God’s great drama of redemption of the Gentiles, Acts 10

In Matt. 16:19, Jesus told Simon Peter that  “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”  As such, Peter had a unique ministry.  This verse does not establish Peter as the first Pope, as some would try to say, but he is a special emissary of Christ as the chief representative of the  apostles to open doors to the kingdom of God that had formerly been closed in Judaism.  Once these doors are opened, we are going to see in our study of Acts that Peter starts to gradually fade from the scene, and the Apostle Paul becomes the focus of the ministry of the gospel to the world.  Peter’s ministry was primarily to the Jews, and Paul’s ministry was primarily to the Gentiles.  Of course there was much crossover. 

But Peter is used by God to show that while salvation is from the Jews, it will go beyond Jerusalem to the rest of the world. Peter and the rest of the apostles were headquartered in the church in Jerusalem.  God first gave the gospel to the Jews through Peter and the apostles.  But now we are seeing the gospel spread outward, even as Christ said it would, from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world.  And to do that, God uses Peter in a special way to symbolically unlock the doors to each new region.  That is why we saw Peter first unlock the doors to the Jews on the day of Pentecost in chapter 2, then he unlocked the doors to the Samaritans in chapter 8, and now we see him using the last key to unlock the door to the Gentiles in chapter 10. All in all, a span of about 10 years from Pentecost to Caesarea. 

And each time Peter unlocks the next door, we see a confirming act by the baptism of the Holy Spirit to show that these new believers are part of the body of Christ, the church.  That is the significance of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Samaria and now in Caesarea.  Each time the gospel moves to a new people, there is an accompanying sign of the Holy Spirit to show that they are now considered a part of the church body, just as the Jews were.  On the day of Pentecost the converts were made up of Jews, not only from Israel, but those Jews who had been scattered all over the Middle East and were visiting Jerusalem for the feasts.  Then the second baptism of the Holy Spirit is given to show that the Samaritans, who were considered half breeds by proper Jews, were now brought into the new covenant through the blood of Jesus Christ and were part of the body as well.  And now the gospel moves even further out to include the Gentiles, who formerly were completely outside of the prior covenant with Israel.  They now receive the gospel as well and there is the confirmation of the Holy Spirit with the same sign that He gave to the Jews at Pentecost, the half breeds of Samaria, and now to the Gentiles.

Now today we want to look specifically at how God unlocks this last frontier of the gospel, which is the Gentiles.  The name Gentiles of course is given to all non Jews.  This title would include those of us listening here today.  We too are Gentiles.  And so this is particularly our history as Christians.  Now there are four acts to this great drama of God.  And the first act is that of preparation.  God had to prepare not only the Gentiles, but prepare the apostles, particularly Peter in this case as the chief representative of the church.

Peter had to be prepared because Jews and Gentiles were traditionally enemies of one another.  Jews had been given strict laws concerning diet and dress and customs in order to keep them isolated from intermarrying and intermingling with the pagan cultures that lived around them.  God knew that if they had no social restrictions upon them they would soon be influenced by the neighboring pagan people and end up adopting their idolatrous ways.  So God had specifically given strict guidelines to keep the Jews separate from the Gentiles. 

But that had morphed into something that God had not designed, and that was a hatred of the Jews for all things Gentile.  And that had resulted in the Gentiles hating the Jews right back.  But God’s plan was to use the gospel to reconcile all men, Jews and Gentiles to Himself.   From a Gentile’s perspective, they knew that they were considered enemies of Israel, and therefore they assumed, enemies of the Jewish God as well.  The fact is though, all men are by nature enemies of God.  Because all men are by nature sinners.  And Paul in Romans 5:10 says our sin nature makes us enemies of God. But God’s plan was to reconcile man to Him through Christ.

And He is going to use Peter to do that.  But first, God has to prepare Peter because of his natural prejudice towards Gentiles.  And at the same time, God prepares the Gentile.  God uses the agency of the Spirit as the first step in the process of salvation.  Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.”  So to prepare the heart of both the centurion and of Peter, the Holy Spirit works in each of them through a vision.

