ACTS 10:24,28-35; 36-48
“A GOSPEL FULL”
Picture it - there you are, in the seaside resort town of Joppa, relaxing in the jacuzzi, when some dudes show up at your air-bnb, knocking on your door, telling you that some stranger up the coast is inviting you to his house. “Cornelius who? How'd he know I was here? He's inviting...? Why is that?”
'An angel told him to'. “Uh-huh. An angel? Riiiiight!” Remarkably enough, in spite of your hesitation, the next thing you know, you're speaking extemporaneously to this guy's entire household.
What would you say? It reminds me of a scene in City Slickers. Mitch Robbins, struggling with a mid-life crisis, stands in front of his son's 3rd grade class, totally unprepared, and fires from the hip...
“Value this time in your life kids, because it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. It gets messy. Your twenties? They're a blur. Your thirties, you raise a family, make a little money and think to yourself, 'What happened to my twenties?'
Your forties, you grow a little pot belly and another chin. The music starts to get too loud and your friends from high school all start to become grandparents. Your fifties, you have minor surgery. You call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties, you have major surgery, the music is still too loud, but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Your seventies, you spend your time dressed in sweats looking for the ultimate soft yogurt and muttering, 'where's the bathroom?'
By your eighties, you wonder aloud who that old person in the mirror is and end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse wearing a mask, who you call, 'mama'. Any questions?”
Such is the danger of speaking publicly unprepared. As I read Peter's “speech” to Cornelius' household, I don't get the sense that his message is delivered extemporaneously. We know this is not his first time around the block. By now, he's been articulating the Gospel message for months, if not years, and that he later stresses the importance of entering such a moment as this well prepared. As he puts it in his letter to the early church: “If someone asks you about your hope as a believer (in Christ), always be ready to explain it in a gentle and respectful way.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
So what Luke presents us with here, in the tenth chapter of his sequel to the gospel of Luke, is a concise and well thought out presentation of the Good News message of Jesus Christ as articulated by Peter to the Gentile household of Cornelius. In doing so, Luke has provided us with an inspired template for how we too, can be ready to explain our faith to seekers we may encounter.
In Peter's apologetic, his defense of his faith in Jesus, he offers five reasons why this message of Good News is so full of life. It's 1) peaceful, 2) personal, 3) scriptural, 4) hopeful and 5) powerful.
So let's unpack that a bit. First, Peter informs Cornelius and company that this gospel message makes possible “peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.” (Acts 10:36) Scripture teaches that selfish, sinful thoughts and deeds mortally soil our soul, puting us at odds with God, who is pure and holy. So Jesus stepped into the line of fire, exchanging his holiness for our sinsoaked stains, by becoming one of us and embracing us. “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by faith into this grace by which we now stand.” (Romans 5:1-2)
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Jesus told stories to help us perceive our need for this peace, like that of a father, who restores his selfish, wayward, road-weary son to his lost position as son and heir, not because he deserves it, but because the Father loves and forgives him. He is finally, as the story concludes, at peace with his Dad. Jesus' audience however has many an elder son, who's yet to decide whether he will be at peace with his father and brother, or will he remain convinced that he has nothing to be forgiven for.
So it is that Peter conveys how this message of good news is not only inherently peaceful but how incredibly personal it is as well. That's not to say it's private, a common misperception of many today. It's personal in that it's interrelational. Peter stands as a wonderful witness to that.
As we saw last week, Peter was disinclined to associate, much less enter the home, of anyone seen by a Jew as spiritually unclean, and a Gentile Roman centurion was high on that list. Then God gave him a personal wake up call, literally, and Peter realized that “Clearly God shows no favoritism. In every nation He accepts those who fear him and do what is right.” (Acts 10:34-35)
Luke underscores the personal, relational nature of the gospel by noting that Peter “stayed with (Cornelius' family) for several days.” They hung out and ate together, acts of friendship & belonging. (Acts 10:48)
Chris Shields gave witness to this personal element of the Gospel the Sunday she was baptized by sharing how, in spite of the fact it had been years since she'd been part of a Christian community, that she wanted to be baptized in celebration how she had made personal connections here, and had come to belong. Peggy Lee shared something very similar with those in her Alpha small group, as have others in the group, who cherish just how personal the gospel is as its experienced together.
The gospel is peace-full, personal but also scriptural. '(Jesus) is the one all the prophets testi-fied about, saying that everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name.' (Acts 10:43)
It's a theme touched on by prophet after prophet. Isaiah prophesied it: “My servant grew up in the Lord's presence, yet he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us have strayed like sheep, yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.”
