Everyone Has Access to Jesus

15 When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as the Spirit fell on us in the beginning. 16 I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”

18 Once the apostles and other believers heard this, they calmed down. They praised God and concluded, “So then God has enabled Gentiles to change their hearts and lives so that they might have new life.”

I. Introduction

II. The Backstory

Remember why he was in Joppa, resurrection of Dorcas and stayed with Simon the Tanner. It was while he was there that he got this vision.

a. To the Jews, Wild Animals were unclean. So were Gentiles, they were physically unclean due to circumcision, the foods they ate, and how they cared for themselves.

The believers at the time were Jewish. The apostles taught in the main area of the synagogues to other Jews. They considered themselves still Jewish, they still celebrated the festivals. They felt they were more enlightened because they saw and believed in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Messiah.

b. Cornelius on the other hand was not Jewish. He was a Roman Centurion who was influenced by the Jewish people in believing in God. So he may not worship the same way as the Jewish would, he wasn’t allowed, but he did believe and tried to live according to precepts of God the best he could.

III. Peter, through the vision had to come to the conclusion that the Gentiles were just as welcomed into the body of Christ as they were.

Two things proved this to him which I feel are equally important for us to understand.

Nothing God makes is dirty. God doesn’t create anything that He does not finds pride in and wants a relationship with, and loves. However, we can make ourselves unclean. We get dirty. We take things in that pollutes us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

But through the Power of the Holy Spirit, we can be made new, pure, clean! Peter realized that the same Holy Spirit that came upon them at Pentecost, came upon the Gentile Centurion named Cornelius.