We're going to be looking in Acts chapter 10.

In Acts chapter 10, I'm going to read the entire thing. The verses aren't going to be on the screen, so there's a lot of them. And we just decided not to do it that way. So the page numbers in the Bible that's on the pew in front of you are available. Or if you have an app on your phone, that's perfectly acceptable as well.

Or if you bring your Bible and I applaud you for that. Going old school. I love it. The days where everybody carried their Bible to church are getting fewer and far between. We have our phones and I read my Bible on my phone more than I do on a paper Bible, just because it's convenient and I have it with me everywhere.

But there's something about bringing your Bible to church, underlining it. If the Spirit says, hey, look at that part. Don't want you to forget that. There's something beautiful about that. I'm not even going to be mad if you underline it in the pew Bible, but maybe don't use highlighters, those aggravate me.

I don't know why some of you highlight your Bibles. I'm just messing with you. I don't care. You can do what you want.

Acts, chapter 10. There's this great. It's not a story, it's a recounting, a retelling. It's an account of the details of what happened. And we get transported back and forth to different locations, different geographies.

In this story, we get to see things that are happening. So some parts simultaneously and some parts actually in the providence of God, happening days in advance or hours in advance of the other, but having to line up perfectly for it to work out how God ordained it. And so I want you to follow along. Notice how it kind of goes, jumps back and forth between the household of a man named Cornelius and the place where Peter the Apostle is staying. So I'm going to read this chapter in its entirety.

Bear with me, there's a lot of verses here, but I want you to hear them all. Now. There was a man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian regiment. He was a devout and God fearing man, as was all his household. He did many acts of charity for the people and prayed to God regularly about 3 o' clock 1 afternoon, or some of your Bibles might say the ninth hour.

He saw clearly, by the way, that is an hour of prayer that the Jewish people observed. They prayed three times A day. Remember Daniel in the Old Testament, who the king made a law that you couldn't pray to anyone other than the king for 30 days, which is really stupid because he can't hear everyone. He's just a man. But he was acting like a God and he expected people to buy into his delusions of power and act like he was a God as well.

And they went along with it because why not? And Daniel said, oh, I know why not. Because I worship the one true God and I'm not going to stop praying to him. He didn't hide, he didn't go into a closet, he didn't. He didn't just sleep in his bed a little while longer and pray to God before he got up.

He opened the shutters to the windows of his house so that everyone could see him and he faced east, which was towards Jerusalem. He was in exile in Babylon. He faced east three times a day despite laws in the government that prevented him from doing this. They couldn't stop him and they tried to stop him. And according to their law, he had to be thrown in a den of lions.

They dug a pit in the ground and they put lions in it and they didn't feed them for a few days and they were hungry and. And so they tossed him down in there and the lions didn't eat him because God shut their mouths. And he says an angel was sent here to shut the mouths of the lions. And so God saved him from that. And so he prayed though these times of prayer three times a day.

And Cornelius is not a gen. He's a Gentile, he's not a Jewish person, but he is praying at one of the Jewish hours of prayer. So notice as we read this his devotion to God, the God Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, the one true God that we worship today. Amen. Verse 2.

He was a devout, God fearing man, as was all his household. He did many acts of charity for the people and prayed to God regularly. About three o' clock one afternoon, he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God who came to him and said to him, cornelius. Staring at him and becoming greatly afraid. Cornelius replied, what?

What is it, Lord? The angel said to him, your prayers and your acts of charity have gone up as a memorial before God, who views your prayers that way, who views your giving and your charitable deeds and the money that you give, whether it's to the mission of the church or whether it's to people individually who views that as a memorial offering a fragrant incense rising up To God. That's how God sees it. He says, verse 5. Now send men to Joppa and what's the word?

Summon a man named Simon who is called Peter. This man is staying as a guest with a man named Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea. When the angel who had spoken to him departed, Cornelius called two of his personal servants and a devout soldier from among those who served him. And when he had explained everything to them, he sent them to Joppa. About noon the next day, while they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray.

He became hungry and wanted to eat. But while they were preparing the meal, a trance came over him. He saw heaven opened and an object, something like a large sheet descending, being let down to earth by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four footed animals and reptiles of the earth and wild birds. Then a voice said to him, get up, Peter.

Slaughter and eat men. Amen. Amen.

This is like a Louisiana, like a bayou Cajun person, like smorgasbord here, okay? All the animals that were considered unclean to the Jewish people heretofore, God's telling them to eat. It's probably like an alligator in there. There's like, you know, there's hogs. Like he can eat bacon now is the point, you know, like, amen.

And so God's saying, like, here's all the things that were considered uncle and shellfish maybe, I don't know. And he's like, hey, you know, all the things that I once told you not to eat, now I'm telling you to eat. And I love this verse. I work with a guy that's a vegan. When I'm at this school bus yard and he's, you know, bless his heart, he's a vegan.

