The Gospel Breaks The Gentile Barrier

 Please turn with me to Acts 10. I want you to picture with me for a minute what it would be like to live your entire life in utter spiritual darkness with no chance of ever hearing or receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ. Picture what it would be to live your entire life without hope in this life or the next. I mean more than just that you don’t feel hope – I mean you actually have no hope. Imagine the horror of your last minutes on earth if you were passing into a dark eternity with no hope of being saved? All that awaits you as you depart this earth is an eternity of darkness and separation from God.

It’s a pretty bleak picture, but for those of us who are Gentiles, that’s what we would have been born into if not for Acts 10. In Ephesians chapter two Paul describes this spiritual darkness for Gentiles when he says that we were separated from Christ, alienated from the people of God, strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God. Far, far from God with a chasm wider than the sea separating us from God, and no hope of ever bridging that chasm. That was our state.

So we should thank God with all our hearts that in His mercy He determined that He was going to bridge the distance and shine the light of salvation far beyond the borders of Israel to the furthest ends of the earth. The prophets in the OT prophesied that that day would come, such as Isaiah 9:2:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.

And Isaiah 49:6 [Speaking of the coming of Jesus God declares]: It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

In Acts chapter 10 the gospel breaks the final barrier so that the salvation Jesus purchased could reach to the end of the earth and the spiritual light that Jesus came to bring could shine in the darkest regions of the earth. Let’s read vv. 1-20.

Acts 10:1-20 (pray)

Since last week we saw that Saul (soon to be Paul) was called to go to the Gentile we may wonder why it is that God chooses Peter to be the one to break the barrier and preach the gospel for the very first time to a Gentile audience. The answer is that this is such a massively radical paradigm shift for the Jewish believers that it took someone of Peter’s stature, a pillar of the church (Saul was barely known and not yet even accepted), and the foremost of the apostles, to break the barrier so that there would be no question of the legitimacy of the Gentile believers being true believers.

As we go through this chapter we see that the barrier is broken down in three stages:

I. Stage One: God prepares Peter to let go of his prejudices

God choreographs two powerful visitations by angels first to Cornelius and then to Peter. Cornelius was a Roman centurion who was also what was called a “God-fearer”. He wasn’t a Jew, he didn’t convert to Judaism, but he believed in the God of Israel and tried to follow the Lord as best he could. An angel appeared to him and told him to send men to a city called Joppa and to ask for a Simon Peter who was staying at a tanner named Simon’s house.

As a Jew Peter would have had very strong prejudices against the Gentiles, prejudices that were derived in some part from scripture. To eat with a Gentile or associate closely would have made him ceremonially unclean. So God is going to ask Peter to do something that had not only strong cultural taboos, but strong biblical taboos as well. That’s why God choreographs these angelic visits so carefully, so that there is no doubt that what is happening is of God. As the Gentile men approach Joppa, and Peter is praying on the rooftop, God gives him this vision of a sheet being lowered with clean and unclean animals on it and God speaks to Peter and tells him to kill and eat. Three times this happens and three times Peter says, “no way, Lord, I would never eat anything unclean” and the Lord says, “What I have made clean, do not call common (or unclean).”

While Peter is trying to understand the meaning of this vision, the men arrive at the door, and the Holy Spirit speaks to Peter and tells him to go with them. Peter realizes that’s the meaning of the vision: he would have considered Gentiles unclean and refused, but God has called them clean and therefore Peter must not call them unclean. God is supernaturally tearing down the prejudices that were deeply rooted in Peter’s heart against the Gentiles.

We’re not going to take a lot of time with this idea of the gospel tearing down prejudice because we have covered it in different ways over the past several weeks, but I want to point out something that may be helpful to us. Long before this vision Peter knew that the gospel was to reach the Gentiles. In Matthew 28, the Great Commission, Jesus commands the disciples to go and make disciples of all peoples-panta ta ethne. In Acts 1:8 Jesus told the disciples that their witness was to reach out in ever-widening circles to the end of the earth. And that’s just to name two times when Jesus made the world-wide nature of the gospel known, there were many other times. Peter knew. And yet he needed a supernatural work of God to break down the final walls of prejudice remaining in his heart. What I see from that is that we can know with our minds that the gospel allows no room for prejudice and yet still have strongholds of prejudice in our hearts that we need to allow God to remove.

Ever notice how we tend to judge normal by ourselves. Anyone on the highway going slower than us is too cautious, and anyone going faster than us is too reckless. We see ourselves as the norm. Prejudice is just a way of seeing ourselves as the norm and anyone going faster or slower than us isn’t normal. Prejudice draws a line in our hearts and anyone like us is acceptable and anyone different is not. It can be a line of race, or religion, or age, or education, or economics, or personality, or looks, or common interests. It is not a line of love, and it’s a line that God is committed to tearing down in his church.

There is no place in the church for prejudice because there’s no place in the gospel for prejudice. If, like Peter, prejudice is something that you still deal with (maybe you were brought up in a prejudiced home and those lines are hard to remove) you need to confess that to God as sin and allow the Holy Spirit to convince you that you would not be saved and you would have no hope if the gospel were not for all peoples. No one was further from God or with less hope than you or I was, and Christ saved us and accepted us. As that permeates our hearts, there can be no room for anything but love for others (regardless of their differences) and a firm conviction, as Peter says, that God shows no partiality. None.

