William Carey, a poor English shoemaker, was born in 1761. After his conversion at age 18, he began preaching in some small Baptist chapels, supporting himself by his trade. Reading Captain Cook’s Voyages sparked his interest in foreign missions. As he continued to study the Bible, he became convinced that the central responsibility of the church should be foreign missions.

That thesis probably does not sound very radical to you, but in Carey’s day, it was revolutionary. The prevailing hyper-Calvinist view of his time was that the Great Commission had been given only to the apostles. It had been fulfilled in previous times. The heathen had rejected the gospel, and so they would have to await their fate on Judgment Day.

But Carey, who was a Calvinist, dared to ask whether Jesus’ command to make disciples of all the nations was not obligatory on all Christians. An older minister accused him of being “a miserable enthusiast” (Mary Drewery, William Carey [Zondervan], p. 31). When he shared his ideas at a minister’s gathering, one pastor retorted, “Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine” (cited by Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya [Zondervan], p. 115). When Carey actually proposed going himself to India as a missionary, his father exclaimed, “Is William mad?” (Drewery, p. 44).

But William Carey went to India, where he labored for 40 years. He supervised and edited translations of the Bible into at least 36 languages. He published grammars and dictionaries, labored to abolish widow-burning and infanticide, and studied botany to promote agricultural improvements. In a sermon that he preached before he left England, Carey uttered his now-famous words, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” He is often called the father of modern missions.

In our study of the expansion of the gospel in Acts, we have seen Philip take the gospel into Samaritan territory. God blessed his efforts as many came to faith in Christ and were baptized. We don’t know for sure the time frame, but it would seem that right in the middle of this revival in Samaria, the Lord sent an angel to tell Philip to leave that region. He was to travel to a deserted road that led south from Jerusalem to Gaza. God arranged a meeting there between Philip and one man, an Ethiopian eunuch who was traveling home after worshiping in Jerusalem. God opened this man’s heart and Philip led him to faith in Jesus Christ.

In biblical times, Ethiopia referred to the region south of Aswan, Egypt, but north of Khartoum, Sudan. So the man was probably a Sudanese eunuch! He was probably dark-skinned. We don’t know if he was physically a eunuch or if it was just the title of a high-ranking court official. He was the equivalent of Treasury Secretary under the Queen. “Candace” was a dynastic title, like Pharaoh or Caesar, not the name of the queen.

This story shows us, as William Carey’s story also did, that God is sovereign in evangelism, but also that His people must be obedient to His command. It teaches us that …

God evangelizes the world through obedient Christians who explain the gospel to seeking souls.

The story reflects four elements in the conversion of a soul: (1) the Holy Spirit’s initiative and preparation; (2) the Word of God penetrating the minds and hearts of sinners; (3) the obedient Christian who explains the gospel message; and, (4) the response of obedient faith in the person hearing the message.

1. God sovereignly takes the initiative in the salvation of souls.

God’s sovereignty in the salvation of this Ethiopian man is a dominant theme. He sent an angel to tell Philip to go to a particular remote place. He arranged for Philip’s and this man’s paths to cross. He prompted Philip (8:29) to go up to the man’s chariot. At that very moment, God had providentially arranged for the man to be reading aloud (most people in the ancient world read aloud) from Isaiah, and not just from any part of Isaiah, but from Isaiah 53. You couldn’t pick a better opening for the gospel from the Old Testament! At the right moment, after the man had trusted in Christ, they came upon some water, and so the man was baptized.

At that moment, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away (8:39). Some do not take this to be a miracle, but it seems to me to be a miracle. The word “snatched” is the same word used to describe the church’s being “caught up” to be with the Lord (1 Thess. 4:17). So God was sovereign in getting Philip to go to this Ethiopian man and in taking him away. As all the Scriptures proclaim, it is God who sovereignly works to save His elect.

Note two things about this process. First, God is not always as efficient as we would want Him to be. This Ethiopian had just made a 1,000-mile journey to Jerusalem. After making this long journey, and considering that he probably stayed in Jerusalem for a period of time, why didn’t the Lord direct one of the apostles in Jerusalem to share the gospel with him there? He could have led the man to Christ and given him a crash course in discipleship before he left. Meanwhile, Philip could have continued his fruitful ministry in Samaria. Later, Philip settles in Caesarea, where a centurion needed to hear the gospel. But rather than send Philip, who was there, God sent Peter, who was not there (chapter 10)!

We cannot view world missions as an efficient, American business enterprise. God’s ways are not our ways. Sometimes He does things that seem to us like a waste of money or personnel. Our job is not to question the Lord, but to be obedient. William Carey must have wrestled with God’s “inefficiency” when, after 19 years of labor, a warehouse fire destroyed ten complete Bible translations, his massive polyglot dictionary, two grammar books, and all of the tediously shaped type fonts. But God used the tragedy to spread the word about the mission, and in two months enough gifts had poured into the mission to pay for the huge losses. “Carey accepted the tragedy as a judgment from the Lord and began all over again with even greater zeal” (Tucker, p. 120).

Second, note that God’s target is the world. Foreign missions was not something that the church or some brilliant strategist cooked up. It is God’s program. He commanded Philip to evangelize this Gentile man from Ethiopia. Someone has observed that in Acts 8 we see the conversion of a son of Ham; in Acts 9, a son of Shem (Paul); and, in Acts 10, a son of Japheth (the Roman centurion). These represent the three divisions of humanity after the flood. Thus Luke is showing us the gospel going out to all the nations, just as Jesus had commanded. In Revelation 5:9, John sees before God’s throne the four living creatures and the 24 elders singing, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” Until all whom Jesus purchased with His blood are brought to salvation, we must, as Paul put it, “do all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).

2. God uses His Word to penetrate the minds and hearts of sinners.

People can discern the existence of God and some of His attributes from creation (Rom. 1:20). But they can only learn how to be saved through the revelation of God’s Word, which tells us the good news about Jesus Christ. Knowledge of the one true God may have spread to this man’s country about 900 years before, when the Queen of Sheba returned from her visit to Solomon. Also, there was a large Jewish colony in Alexandria, hundreds of miles north along the Nile River. The truth about God could have spread south from there.

At any rate, this Ethiopian eunuch was interested enough in seeking God to make the long and difficult journey to Jerusalem. He must have been somewhat let down by what he found there. The Pharisees and Sadducees controlled a religion that was largely legalistic, ritualistic, and highly politicized. They did not know the God whom they professed to follow. As a Gentile, this Ethiopian could not go beyond the Court of the Gentiles in the temple. It is hard to imagine that his experience in Jerusalem had met the hunger of his heart that had motivated him to take this lengthy journey.

But at least he came away from there with a scroll of the prophet Isaiah in the Greek Septuagint version. He was so interested in reading it that he did not wait until he got back home. He started reading it as he sat in his carriage, plodding along the bumpy desert road toward Egypt. No doubt a man of his rank had a large retinue with him, including a driver, so that he was free to read as they traveled. Presuming that he had started at the beginning, he was almost through the entire book. He was reading Isaiah 53:7-8 when Philip came alongside his chariot. Once it was explained to him, God used these prophetic words about Jesus to bring this man to salvation.

Don’t underestimate the power of God’s Word to bring people to salvation! As 1 Peter 1:23 explains, “For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” James 1:18 states, “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth….” Paul tells Timothy that from childhood he has “known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). God’s Word is powerful to save sinners.

I read of a Muslim priest who was asked to do a series of character studies on great people from the Koran: Abraham, Joseph, David, and the prophet Jesus. When he came to prepare his talk on Jesus, he wanted more background information, so he borrowed a Bible and began to read the gospels. As he realized that Jesus was more than a prophet, his Muslim friends were appalled and excommunicated him. He continued to read and on his own trusted Christ as Savior. He went to a local Christian and asked if he could be baptized. He now works with Operation Mobilization doing evangelism among his own people (OM India Newsletter, Summer, 1997).

