We see certainly in the Psalms, even the two Psalms we sang this night, that there is There is a blessing for all the nations. There is a salvation for all the nations. And our text this evening is one which shows the explosion of that happening within the New Testament. And we see each person of the Trinity clearly at work in that pivotal moment in the history of the people of God from Acts 10. But before we read from Acts 10, let's read our confessional reading this evening, Lord's Day 8, page 209, in the smaller forms and prayers. Lord's Day 8, question and answers 24 and 25. I'll read the questions, let us together us say the answers. Beginning with question 24. How are these, that is the articles of the Apostles Creed, how are these articles divided into three parts? God the Father and our creation. God the Son and our deliverance, and God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification. Turning the page, question 25. Since there is only one divine being, why do you speak of three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Because that is how God has revealed himself in his word. These three distinct persons are one true eternal God. This is our confessional reading, the faithful summary of the word of God. Let us turn now to that very word, Acts chapter 10. The pivotal moment in the early days of the New Testament church And we'll read verses 34 to 48. We'll give a little bit of a summary of the whole chapter as we go through our first point. But we'll be reading and focusing on the message of the Apostle Peter in the house of Cornelius, the Gentile centurion. And so we'll read verses 34 to 48. Let us hear the word. of God. So Peter opened his mouth and said, truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. But God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues, and extolling God, then Peter declared, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days. So far the reading, the grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our Lord endures forever. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, God is breaking down the old system. Some things will not change at all. The moral law of God does not change. God's character never changes. Some things will change a little. God has always heard prayer, but now he does hear it in even a special way as Christ is now our risen and ascended mediator in hearing our prayers. Some things will change dramatically. The food laws and the identity of the people of God as a nation, this is all disappearing. One of the significant lines in our text is the very last line, then they asked him to remain for some days. Peter, a Jew living in the house of a Gentile. I mean, it's a shock enough that he would have Gentiles invited into his home, but that he would remain in the house of a Gentile for some days. Oh, God is breaking down. the old systems. God is paving a new way, the way of the New Testament Church. The good news of deliverance by Jesus Christ is exploding outward. There have been some rumblings in Acts chapter 8. We read of the preaching of the good news in many of the villages of Samaria and we have the account of of the baptism of one Gentile, namely the Ethiopian eunuch, but now those rumblings are becoming an explosion. The Apostle Peter enters the house of a Gentile in that place, the kind of house that Peter would not have even walked into a few days before. The gospel will be preached and the Holy Spirit will work mightily, the Gentiles will be baptized. And so the New Testament Church is established. To everyone on all the earth, believe in the Triune God. That is the call. That is our theme tonight. And we see that it is the Triune God at work in this pivotal moment in the history of the Church. Each person of the Trinity clearly at work as the church is established. And so those are our three points this evening. The church established, the impartial father, the church established, the appointed son, and the church established, the active spirit. So first the impartial father and This is how Peter begins his sermon. Luke is probably giving us just a small summary of a larger sermon, but this is his very beginning, his introduction. Truly, I understand that God shows no partiality. Now, what does Peter mean by that? By summarizing what has come before in chapter 10, it becomes very clear what the Apostle Peter means. Acts chapter 10 begins not with Peter, but with Cornelius, a centurion, verse one. He was a man who feared God with his household, and he prayed continually to God, and yet he was a Gentile. Yet there was more that God wanted him to hear and know. And so the Lord tells Cornelius to send his servants to Peter and Joppa where he'll find Simon Peter. And as this is happening, God gives Simon Peter the vision of the clean and unclean animals coming down. And Peter is commanded to rise, kill, and eat. And verse 14, Peter says, by no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. And then verse 15, the voice came to him again a second time. What God has made clean, do not call common. And so through the vision, which is repeated three times, God is showing Peter the barriers of the ceremonial things being broken down. And then those servants of Cornelius arrive and they bring Peter back with them. And they come to the house of Cornelius and there is a whole extended family of Cornelius gathered together to hear the sermon. And that's how That's what leads into verse 34. And included in the conversation before the sermon is verse 28, when Peter said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. God shows no partiality God will have his gospel now go forth to both Jew and to Gentile. A huge shift in the way that God is relating to his people. This is a key moment in the very history of the church, a key moment for why the gospel has continued to go forth and why the gospel is now here in the Gentile region of Waupon, Wisconsin. Here is the explosion of the gospel going forth to the Gentiles, all as God wants it to be, as God made so clear to Peter, though he would waver on it later, It was so hard, Peter caved into pressure before he was again corrected and understood, but certainly now Peter sees it and he will even defend it in Acts 11. The Gentiles are also to hear the gospel. This has always been the plan of God, Even we could think of the Psalms that we've sung this evening. We could think of Genesis 12, the promise that through Abraham all the nations would be blessed. We could think of Ezekiel 17 and the promise of this descendant of David who would bring peace to the