00:00: Have you ever read something in the Bible and then struggled with what you just read?
00:06: Anybody else besides me, right?
00:09: Sometimes you read things in there and you're like, oh, oh, oh, right?
00:15: There's some stuff in there that at times can be hard to fully embrace, at least initially.
00:22: It is not uncommon for God's people to sometimes struggle with how God works.
00:30: Or at other times to struggle with not the how but the what God is doing.
00:36: In the first half of Acts 11, what we're seeing is the early church, the first generation Christians, hearing some portion of what happened in Acts 10.
00:51: Acts 10 was not yet written, but the events recorded in Acts 10, part of that story had gotten back to these early believers.
00:59: And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that is not okay, Peter.
01:03: And so they're objecting to what God was at work doing in what we now know as Acts 10.
01:09: And so they begin to push back and say, this is not okay.
01:12: And in that first half of Acts 11, we see Peter explaining and helping them to understand and come to grips with this is what God is doing.
01:21: And then the second half of Acts 11 is God saying, and I ain't done.
01:25: I'm going to do more of this.
01:28: It is not uncommon for us to have to work at and begin to prayerfully ask God, change my heart so that my heart echoes yours, so that I'm on board with what you are doing.
01:39: Way back long before Jesus, about 7, 800 B.C., the prophet Isaiah wrote the words of God where God said to his people, my thoughts are not your thoughts.
01:52: Neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord.
01:55: For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
02:02: It's hard sometimes to face that truth in practice.
02:11: And yet, can you imagine the alternative?
02:14: If God's thinking, God's ways of doing things weren't any more impressive than what we can come up with?
02:20: It's not much of a God then, is it?
02:22: I don't think there's anyone in this room that we want to have God power.
02:26: God alone can handle that.
02:28: And part of the reason why is his ways and thoughts are higher than ours.
02:32: Acts 11 begins with word getting out about how Peter had preached the gospel to Gentiles.
02:41: Basically, this Jewish, ethnically Jewish man, Peter, who'd become a Christian, is out and about and ends up sharing the message of Jesus with non-Jewish people.
02:57: And he gets back to the Jewish Christians and they're like, no, no, no, Peter, you don't do that.
03:01: You don't talk to those non-Jewish folks.
03:04: That is out of bounds.
03:07: There are all kinds of rile up and they begin to criticize Peter.
03:10: But to really understand what's going on with that, we have to go further back for context.
03:14: And I think the best way to get context is to go back to the beginning.
03:18: In fact, the earliest pages of scripture, Genesis.
03:21: Genesis.
03:22: In early Genesis, Genesis chapter 12, we see God beginning an extraordinary work where he chooses a man named Abram and enters into a covenant or contract with Abram and says, I'm going to have a special relationship with you.
03:39: And as he details the specific, basically God makes three promises to Abraham.
03:45: Abram slash Abraham.
03:46: He gets his name changed along the lines.
03:48: The promise is three parts.
03:51: Land, people, and blessing.
03:55: God promises that he's going to bring Abram out of this land called Ur and into the land that we now know as Israel.
04:03: It's also called the land of Canaan.
04:05: It's that area kind of between Turkey and Egypt, modern day, right along the east edge of the Mediterranean Sea.
04:13: Says, I'm going to give this region of land to you and your descendants.
04:17: And then he promises a people that he's going to, from this man, make a people group, which we call the Hebrews or the Israelites.
04:25: And then he says, I'm going to bless those who bless you.
04:28: I'm going to curse those who curse you.
04:29: And I'm going to bless a larger group of people through you.
04:34: Ultimately, we see as we move through the Bible that this isn't just that specific geographic land, but ultimately the greater fulfillment is a new heavens and a new earth where God's people get to live with him forever.
04:47: The people isn't just those who are ethnically Jewish, but people who are of faith in God, as Romans 4 describes, by God's choice, as Romans 9 describes.
04:59: Not about ethnic issues.