And I give him jokes about that. I'm like, after you've gone home and you found some plants in the yard to go up and just munch on them or whatever it is you do for dinner, you know, I just give him a hard time and he laughs about it. But Anyway, he's like 65 and healthier than me, so I don't know. But anyway, so this sheet comes down, he says, kill and eat. And oh, where's the verse at?

Let's see. Oh, yeah, verse 14. But Peter said, certainly not, Lord. How many times have you argued with God? Certainly not, Lord, for I have never eaten anything defiled or ritually unclean.

The voice spoke to him again a second time. What God has made clean, you must not consider unclean. This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into heaven. Now, while Peter was puzzling over what the vision he had seen could signify, the men sent by Cornelius had learned where Simon's house was and approached the gate. They called out to ask if Simon, known as Peter, was staying there as a guest.

While Peter was still thinking seriously about the vision, the spirit said to him, look, these three men are looking for you. But get up and go down and accompany them without hesitation, because I have sent them. So Peter went down to the men and said, here I am. I'm the person you're looking for. Why are you here?

They said, cornelius the centurion, a righteous and God fearing man, well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to summon you to his house and to hear a message from you. So Peter invited them in and entertained them as guests. How presumptuous is that, by the way? He's a guest at someone's house and he invited people over. Like, I've done that before.

We've been in Tennessee, stayed at a friend's house. Instead of, like, paying money for a hotel. A lot more fun staying with them. And I was like, hey, I'm going to invite some people over. Is that cool?

And they're like, yeah, that's fine. Like, as people that they're friends with too, anyway. But there's something awesome when you're like that at home in someone's house that you can invite other people over. It's a good time. So the next day he got up and set out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him.

The following day, he entered Caesarea. Now, Cornelius was anxiously waiting for them, and he called together his relatives and close friends. So when Peter came, Cornelius met him, fell at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter helped him up, saying, stand up, for I too am a mere mortal. By the way, in some of my research, I was looking up something about Cornelius and I was directed to a Catholic church website that had a lot of details about what Cornelius did.

He actually left his Roman. According to their history, he left his Roman centurionship and actually became a pastor and was placed in bishop over. I forget where they had sent him to. Anyway, he ended up, like, having some guy that didn't like him that was, like, ruling over a city. And they had a temple there, and Cornelius was proclaiming against it, and the guy was going to arrest.

And then there was this big earthquake and the temple collapsed and the guy's like, oh, holy cow. Like, this guy is legit. And then according to this story, this isn't in the Bible. This is just, like, their history of it. According to this story, that guy that hated him, his wife and son had been in the temple when it collapsed, and he feared that they were dead.

And this guy hated God, and it was his mission to destroy anything that spoke of the one true God. But then somebody reported that they heard the voices of the wife and child in there, and they were able to dig them out, and they were safe. And he, at that time, turned to God and served God. So I love that story. But one of the things is they call Cornelius in their history, they call him Saint Cornelius, and they talk about how he had worshiped Peter.

And they say that, you know, as Peter was the first pope, this was great. And I'm like, well, here's one problem with that. Peter tells them, like, don't worship me. I'm just a man. And I'm not trying to, like.

I'm not trying to, like, take potshots at Catholic tradition. I know a lot of you come from that. I just want to encourage you that Peter was an awesome guy. I love Peter. I love everything, like, about his example, the good and the bad, because I learned so much from the bad stuff that he did, because I follow in his footsteps so many times, and I'm like, oh, okay, I shouldn't do that.

You know, like, Peter got corrected for that, and God's, like, correcting me about it. But then I look at this, and I'm like, okay, he's human. He was elevated as far as, like, his authority, his position of power. He was an apostle that Jesus Christ had commissioned to do important work. But Peter here says, like, don't honor me special above anyone else.

Don't worship me. Don't put me on a pedestal, guys. You should be thinking that way about anyone that you see, whether it's on this platform, any other platform, whatever it is, look at all of us and say, listen, you're just a person. And at some point, no matter how good your leadership might be, at some point you're gonna fail me. And I apologize for that in advance, but I will at some point.

I don't think I've done it in a major way right now, by the way. I'm not about to confess something crazy. You know, it's not one of those services I like. You see some of these national guys, you know, like, hey, I had a thing. You know?

But Peter, Peter, he says, I'm just a mere mortal. I'm a man. The Apostle Paul would say the same thing. One time he had been bitten by a snake. And they're like, ah, he was a murderer.

And he didn't, you know, didn't escape judgment. And then he shakes it off, everything's fine. You're like, ah, maybe he's a God. I'm like, that's quite a leap, you know, he's like, don't bring sacrifices out to us. I'm just a guy.

Peter continued talking with him as he went in, and he found many people gathered together. He said to them, you guys know that it's unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. Yet God has shown me that I should call no person defiled or ritually unclean. Therefore, when you sent for me, I came without any objection. Now can I ask why I'm here?

