The Church’s Solution to Prejudice
Rev. Res Spears
The Church’s Solutions • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 2 viewsMissions & Evangelism as seen in the Book of Acts
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As I was studying the passage in the Book of Acts that we’re going to look at this morning, I was reminded of something that many of you will remember me saying before: All the words are significant.
Well, you’d expect a pastor to say just that kind of thing, wouldn’t you? I mean, if I didn’t really believe that, then I shouldn’t be standing up here, TEACHING the Bible. Right?
And you’re not wrong. The Apostle Paul tells us that all of Scripture is God-breathed. The very words that Paul wrote, that Moses wrote, that all of those who recorded what they were inspired to write by the Holy Spirit — those very words are God’s words to us.
So, pastors, at least — and I’d argue that this should be true for all believers — should have a high view of Scripture.
Now, sadly, that’s not always the case. And all sorts of problems and heresies have crept into the church throughout history when pastors and theologians have lost that high view of Scripture.
And the day you hear me begin to waver in my respect for the authority of God’s word is the day you should start looking for another pastor.
But even as someone who considers the Bible to be the authoritative, divinely inspired word of God Himself, sometimes it’s easy to forget that He breathed ALL the words and that ALL the words are therefore significant.
This was one such week.
Now, the ice and snow that forced us to cancel in-person services caused us to take a two-week break from our study in the Book of Acts, so it’s probably a good idea for us to have a quick review.
You might recall that when we began this series a month ago, I said Dr. Luke gives us six major progress updates throughout his account of the early church.
These progress updates mark six significant shifts — inflection points — in the spread of the gospel during the first decades after the resurrected Jesus returned to heaven in the clouds.
These progress reports appear in chapters 6, 9, 12, 16, 19, and 28. And the events that take place between those inflection points demonstrate certain challenges the Church faced in accomplishing the task Jesus had given His disciples: to be His “witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
Significantly, the challenges of the early church are some of the same ones we face as individual followers of Jesus when it comes to making disciples — when it comes to sharing the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ.
In the first week of this study, we talked about the challenge of poverty as the new Church grew in Jerusalem. What was the response of the Church to that challenge? Anybody remember? Generosity and compassion!
The answer was just the opposite of the way the world would tell us to respond. And that’s instructive to us, both as individuals and as a body of believers. Even in scarcity — whether of finances, time, or other resources — both individual believers and the church that is the hands and feet of Jesus here on earth MUST demonstrate generosity.
After all, God has been generous to US in giving us both life and the opportunity for eternal life through faith in His Son, Jesus. And furthermore, He’s promised He’ll meet all our needs as we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
And the progress report concluding that first section of Acts shows the church being blessed by God as it showed generosity in pursuit of the Kingdom of God:
7 The word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
Then, three weeks ago, before Canada decided to send its weather to live with us, we saw the early church confront the problem of persecution. Do you remember the church’s solution to THAT problem? BOLDNESS!
Again, this is just the opposite of the way the world might expect the church to respond to a problem. But once again, in God’s upside-down kingdom, when the early followers of Jesus began to come under persecution for their faith, instead of hiding in their homes, they went out and told MORE people about Jesus.
And once again, we see that God blessed the early church because of it. Listen to Luke’s progress report from chapter 9.
31 So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up; and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase.
Now, remember that the church was encountering these problems as it worked to accomplish the mission Jesus had given it back in verse 8 of chapter 1.
8… you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
You might recall I told you that this verse gives us a sort of geographical outline of the rest of the book.
So, we’ve seen the church deal with poverty as it spread within Jerusalem. We’ve seen it deal with persecution, which is one of the things that drove the believing Jews into the rest of Judea and into Samaria.
In the first two sessions of this study, the movement has been geographical in nature. From the bullseye of Jerusalem, the gospel has spread in concentric circles, with the Church growing in both numbers and geographic area.
Today, though, we’re going to see a different kind of growth, one that doesn’t significantly extend the borders of this new faith, but one that instead breaks through its BARRIERS in a way that some early believers, quite frankly, weren’t ready to accept.
Now, this section of the Book of Acts begins in verse 32 of chapter 9 and ends with the progress report of 12:24.
24 But the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied.
Maybe I should have said it before, but I’ll say it now: SPOILER ALERT! The barriers that hemmed in the early Church were no more successful at limiting the growth of Christianity than were the borders that surrounded it in Jerusalem.
And as we’ll see today, the Holy Spirit-empowered solution to the barrier problem was just as unexpected as the Holy Spirit-empowered solution to the border problem.
We’re going to be looking at chapters 10 and 11 this morning. If you have your Bible today, go ahead and turn there. We don’t have time to study this chapter verse by verse, but it’ll be helpful to you to be able to skim through the parts that we skip over.
