Sermon Tone Analysis

When I was a child my family would take trips to Portugal almost every other year and our trips to Portugal were never complete without visiting the ever famous tourist trap Fatima.

For those who don't know the story of Fatima well apparently Mary the mother of Jesus came down from heaven and appeared to three children and provided a message from God.

On the site where this children were visited they built this incredible church, beautiful building with a shrine dedicated to the place where Mary visited the three children.

People every year make a pilgrimage to the church and go with the hope that Mary will bless them and their hope is laid in a plan of Salvation that apparently Mary brought to them.

This plan of Salvation involves works, and personal sacrifices to deal with sin and all for the purpose of glorifying Mary.

It places responsibility of being cleansed from sin squarely on man and man's own ability.

Apparently Mary told these children that God is offended by our sin, and we have to fix the problem.

That is her message, that is her plan.

The worst part of this is you can do all Mary asked and still wonder if it is enough for you to get to heaven.

I have witnessed first hand people walk on their knees for about a mile on a marble path sacrificing their own comfort, in agony and pain praying the rosary, which is just rote prayer, believing in their hearts this will bring about salvation for them.

People believe this place is so holy, that they bring empty jugs and fill them with water from the faucets around the complex because they believe it has special powers.

People so easily fall for these kinds of shenanigans for one reason and one reason only, they want to believe.

They want to believe in Salvation.

They believe this will get them saved and they place their hope in this plan that an apparition of Mary spoke.

This is sad and heartbreaking because these people are all looking for the plan of salvation and they aren't even looking to God's plan which He fulfilled 1900 years earlier, they are seeking it through someone whom they deified not through the One who designed the plan.

God has already established His plan of Salvation and He is the One who determines who can be saved and He is the One who cleanses people of sin and He is the only One who deserves glory for granting life to mankind.

It is a good thing God is the One who established this plan and provided a solution to the problem of sin because if it were solely up to man well then we would be utterly doomed.

When it comes to the reality of salvation, being saved from sin, going to heaven people have their own preconceived notions of how it should be and what needs to be done.

It gets to the point that people will impose regulations or even make up ways of being saved and even who can be saved.

This comes from man imposing their ideology and their thinking on what God has done, is doing and will do.

The Jews had this problem also.

And God deals with this in our passage this morning.

When we looked at Acts 10 we looked at the Six components of Salvation which for the most part all revolved around us, man and what man's role in salvation is, for the most part.

We have to pursue, acknowledge, obey, believe, listen and receive.

Now as we move into Acts 11 we will focus more on God and His part in Salvation, because lets be honest Salvation is not about us.

This morning we will focus on God's plan of Salvation through the cleansing of sin by the power of the Holy Spirit that can't be thwarted by man and brings Him Glory.

God's plan of Salvation is through His selection, His empowering, and for Repentance.

God's plan of Salvation is through His selection, His empowering, and for Repentance

If you have your Bible's turn with me to Acts 11:1-18

In verses 1-3 Luke changes the scene once again.

When last we saw Peter he was at the house of Cornelius in Cesarea and he was asked to stay for a little while, how long I do not know, but it was long enough for word to spread to all Judea that Peter went to the Gentiles.

The news traveled all the way back to Jerusalem which is the hub of the church at the moment.

Luke in the second half of verse 2 introduces the problem, "those who were circumcised took issue with him."

The circumcised people, that is the covenant people of Israel, those who were born of Abraham's line, and took on the sign of the covenant God had made with Abraham, they were taking issue with Peter's mission to the Gentiles.

In verse 3 is were we find the two fold issue, the two fold accusation, "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them."

This is pretty bad for Peter to do, to go and minister to Gentiles that might have been over looked for these Christians who grew up under the law, but to go to their house and to have fellowship with them, to break bread with them, that was an absolute no-no.

The real issue is that theses circumcised Jewish-Christians believed that if the Gentiles had recieved the gospel that the only way they could be welcomed into the church is if they took on the sign of the circumcision, in essence they believed they need to go the Jewish ritualistic cleansing to be welcomed into the family of God.

The fact that Luke writes here in verse 2 "those who were circumcised" points to a specific group of Jewish believers who believe that the Gentiles should become Jews if they are to be followers of God.

These people want an explanation as to why Peter would do such a thing, what was on his mind, why would he dishonor God in such a way by going to the Gentiles, those who are not covenant people, those who do not belong to God and eat with them without the gentiles first taking the sign of the covenant.

The church leaders took issue with Peter because Peter didn't follow Mosiac law and thus Peter by what these people believed was not following God.

The question raised here is not weather or not the Gentiles should have recieved the gospel but how Peter could have fellowship with them if they have not been circumcised.