Thus we should encourage people to read the Bible, especially the gospels. Give out Gospels of John or New Testaments. When you share the gospel, have the person read the Bible verses himself. God uses His Word to bring sinners to salvation.

3. God uses obedient Christians to explain the gospel from His Word to seeking souls.

Although God sovereignly works to bring people to salvation, He does not usually do it apart from His obedient people. Here is Philip in the midst of an exciting revival, when an angel tells him to go to a deserted stretch of road where no one lived! I can imagine myself thinking, “Why doesn’t the angel go there himself?” Or, “What about all those apostles sitting around in Jerusalem? They aren’t as busy as I am. Besides, they’re closer. Send one of them.” Or, “I’ll go, Lord, but after things quiet down here.”

But as far as we know, Philip did not raise any objections. The angel said, “Arise and go.” The next verse (8:27) says, “And he arose and went.” When he got there, he was a bit surprised, as seen by the word, “behold” (8:27). What in the world is this Ethiopian official and his entire retinue doing out here in the midst of this forsaken road? The Spirit prompted Philip to go up and join himself to his chariot. It would have been traveling at a slow pace, so Philip could easily catch up to it. When he did, he heard the man reading, and to his amazement, Philip recognized it as Isaiah 53:7-8. Philip asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch replied, “Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?” He invited Philip to join him.

His question was not about the interpretation of the words, although they are a bit difficult to interpret. The text is speaking about a man who was treated unjustly. Rather, his question was, “Of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself, or of someone else?” Contemporary Jewish interpretation was divided about this matter. Some said that it referred to the nation, some that Isaiah was speaking of himself, and some that he referred to the Messiah. But Philip had no doubts: “Beginning from this Scripture, he preached Jesus to him” (8:35).

Just prior to this, the eunuch would have read, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Philip thus would have explained that we all have sinned. Because of our sin, none of us can merit eternal life by our own efforts or good deeds. Thus the Lord, to satisfy His holy justice, out of love for us, provided a substitute who bore the penalty we deserve. Jesus Christ bore God’s wrath for our sin on the cross. Perhaps Philip went to other Scriptures as well. But whatever Scriptures he used, Philip told the man about Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and ascended as the only Savior from God’s righteous judgment. He also explained that we must put our trust in Jesus personally as our own sin bearer. The eunuch, prepared by God, responded in faith.

Every Christian should be able to do what Philip did here: Starting with any Scripture or spiritual topic, we should be able to preach Jesus to a seeking soul. If a person brings up evolution, you may need to say, “That’s an interesting subject, and there are competent scholars on both sides of the issue. Sometime maybe we could discuss it at length. But the question that is far more important than evolution is, ‘Who do you think Jesus Christ is?’” Whether the person brings up the problem of suffering or the question about the heathen who have never heard or whatever, after a brief answer, steer the conversation back to Jesus Christ. The person needs to know who Jesus is, what He came to do, his own desperate condition apart from Christ, and how to receive Christ by faith. Everything else is peripheral. If Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, Christianity is true. If He is not who He claimed to be, then Christianity is a fraud. It all centers on Him.

We have seen that God sovereignly takes the initiative in evangelizing the world. He uses His Word to penetrate the minds and hearts of sinners. He also uses obedient Christians to explain the gospel to seeking souls. Finally,

4. God sovereignly works in the hearts of sinners to impart new life and obedient faith.

In Romans 3:10-11, Paul writes, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.” Isaiah 53:6 puts it, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.” John 3:19-20 says, “And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” None of us are naturally inclined toward the gospel. Sinners do not seek after God.

Thus salvation is all of God and His grace, and not from any good inclination in our hearts to seek God. Therefore, no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9). This means that whenever we see a man like the Ethiopian eunuch, who was seeking God by traveling to Jerusalem and by reading God’s Word, God is already at work in his heart, drawing him to Jesus (John 6:44).

We can infer, then, that God graciously imparted new life and obedient faith to this man when he heard Philip present the gospel. Apparently, inferring this was not enough for some early scribe who was copying the manuscript of Acts. So he inserted verse 37, where the eunuch confesses, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” The verse is not in any of the early or best manuscripts, and the style, according to Greek scholars, is not Luke’s style of writing. But even though the verse is not original to Acts, the eunuch must have given some such confession of his faith in Christ, or Philip would not have baptized him. The difference between this man’s genuine faith and Simon’s false faith (8:13) was that the eunuch’s faith came from God, whereas Simon’s faith came from himself.

The act of baptism, as we have seen, is a public confession of what God has done in a person’s heart through faith in Christ. Either the man knew the meaning and significance of baptism, or Philip had explained it. Those who do not believe in immersion argue that there could not have been enough water in the desert to dunk a man. But the words “they both went down into the water” and “they came up out of the water” indicate that it was a deep enough pool to immerse him. The Greek word for “baptize” means to dip, and immersion best pictures what baptism symbolizes, namely, complete identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.

As the men came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. He couldn’t even do any follow-up! But even though the eunuch never saw Philip again, he went on his way rejoicing. God had met the longing of his heart. He knew that Jesus had forgiven his sins and given him eternal life. We do not know from history if he became an evangelist to his people, but it is not hard to imagine that he did. A life of joy in Jesus is hard to keep to oneself! It is the best advertisement for the gospel. As for his part, Philip found himself at Azotus, about 20 miles north of Gaza. Although he had no direct command from God, he kept on doing what he always did, preaching the gospel to the cities as he traveled north to Caesarea.

Conclusion

If evangelizing the lost, especially those of other cultures and nationalities, were up to our abilities, it would be hopeless. But, thankfully, evangelism depends on our sovereign God working through our obedience. In his book, The Preacher’s Portrait [Eerdmans], John Stott shows that according to the Bible, lost people are both sightless and lifeless, blind and dead. Then he asks, “How can we reach him? Are we so foolish as to imagine that we can somehow, by our own argument or rhetoric, induce within him either spiritual understanding or life? No. It is not given to us to give sight to the blind or life to the dead. God alone is the author of light and life” (pp. 107-108). Later (p. 118) he cites Charles Spurgeon, who used to say over and over to himself as he climbed the stairs into his high pulpit, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, I believe in the Holy Ghost.” Spurgeon wrote,

The gospel is preached in the ears of all; it only comes with power to some. The power that is in the gospel does not lie in the eloquence of the preacher; otherwise men would be converters of souls. Nor does it lie in the preachers’ learning; otherwise it would consist of the wisdom of men. We might preach till our tongues rotted, till we should exhaust our lungs and die, but never a soul would be converted unless there were mysterious power going with it—the Holy Ghost changing the will of man. O Sirs! We might as well preach to stone walls as to preach to humanity, unless the Holy Ghost be with the Word to give it power to convert the soul.

The same Holy Spirit who used Philip to reach the Ethiopian eunuch and who used Spurgeon to reach thousands with the gospel wants to use you and me to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to Flagstaff and beyond. With William Carey, let’s obediently expect great things from God and attempt great things for God as we take the gospel to a lost world!

Discussion Questions

1. What are some practical ramifications of relying on God’s sovereignty in the process of evangelism?
2. Is being a cross-cultural missionary a special gift? Are only some called to go to foreign lands with the gospel? How can a person know that call?
3. How can we know whether God is prompting us to talk to a particular person about Christ? How can we get into the topic?
4. How much pressure should we put on people to believe in Christ? Where’s the balance between urgency and letting the Lord work in His time?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2000, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

The United States Navy has over 700 ships that comprise what is called the “Mothball Navy.” These vessels, anchored in various harbors around the country, receive regular maintenance to prevent rust. But they’re just sitting there, doing nothing, even though they require a lot of money and effort to maintain them.

