Intro to Acts 10:1-48

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/13/2018 9:01 AM

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus: Intro to Acts 10:1-48

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Acts 10:1-48

            Message of the verses:  We will look at the verses (10:1-48) as we move through them in the different SD’s as I do not want to put that many verses on this introductory SD.

            I have been giving the name of the different chapters in John MacArthur’s commentaries as we begin looking at the verses that go along with each chapter.  He entitles this chapter “Salvation Reaches Out.” 

            I have to quote the first paragraph from MacArthur’s commentary as what he writes when he quotes Mark Twain’s classic novel Adventures of Tom Sawyer certainly gives us some insight into the things that were going on in the early church as the Holy Spirit was about to bring the first gentile converts into the it.  The quote is an exchange between Tom and his friend Huck Fin, as Tom has just informed Huck that he cannot be a part of his gang.  “Now Tom, hain’t you always been friendly to me?  You wouldn’t shut me out, would you Tom?”  Tom replies, “Huck, I wouldn’t want to, and I don’t want to—but what would people say?  Why they’d say, ‘Mph!  Tom Sawyer’s Gang!  Pretty low characters in it!’  They’d mean you, Huck, You wouldn’t like that, and I wouldn’t.”   

            It is true that children are not the only ones to play such harsh and hurtful games as adults are prone to do it too.  The problem is that these kinds of things actually can be a part of local churches as I have experienced this in the past.  It is sad when it does happen in a church as on many occasions believers will not want to have people of different color or ethnic backgrounds in their church and this causes problems.  It is the goal of the church that I attend to have it look like the city that it is in and that means that we are reaching out to people from different ethnic backgrounds, praying that they will feel comfortable in worshiping with us so we can all worship the Lord together.

            When we see this kind of thing happen we know that it grieves the Lord and certainly does not bring glory to His holy name.  Jesus prayed in John 17:21 “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  Paul wrote in Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

            It was a long time ago that I was listening to some sermons by MacArthur on the book of Ephesians and I remember that he spoke about the deep seated conflict that was between Jews and Gentiles, things that were so bad that it would not seem that anyone could heal this problem, but God can and He does.  People from one country seem to have self-conceived opinions about people from another country and in many cases it is Satan who fuels this fire that causes divisions, and in this 10^th chapter of Acts we will see that there is a large problem between the believing Jews and the new Gentile believers that the Holy Spirit is about to bring into the church.

            We know that the Jews hated the Samaritans, and the same was true with the Samaritans hating the Jews, but this paled in comparison to the Jews hating the Gentiles.  We only have to look at the short book of Jonah to see this truth as at the end of the book Jonah still was upset with God because He had compassion for the people of Nineveh.  We recently had a Missions Conference at our church and the theme was reaching out to Muslims and just before this conference I had the opportunity to talk to a Muslim man from Iran who is a doctor and was giving a series of tests to my wife.  He saw that I was reading my commentaries from the book of Revelation and asked me about that book.  He continued to ask me question after question about my faith and about prophecy and I was able to give him answers that I pray will cause him to become a believer.  I have cards made up with my blog address on them and I gave him one of them so he could read what I have been writing for many years and put them onto my blogs.  I had no trouble talking to him one on one, and certainly desired for him to become a believer.

            Peter is the man who has been involved in being the point man when different ethnic groups have come to know Christ as their Savior and it would be Peter who will once again talk to the dreaded Gentiles to lead them to Christ.  Remember that Peter was staying with a tanner whose trade was despised by the devout Jews, however accepting Gentiles as equals before the Lord was an entirely different matter as strict Jews would have nothing to do with Gentiles, not even allowed to go into their homes.

            I will conclude with two paragraphs from John MacArthur’s commentary:

“The theological foundation for the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the church had already been laid.  In Ephesians 2:11-12, Paul pointed out that through Christ’s one, comprehensive sacrificial death He ‘mad both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall’ (Eph. 2:14).  Luke here chronicles the historical realization of that spiritual truth.

“But this chapter is more than just the story of the introduction of Gentiles into the church; it is also the account of one man’s salvation.  The sequence of events leading to Cornelius’s salvation presents a timeless pattern of how salvation unfolds.  From the text six elements may be discerned; sovereign preparation, submissive will, salvation presentation, spiritual power, symbolic confession, and sweet fellowship.”

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:   “Sodom” (Genesis 18:26-28).

Today’s Bible question:  “Who was the father of Joshua?” 

Answer in our next SD.

1/13/2018 9:42 AM