What? OK. All right. I think that's everything. you'll learn about me, I'll kind of share, I'll lace in bio details through the weekend. If you have Bibles with you, and I hope that you do, if you didn't bring Bibles and we recognize like only half the people here have Bibles, that's fine, we'll figure out how to get this projected, or you can just listen, and because I'm gonna read through, but you can open them up to the book of Acts that's in the New Testament, it's just after the Gospel, so Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, then Acts, and you're gonna go to the 10th chapter. Before I read, it's helpful to always have a little bit of context. At this point in the New Testament, the book of Acts is written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke. And so in the Gospel of Luke, kind of volume one that Luke wrote, it talks about all of the work and words of Jesus. And the Book of Acts are the works and words of the New Testament church. And they almost go together. And there's lots of connection between the two. But at this point in the Book of Acts, the church is being mobilized to go out into the world. And it's going to stretch them and challenge them. But it sets the table for all that's going to come. this weekend. And so when we drop into Acts 10, Jesus has been crucified, Jesus has been raised from the dead, Jesus has ascended into heaven, Jesus has poured his spirit out on people in Jerusalem. What Christians historically have always called Pentecost has happened, and now the people of God are being pushed outward from Jerusalem into Judea with the stoning of Stephen, with the conversion of Paul. That's chapter 8, chapter 9. Then we land in chapter 10 with this interaction with Peter and Cornelius, and it's going to be a part of this pushing the church out to the ends of the earth. Okay, so that's Acts chapter 10. I'm going to read the whole chapter. But if you're here, you can listen because it's a story. So it's awesome. It's not like Chronicles where I'm going to read a list of genealogies and you're going to get lost. It's a story. There's some repeated elements. I encourage you to follow along with me. So this is Acts chapter 10, verse 1, and I'm going to read down through 48. At Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day, he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, Cornelius, And he stared at him in terror and said, what is it, Lord? And he said to him, your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside. When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa. The next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. And he became hungry and wanted something to eat. But while they were preparing it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. And there came a voice to him, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, by no means, Lord, for I've never eaten anything that is common or unclean. And the voice came to him again a second time. What God has made clean, do not call common. This happened three times. and the thing was taken up at once to heaven. Now, while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had just seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon's house, stood at the gate and called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was lodging there. And while Peter was pondering the vision, the spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking for you. Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation for I have sent them. Peter went down to the men and said, I'm the one who you're looking for. What is the reason for your coming? And they said, Cornelius, a centurion and upright and God-fearing man, who's well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you, to come to his house and to hear what you have to say. So he invited them in to be his guests. The next day, he rose and went away with them. And some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied them. And on the following day, they entered Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up saying, stand up, I too am a man. And as he talked with him, he went in and found many persons gathered. And he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I asked then, why you sent for me? And Cornelius said, four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour. And behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon, who's called Peter. He's lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner by the sea. So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come. Now, therefore, we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord. So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. And for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him and we are witnesses. of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. for they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked for him to remain for some days. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Okay, let me pray one more time briefly for us. God, as we take the next 20 minutes or so and think through the reality of what it means for this news of Christ's death and resurrection, for the pouring out of your spirit, to meet those who aren't just of one nation, of one socioeconomic status, of one geographic location, of one special heritage, but rather, God, you, in your graciousness, in your wisdom, in your sovereign grace. Do not show partiality. Gotta pray that as we meet here and think through the reality of what the offer of that grace means to our lives, that while we may come from different church backgrounds, from different parts of the world, from different family settings or household relational health, from different points on the socioeconomic spectrum, from different educational spots, that as we gather together, through your life and death, Jesus, we would be encouraged by that grace. We would