We have the Meats

All right. Well, again, welcome to Hope Lowertown. Glad you were able to be here this morning. Those of you who don't know me, my name is Brian, lead pastor here and excited to jump back into the Book of Acts. This is week 11. We've been just kind of making our way. Not making our way. We've been flying through the Book of Acts as we're about to experience again this morning. We got a whole chapter in front of us. And we took a week off from Easter, kind of took a break from Acts just to look at the empty tomb. And. And now we are continuing in the Book of Acts, looking at how the story continues. And so just wanna jump kinda right into it. So the title of the sermon this morning is we have the Meats. All right. Which will make sense once we get into the text this morning. And I was reading through the text, I couldn't get that phrase outta my head. I was like, I'm just gonna go with that. Cause I don't know what else to call this. Also known as reading time with Pastor Brian. Cause as you can see, this is a big chapter. We're in Acts 10:1 through 48. It's a long text. I tried to go through and kind of take out some verses that just were repeated or just. I got rid of like two verses. So we're gonna be spending some time reading the text this morning. But a little bit of background, if you will. We're gonna be looking at this. And so going back and looking at how the story continues. That's the kind of the subtitle of what we've been looking at, the Book of Acts. It's really Luke 2. So Luke is a doctor physician who ends up writing Acts. And it's the Acts of the apostles. And kind of seeing how, hey, the great commission happened. Jesus sends out the disciples. And now this is the story of the Gospel continuing. And all the way to us. We're gonna see that very real today, how this story continues even now here with us, that the results of what happens today in this text. We are beneficiaries of what happens in this text. So that's pretty cool. So going back to Acts chapter one, though, we have Jesus. This is before he. He's already died. He's already been crucified, he's been buried and now risen from the dead. And he's meeting with his disciples. And it's before he ascends. And he says this. Jesus said to them, his disciples. Cause they asked the question, Jesus, are you now at this time gonna restore Israel back to power. And he says, whoa, whoa, whoa, chill out. It's not for you to know the times and dates the Father has set by his own authority. So don't worry about the time, but not me. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And so we go back to that Jerusalem in Acts chapter two. The next. It's what's commonly called Pentecost. And it's where the Apostle Peter and all the apostles, they were speaking in tongues or they're speaking languages they don't know and people are able to understand them and they're their native language. And they go back and the Gospel just spreads all over the known world, but only within the Jewish community at that point. And then it says Judea and Samaria. As we looked at the last couple weeks of looking at Simon the magician and then the Ethiopian eunuch and how these Samaritans and all these different aspects, Philip goes down to Samaria. And so the Gospel is just. It's following exactly the way Jesus said it was going to. And then today we're going to very explicitly see the ends of the earth. And so that's. We're going to be. So in Acts chapter 10, we're going to start off with looking at God fearing Cornelius, starting in verse one of Acts 10. I'm reading from the NIV and I couldn't fit all the passage on that handout. I only fit like 12 verses on there. So I'll have it up on the screen. You can follow along or look in your Bible or an app or whatever. Because at Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian regiment. He and all his family were devout and God fearing. He gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. So this is an interesting phrase. We've seen it a few times, but not in Acts. You have someone called a God fearer. What does that mean? This was just simply meant it was a gentile. Gentile just means any other ethnicity, any other nationality or race that's not Jewish or not Hebrew. So he's a gentile. That's most likely all of us, right? Unless you have Hebrew blood in you. We're Gentiles according to this text. So there's a God. Fear is a Gentile any other ethnicity other than Jewish or Hebrew that worships the same God. There's something we can Read extra biblical texts and see why were Gentiles attracted to Judaism. And monotheism had a big impact. You can imagine if you had hundreds and thousands of gods and goddesses, like, how do you keep them straight? It's like, oh, we only have one God. It's like, ah, I kind of like that. That makes passing the test a lot easier, right? So that was attractive. And then just Jewish ethics that they. People were attracted to of just their lifestyle. And so that was a big, big part of it. So you have this Gentile now, but he's a centurion. He is a Roman soldier. Like a big dog in the Roman soldier, he's actually oppressing the Jews, right? He's a foreign occupied individual who's there. But he's now said, and for whatever reason has learned about Yahweh, their God and has started worshiping their God. Can't go into the temple