Let’s look first at Cornelius, the centurion.  Verse 2 says that he was a God fearing man, who gave alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.  Added to the fact that he was a Gentile is the additional stigma that he was a Roman soldier.  Yet amazingly, this man was seeking after the God of the Jews.  He had done so by giving alms to the Jewish people, probably to their synagogue.  He had come out of pantheism to the conclusion that the God of the Jews was the only true God and he prayed continually to Him.  It’s likely that he followed the formula of most devout Jews, by praying three times a day, 9am, Noon and 3pm. 

It’s interesting to note that this text shows that a person can be very religious and yet not be saved.  They can be morally a good person. They can be religious and even pray fervently and yet they are not saved.  There are many people like Cornelius today.  They worship God after a manner of speaking. They are religious. They belong to a church.  They believe in God.  And yet they are not saved.  The difference between Cornelius and most people in this situation though is that Cornelius knew that his religious efforts were not enough to save him.  Many people today are satisfied that their good character and moral compass and their religious efforts are enough to please God.  They follow the logic of Martin Luther before his conversion, that a good God will accept those who do their best.  But not Cornelius.  I believe that as he considered the God of the scriptures, he was convicted ever more of his sinfulness and how far short he was of the kingdom of God.  And so he prayed continually that God would show him the way of salvation, that he might be righteous before God.

Well, God heard his prayers and sent an angel to tell him to send for Peter.  For the last couple of weeks I have raised the question of why God designed man to be the instrument of His gospel.  Why not use angels to write in the sky the flaming letters of the gospel, or declare it from their mouths as they are revealed in their full glory?  And the answer is that God uses fallen sinful men to declare the gospel, because man can be redeemed, whereas angels cannot.  God could have used the angel to convey the message of the gospel to Cornelius, but instead the angel tells Cornelius to send for Peter to come from Joppa who wil tell him how to be saved.  Peter could give testimony to the gospel because Peter was a testament to God’s grace, God having saved a sinful man such as Peter and restored him who had denied the Lord to the position of a preacher of the gospel.  Peter was a living testimony to God’s grace.

And then at the same time, God must prepare Peter’s heart.  But God will also confirm His word spoken to Cornelius.  I think that is important to see here.  I don’t think God very often speaks in visions today since we have the completed word of God already written down for us as a more sure word.  But in that age, the New Testament scriptures had not been written, and so God did occasionally speak through visions.  But even then, God needed to confirm the vision of Cornelius to Peter by the word of God in a vision.  Consequently, when the delegation from Cornelius shows up even as Peter is still in the vision, the Spirit tells him to go with the men who are at his door.  If Peter had not had the vision, then why should he have believed these Gentiles?  He probably wouldn’t have gone with them.

You know, the early Christians were taught that they were to confirm every fact by two or three witnesses.  We need to be careful about people claiming to have some vision from God that is not confirmed by scripture.  I’ll never forget getting ready to go out of the country once on a short term mission trip and some lady called me and told us that she had a vision that I was killed in the plane so I should not go.  Well, I went anyway, because her vision was not something that was confirmed to me by God. And it’s obvious her vision was not from God because I stand here before you today. Colossians 2 warns us about false prophets taking their stand on visions they have seen, inflated without cause in their fleshly minds. 

But there is another reason for Peter’s vision and that is to show that God is not a respecter of persons.  In the dream Peter sees a great sheet let down from heaven with all kinds of animals and creeping things in it.  And a voice from heaven calls out, “Arise Peter, kill and eat.” And Peter responded, “No Lord, I have never eaten anything unholy or unclean.” And each time the voice responded, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This happens three times, not only for confirmation, but also for emphasis.  Now I could go off on a tangent here and say this proves that God’s plan is not for us all to become vegans.  But while that may be true that is not the point of the vision.  The point of the vision was to show that the dietary laws regarding clean and unclean animals not longer pertained to the church.  We are free from the dietary restrictions of the Jews. But there is a greater purpose even than that, which is that Jewish dietary restrictions were not simply for health reasons, but for social reasons.  It was meant to put a wall up between  the social customs of Jews and Gentiles so that they would not intermarry and cohabit and live together, and as such the Jews would become corrupted by the immorality of the Gentiles. 