Ask any pastor and he will tell you that one of the frustrations of the ministry is that there are so many mothballed Christians in the church. They sit harbored there, week in and week out. They require maintenance, especially when they have a problem or need. But they’re not doing anything to serve the Lord. Pastors call this the 80-20 rule, that 20 percent of the Christians do 80 percent of the work. But this should not be. If Christ has saved you from your sins, then out of love you should be zealous to serve Him. As Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). If we are growing to be like Jesus, our focus in life should be to serve Him.

Immediately after describing the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus (the apostle Paul), Luke goes on to tell of his initial efforts in serving the Lord. Luke wants us to see that Saul’s conversion was genuine. The persecutor very quickly becomes the persecuted because of his bold proclamation of Jesus as the Son of God and the Christ. But Saul was not a special case.

God wants all whom He has saved to serve Him in whatever situations He puts them.

If God has saved you, He wants you to be involved in ministry in some capacity. It may be, if you are a mother with young children, that at this phase in life, your primary ministry is to rear those children to know and love the Savior. I am not suggesting that you should neglect your family responsibilities to work in the church. At the other extreme, some are so cloistered in their families that they teach their children by example to be selfish and to disregard the need for serving Christ. Surely, this is also wrong. What I am advocating is a ministry mindset, where a person is so thankful to the Lord Jesus for saving him, that he can no longer live for himself, but rather for Him who died and rose again on his behalf (2 Cor. 5:15). This kind of person is always looking for how God wants to use him in whatever situation the Lord has put him. The apostle Paul’s early experiences in ministry picture this kind of life. There are five lessons for us:

1. New believers should immediately begin bearing witness about Jesus Christ.

Paul did not sit around very long after he got saved before he started to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues of Damascus (9:19-20). He could have thought, “Well, I’m kind of new at this. I had better wait until I get it all together before I open my mouth.” He could have thought, “I’m going to look like a fool. After all, I came here to arrest followers of Christ. People will think that I’m unstable if I let them know that I now follow Him.” Or, he could have thought, “Damascus isn’t my home. I’m just visiting here temporarily. I’ll wait until I get back home to begin my ministry.” But he didn’t make up excuses. He just started proclaiming, “Jesus is the Son of God.” “Jesus is the Christ” (9:20, 22).

Saul didn’t have it all together at first. This is implied by the statement, “But Saul kept increasing in strength” (9:22). The local rabbi might have nailed him the first time he spoke out for Jesus. But that didn’t stop him from trying again and again. The more he bore witness of Christ, the stronger he became.

You learn by doing, not just by head knowledge. Of course you need a certain amount of head knowledge before you speak out for the Lord. But there is no better way to learn than to get involved and get nailed! The first time someone hits you with a question that you don’t know how to answer, you’ll be motivated to get into God’s Word and find the answer. D. L. Moody said, “If you don’t go to work for the Lord because you’re afraid of making mistakes, you will probably make the greatest mistake of your life—that of doing nothing.”

You may wonder, “What would I say?” The answer is, “Speak about Jesus Christ.” Show people from the Bible who Jesus is and what He did by dying on the cross.

Saul began proclaiming, “Jesus is the Son of God.” This is the only time that this title appears in Acts (but see 13:33). For the Jews, it was a clear reference to Jesus’ deity. John 5:18 states that they were trying to kill Jesus because He “was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” Near the end of His ministry, Jesus baited the Pharisees with the question of how the Messiah could be both David’s son and David’s Lord, implying both His own Sonship and deity (Luke 20:41-44). Jesus stated the uniqueness of His relationship with the Father when He said, “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Luke 10:22). At Jesus’ trial, the high priest asked, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus replied, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61-62). People need to know that Jesus is uniquely God’s Son, one with the Father (John 10:30). He cannot save sinners if He is only a great man.

Saul also confounded the Jews by proving that this Jesus is the Christ (9:22). When he went back to Jerusalem, Saul took up with the Hellenistic Jews where Stephen had left off. Scripture was the basis for his arguments. F. F. Bruce says that the word “proving” means literally “putting together,” and adds, “here it implies that the prophetic Scriptures were put alongside their fulfilment, in order to prove that Jesus was the Messiah of whom they spoke” (The Book of Acts [Eerdmans], pp. 203-204, footnote 42). In this regard, Saul had a great advantage over many new believers in our culture, in that he knew the Old Testament Scriptures very well even before he was saved. But that should motivate all of us to devour God’s Word, so that we can make a defense from Scripture for the hope that is within us, that Jesus is God’s Anointed One, sent to this earth as the Savior of all who will trust in Him.

I would encourage every believer, both recent and not so recent, to get the Evangelism Explosion training that we offer. It will help you to be bold in witness for Christ. Every Christian should be equipped to tell others about the Savior.

2. New believers should take time to deepen their roots with the Lord.

I am drawing this point not directly from our text, but by piecing together another Scripture that is essential for understanding the history of Saul right after his conversion. In Galatians 1:15-18, Paul says that after his conversion, he did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did he go up to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles. Rather, he went away to Arabia, and then returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later he went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Peter, staying with him for 15 days. He also met James, the half-brother of Jesus. Since the Hebrews considered any part of a year as a year, the “three years” could have been as short as 14 months total. But Paul’s sojourn in Arabia must have taken place between Acts 9:22 and 23. Arabia refers to the area to the east and/or south of Damascus. Some think that he spent time in the Sinai desert, where Moses received the law.

What did Saul do there? We can surmise that he spent time poring over the Scriptures that he knew so well from his upbringing, but this time examining them from the fresh light of his conversion experience with the risen and exalted Jesus Christ. Just as the risen Jesus had taken the men on the Emmaus Road through Moses and all the prophets, explaining to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27), so the Lord now did with Saul. This is the implication of his testimony in Galatians 1, that he did not receive his message from any man, but from the Lord Himself. Surely the Lord revealed Himself to Saul through the Scriptures, giving him insight into things that he formerly thought that he knew, but did not really know at all.

Also, note that although Saul’s experience on the Damascus Road was very personal and emotionally traumatic, his faith had a strong doctrinal flavor to it. Many of his epistles—Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians—begin with a theological foundation before they move into the practical sections. He did not write these things for seminary students to debate, but for everyday Christians, to help them live for Christ in their daily experience. Go through his Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy & Titus) and note the emphasis on sound doctrine. We see this doctrinal emphasis in our text, in that he was able to confound and argue from Scripture with these knowledgeable Jews.

I emphasize this because in our day, doctrine and theology tend to be despised among those claiming to be evangelical Christians. But this is not a biblical emphasis and it will yield tragic results if we do not stem the tide. Sound biblical doctrine is the only solid foundation for healthy Christian experience. Yes, there is always the danger that knowledge will puff up a person with pride (1 Cor. 8:1). But the antidote is not to be theologically ignorant! My heroes in the faith have always been men like Paul who combine solid doctrine with a fervent heart love for Jesus Christ.

I encourage you to deepen your knowledge of Scripture by reading and studying it until you know it well. Supplement this by reading men like John Calvin, John Bunyan, Richard Baxter (and other Puritans), Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, J. C. Ryle, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Their sermons are widely available and are devotionally rich. In our day, James Boice, R. C. Sproul, John MacArthur, and John Piper all combine solid theology with a fervent devotion for Jesus Christ.