because he's a Gentile. They haven't fully converted. That's kind of the phrase where there's these God fears. They love God, they worship God, but they're not quite willing to go all the way and become Jewish in that sense. And so that's kind of who he is here. You might know people like this. You might know people that are, hey, I like Jesus. I like his teachings, I like his morals and his ethics. But man, to go and say he's God, I don't know where we're at, right? I like some things about Christianity, but man, there's a lot of things I don't like about it. That would be kind of like a modern context of maybe someone who's God fearing. It says in verse three, one day at about three in the afternoon, he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God. And he came to him and said, Cornelius. And Cornelius stared at him in fear. What is it, Lord? He asked. And the angel answered. Your prayers and your gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa and bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the Tanner, whose house is by the sea. When the angel had spoke to him, had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. And he told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa. I don't have a map for you this morning because we don't know that region all that well. But Caesarea is up a little bit further north, right on the Mediterranean. You got Joppa. It's 63 kilometers. What's a kilometer? I don't know. Somewhere around 50ish miles. Right. That there's a walk, right? It was a 13 hour hike. Okay, so this is a hall. So Cornelius gets two of his servants and another soldier and says, I want you to go down and take all day, 13 hours you're gonna be walking. And when you get there, you're gonna go and find someone, some house, some tanner by the sea, and ask for a guy named Simon Peter. I want you to go do that. What's interesting about this also is that Cornelius here, as a Roman centurion, that the first gentile that Jesus works with, at least within his earthly ministry that we read about at least, is a centurion. It's just interesting that Peter and Jesus practice what they preach in that. Hey, we want to love all people, even love your enemies. Like we're actually doing that, right? We wanna love and care for those who are even oppressing our people. So they go on the strip, they go all the way down. And then the next point here is kill and eat. At about noon the following day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up to the roof to pray. So Peter is at the Tanner's house. Tanner's house. Oh, is it. What's that show? Full House. Full House. Thank you. There you go. So he's going to Danny Tanner's house. Those of you old enough to know what in the world that is. He became hungry and wanted something to eat. And while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. And he saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. And it contained all kinds of four footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. And a voice of God told him. The voice told him, get up, Peter. Kill and eat. What's going on here? Some commentaries get really caught up in. What's this sheet? What's going on here? It's a sheet held by four corners, and it's bringing down these animals, okay, that are considered unclean within the Jewish community. If you read Leviticus 18 and really all of the first five books of the Old Testament, there's a lot of laws in there. And this is saying, hey, there's animals that are clean to eat and there are animals that are unclean to eat. There are animals that the. This is how you prepare these animals. Even while you're eating them, they're clean. But if you don't cook them the right way, then they're unclean. So there's all these laws. And it reminded me of this, kind of went viral several years ago of this PETA, what do you call it? Billboard, All Animals Want to Live. Where do you draw the line? Right? And it's like, well, and this morning I was looking, I was like, well, clearly in between the golden retriever and the rabbit, it's like, oh, but wait a second. I've never eaten a horse. And I think, isn't it illegal in the United States to eat horses? Yeah, so that doesn't work, right? So you gotta kinda do a squiggly line, right? But you get Peter's point of this. Like, hey, there's clean and unclean, but it's kind of blurry, right? Well, in the Old Testament, it's not blurry. There's a very clear line that when you look at this, I know you can't. It's hard to see this, but you've got all the animals that are clean. And basically the big differentiation between clean and unclean is that you have cloven animals, meaning they have hooves that are split. So a split hook, not a solid hoof like a horse. You can't do the horse, but you can eat a cow. What's the difference? Well, because the cow chews the cud, okay? So if it chews the cud and it has a solid hoof, you're okay. If it has a split hoof and it chews the cud, you're okay. But if it's like a pig, if it has a split hoof and it doesn't chew the cud, that's a no no. Right? You can eat fish, but you can't eat shellfish. Right? You can't eat camels because they chew the cub, but they don't have a cloven hoof. Right? Okay. It's very. It's very clear, actually. All right, in the law, what you can and what you cannot eat and why and all the