Peter's Second Conversion Series

Acts 10:27-47 is read before the sermon.

There’s a powerful story tucked away in the middle chapters of Acts. Our story tantalizes us with angels & visions but at it’s essence it is the story about our 2 main characters to today’s story, Cornelius & Peter. Cornelius represents the power of Rome, a Navy Seal (if you will) of the great Roman nation. Peter represents the power of God, a preacher of the first rank, if you will. It is a really long story that we do not have time to read it in its entirety.

Now, I want you to watch for two conversions in our story today – a conversion for both Cornelius & for Peter. Each man had a powerful turning point & each man had a powerful story they would tell around campfires for years to come. If God had not intervened, the 2 men would have never spoken a word to one another. This morning we examine a story where the gospel and prejudice intersect. Be amazed at the power of the gospel.

1. Prejudice Comes Easy (Peter)

Have you ever noticed how many problems prejudice causes? Liberals despise conservatives (and vice-versa) & teenagers think their parents are stupid. Yes, generations divide us, ideology divides us, race divides us, & now even gender divides us. Few things unite us anymore. To correct some of this, our workplaces have often adopted political correctness forcing people to behave when inside we begrudge what’s being done to us. So many of us have developed antibodies to any talk about prejudice & race because of the sensational media attention in recent years. Yet, racism & prejudice are not going away. Nor, is it is uniquely an American problem. The Nazi’s slaughter 6 million Jews. The Japanese slaughter 6 million Chinese, Koreans, & Filipinos among others. Sunni versus Shiite Muslims, and Palestinians vs. Israelis. And while few of us will murder one another, all of us in this room have prejudice no matter who we are.

Now all this brings me to Peter, one of the most famous Christ followers in history. You will not understand the importance of Peter’s vision of the sheet until you understand that has prejudice as a Jewish person. When meet Peter in our story, we already see him working on his prejudice. Peter is staying in a tanner’s house in Joppa. Jews wouldn’t have stayed in a tanner’s house because of kosher laws. Jews couldn’t be around anything dead.

1.1 Peter – A Better Version of Jonah

Peter is in Joppa just like Jonah fled to Joppa years before. God’s command to Jonah was simple: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:2) Why was Jonah so stubborn against God’s command? Jonah didn’t want God to show compassion on Israel’s enemies. Jonah wanted God to pulverize Nineveh, the last capital of Assyria. Jonah is rebelling because Jonah knows the true nature of God: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.’” (Jonah 4:1-2)

God’s has grace to people who sin against Him. Every Jewish person would have hated the mention of the city of Nineveh. Archeologists recently discovered an inscription on a local Assyrian temple. The inscription refers to the king of Assyria, Ashur-nasir-apli II (883-859) as flaying his enemies’ skins & draping these skins over a pile of human bodies. The inscription goes on to say that such skins were draped over the walls as well as placed on stakes around the pile itself.

This city inspired terror for Jonah and every Jewish city of Israel from the days of Jonah’s grandparents. Peter is the new Jonah. Where Jonah was forced at gunpoint, if you will… God is working with Peter to go willingly. What is significant about Cornelius’ story isn’t just the fact that one more person comes to know the grace of God, it’s the type of person Cornelius represents – Peter would have never been in his home.

1.2 Masada

Can we really appreciate how truly challenging God’s command to the early believers was? Allow me to take you away from the story of Peter & Cornelius to a time about forty years later. It’s a story of some of the first people who would read our account when Luke published Acts. The book of Acts was published during the time the Romans were conquering Jerusalem. Imagine if American Christians shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) shared a message something to effect, “Jesus died and rose again for Japanese people to experience the love of God.” Or, what if during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) when missiles where placed on Cuba, American Christians were to share a message something to effect, “Jesus died & rose again for Japanese people to experience the love of God.” While these Jewish Christians were reading this story about Peter sharing Christ’s love and mercy to the Roman Cornelius, the Romans were slaughtering Jews wholesale throughout Israel.