The Salvation of the Gentiles, Part 4

Acts 10:36-43

     As you are well aware, this Easter season commemorates the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ...The resurrection is the greatest event in history.  It is not just the greatest event in history to Christians.  It is the greatest event in history period.  It's only that some people haven't recognized it as such.  The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ came into the world to die.  He Himself said, "For the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many."  He came to die.  He also came to live again.  In John chapter 2 verses 19 and following, He said to the leaders of Israel in the temple, He said, "Destroy this temple.  In three days, I'll raise it again."  At the home of Mary and Martha, He said, "I am the resurrection and the life."  On another occasion, He said, "Because I live, ye shall live also."

     Jesus Christ came to die for sin, for our sin, and he came to rise again for our life; and for the Christian, Easter is no different than any other day.  It's just a calendar contact to refresh our minds of that which is our very life.  The world talks about Easter at Easter.  The Christian talks about Easter all the days of his life...for the life we live isn't even ours.  It's Christ resurrected living in us.  Easter is not a historical event to me.  It's a way of life.  For some of you, this is resurrection Sunday on your calendar.  For most of you, it's just another resurrection day in your life.

     What makes the difference?  Why is Easter to some people a calendar event and to other people a way of living?  The difference is that some people have personalized the resurrection.  Some people know about it.  Some people live it, and, really, it all boils down to whether or not you have appropriated the death and resurrection of Christ for your very own.  In fact, for those of us who know about Easter, and we know what it really means, and for those of us for whom every day is resurrection day, the world's commercial Easter is almost offensive.  It's almost like a kind of a crass, a pathetic intrusion into the reality of resurrection life.  It's sort of the world jumping on the bandwagon when they really don't even know what it's all about; and I say this very honestly, if Easter is something to you once a year, then it is nothing to you; and you're coming to celebrate Easter is like taking a corpse to a party...because you don't know what we're celebrating. 

     But I have good news for you.  I have been sent by God today.  You know, there was a man who came from God, and his name was John...and I have been sent from God to give you the best news you've ever heard, and the news is this:  because He lives, you can live; and you don't need to go through Easter like a corpse at a party about life.  You can live, and Easter can be a way of life for you as it is for me and for most of us who are gathered today in this place; and so I come with great joy, and I'm thrilled to make this announcement; and I'm not even gonna make it in my own words.  I wanna preach you a sermon that is gonna be one of the best sermons you ever heard in your life, because it isn't mine.  I'm gonna take it right from Peter, and it isn't Peter's.  He got it from God. 

     Turn to Acts 10 in your Bibles.  For some of you, Easter isn't really what it's meant to be, but it can be.  You can know the resurrection in your experience every day.  You can know what it is to really live, to be alive to God; but in order to be alive to God, you must hear the message.  We come to Acts chapter 10, we've been studying the Book of Acts; and in the wisdom of the Spirit of God, He preserved and guarded our study so that when we landed on this particular resurrection day, we would be talking about the resurrection; but that's not unusual for God to set the timing for our messages.  He did the same thing last year when we were studying the Gospel of John.  Came to Easter Sunday and landed on the resurrection, too.  And so the Spirit of God has a very special message for us today, and it's the message that Peter gave in the house of a man named Cornelius, to him and to his household.  Lemme give you a little background.  The Book of Acts, one of the most important books in the New Testament, is the only historical book in the New Testament in the purest sense of the word.  It records for us the growth of the church from its birth to its first early years.  Jesus Christ has already died in the chronology of the New Testament, been buried, risen again, ascended to Heaven.  Having ascended to Heaven, He sent His Spirit back to form His church and to live in His church and to dwell in His church. 

     This happened in the 2nd chapter of Acts.  The Spirit of God came.  The church was born; and then from Acts 2 through 10 where we come today, the church has been growing.  People have been coming to Christ.  People have been coming alive with resurrection life.  First of all in Jerusalem, there was a tremendous moving of the Spirit of God, and people were saved, and they acknowledged Christ, and they came alive; and then they reached outside Jerusalem; and Jews who were living in Greek-speaking countries, who had come to Jerusalem for feasts and certain...certain such important things, they were entered into the church by faith in Christ.  Then the church reached out to half-breed Samaritans, half Jew, half Gentile.  They heard the Gospel.  They believed.  They were placed by the Spirit of God into the church; and, as we come to the 10th chapter of Acts, the last great extension of the church takes place.  It has reached Jerusalem's Jews, the Hellenist Jews, the Samaritans, and the last step is the uttermost part of the earth.  It is to reach the Gentiles; and in the 10th chapter of Acts we find the salvation of the first group of Gentiles. 

