Live Free with Josh Howerton - God’s Kingdom for All // Acts 10:17-23

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

What does it mean to truly embrace everyone as our neighbor? Today, we explore a turning point in the early church as Peter receives a vision that challenges centuries of exclusivity and prejudice. God shows Peter that His love and salvation are for everyone, not just a select group. This revelation leads Peter to welcome non-Jewish visitors into his home and ultimately to the house of Cornelius, a Roman, where he must decide whether to cross social and cultural barriers. This story invites us to reflect on our own hearts, letting God break down any walls of prejudice or division within us.   For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.com slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive. You might be listening on your way to work or to school, or maybe you're working out or taking a walk or sitting in a coffee shop

or getting ready to call it a day. Thanks for joining us wherever you are and whatever time of day it is. My name is Bro. And we just dive into God's Word for a few minutes each weekday, and we try to keep it like six or seven minutes because that's my attention span. So I'm really, really grateful to have you along today. We are currently walking through the Book of Acts, which is all about the beginnings of the early church.

We have seen this church thrive in the city of Jerusalem, and then persecution comes on them like this tidal wave, and they are scattered. Scattered to the places where Jesus had told them they would eventually go to places like Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And we are in chapter 10 today, and this is one of the most important stories in the entire book of Acts, the entire Bible, for that matter. So we might spend a few episodes here, but I just want to highlight what happens in the story and how that might translate into our current reality.

I was reminded of a story like years and years ago when Bobby Kennedy was fighting for his party's nomination for president back in, I think, 1968. Unusually hot humid spring day in New York City, he spends most of the day crisscrossing the streets and some of the poorest neighborhoods of Spanish Harlem. And by the time the tour was over, he was pretty grimy and soaked with sweat, and his guide couldn't help wonder, why this wealthy guy from a fluent family came to the ghetto so often? So he asked him, why are you doing this? and Bobby Kennedy replied because I found out something I never knew. I found out that my world was not the real world. You know, I grew up in a predominantly white, lower, middle-class, conservative southern town. And in those suburbs where I grew up, I rarely had to confront my feelings about people who were different than me.

People who were different racially, religiously, socially, economically, politically, sexually, spiritually, because I didn't know a ton of people who were different than me. All that was, you know, somewhere out there. Well, I eventually grew up and years later moved to Las Vegas to plant a church, and I discovered where out there was. Now, there were many other defining moments for me along the way, but those years in Las Vegas really profoundly shaped my heart. Because I watched people from every walk of life searching for hope and meaning,

planting a church there, redefined my life and my ministry, and it exposed me to the amazing grace of God. And I really had to wrestle on a new way with the words of Jesus when he said, love your neighbor as yourself. In Acts 10, one of the main leaders of the early church, Peter, would have to wrestle with this too. Like us, he would have to wrestle with his own ethnic, moral, political, generational, and religious pride that sometimes keeps us distant from people

who are different than us. And as a result, sometimes even keeps us distant from God. And man, I love Peter. The dude gives me so much hope because all the way through the New Testament, we see God using this guy who, like me, is a big-time work and progress. You see, even though Peter was handpicked by Jesus to be a leader, to be an apostle, even though he had been there when Jesus told them, go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, like all ethnic groups, all kinds of people, even though Peter stood up on the day the church began in Acts Chapter 2 and confidently communicated that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. He had a different view of who everyone was. He was still asking, and who actually is my neighbor I'm supposed to love? You see, even though he's hung out with Jesus for three years, Peter was still a deeply prejudiced and self-righteous individual. The fact is, Peter was deeply prejudiced against anybody who wasn't a Jew.

These non-Jewish outsiders were labeled as the Gentiles and sometimes even referred to as dogs. You see, Peter was brought up in a culture that led him to believe that people who weren't Jews were like less than human. He was taught, if you accidentally brush up against a non-Jew in public, you need to rush home and wash off the contamination, that you shouldn't help a Gentile woman in the time of childbirth because it would only bring another Gentile into the world. And under no circumstances, never, ever invite a Gentile into your home and never go into the home of a Gentile because it will defile you. That's what Peter grew up with. It's what he knew. That's what was comfortable for Peter. But following Jesus won't keep you comfortable for long.

Following Jesus will eventually bring you face to face with some things about your life and your heart and your character. And as I've been working through this, passage, God's been teaching me some things about me. Some stories from deep in my memory began to resurface. The Holy Spirit began to reinforce his truth in my heart and speaking to my spirit about all of this in a variety of unique ways. For instance, I know this is really weird, but I was eating a cob salad at a restaurant and the thought hit me. It's kind of like that. So I said to my salad, salad, speak to me. And the salad said, this is the way it ought to be. Everything in this salad is unique.