Ritualistically they are unclean and thus not able to have fellowship with God or even have fellowship with the church.

This becomes an issue of God's plan of salvation versus man's plan for God's salvation.

How does someone become cleansed by God in God's plan of Salvation.

God's will in this new covenant is to do something new, something the Israelites have never experienced and that is to bring about a cleansing or purification of the heart that doesn't need to be ritualistic.

God's will for Salvation is internal, God's will for Salvation is at His discretion, God's will for Salvation is through His Holy Spirit God's will for Salvation can't be thwarted by man God's will for Salvation is His glorification and God's will for Salvation grants repentance.

As Peter provides his explanation and mind you this is not a trial and he is not making a defence just explaining the reason for his going to the gentiles and having fellowship with them.

His explanation for God's plan of salvation begins with Salvation through God's selection.

Salvation through God's Cleansing

In verses 4-14 Peter provides his explanation of events.

We read in verse 4 that Peter began to explain himself in "orderly sequence," Peter provide events from his own perspective not from Cornelius'.

He begins with being in Joppa praying, he fell into a trance and saw a vision, the vision entailed all the creature of earth, all that God had created.

This is interesting and I didn't notice earlier in chapter 10 that the list of animals is reminiscent to the list in Genesis.

In Genesis 1:20-25 is the account of the fifth day of creation and the beginning half of the sixth day.

It is a clear picture of God as the creator of all things, and if you notice at the point of creation what does God say.

Verse 21, "God saw that it was good," then in verse 25 "God saw that it was good."

God sovereignly created all things good even in verse 31 after God the pinnacle of God's creation after the apex of His created order after God created man we find this in verse 31.

God had created everything and because He had created everything, everything was good.

This of course was pre-fall, after the fall no longer was anything good anymore, now because of sin, sin has infected and infested everything.

Still the One who dictates what is good is God.

God is the One who when He created all things all the animals that Peter saw in the sheet, and when God created them they were created good, they were good because God determined they were God.

God is the One who can determine what is common and what is not.

Now when I am talking about the animals being good, I don't mean they are good to eat or they look tasty.

They are morally without blemish or imperfection, same goes for mankind.

Man was created good.

They weren't good because of anything they did, they didn't work up to it, they didn't have to jump through hoops to be good, they were created that way.

God determined it because God made them pure, innocent perfect.

When they sinned they turned their back on God.

They became hostile to God.

They abandoned the purity and the innocents and the goodness that God created them in.

So now as Peter is telling the leadership about the sheet and all the animals that were in the sheet it is pointing to God's sovereignty in His creative power and the fact that the One who created these animals and created man is the One who determines who is clean and who isn't.

Peter is very clear in letting the circumcised men know he followed the law, he was ritualistic.

Verse 8, "But I said, "By no means, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered my mouth."

There were two things the Israelites were very careful to follow, circumcision and the dietary laws.

Peter was clear he had never eaten anything that God had deemed unholy or unclean.

This is in Leviticus and there are so many they are not allowed to eat, the most famous that just about everyone knows, is pork.

There was more then likely a pig squealing in that sheet because how offensive it is to the Israelites.

God was making a point this would have hammered the point home.

Anyway Peter wanted these men to understand how he felt and wanted them to understand the gravity of what the Lord says.

Verse 9 "But a voice from heaven answered a second time, 'What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.'"

The same God who created all things good also has the power to make things clean.

Man doesn't choose what is clean and what isn't, man doesn't decide what is good and what isn't.

Man doesn't decide what people are good and what people aren't, this is all on God.

Man can't do anything about making others clean.

Yes, you pray for them and you can give them the gospel but you can't make them clean you can't save them you can't take away their sins.

In fact you can't look at the outer appearance of someone and say this person is clean and this person isn't.

I am not talking about needing a shower.

Remember the Pharisees with Jesus were always concerned with the ritualistic washing;

Peter and the others are still focused on the rituals and not on grace and not on God's desire and God work.

Paul says this to the Romans in regard to food;

Later Paul says this to Titus;

God is the One who determines who is clean and who isn't.

He chose me, in the same way He chose Peter to go to Cornelius.

Peter is a picture of us, hard headed, he doesn't wand to go.

So God needs to make the point he has to go.

When ever God wants to make a point He typically repeats what He has to say three times.

I am not trying to make a big deal out of the number three only make the observation God does repeat Himself to make a point and many times it is three times.

Peter explains he was told to go with the gentile men who came and it was the Spirit's explicit instructions to go without putting up a fight and without doubting God's work in this.

The 6 men went with Peter for a very important reason, to witness what God was doing.

All they need for witnesses are two, there are six, there would be no refuting what God was doing with this amount of witnesses.