Pastor Jeremy M. Thomas
Fredericksburg Bible Church
107 East Austin
Fredericksburg, Texas 78624
830-997-8834      jthomas@fbgbible.org
A0849 – December 7, 2008 – Acts 10:34-48 – Jesus Christ: Lord Of All

Acts 10:34-48 Ἀνοίξας δὲ Πέτρος τὸ στόμα εἶπεν· ἐπʼ ἀληθείας καταλαμβάνομαι ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν προσωπολήμπτης ὁ θεός, 35ἀλλʼ ἐν παντὶ ἔθνει ὁ φοβούμενος αὐτὸν καὶ ἐργαζόμενος δικαιοσύνην δεκτὸς αὐτῷ ἐστιν. 36τὸν λόγον [ὃν] ἀπέστειλεν τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραὴλ εὐαγγελιζόμενος εἰρήνην διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, οὗτός ἐστιν πάντων κύριος, 37ὑμεῖς οἴδατε τὸ γενόμενον ῥῆμα καθʼ ὅλης τῆς Ἰουδαίας, ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας μετὰ τὸ βάπτισμα ὃ ἐκήρυξεν Ἰωάννης, 38Ἰησοῦν τὸν ἀπὸ Ναζαρέθ, ὡς ἔχρισεν αὐτὸν ὁ θεὸς πνεύματι ἁγίῳ καὶ δυνάμει, ὃς διῆλθεν εὐεργετῶν καὶ ἰώμενος πάντας τοὺς καταδυναστευομένους ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου, ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἦν μετʼ αὐτοῦ. 39καὶ ἡμεῖς μάρτυρες πάντων ὧν ἐποίησεν ἔν τε τῇ χώρᾳ τῶν Ἰουδαίων καὶ [ἐν] Ἰερουσαλήμ. ὃν καὶ ἀνεῖλαν κρεμάσαντες ἐπὶ ξύλου, 40τοῦτον ὁ θεὸς ἤγειρεν [ἐν] τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ καὶ ἔδωκεν αὐτὸν ἐμφανῆ γενέσθαι, 41οὐ παντὶ τῷ λαῷ, ἀλλὰ μάρτυσιν τοῖς προκεχειροτονημένοις ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ, ἡμῖν, οἵτινες συνεφάγομεν καὶ συνεπίομεν αὐτῷ μετὰ τὸ ἀναστῆναι αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν· 42καὶ παρήγγειλεν ἡμῖν κηρύξαι τῷ λαῷ καὶ διαμαρτύρασθαι ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ὡρισμένος ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ κριτὴς ζώντων καὶ νεκρῶν. 43τούτῳ πάντες οἱ προφῆται μαρτυροῦσιν ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν λαβεῖν διὰ τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ πάντα τὸν πιστεύοντα εἰς αὐτόν. 44Ἔτι λαλοῦντος τοῦ Πέτρου τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα ἐπέπεσεν τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἐπὶ πάντας τοὺς ἀκούοντας τὸν λόγον. 45καὶ ἐξέστησαν οἱ ἐκ περιτομῆς πιστοὶ ὅσοι συνῆλθαν τῷ Πέτρῳ, ὅτι καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἔθνη ἡ δωρεὰ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος ἐκκέχυται· 46ἤκουον γὰρ αὐτῶν λαλούντων γλώσσαις καὶ μεγαλυνόντων τὸν θεόν. τότε ἀπεκρίθη Πέτρος· 47μήτι τὸ ὕδωρ δύναται κωλῦσαί τις τοῦ μὴ βαπτισθῆναι τούτους, οἵτινες τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἔλαβον ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς; 48προσέταξεν δὲ αὐτοὺς ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ βαπτισθῆναι. τότε ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν ἐπιμεῖναι ἡμέρας τινάς.

