Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): Things have certainly changed in the last several decades, and in particular, the way we interact as families. Here's Pastor Jeff Johnson.

Jeff Johnson: Most homes today, the family's here, there and everywhere. There is no family dinners where they sit around and talk over the day. That could even be a time of communication and an altar time in that you pray and you seek the Lord and then you talk.

And those families that do that, it's been proven with many tests that those are the families that don't have as much problems with their teenagers because they communicate. They talk. They discuss things that they're troubled about and there's communication with the parents and the children, instead of everybody eating in different rooms, watching different programs on TV, whatever. We're so scattered in our society.

Guest (Male): It's a great pleasure to have you along as we begin another time of study in God's word here on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff Johnson. Today we're going to talk a bit about God's way of doing things. Human beings have tried to make God fit into our own plans for about as long as we've existed. Just think about where all the trouble started in the Garden of Eden.

The better way to live is to accept God's plans and worship him. Can you imagine a world where that actually happened? Our text today is Acts chapter 10 and a vision God gave to Cornelius. Here's Jeff Johnson with today's study.

Jeff Johnson: This morning we're in Acts chapter 10 starting a new chapter. And this is—it just gets better as we get on into this because this is where we come in, Gentiles. This is where we're invited in and we're brought in. And this promise that we have heard in Acts chapter 2, verse 39, it's to you, it's to your children and it's to your children's children and to all those that are afar off. And I think he was saying those were far out, too. And that's the Gentiles. If there was ever a far out people, it's the Gentiles.

Because the Jews were always kind of close and they had it somewhat together. But Gentiles were just pagan heathens out there just doing our thing. And yet the Lord's love is reaching out to us. So Acts chapter 10, we're going to look at that God loves everyone, but do you love everybody? God is going to be dealing with the first prejudice here, this prejudice that dwells up. And it usually comes through being raised in a family that is prejudiced. It is taught and it's something that is contrary to the Scriptures.

See, God is no respecter of persons, right? And so we are becoming like him, and so eventually we're becoming no respecter of persons ourselves, no matter who they are or what they've done. So this is going to be an interesting chapter. In chapter 9, verse 43, it says that it came to pass that he, Peter, tarried many days in Joppa with one Simon a tanner.

Simon a tanner was an unclean person. It's an unclean area. You're supposed to be 50 cubits away from someone unclean and it's supposed to be outside of the city. And anybody that married a tanner and didn't know that they were a tanner could divorce them. A woman could just divorce somebody that was unclean as this person is. So here is Peter now, staying in an unclean Gentile's home. And Gentiles were called Gentile dogs, okay?

They were called Gentile dogs. And they were just firewood for the pits of hell. And that's what the Jews believed. That's all the Gentiles were all about. So you can imagine the strong prejudice that they had. And when a Gentile was walking down the street, they'd walk across just so they wouldn't come near someone unclean. So this was a very serious prejudice and it got to be just anti-Christ after a while.

But what's interesting is that in chapter 9, there's a great miracle that took place. And we saw that last week and that was that healing of that man. And he arose and he immediately was healed. Then there was a greater miracle in the end of chapter 9 where this little girl who was dead was raised again from the dead. Resuscitated and back to life. But now we move into chapter 10.

This is the greater miracle. There was a great miracle and there was the greater miracle raising from the dead. But here's the greatest miracle, Acts chapter 10. And that is changing of a heart causing someone who lived one way and felt one way be changed and now live another way and feel God's love and begin to reach out to people, begin to love the unlovable. I think this is the greater miracle of all.

So here we go. There was a certain man in Caesarea. So it gives us the little city, actually it wasn't a little one because it was big at this time because the Romans had put a lot of money into it. It was a Gentile city where Jews lived. And Caesarea was the headquarters and the capital of Rome there in that troubled area of Palestine. About 30 miles north of Joppa. So remember we left Peter in Joppa down south, a few miles outside of Tel Aviv is Joppa. It's still called Joppa, very quaint little town. But then you make your way up north and you get to Caesarea, which is a beautiful, beautiful city on the Mediterranean.

