Let's Eat
If Jesus didn't come for everyone then who gets to decide who He did come for?
"a feudal picnic basket" by langalex is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
This Sunday’s sermon started out about a picnic. The scripture, which we’ll get to, is from Acts 10:33-43 but quoted 1-32 as reference. It’s a reference because Pastor Lee opened with the idea of a picnic and tied it to Peter’s vision of the sheet being let down. The underlying point of the sermon was that God welcomes everyone to His Kingdom, and that’s true. The first verse of the scripture Pastor Lee quoted says that from both Luke and Peter, but they add some conditionals that were a little glossed over, if not left out in the sermon. Let’s go ahead and get the scripture out there.
33“So I sent for you immediately, and you have been kind enough to come. Now then, we are all here present before God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.”
34Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality,
35but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.
36“The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)—
37you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed.
38“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
39“We are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross.
40“God raised Him up on the third day and granted that He become visible,
41not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.
42“And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead.
43“Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.”
Acts 10:33–43 (NASB95)
Before we dive into that sermon scripture, I want to tie in a verse from the preceding scripture that dovetails nicely with verse 33 of the sermon passage. Verse 28 says essentially the same point. This all ties in with John 3:16 as well.
26But Peter raised him up, saying, “Stand up; I too am just a man.”
27As he talked with him, he entered and found many people assembled.
28And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.
Acts 10:26–28 (NASB95)
14“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
15so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
16“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
17“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
18“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
19“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
20“For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
21“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
John 3:14–21 (NASB95)
You probably expected me just to quote John 3:16, but everyone knows that scripture. The context is very important. Those are all Red Letter words, too, meaning Jesus said them. Don’t gloss over that longer passage. If you didn’t read it all because you decided you knew it and could skip it, please, go back and read it all slowly. That passage is for everyone. No one is left out; that’s what Luke and Peter mean, what scripture means when it uses the phrase, “No respecter of persons.” It means who you are, where, and what you’ve done concerning the sacrifice of Jesus doesn’t matter to God. It also means that His rules apply to everyone equally because He doesn’t care if you were a big shot in the World, had power or influence, or were rich beyond the dreams of Avarice. God applies his rules perfectly to everyone.
That last bit should make you happy at first, but after you’ve learned about God, it should change you. Why? Because when you come to realize that everyone fails to uphold all of God’s rules, you no longer want justice for everyone because if everyone gets what they deserve, no one is going to Heaven, including you and me. What to do, then? Well, that’s where grace comes in. We want to get what we don’t deserve, which is mercy. If we want mercy for ourselves, we must be willing to allow other people to get mercy, even those we don’t like.
That last one is hard. It is for me. We like things “fair.” Unfortunately, different human beings have different ideas about what “fair” is. God, on the other hand, has one idea of what is fair, and it’s in the Bible. The best news of all is that Jesus took all that “fair” punishment onto Himself and washed all His children clean. It simply prevails upon us to understand what it means to be “Children of God.”
I did a mini-commentary on some of the verses as I read the scripture. Some meanings had an impact on me, and I’ll share them. This is not necessarily what was in the sermon.
Verse 31 of the sermon scripture touched me with the idea that alms, what we would call charitable donations, probably should be given so that the person receiving them thanks God for what we have done, not us. If we can accomplish that, we’ve given in such a way that they see Jesus reflected to them through us, and that’s a successful piece of giving.
Verse 34 is again the “no respecter of persons,” meaning He is the ultimate in what is fair for people.
Verse 36 had me write down the single phrase, “Preaching peace by Jesus Christ.” I’m not sure why or even what that is supposed to mean, but what strikes me is that it is peace BY Jesus Christ, not from, for, to, or with, but “By” Him.
Verses 37-43 are an excellent outline of what Salvation is. These things are salvational beliefs. In my opinion, Christians should hold these things in common across all denominations. If you or they do not, I question their “Christianity.” Yes, that’s a harsh statement, but this is God’s Word, and it is true. I may have and get things wrong, and you are free to believe I have as long as you have other scripture with which to anchor your disagreement. If you don’t have a counter-scripture, I will continue to believe what I believe and ignore your input because it isn’t rooted in His Word.
This brings us to the sermon proper. Pastor Lee went into detail about a picnic, about bringing everyone to a meal in an informal manner. Everyone brings something different to the table. Her example was forty-five different versions of Jello.
We didn’t have a nursery today, so the children stayed in church. At this point, Pastor Lee called a number of them up to re-enact verses 1-33, where the Centurion Cornelius sent men to find Peter and bring him to where Cornelius was. It was very animated.
Verse 43 is the key to me in this passage.
43“Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.”
Acts 10:43 (NASB95)
Peter is talking about Jesus, thus the capital “H’s.” I took a note to read beyond verse 43, which was the last verse in Pastor Lee’s sermon scripture. Her point in the message is that Peter is doing a new thing. Before, Jews weren’t permitted to associate with Gentiles, but God had a Gentile call to Peter, and Peter had an angel of God tell him to go to the Gentile (read verses 1-33 to see all of this.) Once Peter was there with Cornelius, both men realized the other was a man of God, equally filled with the Spirit of God, doing what God wanted the other man to do. How do I know that? Because I did what my note said and read beyond verse 43.
44While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message.
45All the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.
46For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God. Then Peter answered,
47“Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?”
48And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay on for a few days.
Acts 10:44–48 (NASB95)
This is amazing to me. Peter saw the Holy Spirit descend on these men and indwell with them. This is God communicating to Peter in no uncertain terms that His Son Jesus is meant for every person on the planet who ever was, is alive, or ever will be alive.
This sermon connected me very much to the Sunday school lesson and forgiving others so that I might be forgiven. I will keep my thoughts private but suffice it to say I was quite convicted about some things towards specific persons I know (none of you, I promise.) I have quite a bit of work to do regarding the passage from the Sunday school lesson I’m thinking about. I’ll close with that for your contemplation as the week goes by. God bless and Godspeed.
25“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.
26“But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.”
Mark 11:25–26 (NASB95)