Acts 10 Round Two: Pentecost Part Two

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The More We Dig. The More We Find.

Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose Of Acts
• 1:10 Setting The Stage For Acts 10
• 3:32 Cornelius Sees A Vision
• 5:00 Peter’s Vision And Puzzle
• 7:10 Peter Meets Cornelius
• 9:00 Peter Declares The Gospel
• 10:30 The Holy Spirit Falls On Gentiles
• 12:20 Power With The Gospel Today
• 13:30 Prayer And Closing Charge

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. Every day, we take one chapter of the Bible, dig deeper, and discover that the more we dig, the more we find. You can find out more at the BibleBreakdown.com. Now let's grow in God's Word together. Well, hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Acts chapter 10. And if I were to give this one a title, it would be Pentecost Part 2. It is the sequel to what happened in Acts chapter 2. Only this time it's to Gentiles. And so it's going to be really, really awesome. Also, Peter's going to have a really weird dream. There's going to be a whole lot of great stuff that's going to go on in here. But before we get to that, as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube videos. Make sure you are commenting and letting us know how you are encountering God through reading his word. Also, if you listen to a podcast, you are my favorites. Make sure you leave us a five-star review. Let us know how you are interacting with God's word together as well. Also, make sure that you are going to the Bible breakdown discussion and just join the conversation as we are just digging into God's Word and creating this community around just knowing God together. Because the more we dig, the more we find. And I want to catch us up to what's about to happen because, man, it's about to go just crazy in the early church. Don't forget that the doctor-turned investigative journalist, Luke, is writing a sequel to the gospel of Luke. And he is telling in the gospel of Luke, he was telling about the life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. And now Acts is the sequel to the same, written to the same guy at Theopolis, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to talk about the first 30 to 35 years of the early church. And I love that the overall theme of this is that if you were voted, most likely to succeed, if everything always goes your way and everything is just always good in your life, I've got good news for you. God can still use you. However, likely, most of the time, he uses the least likely to succeed, those who have nothing going for them, and those who seem to be forgotten by everybody else. God uses the ordinary to do the extraordinary in his kingdom. And we see that in the Acts of the Apostles, that these ordinary fishermen and used up Pharisee that we're that we're learning about, they are shaking the entire world. And what we're about to see is a sequel to Acts chapter two. Now remember what happened in Acts chapter two, that they were all together, one mind, one heart, praying for the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit descended and filled all of them. They were filled with him with boldness, and they go out and they just start spreading the gospel, and it was amazing, it was awesome. And mostly, in this time, not all, but mostly, the gospel is now spreading among the Jewish nation. But now things are about to just go for everybody. And watch what happens as we do this. And so first, we got to remember that in the context of Jewish culture, it was considered to be disrespectful to have anything to do with Gentile people. And you got to remember that it was a lot of the Gentile people that had tried to destroy the Jewish nation for years. So some of this slight kind of difficulty with them liking non-Jewish people is not entirely undeserved, right? But at the same time, there is a little bit of this elitism and that we are the chosen people going on. And so there's a lot that they're grappling with here as they're also understanding the gospel. But watch what happens as God starts to turn Peter's heart to help him understand that the gospel is for everyone. So if you got your Bibles open to Acts chapter 10, the New Living Translation, let's read this together. Here we go. Verse 1. In Caesarea, there lived a Roman army officer named Cornelius, who was a captain of the Italian regiment. He was a devout, God-fearing man, and he was everyone as well as everyone in his household. He gave generously to the poor and prayed regularly to God. One afternoon, about three o'clock, he had a vision that he saw an angel of God coming to him. Cornelius, the angel said. Cornelius star stared at him in terror. What is it, sir? He asked the angel. The angel replied, Your prayers and gifts to the poor have been received by God as an offering. Now send some men to Joppa and summon a man named Simon Peter. He is staying with Simon, the tanner, who lives near the seashore. As soon as the angel was gone, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier, one of his personal attendants, and he told them what had happened, and he sent them off to Joppa. So something's going on, and he tells them specifically where to go and what to do. All right, verse 9. The next day, as Cornelius' messengers were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat roof to pray. And it was about noon, and he was hungry. But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, Get up, Peter, kill, and eat them. No, Lord, Peter declared, I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean. But the voice spoke to him again, Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean. The same vision repeated three times. Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven. Peter was perplexed. What could this vision mean? And just then the men sent by Cornelius found Simon's house. Standing outside the gate, they asked if a man named Simon Peter was staying there. Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over this vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, Three men have come looking for you. Get up, go downstairs, and go with them without hesitation. Don't worry, for I have sent them. So Peter went down and said, I am the man you were looking for. Why have you come? They said, We were sent by Cornelius, a Roman officer. He is a devout and God fearing man, well respected by all the Jews. A holy angel instructed him to summon you to his house so that he can hear your message. So Peter invited the men to stay for the night. The next day he went with them, accompanied by some of his brothers from Joppa. So so far what is happening is there's been this vision. And in Jewish culture, there was a lot of different things that you could eat, no problem, but there were some things that you weren't allowed to eat. They were considered unholy, unclean. But then he has this vision where God is all of a sudden saying, I'm now calling these things clean. You can eat them. But he wakes up and obviously he's realizing God is not telling me I can have a ham sandwich now. He must he must be saying something else. Something else is going on. And what we are going to realize is that up until now, they had considered the Jewish or excuse me, the Gentile people unclean. But no longer. Here we go, verse 24. They arrived in Caesarea and the following day. Cornelius was waiting for them, and he had called together his relatives and close friends. As Peter entered the home, Cornelius fell at his feet and worshipped him. But Peter pulled him up and said, Stand up, dude, I'm a human being just like you. So they talked together and went inside, where many others assembled. Peter told them, You know, it's against our law for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this, or to even associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of you as unclean or impure. So I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. Now, tell me why you have sent me. Cornelius replied, Four days ago I was praying in my house about this time, three o'clock in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in dazzling clothes was standing in front of me. He told me, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your gifts to the poor have been noticed by God. Now send some messengers to Joppa, and summon a man named Simon Peter. He is staying in the home of Simon, a tanner who lives near the seashore. So I send for you at once, as it was good of you to come. Now we are all here waiting before God to hear the message the Lord has given you. Then Peter replied, I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism, and every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right. This is the message of the good news to the people of Israel. And there is peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what happened throughout Judea at the beginning in Galilee, when John began preaching the message of baptism. And you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good, healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. When we, the apostles, are witness, or wit and we the apostles witnessed all of this that he did throughout Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. But God raised him to life on the third day. Then God allowed him to appear not to the general public, but to those whom God had chosen in advance to be his witnesses. We were those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He ordered us to preach everywhere and to testify that Jesus is the one appointed by God to be the judge of all, living and dead. He is the one all the prophets testified about, saying that everyone who believes in him will have their sins forgiven through his name. So what has happened is he preaches the gospel to these people. And some of these people had never even heard of Jesus. They just knew of Yahweh, and they knew the God of Israel, and they'd served the God of Israel. But now Peter says, Oh Lord, you've heard of Yahweh. Let me tell you about his divine son, Jesus. Verse 44. Even as Peter was saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all of them who were listening to the message, just like what happened in Acts 2. The Jewish believers who had come with him or come with Peter were amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles, too. They, for they heard them speaking in other tongues, praising God. And Peter asked, Can anyone object to their being baptized now that they have received the Holy Spirit just as we did? So he gave orders to them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Afterward, Cornelius asked him to stay with him for several days. Wow, isn't it amazing that God is no respecter of persons? Up until this point, they didn't know what was going to happen. So they did what they knew to do, and they were spreading the gospel, but spreading it to the Jewish nation. They had no idea that what God was doing was not limited to the Jewish nation, but it was for everywhere, for all time. And can you imagine having never heard about Jesus? You'd heard of Yahweh before, but to hear about Jesus for the very first time, and even while you were hearing, as faith began to rise and be built up in them, that boom, the Holy Spirit came into them, filled them up, and they began to speak with other tongues and use the other gifts of the Spirit as whatever God had need of in that moment as they were sharing with one another the goodness of God. It's just amazing that when we teach and preach about Jesus, power comes with it. So what can we learn with this today? And that is this that when you share the gospel, the power of God goes with you. And when we receive the gospel, the power of God comes upon us. And so we have no idea. I don't I don't think for us who have been exposed to the gospel for a while now, I think it's easy to forget the joy and the power of God that comes upon us who have received the gospel. That's one of the things I heard someone say one time. How do you know if you've truly become born again and receive the gospel? And that is that it changes your life. That you you don't just receive, okay, I believe now that Jesus is the Son of God and go about your life, but when you realize He is a Son of God and He is now my Lord and my Savior, that something happens as the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of us, he fills us up and he transforms us. And if that's happening in your life today, you may have 99 things going wrong, but Jesus ain't one. And I want you to celebrate today that the Holy Spirit lives within you, and because of that, the power of God is in you and can work through you to make a difference to everyone around you. Let's pray together. God, thank you so much for your goodness and for your mercy. Thank you that you are with us. Thank you that the power that brought Jesus back to life is the same power that lives in all of us. I pray, God, that we will realize that and we'll never walk around feeling like a victim, feeling powerless, or feeling forgotten, but to realize that because of you, we are more than conquerors. Thank you for that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Remember, Acts 1, Jesus said this. Say it with me. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. My prayer today is that you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit and you will be a witness in your world today. I love you. I see you tomorrow for Acts chapter 11.