While Saul probably spent much of his time in Arabia studying God’s Word, it is likely that he did not just hide out in seclusion somewhere. Apparently he had been bold enough as a witness in Arabia to incur the displeasure of the king, Aretas. So when Saul returned to Damascus, the ethnarch under Aretas teamed up with the Jews in trying to seize Saul (2 Cor. 11:30-33). He had to escape for his life over the wall of the city in a basket at night. That leads to the next point:

3. New believers should be prepared to face opposition and rejection.

Often new believers naively think that since God loves them, He will protect them from all trials and hardship. But even a casual reading of the Bible shows that this is simply not so.

A. Be prepared to face opposition and rejection from without.

The Jews were dumbfounded at first when Saul began proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God (9:21). They wondered if it was a case of mistaken identity! But when it continued after he returned from Arabia, their patience grew thin and they sought to kill him. In Jerusalem, he met the same hostility from the Hellenistic Jews who had killed Stephen.

Some argue that Saul was insensitive or inept in his early effort at evangelism, but I disagree with that assessment. He had a group of disciples who had responded favorably to his message (9:25). Besides, the criteria for measuring success in evangelism is never how many respond, but rather, did we give the gospel clearly and without compromise? The Lord Himself appeared to Saul after he returned to Jerusalem and told him that the Jews would not accept his testimony, and that he should quickly get out of town (Acts 22:18). There is nothing wrong or unspiritual with a believer seeking to preserve his own life by fleeing from hostile enemies, as Saul did both from Damascus and Jerusalem.

But the point is, be prepared that not all will welcome your message about Christ, even though it means everything to you. The gospel is an offense because it confronts sinners with their sin, and it robs them of any glory in their own salvation. Our job is to be faithful in presenting the message, and leave the results to God. But don’t be surprised by open hostility.

B. Be prepared to face opposition and rejection from within.

When Saul went to Jerusalem, all the disciples, including the apostles, were afraid of him and would not welcome him into their circles. This is certainly understandable, in light of his previous track record! They probably thought that he was trying to infiltrate their ranks, so that he could arrest even more of them. But even so, their rejection must have hurt. For a few days, Saul must have felt pretty lonely, cut off both from his former Jewish colleagues and also from those who loved the same Lord that he now loved.

New believers are often naïve about other Christians. They think, “Isn’t it great to be in the family of God, where we all love one another!” But then they encounter jealousy or strife over minor issues. They see gossip and rivalry. If they are not prepared for it, they can become disillusioned with the church and drop out in bitterness. Outside of the flock, they are easy prey for the devil.

At some point (and we don’t know how the connection was made), Barnabas, the son of encouragement, came alongside Saul, listened to his testimony, and was convinced that he was really a disciple of Christ. This leads to the fourth lesson:

4. Mature believers should be quick to come alongside younger believers, to encourage and accept their efforts in ministry.

Good old Barnabas! Here, he takes Saul to the apostles (only Peter and James, according to Gal. 1:18-19), and convinces them that Saul’s testimony was genuine. A few years later, Barnabas left the thriving work in Antioch to look for Saul and bring him there to help. From there, the two of them were sent out on the first missionary journey.

All too often, older Christians are quick to criticize younger believers, treating them as if they should act like mature believers. Rather than welcoming them onto the team, they are quick to point out how immature and inexperienced they are. Sometimes the older saints are threatened by the zeal of the younger saints. But we ought to learn from Barnabas to err on the side of acceptance and encouragement. If the younger believer needs to have some rough edges smoothed out, the Lord will take care of that over time.

I don’t have any statistics on how many younger believers get discouraged and drop out of the church because no one comes alongside to encourage them. But I have read that out of any given seminary graduating class, 20 percent will quit the ministry within five years of entering it. And the number one reason they leave is not low pay or moral problems. The number one reason they leave the ministry is the pressure of criticism (Ron Lee Davis, Mentoring [Thomas Nelson], p. 157). Those of us who have been around the church for a while should be quick to come alongside younger believers, to encourage and accept their efforts in ministry, even if they are still a bit unpolished.

Saul’s early efforts at serving the Lord teach us that God wants all whom He has saved to serve Him in whatever situations He puts them. This means starting to serve as soon as you’re saved. It requires taking the time to sink down some roots. It means being prepared for opposition, both from within and from without. And, it means that mature believers should come alongside younger believers, to encourage them in their efforts.

5. All believers should use times of peace to build up one another in the Lord and to continue reaching out with the gospel.

Verse 31 is the third of seven progress reports in Acts (2:47; 6:7; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20; 28:30-31). It shows the church, not just in Jerusalem, but now scattered throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, enjoying a period of rest from persecution. Although a few manuscripts read “churches,” the best reading is “church,” singular, showing the unity of the different churches scattered throughout Palestine. The word “so” does not imply, “Good riddance! With Saul gone, the church finally enjoyed some rest!” Rather, it is a commonly used phrase that simply indicates a transition or the resumption of a previous narrative (see 8:4, 25). Luke is probably going back to the dispersion and persecution that began after Stephen’s death, and saying, “After all of this, the Lord granted a period of peace.”

While I would not go as far as Donald Grey Barnhouse, who calls verse 31 “a sad note,” because of the tendency of the church to grow stagnant at such times (Acts [Zondervan], p. 86), I would acknowledge the danger. When the pressure is on, either through persecution or trials, we are more likely to walk closely with the Lord. We are very much aware at such times of our great need for Him, and so we rely on Him in prayer. We are reminded of the shortness of life, and so we make every opportunity count for eternity. But when the pressure is off, the danger is that we will kick back and coast, rather than to be disciplined to seek the Lord.

But we should use such rest periods for spiritual growth, both personally and corporately. Luke summarizes the growth of the early church by saying that it was being built up, and that it went on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Our goal in our relationships with one another as believers should be to build up one another in Christ (Rom. 14:19). The fear of the Lord is not at odds with His love and grace. Paul instructs us to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God (2 Cor. 7:1). The word “comfort” refers to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in coming alongside to help us. Whether in a time of peace or persecution, we must rely daily on the Holy Spirit as we seek to grow in Christ.

Luke also notes that the church continued to increase. We should use peaceful times to continue reaching out to the lost with the gospel. We dare not get comfortable, and forget about the condition of souls without Christ. Someone has said that secret discipleship is a contradiction in terms. Either the secrecy kills the discipleship, or the discipleship kills the secrecy. If we are followers of the one who came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), we must commit ourselves to the same goal.

Conclusion

If you are wondering, “What can I do to serve the Lord?” I encourage you to go to Farese.com. It is the web page of John Farese. He is 44 years old and one of the oldest persons to reach that age after being diagnosed from birth with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. He is bedridden and uses speech recognition software to operate his computer system, which enables him to do everything from reading the Bible to creating Web pages for his customers on the Internet.

John writes, “He has turned for me my mourning into laughter, and my desolation into joy; he has led my captivity captive, and made my heart rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. He drew me when I struggled to escape from his grace; and when at last I came all trembling like a condemned culprit to his mercy seat he said, ‘Thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee: be of good cheer.’” John is a charter member of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Boca Raton, Florida.

If a man with severe health limitations like John Farese can find a way to serve the Lord who saved him, so can you. Go and do likewise!

Discussion Questions

1. How can a new believer discover where God wants him to serve?
2. How does a believer find the right balance between private time with the Lord and ministry time?
3. How can we keep from growing bitter when we feel rejected by fellow Christians?
4. Should every Christian be involved in evangelism, or only those with the gift of evangelism?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Have you ever noticed that the guy driving slower than you is always a jerk, whereas the guy driving faster than you is always a maniac? By fallen nature, we’re all prone to justify ourselves and to condemn those who are different than we are. We’re prone to judge others according to outward characteristics, rather than to accept them as individual human beings on an equal par with us.