Most of you will recognize the events of chapter 10, where Peter receives a revelation from God about food that helps open his eyes to a new ministry opportunity.
But before we get into this chapter, I want to point out a small detail that’s easy to miss. It’s a geographical marker that appears in chapter 9, and it’s easy to skim right past it without recognizing the importance.
At the end of chapter 9, Peter raises Tabitha, who’d also been known as Dorcas, from the dead. It’s a great miracle that affirms the authority of the gospel message he was preaching near the border of Judea and Samaria, and it’s important for lots of reasons.
But what’s easy to miss is WHERE this miracle takes place, in Joppa, which is called Jaffa in modern Israel. Now, Luke mentions the name Joppa four different times in the last 8 verses of chapter 9.
That should be a flag for us. That should tell us there’s something significant about Joppa, beyond just the simple geographic reference.
So, for a gold star, can anyone remember something significant that ALSO took place in Joppa? It’s from the Old Testament. We had a series that started in Joppa back in 2024. Anybody?
Let me read you a couple of verses.
1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying,
2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
3 But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship which was going to Tarshish, paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
So, we see the Old Testament prophet Jonah go to Joppa to try to AVOID visiting the Gentiles in Assyria and proclaiming the word of the Lord to them. Anybody remember WHY he didn’t want to go to Nineveh?
He HATED the Assyrians! He hated the Ninevites. He WANTED God to bring His righteous judgment upon them. He was prejudiced against them — and he thought he had good reason for it.
And so, here in Acts, we have the Apostle Peter, another Jew, preaching and performing miracles in Joppa. And God is about to call Peter to go and preach the gospel to another group of Gentiles. And the question is whether THIS Jew will respond in a better way than Jonah did.
So, let’s skim through the story Luke tells in chapter 10 and see how the Holy Spirit leads Peter to break through the barriers of prejudice. We’ll start in verse 1.
1 Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort,
2 a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.
Now, Caesarea was located in Samaria, along the coast, about 40 miles north of Joppa. Cornelius was a centurion, in charge of 100 of Rome’s military forces there.
And it’s significant that Luke describes him as a God-fearer. Cornelius wasn’t a Jewish convert, but he believed in the God of the Jews, and he worshipped God and was generous to God’s people who lived in that city.
This was a man who was clearly seeking the Lord. And God always responds to those who are truly seeking Him. And so, God sent an angel to tell Cornelius to send for Peter in Joppa. And that’s just what Cornelius did. And his emissaries left immediately for the day-and-a-half trip to Joppa.
And just as they’re approaching the city, Peter is heading up to the rooftop of the home where he’s staying. He’s going there to pray, but he becomes hungry, and then he falls into a trance. Look at verse 11.
11 and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground,
12 and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air.
13 A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”
14 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.”
Now, you need to understand that God had given the Jewish people certain dietary guidelines back in the Book of Leviticus. And Peter was an observant Jew. He followed those guidelines.
But the Pharisees had added their own rules to the Mosaic Law, too. And one of the things that had been added over time was the restriction against even associating with Gentiles.
And that’s important, because this passage is about food, but it’s really about prejudice, about the unfair and unjust barriers we erect between ourselves and others.
It’s significant that this vision of Peter’s — repeated three times so he’d finally get the message — concluded just as the men from Cornelius appeared on his doorstep. God was making sure Peter understood that he was allowing his own cultural prejudices to get in the way of his obedience to God.
So, the men from Cornelius arrive, just as Peter’s vision concludes, and they call up to him. Now, look at verse 19.
19 While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you.
20 “But get up, go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them Myself.”
The word that’s translated as “misgivings” in verse 20 can have the sense of discrimination. So, the Spirit is essentially telling Peter to go with these men without discriminating against them, without prejudice against them.
And Peter finds out pretty quickly the reason for this very direct command of the Spirit. These men are Gentiles, and they want him to come with him to visit a Gentile centurion and his family in Caesarea.
So, here we find ourselves at the moment of truth. Will Peter set aside his lifelong prejudice because of what God has revealed to him in the visions that were about food, but not JUST about food? Or will he be like Jonah and take off in the other direction?
In verse 23, we see that Peter seems to have understood what the lesson was really about. He invites the Gentiles in to stay with him for the night, something that would have been unheard-of for a Jew. And then he leaves with them the next day for Caesarea.
And when he arrives, he enters the home of Cornelius with a confession about his cultural and racial prejudice. Look at verse 28.
28 And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.
Imagine going into someone’s home and saying, “I wouldn’t normally come into such a dirty house.” Well, that’s kind of what he says here. But it’s a confession of his prejudice against the Gentiles, and it’s also a statement of repentance.