05:03: And that the blessing was never intended to be just for Abraham and his biological descendants.
05:11: Genesis chapter 22, God says to Abraham, in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
05:19: To Abraham's son, Isaac, God says, in your offspring, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.
05:25: And to Abraham's grandson, Jacob, he says, in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
05:34: You notice a pattern there?
05:36: Three generations in a row, God's making the same basic promise.
05:39: I'm going to do something through you and through your offspring that will be the means by which all the families, all the nations, all the peoples of the earth will be blessed.
05:51: Now, offspring is a great translation there.
05:56: We might not use offspring so much these days, at least with regards to people.
06:00: We might say descendants, right?
06:02: But if we were to use the word descendants here, we'd be wrong because it's not plural.
06:07: It's singular.
06:08: How do I know that?
06:09: Galatians 3.16 makes very clear what this is talking about.
06:13: The apostle Paul explains about these promises.
06:16: Now, the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.
06:21: And it does not say, and to his offsprings, referring to many, but to one and to your offspring, who is Christ.
06:32: Paul's helping us understand this promise was that God was telling Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, somewhere down the line, I'm going to send Jesus.
06:40: And through Jesus, I'm going to have blessing for the whole world.
06:44: That's what's going on there.
06:47: So if we wanted to translate it, we'd have to say descendant, singular, Jesus.
06:52: Now, in light of that, in light of this being the very origins of the Jewish people, the Jewish people should have been expecting God to bring blessing to all nations, all peoples.
07:05: The Jewish people should have been waiting for and yearning for God to bring blessing to all nations, to all peoples.
07:12: The Jewish people should have been desiring this, longing for it, for God to bring blessing to all nations and all peoples.
07:20: This was announced by God at the outset, as a promise, right at the beginning of the Jewish people, when there was only one Jew, Abraham.
07:30: And then God was going to build through that one man and his wife and their descendants, the Jewish people.
07:35: Not only do we have, from the earliest pages, Genesis, this idea, this blueprint of God announced in the form of a promise, we also have the middle of the Bible, what we call the Book of Psalms, which is essentially the Jewish hymnal.
07:49: It's a book of poetry that was sung.
07:52: It was their hymnal.
07:53: These were all God-given samples of how they could worship God.
07:57: And in there, there's quite a few places.
08:00: I'm just going to give you a couple of them here.
08:02: There were celebrations of God's plans to bring blessing to the whole world.
08:08: Psalm 22, 27.
08:11: All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nation shall worship before you.
08:20: That's global.
08:21: That's not just Jewish people.
08:23: That's all the families, all the different people groups.
08:26: Psalm 117, verse 1.
08:28: Praise the Lord, all nations.
08:30: Extol him, all peoples.
08:33: You know what I love about that one?
08:34: That's verse 1.
08:36: Verse 2 is on the same topic, and that's the whole psalm.
08:40: They have a worship hymn in their hymnal that's only two verses, and the whole thing is about all peoples coming to God.
08:48: Like, dude, you got a whole song about that.
08:50: You got a worship song that's exclusively about that, Jewish people.
08:53: You should be on board with that.
08:55: They had been taught by God to desire, to expect, to celebrate that God wanted all peoples, all groups out there to come into right relationship with him.
09:08: Psalm 96, verses 2 and 3.
09:10: Sing to the Lord.
09:11: Bless his name.
09:12: Tell of his salvation from day to day.
09:15: Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.
09:22: That's great.
09:24: You know how sometimes we sing here, come, now is the time to worship?
09:28: When we sing that line, we're not talking to God.
09:31: We're talking to each other.
09:33: We're saying to one another, hey, guys, let's get our heads on straight.
09:36: Let's get our hearts right before the Lord, because right now we want to worship God.
09:39: And so when we sing, come, now is the time to worship, we're speaking horizontally in light of God.
09:44: But that's what this psalm is doing.
09:46: It's saying, hey, fellow people that know God, let's make sure we're telling everybody out there, all the peoples about God.
