Download The Kingdom Network-Acts 10-11.18

What is a sin recognized as a major
problem in this country, yet most of
us will deny we contribute to it?
What is a sin recognized as a major
problem in this country, yet most of
us will deny we contribute to it?
Being racist.
Food
The Kingdom Community-Part I
March 11-Barriers to the Kingdom
Community (Acts 10).
The Kingdom Community-Part II
March 18-Culture, customs and the
Kingdom community (Acts 10 &
19v23-40).
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Influential leader
among early Church.
Like most Jews, held
on to the custom of
not associating with
Gentiles.
Peter
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Centurion, leading the
Italian regiment.
Unlike most Gentiles,
he was not an idol
worshipper but feared
God.
Cornelius
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Prayed at noon time.
Received vision from
God.
Received instruction
from God.
Send men on a journey
to find Peter.
Stayed at unclean
Jewish tanner’s home.
Peter
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Prayed at 3pm.
Received angelic
visitation.
Received instruction
from God.
Went on a journey to
find Cornelius.
Peter stayed in his
home, considered
unclean by Jews.
Cornelius
The social network
• People connecting people
creating growing network.
The Kingdom network
God connecting people-who then connect
other people, creating growing network.
Divinely arranged encounters
• We are used by God to bring people together
to hear the Gospel.
• God brings people in contact with us at the
right time for us to learn and grow as
Christians.
Peter’s vision
• “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never
eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice
spoke to him a second time, “Do not call
anything impure that God has made clean.”
• C.f: Leviticus 11:43-47
Mark 17v15-16, 18-19
• Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said
“Listen to me, everyone, and understand this,
Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by
going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a
man that makes him ‘unclean.’
• “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that
nothing enters a man from the outside can make
him ‘unclean’? For it doesn’t go into his heart but
into his stomach, and then out of his body.” (In
saying this, Jesus declared all foods “clean.”)
Luke 5v30-31
• But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law
who belonged to their sect complained to his
disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax
collectors and “sinners”? Jesus answered
them “It is not the healthy who need a doctor,
but the sick. I have not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance.
• Who do we prefer to eat and drink with?
Peter’s justification-28b
• “You are well aware that it is against our law
for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit
him. But God has shown me that I should not
call any man impure or unclean.”
Luke 8v5-7
• When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a
centurion came to him, asking for help.
“Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home
paralyzed and in terrible suffering.” Jesus said
to him, “I will go and heal him.”
Peter’s issues.
• Justified his actual prejudice against Gentiles
with selective bible verses, and his own
cultural laws.
• Do we also justify our own racist and
discriminatory attitude and actions?
The Kingdom network
God’s plan was to show Peter:• The Kingdom of God was not exclusive for
Jewish believers only.
• Being spiritually clean was not a matter of
external observations of rituals and rules. but
by realizing the cleansing work of the Cross.
The Kingdom network
• The church is to open her doors to all people,
regardless of their race, status & background.
• We can be more inclined to associate with
people based on external rather than internal
attributes.
• We can be too self righteous to admit we have
racist or discriminatory tendencies.
“…God does not show favoritism but
accepts men from every nation who
fear him and do what is right”.
Acts 10v35
James 2v1-4
• My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord
Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. Suppose a
man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring
and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby
clothes also comes in. If you show special
attention to the man wearing fine clothes and
say, “Here’s a good seat for you”, but say to the
poor man “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor
by my feet”, have you not discriminated among
yourselves and become judges with evil
thoughts?
Objections-chapter 11v1-3
• The apostles and the brothers throughout
Judea heard that the Gentiles also received
the word of God. So when Peter went up to
Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized
him and said, “You went into the house of
uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
Are we fishes of ALL men, or privately wish
some types of people don’t come to FBC?
(Why don’t they can go to another church with
more of their kind?)
Of course I accept
you as my equal.
John Piper
• “I was, in those years, manifestly racist. As a
child and a teenager my attitudes and actions
assumed the superiority of my race in almost
every way without knowing or wanting to
know anybody who was black, except Lucy,
our family cleaner lady”.