Isn't that great? Like Peter, he's preached to thousands before this. He understands what he's supposed to do when he's declaring the gospel. And yet he's saying, why am I here? Sometimes I feel that way as a pastor.

I'm like, I don't know what even accomplished with that. Why am I here? Did I say the wrong thing? Do I have what it takes? Why am I even here?

That's a natural thing to feel for a lot of people. And yet, Peter, he says, I don't understand why I'm here. Sometimes, like, duh, God showed you they're not unclean. He showed you that what he has made clean, you should accept and welcome in. There's a whole bunch of people gathered.

Do what you're supposed to do, Peter. Well, Cornelius replies, four days ago at this very hour, in other words, this was two days before Peter had his vision. But Peter was having his vision right at the appropriate time for those men from Cornelius to go knocking on the door. God ordained the times of all of these things so that it would play out just perfectly in his timing. Some of you guys are waiting on things in God's timing.

And you need to understand that God is never late.

Cornelius said, Four days ago, at this very hour, at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, I was praying in my house. And suddenly a man in shining clothing stood before me and he said, cornelius, your prayer has been heard. Some of you need to hear that today. The prayers that you've been praying, God has not ignored God. They didn't get, like, filtered out in a spam folder in somewhere in his email.

God hears your prayers. Your prayers have been heard. Your acts of charity have been remembered before God. Therefore, send to Joppa and summon Simon, who is called Peter. This man is staying as a guest in the house of Simon the Tanner by the sea.

Therefore I sent for you at once. And you were kind enough to come. Kind enough to answer a summons. You know, that's like you were summoned for jury duty. And you were kind enough to show up, you know, at the punishment of different various penalties.

So now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to say to us. Peter's nervous because he didn't bring notes. You know, like he didn't have a sermon plan. He's like, God didn't tell me that. He just told me to go with him.

But then Peter started speaking. Verse 34. I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism in dealing with people. But in every nation, the person who fears him and does what is right is welcomed before him. You know the message he sent for the people of Israel, proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ.

He is Lord of all. And you know what happened throughout Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John announced with respect to Jesus from Nazareth, that God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil because God was with him. We are witnesses of all the things he did, both in Judea and in Jerusalem. And they killed him by hanging him on a tree.

But God raised him up on the third day and caused him to be seen not by all the people, but by us, by the witnesses that God had already chosen who ate and drank with him. After he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to warn them that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. About him, all the prophets testify that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins and through his name. While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the message.

The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were greatly astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they all heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, can anyone withhold the water of baptism from these people who have received the Holy Spirit, just as we did? So he gave orders to have them baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for several days.

So I have a question.

Do we Seek God or does God seek us?

It's a doctrinal question that a lot of theologians have argued about over time. You know, is it us reaching out to God and searching for him, or is God seeking us out to follow Him? Is it both? I think I heard of both. I believe it is both.

Because while Cornelius is actively seeking God, While Cornelius is actively trying to follow God, he's obeying him, he's praying to him, he's giving money to the poor. He's doing all these things. Not only that, but he enjoyed a good relationship both with his friends and his household. As a man of his position in his time, he would have had different servants and slaves and people that worked for him. Of course, all the troops and soldiers that worked for him.

And it seems to be that he was in good standing with them. They respected and loved him. But also the Jewish people did. Cornelius wouldn't have heard about the God of the Jews. He wouldn't have heard about Yahweh if not for having a good relationship, working relationship with the people that he was in charge over.

A Roman centurion would have been responsible over maybe up to about 600 troops in his regiment, which was called the Italian Cohort. They would have been, of course, Italians that had come, and they would have been like volunteer army, basically. And they volunteered to serve under him. And so he has a voluntary army that's working for Rome, but they can kind of come and go if they want. And they seem to be happy enough working for him, the Jewish people.

They get along good with them. So much so that he begins to fear their God and to serve and honor their God and to give money to the poor in the name of God. By the way, this just hit me. This isn't in my notes, but there's plenty of times where people want to give money, they want to serve people, but it's not in the name of God. It's because of some type of compulsion, some type of.

Maybe even a burden on their heart for them or whatever it might be. It might be an ideology that they have and that they buy into that says, oh, well, we have to take care of this people, this group. They're marginalized. They're in trouble. So if we do this, I got to tell you, in my opinion, the only true way to serve someone is out of an overflowing heart of love for Jesus Christ.

And if you love Jesus Christ so much that you want to serve him, Jesus said, what? When you have done this for the least of these people among you, you've done it as if you were doing it to me. So serving Jesus, as we reach our hands out to those in need around us, is the way that we show our love for God. And Cornelius understood that. He's giving alms to people as part of his faith, as part of his trust in God.