We all have distinctive taste. We each had a different way of growing, but now we're all in here together touching each other. And I'm thinking, come on now, salad, preach. My salad continued. Now we could all go over there and live in that salad bar. Each of us compartmentalized in our tidy little container. But we are so much better together.

And in order to make this beautiful, delicious salad, we all had to die to ourselves. And bro, you've got to keep dying to yourself. You have to continue to live your life trying to get all people to live together in the salad bowl instead of the salad bar. You see, at the core, prejudice, bigotry, elitism, racism is the lie that some people are superior

or inferior to others. And it's a lie that we as followers of Jesus have to dispel. And I'm learning that the more the good news of God's love grips your life, the more you get to personally know Jesus Christ, you begin to develop the same kind of heart he has toward all people. You stop seeing yourself with any hint of superiority. You live humbly and

gratefully without any sense of entitlement. And things like compassion and kindness and inclusivity and most importantly love begin to flow through your veins. And we start to long for everyone to come to know Jesus because his kingdom is for everyone and he wants everyone to come home. Well, in Acts chapter 10, we see the door to the kingdom swing open wide. We encounter a man who is not part of Peter's world. He's not in his ethnic group. He's not a part of Peter's clan or community or tribe. He's an outsider, one of those Gentiles.

And his name is Cornelius. Cornelius is a Roman military officer overseeing a regiment of soldiers, and he lives a little coastal town called Cessaria. And though he doesn't yet know about Jesus, he still has an awareness of God. He actually prayed to God and gave generously to under-resourced people. I mean, if Cornelius had died, somebody probably would have stood up at his funeral and said,

man, if anybody's in heaven, it'd be Cornelius, because, man, he was such a good guy. But the truth is, Cornelius and his family were spiritually lost. If they weren't, there'd be no need for this chapter in the Bible, no need for God to ask Peter to go build a bridge to him. The only thing sadder than the fact that Cornelius was lost is that up to this point nobody really cared, whether he was lost or not. Peter certainly didn't, because Cornelius wasn't like him. Cornelius wasn't one of his people. But one day God gives Cornelius a vision. He sees an angel of God, and the angel tells Cornelius that God sees this good heart

and instructs him to send some of his soldiers to bring back a guy named, you guessed it, Peter, who was staying at the house of Simon the Tanner in a town called Joppa. So Cornelius does that. Now, Peter has no idea what God's about to do. He is clueless to the fact that he's about to go in for some open-heart surgery. He has no idea that God's about to take him out of the salad bar and throw him into the salad bowl. And you know, God is so good at bringing us face-to-face with him. the things we resist it all of our lives. And he uniquely does this with Peter. Let's pick it up

in verse 9. The next day as Cornelis's messengers were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, he was hungry, but while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles and birds. Then a voice said to him, get up, Peter. Kill and eat them. Go ahead, Peter. You can have that ham and cheese sandwich. some bacon with your eggs in the morning with a side of sausage gravy. Have a pork chop chop for dinner. And that must have felt like fingernails on a chalkboard to Peter because he was very proud of his diet. He had followed a long list of dietary restrictions that flowed from his religion,

his entire life. So I love his response to verse 14. He says, no, Lord, no. I've never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean. I mean, can you kind of hear the self-righteousness in his voice? First of all, he tells God, no. And then he says, I've never done anything like that. I have never and I would never eat any of those things on that sheet Lord. Now he didn't get it yet that God wasn't talking so much about food as he was about tearing down the walls of prejudice and exclusivity. So God gives him the same vision a second time to see if he gets it. And then God gives him the same vision a third time, three times, to let it kind of sink in. And you know what? All of us are slow learners, aren't we? Especially when God is trying to move us out of our

comfort zone. Well, let's just hit pause right there. We'll pick this up tomorrow. But I just want to challenge you as God's been challenging me. Who do you compartmentalize? Who would you rather see just stay on the outskirts of the salad bar than to jump in with you in the bowl? Honestly, is there any kind of prejudice lurking in your heart? Any hint of superiority in there? Do you look at them with disdain because of the way they look or the way they live or the way they vote or the way they dress or where they're from? I mean, it might be a good time to pray that prayer from Psalm 139 and just honestly say to God, search me, O God. Know my heart. see if there's anything rolling around in there that you would find offensive.

I've had to pray that prayer many, many times. In fact, I've found it's one of the most important prayers I regularly pray. So let's do a little introspective work like Peter has to do. And then we're going to jump back into this story tomorrow. And I'll see you back here then. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays and Sundays.

For more information about all the digital ministries of Lake point, visit lake point.church slash daily drive. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out.