Now God through this vision was eradicating that wall of separation, so that there would be no more Jew and Gentile, but all men would be able to receive the gospel.  Peter doesn’t understand all of this at first.  Peter is hungry, he was waiting for lunch to be fixed and so he went up to pray until it was ready.  So what Peter is thinking about is food, not about evangelism.  But when the men from Cornelius knock on his front door, the Spirit of God tells him go with them without misgivings, because the Lord had sent them himself.  And that is when the light starts to dawn on Peter.  It will take a couple of more days to sink in, but when he eventually gets to Cornelius’s house and hears what he has to say, then he will finally understand what it is that the Lord desires out of this; that God is not a respecter of persons.  But that whosoever will may come to salvation.  As 1 Tim. 2:4 says, God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

There is one other matter in regards to preparation that we don’t want to miss, and that is prayer.  God prepares as man is praying.  God uses our prayers, requires our prayers, and answers our prayers in mysterious ways.  It is mysterious that He should desire us to participate at all.  But He does, telling us to pray at all times. To pray earnestly and fervently.  And what happens so many times is that prayer precedes revival. Prayer conditions the sinner’s heart to receive the word, and the saints heart to present the word.  I like the fact that both Peter and Cornelius were engaged in regular scheduled prayer when God intervenes.  Do you schedule your prayer time?  I think you should.  Otherwise it will not happen.  These men were praying at the regular customary prayer times which were three times a day.

The second act in this drama we will call the explanation.  Peter hears the message of explanation from the delegation at his door.  He invites them in to lodge with him overnight, which was already evidence of a great work that had begun in his heart, since Jews would not allow a Gentile in their house.  The next day, Peter gets 6 believing Jews to accompany him and he travels for two days to go to see Cornelius.  When he arrives, Cornelius falls down at his feet to worship him.  But Peter urges him to get up and says “I too am just a man.” 

Today in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, thousands line up to kiss the toe of Peter’s statue so that the toe is completely worn away.  These poor people need to be taught that Peter forbad the worship of him, since he too was a sinner saved by grace, a man just as we are.

Cornelius gives his explanation of why he had summoned Peter and what he wanted from Peter in vs. 30.              He told of the appearance of the angel and his obedience in sending for Peter as he had been instructed.  You know, this is a good illustration of how faith is always tied to obedience in some form or another.  It is not just enough to claim to believe, but faith is to trust in obedience and follow instructions.  Perhaps that is why God chose a soldier to be the first convert of the Gentiles.  He knew how to obey instructions.

Notice that what is being taught here is Cornelius’s morality, his sincerity, his belief in Judaism was not enough to save him.  There are not many roads to heaven.  There are many roads to hell.  There is only one way to God and that is through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.  Jesus said in John 14:6  "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Secondly, note that God sees hearts, not skin color or race or nationality.  No matter where a man might be, if he truly seeks salvation from God then God will see his heart and answer his prayers.

And third, note the attitude on the part of Cornelius and those assembled in his house.  This is the attitude of a congregation that would hear from God; they were all present, they wanted to hear the word, and they listened attentively, believed with their whole hearts, and obeyed.  They were the shining example of a receptive congregation.

And that leads us to the third act in this drama of redemption, the act of proclamation.  God has ordained according to 1Cor. 1:21 that by the “foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”  Peter didn’t start out with 8 worship songs and a skit, he just went right into proclaiming the gospel of Christ.  They already were practicing religion.  They needed to be saved.  And Rom. 10:17 tells us that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”  Faith is not founded on feelings, or experiences or sincere hopes, but on the written promises of God. 