     So the church began and founded by our Lord when He sent His Holy Spirit has exploded in a few years, to the extension that now into Gentile territory, and the design of our Lord Christ that we would first be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and then the world has come to pass, and so, as we come to the 10th chapter, Peter is about to preach a sermon to a group of Gentiles which will result in their salvation and their being brought into the church.  Now, the message to the Jews was Christ crucified, risen, and coming again; and the act of faith receives it.  The message to the Samaritans, exactly the same.  The message to the Gentiles, exactly the same.  The message to you, no different. 

     As we come to the 10th chapter, we begin in verse 34, really, in our study with the sermon of Peter.  Lemme give you just a brief look backwards in the chapter.  God knows what a monumental event this is, that the Gospel be extended to the Gentiles; and so God has done the preparation.  Cornelius is a pagan by all definition.  He has been raised apart from the law of God.  He has been raised...that is, the written law.  He has been raised apart from Judaism.  He does not know the transcripts that have been granted to men from God, because they were placed in the care of Israel; but he lived up to the light that he had in his conscience and in the world around him.  And, incidentally, Romans 1 says that, "The wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness."

     He goes on to say, "That which may be known of God is in them and around them, and if they don't understand it, if they can't see God from their conscience and the world about them, they are without excuse."  And so God gives to every man across the earth knowledge that he exists, and if a man will apprehend that knowledge, live up to that knowledge, then God will move in with more light.  People always say, "What about the heathen?"  We talked about this last week.  What about the people in pagan countries who never have the Bible, who never hear these things?  Believe me, God is a just God.  God never makes a mistake, and God is a loving God; and if a man in any kind of a situation lives up to the light he has, God grants him more light.  Cornelius was such a man.  He had attached himself somehow to Judaism, because he saw, in Judaism, the God that he knew in his heart to be the true God; and so God began to work on him. 

     In the first 20 verses of Acts, we found the sovereign call, how God prepared the heart of Cornelius.  In the verses 21 to 33 that followed, we saw the submissive will.  We saw how Cornelius was so ready and so eager to know salvation.  God did his part.  Cornelius was available, and God and Cornelius got together.  Now, all Cornelius needed to hear was the simple proclamation.  He just needed an explanation.  His heart was ready.  God had sovereignly done His work.  He was prepared soil.  All he needed was the seed to be planted, and here comes Peter.  Peter is God's chosen vessel to dispense the facts of the Gospel to Cornelius, that he might be saved and added to the church.

     As we come to verse 33 of chapter 10, Peter is at Cornelius' home.  Cornelius is sitting with his household.  This is what he says, "Now...in the middle of verse 33...therefore we are all here present before God to hear all things that are commanded thee of God."  He says, "All right, Peter, we're all here.  Now you tell us what God knows we need to know."  Here was a man who wanted salvation.  In fact, before Peter's sermon ever was completed, Cornelius had believed, received Christ, and Peter got stopped in the middle of his sermon.  He was so ready.  He says, "Now preach."  And as we come to verse 34, we come to the sermon of Peter.  It's a very simple sermon.  It's just as clear and concise as it could possibly be, and I don't wanna embellish it very much.  I just wanna preach you Peter's sermon. 

     Now, like all good sermons and all that Peter preached, it has three parts.  It has an introduction, a main theme, and an invitation, conclusion.  Let's begin by looking at Peter's introduction.  Verse 34, "Then Peter opened his mouth," and the term there as we saw means that he was about to say something very important, a very weighty saying.  "And he said, 'Of a truth or truly I perceive," and this really means, "I am beginning to understand, that God is no respecter of persons."  Now, as a Jew, Peter had been reared all his life to feel that God had a special love for Israel, and that God liked Israel better than He liked anybody else; and this died hard in the breast of a Jew of his day; and to extend himself to Gentiles was extremely difficult; but God had prepared him with a vision, and in this vision that he had seen earlier in the 10th chapter, God had begun to break down this kind of attitude and this kind of prejudice, and so Peter says, "I am beginning to understand that God is not partial to people.  God doesn't play any favorites culturally, religiously, racially, but God is no respecter of person." 