The ancient Greeks divided up the human race into two categories: Greeks and barbarians. The barbarian was literally a man who could not speak Greek, and so his words sounded to the Greek ear like “bar bar.” One Greek historian asked rhetorically, “How can men who can only bark ever rule the world?” Prejudice is not eradicated with brilliance, since Aristotle believed that the world’s climate maintained the difference between Greeks and barbarians. He explained that those who lived in the cold lands to the north had plenty of courage and spirit, but little skill and intelligence. Those who lived in the warm south had plenty of skill, intelligence, and culture, but little spirit and courage. Only the Greeks lived in a climate designed by nature to produce the perfectly blended character (Aristotle, Politics [7:7:2], cited by William Barclay, Flesh and Spirit [Baker], pp. 40-41).

We may chuckle at Aristotle’s theory, but we’re all prone toward prejudice in some form or another. But for God to use us effectively in His purpose, He must break us of our prejudices. To be prejudiced is to pre-judge someone without sufficient information. The story of the gospel spreading beyond Jewish boundaries toward the Gentiles teaches us from the life of Peter that …

We all have built-in prejudices that God must break down if we are going to be effective in His service.

Peter was staying at Joppa on the Mediterranean coast. It was the city where the prophet Jonah had fled to board a ship to Tarshish. He was trying to run from the Lord’s command to go and preach at Ninevah, the capital city of Israel’s arch-enemy, Assyria. About 30 miles north of Joppa and some 65 miles northwest of Jerusalem, was the Roman provincial capital, Caesarea, where the governor lived. Under his authority were some 3,000 troops, including the Italian cohort. Serving with this unit was Cornelius, a centurion who commanded 100 soldiers. The Jews despised the Roman occupation of Palestine; they hoped that Messiah would come and deliver them from the Roman oppression.

And so the stage is set: you have a Gentile Roman soldier, representing the despised occupation of Israel, residing in the main city of the Roman occupation. Thirty miles south you have a Jewish apostle, temporarily residing at the spot where Jonah had taken off in disobedience to his commission to preach to Israel’s enemy. And behind the scenes, God is orchestrating the events to bring these two men together in a way that shocked both of them by breaking down the wall of prejudice between them. The result of the story is that today you and I who are Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the church with the Jews, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Eph. 3:6). The story brings out five lessons:

1. We all are prone to prejudice.

I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Steve, you’re right. Most people are prone to prejudice. But, thank God, that’s not one of my weaknesses! I am very unbiased, accepting, and loving.” But the fact is, even committed Christians, even godly men like Peter, have prejudices. Like Peter, we’re probably blind to those prejudices until the Lord shocks us into seeing them.

To prepare Peter to go to Cornelius’ house, He gave him a vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven. In the sheet were all kinds of animals and insects and birds that the Old Testament forbade the Jews from eating. Peter was hungry, waiting for his lunch. A voice said, “Arise, Peter, kill and eat.” But Peter was shocked, as seen by his reply, “By no means Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean” (10:14).

I thought about shocking you into seeing some of your prejudices by putting a cigar into my mouth, but I was afraid that we would have to call the paramedics to revive a few souls, and that some might actually pass from this life into glory at the sight! But the fact is, many godly men of past generations smoked. They did not have the modern knowledge that we possess about the health risks of smoking. But the godly pastors Charles Spurgeon and G. Campbell Morgan both smoked cigars. Jonathan Edwards smoked a pipe. Martyn Lloyd-Jones smoked cigarettes early in his ministry, as did C. S. Lewis all through his life. Many American Christians would question the spirituality of a man who smoked, if not his salvation: “Doesn’t he know that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?” Yet many of these judgmental American “temples” are noticeably overfed and under-exercised!

Many American Christians also would say that a Christian who drinks beer could not be spiritually mature, even if he never disobeys Scripture by getting drunk. My parents used to know a German Christian who lived here in America who would say in disgust, “You Americans say that we should not drink beer, and yet you go to bowling alleys!” For him, to go into a bowling alley was the epitome of worldliness, but drinking beer was something all Germans did. I am not endorsing drinking alcohol or smoking; in fact, I would advise against such practices. But I am pointing out how we are quick to judge those who do things we do not approve of, and yet we do not judge ourselves for things we do that may be harmful to our health. Sometimes, like Peter, we are more scrupulous than the Lord is!

I could point out many other ways that we are prone to be prejudiced. We all tend to group people by race or occupation, and then we pigeonhole individuals and judge them because they belong to the group. Peter easily could have thought, “Centurions are Roman soldiers and are wicked, sensual, worldly pagans.” He would have badly misjudged Cornelius. Cornelius could have thought, “I’m supposed to learn from an uneducated Jewish man who is staying with a tanner? He probably has never been outside of Palestine. What could he teach a well-traveled Roman like me?” He would have missed God’s blessing.

Like Peter, most of us use the Bible to justify our prejudices and to read it through the lens of our prejudices. After all, the Bible warned Israel about associating with the pagan idolaters of the nations around them. The Bible showed them that they would be contaminated by contact with these “uncircumcised dogs.” Peter and the other apostles had heard Jesus give the Great Commission on more than one occasion. Yet up to this time, they were still reaching out primarily to Jews. They probably thought that reaching those in the uttermost parts of the earth referred to Jewish families who were scattered abroad. But to reach out to pagan Gentiles was simply unthinkable! They could quote chapter and verse out of the Old Testament to back up their views.

Don’t miss my point: I am not saying that we should be tolerant or accepting of practices the Bible calls sin. Neither am I saying that we should join in carousing with sinful people as if there is no difference between them and us. But I am suggesting that if we do not face our prejudices and allow God to root them out, we will not be effective in reaching across cultural and personal barriers with the gospel. If you are prejudiced against Native Americans or blacks, how will you reach them with the gospel? If you hate homosexuals (the people, not the sin), how will you lead them to Jesus Christ? If you steer clear of young people with body piercings and tattoos, how can God use you to bring the gospel to them?

2. God is gracious to gently break us of our prejudice so that He can work through us.

God sent an angel to Cornelius, and the angel knew the gospel perfectly well. He could have explained the way of salvation to Cornelius and left Peter out of the loop. But instead, he gave instructions to Cornelius on how to contact Peter so that Peter could go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Isn’t it just like God, that when He is pleased to open the gospel to the Gentiles, He picks a Gentile who represents something that every loyal Jew hated—a military commander from the occupying Roman forces! Peter had to break out of his comfort zone in order to obey God. And Cornelius would have had to overcome any prejudice that he may have had against contacting an uneducated Jew to explain spiritual truth to him. He might rather have had a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin come, but he would have missed the way of salvation.

Note also how the Lord worked gradually with Peter. First, as we saw last week, Peter was staying at the home of a Christian brother who was a tanner. The Jews viewed tanners as unclean, since they had daily contact with dead animal skins. And, their houses were smelly places. The party from Cornelius easily could have found Simon the tanner’s house: Go to Joppa and follow your nose! But Peter was staying there.

Then, the Lord repeated the vision three times for Peter, in order to impress the point on him. No sooner had the vision ended than the three visitors from Caesarea arrived. Peter could have told them where the local Gentile motel was located, but he invited them in and gave them lodging (10:23). The prejudices were coming down gradually. When Peter arrived at Cornelius’ house, he was surprised not only to find just a handful of Gentiles, but a whole house full! Peter’s opening comment, about it being unlawful for a Jew to associate with a foreigner (10:28) was not a rude comment, as some think. Rather, he was just acknowledging the obvious and explaining why he was deliberately violating the commonly understood customs.