be built up in our faith that we would cling tightly to you, our Lord, our King, our Savior. Amen. If you go back home the way that I came here, so I took Beltway to 270 to 70, and I know not everyone, maybe if you took the ICC and you came over to 270, then you're gonna get to experience this. But on your way home, Lord willing, on Sunday, at some point during the day, you're gonna be going through Frederick, going south on 70, and there's gonna be hills, and depending on the time of day and what's going on, there may be construction, and there may be traffic. And the challenge of Frederick is there are hills, and not everyone uses cruise control, so they go fast on the downhill, and then they slow way down because they're, you know, the way that all these forces work. Any physicist or mathematician can explain it to you later during the retreat, ask them. But you only have two lanes, and that's part of the challenge, right? It's like there's no room to pass, you have slow people in the fast lane, you have slow people in the slow lane, and that means everyone goes slow and people get upset. And it looks as you go up and down the hills very tight and packed in. Now, if you persist and you continue, you don't jump off and just find a Starbucks or someplace quiet or whatever, then once you hit right around Gaithersburg, something magical happens on 270. Do you know what it is? It opens up. Thank you. He used hand signals. That's OK. That's part of feedback and totally acceptable. It opens up. You go from the two lanes of the up and down of Frederick and the, oh, what are people doing, to all of a sudden, you get three times as many lanes. You get local and express lanes. It's magical. It's as if the road opens up before you. And this changes people's behaviors. Because the people who are impatient, who've been tailgating the entire time, it's like they lead foot it. Like they just drop the hammer. And all of a sudden, they're driving a race car, and they're going way faster than what is recommended by the guidelines that you see. Then others are like, oh, I can finally move over. So they move way over to the right side. People who are going to go a different direction, they may move all the way over to the local lanes. But there's this opening up that has an impact on the traffic patterns, the way people are traveling, And you can almost sense it. There's no sign announcing it. There's nothing that says, hey, highway's opening up. Moderate your speed tendencies. There's nothing that says, hey, it just happens. And that's a bit of what's going on in the book of Acts. The people of God for 2,000 years have been traveling on two lanes. and that has involved an ethnic identity, it has involved markers of their community, like circumcision and kosher rules, and a very clear sense of here is what the people of God look like. If you want to be the people of God, these are the two lanes you travel on, just these two lanes. And what happens in the book of Acts that is amazing, miraculous, is that it is as if when Christ is ascended and he tells his disciples, wait here in Jerusalem, because God's power is going to be poured out on you, you are going to receive the Spirit. And through the Spirit, you're not only going to announce, serve as witnesses to the people here in Jerusalem who've been traveling on those two lanes, but the lanes of God's road of redemption are going to expand. They're going to multiply in significant ways. This is going to take you in different directions. Some people are going to speed up and go really fast. Other people are just going to kind of move over and keep generally traveling the same way. But the road of redemption is about to open. And so when God's Spirit is poured out, as the events begin to unfold, in Acts chapter 10, when Peter and Cornelius engage through these dueling visions, it is as if the road is expanding before them. And Peter is realizing this is what's happening. This is what's going on here. The ways in which we used to travel, whether that frustrated us or it felt kind of quaint, are about to be opened and opened widely. Now this is where this is good news for all of us because if you're here and you're not ethnically Jewish, then you should be excited because you have been traveling or are invited to travel on part of this expanded road of redemption. This is where we find ourselves traveling in the 21st century. So it is a road that we continue on. And so as we, you know, it's, I know it's a lot there, when in these 48 verses there are these repeated elements, that was Luke's way. It's a first century Greco-Roman way of cueing you in. There's no opening to the Acts of 10, or to chapter 10, even in the ESV version, or NIV, or whatever you're reading from, it doesn't say Hey, things are about to rapidly expand, and this is a really big deal. There's no heading that says that in the text. But part of how you know when you're kind of cued in, oh, something's going on here. And I don't kind of quite get it, the whole reptiles and birds and animals on the sheet thing. but it seems like this is important. Part of how Luke cues you into that reality is that there are these repeated elements and it takes 48 verses to get through the story. So in the New Testament, one of the ways, particularly in narratives, that you are cued to know, like, hey, this may be important, I should try to figure out what's going on here, is there's time, energy, and emphasis. There's a slowing down and oftentimes a repetition of the elements. And so that's what we have. We see here in Acts chapter 10 an expanded community and invigorated lives. And so I'm gonna just chop up the text a little bit in those two points. Expanded community and invigorated lives. So you have two people with two visions here. Cornelius is somebody of faith, okay, so Cornelius has faith. He gives of his life, he prays, he seems to exercise spiritual disciplines, but