And he has taken up this habit of prayer three times a day, like devoted specific prayer daily. And yet there was something missing in the faith of Cornelius. What he was missing was accurate knowledge. He was missing good doctrine, he was missing theology. He didn't have a full understanding of what it meant to serve God, of who God was, and specifically of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And so even though Cornelius was a good man, a God fearing man, an honorable man, by those around him, we see that there was a large crowd that gathered. Sure, he's a powerful guy. And if a powerful guy says, hey, show up at 3 o' clock on the. On Wednesday, you might be there, right? But, like, they showed up, and they were eagerly anticipating this guest named Peter.

So Cornelius, he's having his prayer time, he's honoring God, but an angel shows up. How many of you pray so frequently, so fervently that angels show up? Not me. Hasn't ever happened yet. I'd love it if it did.

By the way, an angel is a category of divine beings, of spiritual beings. That simply means a messenger, one to bring a message, to deliver a message. And so he is truly an angelic messenger from God. To tell Cornelius something, he's saying, hey, God has noticed. God's noticed you.

God's noticed what you've done. God has seen your gifts. Even though you might be doing like Jesus had said, give so that your left hand doesn't know what your right hand's doing. Give in secret. Don't give.

Standing on the street corners proclaiming it with bullhorns, saying, look at this and hand out some money to people. Give when nobody sees it. Amen. Many of you do that. Many of you have been practicing that.

Many of you understand that already in your lives. And you understand the joy that comes from being able to be a blessing to someone else, maybe even when they don't know it. I've had more people than I can remember that have said, could you hand this card or this gift or this envelope or this check to someone, or can I give a check to the church and then we can give them the money? Like, I don't want them to know it came from me. I don't want them to know where this came from.

I just want to bless them. I just want to help them. Thank you guys for that. It's amazing. It's a blessing to know that you have that kind of heart, and that's what Cornelius did.

But Cornelius, he has this meeting with the angel, and God is going to show him that he's got something else to grow from. He has something that he wants him to do. And so even though he had strong faith, he had strong practice, he still needed more knowledge of true doctrine of who God is. There's some of you today that need to grow in your faith. There's some of you today that have been saved, maybe baptized, maybe even become a member of a church, whatever it might be.

And you're checking off all the boxes you attend regularly. Maybe you've started giving. You've done all these things, but the knowledge of God in your life is deficient. You're not studying the scriptures, you're not digging in daily. You're not drilling into the word of God to say, you know what?

I put my trust in him, but I really don't know him that well. Can you imagine putting trust, like, we do this all the time. Like, you've driven over a bridge before. You might not understand what type of bridge that is. They got all kinds of different styles of construction.

You might not understand that. You just know. Like, I saw a bunch of cars go across it. Seemed to hold them fine. I'm going to give it a go.

Tom told me about years ago with the. What was that bridge? The Skyway Bridge. He went across it eight times that day. Like, the day that it collapsed.

Fortunately, he wasn't on it when it did. Like, he'd been on it eight times that day. It's like, whoo. Can you imagine putting your faith in something that's about to collapse? Whoa.

God's not dead. God's not about to collapse. God is strong and he's faithful, and we put our faith in them. But some of us. Some of us, we.

We don't understand the things of God to the level that we really know why we trust in Him. And there will come a time when something happens in your life where your faith gets shaken, some action happens, and you say, boy, I don't know. I wasn't prepared for this. Is God big enough to handle this? And the answer is, yes, he is.

But if you haven't dug into your faith, you haven't set a foundational doctrine of faith deep enough in your life before that event happens, and you're not ready to Weather through it. So Cornelius was giving this moment, even though he had been seeking God during his life this far, God sought him for a deeper relationship. And not only that, but he was using Cornelius to reach all those that Cornelius had influence over. Can you imagine this? He has maybe 600 soldiers, 600 troops in his regiment, but then he's got family, friends, household servants.

I know we don't like the idea of having slaves, but that was the world that day. And the best thing you can do, if you do find yourself living in a time where we have slaves, is to be a good slave master. Like, I don't know how to say that. That sounds, like, hard to say, given our history in. Well, I can't even just say this country, like, the whole world.

But, you know, the thing is, and I don't even want to get into, like, we still have slavery today, but it's usually around sex trafficking. It's disgusting, and it's prevalent, and it's in our community. We'd like to ignore that and think that that doesn't happen. We did away with slavery, but that's just me getting on a soapbox, and I'll save that for another time. But the best thing you can do if you find yourself having people serving you in your household, is to treat them well, treat them with respect, take care of them, treat them like you would a son or a brother.

And that's the kind of man that Cornelius was. And so he served Yahweh God. He learned about him because he lived amongst Jewish people in his town that lived their faith out so well and faithfully that it was attractive to him. In other words, the Jewish people had lived out their faith in God so well that Cornelius said, I want in on that. By the way, you can do that same thing as you live for Christ.