Later, of course, Peter fell into the sin of prejudice again in Antioch, the first prominent multi-racial church. When he visited there, he commonly ate with the Gentile Christians until certain Jewish men came from Jerusalem. Then he withdrew and ate with the Jews only. The apostle Paul had to confront him in front of the church, and Peter repented (Gal. 2:11-14).

Thankfully, the Lord works gradually and gently with us in spite of our many shortcomings and sins. He teaches us by putting us in uncomfortable situations, where we have to challenge our blind assumptions and grow to be more like the Lord Jesus, who was the friend of sinners that others were prejudiced against.

3. God’s purpose is to spread the gospel through us so that He will be glorified among the nations.

It is obvious that God was the prime mover in this story. His purpose is to be glorified among the nations, and He accomplishes that purpose by preparing both the hearers and His preachers. He revealed Himself to Cornelius, and just at the right moment, gave Peter the necessary vision to prepare him.

It would be against other Scriptures to conclude that Cornelius was a basically good man who was naturally inclined to seek after God, and that because Cornelius sought God, God responded by revealing Himself. The Bible is clear that there are none who seek after God (Rom. 3:10). Any time you find a person like Cornelius who seeks after God, you can know that God is first seeking the person. We don’t know for how long Cornelius had been a devout man, but we do know that the timing of this event was according to God’s purpose.

I confess that one of the mysteries of God’s ways for me is why He allows whole nations to go on in their spiritual darkness for centuries, but then in His timing opens them up to the gospel. Until 12 years ago, Mongolia was a closed, completely unevangelized country. Then the Communist government fell and missionaries were able to get into the country. Now there are many churches throughout the country, and people are coming to the Savior daily. We know that around His throne in heaven there will be some from every tribe and tongue and people and nation that the Savior purchased with His blood (Rev. 5:9). If we do not have a heart to reach out with the gospel across cultural, racial, and national barriers, we do not have the heart of the Lord Jesus.

So what are we to do when God confronts our prejudice?

4. When God confronts our prejudice, we must yield in obedience to Him.

At first Peter was a bit confused by the meaning of the vision, since it was so shocking to his understanding of biblical matters. His response was the oxymoronic phrase, “By no means, Lord!” (10:14). In his defense, Peter was responding as the prophet Ezekiel had done when the Lord commanded him to eat unclean food as a prophetic drama to show Israel how terrible the captivity would be (Ezek. 4:14). When the prophet protested, the Lord allowed him to substitute another method of preparing the food. But here, the Lord followed Peter’s protest by saying, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy” (10:15). After the vision was repeated three times, Peter was left greatly perplexed as to what it all meant. But as soon as he was clear about the fact that God had done away with the ceremonial laws of defilement for eating unclean food, Peter overcame his lifelong scruples and obeyed the Lord.

Jesus had taught that the Jewish laws of ceremonial defilement were fulfilled in Him, but this was such a radical thing that the disciples did not fully understand it until after Peter’s vision. In Mark 7, some Pharisees observed that Jesus and the disciples did not observe the traditional hand washing ceremonies before their meal. Jesus exposed their hypocrisy for their fastidious outward washing when their hearts were full of sin. Then privately He explained to the disciples that it is not what goes into a man’s stomach that defiles him, but rather that which comes out of a man’s heart. Mark adds the parenthetical comment, probably supplied by Peter, “Thus He declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). But now Peter had to make the logical step from the fact that Gentile food would not defile him to the fact that neither would the Gentiles themselves defile him. For a Jew, it was a radical concept!

But, as I said, Peter put it to immediate application by offering food and lodging to the three Gentile visitors, and then by accompanying them to Caesarea in obedience to the Spirit’s direction. He took with him six brethren from Joppa (11:12), who later could testify to what God had done among this group of Gentiles. As we will see, some in Jerusalem called Peter on the carpet because he ate with these Gentiles. They were more concerned about his keeping the Jewish ceremonial law than they were pleased with the fact that these Gentiles had gotten saved! But Peter did what he did in obedience to the Lord, and we must do the same.

The first thing he encountered in Caesarea was this Gentile centurion falling at his feet in worship. Peter did not say, “Thank you for recognizing my high spiritual office,” and offer him his ring to kiss! Rather, he pulled Cornelius to his feet and said, “Stand up; I too am just a man” (10:26). One way to overcome prejudice is to treat other people, whatever their race or background, as equals. We should view ourselves as beggars whose job is to show other beggars where to find God’s free bread.

Thus we’ve seen that we all are prone to prejudice, but that God is gracious to gently break us of this sin so that He can work through us. His purpose is to spread the gospel among the nations for His glory, and He does it through His servants who are willing to cross cultural barriers. When He confronts our prejudice, we must yield in obedience to Him. What is the result?

5. When we yield to the Lord and put to death our prejudice, He will use us mightily in His service.

As we’ve seen, God had prepared the listeners and He had prepared the preacher. Cornelius had invited in all of his friends and neighbors, who had gathered, as Cornelius puts it (10:33), “before God to hear all that [Peter] had been commanded by the Lord” to say. That’s a ready situation for God to work, when the hearts of the people are prepared and the heart of the speaker is prepared and they gather in God’s presence to hear a message that God commanded him to give! As we’ll see, Peter didn’t even get a chance to finish his message before the Holy Spirit fell upon everyone there and they all got saved. And, of course, this was just the beginning of the gospel moving out into Gentile territory. The same gospel that saved the apostles was mighty to save the Gentiles who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of Peter’s obedience in putting to death his prejudice, the gospel has come to us who otherwise never would have known God.

Conclusion

As you know, in the late 1960’s there was a lot of cultural upheaval that resulted in a wide gap between the younger and older generations, both in attitude and appearance. Hudson Armerding was the president of Wheaton College at the time. He had fought for our country’s liberty during World War II, and as a member of that generation, was conservative in his grooming and attire. He also despised the counter-culture movement, because to him it represented unpatriotic draft-resisters, flag burners, and the like. So he did not like it when students dressed in the grubby counter-cultural fashion. Also, he thought that it was biblically inappropriate for men to have long hair. But the staff at Wheaton was trying to permit a degree of liberty among the students on this matter.

One day Armerding was scheduled to speak in chapel. Just before the service, they gathered for prayer. Just before they began, a young man walked in who had a beard and long hair, and was wearing a sash around his waist, with sandals on his feet. Armerding looked at him and was sorry that he had come in. Worse yet, the student sat down right next to the president. When they started praying, Armerding did not have a very good attitude.

Then the young man began to pray: “Dear Lord, you know how much I admire Dr. Armerding, how I appreciate his walk with you. I am grateful for what a man of God he is, and how he loves you and loves your people. Lord, bless him today. Give him liberty in the Holy Spirit and make him a real blessing to all of us in the student body. Help us to have open hearts to hear what he has to say, and may we do what you want us to do.”

As Armerding walked down the steps to go into the chapel, the Lord spoke to him about his attitude. After giving his message, he asked the young man to come to the platform. A ripple of whispering went through the students, many of whom thought that the president was going to dismiss the young man from school as an example to the rest of the students. But rather than rebuking him or dismissing him, everyone including the young man was surprised when Dr. Armerding put his arms around him and embraced him as a brother in Christ. It broke up the chapel service, as students stood and applauded, cried and embraced one another. God used that simple act of one man laying aside his prejudice to turn the mood on campus to greater love and acceptance of one another. Dr. Armerding later learned that this young man had adopted his appearance in order to reach some of his generation who were alienated from God and the church (Hudson Armerding, Leadership [Tyndale], pp. 166-168).

Here’s a radical prayer request: Ask God to show you your prejudices. When He does, obey Him by putting your prejudices to death and by showing His love and offering His gospel to those whom you might not naturally be inclined to like. He will use it to exalt His name among the nations!