the text is using cues like he fears God or is a God-fear to indicate to you that he hasn't received that mark of circumcision and he wouldn't find himself traveling if the road at that point was two lanes and involved being ethnically Jewish, then that was not Cornelius. He wasn't on that road. He was outside of that road, although somebody who was working through their faith, someone who genuinely was trying to engage God and trying to think through, okay, what does it mean to live in a God-honoring way? That's what it meant to fear God. It wasn't the type of way that we in the 21st century tend to hear fear. It was a bit more of, I know God's real, he's powerful, and I wanna live a life and in a way that honors him. And so he has a vision and is met and is told, call Peter, Simon, Peter, here to come and meet with you. He's got some stuff that he's going to talk to you about. Then around the same time or in that same unfolding story, Peter who was one of the apostles, kind of on the inner circle of the disciples, who then became an apostle, who was there at Pentecost and preached the sermon. At Pentecost, as the Spirit is poured out, so someone who is on those two lanes, but is seeing and experiencing in real time this expansion, even if it's not always clear to him. And you see this rubbing together with the vision that he has where a sheet comes down with all these kinds of animals. And he's hungry and he's waiting for food to be ready or for everyone to get together in the household to eat. And he hears a voice and God says, take and eat. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. I've never, I've never participated in eating food that wasn't clean. And there's a bit of a pushback here where the response is, what God has made clean, do not call common. And this perplexes Peter. It is often true that if you are used to living in a particular way, within a particular culture, that when you're forced to move outside of that, it can be a bit scary, because it's what you know. You're used to things being the way that they are, and you may find actually great comfort and stability, and it's not that there's something wrong with that comfort and stability, but where the challenge comes here is that Peter is one of the apostles, one of the sent ones to go make this news of Jesus known, And God's plan involves more than just staying on those two lanes. God is about to expand this road. And so he's cuing Peter to say, Peter, listen, if I call this clean, then this is clean. And Peter's perplexed by this and maybe doesn't know quite what to make of it at about the same time the men from Cornelius show up, right? And then the men from Cornelius come and basically because God tells them, hey, I've sent these men, then you should go." And he goes. Cornelius calls his household together, and Peter shows up. Peter is beginning to make sense of, oh God, is this what you're doing? because as he's putting the pieces together of the vision that he saw, and the vision that Cornelius saw, and how they've been all brought together to this one particular moment in time, Peter does a bit like what he did on Pentecost. He rehearses, he preaches, he gives a speech about what God is doing in the world, right? So if you caught that, where it says the Gentiles hear the good news is my heading, but it starts in verse 34 and kind of runs down. Over the next eight verses or so, what's happening is Peter is rehearsing what we may in the 21st century call the gospel, the good news of how God is working in the world. And as he does this, the Holy Spirit's poured out on Cornelius and his whole household. This is the opening up. This is the moment with which it dawns on Peter. This is what God is doing. And so when he poured out his spirit and said, you're going to be my witnesses to the ends of the earth, he didn't mean that we would any longer just be on these two lanes. He meant he's about to do a major redemption highway expansion, and we're going to continue traveling, and then it's gonna take us all sorts of different directions, and this is gonna be really new. the expanded community is about to become live. And so you get this sense, there's almost these echoes and parallels where if you go back and read later tonight if you want, and you want to go explore Axmor, he preaches at Pentecost and then the Spirit's poured out and then people speak in tongues. It's almost a parallel structure. He preaches about what's going on, although it's a slightly shorter version, and then the Holy Spirit's poured out and then people speak in tongues, except this time they weren't on the two lanes, they were traveling on lanes right next to them. but weren't ethnically Jewish. And so here Peter realizes, wow, now can we keep them from receiving the sign of participation as part of the new covenant community? Can we keep them from being baptized? And so they're baptized and the community is expanded. This is one of the ways that the gospel of Jesus Christ works. God is sovereign and elects people and extends his grace to them and brings them into contact with himself and he does it even if you may not always expect it, it may not be people who you get to pick out, but part of the work of the church is to travel on the road that God has mapped out. He's the one who gets to lay it. And so you see this coming together in the narrative where God expands his community. Then, as the spirit falls, lives are invigorated. There is a sense of recognizing just what's going on. In verse 34 and 35, and I'm gonna read it, this is an important part of Peter realizing and being reinvigorated toward how his mission is about to change as an apostle. So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I understand that God shows no partiality. But in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right and acceptable to him, as for the word that he sent through Israel, preaching