Acts 10:34-48 Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, 35but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him. 36“The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)— 37you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed. 38“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. 39“We are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. 40“God raised Him up on the third day and granted that He become visible, 41not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. 42“And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead. 43“Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.” 44While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. 45All the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God. Then Peter answered, 47“Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?” 48And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay on for a few days. (NASB95)

Now, last time we followed Peter up to Cornelius’ house. This is one of the most significant events in the NT and we know that because God the Holy Spirit made it the subject of Acts 10, Acts 11 and parts of Acts 15. There was a tremendous barrier to overcome and it was overcome, but the Church had begun Jewish, it was totally Jewish from Acts 2-7, not Samaritans, no Gentiles, then the Church broadened in Acts 8-9 to bring in Samaritans and finally in Acts 10ff the Gentiles come into the fold of the Church. And at each one of these junctures there’s a racial barrier to overcome and the Jewish believers have to adjust, they have to adjust to the work of the Holy Spirit. They are having a hard time adjusting to the transitions of the Holy Spirit. They are not too comfortable with His work. So to help them adjust on all three occasions you have the tongues phenomena. In Acts 2 the Jewish apostles speak in tongues, in Acts 8 the Samaritan converts speak in tongues, granted it is not explicitly stated, nevertheless some visible phenomena occurred and we conclude it was tongues, and finally today we come to Acts 10, the Gentiles speak in tongues. So, tongues in Acts 2, tongues in Acts 8, tongues in Acts 10, only one other occurrence of tongues in the Book of Acts and that’s in Acts 19. What you do not find is that every person who is converted goes around speaking in tongues, that’s not the case, and it’s wrong to require every person who believes to speak in tongues and if they don’t pass judgment saying “Oh, you’re not really saved or you don’t have the second baptism yet, the baptism of power where you really get the Spirit and maybe you’ll be holy enough later to get it.” But rather what is happening with the tongues in these three chapters? Ask yourself, as you read those chapters who is always present? What group of people are present on all three occasions? The Jews. Why? Because tongues are for Jews and if Jews aren’t present then no tongues, the purpose of tongues is to authenticate to Jews some new truth that they don’t believe. So one of the primary purposes of tongues is to authenticate some new truth, Yes Israel, this is what God is doing so don’t be afraid to go along with this, this is a genuine movement of God. And what this accomplished in the 1st century is something remarkable that you and I 20 centuries later have very little appreciation for. Because the tongues prohibited the church from splintering into three factions; the Church could have easily divided into a Jewish Church, a Samaritan Church and a Gentile Church. But that’s not the plan of God the Holy Spirit. The plan of God the Spirit is to unify, to generate a body of people from all nations into in Christ. So that’s one of the major purposes of tongues in the Book of Acts. 

Now, before we come to the tongues event here in Acts 10 we want to look at one of the most fantastic sermons in the NT. Some of you still don’t appreciate the OT but these sermons in early Acts are basically generated from OT material. So let’s see how Peter uses the OT. In verse 33 Peter has entered and we have Cornelius and his household ready to hear the command of the Lord. And in vv 34-41 we have the command, a command that if you stopped to outline this, in a remarkable way, would correspond to one of the four Gospels. The very sequence. Just look at it for a minute, verse 34-36 form the introduction; verse 37 the first part of the message, it started from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed. Verse 38, Jesus of Nazareth how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, that’s His baptism, also verse 38, and how He went about doing good and healing all, these are His works, not His teaching but His works, one of the gospels emphasizes His works. Verse 39, They put Him to death, that’s the crucifixion event, then verse 40 God raised Him up on the third day, the resurrection, and then verse 41-42 the post-resurrection appearances. There’s nothing about his genealogy, there’s nothing about the virgin birth, there’s nothing about His teaching. 