09:54: And yet, the reality is that the Jewish people overall, for most of biblical history, did not echo the heart of God for all the nations, all the people groups to have relationship with God.
10:09: which I think begs the question, do we have that heart for all people to come to know Jesus today?
10:19: Let me give you two specific areas of application.
10:22: Number one, do we support missions?
10:27: Every single believer in Jesus Christ is called to missions in some form or another.
10:32: Maybe you're called to go and bring the gospel to a faraway people or place.
10:37: Maybe you're called to send by financial giving that supports those who go.
10:45: Maybe you're called to pray and support through regular, heartfelt prayer the work that God is doing to bring the gospel to the ends of the world.
10:55: But I can just about guarantee, no, not just about, I can guarantee that every believer in this room is called to at least one of those, namely prayer.
11:04: And I would imagine that all of us in middle class American can afford to be sending at some level.
11:14: For one of you, it might be $500 a month.
11:17: For somebody else, it might be 50 cents a month.
11:18: I don't know.
11:19: That's between you and God.
11:20: But we want to make sure that our lives reflect our heart and that our heart reflects the heart of God.
11:27: So I would say, how are you supporting missions?
11:34: The second question or second test I would give you is this.
11:38: Are you doing missions at home?
11:40: Are you personally looking for opportunities to share the message of Jesus with the people around you?
11:47: Especially the people who aren't just like you.
11:50: Do we take serious the call of God to be his ambassadors, to be his representatives to the world around us so that people know about the kindness and grace of God offering salvation through Jesus?
12:04: Everyone around you and everyone around me and everyone in this room is broken.
12:10: We are not perfect.
12:11: We don't have it all together.
12:13: And the only solution for that in the eternal scheme of things is for God to forgive us and transform us.
12:20: And he does that.
12:21: He promises to do that if we stop trying to do our own thing, stop living like God is not the most important thing, and we submit to him in faith.
12:34: Now, submit sounds like a dirty word in modern culture and he's like, no, I'm the boss of me.
12:40: But if you were made by God, he's the boss of you.
12:44: And God has every right to expect our loyalty and our love.
12:50: And when we stop trying to do our own thing, ignoring God, and we say, God, you're right in everything you say.
12:56: I want to be on the same page as you.
12:59: I want my life to be lived with you and for you.
13:01: Please forgive me because of what Jesus has done.
13:05: God says, all right, now we're talking.
13:07: And he's happy to answer that request favorably.
13:13: Jesus didn't die just to be an example for us.
13:18: He died to take our punishment.
13:21: I remember as a kid, my uncle gave my mom a spanking paddle.
13:29: Some of the older folks remember such a thing as a spanking paddle.
13:32: Some households used a wooden spoon, right?
13:35: This thing was like a board like this.
13:37: It looked like a cricket bat with a handle on the end.
13:41: And I was to that age where I didn't really get spanked much anymore.
13:45: I was more or less a good kid.
13:47: But ooh, boy, did my brother get spanked often.
13:50: And he needed it.
13:52: And I thought it was quite entertaining.
13:54: When right after we got the spanking paddle, my brother got a good old whooping on his backside.
13:59: I was like, yeah, this totally fits.
14:02: It never crossed my mind that maybe I should volunteer for the spanking in place of him.
14:15: The idea of taking somebody else's punishment doesn't come naturally.
14:22: But that's what Jesus did.
14:24: He volunteered to take our punishment.
14:27: The punishment we earn from God for our rebellion.
14:32: And he said, Father, punish me instead.
14:37: Only it wasn't a paddle.
14:38: It was death on the cross.
14:42: People need to understand that there's a way to be forgiven by God, a way to be accepted by God, a way to become literally a child of God, adopted by God, that we might live forever with him.
14:54: Not only that there's a way, but that there's only one way.
14:59: Jesus.
15:00: Faith in Jesus alone.
15:04: Because if they don't latch on to that offer of rescue by God, they will not be rescued.
15:12: Do we love the people around us enough to bring them that message?
