Sermon Tone Analysis

Acts 11

This class continues with the expansion of the early church.

In the wake of Cornelius’ conversion, early Christians (who are mostly converted Jews or converted Jewish proselytes) are learning that the gospel is meant for

Gentiles as well.

This episode focuses on why that was news, how the book of Acts continues to telegraph the reclamation of the nations in the Deuteronomy 32 worldview,

So park on this whole incident just a little bit, in verse 1, again, we see the reference to Gentiles.

Gentiles also received the word of God, pointing back to Cornelius and his household; we have a reference to the circumcision party who were critical of Peter.

If you remember last time in our last episode, there were certain categories of the way you Jews viewed Gentiles, and that's going to spill over into the church.

Again, we’re seeing it right here in chapter 11 when we get into Paul's travels, and he runs into the people at the synagogues.

You’re going to see it even Jewish people who believe, and I think it's clear that the circumcision party here in verse 1 are Jewish believers.

They are people who've accepted the Messiah, Jews who have accepted the message of Jesus as Messiah and that's because of verse 18.

When they hear Peter's explanation, they don't continue their criticism.

They said, well, then, to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.

So I think it's pretty fair to say these are Jewish believers.

Later on, I think, not these particular ones necessarily but just in general, this segment within the church, Jews who have come to embrace the gospel message, the identity of Jesus Messiah as the Christ, some of them, whether based on their own misunderstanding of the gospel in part or maybe more self-serving reasons or maybe because they're fearful of non-believers in the Jewish community, we don’t necessarily know.

It's probably going to be varied as far as explanation but later, we’re going to see this group, or at least this kind of group, be referred to as Judaizers.

Judaizers

These are the Judaizers.

So you’re going to have a significant element within the church because frankly up until this point, up until Cornelius chapter go, the identity of the early church is Jewish believers.

Now we've run into proselytes before, people who were Gentiles who converted to Judaism and then converted to be believers, followers of Jesus.

So we’ve seen that party as well.

We've seen references to the Hellenists where the Hellenistic Jews, Jews again but who were more accepting of Gentile culture, so there's a number of parties, a number of sects within the early church.

But it’s going to be dominated, at least initially, by Jewish converts or proselytes, who had converted to Judaism and then later, follow the Lord.

So you get a little bit of the dynamic coming out here.

But I think it's fair to say when you see verse 18, they realize, okay, this is linked back to the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Peter references this, what happened at Pentecost, and if it's the same thing, then we have to abide by that, then this is the will of God.

Then to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

So they're fine with it, but you run into different settings, different situations, later on either with Peter or especially with Paul, where it's not going to work so smoothly.

Another question to ask is, when you read verse 18, they shut up.

They quit criticizing Peter, and they say, okay, I guess Gentiles can be part of the people of God.

Why was that such a surprise you might wonder?

I think the answer is partly a little obvious but may be partly not so obvious.

It's a surprise because for Jews, think back to the whole Deuteronomy 32 worldview, this Divine Council worldview that we should be familiar with from the Old Testament.

For Jews, who understood their Bible, the nations were something that needed judgment.

Now granted, there was this hint in the covenant with Abraham that they would be brought back into the fold, but a lot of Jews presumed that they would sort of be brought back kicking and screaming.

In other words, in the context of a judgment because they had worshiped other gods.

They had followed other gods and so they needed to be dealt with harshly, and then brought back.

It’s sort of the same dynamic as the American Civil War.

What do we do with the Confederacy?

What we do with people who were loyal to the south to unite the nation?

Well, there was a lot of difference of opinion.

Basically, they need to get kicked in the butt first and then brought back in the fold, or they need to be completely forgiven and then brought back to the fold.

There was just a spectrum of approaches.

For a lot of Jews in their context, they are thinking, yeah, God ultimately is going to use us to bring you back into relationship with him, but you’re going to get what you deserve.

And the thinking was that this judgment was supposed to happen at the hand of God and his military Messiah.