nations and many more prophecies and promises. But what was before shadow and prophecy is here. in Acts 10 in the house of Cornelius becoming the explosion of the good news to the Gentiles. So Peter has this dramatically revealed to him. There are at least two applications for us here, people of God. First, are we able to overcome our discomfort for the sake of the good news. Now, again, this is a pivotal, dramatic moment. Peter needed to be shown this in dramatic ways. But this same principle of the need to overcome discomfort in order to open up our mouth and speak about God, who shows no partiality, who would have all people come to him, everyone who believes, it's the same thing, the same lesson which we are to learn. Now, we're probably not gonna have the vision with the sheep's coming down and enter into the house of a person that we would never have walked into before. It will probably not be as dramatic for us as it was for Peter, but it's the same principle. It can be uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable to share the gospel because we're telling people that they're sinners. We're telling people that they need Jesus. We're telling people that there's a need from outside of themselves that they must come to. It can be uncomfortable. But as Peter so dramatically was able to overcome his discomfort on this day, may we be given the strength and may we pray for the strength to overcome our discomfort in speaking about the good news of the gospel, to always be ready to give a reason for the hope we have within us. And then a second application is closely related, but it is this, it's a little bit different, that we would never bar anyone from the gospel. Are there any people that we might think should not hear the gospel because of how they grew up, what they look like, what they eat, what kind of home they have, what language they speak. Let us never think in these terms. There is no type of person who is outside of the reach of the good news. We are all sinners and the good news goes forth to all nations. Now it is for everyone who believes in Jesus Christ that there is salvation. So the Apostle moves from speaking about God the Father who has no partiality and will establish the church to the Son himself whose work has brought about this shift to have the gospel going forth in this way. And so we come now to the church established, the appointed Son. Peter's speaking now of the eternal son of God, the life that Jesus lived on this earth. That's the focus of the message of Peter. Again, this is probably a summary by Luke here in Acts. Peter's probably saying more if we think about what More it is that Peter might have said, the Gospel of Mark is basically the outline of what Peter says here. This is basically an outline form of the Gospel of Mark. What Peter said here may very well have been like what we read in the Gospel of Mark. Working through the life and the death of Jesus Christ and focusing also upon how the ministry of Jesus Christ was not some haphazard or accidental thing, but that it was a ministry that Jesus was appointed to, that he was baptized into, anointed to. So God anointed Jesus of Nazareth, verse 38, with the Holy Spirit, which is a reference to his baptism by John, that event which all four Gospels record. The coming of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus was an official ministry, and that's one of the things that the Apostle Peter emphasizes here. I think I've used the illustration before of how a police officer has certain rights that we don't all have. If I was to just try to give someone a speeding ticket, that wouldn't go very well. I don't have the right to do that. But if somebody who has the badge and is commanded to enforce those laws does it, well then he can and he should do that. Well, Jesus Christ, he has the badge. He has the anointing. He has the power. When Jesus is casting out the demons and doing good and overcoming evil, he's doing it as the very agent of God. haphazard. It's nothing Jesus just woke up and decided to do someday. It's something that God had planned. It's something that Jesus is especially appointed to do and that Jesus does for a specific purpose, the very purpose. of conquering the devil and showing his power and establishing his New Testament Church and all of these things and so we speak about Jesus who is anointed in verse 38 and Jesus who is the appointed judge in verse 42 when Jesus commands it when Jesus does it there is the very authority that has come from God the Father and there is the very authority of Jesus who is himself God. There is nothing random about the ministry of Jesus Christ. It was all a specific planned and appointed task. And then the chosen work of Jesus Christ, the final and only appointed way of our salvation was his very hanging on a tree, which is followed by his resurrection on the third day. And so he conquers evil completely, even as he was asking that the cup of that task could be taken away if possible, yet Jesus goes willingly to the most difficult appointed task there has ever been. and he died on a cross for our sins. This is the Savior, the Savior whose work was so intentional and so planned and so appointed. People of God, do you know the basic outline of the life of Jesus Christ? You know, it is good. to be prepared to speak the truth, to be able to answer various objections if we can. It is good to be able to discuss the truth with all different kinds of people, but really it comes back to the life of Jesus Christ. And so in the first point I asked, are we uncomfortable with sharing the gospel with that ever stop us well here now I'll ask are you unprepared and I'm going to tell you you are not unprepared because I am confident that each and every one of you can speak of the basic outline of the life of Jesus Christ that he came that he was born that he was raised that he was baptized by John that he ministered and what he did in his ministry that he died And then he rose again and he ascended. We can speak through the outline of the life of Jesus Christ. We can say who he is and what he has done. And we should never feel unprepared because the sharing of the gospel is essentially that. The sharing of the good news is to go through the life of Jesus Christ. That was the essence of the sermon of the Apostle Peter on the day of the explosion of the New Testament Church. He walked through the life of Jesus Christ. This is what everyone must know to believe and be saved. Do not feel as though you are unprepared to speak the good news, for it starts by simply going