15:15: Or are we biased against the people around us?
15:19: It's not uncommon for God's people to be biased.
15:22: Think back to the Old Testament.
15:23: When I say Jonah, what's the first thing that pops into your head, right?
15:26: It's probably the big fish part of the story.
15:28: That's a small part of the story.
15:30: It's not even the main part.
15:32: The main part of the story of Jonah is that God sent a prophet to a foreign people, the Ninevites, to announce judgment from God against them.
15:45: And they repent.
15:50: And God forgives and relents.
15:55: The prophet Jonah, a Jewish man, was sent by God to bring this message, and he doesn't want to go.
16:02: He wants to run away.
16:03: And so he does run away, which is why the whole fish is part of the story, right?
16:06: And when he finally gets there, his message was, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown.
16:15: And the people of Nineveh believed God, and they called for a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them.
16:23: They go into mourning as a nation.
16:24: They believe that God's going to judge them, and they say, we don't know if God might have grace and mercy nonetheless, but he's right.
16:31: We need to repent.
16:32: And the Ninevites repented, and God relented.
16:36: That's a beautiful reality, that God says, even though I should punish you, even though you deserve punishment, if you turn away from it, I'll have mercy.
16:44: Jonah chapter four, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry, and he prayed to the Lord and said, oh Lord, is this not what I said when I was yet in my country?
16:57: That's why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you were a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
17:07: Therefore now, oh Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
17:12: Dude, I want to smack Jonah.
17:15: His answer basically is, man, this is why I didn't want to come.
17:19: I knew you'd probably forgive these guys.
17:22: I only want you to forgive and show love to my people, not to these schmucks in another country.
17:27: I don't like these guys.
17:29: I knew this is the way you'd probably act.
17:32: I don't want good for these people.
17:34: And then he ends the whole thing with, go ahead and take my life, God.
17:37: I'd rather be dead than see you be nice to these people.
17:40: Dude, prophet's got some issues.
17:43: And you get to the end of Jonah, no hint of repentance.
17:49: Now, I'm hoping that he did repent and get his heart right with God.
17:57: I'm hoping that when I get to heaven, he'll be there and I can say, you finished the story at that part to leave it hanging to challenge us, didn't you?
18:05: And he'll be like, yeah.
18:07: I'm hoping that's what happened.
18:10: But Jonah was exceedingly biased against these foreign people.
18:14: Now, there were some historical injustices committed and there was some cause for it.
18:21: And yet, in a lot of ways, he was an ethnic bigot.
18:29: We are, as a church, partnering with a Hispanic church plant here in Green Bay, Unidos, reaching Spanish-speaking people in the Green Bay area.
18:39: And we had the privilege of allowing them to use this facility back at Good Friday.
18:47: And I had the opportunity to visit with Pastor Jonathan and his wife, Linda, recently.
18:52: And they said that their congregants absolutely loved being here.
18:57: Not because of the building, which is fine and good and whatever.
19:01: But they said people were so welcoming.
19:04: They felt absolutely loved by the people that they ran into that night.
19:10: So kudos to you if you were one of those folks that welcomed them, who was glad to see people different than yourself in this place, using this building, worshiping the same God that we love and worship.
19:26: Jonah, 700, 800 years before Jesus.
19:30: How about Jesus himself?
19:32: Did he experience this?
19:33: Absolutely.
19:34: Luke chapter 4, verses 24 to 29.
19:36: And Jesus said, Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.
19:42: But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over our land.
19:51: And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, that's an area outside of Israel, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
20:03: And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha.
20:08: And none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian, also a foreigner.
20:15: When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath.
20:22: And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so they could throw him down the cliff.
20:30: All right, Jesus is in a Jewish church service, basically.
20:35: Says this stuff, says, hey, remember back to this era and this era when God was doing something with non-Jewish people and he only blessed those at that time?
20:44: And the whole synagogue is so angry, they literally form a mob, drag Jesus to the edge of the town so they can kill him by throwing him off a cliff.