What gospel is the one that starts with John the Baptist? What gospel is it that emphasizes Jesus’ works and not His teachings? What gospel is it that follows exactly this sequence? The Gospel of Mark. This is a perfect summary of the Gospel of Mark. I could summarize it no better than these seven verses. Now the Gospel of Mark is believed to have been written under the auspices of Peter; it was written by Mark, and as a young boy Mark hung around the apostles, and later in Acts we find he went out on a missionary journey with Paul but he flaked out and didn’t finish the work, and then later on Barnabas tried to take Mark along with Paul on another trip and they had a big dispute because Paul said Mark was a flake and Barnabas was the man of second chances, he wanted to help flakes grow up into non-flakes, Paul was interested in believers who were already mature and so you have this big dispute and finally they just went their separate ways, nd Barnabas and Mark went one way and Paul took Silas went another. But finally Mark did mature and he became the pupil of Peter and everywhere Peter went Mark would follow and Peter would preach and Mark would take notes, he was his number one student, and he studied and thought and memorized Peter’s theology until after he had put together all of Peter’s teachings he compiled it all and that’s your Gospel of Mark; that’s where the Gospel came from. And this sermon is a perfect summary of that gospel. 

Something else about this before we get into the details. Please understand this is a summary. Peter probably spent an hour, maybe two hours teaching. So what you’ve got here is a summary of what Peter taught. And that’s true for all the sermons in Acts. They are summaries sufficient to get across the substance of what Peter taught but they’re not word for word, they catch the emphasis of what was said. 

Now notice as you glance at the sermon, does Peter start the way so many Christians start when they evangelize? Does he say, “Cornelius, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, Christ died for you, now if you’d just say this prayer with me and sign this card you’ll be saved.” No, he rather spends some time developing the word of God, he’s going to cite a lot of OT Scripture here. For example, verse 34, the clause, “God is not one to show partiality, that’s a citation out of the OT. In verse 36, the word which He sent is a citation out of the OT; preaching peace is a citation out of the OT. In verse 38, God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit is a citation out of the OT. Verse 39, they hanged Him on a cross, literally that’s a tree, another citation from the OT. So obviously Peter would have to spend some time saying, alright, over in Isaiah we have this anointing of the Messiah and over in Deuteronomy we have this passage about hanging a criminal on a tree and he spent time developing this, this is just a summary of Peter’s witness to the gospel. That way they know what he’s talking about, they can understand who Jesus is and what He did. This is not trying to pull one over in two minutes.
 
So verse 34, Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)—now let’s back up to verse 34 and see how Peter begins. In the Greek of v 34, the words most certainly are the word for “truth.” “I understand the truth now Cornelius. Before I didn’t understand it, I thought the dietary code kept me from coming to you but now I know the truth. What truth? That God is not one to show partiality. Now, this isn’t exactly new, I mean, this was in the OT, in fact this is a quote from the OT. And the point is that God works with all nations. It’s often said God only works with the nation Israel. But the OT says he works with all nations. For example take the Book of Jonah. What mission did God give Jonah? What people was that Jewish prophet sent to? Assyrians. Assyrians aren’t Jewish, they’re Gentile. And yet God had some work to do with that Gentile nation. Try this one on, Amos 9:7, it was a mistake for the Jews to infer from the Abrahamic Covenant that since they were the chosen nation of God that God had nothing to do with the other nations. Here’s Amos, verse 7, “Are you not as the sons of Ethiopia to Me, O sons of Israel?” declares the Lord. “Have I not brought up Israel from the land of Egypt,” we don’t deny He did a work for the nation Israel, but look at the rest of the verse. He brought up “…the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?” Other historical exodus,’ maybe not on the catastrophic level of the Egyptian Exodus but it is a fact that He is the sovereign of the universe and He also worked a mass exodus of the Philistines and the Arameans. So we conclude that in a special sense He’s the God of the nation Israel but that did not mean no relationship with other nations. He’s sovereign over all nations. So what’s happening in Europe right now, He’s sovereign over it, what’s happening in North America, He’s sovereign over that, what’s happening in Beijing, He’s sovereign over it, what’s happening in the nation Israel, He’s sovereign over that too. He sovereign over all nations and works with all nations. But Peter and most Jews of the time had a very myopic view of themselves, they still do in many respects, and they got so focused on themselves as the elect nation of God that they missed God’s work with other nations. They missed the greater implications of sovereignty of God and Peter’s saying, “Now I understand the truth that God is at work with all nations, and that includes you Cornelius.”

