sending servants all the way down to Joppa to find Peter when Philip's in town?

Lord, what are you doing? This whole thing could have been settled a lot quicker. But you know, Philip didn't need that lesson, did he? Philip didn't need the lesson that you should be preaching the gospel to everybody everywhere.

He's already demonstrated that. He's preached to the Samaritans. He's preached to the Ethiopian eunuch. He was the first one to hit the port cities on the coast. Philip doesn't need that lesson. You know who needs that lesson, who really, really needs that lesson is Simon Peter, Simon Peter, big man in Jesus' church.

He needs that lesson.

That's a hard lesson to learn too. We find him having real difficulty learning about preaching the gospel to the Gentiles and understanding their full status in Christ. He had trouble learning that lesson even from, well, we read the account in Galatians, don't.

We?

How he was treating the Gentiles way differently when he was around the Jews. Hard lesson for Peter to learn. And so we see that the Lord is working on Peter. So, he instructs Cornelius, this Gentile, centurion in the Italian regiment, how much more Gentile can you be than to be from Rome, from Italy, and to be at the head of a column of around 100 men all wearing the uniform of the oppressor of the Jews.

And God says, you're going to send servants down to Joppa, and you're going to get Simon Peter up here, and he will tell you what to do. So, God has a plan here for Peter as much as He has for Cornelius.

Isn't it interesting the way the Lord works in our preaching of the gospel, in our declaring of the good news of Jesus Christ, as we herald the reality of King Jesus to others? That God is doing a work in us even as we preach it, at the same time He's doing a work in those who hear it.

Now, the servants leave, they head to Joppa, and as they get near the city, look at the Lord's timing of all of this, Peter, verse 9, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour. He became very hungry and wanted to eat, but while they made bread, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened, and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth.

Can you imagine this sheet? It's huge, it's massive, all four corners bound up together, and you can just see it wriggling full of motion as it's being lowered down right in front of him, and when it lands, here come the corners out, and there's just critters everywhere filling that sheet.

And a voice comes to Peter, it says, rise, Peter, kill and eat. Here it is, here is the commandment to rise. Peter told Aeneas, the lame, rise. He says to the dead body of Dorcas, rise. God says to Peter, rise, kill, and eat.

What's the problem?

It's full of all kinds of things that a good Jewish lad ought not to eat. What's in there? All kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of.

The air.

And what's wrong with that list? It's the thing that, at the very beginning, all kinds, all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth. Not some, but all kinds. Not just some wild beasts that are worth hunting and a Jewish person can eat, but it's all kinds of wild beasts.

Not just some creeping things, like you can have a locust here or there, but no, this is all kinds of creeping things. All kinds of the birds of the air. I don't know how many buzzards were in there, how many crows.

All kinds, and this is a great challenge to Peter. Don't you think the Lord knows that? He says to Peter, rise, kill, and eat. What is Peter's response?

No, Lord.

It's like a married bachelor. How can you put the word no and the word Lord together in the same sentence and make sense? You just can't do it.

No, Lord?

Isn't this amazing? Peter is out-holying Jesus. Jesus is telling him, rise, kill, and eat, and Peter is saying, no, no, I'm too holy for that. You see, I'm too well-informed in the Scriptures for that.

I'm more righteous than you, so no, that doesn't make any sense at all. But it is precisely because Jesus Christ is risen, precisely because He has brought about the new covenant, precisely because He is at the right hand of the Father that He has the authority and the wherewithal and the basis to say to Peter, rise, kill, and eat.

Now, in the old covenant, God gave certain animals to His Son to eat, didn't He? Out of Egypt, I've called my son, He calls Israel His son, calls Israel His servant. And says to His Son, He says to him, here are the critters you can eat.

Here's a whole list of them. You can read about Leviticus, Numbers.

Here's what you can eat.

Oh, what a bountiful gift from a Creator, from their Lord, from their Redeemer. Here's what you can eat. And in the new covenant, the Lord has given to His Son, capital S, Son, capital S, Servant. How much has the Father given to the Son?