“Bloodlines: Race, Cross and the Christian.”
Gal 3v26-29
• You are all sons of God through faith in Christ
Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the
promise.
More objections-chapter 15v5
• Some men came down from Judea to Antioch
and were teaching the brothers: “ Unless you
are circumcised, according to the custom
taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”
• Then some of the believers who belonged to
the party of the Pharisees stood up and said,
“The Gentiles must be circumcised and
required to obey the law of Moses.”
Maybe if you try be more like us,
we’ll let you join our club..
Acts 15v19-21
• “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should
not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are
turning to God.”
• Are we making it difficult for those of different
racial and social backgrounds to become
Christians?
Even more objections-the crisis in the
Galatia church
• Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision,
why am I still being persecuted? In that case
the offense of the cross has been abolished.
As for those agitators, I wish that they would
go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
Gal 5v11-12
Gal 2v11-13
• When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him
to his face, because he was clearly in the
wrong. Before certain men came from James,
he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when
they arrived, he began to draw back and
separate himself from the Gentiles because he
was afraid of those who belonged to the
circumcised group. The other Jews joined him
in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy
even Barnabas was led astray.
Gal 2v11-13
• When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him
to his face, because he was clearly in the
wrong. Before certain men came from James,
he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when
they arrived, he began to draw back and
separate himself from the Gentiles because he
was afraid of those who belonged to the
circumcised group. The other Jews joined him
in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy
even Barnabas was led astray.
• If the Apostle Peter struggled with prejudice,
what are the chances we have the same
problem?
• If the Apostle Peter struggled with prejudice,
what are the chances we have the same
problem?
• We ALL discriminate against some groups of
people and individuals.
• If the Apostle Peter struggled with prejudice,
what are the chances we have the same
problem?
• We ALL discriminate against some groups of
people and individuals.
• Being able to socialize well with people of
different racial and social backgrounds does
not mean you do not discriminate them.
• If the Apostle Peter struggled with prejudice,
what are the chances we have the same
problem?
• We ALL discriminate against some groups of
people and individuals.
• Being able to socialize well with people of
different racial and social backgrounds does
not mean you do not discriminate them.
• Racism and prejudice is often rooted in other
sins.
“This country, everybody is racist.
Now, everybody talks about his own
interest, doesn’t care about other
people’s interest. So let’s not hide
and say we are not racist.”
Tun Mahathir Mohammad,
February 22, Malaysian
Insider.
• Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to
them that hate you, and pray for them which
despise you, and persecute you”? Was not Amos
an extremist for justice: “let justice roll down like
waters and righteousness like an ever flowing
stream”? Was not Paul an extremist for the
Christian gospel:“ I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus”? Was not Martin Luther an
extremist: “ Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise,
so help me God”? And John Bunyan:“I will stay in
jail to the end of my days before I make a
butchery of my conscience”?...so the question is
not whether we will be extremists, but what kind
of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for
hate or for love?”
Martin Luther King
John Piper
Reaching out to other communitiesthe Cornelius model.
• Begins with a change of attitude.
• Choose wisely those from the community
who are receptive to the Gospel.
• Make effort to go/connect with the
community.
• Sharing the gospel is not enough-follow up
with genuine fellowship.
Ephesians 2v14-16
• For he himself is our peace, who has made the
two one and has destroyed the barrier, the
dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh
the law with it’s commandments and regulations.
His purposes was to create in himself one new
man out of the two, thus making peace, and in
this one body to reconcile both of them to God
through the cross, by which he put to death their
hostility. He came and preached peace to you
who were far away and peace to those who were
near. For through him we both have access to the
Father by one Spirit.
“In 2008, many hoped the election of an African
American president would finally bridge the
racial divide. Today, we are left wondering why
racial barriers have not abated…the only
solution powerful enough to bring about
reconciliation is the gospel of Jesus Christ- the
gospel that announces that through his blood,
Jesus has demolished the dividing wall, that
separates humanity and brings all ethnicities
together into one body: the church.
Juan R. Sanchez. Jr, Pastor, High Ponte Baptist
Church, Austin, Texas. Committee member,
The Gospel Coalition.