II. Stage Two: Peter preaches Jesus Christ to the Gentiles (vv. 34-43)

When Peter gets to Cornelius’ house, he finds a large group of people all ready to hear whatever he has to say to them, and Peter preaches Christ. Let’s read vv. 34-43.

The gospel is the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and the forgiveness of sins that comes through believing in his name. Peter is very carefull to preach the historical Christ to this room of spiritually eager Gentiles even though as he states they already know a lot of the story (vs37). He goes through Jesus’ life, how through the power of the Spirit he did good and set free all those who were oppressed by the devil, how he was crucified on a cross and how God raised him up on the third day. He proclaims the ascendency of Christ when he says that he is Lord of all (vs 36) and that it is Jesus who will judge the living and the dead on the Day of Judgment. And then he tells them the response the gospel calls for: To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name (vs. 43).

It goes without saying…or does it?

I had a friend who I used to get into a lot of theological arguments with. Once in a while when I’d point out some biblical truth he was missing, he’d say, “Well that goes without saying.” It may seem to go without saying but it needs to be said: Christ is to be the center of the church and to be preached in the church. If you have been here for more than a couple of weeks, you may have noticed that almost every song we sing references the cross and almost every message at some point references in some way what Christ did for us by dying for our sins. That is intentional: Christ isn’t one of the things we preach here, Christ is our message, Christ is our life, Christ is our hope, Christ is our foundation, Christ is the only reason the church exists!

The other day I heard a song I’d never heard on Christian radio the other day and one verse began really well: what can build a bridge between a holy God and a sinful man? Good line and I was waiting to hear how they would sing of Christ as the answer. I was disappointed when the next line was I know there’s only one thing, only love can. I looked up the song lyrics online and nowhere in all the song is Jesus mentioned. I don’t doubt that the band is a Christian band and they probably think that it goes without saying they are referring to Jesus. It needs to be said. Yes, Jesus saved us because of love – his love, the Father’s love. That is something to celebrate, but we need to be clear: love didn’t bridge the gap, love didn’t die for us, love didn’t heal us. Jesus did. And saying that is important.

The thing that makes Christianity distinctly Christian is the proclamation of Christ. Healthy churches can only be built on the careful guarding of the gospel, and when a church assumes the gospel goes without saying or loosens its grip on the gospel that church will soon begin to decline and eventually it will die. There are thousands of churches that are in decline or dead – most of the time it began with a move away from the clear proclamation of Christ and him crucified. Here are just three reasons why the church must never lose its grip on the gospel:

a. Salvation comes only through the clear, distinct preaching of the gospel..

b. Christian lives are only transformed through the gospel. It’s not enough to find Biblical principles and try to live by them. That is reducing Christianity to behaviorism – tinkering with how we behave rather than transforming our hearts. Only the gospel deals rightly with our souls and our soul’s greatest problem, and rightly brings the cure and power of God’s grace.

c. The generation that loosens its grip on the clear proclamation of the gospel – maybe by presuming “it goes without saying” may find to their heartbreak that the next generation lets its grip on the gospel go entirely. We guard the gospel for more than ourselves – we guard it for the next generation. We want to hand this church over to the next generation and have its gospel witness burn brightly from one generation to the next – that can only happen as we guard the gospel and proclaim Christ. That goes with saying.

III. Stage three: The Holy Spirit is poured out on the Gentiles (44-48)

Peter preaches Christ to this room of eager, hungry Gentiles and while he is preaching Christ - and in my opinion because he preaches Christ - the Holy Spirit was poured out in the middle of his message. The Holy Spirit will always bless the preaching of Christ. As they heard Christ preached they believed and received the Holy Spirit immediately. They began to speak in tongues and praise God and the Jewish brothers who came with Peter were amazed because they saw these Gentiles filled with the Holy Spirit exactly as they had been!

This was the event that fully convinced Peter that God had opened the door of salvation to Gentiles in the same way He had opened the door to Jews who believed in Jesus Christ. He baptized them on the spot. In chapter 11 Peter would take some heat from the circumcision party who would accuse him of hanging out with and eating with uncircumcised men. Yes, Peter would explain, but here’s why. And he told them the whole story, ending with the reception of the Holy Spirit.

Read 11:15-18

And the final barrier for the gospel had been forever broken and Gentiles were included in the church and in the plan of salvation. Isaiah 9:2 had come to pass: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.

Conclusion: I began this message by asking you to picture living with no hope and no spiritual light. Picture the horror of your last moments on earth knowing that you would spend an eternity in a Christless, loveless, lightless place. Now consider how blessed we are that God broke the Gentile barrier so that the ends of the earth could be reached with the message of Christ. If you are a Christian, your last moments on earth will be in preparation to see Christ face to face and to be in his presence forever. How thankful for Peter’s obedience to preach the gospel to Cornelius’ household. How thankful we should be that the Holy Spirit through the church spread the good news of Christ to the ends of the earth.

Maybe there’s someone here who isn’t yet a Christian. The Bible says that like all of us you were born without hope and without God. If you were to die now, the Bible says that you would spend eternity separated from God and all that is good. But God didn’t leave you without hope – Jesus died on the cross as full payment for the sins of anyone who will believe in him and receive him as Lord and Savior. Will you pray with me to receive Christ right now?