different aspects of it. So this is very clear. So in this sheet that's coming down are all these unclean animals. And this voice says, kill and eat. And Peter says, surely not, Lord. Peter replied. Peter has a way of doing this. We're gonna see that he likes to verbally process things. I'm kind of that way. I'm gonna just start talking, and then I'm gonna say dumb things, and then people are gonna get offended. And then the next day, I'll go, I probably shouldn't have said it that way. Right? That's Peter. Peter's this way. So he's surely not, Lord. Like, you're God. I remember when I was talking to you face to face and I said the same thing. And Jesus was like, hey, Peter, get behind me. Cause you're Satan. You talk like the devil. And he's doing this. Surely not, Lord. Peter replied, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean. And the voice spoke to him a second time. Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This happened three times. It's almost like a Scandinavian or Minnesotan Sweden tradition, right? Where you gotta ask three times, right? Like, hey, would you like some more soup? No, no, no, I'm good. Would you like some more soup? No, no, I'm good. Hey, would you like some more soup? No. And then you just gotta put it. You just gotta dish it on the plate. Cause they will. And then it's like, oh, thank you so much. And if you don't do that, they get offended. Right? It's almost like Peter's, you know, doing the Scandinavian thing. Maybe. Maybe Yahweh needs to be asked, no, that's not what's happening three times. And it says, immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. The commentaries make the link then, because you've got. In this context of what's happening here, all we have is food, clean and unclean foods. But Peter's going to make a very different connection. So if we go back to Jesus in Mark, chapter seven, he's teaching, it says Jesus called the crowd to him and said, listen to me, everyone understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going in. Rather, it's what comes out of a person that defiles them. After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. Are you so dull? And Jesus asked his disciples. I was like, man, that's kind of intense. What's going on? Going on here? Basically, you're not seeing the obvious thing. I looked up the message Bible. It's always kind of good to go into that and just kind of look what's trying to happen here. And Eugene Peterson in his Bible says, are you being willfully stupid? Right? How are you not seeing this? You're being dull. I have made this as explicit as I possibly can. And you're just not seeing the meaning behind what I'm talking about. Don't you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach and then out of the body. Right? He's giving them a little Analogy lesson. He's like, well, how are you missing this? This isn't about anatomy. It's about the heart. That's what needs to be cleansed. That's what needs to be pure. And then Mark then kind of adds his own commentary here. And by saying, in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean. But that's not what Jesus was trying to do here in this context or in this text. He's saying, this is just what's happening. So what's going on? Jesus here never breaks the food laws. He lives under the law. He is a Jew, and so he is obeying the clean and unclean food loss. So why does Mark give us that tidbit there? Says, while Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, Just thinking about this, like, what was that about? What's with the sheep? What's with the food? The men sent by Cornelius found him out where Simon's house was and stopped at the gate. And they called out, asking if Simon, who was known as Peter, was staying there. And while Peter was still thinking about the vision, the spirit said to him, simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them. Peter went down and said to the men, I'm the one you're looking for. Why have you come? And the men replied, we have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God fearing man who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you might say. Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests. Okay, so Peter, he's almost there, but he's inviting these individuals into his house, his territory, at least the Tanner's house, Right? He's inviting them into a Jewish house. He's under very strict laws not to associate with Gentiles or people that would be unclean. And because of their diet, they would be considered unclean. So inviting them in is a step in the right direction. But this would be. Right, this is. I don't even know this Duke, I think. I don't know, some university, I don't know if you like. The Wolves and the Lakers are on right now, which is so much fun to watch. But I don't know if you've ever been, like, I've been to a Packer game. I'm a Packer fan. My wife's a Vikings fan, and we've gone to Lambeau. Right? And I don't. Did you wear A Vikings anything that day? I don't think so. Oh, she did okay. Yeah. So she's wearing Vikings. We weren't even playing the Vikings. We were playing the Lions, right? And she wears her Vikings thing. And listen, Green base, they're like, oh, we love you, you're great. You know what I mean? We bless your heart. Not so much with the. No, I'm kidding. There's something