Discussion Questions

1. What are some common evangelical Christian prejudices?
2. Church growth advocates argue that the church should target reaching its own kind. Is this biblical? Why/why not?
3. Should every Christian be seeking to reach those who are culturally different or is this just the gift of some?
4. What are some of the culturally different groups in our city that the Lord might want us to reach? What should you do?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

I have a book on creative thinking that is titled, A Whack on the Side of the Head (by Roger von Oech [Warner Books]). We all get into mental ruts and often need a whack on the side of the head to jar us into new and better ways of thinking. Also, we all bring a lot of wrong-thinking baggage with us into the Christian life. If we are to grow into being more like Jesus, every once in a while God has to take a 2x4 and gently whack us on the side of the head to help us change our thinking.

We’ve seen how the Lord whacked Peter in preparation for his going to the house of the Gentile centurion, Cornelius. No Jew would think of going into a Gentile home, much less eating with Gentiles, for fear of contracting ceremonial defilement. The Lord Jesus had clearly told the apostles to go into all the world to preach the gospel to every creature. But in their centuries-old Jewish way of thinking, the disciples thought that Jesus meant for them to go and preach to Jews who were scattered all over the world. But the thought of preaching the gospel to pagan Gentiles and of those Gentiles coming to salvation without first becoming religious Jews was simply unthinkable.

But now the unthinkable has happened for Peter. He wisely had taken six Jewish believers with him to Cornelius’ house, who witnessed what God was doing. They all saw the Holy Spirit fall upon the Gentiles in just the same way as He had fallen upon the believing Jews on the Day of Pentecost. But now Peter goes back to Jerusalem and the Jewish believers there call him on the carpet because he “went to uncircumcised men and ate with them” (11:3).

A lot of pastors just skip over these verses, since they repeat the story of chapter 10. But whenever Scripture repeats something, we need to take notice. There is an important lesson here that we might be prone to miss. Our text shows how God changed the thinking of these Christians on a matter that was essential for the spread of the gospel. If the Gentiles had been required to adopt Jewish rituals and ceremonies to be saved, the gospel would not have spread around the Gentile world as it did, and it would be a different “gospel.” The Holy Spirit inspired Luke to include this story twice so that the Jewish believers especially would see that salvation is not a matter of adopting Jewish rituals, but rather of God saving people of every race through faith in Christ alone.

But these Jewish Christians needed to change their thinking. The story shows how God began that process, and how He works to change our thinking:

To accomplish His sovereign purpose in salvation, God has to change the wrong thinking of His people.

First we need to understand God’s sovereign purpose:

1. God’s sovereign purpose includes the salvation of some from every nation for His glory.

God prophesied His purpose to Abraham in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 12:3, where He told him, “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” Later God told him, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 22:18). That seed of Abraham was not just the Jewish race, but specifically Jesus Christ, God’s promised Redeemer. In the last book of the Bible, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fall down before the Lamb and sing, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:9-10). Thus God’s purpose is to glorify Himself through the salvation of His elect from every nation through the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ.

That purpose in its beginning stage is acknowledged in 11:18, where the Jewish believers say, “Well then, God has granted to the Gentiles also the repentance that leads to life.” The Greek word for “Gentiles” is ethne, often translated “nations.” While the Jewish Christians did not yet grasp the full ramifications of what God was doing, the apostle Paul would later expound on it in Ephesians 2 & 3. He calls it “the mystery of Christ,” and acknowledges that it was not made known in previous generations. But now it has “been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit, to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph. 3:5-6). While for 2,000 years the nation of Israel had been God’s chosen people, now all the nations are on equal standing before God through the cross of Jesus Christ. Everyone who comes in faith and repentance to Christ becomes a part of God’s kingdom of priests, made up of Jew and Gentile in the body. This concept was nothing short of revolutionary!

I could spend the rest of the message elaborating on what I am about to tell you, but I will limit myself to three brief implications that you can chew on more on your own:

1) Concerning God’s purpose, it is fundamental to understand that salvation is God’s program and God’s doing, but He uses us in the process.

A major theme in this story is that God took the initiative in the salvation of the Gentiles. It’s all through the story: God gave the vision to Peter of the sheet being lowered from heaven with the unclean animals and the command to eat. Peter wasn’t trying to come up with some new theology. God, not Peter, originated this process. Further, God sent His angel to Cornelius with instructions as to how to get in contact with Peter. He orchestrated the arrival of the Gentile messengers from Cornelius with Peter’s vision, and specifically told Peter to go with them without any misgivings. He sovereignly saved the Gentiles and sent the Holy Spirit upon them even before Peter finished his sermon. As verse 18 states, He granted to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life. No one can work up or will repentance by his own free choice. God must grant it as His gift to sinners who do not deserve it. Thus salvation comes totally from the Lord.

At the same time, He uses us fallible humans to further the gospel. The angel did not preach the gospel to Cornelius, but rather told him that Peter would speak words by which he would be saved (11:14). We see this same emphasis in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, where Paul makes it clear that salvation is due to God’s choosing and God’s working, and yet He is pleased to use the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. This point is important because some wrongly conclude that if salvation depends on God’s sovereignty, then we don’t have to do anything. That is simply unbiblical! God sovereignly takes the initiative and He sovereignly grants repentance to those whom He chose before the foundation of the world. But He does it through His people obediently preaching the gospel.

2) If you are not in some way involved in getting the gospel to the nations, you’re not involved in God’s purpose.

World missions is not just an optional program in the church for some to be involved in. Missions is what God is doing! Not all are called to go, but every believer should be interested and concerned enough to educate himself or herself about the task. Out of that interest, we all can and should be praying for missions. We all should be giving to missions. If world missions is at the heart of God’s purpose, then apathy about missions is inexcusable!

3) The local church should be as racially diverse as the local population.

If God’s purpose is to save some from every nation (ethnic group), and we have many diverse nations (ethnic groups) in our city, then we are not fulfilling God’s purpose if our church is not reaching some from every group. As a church, we should be thinking of ways that we can reach across cultural barriers and see people from different racial and cultural backgrounds coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

As I said, I could spend the whole message on this point, but hopefully I’ve said enough for you to get a glimpse of God’s purpose. Maybe also you have begun to see how your thinking needs to change. But I need to say more on that:

2. We all bring wrong thinking into the Christian life.

By nature, we all are ethnocentric. We all bring wrong theological views into our Christian experience. Spurgeon (C. H. Spurgeon Autobiography [Banner of Truth], 1:164) said that we’re all by nature born Arminians, so that at first we think that we came to the Lord ourselves. Only later we learn from God’s Word that He first sought us. Part of the process of sanctification is God’s transforming our minds (Rom. 12:2) as we begin to assimilate the truths of His Word. Here are three ways that Peter’s critics in Jerusalem were thinking wrongly:

1) Wrong thinking: human traditions are more important than salvation.

Peter had seen this remarkable response, as a whole house full of Gentiles had believed in Christ and were saved. But rather than rejoicing over what God had done, these saints were grumbling about the matter of Peter’s eating with Gentiles! The Old Testament did not forbid Jews from having social contact with Gentiles, although it did specify what sorts of foods they could eat. But these Jewish Christians were more concerned about Peter violating kosher laws than they were happy about the Gentiles getting saved!

But before we try to remove the mote in their eye, let’s deal with the beam in our own eye! We often do the same thing. We elevate certain traditions or ways of doing things above the salvation of lost souls. We are all for seeing young people getting saved, but they had better make sure that they not delay in looking and acting like those who have been in the church for 50 years!