20:54: That's some serious bigotry, folks.
20:57: That's some serious xenophobia.
21:00: They are so biased against other people, they're ready to kill Jesus over it.
21:05: Spoiler alert, they don't succeed in killing him.
21:08: That comes later in the story.
21:10: But they're ready to, they try to.
21:13: The apostle Paul experienced this.
21:15: I'm not gonna go into the details.
21:17: It's coming up in Acts 22 when we get there.
21:19: But basically, Paul's giving this speech to a Jewish audience and they're listening and he's going through a story about what happened and how God was at work.
21:27: And then he gets to the part where he says, and God told me to take this message to the non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, and they go nuts.
21:34: They start shouting, they start throwing stuff, and they demand that Paul be put to death.
21:40: Like, kill this guy.
21:42: He can't possibly bring news from God to non-Jewish people.
21:46: Why were these folks like this?
21:51: Because they misunderstood holiness.
21:55: I think that's a key part of it.
21:56: In the Old Testament, God called his people to be holy, demanded they be holy, gave them rules to help them be holy.
22:03: And holy fundamentally means set apart.
22:07: God meant for his people to be different because they were in relationship with him than those who were not in relationship to him.
22:17: I'll give you an example.
22:18: There's a lady in this room that I kiss on a regular basis, and he guesses who that might be.
22:25: My wife.
22:26: Thank you for figuring out who that was, Grace.
22:28: And everyone else looks around like, I don't know, who could it be?
22:31: It's my wife, right?
22:32: Because I have a different relationship with her than I have with anyone else here.
22:35: And so that different relationship should be reflected in how I live.
22:39: I should have certain kind of things that I do with her that I don't do with anyone else, and vice versa.
22:43: The Jewish people were supposed to be like that.
22:45: They were supposed to be different from the peoples around them, but they weren't supposed to be against those people because of their ethnicity.
22:53: The point was, if you are part of the people of God, live like God is your God.
23:00: Be wholeheartedly set apart for him.
23:02: Your life belongs to God to be lived for God.
23:05: And so don't let any of the people around you who aren't following God drag you into a lifestyle of not following God.
23:12: That was the point.
23:14: John chapter 17, Jesus said as much in just talking about his disciples.
23:20: John 17, 14 through 16.
23:22: I, Jesus, have given them, his disciples, your word.
23:27: And the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
23:34: I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
23:40: For they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
23:45: That's the passage where we get that saying that Christians should be in the world, but not of the world.
23:50: That's the root of that.
23:52: The idea is that we're supposed to live amongst non-Christians without becoming just like the non-Christians.
23:59: We are supposed to be those who have relationship with God and live like we have relationship with God even while living amongst people who don't have relationship with God.
24:10: So I think we have to ask the question, are we in but not of the world?
24:14: Are you in the world living amongst non-Christians and yet still having a truly distinct life?
24:23: Not just that you go to church, but that you make different choices with your time, with your money, with your entertainment, with what you partake in.
24:34: Do you make different choices because of your relationship with God than the people around you make in those same areas?
24:41: Are you different from the non-Christians around you but in the right ways?
24:47: Sometimes we get these stupid ideas of what being distinct means.
24:52: Oh, it means I can't ever drink alcohol.
24:54: I've met people.
24:55: I've met pastors that think that and I'm like, dude, drink or don't drink.
24:59: It doesn't matter if you don't abuse it.
25:01: That's not the kind of standard.
25:04: Right?
25:04: Or I have to have Christian logos on the back of my car.
25:10: That just annoys me when I see you drive badly with the logo on the back of your car.
25:15: Some of you have seen those ichthous on the back of the guy that's cutting you off, haven't you?
25:19: Right?
25:20: Or it means I have to wear Christian shirts with cheesy puns.
25:24: I should love those shirts and I don't.
25:26: They just don't work for me.
25:28: It's fine if you want to wear that.
25:29: There's nothing inherently wrong with that.