about going into enemy territory. And that's what Peter's doing. He's saying, hey, I'm the home team. Why don't you come on in? It's very different when you're the one wearing the Packer jersey going into the Viking stadium, right? It's very different. And then everyone's really nice. We've done that too. Never had an issue. So what's happening here? Let me read FF Bruce's commentary. It says a God fearing Gentile like Cornelius had no objection to the society of the Jews. But even a moderately orthodox Jew would not be willing to enter the dwelling of a Gentile God, fear though he might be. No doubt some of Peter's inherited scruples were weighing less heavily with him by this time. But to make him accept an invitation to visit a Gentile, a special revelation was necessary. This is like, this isn't just. This isn't a minor thing. This is a major thing going on. And I think it's hard for us to wrap our head and comprehend what's happening in this. So let's keep going here. It is not about the food. It's not about the food. And yet we're gonna say it is about the food because that's what helps Peter make the connection. The next day, Peter started out with them. So again, they're making that 13 hour trek back. And some of the believers from Joppa went along. Believers, meaning Jewish believers, ethnic Jews that are now Christian, following Jesus went along with Peter. I skipped a couple verses there, just kind of recapping what's going on. And while talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them, you are well aware that is against our law for a Jew to associate or visit a Gentile. This is like, this is a big deal. This is like who they are. This is ingrained in them. We do not do this and not because they're a different ethnicity. The ethnicity has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with their actions, their lifestyles, their food, all the things that would say, we cannot associate with you. We are two very different things. And they Just don't mix. We're oil and water here. Many years ago, this would probably been 2011 or 12. It's hard to see, but there's actually a guy, this guy right here. I'm doing his premarital right now, which is kind of fun. So he was in my youth group 11, 11, 12 years ago, and we took a trip down to the Navajo Nation, kind of in Arizona, New Mexico. And I want to highlight this guy, Daniel Smiley. He was the pastor down there. I learned a lot from this guy in just a matter of a week. He was just awesome and kind and patient with me and my ignorance and so many different things and learned a lot. But there was one maybe a year or two later where we were at home up here. And he and his church, these several people, they got in a 15 passenger van and they're driving up to Canada for a Native American Anabaptist convention. Cool. He was driving up there with this van full of people from his church, and he said, hey, Brian, can we stay with you? And I was like, yeah, of course. Angela and I were living kind of in a parsonage, and the basement was like the youth room, if you will, like all the. It was like the youth group and Sunday school classes, and we kind of lived in the upstairs. I said, yeah, you guys can come over. We got plenty of room in the basement. Bring some air mattresses, it'll be great. So they come over, they get in and a bunch of them come in. And it's the middle of winter, it's freezing outside. And there's two. We were like a split level. And so looking down the stairs, there are these two elders, two old timers that were standing there. And the door's wide open. They're standing there. And I'm at the top of the stairs saying, hey, come on in, right? You're letting all the heat out. Get on, get in here. And Daniel Smiley gently puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, they've never been in a white man's house before. And I, as a student of history, was like, you go ahead and take your time. You take all the time you need before you feel comfortable coming into this place. Right? There's not so much. And this isn't like an unclean, clean thing of like a dietary thing, but this is now going into a home of historically my oppressors. This is just historically true. And so I can't even. I have no concept for that. There's no people group in my screen that I look at and say, oh, man. You've been those people to me and my people and my grandparents. I don't have that, but they did. And there's something that's happening here now where I can't even imagine. I don't have this reference. And so they did come in. They spent the night, and it was great. We had a good time. But as we look back at this, it's not about the food. And here we have then, in this text here from Dr. Luke, it says, but God. But God has shown me. Listen. What he says. He doesn't bring up food. God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for you, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me? Cornelius answered. And then he goes into the story, right? This isn't about the food. It's part of it. We're gonna get into that a little bit, but it's not about the food. The eating habits made them unclean. The oppression of the Hebrew people is what made them unclean. But God. Peter here says I should not call anyone, anyone unclean. Not food. He doesn't bring up even circumcision or their physical appearance that would hinder them from being part of the community and covenant of God. It's. But God has declared I shouldn't call anything unclean or impure. Now, we're all here in the presence of God. So Cornelius kind of recaps, hey, I saw this vision. That's why you're here, that we're all in the presence of God, to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us. This is like a preacher's dream, right? This is like, hey, we're gonna send for you. I want you to come here. I want you to just tell us. And you're like, yeah, I get it. It's every Sunday I feel this way. Okay, You've been sent here to tell us, but this is wild, like you know something that we don't. God has revealed something to you that I just don't understand. Can you teach me? Can you tell me? And then Peter began to speak. I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel? Announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is the Lord of all. Again, you've got this Peter being this external processor. He's like, oh, yeah. He's connecting the dots in his brain. Pure, unpure. Nope. No, no. There's no favoritism now. That's the point. He accepts every nation, the one who fears him. You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea? Beginning of Galilee after the baptism of John preached how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power. And how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil because God was with him. We are witnesses. I'm gonna come back to that word in a little bit. This is eyewitnesses. This is an eyewitness account of everything he did in the country of the Jews. And in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross on that cruel tree. But God raised him from the dead and on the third day and caused him to be seen. And he was not seen by all the people, but by the witnesses who God had already chosen by us, whom ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. He just shares the story of Jesus, the gospel. And as Peter is still speaking, he's still preaching. He's in it. He's just going after it. The Holy Spirit came on. All who heard the message, the circumcised believers, right? These Jewish believers who are there who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even to the Gentiles. But this is a. This is the Gentile Pentecost. This is. This is. This changes the world. This, what happens right here turns the world upside down, that it's no longer that Israel is the life raft and we gotta become Jewish. We gotta be an Israelite. We gotta get in their raft. It is now all people, all tribes, all nations, all tongues. It's every ethnicity from that word, Gentile. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praise God. The reason why we are here and exist as a church is directly because the story has. Has continued through this moment. If this doesn't happen, then we all need to become Jewish and obey Jewish laws and rituals. That's not what's happening. All right, let's see. Peter said, surely no one can stand in the way of being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have, so ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. And then they asked Peter to stay with them for a Few days. Right. We just did baptisms last week. What an awesome thing. And we'll do it again, and we'll keep doing it. So if you're interested in what baptism is, and if you're just like the Gentiles, like, man, I believe I have Jesus. I believe the Spirit is with me. What is to keep you from being baptized? So it's still not about the food? It's still not about the food. It's about all people, all tribes, all nations. But seriously, what's going on with the food? Okay, I think that's a genuinely real question. Like, what's going on? And I don't. It's not the point of the text. It's really not. We'll get into that in just a minute. But what's going on with the food? I don't have. I think this is Wayne Grudem's definition of a covenant. I looked at my notes and I just had a quote. I don't know who said this. Someone other than me from a book once said, a covenant is an unchangeable, divinely imposed legal agreement between God and man that stipulates the conditions of their relationship. So not to get super heady and nerdy, I think this is what helps us with this whole covenant thing. Why is it, I think we've all maybe wrestled with this or maybe still don't understand, why is it that there are some Old Testament laws that we seem. That maybe we still adhere to and believe and, like, we're still under that. But then some things are not the case. So I can eat foods, whatever I want, but then it seems like with the Ten Commandments, like, adultery's still bad. Like, I don't. I don't get it. What's happening? Okay, so when we look at a covenant in the Old Testament, we are. Well, we're given all the covenants and shown all the covenants. But where God makes a covenant with his people, a contract, if you will, and he makes a covenant with his people, and there is four of them. There's the Noah's contract he has with Noah, Noah covenant. And then he's got Moses or Abraham and then Moses and then David, these four different covenants. And you gotta think of it as God making a contract, a covenant. And I know we've been using this transparency analogy, right? But you put a transparent on. You put it. And they all kind of build on top of one another. But when you have those four covenants by themselves and you're looking at that picture, it just looks like law, obey it, live this way. And if you do this, then God will bless you, you'll be saved. That's what it looks like. But then we're introduced to a new covenant that. Right, because these are still there, but it supersedes it. It now is on top, and it brings everything together. I remember when I was in college, I had a buddy who was an artist. And for fun, we used to just go up to a whiteboard and we would just make some crazy scribbles. And then he would go up and he would just draw, right? He would just turn it into something that was awesome. And it was like, I don't know how your brain works that way. It's kind of like this. You've got these covenants, old covenants. And then the new covenant comes on top and it brings it all together and it supersedes the old, or according to the language of the author of Hebrews, that the old covenant then has become obsolete. So old covenant shows us our need for grace. The new covenant gives us grace in Christ, and we live that out of love. And so the Old Testament has all these laws, right, about food and sacrifices and all these different things. And now we have grace. Now we have access to the throne. The old covenant again, these food, festivals, they point to God's covenant people to him. They point God's covenant people to himself and to his holiness. But Jesus fulfills the law. He fulfills that old agreement completely making it obsolete. And he lives under the law perfectly in a way that nobody could, lives it perfectly. And now he also takes on the penalty for everyone who didn't obey that law perfectly. So now he says, you're under grace. So now when you look at these old laws, it doesn't have everything to do with us. You don't necessarily read it word for word, law for law. Their law is our law. That's not the point of it. The point of that law and all those laws was to point people to God and his holiness in a lot of different ways. And then to show surrounding people and nations, this is who God is. So now Jesus comes in and his whole point is, what's the point of the law? Why does God have these laws about clean and unclean animals? Why does he have laws about feeding the poor and how to harvest your fields? And he does this over and over. You have once heard, thou shalt not commit murder. Great, that's a good law to have, he says. But even in your heart, if you commit murder, if you have hatred towards somebody, you've missed the point of the law. If you think it's just don't, don't kill someone, well, therefore I'm a good person. So it's still not about the food. If we were to really boil down and say, okay, this is a narrative text, right? We've talked about this a lot in this book. This is not descriptive. It's descriptive. It's not prescriptive. It's not prescribing something to us as a New Testament church. It's describing what was happening in the first century church. So it's not about the food, but we have this idea of all nations. That's the point of this text. Gentiles, all ethnicities. I don't think, again, we have necessarily a problem with this in our context because we wouldn't be here if this were the case. The Gospel is for all people, all tongues and tribes and nations. I think we, we get that we might struggle with it at some point in our own hearts, but I don't think that's necessarily so. Let's, let's, let's apply it in another way and look at this maybe from a theological lens, right? Do I have some theological snobbery where I look down on somebody? Right. You call yourself a Christian, I'm going to call you a God fear. Right? Let's get this right, because I know what's right. You don't. Do we look down on somebody because of their different theology? Again, not the point of the text, but I think we can make some application. We see this in Galatians very explicitly. I read this last week for Easter. The law is not based on faith. Doing good works has nothing to do with your faith. On the contrary, it says the person who does these things will live by them. You want to live by the law, then do them all. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, right? He lived in the law. He fulfilled the law, for it is written. Cursed is anyone who is hung on a tree. He paid the penalty for not living the law, even though he did live the law. He redeemed us in order the blessing given to Abraham all the way back in Genesis 15 and that Abrahamic covenant, God might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. Back in Genesis 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham and says, all nations will be blessed. And here Paul in Galatians is saying, do you see how this works? This was always the case. This was always to Bring all people to Christ. And we missed it for a long time. Still not about the food. We preach the gospel to all people, but we preach Christ crucified. We have to talk about Jesus again. This cross, it's offensive. It is an ancient torture device. But we have to get to Jesus. If we only talk about the benefits of the teachings of Jesus or man, hey, listen, your marriage will thrive if you just take this idea of sacrifice and forgiveness and we just talk about morals, we're missing the point. We have to get to Jesus. People cannot