You can imagine, we go into the theater there, the Roman amphitheater, which they had dug out of the sand and we sit in there and we worship the Lord and you're looking at the Mediterranean as you're doing that and it's perfect sound. The thing is made in such a way is that you can drop a coin down at the bottom where the actors would be and you can hear the coin throughout the whole area. You don't need a sound system. So we usually get our worship leaders to go down there and do some songs for us as we just worship the Lord in that amphitheater. It's amazing. But it's beautiful up there.

Now don't get this Caesarea mixed up with Caesarea Philippi, which is inland, which is up north in Tel Dan. Caesarea Philippi, remember, is the place that Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God." So this is Caesarea by the sea. This is over the Mediterranean. And in Caesarea there was this certain man, notice Cornelius, a centurion.

He was a centurion in that he was over 100 men. A cohort is 600 men. A centurion, you'd divide that up into six centurions. They would be over 100 men. They were your master sergeants. They were the guys that got stuff done. They were the units that would go in and take care of things. This Cornelius was over 100 men and they were of the band called the Italian band.

No, this was not a real music band. This was the Italian group. And they were very dedicated to Rome. They were one of the most dedicated units that they had in Rome. And he was part of this band. Now, verse 2, a devout man, so we begin to break apart what kind of man this man is. He was very devout, he believed in God, and one that feared God, it says. And there's a lot of people that are in this state. They have a fear of God.

There's a lot of people in a lot of different religions that have a fear of God. That's why they're in the religion they're in. And they fear God. They want to try to be as right as they can be because they just believe in God. And they don't want to be hit with the big stick. They look at God as up there with a stick and just knock them if they do anything wrong. So they just try to live life the best they can and try to stay in that place.

With all his house. Now, this is interesting that he feared God, he believed in God and all of his house were affected by that. And someone has said this, I believe it's true, that a family altar alters the home. In other words, where God is worshipped, where God is looked to and trusted in, is a home that has been altered. It's a different home than most homes.

Most homes today, you look at the whole thing of family, it's totally broke down. The family's here, there and everywhere. There is no family dinners where they sit around and talk over the day. That could even be a time of communication and an altar time in that you pray and you seek the Lord and then you talk. And those families that do that, it's been proven with many tests that those are the families that don't have as much problems with their teenagers because they communicate.

They talk. They discuss things. They talk about things that they're troubled about and there's communication with the parents and the children, instead of everybody eating in different rooms, watching different programs on TV, whatever. We're so scattered in our society and we have such a lost generation. Where's Johnny? Johnny's in the bedroom on the computer. What's he doing in there? He's been in there for hours. I don't know. He gets into it. It's sad.

So with all of his house, they were touched by this, which gave much alms. So he was a giving man, devout man, a giving man. And then it says that he prayed to God always. So he was a seeking man also. He was seeking God in the best way he knew how. You might say he was a religious man and I do not agree with some that I have read that if Peter would have never made it, would this man made it into heaven?

Well, if somebody would have come like Peter to do what Peter did and he heard the gospel and he received Christ, yes, he would go to heaven. But if you do not receive Jesus Christ, he is the only way, the only truth, the only life. There is no other way to get to the Father but through him, right? So he believed in God, but you can't just believe in God and go to heaven. Jesus said, "I'm the way." God sent his son to show the way.

So you can't have one without the other. You need them together. And then of course the Holy Spirit comes to do his work in and through our lives and he lives in us. So the triune God. And so he was sort of a religious man seeking God. He saw in a vision. All of a sudden he gets this vision, evidently it was the time where he prayed and he prayed as the Jews did. The Jews would pray three times a day. And he's praying at 3:00, the ninth hour of the day. And an angel of God was coming in to him.

So he sees this vision of this angel saying to him, "Cornelius." He knew his name. That must have blown his mind. I've never seen an angel. And God's never come to me like this. I'm open, but it would have freaked me out because you can imagine an angel coming to you. So he had this visitation that was very interesting. And what gets me here is over in Luke's Gospel, chapter 19, verse 10, it says this: "For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

Okay, he's a seeking man and I remember the days where I was seeking God. I never found him until I hit bottom. Because I wasn't ready and God needed to get a hold of me because he knew me. He knows all of us. And he waits for that perfect time. But he is a seeking Savior. And I love this because I don't care if you're Muslim, if you're a Buddhist, if you're a Hindu, if you're a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, if you're a religious Baptist or a religious Catholic. I don't care where you're from, God is seeking to save.