     In fact, Paul uses the very same phrase, Romans 2:11, he says, "God is no respecter of persons," and that is not anything new.  That's throughout the Old Testament.  God regards not men, the Old Testament says.  That is, God doesn't make concessions to smart men as over against unintelligent ones or rich ones as over against poor ones.  Or a certain race against another race.  God is impartial.  What's Peter saying?  Peter's saying, "Cornelius, I know you're a Gentile, but lemme tell you this.  Salvation is available."  That's his point.  Salvation is available.  That's the first point, and that's what I'm here to announce to you today.  It's available.  I don't care who you are.  I don't care what your strata.  I don't care what your attitudes at this point, what's your culture, what's your background, or what is your race.  I don't really care about any of that.  Salvation is available.  Paul said, "For I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto everyone that believes.  The Jew, it came first, but also to all the Gentiles."  And so the Gospel is for all men.  In 2 Peter 3:9, Peter said, "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise."  That means God keeps his promises as some men count slackness.  People are slack.  People don't keep their promises.  God does, but He is long suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.  The argument of 2 Peter 3 is, "Well, the scoffers come along and say, "Where is the coming of the Lord?  Why, you keep saying the Lord's coming, and the world's a mess.  Why doesn't He get here?  Ah, He must be impotent."

     Peter says, "No, He doesn't come because He's impotent.  He doesn't come because He's merciful, and He's waiting to give men an opportunity to respond."  It's mercy, not impotence, because God wants men to come to salvation; and the term there is, "He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to pass."  Across the barriers, across the board, salvation is available.  It's not for super-religious people.  It's not for strange kinds of fanatics.  It's for all men everywhere who respond.

     Now look at verse 35, and he carries the same thought further in his introduction.  "But in every nation," and, boy, if you could only imagine what a concession this is for Peter to make.  "In every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted with Him."  Now, that is not saying you're saving by works.  What it means when it says is accepted with Him is it means God looks favorably on him.  For example, when God looks around the world, He sees a pagan somewhere.  Maybe in a corner where there is no information about the Scriptures at all; but He looks into the heart of that pagan, and that guy is living up to the information he has written in his conscience.  Romans 2 says that, "Every man is born with enough conscience about God to be able to see God's eternal God headed power.  In other words, you can know God just from what He's written in your heart. 

     Romans 1 says you can know God from He's done in the world.  Anybody can see the world and not see God isn't looking very well; and so this...the testimony of Scripture is that men have the knowledge of God built into them, and anywhere, if a man lives up and fears God as He is revealed to him, and does his best to do what is right, as he understands God, God will look favorably on that man.  That doesn't mean the man is saved.  That means that God looks favorably on him.  Watch, and then God will give him the information he needs to be saved. 

     Cornelius was a good man.  He feared God.  He worked righteousness the best he knew how, but he was not saved.  Chapter 11 indicates that to us, as we shall see in our future study.  Cornelius is not yet saved, though he has lived up to the light he has.  The principle is simple.  Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, said Peter, but the name of Jesus Christ.  A man could live up to all the light that God gave him, but he wouldn't be saved until he learned Christ and received Christ.  There's no salvation any other way.  You say, "Well, what about the guy who does the best he can?  Will God teach him about Christ?"  Absolutely. 

     John 7:17, Jesus said, "If any man wills to do His will."  If a man really wants to please God, the God that he understands in his conscience and in the world around him, "he shall know of the doctrine...said Jesus...whether I speak of Myself or not."  In other words, Jesus said that God'll give him more light.  God will reveal the truth, and that's Cornelius.  Cornelius had lived up to the light he had, and here came Peter with the rest of the light...and God is impartial.  Cornelius was a Gentile, but God withdraws Himself from no seeking heart.  Jesus said, "Him that cometh unto Me, I'll under no circumstances turn aside."  Doesn't matter who you are...

     When man sinned, he fell away from God, in total, all men; and when he fell away, a gulf intervened; and that gulf is as bottomless as hell and as black as a moonless midnight; and that gulf, throughout its yawning depths, is populated by demons, howling against man; and the genius of man and the goodness of man and the contrivance of man could not span that gulf; and so man remained cut off from God; and in the midst of hell's high carnival over man's lost condition, Jesus Christ left His home in glory, came to this world; and, at the cost of His own life, Jesus Christ flung a bridge across the gulf; and the name of the bridge is salvation; and for centuries now sin-wrecked humanity has been stumbling across that bridge into the arms of a loving God; and at no time has God ever distinguished race, culture, mentality, or any other thing...So Jesus Christ is the only way to God.  I don't care how good you are, you're still on the other side of the gulf, unless you cross the only bridge, who is Jesus Christ.  And so here's Cornelius; and he's so ready; and Peter says, "Salvation's available, Cornelius.  You lived up to all the information you had, and here I am to give you the rest."  That's always how God works. 