When Marla was a young believer, she went to a church of hippies that met in a park. (She was the only non-hippie in the church, of course!) They met in a park because a youth pastor had seen a large number of young people from the counter-culture come to faith in Christ, but the church he served did not want that sort of young person coming to that church. After all, they might wrongly influence our clean-cut (but spiritually dead) youth! Sadly, he went to several churches in the area, asking if he could bring these young people into these churches, but he was refused. Finally, he took them and started meeting in the park.

If any of your cultural baggage (and I’m including your spiritual culture) is getting in the way of your enthusiastic commitment to reaching people from different cultures with the gospel, drop your baggage! Our main focus should be the salvation of lost people to the glory of God. If you see someone come into church who is not “your kind of person” and you don’t go out of your way to make that person feel welcome, your heart is in the wrong place! In the early 1970’s, I was able to visit Peninsula Bible Church where Ray Stedman was pastor. You would see little old grandmas sitting next to long-haired hippies worshiping together. That’s how the local church should be!

2) Wrong thinking: the church should consist of “my kind” of people.

We all are prone to think that the church is for folks just like us, but not for those who are much different than we are. There is even a principle espoused by the Church Growth movement, “the homogeneous unit” principle. It states that people are attracted to churches that have “their kind of people,” and advocates that we should be targeting a certain segment of the society. So you have churches that state that their target is to reach the Baby Boomers, or the Generation Xers. They aim their whole church service to make these kinds of people feel comfortable.

I believe that this approach undermines God’s purpose for the church (see Eph. 3:4-11). God is most glorified when a local church is made up of culturally and racially diverse people who would never get together apart from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. I think it’s biblically wrong to have a contemporary service for the younger generation and a traditional service for the older folks. We all need to learn from one another and learn to get along with one another. The church is God’s adopted family, made up of children from every conceivable background, to His glory.

3) Wrong thinking: God has to do things my way.

These Jewish Christians probably would have said that it’s okay for God to save the Gentiles, but first they need to become Jews. But for God to save them just as they are? That doesn’t fit with my way of thinking! He has to do it my way!

Church members are notorious for saying, “We’ve never done it that way before!” For example, there are many in evangelical churches who think that if you don’t give an altar call, you haven’t preached the gospel. Yet neither John Wesley nor George Whitefield nor Charles Spurgeon gave altar calls, and they were some of the most effective evangelists in the history of the church. It was Charles Finney who popularized the idea, based on some bad theology. But because it is the dominant method in our day, people think that we have to do it that way. The test of any method or any way of thinking must be God’s Word, properly interpreted and applied.

Sometimes God surprises us as He surprised Peter by saving people even before we finish our sermon and give an invitation! And the people He saves aren’t the kind of folks we would think He would save! We need to allow God’s Word to confront our wrong thinking so that we can grow in Christ and be more usable in His purpose.

3. God changes our wrong thinking so that we can be His instruments in His work.

If Peter had stuck to his protest, “By no means, Lord,” God couldn’t have used him to preach to Cornelius’ household. If we want God to use us in His great purpose of being glorified through the salvation of the nations, we must let Him change us. How does He do it? In many ways, but here are six from our text:

1) God changes us as we seek to walk with Him.

It was while Peter was praying that the Lord gave him this life-changing vision. If Peter had skipped his prayer time, he might have missed what God wanted to do through him. God will not change your thinking if you rarely spend time alone with Him.

2) God changes us by jarring us through uncomfortable circumstances.

Peter didn’t start out his prayer time thinking that he needed to come up with a creative new ministry idea. Rather, God sovereignly intervened with His ideas and His agenda! And God’s agenda shocked Peter, as seen by his startled reply, “By no means, Lord!” It was the Lord’s whack on the side of Peter’s head!

The Lord often has to whack us to get us to change. If we’re comfortable, we don’t feel any need to change. But if we’re suddenly hit with a new situation that’s outside our comfort zone, we realize that our old ways of thinking won’t do. We have to listen to the Lord and trust Him to do something we can’t do in our own strength.

3) God changes us by repeating the lesson until it sinks in.

The Lord had to repeat the vision three times for Peter. He repeats this story twice for every reader of Scripture, so that we get the point. And, the process of God’s changing their thinking was not finished with Peter’s explanation here. A party of Jews who professed to be Christians insisted that a person had to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses to be saved. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) had to work through this important issue, and Paul wrote Galatians to refute this serious error. Even Peter later fell into this wrong thinking, as Paul mentions in Galatians 2:11-15. But God often has to whack us again and again until the truth sinks in. In my own life, I’ve looked back on some issues and thought, “Why didn’t I see it sooner?”

4) God changes us by appealing to our thinking with His Word of truth.

Peter wins over his critics by relating in orderly fashion his experiences of how God worked. He could have asserted his apostolic authority: “I’m an apostle and you all need to submit to what I did.” But he would not have convinced the thinking of those who needed to change. Lasting change has to take place in the mind, and we must be convinced that the new way of thinking is in line with Scripture. So he shared the process that God took him through to change his thinking.

But if Peter’s experiences had contradicted Scripture, then they would not have been from the Lord. Granted, he had to take a new look at Scripture (such as the Abrahamic Covenant), because he thought that he understood it before. The Old Testament has much to say about the Gentiles sharing in God’s salvation, but Peter had missed it. Here, as far as what is recorded, he does not go into a biblical defense. But he does square his experience of the Gentiles receiving the Spirit with what the Lord had said about that subject (11:16). No doubt Peter became even more clear as he later read and interacted with Paul’s epistles. But change comes as our thinking changes through God’s Word.

5) God changes us by getting us to see that He is sovereign and we are not.

There is a basic lesson that we all need to learn, although we’re all slow to learn it. Repeat it after me: “I am not the Lord of the church; Jesus is!” This is not my church; it’s His church. He is in charge and He can do as He pleases, and He doesn’t even need to consult with me! If we’re not careful, we can end up standing in God’s way (11:17).

6) God changes us so that He can use us in greater ways to fulfill His sovereign purpose in saving the lost.

These things happened about seven years after the Day of Pentecost, and the gospel was still bottled up pretty much among the Jews! Philip had seen the Samaritans get saved and the Ethiopian eunuch. But the apostles were pretty much still in Jerusalem ministering to the Jews. God had to jar Peter and use some persecution (11:19) to get the message flowing to the Gentiles.

But, sadly, the Jerusalem church never really caught on. Their Jewish identity was so dominant that they did not launch a mission to the Gentiles, even after Peter’s experience. Maybe they figured that the Cornelius experience was an interesting one-time event, but they didn’t take it beyond there. In time, the significance of the Jerusalem church waned. The rest of Acts is mostly taken up with the Gentile mission through the church at Antioch and the missionary journeys of Paul. The lesson for us is that if we do not respond to the opportunities that God gives us, He will set us aside and use others.

Conclusion

The reason that the Trout family is in our church is that I received a phone call from a man in Phoenix working with the Southwest CBA. He said that he had a man in Flagstaff who wanted to reach out to the Spanish speaking community here, but he couldn’t find a church that would share that vision. I asked him how much financial support we had to commit to. He said, “None. They just need a church to be behind their vision and to provide a place where they can meet.” I said, “Send him here!” I knew that if we shut the door to reaching out to this segment of our city, the Lord would not bless this church.

God’s purpose is to be glorified as His people reach out to those from every people group with the good news of His saving grace. If your thinking is not in line with God’s purpose, I pray that He will use this message to whack you on the side of the head!

Discussion Questions

1. Discuss: Missions is not a program in the church; it is the program of the church.
2. Why is a mono-cultural church (“Baby Boomers,” etc.) not biblical? Why should the church be multi-cultural/racial?
3. What are some American church traditions that may hinder our outreach to this culture?
4. Is there any wrong thinking that we as a church (or you as an individual) need to change to conform to God’s Word?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2001, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation