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Reading Acts 10:44-48 where after Peter preached the gospel at the household or Cornelius, the people believed, received the Holy Spirit, and were baptized. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Jesus preaches the gospel in the household of Cornelius, and the people listening to him believe, and they are saved. And then, they are baptized, because that's the proper order, when we understand the text.
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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of Acts, we finish chapter 10 today, where Peter has preached the gospel in the household of Cornelius, and we will read today the result of his preaching, and what is done with those people who have come to faith.
Let me read here Acts 10, verses 44 to 48. Hear the word of the Lord. While Peter was still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the word. And all the circumcised believers who came with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also, for they were hearing them speaking with tongues and magnifying God.
Then Peter answered, Can anyone refuse water for these to be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did? And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for a few days.
And there we go. That'll be the conclusion of our chapter, where we have been learning here in Acts chapter 10 with this whole episode that God is drawing Jews and Gentiles to himself through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so here, Peter, with the Jews who are with him, see that God has come to the Gentiles also. This is wrapping up chapter 10 and will still be the subject of chapter 11 as well when we get into that chapter next week.
I'll tease that out a little bit before we get to the end. So let's come back to Acts 10, 44, where it is said, While Peter was still speaking these things, what was he speaking about? Well, that was the simple gospel presentation that we read about in the last lesson.
What Peter presents in verses 34 to 43, he talks about Jesus who had been sent by God, Jesus, who is Lord of all, that he did many great things in Judea, starting from Galilee, how he had healed the sick and had cast out demons and God was with him.
He started from the baptism of John. He continued through the ministry that he did in Judea and Jerusalem and to the point that Jesus was put to death by being hung on a cross. God raised him up on the third day, and then he appeared to many witnesses, Peter being one of them, and is testifying to these things now before the household of Cornelius.
And then Jesus commanded the disciples to go out and preach and solemnly bear witness that this is the one who has been designated by God as judge of the living and the dead. In verse 43 of him, all the prophets bear witness that through his name, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.
You know, every once in a while, the name Andy Stanley will pop up in my feed and in my newsreel. I will not have heard this guy's name for a while, because maybe he's gone a little bit without saying something controversial.
But then all of a sudden, his name will come back up and it will be something random, either something that he did, or someone believes that we need to be reminded of what Andy Stanley did. This is an article that I read today in Church Leaders.
It was published just today in Church Leaders magazine or website, whatever you want to call it. And it's nothing new that Andy Stanley did. It's just going back to previous things that he did. And he talked about how to reach people.
He had decided that he wasn't going to say the Bible says anymore. And if you know anything about Stanley's ministry, then you know how much he's actually tried to distance himself from saying the Bible says.
He even did a sermon in which he said, Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so. And this is where our trouble began. And he said that he changed his approach to preaching. Instead of saying the Bible says, he would say Jesus said, or John said, or James, the half brother of Jesus said, or something like that.
But how do you know what they said? Because it's in the Bible. He thinks that leads people astray and we shouldn't say that anymore. We should rather be saying, oh, it was this man or this man or this man or something like that.
And he claimed that it changed his preaching and the way that people listen to it on a hugely dynamic level. I don't really know how true that is. I just know the more that Andy Stanley preaches about this and tries to apply it, the more he even distances himself from what the Bible says itself.
You're probably familiar with the very controversial statement he made about unhitching ourselves from the Old Testament. But here, Peter, in bearing witness to these people in the household of Cornelius.
He himself is an eyewitness to this. He can say to these people, I saw it. I was there. You should listen to me because I'm one of them. He does say that he does appeal to himself as an authority because he was designated by God to go out and preach these things.
And he is an eyewitness to the things that he is preaching about. But he does not call himself the only witness. He references other witnesses. And he doesn't just talk about eyewitnesses. What does he say in verse 43?
Of him, of Christ, all the prophets bear witness that through his name, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. In other words, the scriptures bear witness. We even read at the end of Luke, same author as the book of Acts.
When the disciples saw Jesus risen from the dead, even what they saw with their own eyes was not enough to convince them until Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures. In fact, at the end of the book of Matthew, we see the same thing.
Jesus had directed the disciples to come and meet him on a mountain in Galilee. And when they come and they see him there risen from the dead, some believe, but some doubted. They even doubted their own eyes.
They're going, yeah, he died. He was buried. He rose again. Here he is right here. But they were baffled. They could not make sense even of what their own eyes were telling them. And it's through the scriptures that this was understood, what all of this meant.
Though we don't have quotes from Peter here from the Old Testament like we have with the sermon at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. That doesn't mean that Peter neglects the Old Testament, for he says here, the prophets bear witness.
These things were written about beforehand, and Jesus fulfilled them. It was God's plan that it would be the Christ who would be crucified and rise again so that whoever believes in him, Jew or Gentile, whoever believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.
Now, when we go on in verse 44 to read that while Peter was speaking these things, it could very well be that he goes on to explain the prophets. That's what he says in verse 43. Of him, all the prophets bear witness.
So now he's doing that Old Testament jog like he did at the sermon in Pentecost, where he is showing from the prophets those whom God had spoken to in the past and revealed these things. How it was said in the scriptures and the people are hearing it.
And as Peter is talking, as he is walking them through what God has testified to through witnesses and through the prophets, through the apostles and prophets, really. As Peter was speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the word.
A person does not come to faith except through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Romans 10, 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. We must share the gospel. Because the the way that God has ordained that he would bring his elect into his kingdom is the hearing of the gospel and believing in Jesus Christ.
That is what God has set up as his plan. And we get to be part of that plan when he sends us out to go preach the gospel to others. Now, like I said to you at the beginning of this lesson in Acts chapter 10, God is not bringing people into the kingdom through visions.
He is not giving people visions of Jesus who are preaching the gospel to them in a vision, and then they therefore become Christian. We hear stories about this are usually anecdotal that come from other countries, especially from Muslim areas.
This seems to be a very popular thing among Muslims that they saw a vision of Christ and they believe Jesus and are saved. But remember that God sent an angel to Cornelius and Cornelius was not converted by what the angel said.
The angel doesn't even share the gospel with him. The message is that you need to send people to go and retrieve Peter who are going to come to you. This apostle is going to come to you and he's going to share the gospel with you.
By what Peter shared in the household of Cornelius, people believed and are saved. This is the plan. So no one is getting saved by seeing visions of Jesus and believing in that. They have to hear the gospel and turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved.
It's frustrating when I will hear otherwise sound or solid teachers repeat these Muslim anecdotes of people who used to be Muslim and they saw a vision of Jesus and now they're Christians. That's not how they got saved.
They got saved because they heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, if somebody's going to recount some sort of story of, well, I saw a figure or I heard a voice saying go to this place and I went there and I encountered somebody and they shared the gospel with me and I'm saved.
If that's going to be the anecdote, there's no way that I can disprove it. I may have a little bit of skepticism there, but if a person's a believer, praise God. What difference does it make to me how God brought them there if I can hear from them that they heard the gospel and believed in Jesus and they're saved?
There are different ways that God will bring us to an understanding of the gospel. Well, that's probably not the best way to say it, but the different journeys that we are on. There's a different point in your life in which you came upon the gospel or the gospel came to you and you believed in Jesus and you are saved.
It's different for you than it was for me. For me, I was raised in a Christian household and I heard the gospel preached by my parents and I believed in Jesus and I'm saved. For somebody else, it may be that they come to the end of their rope.
They tried this way and this way their whole lives. They chased after their passions of their flesh. They were at the very end of all things. They thought all I've got left is to take my life and somebody comes into my life and shares with me the gospel and I was cut to the heart and I believed in Jesus and here I am.
You know, that could be their testimony. That could be their story. We're all going to have a different testimony as to how God came to us in the midst of our circumstances and brought us the gospel that we would believe in him and be saved.
But it is the only way that we are saved is by faith in Jesus through the hearing of the gospel. It's by faith in Jesus through the hearing of his word. And no matter how Andy Stanley or any other false teacher wants to dance around it and play semantics and whatnot, no one is coming into the faith except through the hearing of the gospel.
That is the only way to be saved, to put faith in Jesus. And that's what happens here in the household of Cornelius. So that while Peter is saying these things, the Holy Spirit even falls upon all those who are listening to the word.
Now, what does that mean? What does it mean that the Holy Spirit fell on all those who were listening? Well, there are a couple of historic commentaries. I can't remember which ones these were now. But when I was doing my commentary study of the book of Acts, I know that there are people like Matthew Henry may well have been one of them.
I believe Matthew Poole was one of them. So where it says that the Holy Spirit fell upon those who were listening to the word, and I believe this was Matthew Poole who said it's the same way the Holy Spirit fell upon the apostles in Acts chapter two.