     I'll never forget stumbling through a...town in the Andes in South America where the streets were mud, and the sewers ran outta the houses, down little gullies into the middle of the little dirt street.  Unbelievable place.  Mud huts inhabited by people and animals in the same hut.  Little thatched roofs, way up, 20,000 feet into the Andes.  Walking along a little road with a missionary and looking about and seeing the little children in the mud and all the filth and the things that were there that were so foreign to my own understanding, we then stumbled onto a clearing, and I began to hear a song; and I...it sounded like a lotta people were singing; and then I begin to say to myself, "That sounds like What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  And I didn't understand the words, but the tune was familiar, and so I wandered over to the back of the church, and he said, "Look in."  And here was a little church, and I stuck my head in the door, and there was no room for me to step in.  They were standing up wall-to-wall bodies from front to back and side to side, and they were singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  Now, those people were so far and so remotely removed from anything that we could understand.  They were so cut off from the testimony of Scripture given to Israel and to many of us; but somehow God, in His own timing, had gotten the Gospel to prepared hearts; and in recent years, a revival had broken out to the extent that they told me they were gonna have to build more churches in the next few years than they'd ever built in the history of any work in that area of the world. 

     God will always meet the seeking heart, believe me; and you'll find as you travel around the world...I'll never forget running down the streets of Jerusalem and running into a little Arab boy and beginning to talk to him.  He spoke enough English to tell me that he, too, had met Jesus Christ.  All around the world, I don't care where it is.  Whether it's on a university campus or in a prison, or whether it's with the brilliant or the uneducated, whether it's the rich or the poor, you'll find the barriers have been crossed; and Jesus Christ is real to people; and that's all he's saying here.  "I don't care who you are, what your background is, salvation's available."  Cornelius, Gentile or no, it's available. 

     The second thing that Peter says is so interesting.  It's not only available, then he moves to his theme.  His introduction is salvation is available.  His theme is salvation is in Christ.  It's great to know it's available.  The next thing you wanna know is what is it, how do you get it, where is it; and he says it's in Christ.  The only one, people, who can provide you with resurrection life is Jesus Christ.  Why?  He's the only one that ever raised from the dead.  Hardy says, "I only wanna know two things.  Has anybody ever cheated death?  And, two, did they make a way for me to do it?"  He said, "If I can find that man, that's what I wanna know."  He look around, and he checked 'em out.  Buddha's tomb occupied.  Mohammed's tomb occupied.  Jesus' tomb empty.  He said, "Somebody cheated death."  Then he said, "Did he make a way for me to do it?"  Then he read the Bible, "Because I live...what?...ye shall live also."  He said, "That's what I wanna know."

     There's no salvation in any other, because there's no resurrection in any other than Jesus Christ; and so Peter begins to preach about Christ; and he begins in verse 36.  "The Word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all) - that thing I say you know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached."  Now what is he saying here?  Look with me at that for a moment.  What's he saying?  He's saying, "Here I am to announce to you salvation is available."  Now he says, "It is by Christ Jesus.  There is no other way."  He said, "This is the Word which God has sent."  You know, God's been giving messages for a long time.  Unfortunately, people aren't always listening.  You can't crawl outta your little box and discover God.  You can't reach God by your own design.  You're natural, and He's supernatural, and by the every definition of terms, the natural cannot escape to understand the supernatural.  So we're stuck.  So since we can't escape into the supernatural, the supernatural reduced itself to us, and God speaks to us in our world...

     And what did God have to say?  Well, God in sundry times and diverse manners in time past spake unto the fathers by the prophets.  He spoke in the Old Testament, and in His last days, He has spoken unto us by His Son.  God said something in the Scripture, and He said something in the person of Christ.  What did He say?  What did God say? 

     Look at verse 36.  "The Word which God sent unto the children of Israel."  Incidentally, God used Israel as a vehicle, not as an end.  God didn't unload His grace on Israel.  He simply used Israel as a channel.  They were ineffectual, however, and God cut a new channel, which is the church; but God had only chosen Israel to be a tool, a witness for Him; but what He wanted to say was, "There is peace by Jesus Christ."  And the point is this - man is at war with God.  You're born into this world in conflict with God; but God sent a Word.  God revealed His mind.  God revealed His will, and His will was that men know peace with Him. 