Remember, the Jewish conception of Messiah was a person in the line of King David, someone ruling, someone with political and military authority, sort of aligning the vision of Messiah with the divine warrior of the Old Testament because you do get a number of passages that talk about of the day of the Lord, when the nations bow down to Yahweh, when they worship the Lord as the true God.

Those are in the context of the day Lord judgments.

And so these ideas were sort of conglomerated in the Jewish mind.

And so when a Jew thinks about the nations, it's almost like it shouldn’t be this easy.

You just sort of repent and believe and your good?

What happened to spanking you a little bit for worshiping other gods?

What happened to that?

It should be harder.

There should be more of a cost.

And still thinking about the Messiah in terms of this military deliverer, when that's not what you get with Jesus, for those of you who have been listening, you'll remember when we started in Acts 1 and 2, we talked about this, about how even after the resurrection that Jesus had to open the minds of the apostles to understand that, hey, the Messiah was actually supposed to suffer and die and be raised from the dead, all these ideas that we, as Christians, think are so elementary and so obvious.

They’re not obvious in the Old Testament, if you remember our discussions way back when, because all of the elements of the Messiah, especially when it comes to suffering and dying and the resurrection and all that sort of thing, none of those elements are in one place.

You don’t have a verse that links the Messiah to a death and a resurrection.

Messiah Mosiac

Well, what about Isaiah 53? Well guess what?

The word Messiah is not in that passage.

So the portrait, the profile is the word I like to use, the profile of the Messiah is a mosaic.

It's scattered all over the place, and you can see it, in hindsight.

But again, we have that advantage.

You’re looking at the apostles here at the beginning of the book of Acts, and this isn’t far removed from the crucifixion, the resurrection.

What in the world is going on?

The Lord appeared to us in the upper room or the road to Emmaus.

They still don't get it, and the text literally says he had to open their minds so they could discern what really was going on.

So if you didn't have that event, lots of Jews who come to embrace Jesus at the Pentecost, they go back in the nations or the gospel spreading in Judea into the rest of Canaan, they didn’t have that event, that clarification moment.

They didn’t have the Lord directly opening their minds to understand this.

This is still a tough thing because they're just thinking about the Messiah in one way.

They're thinking about the Gentiles in one way.

And so they have to be taught in here in Acts 11 and back into Acts 10.

These supernatural events confirm for people that there's a connection between what's happening here with the Gentiles and what happened at Pentecost, and that’s connected to things that Jesus taught.

And it just takes a little bit of time for the picture to unfold.

And here in verse 18, you have the circumcision parties say, okay, I guess were good.

To the Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life.

They don’t need a butt kicking first.

This doesn't have to wait until the day of the Lord when there’s upheaval and punishment and violence and all this other stuff when wickedness is judged in this sort of this final, it has this feel of finality.

We don’t have to wait until then for the nations to be drawn back.

It’s happening now.

Again, these were new thoughts to them, and they have to be pieced together.

So if we keep going in Acts 11 in verse 19, we read

So here again you have believers who have to get out of town because Stephen had been executed or stoned.

So there were lots of people who had accepted the Messiahship of Jesus and the gospel and they’re getting out of town.

And here it mentions Phoenicia Cyprus and Antioch, and what were they doing?

They were speaking the word to no one except Jews.

That’s not because they’re racist or biased.

This was normal because, hey, it's the Jewish Messiah.

Who else would we talk to?

Again, they haven't had these revelatory events in their life.

They're still thinking this is for us.

It's our Messiah.

We’re Jews.

We need to accept this now and that’s who we’re going to talk to , because those are the people who are going to understand.

Verse 20

Now let’s just stop there.

We've got another reference to other places.

And I've said before in Acts and just generally on the blog and in other contexts, when place names show up, it is often worth your while to go in and look at some of those things.

What's the history there?

Here we have Phoenicia Antioch and Cyprus.