You can live in such a way that your friends, your family, your neighbors say, man, I see something going on in your life, and I want that in my life. I want that kind of change in my life. So one day he's praying. The angel appears. While he's doing that, he's getting these instructions to send for Peter.

Now, some of the Scriptures might say a different word, and I had you shout it out as I was reading it, but he said, summon Peter. Now, you've got to think of the power hierarchy here. This is a Roman centurion. He's a powerful enough guy, and he's sending men to Peter to summon him. Was it viewed as a summons or an invitation?

Because there's a different like consequence for refusal, right? If you're invited to something and you don't show up, somebody's like, hey, do you want to go bowling? I'm like, no. And they're like, why not? Well, I'm terrible at it, so it'll be fun.

I'm like, no, I hate spending my money on something that makes me look dumb. You know, I just like. They're like, well, I'll pay for it. I'm like, oh, okay. So you'll pay to laugh at me.

Got it. That's fine. I can handle that. I don't mind be the object of your jokes. I just don't want to spend my money on it, you know, I just don't like spending my money on something I'm that terrible at.

Yeah, so he sent three guys. Now if you notice, and I pay attention to the details, this is what I do. He sent three men. Two of them were household servants. I believe that was the invitation part.

The other guy was a soldier. That's the summons part. If you refuse the invitation, it might escalate to a summons. Maybe that guy was there for security on the road. You know, maybe he's there just so people didn't mess with them.

Who knows what. But like, it gets really official when you send a guy, like, with the full, you know, uniform and spear shield. I don't know what all they had, but all the gear, all the fighting gear. And he shows up and like, okay, yes, sir, I guess I'm coming. You know, like.

And so Peter, and remember, Peter was a guy that didn't mind telling the authority no. They said, hey, stop preaching about Jesus. He's like, no, we'll put you in jail. He's like, okay, you already tried that yesterday. And what happened?

Like an angel, let us out. And I'm here preaching again. So no, you know, he didn't mind telling authority what their position was and what he thought about them. I don't either. Like, I don't mind.

I try to be polite, I try to be nice. But it's like, you know, if they really try to get in the way of the work of the gospel, I can tell them where to go away. You thought I was going to say something else, didn't you? Alright, so anyway, ha ha. So he sends these men and they show up.

Now meanwhile, while they're on the way, they're not quite at the house yet. Peter's there. And I got to tell you where Peter's at and what had happened just before this Peter, they were enjoying A time of relative peace and tranquility concerning the Christian faith. Living in the region of Jerusalem and Judea. There had been a time right after when Stephen was martyred.

We looked at him a few weeks ago where Saul had gone off and started persecuting the church. We looked at this, what, last week, where. Well, that was Antioch. Two weeks ago is where Saul was converted. He's going to Damascus to bring back people and arrest them who were Christians, followers of Christ.

And then he gets converted. Christ meets him on the road, he starts serving Jesus Christ. And so for a period of a few years there, things were going smoothly. Nobody was fighting the church or fighting the Christians. So Peter decides he's going to go tour around, just kind of go meet up with all the Christians.

He doesn't have a real missionary purpose as far as like going to reach unreached people groups. He just starts going and visiting the Christians and saying, hey, how's it going? Let me encourage you, let me share a word of faith. Let me exhort you in the word. And so he goes around doing that.

He goes to this one area and there's a man named Aeneas and he's been bedridden for eight years and paralyzed. And Peter's like, I've healed people before. I've seen Jesus heal people before. I know this one. He says, aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you.

Get up. And so the man stands up and he's like, wrap up your bed, you're free to go, man. Woo hoo. Great. Word spreads around about that.

They're like, all right, the power of God is here through the apostle Peter. This is fantastic. And then as that's spreading around, there's some men that bring word to him and they say, could you come up to Joppa? There's this dear lady, this widow named Tabitha or Dorcas, she had both those names. Neither one of them is really on the top list of baby names in 2026 or any real time in the last like 85 to 100 years.

I don't think there's any Tabitha's or Dorcas's in here. I apologize if I said anything like that. But anyway, I'm not making fun of the name. I'm just saying it ain't that popular. But she was okay.

She was loved. She was well loved. And they said she just died. Can you come up here to Joppa, which was kind of like the next town up from where he had been. Now, Joppa was quite known for the town where Jonah had run.

It's a port city. And Jonah had run there when God called him to go and preach the repentance to the people in Nineveh. Jonah hated them. And he says, I'm not doing it. I'm not going there because I know what will happen.

I'll preach to them about you. They'll repent and you'll forgive them, and then you won't destroy them. And I hate them, and I want them dead. He didn't say quite those words. He almost did, though.

It was almost exactly that way. Like, he pretty much just made it clear to God, I hate them and I want them dead. How many of you have ever done that with somebody? Okay, yeah, okay. All right.