And he's seeking everyone. So there's hope for everyone, no matter where they come from, no matter what they're doing, no matter how lost they are or how religious they are. Because remember, religion never saved a man. Jesus saves, period. So interesting, he comes to him and he's in prayer, and we know this because in verse 4 talks about your prayers have been answered, verse 30 talks about when he was in prayer.

So we know that this was a man that was seeking God, he was actually praying to God when he had this vision. And he gets this word of knowledge. Look at verse 4: "And when he looked on him, he was afraid and he said, 'What is it, Lord?'" Just like Paul, when he got knocked down on his back. "Lord?" So there's some kind of a relationship beginning here. He's crying out, "Lord?" And he said unto him, "Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa."

So he gives him this direction: "And call for one Simon whose surname is Peter." So this is God's timing for Cornelius. God came to Cornelius, set the situation up, told Cornelius what he needs to do. He didn't give him the gospel, did he, the angel? Why? Because angels don't give out the gospel. They set things up for God. They're always setting things up for God. And there's a lot of things going on in our lives that are being set up on a constant basis.

And I think if you get anything out of this morning, you get this, that we're in good hands because we're in his hands and he's orchestrating everything. And everything's going to be done according to his orchestrating. So timing and the person. Now notice he didn't send Philip to him. Philip was there in Caesarea. Why didn't he send Philip? Because he didn't need to hear from Philip, he needed to hear from Peter.

So God sends a certain person at a certain time to a certain other person to speak to them. I know because I had someone come to me who I would listen to. Now if he would have sent somebody else, I probably wouldn't have listened to them. I would have just said, "Get out of here. Who do you think you are?" But this guy looking at me, he's loving me in his eyes, he's speaking to me about the gospel. I went, "Oh man, all right, what? You mean I've got to come up here and go to this church?" "Yeah, just come with me right now." Convince me.

But notice the angel didn't do it. Why? Because he's chosen us to do it. We are the ones. We are the world's last hope. You are it, guys. If they hear it from you, then they're going to hear it. God is going to direct us though to certain people. I was just bringing some bottles up to the store to cash them in. I didn't know that they didn't give you too much for them, but anyhow, it's the first time I did it. Because I see guys come up with bags of them, so me and my wife said, "Let's save the stuff, put it in there" and he gives me a buck.

And we had that stuff in the garage for months and finally get rid of this stuff. So I go down there. It wasn't to get a buck. God didn't send me down there to get a buck. God sent me down there to witness to this guy. And I just come up to him. He's got this strange accent. I said, "Where are you from? You're from Romania." I just kind of threw that, "You're from Romania," because he sounded like he was from Romania. He goes, "Ah, yeah, I was—my parents were born in Romania."

Then I went through all Russian, went here and there and he told me his story. And I said, "Do you know the Lord? Are you a Christian?" "Well, I'm Orthodox." So man, I just really was able to get into it with him, share with him, I gave him Scripture and he's writing it down. He had a little daily thing that he was going through and he had just so happened to visit over there at Pacific Coast over there on Westminster Calvary Chapel one time. Some friends of his said, "Come and see a man."

And I said, "You need to go back and see that man" and gave him direction and just really encouraged him to go back. And I'll again go back and encourage him because I see him all the time. I drive by there all the time. So you never know when God's going to send you to talk to somebody and they're going to listen to you. And it was just like God's timing. He sets these things up.

So this is the timing for one Simon, notice whose surname is Peter. His name was going to be changed. Simon is shifting sand, Peter of course is Petros, a little stone. You're just a little stone, Peter. And then remember in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus said, "But upon this petra," and he looked at Mount Hermon. "I'm going to build my church." When Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God."

I'm not going to build it on you, Peter. You're not the first Pope. You're a little stone. In fact, you're not infallible at all, you blow it all the time, guy. I'm going to build it on this confession that thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And that's what he builds his church on, our confession. Now, he says he lodges with one Simon a tanner whose house is by the seaside.

I mean, you don't really need to know exactly where it is because you'll smell it when you're coming to it. It's the tanner's house by the seaside. Phew, man. What is that smell? That's the tanner's house. "He shall tell thee what thou ought to do." So when you get there, he's going to tell you what you need to do, Cornelius. You mean there's something I need to do? Yes. Amos said, "Prepare to meet your God."