There's not a reason for us to have to think that visually this looked any different than what we'd already seen in the book of Acts. So how does Peter know that the Holy Spirit has fallen upon them? Because he's right there witnessing that it has taken place.
So it could very well have been that tongues of fire came down and rested upon them, and then they begin speaking in tongues, manifesting that this was a work of the Holy Spirit and their magnifying God.
That could very well be what they visually saw, some sort of descent of the Spirit upon them, just as it had happened for Peter and his fellow apostles. So it is happening even among these Gentiles. They have seen it, and not only that, but the fruit of it, that they're speaking in tongues and magnifying God.
And this becomes evidence to Peter and those who are with him that the Spirit comes to Gentiles as well as to Jews. That God is saving Jew and Gentile to himself through the preaching of the gospel. So in verse 45, all the circumcised believers who came with Peter.
I told you earlier that was going to be significant. When we read about that earlier in Acts 10, that there were people from Simon's household who accompanied Peter to go to the house of Cornelius. So that you have Jews there who can see and serve as eyewitnesses that the Holy Spirit came to the Gentiles just as the Holy Spirit came to Jews.
They were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. Not just that the Holy Spirit descended upon them, but that the gifts of the Spirit were being manifested through them.
For they were hearing them, verse 46, they were hearing them speaking with tongues and magnifying God. Now, let me clarify, because this gets twisted. This particular passage that we're reading today definitely gets twisted a lot.
This does not mean that you have to speak in tongues in order to be saved. I had baptized a young man and his wife over a decade ago. This would have been now, because I think this was in either 2014 or 15, somewhere in there.
But this young man came out of a Pentecostal church, and it was a Pentecostal church that was oneness. So they denied the Trinity. And just as Peter says here in verse 48, he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
So they reject and deny Jesus' statement in Matthew 28, 19 to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. They reject that and say, no, the only one who you are to be baptized in is Jesus Christ.
It's not wrong to be baptized in the name of Christ, but they take it so far as to reject that there's even a Father and Son. Oneness Pentecostal, that's why they're called that. So this young man was baptized in a oneness Pentecostal church.
But he was stunned by being told after he was baptized that he now had to start speaking in tongues to show that the Holy Spirit had come upon him. And he's like, speaking in what? And so he did it, but he only did it because they were telling him to.
And like instructing him, you need to speak this way. You know, whatever. I thought about a Kia, but about a Honda. It's a funny little imitation manner of gibberish that they call speaking in tongues.
But anyway, so he did that. He came up out of the water and did that. But afterward, he was going, what was that? I missed something. I missed something there. And as he explored that, coming to find, I don't think this is right.
And so he left that church and came to mine and asked me all these questions about it. And when I walked him through Acts, he was going, okay, yeah. So what they were telling me to do, they're not even doing.
They're telling me to speak in tongues. They're not even doing what the apostles did in Acts chapter two when they began speaking in tongues. It is very clearly other languages. So when we get to that in this section of Acts and Acts chapter ten, it's not like the definition of tongues has changed, has changed.
It's still the same definition that it had back in chapter two, that the apostles spoke languages that the people understood. They heard the gospel being spoken. Well, sorry. They heard the works of God being testified to in other languages.
It doesn't exactly say gospel. It just says the works of God, though that could have included the gospel. But they hear that spoken in their respective languages. They can tell this is something miraculous.
Speaking gibberish is not miraculous. There's a lot of different religions in the world that do that. Kundalini, which is Hindu, for example, that's one of those that will speak this gibberish language and claim that it is some spiritual otherly language.
It's not miraculous. It's not even of God. So speaking that gibberish does not indicate anything. It does not. It is not a sign at all that the Holy Spirit has come upon you. It is not at all. You may be experiencing some sort of ecstasy, ecstatic utterance.
You know, your your mind is kind of getting away from you in the midst of overwhelming feeling. But you're not speaking in tongues and it is not evidence of a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. I've known people who have claimed that it is and their lifestyle continues to be wicked and depraved.
You claim you're speaking in the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit has poured himself out on you in this way that you're now speaking in tongues. But your lifestyle doesn't reflect any sort of holy transformation, which we would certainly expect to see if the Holy Spirit has come upon somebody.
That's the fruit of the Holy Spirit that we would expect to see today. But here in this miraculous time that the spirit continues to manifest himself in the churches where the gospel is being preached.
This becomes evidence of the fact that these Gentiles have received the spirit. They likewise are saved and are members of the kingdom of God. And the Jews who are with Peter serve as witnesses to see that's what's happening.