     You know, we look around our world, and we get...we read the papers, and we read about a peace in Vietnam, and then the next thing we know, we're fighting a war in Cambodia; and we begin to say to ourselves, "Where does it all end?"  And we, finally, if we know anything about the Bible, we say it ends in the coming of Christ and not before, 'cause the Bible says there is no peace to the wicked.  There'll never be peace between nations, never; because nations are only groups of people, and there's no peace between people; and sadly to say, there's no peace within the individual heart.  Witness the psychological bonanza that's going on today; and the reason there's no peace in the individual heart is because men don't have peace with God, which means that they're out of flow.  They're in a world going against the grain...they're running on a treadmill backwards.  No wonder they can't be comfortable.  No wonder they can't be at peace.  They're going against the grain. 

     From the time a man is born into this world, he is born in sin.  He is in rebellion to the moral law of God, which flows in the universe.  He's smashing continuously against the moral law of God; and, consequently, he is not at peace with God, and that reflects in his own life; and he's not at peace with himself.  And if he's not at peace with himself, he's not gonna be at peace with his family; and if he can't be at peace with his family, nations aren't gonna be at peace with nations; and so all you have in the macrocosm is an extension of the microcosm.

     All you have in the big world, the lack of peace, is a reflection of the little things in your life as individuals that you cannot resolve peacefully...There's no peace.  Men are trapped on a gulf with a chasm in between they can't bridge, and a chasm filled with the devil and his demons, howling and hissing; and they don't have any peace in their hearts; and they're living against the grain of the ethics and morality, which God has built the universe upon; and, consequently, they know no rest; and God bursts into their scene; and He says, "I have a message, and my message is peace.  Would you like to at peace with God?  Have the peace of God in yourself and be at peace with men?"  That's His message. 

     Resurrection life is a life of peace.  When you come to Jesus Christ, the old war life dies.  The old rebellious life dies, and you rise in a new life at peace with God.  I'll tell ya, just to be alive in this universe, living the life of God, living in the flow of the universe, living according to God's standards and in the life of God.  Absolutely revolutionary.  Total change.  That's God's message to the world.  Peace.

     Why does a man wanna live in rebellion against God when he can have peace with God?  Why does a man wanna live in rebellion with himself when he can have peace with himself?  Why does a man wanna live in rebellion with his family and his friends when he can have peace?  It's all available.  In fact, that's what we're here to tell ya.  In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, listen to these verses.  "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself."  In other words, He's made peace with us.  We were cut off.  The gulf was there, but Jesus threw the bridge down and across it we came, and we made peace with God.  He says, "He has reconciled the world to Himself by Jesus Christ.  To wit, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself."...

     Say, "How did He do it?"  "Not imputing their trespasses unto them."  You see what God did?  God took care of our sins in Christ; therefore, we can have peace with Him.  The thing that creates the friction is sin.  God has a flow of holiness.  We smash it up with sin; and, consequently, there's no peace.  There's only turbulence.  As we come to Christ, the holiness of Christ becomes ours, and we get in the flow.  There's no more turbulence.  We're at peace with God.  Even though we still sin, it's covered by the blood of Christ.  It's forgiven instantly and cleansed, and it's as if it isn't there, and the Lord says, "I will remember it no more." 

     And so the message is peace, and then Paul went on to say, "That's our message.  We beg you, be at peace with God.  It's available."  He says in verse 36, "Preaching peace by Jesus Christ."  There's no other way, people.  I would love to stand here and be able to say you could believe anything you want.  Go to heaven.  Anybody in the world, I don't care if they're Muslim, or if they're in some kind of cult or occult or if they're Buddhist or whatever they are, they can believe anything the want, as long as they're sincere, they'll make it.  But that would be a lie, and I will not say that.  It is not so.  There is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ, but don't you worry.  In any of those pagan countries, if a man is really living up to the knowledge of the true God within him, God'll give him the light that he needs to come to that full knowledge of Christ; but there is no other way.

     So God here is the real preacher.  "The Word which God sent unto the children of Israel."  He's the real witness.  Peter says, "I'm just repeating what He said."  And then I love that statement at the end of verse 36.  Catch it, would you?  "He is Lord of all."  You know what that means?  That means about five things, and I'm just gonna share a couple thoughts.  There's so much in there.  "He is Lord of all."  What does that mean? 

     That means that Peter's saying to these Gentiles, "Hey, He's my Lord.  He's your Lord.  We're one."  Not only that, it says, "He is Lord."  You know who Jesus was?  He was God in a human body.  He is Lord.  He's no