I've got the honest people in the group. Thank you. I haven't said it quite that way. I'm like, lord, if you take them home, I will be happy. Which means I've said that.

Yeah, I've said it, too. I apologize. It's not about you guys. Don't worry.

So anyway, So Peter goes up there, and I don't know why they summoned him. I don't know what they thought was going to happen. Maybe they wanted him to, like, speak at her wake or funeral or whatever they do. I don't know. But instead, he just goes up there and he's like, everybody get out of the room.

And he's in the room with the woman that had died four days before. Three days before, I think. Yeah, three days ago. And he's in the room with her. He's alone.

And I think he did this because as far as we know, he hasn't raised anybody from the dead yet. He's done all. He's driven out demons, he's healed people. Told the guy to get up and walk. He's walked on water for a few seconds or whatever, you know, like, he's done a lot of stuff that none of the other apostles had even done.

But he's like, if this don't work, I don't want anybody to see it, you know? Like, I don't want them to be like, ah, you couldn't do it, Peter. You know, you tried. I don't know. Like, I don't know if anybody's really mocking you if you try to raise somebody from the dead.

And it didn't work. But whatever it is, Peter's, like, scared. And so he. This is my opinion, that he was scared. He's like, everybody out.

And then he's like. I think he whispered it so that nobody heard in case they had, like, a cup to the door. He's like, tabitha, get up. And then she did, and she was alive. And he's like, hey, guys, good news.

She's alive again. And they celebrated that she had been a widow who made it her life's mission to take care of other people. They were bringing the things that she had done. They were showing Peter, like, look, she made these. Like, she would sew things and she would make garments and things.

Like, look at all this beautiful work that she did. She put her heart into it, and they just wanted to remember her. And instead, they received her back from the dead so she could continue ministering before God in the way that she did. Some of us, unfortunately, decide while we're still alive that we're going to stop ministering. Some of us decide that while we're still alive that our time, our season of ministry is over.

And that that's a young person's game and somebody else can pick up and do it. But I don't know if you've looked around. Our average age here isn't young. Like, we have some young people. I'm glad you guys are here because for the longest time, I was the young guy in the church, and now it's catching up.

But anyway, it's not a young person's game to minister. If you still got the breath of God in your body, it is your time to serve Christ. So Peter has healed a man. He's raised a woman from the dead. And then they said, would you stay with us for a while?

Now he stays in Joppa, the town that Jonah had run away from God from. But what's interesting here is, did you notice who he was staying with? Another guy named Simon. That was Peter's, like, original name. Simon.

Peter. Simon the tanner. What does a tanner do? A tanner takes animal hides, animal skins, tans them, turns them into leather. It's a process that involves literally every day touching carcasses of dead animals.

That makes you ritually unclean. And it says that you're staying by the sea. You had to have a source of continual source of water in order to kind of wash them and be part of this process. I'm sure you would get, like, environmental lawyers saying, you can't wash that into the sea now, you know, but back then, that's how they did it. And back, like, 30 years ago, that's how we still did it.

So anyway, you know, that's like, this is where the guy lives. But Peter takes up temporary residence in his home. Peter, the man who's about to have this conscience of this, like, crisis of conscience of faith of eating unclean animals and saying, no, Lord, I've never eaten anything unclean. He's like, you're living in a house with a guy who's every day unclean. You're in contact with him every day.

You can't stand here, Peter, and claim your moral high ground. You sit on a religious high horse saying, oh, no, Lord, I'm the perfect, like, perfectly ritually clean observer of the law. I'm great God. He's like, you're living in an unclean house, which God didn't seem to mind. But, like, this is just kind of the irony.

I don't think it was necessarily outright hypocrisy. It's just Peter didn't really even, like, put it together at this point. Even knowing Jesus, even all the stuff that Peter's done, he's still kind of looking at. At the law and saying, okay, I can follow this law. It's like, what about the implication of the law for all these things?

Like, you're ignoring that. And so Peter just still hadn't quite fully gotten it. Remember, he started out as a fisherman. Like, he's a sailor. He's lived a rough life.

He's just found ways like, I can observe the law and the things that I eat, but I can hang out over here with these guys and it won't matter. And God's trying to say to him, actually, I don't care about any of that anymore. What I care about is your heart, and I care for people that are seeking my heart. And so he had to teach Peter this lesson. And so Peter, he's hungry.

It's lunchtime. If you're paying attention, the Bible is telling us all these details. You just have to read it and pay attention. It says where he's at during this time of the day. It's lunchtime, and he's hanging out on the roof of the house.

Now, that sounds cool. It's not like a roof of a house now. Like, there were houses where it had a flat kind of floor. It was an upper deck kind of thing. It was a party deck, if you think about it in modern terms, you know.

And they would have this party deck up there where you could just go hang out. Maybe they'd hang, like, cloth, some shade and everything, and the breeze could blow through. So it was actually the cool part of the home. And he'd hang out up there. And so he's up there, he's having his prayer time.