through the basics of the life of Jesus and the basics of who He is, the very Son of God doing these things for the salvation of all who believe. Now let's look at the church established and the active spirit. And here we're looking especially at verses 44 to 48. and is the work of Jesus that makes salvation possible, but it is the power of the Holy Spirit. which would bring a person to the point of believing and being made new. The same Holy Spirit who continues to be at work to renew the heart of every true believer. To this day, we need the active work of the Holy Spirit to establish us in the faith. And what the Holy Spirit does here is even a special outpouring, an unusual outpouring. It is one which is a mini version of what the Holy Spirit did in the establishment of the church among the Jews in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Even though this wasn't a day of Pentecost feast, it wasn't strictly speaking a Pentecost day, we can call this the Gentile Pentecost because it is such an echo of what the Holy Spirit did on that day. What the Holy Spirit did for thousands on the day of the church being established among the Jews, the Holy Spirit now does with the same kind of power though with a smaller number among the family of the centurion Cornelius. And so if there's any doubt that this connection was plain and meant to be seen, Peter will speak of it so clearly in Acts 11, verse 17. If you just look over at the next page, Acts 11, verse 17, where Peter says this, and then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, was I that I could stand in God's way. Just as the Holy Spirit, verse 15 as well, as I began to speak the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. The beginning of what? The beginning of the New Testament church. First with the Pentecost in Acts 2 among the Jews and now with the explosion the Gentile Pentecost here at the end of Acts chapter 10. Now, some have tried to claim that this passage is proof that all new believers should speak in tongues. Now that used to be a rare view, but I think it's something we should speak about for just a couple of minutes because it's become so increasingly popular over the last 100 years. But any modern speaking in tongues is gibberish. What happened here in the house of Cornelius was, as Peter says, who was there for both events, in verse 15, it was the same as how the Holy Spirit fell on us at the beginning. In other words, it's the speaking in tongues intelligibly in other languages. It is a special power of the Holy Spirit to show that he's at work, to show that his church is being established, to show that the gospel is to go forth from Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. The Gentile Pentecost here is nothing like the gibberish of so-called modern tongue speaking. It is instead like the speaking in the power of the glory of God and extolling him and praising him in all other intelligible languages just as it was in Jerusalem. And so Peter, seeing the power of the Holy Spirit, sees that there must be baptisms on this very day. Now usually we don't preach the gospel and moved to baptism on the very same day. But there is this momentous and miraculous moment here in Caesarea. And Peter, recognizing this, sees the Holy Spirit is at work. The church is to be established. We will baptize them now, today. And so they do. The church is established. It is the moment, the beautiful day when the Gentiles first come in a group of not just one person, not just individuals, but come, come with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the active work of the Holy Spirit brought to that point of trusting in Jesus Christ. Perhaps you have heard about the man who was working on the Crystal Palace who was saved by one line from Charles Spurgeon. Perhaps you have not heard of this. I'll read the account as Spurgeon speaks of it. a day or two before preaching at the Crystal Palace. I went to decide where the platform should be fixed and in order to test the acoustic properties of the building, cried in a loud voice, behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. In one of the galleries, a workman who knew nothing of what was being done heard the words and they came like a message from heaven to his soul. He was smitten with conviction on account of sin, put down his tools, went home, and there, after a season of spiritual struggling, found peace in life by beholding the Lamb of God. The same Holy Spirit who was so powerfully at work in one moment on this day, can still powerfully work. The Spirit worked here with a message about Jesus Christ. It's no accident that on that day many years ago, when Spurgeon decided to say something to see how it would sound, that the words that the Holy Spirit used were words which would direct someone to look at Jesus Christ, behold the Lamb of God. That's what the Holy Spirit uses. That's how the Holy Spirit will grab hold and bring someone to a place of spiritual struggling. A place of spiritual struggling which can result in spiritual peace when there is belief in that Savior Jesus Christ because of the Spirit working in us. Now, people of God, as we step back, we see so plainly each person of the Holy Spirit in this passage. The Holy Spirit is often in the background. The Holy Spirit is often not mentioned, like the wind that we cannot see, but yet is working, active, that is the Holy Spirit. It is not an accident that at such a pivotal moment in the history of the Church, we would see reference to each person of the Trinity. At the very creation of the world, between Genesis 1 and John 1, clearly each person of the Trinity is at work. in the formation of the New Testament Church, exploding for the first time among the Gospels in a new way with a call that goes out to the nations in the creation, we might say, of the New Testament Church. Each person of the Holy Spirit, of the Holy Trinity is clearly at work. People of God, let us come to the triune God who is overall, and be saved by Him, the salvation is for everyone who believes. If you have not believed in this great truth, hear the call now. Know that God desires that all the world would come to Him. Know that Jesus died for all believers, and know that the Holy Spirit works in the heart of both Jews. and Gentiles. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God Almighty, we praise you for showing us so plainly how you established your church with the breaking down of ceremony, with the breaking down of the national distinction and with your word concerning your son going forth to all the nations.