Everything. He is the heir of all things. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. Everything has been given to Christ, His Son. And His Son says to His servant, Peter, rise, kill, and eat. Here's the bounty of what my Father has given to me.

I give some to you. Rise, kill, and eat. So what is Peter saying to his Lord? No, no, no. You can't say that because Christ has risen from the dead. So therefore, you ought to rise, kill, and eat, Peter.

Christ is the heir of all things. Whatever He touches is now clean. If there was an unclean animal that touched you in the old covenant, you became unclean. But everything's different in the new covenant because when Jesus touches you, you become.

Clean.

He has laid His hand on these and said, these are clean. Don't call unclean what I have declared clean. You see how that's reversed? Now, this sheds some light on a description that we have back at the beginning of our passage wherein the angel says to Cornelius in verse 4, second half of verse 4, so he said to him, your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God, a memorial before God.

What an interesting word. When you look up the word memorial and you read through the Old Testament what a memorial is, you find that altars, and feasts, and sacrifices, and priestly vestments, and liturgy are all described as memorials.

How can it possibly be that a Gentile, an uncircumcised Gentile who's never been to temple in his life could have anything on that level offering up a memorial before God? Any Jew reading that doesn't go past that.

You know how it is when you're reading in the Scriptures and you just get stopped cold? This would stop a Jew cold.

What?

How can a Gentile's prayers and alms be considered a memorial before God? Well, this is the big sea change happening that Peter needs to get on board with. He needs to understand that what God has declared clean is now clean, and when he puts this huge sheet full of all of these critters down in front of Peter, and he does it three times because Peter needs stuff three times, this is now clean.

Peter still doesn't know what it means until... Yes, hello? We are servants of Cornelius. Come to find Simon, whose surname is Peter. Hey, we're a bunch of Gentiles. He wants you to come with us and come to a Gentile's home, and eat Gentile food, and stay with a Gentile family, and we need to hear something from you.

The Lord has sent us, you see. Peter needs a lot of help to get there. This is a huge struggle for Peter to be able to accept what Jesus is saying, to really latch on to and believe what Jesus said. You are my witnesses.

You are going to go out from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth, and Peter may be thinking to himself, well, I'll just do Jerusalem, I'll just do.

Judea.

Okay, fine, I guess I'll have to go to Samaria, but why should I have to go to the uttermost parts of the earth? And Jesus is saying, no, you're going to go to the Gentiles, you're going to go to a Cornelius who is a centurion in the Italian regiment in the port city of Caesarea.

Now remember, Peter is really hungry. He's up there on the top of the house, and he's really hungry. He's been waiting for food to arrive. He is starving. And the sheet comes down full of all of these tasty critters, and he says, no.

God says, here, satisfy your hunger with these. He says, no, physical hunger couldn't change him. Something else is going to take place. Lord is doing a work in Peter, not even physical hunger can change him.

He's going to change him spiritually. Now, we know that Simon Bar-Jonah can get stuff wrong. So think about the passage in Matthew 16, beginning in verse 13, Matthew 16, beginning in verse 13, when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, not the same Caesarea, not the same Philip, but catches your eye.

When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, who do men say that I am, that I, the son of man, am? Verse 14. So they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, some others, and there's Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. Bar is the Aramaic word for son.

All right, so Simon, the son of Jonah. He says, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, something only God could reveal to a man.

Verse 21, from that time, Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day.

And then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you. Once again, Peter is out holying Jesus. I'm going to have more wisdom than Jesus here.

Verse 23, but he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan, for you are an offense to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. Jesus had heard this temptation before.

Satan in the wilderness had tried to tempt Jesus to receive the glory of the kingdoms of the world by avoiding the cross. All you have to do is just bow down and worship Satan. Oh, he knew this temptation to avoid the cross, and he said, get behind me, Satan.