In verse 35 he explains, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him. That’s the biblical doctrine of race. The fifth divine institution, rarely taught is that of racial or tribal diversity. Where did the nations originate? When did modern civilization begin? It began after the Global Flood of Noah. Eight people got off the ark and out of the four wives you generate the genetic diversity we see today, everyone on the face of this earth is the descendant of one of those four women. And that’s why you find in ancient documents this remembrance of these four matriarchs, the red matriarch, the yellow matriarch, the black matriarch and the white matriarch. How is it that virtually every culture has some story of the four matriarchs? Because there’s a basis in truth, this is remembered by every culture. And in Gen 10 when the new civilization began he divided the human race into various families and nations, seventy to be exact, seventy basic divisions. This is what we call tribal diversity. God put a barrier between races and cultures for our own protection. He did it to suppress man’s tendency to corrupt itself. Today the world is trying to overcome these barriers and create a one world system; economic, political and religious and we’re well on our way. So there are barriers built in that need to be respected. But just because this diversity is there does not mean one race or nation is superior to another. What confuses some people is they see one race or people really blessed, they prosper and another race looks decrepit and so it appears that one race is superior to the other. It’s not that, it’s just that the thought forms in one culture are biblically based and the other is pagan based and so of course you see a difference. But that’s not due to racial superiority. That’s due to the influence of the word of God, or sadly, the lack thereof. But God welcomes from any nation the man who fears Him and does what is right. We summarize fearing God as accepting the Creator-creature distinction and rejecting the pagan dream of the Continuity of Being, that all being is one, the ancient form of evolution. Cornelius did respect the Creator-creature distinction. And he did what is right, there are certain things God takes note of. Now a unbeliever can’t do anything to merit salvation but there are certain things that count with God and the specific thing here with Cornelius and his household is that they blessed the Jews, they gave alms to the Jews and God took note of that. Why? Because He had said in the Abrahamic Covenant “I will bless those who bless the Jews and I will curse those who curse the Jews.” And Cornelius blessed the Jews.  

V 36, The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)—Lord of all. Now, those last words are the key to this sermon, Jesus Christ is Lord of all. This is a sermon on the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter is just catching the vision that Jesus Christ is not just for the Jewish people, He’s for all people. We’d say at this point Peter’s finally understood what Stephen understood back in Acts 6. We said Stephen was one of the greatest Bible students ever because he saw this long before anyone else, what did he see? That the plan of God was bigger than Jerusalem, it was bigger than the Temple, the plan of God has to do with all nations. Now it did come through the sons of Israel but the goal was for people of all nations to come to the Jewish Messiah who is sovereign over all. He brings peace. Jesus Christ is the only solution for world peace. Everybody talks about world peace. There is no other road map to peace. You can take away all the guns, you can take away all the ammunition, you’re still not going to get world peace, the problem isn’t guns, the problem is people, people are corrupt, people are sinful, and when the government says you can’t have your 2nd amendments rights what they mean is you can’t have it but we can and that way we will have all the power and authority to force you to do what we want. But that’s a totalitarian dictatorship. And the answer is not a totalitarian dictatorship, that won’t bring peace. Those people are just as corrupt as anybody else and probably more so. But the Lord Jesus Christ does have a peace plan. And Peter’s beginning to see the plan, “Hey, there is going to be peace between Jew and Gentile, up to now there’s been hostility between these groups, but peace can be had through the Jewish Messiah.” Jesus Christ on the cross obliterated the barrier (Eph 2:11ff). Few people realize that the first step toward world peace is not Jesus Christ’s second coming but Jesus Christ first coming. When He was on the cross He was winning a strategic battle mentioned in Genesis, the Serpent was defeated, but His removal from planet earth comes in three stages, two of which are yet to unfold. So the first step to peace was made when Jesus Christ died on the cross and now each person that believes in Him is another stepping stone toward world peace. But the only way to world peace is through the terms of the gospel which are faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. He makes the plan for world peace because He is Lord of all! 