And they know that these people are speaking other languages. It could very well have been one of those languages they were speaking was Hebrew or Aramaic. Even though that was not their native tongue and they did not speak that language.
Peter, by the way, in speaking in this household to Cornelius and the members of his family was likely speaking Greek. Yesterday when I had talked about how he professed that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Greek word is Kyrios.
Well, it's because Peter was speaking Greek. He would have spoken the Greek language in this home. And it's likely that all the apostles spoke Greek because that was the universal language in the Roman Empire.
So Peter has spoken Greek. Now, these Gentiles may be speaking Aramaic and Hebrew. And Peter and the other Jews that are with him are hearing that. And they're going, OK, yeah, same thing we saw before has happened now with these Gentiles.
The Holy Spirit has come upon them and they are magnifying God. It's not just that the Spirit has come upon them, but in whatever it is they are saying, it is magnifying God. So it could not be gibberish, brethren.
It can't be the gibberish nonsense language that Charismatics preached today. Because how would that be magnifying God? The Jews and Peter are hearing them magnify God because they know what they're saying.
And so Peter answered, verse 47, Can anyone refuse water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit? Just as we did. And this is evidence that a person is not saved by baptism. They don't come into the Holy Spirit after being baptized, but before.
The Holy Spirit has done a work on the heart of a person before they are baptized. So they are justified by faith and not by the waters of baptism. A person who is saved will get baptized. A person who has been justified by faith will be baptized.
But it is not baptism that has justified them. It is faith in Jesus Christ. Now, I agree that baptism saves in the sense that baptism is a sanctifying work. So just as we might refer to sanctification as a work of salvation.
So you could say the same thing with baptism. What I quoted yesterday at the end of the lesson when I was praying, and I quoted from Philippians 2 .12, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
You are already saved by faith in Jesus. But as we are growing and being sanctified, this is also working out our salvation. So baptism is salvific in that sense. But it is not what justified you or made you right before God.
And whenever I will have these conversations with those who believe in baptismal regeneration, like a Lutheran, for example, I just have to ask one simple question. And they're often stumped by it, or they see the conundrum in their own testimony to baptismal regeneration.
They identify the problem when I ask them, was that person saved before they went down into the water? Were they justified before God before they went under the water or had water sprinkled on them, as it's Lutheran?
Were they justified beforehand? I can't remember any time a Lutheran said to me that the answer to that is no. I mean, Lutherans will concede even that. Sure, that person wanted to be baptized. If they die before they got to the water, then they're still going to heaven.
So it is not the water that saved. It's Christ that saved. And they were justified in what way? By faith. Not because they got wet, but because God saved them. Because God was gracious to them. Because they heard the gospel and believed and are saved.
There's no work. There's no speaking in tongues that therefore verifies that a person has been saved. Because, you know, narrative is not normative, as often said with the book of Acts. It is simply by faith.
As Peter said previously in Acts 10 .43, Of him all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. And that is evident among these Gentiles that they believe.
And so Peter says, can anyone refuse water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did? They show evidence of the fact that they believe. Therefore, they must also be baptized.
And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. This was a coastal city that they were in. So they probably went down to the Mediterranean Sea. And got baptized by full immersion. Because that's what baptism is.
There's my Baptist coming out of me right there. And then they asked him to remain with them for a few days. And so he does. Now what we have next in Acts chapter 11. Is Peter testifying to the other Jews.
That the Holy Spirit is coming to the Gentiles as well. And so we must go to all nations to preach. Just as Jesus commissioned us to. In Acts 11 .17, which we'll get to next time. Therefore, if God gave to them the same gift that he gave to us.
After believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not after baptism. But after believing. Who was I that I could prevent God's way? Peter says. And that's how a person is saved. By faith. In Jesus. Amen. Amen brethren.
Let us praise God. For his goodness to us. In bringing the gospel our way. That we may believe in Jesus. And so be saved. Heavenly Father we thank you for. The good lesson that you teach to us. From your word.
And I pray that we would always. Love the word. Desire to hear it. And share it with others. For it is only by the hearing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That a person will believe in him. Be forgiven their sins and so be saved.
As I prayed yesterday. Help us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in us. Both to will and to work. For his good pleasure.
It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. You've been listening to when we understand the text. With Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday we look at an Old Testament book.
On Friday we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow we'll pick up on an Old Testament study. When we understand the text. We'll be right back.