He's spending time with God, and he gets this vision of the sheep being lowered with all the unclean animals. We talked about that. And God says three different times, the things that I have made clean, don't you dare call unclean. Now, God is today saving people just like he was with Cornelius and his family. God is saving people that we never would have dreamed would fit in.

I sat at District advance yesterday, across the table from a guy who's serving Christ in his church and who knows where else. We didn't get a chance to talk too much, but he's wearing his. He does motorcycle ministry. He's wearing his patch vest. He never took his sunglasses off, so I didn't get to look him in the eye.

But his name was Neo, and I thought that was pretty cool because I liked the movie the Matrix. And anyway, I don't know what his real name was. But, you know, if you had just looked at him, I don't know, you probably wouldn't have judged him. There was nothing to judge him about. But I'm just saying, like, you look at him and you're like, okay, if you're like, the clean one of the group, what do the other guys look like that you're ministering to?

And a lot of people, if those guys came in and sat down, they'd be like, I don't know about this. Am I safe? You know? And it's like, yeah, actually, some of the people that God is reaching, some of the people that he's drawing in, that you least expect, are the ones that are actually closer to God in their prayer life, in their acts of giving and service. They're actually following Christ more closely than you are.

And some of us need to actually get off of our religious traditions and high horses and be able to say, listen, I understand that there's things that I've been told were unclean or dirty and distinct away from. But those are the very people that God is reaching. And he's actually drawing them. They're marching towards him faster than I am because their devotion to him is greater than mine. And I need to understand that.

There's room in the pew next to me. There's room to enjoy table fellowship with them, because he's drawing them to himself. And they're responding in such a way that now I need to learn from them. So Peter's learning these lessons. The vision was repeated three times with a sheet coming down from heaven.

I don't know why three times. Maybe it's because there were three men about to knock on the door. I Need you to understand that. Three visions, three men. Don't call anyone unclean.

Okay, maybe that. Maybe it's just because Peter worked well with threes. Like, three times he denied Jesus three times Jesus restored him in John, chapter 21. Maybe that's it. I don't know what it is.

But what God has made clean don't call unclean. Was drilled into his head three times. Some of us need that drilled into our heads, maybe even down into our souls.

The three people, two were servants, one was a soldier. They show up. Peter agrees to go with them after asking why they have showed up, and he agrees to go with them. He offers them fellowship around the home of Simon that he's staying with. And then the next day, they leave, and they journey together, and they show up at Cornelius home.

As they go there, as they gather, Cornelius has gathered all these people there. As they show up, Cornelius has brought in everyone that he has power or influence or friendship with. He's leveraged everything he's got to bring people here for this one moment. Some of you can utilize your homes, the clubhouses in your mobile home or RV parks that you live in or apartments or whatever it might be. Some of you could utilize the spaces that you have available to you to invite people over and say, listen, and I don't care.

You can invite me. You can invite Troy that's hanging out back here. Hey, wait. Yeah, Troy will come and preach. Like, he'll come and declare the gospel.

He's an evangelist. Like. Like, you can invite somebody. Like, we'll come in and we'll share. If you're like, I'm not the person to do that, but I think I know somebody that is.

Gather the people together, and we'll be there. You know, like, we'll show up, and we'll be part of this, and we'll say, okay, why am I here? And they're like, well, we want to hear about Jesus. I think. I think that's why you would be the one to come here.

Like, absolutely. Let me come and share. By the way, it doesn't have to be a big group. We can meet in your living room. If you got a couch and a couple chairs.

We'll hang out there, get a couple friends around, a couple neighbors, whatever it is, and we'll sit there and we'll talk about the Bible with you. We'll talk about Christ with you. Those are the kinds of things that God is calling people to do. Who can you leverage and influence? Who can you bring into your home, into your community?

Into your neighborhood, whatever it might be, and have somebody present the truth of the gospel to them. Because Christ is seeking people just as people are seeking God. Peter preached a simple message. It told us the things that he said as he tells them about Jesus. And he kind of did this.

Well, you already know about Jesus, don't you? He's like, you've heard what was going on. You heard about him. You heard about John the Baptist. You heard about Jesus.

You're a Roman centurion, Cornelius. You got reports, even though you live a little farther north. You got some stories about what was going on down in Jerusalem. You've heard about this, haven't you? Just because he's heard about it doesn't mean he's heard about it from somebody that has faith in Christ, that can declare the truth of the gospel to him.

And see, Peter had to say, like, you've heard about this stuff, but let me tell you how I've been able to live it. And while he is still talking about his experience with Jesus Christ, he doesn't even give an altar call moment. He doesn't even say anything that he thought was like the big clincher, like the key moment, the bold print moment in his notes. He didn't remember bring a sermon with him. He didn't do that.