Now that’s the introduction to Cornelius and our key point is that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. So watch as we go into the details and I’ll point along the way how His Lordship operated in the past, how it functions in the present and how it is expressed in the future. 

Verse 37, you yourselves know, and that word means information, facts you have some facts, and he’s going to outline the facts which is basically a summary of the Gospel of Mark. But the problem is that in the Scriptures facts are not all you need, you also need a philosophy of fact. Facts are not self-interpreting, you bring a philosophy or framework of fact which tells you how to interpret the facts. And obviously if your philosophy of fact is wrong then you can’t see the picture correctly. So they had information but how all those facts fit together is about to be outlined and he’s going to start with John the Baptist. Some of you will wonder, because I’ve taught you to start with Creation, why doesn’t Peter start with Creation? Because Cornelius was already convinced of the Creator-creature distinction. So Peter doesn’t have to clarify that. Instead he can start with the baptism of John. And so he says, you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed. They were aware that the whole thing started up in the Galilee because the OT prophesied it in Isa 9:1-2, and when they’d go to synagogue, at some time or another Isa 9:1-2 would be read and Isaiah taught that when the Messiah came His ministry would begin up in “the Galilee.” The Galilee is just this region that surrounds the Sea of Galilee. And the OT said it’s going to start here. The city where things really got started was the hometown of Peter, right on the NW short of the Sea of Galilee, the city of Capernaum. It was a multiracial city, Jew and Gentiles lived here. If, and we’re speculating here, but if Jesus Christ only came for the Jewish people, with no reference to Gentiles, would Capernaum be the most strategic starting point? What city would be? Jerusalem. But it started in Capernaum, hint; this is bigger than the Jews. 

When did Jesus Christ’s ministry begin? after the baptism which John had proclaimed. What was the baptism of John? Don’t confuse this with what we do out at Welge Ranch. That’s believer’s baptism. What John did was a baptism of repentance. It was for the nation Israel, they needed to be prepared spiritually for the Messiah. And one day Jesus Christ went out to John the Baptist and asked him to baptism him and you remember John’s response, “You don’t need to be baptized by Me, but I need to be baptized by You.” And he was respecting the fact that Jesus Christ had nothing to repent about. Jesus Christ was perfect, no sin. But still He insisted, not because He needed to repent but to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus was fulfilling part of the Mosaic Law. He was generating the space-time righteousness that He would impute to the believers account. The righteousness that is imputed is real, not imaginary, it was generated in space and time. Jesus Christ generated it and part of it was generated at His baptism by John. Verse 38, another piece of info they had, You know...how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, this is what happened when Jesus was baptized. Remember, He was out in the river Jordan and John baptized Him and when He came up what happened? A dove descended on him, a symbol of the Holy Spirit and the words from heaven, “This is My Son with whom I am well-pleased.” What’s this all about? What this is about is God the Father anointing God the Son. Take this word anoint in v 38, this is the word chrio, now, what’s the NT word for Messiah? Christos, we say Christ, they say Messiah, same thing. So we have chrio and Christos, two related words, they basically mean the same thing chrio is the act of anointing, and Christos is the anointed one, the Messiah. We conclude what Peter’s saying in v 38? God Messiah’d Jesus at His baptism, this is the formal declaration of God Almighty that Jesus is the Messiah. Why else do you think John said when Jesus approached, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He was pointing out the Messiah, “Here He is.” And so His baptism is a crucial event, it’s the event that marks the beginning of His messianic ministry. And Peter concludes verse 38 that this was done “by means of “the Holy Spirit and he received power and that’s the power to do miracles and we’ll see what that was about. 

