Share the Mission2Sydney “Storm” video invite with your leadership team!
It does not seem to take long, when you have stepped out in faith, before criticism follows hard on the heels of spiritual courage. It was no exception for Peter. He had just been blown away watching the Holy Spirit being poured out on culturally unclean Gentiles in Caesarea. When he returned to his home church in Jerusalem, he was hit with the icy blast: “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them!”
What should he do? Peter could have preached an elaborate expository sermon based on all of the texts in the Torah about how God wanted to bless the world through Abraham’s descendants. Or perhaps he could have launched into a philosophical presentation about how it is in the very nature of God to be racially impartial. Instead, Peter simply started to tell his own story:
“Guys, I felt exactly like you did. I had no inclination or desire to share the gospels with unclean Gentiles because it would mean that I would have to come up close to people who ate pigs and mussels and dirty things like that. Ugh! Just thinking about it makes me want to vomit.
“But Jesus changed my heart. He melted my heart by giving me a vision as I was praying, gently directing me to accept the invitation of a group of servants who were waiting at the door, and then leading me into Cornelius’ house which was packed with his family and friends. As I looked into their spiritually hungry eyes and started to share the story about Jesus, they experienced what we did—the Holy Spirit was poured out on them.”
Silence.
“Who was I that I should stand in God’s way?”
Silence.
When God steps out to write a new chapter of salvation history, who are we to tell Him to stop writing? All we can simply do is watch with growing amazement and excitement.
Two times, the same story of Cornelius is repeated back-to-back. Why would Luke be so repetitive? Perhaps it is because the followers of Jesus around the Mediterranean needed to have the message that the gospel was for everyone, including Gentiles, drummed into them. But why do we need to read the same story twice, back-to-back? Perhaps we need to have the same message drummed into us too. Are there any people, who make us recoil with the thought of what they do, whom Jesus is calling us to bring the good news of His love and soon return?
This story inspired some of Jesus’ uprooted refugees to start experimenting by sharing the good news about Jesus with the Gentiles in Antioch. They met with unbelievable success. Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman empire, after Rome and Alexandria. It became one of the key strategic focuses of the early Christian church—part of their first century Mission to the Cities. You will have to wait to Chapter 13 to find out what particular mission strategy of the church in Antioch implemented!
Antioch also became the place where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. Why did they get nicknamed in this way? It is because they just could not stop talking about Jesus! Do you want to be given the genuine, authentic “Christian” nickname here in Sydney? It is not by ticking a particular box on the 2016 Census coming up in August, or by having your name and address listed on the Greater Sydney Conference membership role, or by turning up to a church service most Sabbaths.
If you still aren’t sure what to do to be genuinely called a Christian, just pray that the Holy Spirit would perform the same supernatural miracle that He performed in the hearts and minds of the Christians in Antioch!
The book of Acts is drenched with the Holy Spirit. Reading it is like taking time to play out in the tropical rain! Read the full stories for today in:
Acts 11 ESV
Acts of the Apostles “A Seeker for Truth”
Invite your friends to join this journey with you! You can follow this journey on Facebook too.