God has shown him his wrong thinking, and Peter wants Cornelius and his family to know that he’s thinking differently now.
And then, after learning that Cornelius has asked him there to hear the gospel, Peter launches into the first sermon preached to the Gentiles. Look at verse 34.
34 Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality,
35 but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.
NOW he understands that God isn’t one to show partiality. The word there can be translated as “one who discriminates.” God has shown Peter there’s no room for prejudice in the life of a believer, because GOD isn’t prejudiced.
In fact, I want you to see all the inclusive language Peter uses here. People from EVERY nation are welcomed by God. Jesus Christ is Lord of ALL. In verse 38, Peter says Jesus healed ALL, which in the context means He healed Jews and Samaritans and Gentiles, alike. In verse 43, he says all the prophets wrote that EVERYONE who believes in God through Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins.
And with that, Cornelius and his family believed, and the Holy Spirit came upon them. The unjust and unfair barrier between Jews had been broken down. Look at verse 45.
45 All the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.
Now, the message of salvation by faith had always been one for the Gentiles, too, even back in the Old Testament. But the Gentiles had never widely received it, because of Israel’s prejudice against them.
I can only imagine what these Jewish converts to Christianity must have thought as they saw this whole household come to saving faith because of this one short sermon from Peter. I imagine they must have felt some shame for all those Gentile souls that were lost because of their ancestors’ prejudice.
But prejudice is a hard thing to break. That’s what Peter found when he returned to Jerusalem. Look at verse 2 of chapter 11.
2 And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those who were circumcised took issue with him,
3 saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
The old cultural and racial prejudices still had a firm hold, even on these Jews who’d turned to Christ in faith. But then, Peter told them the story of his visit to the home of Cornelius. And I want you to hear how he concluded it. Look at verse 17.
17 “Therefore if God gave to them the same gift as He gave to us also after believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
When they’d believed in Jesus — when they’d trusted in Him for their salvation — God gave these Gentiles the same gift He’d given the new Jewish believers. He gave them the Holy Spirit.
And so, Peter says here, “who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”
This is the same Peter who, upon hearing Jesus say that He had to go to Jerusalem and be killed, said, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” The one to whom Jesus responded, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.”
He who’d literally tried to stand in the way of Jesus’ work at the cross was now saying, “How could I stand in God’s way?”
THIS Peter, the one of Acts 10 and 11, has learned something important. He’s learned the solution to prejudice. He’s learned humility.
He’s learned that God doesn’t love Peter more because he’s a Jew. He’s learned that God doesn’t harbor prejudice, so neither should followers of Jesus.
He’s learned that the barriers we erect between ourselves and others are sinful. That they interfere with God’s work. That they bring dishonor to His name.
Folks, I’d like to think that this message isn’t necessary in this day and age. I’d like to think that modern humans — to say nothing of CHRISTIANS — have nothing to do with prejudice. I’d like to think it’s no longer a factor in our lives, in our culture, or in the way we proclaim the name of Jesus.
But you know that’s not the way things are. We’ve been reminded of it in graphic and outrageous and shameful ways even this week.
And the events of this very week should remind us that racism — that prejudice of any sort — MUST NOT be given a place in the church.
And the text of these two chapters in the Book of Acts should remind us that the solution to every sort of prejudice we might harbor is humility.
Arrogance and vanity and conceit erect the barriers between us and whoever we might consider to be “other.” Arrogance and vanity construct the lie that whoever isn’t somehow LIKE us is therefore somehow LESS than we are. That’s a lie and an abomination in God’s eyes, and we MUST see it for the lie that it is.
But that takes humility.
Jonah had to learn humility in the belly of a great fish. Peter learned it at the side of Jesus and again on a rooftop in Joppa. What will it take for US to learn it?
Make no mistake. The lingering prejudice of this nation has been on display for all the world to see for many months now, if not longer.
And to the extent the church has failed to call it the abomination it is, we’ve failed the world just as surely as the people of Israel failed when they refused to preach to the Gentiles.
When the world sees that we support racism in the name of the economy or national glory or political expediency or empty promises of safety, they conclude that we must serve a GOD who shows partiality, a GOD who discriminates.
But that’s not who God IS. And so, let us humble ourselves and repent. Let us heed God’s call to break down the unjust and unfair barriers we’ve erected and to express our shock and indignation whenever anyone tries to rebuild them.
The effectiveness of the church’s witness for Christ depends on this. Let us be like Peter. We MUST not be like Jonah.
The church in the Book of Acts saw the problem with racism and prejudice, and they repented. WE must do the same.