(Isaiah 53:1-2,5-6)
Jeremiah foretold it: “The day is coming when I will make a new covenant with my people. I will forgive their wickedness and I will never again remember their sins.” (Jeremiah 31:31,34)
Ezekiel promised it: “I will sprinkle living water on you and you will be clean. I will give you a new heart and I will put my Spirit in you. I will cleanse you from your sins.” (Ezekiel 36:25-26)
These prophecies are largely limited to the messiah's ministry to bring reconciliation between God and His people. There are scores of other prophecies that describe the character, actions and impact of the coming Messiah. Only one historical figure who has ever lived fills this complex bill.
It's like the father and son sitting in the living room. As the father reads his newspaper his son constantly peppers him with questions and requests. Finally, out of exasperation, the father picks up a magazine, rips out a page with a picture of the world on it, tears it up into little pieces and tells his son “It's a puzzle. Put it together and give me some peace.”
Five minutes later the boy reappers with more requests and questions. “I thought I told you to put together that puzzle of the world.” “I did Dad. The other side had a picture of Jesus on it. When I pieced the picture of Jesus together the whole world came together.”
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The prophets provide the puzzle pieces of God's anointed/Messiah. When you put them together they provide one of the most compelling, convincing evidences for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So it is that Peter points to the peaceful, personal and scriptural elements of the gospel. But he's not finished.
He also highlights for Cornelius and company the hopeful piece of the gospel puzzle – the hope of the resurrection from the dead! “They put him to death by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him to life on the third day, and he appeared to us whom God had chosen in advance to be his wit-nesses. We were those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” (Acts 10:39-41)
Author Lee Strobel writes in his book, Case For Christ,of the solid, historical evidence we have for Jesus' resurrection – from the four gospels informing us that women were the first witnesses in spite of the fact that women couldn't testify in Roman or Jewish courts, to the fact that neither the Jews nor the Romans ever could procure a body, or that his tomb's only thing of monetary value was left behind, ruling out grave robbers, to the fact that Jesus' followers were willing to die to spread the good news.
I mean, who dies for a lie? Peter points to the reality that the Gospel contains our best hope! And to do so, he simply points out that he and others repeatedly ate with their risen Lord. He shares that he saw Jesus with his own eyes and shared meals with him to counter any suggestion that they'd seen a ghost. And with his testimony we are offered a hope that there's far more to life than all of this.
The book I'm reading points to the tantalizing hope that something better lies ahead. “We all long for something, pining after an impossibly better world, homesick for a home we lost before we're born. We're homesick for the Garden of Eden, to find at the back of our wardrobe a doorway into an enchanting world. The way we live in the present moment depends on the things we believe about the future and those who belong to Jesus' kingdom live with an otherworldly future in mind. They live in anticipation of the new Eden, like people who might stumble into the new Narnia at any moment.”
(from Gregory Coles' No Longer Strangers)
The hope embodied in Jesus' resurrection..is that death is not life's final word. The best is yet to come. It's like the story of a dying woman who whispers her last requests to her pastor before expiring. Later, at her funeral, people murmur around her casket where she is found holding a fork in her hand. Ultimately, her pastor explains. “Mabel reminds us of all the potlucks we ate together and how at the end of the meal, just before the desserts were brought out, someone would inevitably say, “Hold on to your forks, the best is yet to come! Mabel's digging in!” That's why the gospel is just so hopeful!
Finally, Peter points to a powerful gospel: “You know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil...” And then, much to his friends' surprise, Peter's message is interupted as “The Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to his message.” (Acts 10:38, 44)
It's the first time non-Jews are filled with the Holy Spirit. As a result, it's often referred to as the second Pentecost, but that's a bit inaccurate. It's more like the fifth Pentecost. The first was when Peter and others were filled in Jerusalem... The second is when they held a prayer meeting with the growing church, and “The meeting place shook and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit again!”
(Acts 4:31)
The third Pentecost was in response to Peter and John's ministry to the people of Samaria: “As soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new believers to receive thee Holy Spirit. Peter and John laid their hands upon them and they all received the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 8:15,17)
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The fourth Pentecost event was when Ananias likewise laid his hands on Saul in Damascus and Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit, making this event in Caesarea the fifth time. A look at a map shows how the Pentecost events, or movement, was slowly and surely spreading to new communities. These also mark different types of Pentecost events: an initial event where leaders are filled, another where the Spirit fills those praying together, a third in response to prayer ministry, with leaders praying over new or renewed believers, a fourth one that is personal and intimate and the fourth in which those engaged in worship and the proclamation of the gospel are filled, like we're doing now!
Acts 10 points us to two great applications. One, how we too can be ready to explain our hope (in Christ) in a gentle and respectful way .” (1 Peter 3:16) providing five reasons why this message of Good News is so good: It's 1) peace-full, 2) personal, 3) scriptural, 4) hopeful and 5) it's powerful.
And Two, it encourages us to keep seeking to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Just a couple of weeks ago one of you told me of how you experienced something akin to that during worship What if we're to ask God to rattle the raftrs here again by filling us with the Holy Spirit?
After all, “Even as Peter was saying such things, the Holy Spirit filled those who were listening!”
(Acts 10:44)