But turn back to Isa 61 because God anointing Him is a quote from the OT and by doing this we get some details about the nature of the Messiah. Cults always argue that Jesus Christ couldn’t possibly be God and if he was then you get a contradiction, this divisive doctrine of the Trinity. Most Christians don’t talk much about the Trinity. I don’t know if it’s because they’re ashamed of it or what but it’s a very practical doctrine and it’s something to be proud of. If you don’t have it you can never resolve the issue of the one and the many, the unity and the diversity of life. This is a precious truth with practical implications for marriage, family the state and so forth. And also turn to Luke 4:18. Isa 61 and Luke 4:18. Look first at the last verse of Isa 60 and ask who is the speaker here. “The smallest one will become a clan, And the least one a mighty nation. I, YHWH, will hasten it in its time.” So the speaker is YHWH, continuing in verse 1 because there’s no chapter divisions in the Hebrew, YHWH is the speaker, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to captives And freedom to prisoners; 2To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn,” 

Alright, in Luke 4:18 Jesus was in his hometown of Nazareth. And it was tradition that on the Sabbath the Jews would go to synagogue and the men would get an opportunity to read from the OT and Jesus is the man, he comes forward and takes the scroll and opens it to Isa 61 and starts reading. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” And He closed the book, and verse 21, said, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in Me.” He says, you know the Me from Isa 61, I’m the Me. And the crowd must have been flabbergasted, because they knew very well what He was claiming. But ask yourself, did He finish Isa 61:1? No, he stopped mid-verse? Why did He do that? Because the rest of the verse isn’t fulfilled until His second coming. Jesus splits His coming into two comings and He does it mid-verse. So Jesus, in all His brilliance uses a valid interpretive principle called double reference where you’re just going along and the passage is talking about one event and then without saying anything it skips a significant piece of time and talks about a separate event. We’re not told in Isa there would be 2000 years between those words, but there is. And Jesus was a good Jewish Bible student and He knew, I’m going to do the first part of this verse at My first advent, but that vengeance stuff, I’ll do that later. 

But there’s something even greater here because count the people involved in Isa 61. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me,” that’s what Peter is quoting to Cornelius, and notice, person a) The Spirit, person b) the Lord God and then person c) me, the one anointed. Three distinct persons. Who’s the Spirit, obviously it’s the Holy Spirit. He’s not an it, He’s a He, not a force, a person. The Lord God, b) adonai YHWH, that’s God the Father and c) “me” the anointed one, the Christos, the Messiah. And who did we say was the speaker of all this? Previous chapter, verse 22, “YHWH,” YHWH is the speaker of verses 1-2, so YHWH has got to be identified with the me of vv 1-2. It’s saying the Spirit of the Lord YHWH is upon me YHWH, three distinct people involved here. Two of them are YHWH explicitly. Don’t try to deny the Trinity. You couldn’t have it any clearer that more than one person are YHWH. So the Messiah would be YHWH. Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus is YHWH. There’s no way around it. We’re often told the Trinity isn’t in the OT. I beg your pardon but what is this?