believe in Jesus if they've never heard of Jesus. We've got to preach Christ crucified, not just our values or Christian lifestyle. And then finally he says this, that you are my witnesses. Tell your story. There's something in your life where you went from darkness to life, from death to. To life. You are his witnesses. Something happened in your life. Share that story. Personal testimony is powerful. And so we get to read old texts and look at their eyewitness account. And we put faith in that, that this is true and trustworthy. Last quote here, it says in this speech. This is from New International, New Whatever. It's from this book. In this speech, as the three older speeches, Peter testifies they were witnesses to the events described. The testimony of the eyewitness was important to the Christian in the first century insofar for all generations. This is because Christianity is based on events surrounding Christ's sojourn on earth. Though we ourselves have not seen the risen Christ with our own eyes, our faith rests on the fact that he did rise from the dead and that a host of reliable witnesses attested to this fact. So when we share the gospel, we preach the gospel to all nations and we preach Christ crucified and we share our story. So in gospel application, I think simply, is there someone that you don't think is worthy of hearing the Gospel? By worthy, I don't mean like in a sense, that we're all sinners and we're not worthy of Jesus and his sacrifice. I don't mean that. I mean Jesus loves them. Jesus died for them. He paid for their sins. But you say, I don't think that they're deserving of the love of God. I don't think they're deserving of the forgiveness of God. It could be an ethnic thing, it could be a lifestyle of somebody or a pattern of sin, that they just aren't a good person. And I don't want to spend all of eternity with that person, with me. I don't want them. Is there Anyone that might come to mind that we need to repent of, that we need to, in our own hearts, share the gospel with that no one, anywhere, at any point, is beyond the reach of the gospel. And maybe you put yourself into that category. I'm not worthy of the gospel. God can never forgive me. That's just not true. The gospel is meant for other people, those good people. It's just not me. I'm too far away. I'm too far gone. I just. I did some things. I don't care. And I. You're not. Maybe you've already believed the gospel. You. You say, yes, I'm a follower of Jesus. We need the gospel. We need to hear it. We need to believe it and love it and let it influence us. At Hope Lowertown, we have communion every week. And I'm so glad we get to do this, because this is a beautiful example of our unworthiness of being sinful human beings who have committed treason against God. And he takes on flesh, writes himself into the story, and then dies the death that we deserve. And so we have these elements that represent his body that was broken for us, the juice that represents his blood that was shed for us. He fulfilled the law so we don't have to. He points us to himself, points us to grace so that we can boldly approach the throne of grace through Christ. And so, as we take these elements, we remember that. We remember that I am unworthy, but he is worthy. And that because he's my older brother and he puts his arm around me and his righteousness around me, now I am worthy. But it's got nothing to do with anything I've done. It has everything to do with Christ. I'm gonna pray, and the worship team's gonna come back up here and play a couple songs, two songs. And so feel free to grab these elements as you feel led. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you say, yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus, I've bent the knee to king Jesus. I would love to have you take these elements with us and remember the finished work of Christ on the cross with us this morning. Let's pray. Heavenly father, thank you for Dr. Luke, that thousands of years ago, as a follower of you, a convert, and most likely a gentile convert, just like all of us, and wanted to highlight how the gospel spreads to all people, all tribes, all tongues, all nations. And that's always been the point. And that your apostles, that they were sent out to preach the good news and we see this here in this text, that you have made everything clean. That's not what goes in us that defiles us. It's what comes out in our own hearts. Maybe we look at other people, we look down on them. Whether it's fear theologically or whether it's just any area, the parenting or food, or just all these different things that we may look down. God, would you forgive us of that? That you died for all people. So would you help us to share the good news to all people, preach the gospel to ourselves because we need it over and over and over. And as we take these elements, I pray that you would just be honored and glorified as we remember the finished work of your Son on the cross. And I pray you just give us boldness to preach that cross of Christ, crucified, dead, buried and risen again. And we'd not be ashamed of that. Because the gospel is not one that we should be ashamed for, but it is the power for salvation. Pray that now you'd be honored and glorified. All we say and do, and it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.