We all need to get our house in order. We all need to deal with this Jesus. We all need to either receive him or reject him, but that's what our lives are going to be brought to to the very end is what have you done with Jesus? So he'll tell you what you ought to do. See, what we do is we plant, we water the seed, we plant the seed, but God gives the increase in that person's life.

He'll save that person when it's his time. Now the person that came to my house didn't lead me to the Lord. He said, "Come and see a man" and he brought me to a church and that's where I received Christ. I didn't bring that man I spoke to the other day to the Lord because I didn't feel that there's some things that need to happen. I just planted some more seeds, watered a little bit and God's just shaking this guy. He's marking down the Scriptures and he's coming, he's coming.

There's a Scripture that says in Proverbs, "He that wins souls is wise." So to go around winning souls, that's the wisest thing you can do. And in fact over in Daniel 12 in verse 3, let me read it to you. Daniel 12:3 says, "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever." So it makes your life shine. You're going to be a blessing.

So he's there by the seaside and verse 7, "When the angel which spoke unto Cornelius was departed, he called two of his household servants," so two Gentile servants, "and a devout soldier," one Gentile soldier of them that waited on him continually. So this is God's word now to Cornelius setting up one side of the equation what God is doing here. And when he had declared all these things unto them, he sent them to Joppa.

So it's like what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:23, "As the Lord has given me, so I'm giving to you." So what God gives to us, even like this morning, we can give it away to somebody else. And we should. I mean God gives so we would give it away. So all these things to them he sent him to Joppa. The message received, the message sent. Meanwhile back in Joppa, verse 9, "On the morrow as they went on their journey and drew near to the city," remember it's about 30 miles, "Peter went up upon the housetop to pray."

Now we see Cornelius, he's been dealt with. Now here's Peter. He says, "You know, I'm going to go up and pray" about the sixth hour, which was 12:00 noon. And notice that both of these guys are praying at the time they have this encounter with God. They're just trying to be in touch with headquarters somewhat. Now Cornelius was one way but Peter was in touch. Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. I mean, this man has had an experience with God.

And he became very hungry because it was the noon hour. He was hungry. They were fixing lunch, it wasn't ready yet. And food can stumble us sometimes from the things of God. In fact, a lot of times it does. Our bodies just crave food. It's too bad that our spirits didn't crave spiritual things as much as our bodies crave food. But the Lord is trying to teach us, desire the sincere milk of the word that you might grow thereby as a baby seeks after the bottle, he says.

You know how a baby seeks after the bottle, don't you? I mean, they're crying, check it, see if it's wet. No, it's not wet. Maybe it's hungry. All right, get the bottle. All right, I'm trying to get it ready and everything, just the right heat and you put it in the mouth and the baby's satisfied. But that baby's going to cry until it gets its milk. Is that how we are spiritually?

Guest (Male): That is something for all of us to seriously consider today. What's our attitude about God? And can we sometimes catch ourselves wanting God to serve us instead of the other way around? This is Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff Johnson. You just heard a study in Acts chapter 10 called "God Loves Everyone. Do You?". Hear it again at sounddoctrineradio.org or through the Sound Doctrine Radio app.

How's your devotional life going these days? Could it use a kickstart? Allow me to recommend Daily Devotions with Calvary Chapel Pastors. This collection of daily devos will edify you as you read God's inspired word. You'll hear people of God pour out their hearts, sharing personal experiences of God's faithfulness. Authored by Chuck Smith, Skip Heitzig, Jeff Johnson, Greg Laurie, Raul Ries, Mike MacIntosh, Don McClure, Joe Focht, and many more.

Just give us a call at 800-353-7553 or order online through our e-store at sounddoctrineradio.org. Your financial support is not only needed at this time, but would be very much appreciated. Think of your donation as an investment into the lives of listeners all around the world who make it their aim to build their lives on sound doctrine contained in God's word.

So thank you very much for standing with us. Go online to sounddoctrineradio.org and click give or call 800-353-7553. There's much more to come in Acts. Set aside a half hour each day as together we open and study the word with Pastor Jeff. Sound Doctrine is furnished to you on the station by Calvary Chapel Downey.