good news to them all." And then he continues to unpack. So it's coming clear to Peter. The example from the vision where the sheep was coming down, and he said, wait, I've never eaten those animals, and then God almost pushes back and says, don't call common what I've called clean. Peter applies the same framing, same phrasing to Cornelius and his household, people who were outside, that they aren't common, that they are part of who God is working in. and this reinvigorates. He is going to see how this continues to unfold in the book of Acts. He begins to recognize they're now a part of us. The highway of God's redemption is now expanded. This is going to take us to a lot of new places. And that's the road that the church continues on into the 21st century. So I know that we've traveled up to Pennsylvania, but where we find ourselves in a global city, part of our continued work as a church in the 21st century as witnesses to God's work through Jesus is that we make that good news known faithfully. That news is unchanged. You could lift Peter's sermon here and use that to, if someone says, why are you a Christian? You could almost repeat in total what Peter said, and that would be a faithful presentation of what God has done in the world. But God has called us to do it on a different continent, in a different millennia, and with different challenges today. But that's a part of the work of the church. And so for us, part of our creative thinking as a Christian community in the 21st century is, what does it look like in Laurel to travel on this highway? What does it look like for me to be a faithful witness in the neighborhood that I live, in the workplace that I'm a part of, in a changing world with lots of new technology and lots of things that are different? Our Christian hope is unchanged. Our ultimate hope in life and in death, as the Heidelberg Catechism would put it eloquently in question one, is that we are not our own but belong body and soul to Jesus Christ in his death and his resurrection. That's our hope and that's what we have to offer to the world. So that comes with both some, I think, great encouragement. What that means on the one hand is that we get to, here in the 21st century, participate with the work of God. Like, I don't think it's very compelling to say, go to church because you need to do some religious stuff. I don't think, that may get you there, at least for a few times, but I just don't know if that sustains you. It just doesn't feel, Like, okay, I'm checking a religious box. That's not a great motivator for a life-changing life of spiritual disciplines. But if you tell someone, do you want to participate in what the God who created the world and who's actively redeeming it and continues to work by the power of His Spirit today. Do you want to participate with that? Because I know where you can be energized and understand more and be taught how to do that faithfully in your day-to-day life. Not just on Sunday morning, not just on Sunday evening, not just in your home group, but every day. Now that's something that you're like, oh, okay, yeah, I'd like to hear more about that. That's our call as Christians, and so we should be encouraged because that's the work. But, and we'll talk about this tomorrow, I guess, and then Sunday morning as well. There are challenges because we get scared sometimes by the five lanes or the expanded road, and we sometimes say, I kind of like the quaint two-lane highway, and we can want to narrow down the highway of who gets in or who belongs or who's a part. And that is a constant, that's not unique to us, but I think it's a constant wrestling with the reality of sin, is that communities tend to like to install new shibboleths, or things that are like boundary markers, new ways to figure out who's in or who's out. And what the gospel and what the Peter Cornelius story challenges us to do, it almost serves as a bit of a warning, is be careful out of fear or out of wanting to mark your territory that you don't raise the common denominator of Christian faith beyond Jesus. Right, that's the challenge. And I'm gonna give you one quick pastoral helpful note. Oftentimes, no cult or church or religious person ever will usually, so 95% of the time, they will not tell you this is what we're doing. We're not buying into Jesus, we're gonna add to Jesus and we think it's X, Y, and Z. Some people will. Most people, they may have traditional sounding, even scripturally supported answers, but the way in which the community functions, there's no sign that says the highway is now narrowing. They just do it, and it has community effects. So what that means is for you, and this is true for no matter how young you are or how old you are, as an active participant in a community, you have to begin to think through, are the things that we're doing here ultimately coming down to the gospel? Do we have the freedom as a community for people to travel in the fast lane, for people to go in the slow lane, and for people to go new directions, empowered by the work of Jesus with Him being the common denominator of what unifies our faith? And that's the challenge for us. We're gonna pick that up tomorrow morning from Galatians chapter two. We're gonna see Peter's story continues. And you're gonna see he meets this challenge head on. That's what we'll take up in the morning, okay? All right, let me pray. God, thank you for this time. And as we enter into the weekend, I pray that you, will both challenge and encourage our lives. And that would happen not just on an individual level, but on a corporate level as well. That you would give us the strength to meet new people, or to get to know people we know a bit better, and that you would give us the wisdom to work through the New Testament and how it comes to bear in our lives as Christians in the 21st century. We pray these things in your name, Jesus, amen. All right, 30 minutes.