Now back to Acts 10 That’s the full import of what Peter said. Maybe your realizing this was no sermonette for Christianettes, this was heavy doctrine he’s giving them. You don’t have to water down truth, you just have to have a positive audience who are interested in the truth. Now, we want to finish verse 38 because there’s so much here we don’t want to skip it. It says He received power, now that’s the power to do miracles. It’s the defining moment when He received authorization from His Father in heaven to do miracles. He didn’t do miracles as a boy, sometimes you hear in the Roman Catholic Church traditions about Jesus as a boy doing miracles but His first miracle didn’t occur until after His baptism, according to the Scriptures. His first miracle was up at Cana of Galilee at the wedding feast where He turned water into wine. The miracles were to demonstrate, and I think a lot of people miss this, they always think, this proves the deity of Christ, and it does do that but another side of this that is equally important is that they demonstrated He had kingdom authority. If the kingdom is what the OT describes then it is a place where man and nature are at peace, babies can play by vipers dens, nature is at peace with nature, there are no tornadoes, no earthquakes, the demons are removed and you have world peace. Who can change the world and make it like that? Who has that kind of power? Who has that kind of authority? Obviously whoever is Lord of all. In v 36 who is Lord of all? Jesus Christ. He intervenes the normal course of history, he interrupts human kingdoms and establishes His own kingdom. That’s what the Book of Daniel is about. And so what do the miracles the Messiah did demonstrate? Let’s list some of them. He rebukes the wind and the waves, what realm? Nature, weather patterns, ocean currents. He controls that. Some of the greatest battles of history have been highly impacted by weather. Who providentially arranged that? Another series of miracles He did was cast out demons. One of the most fascinating miracles, Jesus Christ rides into Jerusalem at His triumphal entry on an unbroken colt. What realm? Animals, nature. He controls that. Now, when you compare His miracles with the kingdom environment you get a perfect corollary. Every time Jesus Christ did a miracle it was a declaration that I am the King, I have kingdom authority. And so verse 38 goes on to talk about the miracles of the King, He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil for God was with Him. That’s the main reason for His miracles, it wasn’t just that He felt bad for people, He was saying, I’m the King you’ve always wanted, will you receive me? And Peter goes on, “We are witnesses of all the things. He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. That note about we are witnesses is important. We’re not talking about private revelation, we’re talking about public miracles, we’re talking about things that were observed, we saw them. Christianity hinges on this. If it didn’t happen in space and time then it’s not true. The idea that most people have about their religion is that it’s just something they believe, and by that they mean an existential leap into the area of non-reason, it’s just a subjective experience. But this, this is very different, this isn’t a leap at all, this is something we saw in space and time, this is something you can think about, this is something you can talk about in human language, this is something that can be understood. 

And yet here’s the contrast, watch the contrast. He did all these things, He did good to all and how did they treat Him? They put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. Now, if you think of the cross as a little piece of gold jewelry you’re way wrong. What this was was a symbol of unspeakable horror. You didn’t talk about the cross in the first century. Cicero tells us this was unmentionable in polite Roman society. When they condemned someone to the cross they didn’t even verbalize it, they used a euphemism. And now you can see what sixteen centuries has done to the biblical view of the cross. The execution of Jesus Christ was the most painful, humiliating death imaginable. Someone hung on a cross was seen as the Ted Bundy of the day (Deut 21:22-23). And yet while He was seen as a criminal by men what does verse 40 say? He was approved by God. God raised Him up on the third day and granted that He become visible, 41not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. So we have the resurrection, the heart of the gospel message, the death and the resurrection, the death and resurrection. And after the resurrection He became visible to a certain number of witnesses. Those are the post resurrection appearances, if you are an informed Christian you ought to understand the text of 1 Corinthians 15, if you know it, someone asked you how many people at one time saw Christ? What’s the maximum number of people that ever saw Christ after He rose from the dead? Answer: five hundred at one time, so it was not a hallucinatory experience. 

Then Peter adds in verse 41, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. Now why is that there? To avoid Docetism, the belief that Jesus is just a phantom, a ghost, an appearance. That was a heresy that Christ predicted would arise and so he says, we ate with Him and drank with Him after the resurrection. You can’t eat with a phantom, ghosts don’t eat. So he’s giving evidence of the physical nature of the resurrection. He ate bread, you could have seen the bread crumbs fall from his mouth to the table; you could have seen the glimmer from His lips as he drank. He was a real man, a real human being. A resurrected human is still a human being. Some people have the idea that the resurrection body is some sort of freak alien thing. It’s not, when people saw Jesus He looked like a man. And when He went back to heaven He went as a man. When you first see him I don’t know what you think you’re going to see but what you are going to see is a human being. He’s going to have hair on his arms, He’s going to have fingernails, feet and toes, the whole nine yards. He’s a man and you’re going to see a man. It’s sort of a startling concept to many Christians, but a man is sitting at the helm of the universe, not an alien, not an angel but a real man.