He just shared his story. And as he's sharing, did you notice what happened? Without Peter even offering a prayer about it or laying hands on anybody who else showed up, the Holy Spirit showed up. Now, there's a couple good reasons for this one. One reason is because the Holy Spirit wanted to.

He had people there who were willing and receptive. And he says, I'm going to live in the lives of these people and live through them, and my power will be shown and evidenced in their midst. But the other reason was because the Holy Spirit falling on the Gentiles was God's like, you can't argue with it stamp of approval that he had accepted them. The Holy Spirit showing up in the midst of the Gentiles and was evidenced in their case, as it had been in a couple other places that they began speaking in other tongues or languages, languages they didn't know, languages they hadn't, like downloaded Babel or Duolingo or some other thing. They didn't have to learn Spanish on your lunch break, breaking your car or whatever, cassettes back in the day.

They didn't have all that. They just had the Holy Spirit. And he gave them, just like the apostles and the believers on Pentecost, he gave them the ability to Speak in other languages. And so they begin doing this. It's like, totally clear that this is the power of God, the Holy Spirit in their midst.

And so Peter's like, I think they need to be baptized. Now, hold on a second. Isn't this backwards? Don't you get, like, saved, baptized, and then the Holy Spirit. Isn't that what he said on Pentecost?

They're like brothers, what should we do? He's like, repent of your sins. Get baptized. Then you will receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Wait a minute.

I thought we had a formula here, Peter. I thought there was like, here's the steps. And now he's saying, like, well, let's see. A, C, we got to do B. Like they have.

Like, they must have repented because the Holy Spirit showed up, but they haven't been baptized. We got to go back and do that. Listen, here's the truth of it. Jesus is saving people in ways, in methods and steps that you haven't been able to figure out on your own. There are some.

I know a man who was a pastor, and now he's a man that trains pastors. You know, like, that's his full time setup. That what he does. And he was called to Christian ministry before he was saved. You can't argue him out of that.

Like, he's like 100% tell you that that's exactly what happened. Christ called me, then he saved me. Okay, that's his business. I think the Apostle Paul was the same way. Christ had called him long before he had received that bright light and received salvation.

Christ already had a calling on his life. Some of you have been saved, and there's a calling on your life. Maybe it's not to be a pastor, an evangelist, a prophet, whatever it might be, but you have a calling on your life to serve Christ in some way that you haven't yet realized and you haven't yet accepted and lived out. So, Cornelius, these people had this moment. The Holy Spirit shows up, they're baptized, and life goes on from there for them.

So the question is, what about us? What about for us? I think we need a wake up call. We need a vision from God. We need a knock at our door like Peter got.

We need those things to happen. But some of us have had an invitation sitting there on the counter from God for a long time that we just have ignored. Sometimes you'll get an invitation to something that you might say, I don't know, I might RSVP for that. I might show up for that. I'll check into it later.

I'm busy right now. I don't have the mental bandwidth to deal with that at this moment. I'll deal with that in a little while. And then time for comes and goes. And you look at that and you realize it happened two weeks ago.

Now you can just throw it in the trash and that invitation has come and gone. But then there's such a thing as a summons, like a jury summons. Eventually, if you keep ignoring those, there will be a police officer potentially at your door. There are penalties for ignoring a jury summons. There's penalties for ignoring a tax bill, there's penalties for ignoring a warrant.

There's penalties for driving on a suspended license. There's all of these things. And if they keep happening, then you're going to have some kind of penalty. And some of you have been ignoring the summons of God on your life. He's been calling you, he's been inviting you, and he might even escalate it to say, you will do this, or you're going to run up against thorns and briars and thistles every which way you turn until you respond.

That's what happened to Jonah. When Jonah was called to Nineveh, he went to Joppa to run away from God. When Peter was in Joppa, he received the call of God and he went to go and serve and answer that call. The question is, what is God calling you today? What is he calling you to do?

The nice thing that we have today, by the providence of God, not me, is that we have a tool that we're utilizing, that we've talked about almost ad nauseam. But you'll forget if I don't shape your spiritual gifts, the gifts that God has given you by His Holy Spirit to use for his kingdom purposes, the heart that he's placed within you, the compassion and passion that you have in your heart already for someone, for some area, for something. The abilities that you have that are unique to you, the personality that God has blessed you with, even the things that are a little bit irritating to those closest to you might be the things that God has uniquely gifted you to be able to use in his kingdom and the experiences you've had. Some of you have lived through hell on earth, some of you have had great days in every era of your life, whatever it might be. God is able to use all of those things, all those experiences, all the passions that you have in your heart, all the personality quirks and things, the introversions, the extroversions, whatever it might be.

He's able to use all these things. He's able to give you a gift through His Holy Spirit to utilize that for a purpose in his kingdom. For a kingdom purpose so that he can reach others with the good news of Christ.

Sa.