25:31: But that's not what should set us apart.
25:34: We should be set apart by love for the unlovable, by forgiving at a level in a way that the world doesn't understand.
25:45: We should be set apart because everything we choose comes from a heart that delights in Jesus and wants to honor Jesus.
25:54: We should be known as self-sacrificial givers.
25:58: We should be known as those who say no to wrong desires, because everyone has those, and say yes to obedience to God.
26:07: These are the kinds of things that should set us apart.
26:10: Are we properly distinct?
26:14: Or are we even in the world at all?
26:17: Historically, there were monks that would squirrel away in monasteries and be totally separate from non-Christian folks.
26:29: It's fine to do that for a little while, but I don't think a life of that is honoring to God.
26:33: God calls us to be in the world, representing him to the world around us.
26:36: Similarly, I know that there are Christians in our time who isolate themselves from the world around them.
26:43: They find ways of making sure everything they do is cut off from unbelievers, and every part of their life is in isolation, so they have little to no contact with non-Christians.
26:53: That's not right in honoring to God either.
26:57: Let me ask the question, are you actually in the world?
26:59: Are you engaging normally, day by day, with people that don't know Jesus?
27:04: We need to, with God's help, find this balance where we're in the world, but not defined by the world.
27:10: We're not hiding from the world.
27:11: We're not off doing our own little thing, but we are able to be present among unbelievers and represent God well.
27:22: Then we get to Peter's experience, which we see in the first half of Acts 11.
27:27: I think two and three are a good place to start.
27:29: Peter went up to Jerusalem.
27:31: The circumcision party criticized him, saying, you went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.
27:37: Now, it's not about the circumcision physically.
27:39: It's just a way of describing non-Jewish people.
27:43: That was the mark of being a Jew, was circumcision and not Jew, not circumcised.
27:47: So they're saying, how dare you go connect with and share a meal with non-Jewish people?
27:55: And I love Peter's response.
28:00: He retells the story of what happened, which we already saw in Acts 10.
28:05: Says, hey, I was in this coastal city.
28:07: I was in Joppa.
28:08: I was praying.
28:08: God gave me this weird vision.
28:10: I resisted, but God insisted that I was wrong.
28:14: He was right.
28:15: And it turns out it wasn't just about food.
28:18: It was about people.
28:19: And then right away, these three guys arrived.
28:21: God says, go with them.
28:22: I sent them.
28:23: Make no distinction.
28:24: That is, God commanded me, Peter, to treat these three Gentiles like they weren't Gentiles, to treat them the same as I would treat a Jewish person.
28:32: No distinction.
28:33: Jews, Gentiles, you treat them the same.
28:36: Hey, and these six fellows that are with me now in Jerusalem, they came with me for this whole thing.
28:40: So we got seven eyewitnesses between us.
28:43: And we went to Cornelius' house.
28:44: And he told us about this angelic vision.
28:46: And not only had God told me to go with them, he sent a message to Cornelius to fetch me.
28:50: So God is at work on both sides of this.
28:54: And the angel told Cornelius that I was supposed to tell him how to get saved.
28:57: And that's the instructions God gave me to be doing.
29:00: Like I'm supposed to tell people how to get right with God.
29:03: So I did.
29:04: And before I even finished talking, the Holy Spirit fell on him.
29:06: And the Holy Spirit just did for them the same stuff that he did for us Jews.
29:10: And I mean, I kind of picture him going, what are you going to do?
29:14: Right?
29:15: Like I was along for the ride.
29:18: God's the one that orchestrated this whole thing.
29:19: I didn't give him the Holy Spirit.
29:21: God did that.
29:23: And essentially he says, if God's doing this stuff, how can we get in the way of it?
29:29: Verse 18, when they heard these things, they fell silent.
29:33: And they glorified God saying, then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.
29:41: I love so many things about that verse.
29:44: They fell silent.
29:45: All their complaining is shut down.
29:47: And they're like, what do you say?
29:51: Right?