So it says after He arose…He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead. And this is His future work as Lord, to Judge the living and the dead. Verse 43 is the end of it because it is interrupted by the Holy Spirit falling upon these people. Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins. What’s the condition here? Believing in Him. There’s nothing about circumcision, there’s nothing about commitment of life, there’s nothing about praying a prayer, there’s nothing about walking an aisle, there’s nothing about water baptism, there’s nothing about all the gimmicks people bring in. Those things may have their place but not here, not with respect to the forgiveness of sin. It’s solely by faith alone in Christ alone. If you’ve believed your sins are forgiven. Look how this happened mid-sentence, Peter was just talking and when they had all the necessary information and they were believing it it happened. This is a perfect example of what Paul meant when he said, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” These people were just hearing the word of God and they believed it. And verse 44, this is very dynamic, look at the time words, While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. 45All the circumcised believers who came with Peter, Jewish believers, six of them, were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46For they were hearing them speaking with languages just like in Acts 2, I refer you back to the first verses of Acts 2, and exalting God. Exalting God is the exact expression used in Acts 2:11 of what the apostles did. Exalting God means they were giving little blips, like newspaper headlines, they were intelligible utterances but they weren’t full sentences, they just expressed what God had done in Jesus Christ, attesting in a foreign language, the mighty acts of God in Jesus Christ, “He raised Lazarus from the dead, He turned water into wine, He stilled the wind and the waves,” the only difference with Acts 2 is that these are Gentiles speaking now, they’re probably speaking in Aramaic and so the Jews present understand exactly what they’re saying, Peter thought immediately back to Acts 2.

Then in verse 47, “Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?” 48And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay on for a few days. Acts 10 at this point gives you a third model of how the Holy Spirit came upon people in the book of Acts. Next time you hear someone try to build a model of salvation out of the book of Acts, how something has to happen to be genuinely of the Spirit of God explain this to me. How is it that in Acts 8 we have people who believe, then they are water baptized and only after that are the Spirit baptized. Then with Paul in Acts 9 which is explained in Acts 22, he believed on the Damascus road, when he got to Damascus he was water baptized and while he was in the water he was Spirit baptized. Finally you have Acts 10 and here Cornelius and his household believe, then they are Spirit baptized and lastly they are water baptized. 

Acts 8	Acts 9/22	Acts 10	
1. Belief 	1. Belief	1. Belief	
2. Water Baptism	2. Water and Spirit Baptism	2. Spirit Baptism	
3. Spirit Baptism		3. Water Baptism	

Now if you look at that you’ve got three different orders of events. In every case you’ve got faith first, but the water and Spirit baptism you’ve got every configuration possible, You’ve got water before Spirit in Acts 8, you’ve got water and Spirit happening simultaneously in Acts 9 and you’ve got Spirit before water in Acts 10. So which model are you going to choose to for all time? Acts 8, Acts 9 or Acts 10; it’s up for grabs, use the roulette wheel or your dice and pick one. Now obviously you can’t use any of them for a standard model of the Church Age, they weren’t intended to be models of the Church Age, they are intended to be reports of what happened in that age of transition. And if you want a model for the Church Age you don’t go to Acts, you go to the epistles which we’ll do next week, we’ll hammer out the doctrine of the church. 

And so Peter has given us one of the greatest sermons on Jesus Christ and it’s a perfect example of how these people were putting all the facts together under the word of God and seeing them come together in Jesus Christ and when that happened they were believing it and were instantly saved at this point, they had personally believed in Christ, the sign of their salvation was the giving of the Spirit, and then they were water baptized. And then finally, it says that Peter stayed with them a few days. These people were hungry for the word of God. They wanted more. If we could only get that kind of response to the word of God today. But we’re nearing the apostasy so very few Christians are interested in what God says.