I believe we just get a glimpse into Peter’s sermon here, I don’t think this is much more than an outline.  But Peter preaches Christ; the life, and death and resurrection of Christ. That Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises of the prophets.  His plan of salvation starts with the standard of salvation;  fearing God and doing what is right. That is the outcome of salvation.  That is the way of life for a Christian.

Peter then summarizes the historical basis for the gospel through the life of Christ.  Jesus was anointed by God, filled with the Holy Spirit, whose works were evidence that God was with Him.  And yet He was put to death by hanging on a cross.  But God raised Him up from the grave the third day, and it was witnessed by the disciples who ate and drank with Him.  Jesus then ordered them to preach the gospel and to testify to everyone Jesus is the Messiah who now lives and has been appointed by God as the Judge of the living and the dead.  And that whoever believes in Him has received forgiveness of sins.

That is the gospel in a nutshell.  That God sent Jesus to be the promised Messiah, who would take the sins of the world upon Him, and die on the cross in our place, so that we who believe in Him and confess Him as Lord, will receive forgiveness of sins. The essence of sin is that we substitute ourselves for God.  And the essence of salvation is that God substitutes Christ for us.  2 Cor. 5:11 says it this way, “God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to become sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God through Him.”  This is the good news for all that recognize that they are outside of the kingdom of God.  That their righteous efforts are not able to outweigh their sinfulness.  But by calling on the name of the Lord, believing in Him, we might receive the gift of righteousness which was purchased by Christ for us.  Whosever believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sin.  That is the only way to achieve the righteousness that God demands.

And that leads us to the last act, validation. Now when they heard this good news, the whole assembly immediately believed.  The indication there is that Peter had not even finished his sermon and they believed.  They were ready to accept the gospel.  So simply believing that Christ had died for them, and trusting in Him as Lord and Savior, they received the righteousness that comes on the basis of faith.  The righteousness of Christ.  By believing, their sins were transferred to Christ, and Christ’s righteousness was transferred to them.

Now Peter and his delegation cannot see such a transaction.  So God arranged a demonstration to show him and his church members that these people had been saved in the same way as they had.  And God does that by the same baptism of the Spirit that came at Pentecost and in Samaria, testifying through the Spirit that they were now in the body of Christ, the church.

And not only was there validation by the Holy Spirit, there was validation by the obedience of the new believers.  Peter orders them to be baptized, as a testimony to the world of their faith in Jesus Christ.  Notice these Gentiles are not saved by baptism, but having already received the Spirit of God they are baptized in water in obedience as evidence of their salvation.  Salvation results in obedience from the heart.  From this point on, there will not be a visible manifestation of the baptism of the Holy Spirit that accompanies salvation except for one more time when a remote band of John’s disciples in Ephesus are brought into the church.  But the baptism of the Spirit was specifically to show that God has accepted all races and all nationalities into the kingdom of God, the church.  But from now on the order will be to hear the word, believe in Christ as Lord, and then be baptized and join with other believers in the local church to serve and worship God in obedience. 

So in closing, don’t lose sight of the big picture presented here in this chapter.  God is not a respecter of persons.  God looks at the heart, not at race or outward appearance or skin color or nationality.  And the good news of the gospel is that by faith in Jesus Christ, salvation is made available to all men everywhere who will confess Jesus as Lord, believing in what He did for us on the cross, that we might receive forgiveness of sins.  I hope that you have the same attitude as the congregation in Cornelius’s house.  I hope that today you will immediately call upon the Lord in faith and repentance that you might be saved.

And for those of you that have already been saved, I pray that you will be prompted through this account to be obedient to what God has asked of us.  To not only fear God and obey righteousness, but to be baptized as a testimony to the world, and then to be His witnesses throughout the world, taking the good news of the gospel to every living person, recognizing that we are chosen by God to be His representatives to a lost and dying world who need to hear the good news.