29:52: If God has worked like that, how do you even begin to argue against it?
29:57: Right?
30:00: If there was a big fancy chair here, and you guys are all like, don't, what are you doing getting a big fancy chair?
30:06: I'm like, dude, I didn't put it there.
30:07: I was praying.
30:08: God said he wanted to provide a chair for the church.
30:10: And then poof, there it was.
30:12: And we had like 10 witnesses that saw the whole thing.
30:15: And I don't even know.
30:16: I guess God wants us to have a chair.
30:18: What are you going to do with that?
30:19: Right?
30:19: Like, I didn't do it.
30:21: God did it.
30:21: Now, I don't think God's interested in us having a fancy chair.
30:23: I don't get any ideas.
30:24: But if God does it, if God works in this spectacular way, you got to say, okay, God knows what he's doing.
30:35: Second, they glorify God.
30:37: They worship God.
30:38: They praised him for including the foreigners, for doing the same kind of saving work amongst other peoples.
30:46: And he says, they say, God's granted them repentance that leads to life.
30:50: He's saying, yeah, God's saving other people too.
30:53: It's not just us.
30:54: God has expanded what he's doing here in an amazing way.
30:57: Praise God.
30:59: And notice that phrase, God has granted repentance.
31:03: God's the one that does it.
31:05: Granted is literally gifted.
31:07: Right?
31:08: Repentance.
31:10: Meaning, implicitly, we need God's grace to even be able to repent.
31:16: We're not going to turn away from the junk in our lives without God's grace at work.
31:22: Do we need to repent?
31:23: Are we commanded to repent?
31:24: Yeah.
31:25: Can we do it on our own?
31:26: No.
31:27: If you recognize things in your life that are not as they should be, pray to God to give you a changed heart towards those things so that you do turn away from them.
31:35: Jesus told Peter in Matthew 16, 18, I will build my church.
31:42: Meaning the people, not the buildings.
31:46: And in Acts, we see God doing precisely that.
31:48: He's working through people, but not according to the wisdom of people.
31:52: He's using people to accomplish things, but often in ways that are not what they would have thought, expected, planned.
31:58: We see that in Acts 10, where Cornelius and his family come to Christ because of this whole angelic messenger, and they send to Peter, and Peter comes and presents, that whole thing.
32:08: Like, we've already seen that story.
32:09: God is building his church.
32:11: And then in the second half of Acts 11, we see God doing it in the city of Antioch.
32:17: Now, if you look at a map of that region of the world, you kind of get this Mediterranean Sea horizontal oval shape.
32:27: And that east end of the Mediterranean Sea, the land there is Israel.
32:31: If you go up just to where it kind of begins to curve to the west, where Turkey is, just before that curve, that's where Antioch is.
32:39: So it's north, northwest of Israel, about 280, 300 miles if you draw a straight line.
32:45: Of course, back then, you didn't travel on a straight line.
32:48: It would have been 400 to 550 miles walking distance, depending on the routes, because it's rugged territory.
32:57: So it's a good hike for an era without automobiles.
33:01: And so on.
33:03: Check out verses 19 through 21.
33:08: Now, those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.
33:20: Think back to chapter seven.
33:21: That's when there was persecution.
33:23: Saul was still not a Christian.
33:25: He's key part of the persecution efforts.
33:29: And a bunch of folks scatter.
33:32: And this description geographically is that same area, plus an island a little off the coast.
33:38: And these Jewish Christians travel, let's call it four to 550 miles away.
33:43: And they bring the gospel message with them, but they don't share with anyone but their own kind.
33:50: They only share it with Jews.
33:54: Verse 20.
33:55: But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, also preaching the Lord Jesus.
34:05: Hellenists are Greek background folks.
34:07: So there's some of them who are like, we're going to cross the line.
34:10: We're going to share it with other people.
34:13: Verse 21.
34:14: And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
34:19: So we see God continuing to be at work, bringing these other people who were outsiders to the inside.