Peter needs some education. Do you remember where Jesus found Simon Peter? Where He found Simon, the son of Jonah? He found him fishing, right? And he had fished a long time, and how much had he caught?

He hadn't caught a thing. And Jesus calls out and says, let your net down again. He said, okay, although we've done it all night, we'll let it down again. And they catch so many fish, the nets start breaking.

They don't know what to do. This is the biggest catch that they've ever had in their lives. That's what Peter understood. It's like, you are holy, you are powerful, I don't even deserve to be in your sight.

And then Jesus said to him, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. What kind of men? All kinds. All kinds of men. Look at that sheet bound to the four corners coming down out of heaven full of wriggling creatures.

You see it again? Oh, it's a fishing net. But inside are not just the clean, but those that Peter would think are unclean. All kinds of men. All kinds of creatures in the net. Now, Peter, you're supposed to be a fisher of men.

What kinds?

All kinds of men. And so Simon Bar-Jonah is there in Joppa, and he just got told he's got to go to the Gentiles and preach God's Word. Awfully familiar, isn't it? Jonah was told the same thing, go to Nineveh, preach my Word to the Ninevites.

But Jonah, he hated those Assyrians. They were his oppressors. He hated them, and he knew that the potential was if he came up there and preached the Word to them, that they would repent and then God would spare judgment on them.

And he wanted to see those oppressors completely destroyed, burned up with fire. And so Jonah went to Joppa to hire a ship to take him to Tarshish, far away. Well, here's Simon Bar-Jonah, the son of Jonah, and he's in Joppa, and he just got the same mission, go to some Gentiles and preach the Word to them.

What's he going to do? What's he going to do? Not just Gentiles, but go preach to your oppressor. Go preach to a centurion of an Italian regiment, the gospel. Oh, that's rough. So what is he going to do?

What are we going to do when the Lord clearly gives us instructions in His Word to follow Him in some fashion of obedience? What are we going to do? Love my enemy? Pray for those who persecute me? Forgive my brother seven times every time he comes to ask me?

Seventy times seven, Lord? Stand fast in the faith? Some of these instructions are difficult. And often, we are in the position of being confronted with the clear revelation of God's Word about a situation, and we have the tendency sometimes to say, no, Lord, you don't understand.

This person is unfeeling and righteous and bitter, and I don't want to do that kind of thing for them. They're just going to turn around and do the same thing all over again. No, Lord, you don't understand.

This is going to cost me too much. This is going to be too difficult. This is far too risky. No, Lord, I can't have that conversation with that person because it might not go well. And yet, when we are given the clear instructions from the Word of God, we are being instructed by a clear, unfailing, inerrant, infallible Word given to us by the Holy Spirit, holy men moved by the Holy Spirit, given to us what the Father has to say about His Son, and we don't get to say, no, Lord.

We don't get to say, no, Lord. And none of us are more compassionate and merciful than Jesus Christ, and none of us are more holy and righteous than Jesus Christ, and none of us are more wise than our Savior, Jesus Christ.

So whatever the reasons we have to say, oh, no, that's a bad idea, pick somebody else. Oh, it's more efficient to send Philip the evangelist, or somebody else would be a better option here. God, don't you think that this would work out a different way?

We don't get to do that. So it comes down to this, because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, He gives us clear instructions in His Word, and then He says, rise, rise for Him, for Him, not because there's a whip at my back or a spear in my side, but for my Savior, for my King.

He's risen, He's on the throne, He calls me to it, He says, rise for Him, for Him.

Conclusion and Prayer

Let's pray.

Father, we thank You so much for this day. We thank You for the truth of Your Word and the glory of Your Son, Jesus Christ, and Your patience and longsuffering with us, the gift of Your Holy Spirit. And Lord, we have this hope that because our Savior, our King, is risen from the dead, we may rise from where we are and walk in obedience to where You would have us to go.

And Lord, I know that some of these things You call us to are difficult, but help us to trust You.