34:25: Word gets back to Jerusalem.
34:27: They hear about it.
34:27: They send Barnabas.
34:29: This is the same guy who had enough guts to reach out to Saul when he first became a Christian.
34:34: They send Barnabas out to Antioch to find out what's going on.
34:38: And he investigates.
34:39: Then he celebrates.
34:40: Yay, God's at work.
34:42: And then he travels to Tarsus, which is Saul slash Paul's hometown.
34:47: About a week's journey away.
34:49: He travels to Tarsus to go recruit Paul.
34:50: He's like, hey, Paul, we got some folks that need to know more about Jesus.
34:53: Come with me.
34:54: They head back, and they spend a year there investing in these new believers.
34:59: That's awesome.
35:00: I love this.
35:03: Unity, investment.
35:04: What do you call a year of investing in new believers so they understand the faith and can live well for following Jesus?
35:13: Discipleship, right?
35:16: You and I are all called to be disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus, and we're all called to help people grow in that.
35:23: Let me ask you this question.
35:25: How are you investing in other people growing in their faith as Jesus followers?
35:30: If you don't have a good answer to that, may I suggest that you look at the insert in your bulletin, there's a whole bunch of opportunities where you can be involved in investing in folks.
35:49: Because they're growing in their walk with Jesus, verses 27 to 29, they live differently.
35:56: God sends word to a prophet, there's a famine coming, and so they say, hey, we're going to work together, we're going to address that.
36:02: We're going to collect offerings, and we're going to financially send those offerings to the people who are in need and help take care of them when they're in need.
36:10: Sounds a little like safe families.
36:12: Sounds a little like some of the other helps that we do around here.
36:15: We ought to be helping those who are in more need than us, especially, but not limited to, fellow Christians.
36:23: It's the church being the church.
36:25: And finally, I want to end in verse 26.
36:29: 26 is kind of interesting.
36:32: If somebody said, what do you believe religiously?
36:35: Who are you in terms of religion?
36:37: You probably wouldn't say, I'm a member of the EFCA.
36:41: You probably wouldn't have previously said, well, I'm an alliance person.
36:45: You'd probably just say, I'm a Christian, right?
36:48: Which is good.
36:49: That's a good answer.
36:49: But you know, that's kind of not how the Bible usually talks about us.
36:55: This term Christian to describe Jesus' followers goes back to verse 26.
37:01: And in Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians.
37:07: Literally, the word is Christ, like Jesus, Christ, with a little ending suffix that means belonging to or adhering to.
37:17: You're connected to Jesus.
37:19: So when we say we're a Christian, we're literally saying, I'm with him.
37:24: I'm with Jesus.
37:25: I'm a Jesus guy.
37:27: I'm a Jesus gal.
37:28: I'm with Jesus.
37:30: Which means, if we're Christians, we should be living holy lives.
37:34: We should be living for him.
37:36: We should be living like we're in real relationship with Jesus.
37:40: And that'll set us apart in all the right ways and give us a love for the people around us that is transformative.
37:50: that God will use to build this kingdom across every boundary.
37:57: Let's pray.
37:58: God, help us to recognize that your plan is a global plan that encompasses every group of people out there.
38:07: There are no demographics of people that you don't desire to love and embrace and forgive and accept and adopt through faith in Jesus Christ.
38:19: Grant that even today if there are any here who are not walking in relationship with Jesus that you would give them repentance.
38:25: Give them a desire to turn away from their sin.
38:28: To be done with living their own free for all lifestyle.
38:32: And say, I want to I want to have a relationship with God.
38:36: That's got to be better.
38:37: If he designed us, if he designed the whole world, he must know what he's up to.
38:41: And I pray that those who are here who have already done that, who have already repentantly trusted in Jesus, that you would give us a renewed heart of love for all the people around us and even to the ends of the earth so that we live actively in such a way through our time, our giving, and our prayer that people would come to know about Jesus.
39:11: It's in his name we pray.
39:13: Amen.