Do you know who God is preparing? Acts 10:23-33 | Prescott Anglican Church
Text: Acts 10:23–33
Synopsis: In Acts 10:23–33, Peter enters Cornelius’s home and finds a gathered household eager to hear from God. Peter’s humility before Cornelius, his willingness to cross old social boundaries, and Cornelius’s expectant faith show how the Holy Spirit prepares both the messenger and the hearers. This sermon calls Christians to resist both isolation and self-importance, trusting Christ to bring the gospel to people he is already preparing.
Manuscript:
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, instruct us neither to view ourselves as saviors nor to isolate ourselves within our own plans. Teach us instead to proclaim the gospel boldly to whomever you are preparing and calling us to serve. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
When a sermon encourages, convicts, or strengthens us, it is not because the preacher is unusually impressive. It is because the Holy Spirit has worked in our lives. And when that immediate result does not come, that does not mean the Spirit is absent. He is at work in ways we cannot always see.
That truth stands near the center of Acts 10. We are neither called to hide among people who are like us nor to imagine that our own evangelistic skill is what changes hearts. God prepares people to hear the gospel, sends his servants to speak it, and receives the glory when it bears fruit.
Punting will not score
When I was a young clergyman serving a very small church on the coast of Maine, the local clergy gathered quarterly. When someone asked how things were going, I would make a joking comment about “punting.” It was not much of a plan. One day a friend looked at me and said, “Ian, if you’re always punting, you’re never going to score.”
He was right. We are not called to stay permanently on the defensive. There is always a temptation, especially in small and conservative churches, to close ourselves off from the world. We can congratulate ourselves for getting every primary, secondary, tertiary, and fourth-level issue right, then decide that everyone else is too compromised to bother with.
But the Church is not a holy huddle. We are not called to retreat into our own plans and speak only to people who think, look, vote, worship, or live like us. We are called to make Christ known.
Acts 10 brings that temptation into focus through the contrast between Jonah and Peter. Jonah was sent to Nineveh, a city he hated. He fled in the opposite direction. Even after he eventually preached repentance, he sat down hoping to watch the city burn. He did not want the people of Nineveh to receive mercy.
Peter faces a similar challenge. He is sent from Joppa to Caesarea, the Roman administrative capital of Judea—a place filled with the soldiers of the occupying power. Yet Peter goes. He becomes, in this sense, a better Jonah: not a savior, but a servant willing to enter the place God sends him.
That matters because we can become Jonah without realizing it. God’s mercy may seem good enough for us and people like us, but we may quietly doubt that he will show mercy to those who think differently, live differently, or represent things we fear or dislike. We may even resent the possibility.
Cornelius is the answer to that instinct. He is a Roman centurion, perhaps the least likely convert imaginable to Peter. Yet God has already been preparing him to hear the gospel of grace.
God prepares the messenger and the hearers
There are different faithful ways to read Scripture. Sometimes we linger over a single detail, allowing it to provoke careful thought. Sometimes we read a whole chapter or book at once to see the larger movement of God’s work. In Acts 10, we have been taking a middle path, following the story a few paragraphs at a time.
First, we saw God preparing Cornelius. Then we saw God preparing Peter through the vision of the sheet. Now those two worlds come together.
Peter journeys to Caesarea with several believers from Joppa. Cornelius, meanwhile, is expecting him. He gathers his relatives and close friends, even though he has no guarantee Peter will come. Cornelius trusts the word God has given him. He assumes that Peter will have something so valuable to say that it is worth gathering the people he loves around him to hear it.
That is faith. Cornelius stakes his reputation on a promise he has not yet seen fulfilled.
It also gives us a question to consider. When we gather for worship, do we expect to hear the gospel of grace? When we invite a friend, do we do so with the same hopeful expectation Cornelius had—that the Lord may speak a needed word through the preaching of his Word?
Cornelius’s expectation was not ultimately confidence in Peter. It was confidence that God was at work.
“Stand up; I too am a man”
When Peter arrives, the scene is wonderfully awkward. Cornelius, a Roman centurion, comes out and falls at Peter’s feet in worship. Peter immediately lifts him up and says, “Stand up; I too am a man” (Acts 10:26).
That response teaches us something essential about gospel ministry. When someone brings good news, we may be tempted to make too much of the messenger. Conversely, when someone brings hard news, we can dismiss or despise the messenger. Either way, we make the messenger more than he or she is.
Peter refuses that role. He will not accept worship. He will not let Cornelius mistake a servant for the Savior. The gospel is not about the glory of the preacher, the evangelist, or the person who happened to invite someone to church. It is for the glory of God alone.
This also highlights something true of Jesus. In the Gospels, when people worship Christ, he does not rebuke them for it. Jesus receives worship because he alone is worthy of it. Peter is a man; Jesus is the incarnate Son of God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alone deserve our worship.
We should remember that whenever we preach, teach, pray, encourage, or share the gospel. We are not the heroes of the story. We are witnesses. Christ is the Savior, and he alone receives the glory.
A crowded house of Gentiles
Peter then enters Cornelius’s home expecting perhaps a conversation over tea. Instead, he finds a house full of people. Cornelius has gathered relatives and close friends, and Peter walks into a courtyard filled with Gentiles.
This is another awkward moment. Peter has gone from being improperly worshiped to standing before a crowd he would once have avoided. But he does not turn around. He does not retreat to the comfort of Jerusalem or Joppa. He says, “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” (Acts 10:28).
Peter has now rejected two opposite errors. He will not accept being treated as divine, and he will not treat Cornelius as untouchable. He refuses to be made into a god, and he refuses to treat another human being as though he were beyond God’s grace.
That is the Christian posture. We are not called to make ourselves heroes, and we are not called to limit our fellowship and witness to people who are comfortable or familiar to us. We are sent to the people God is preparing to hear the gospel of grace.
Peter says that it is “unlawful” for a Jew to associate with Gentiles, but the Old Testament law itself did not forbid every such interaction. Over time, customs and safeguards had become fences that kept people at a distance. Customs can begin as attempts at faithfulness or wisdom, but they can become more important than Scripture itself. What once felt healthy can become a barrier between us and people who need the gospel.
The warning here is not only, “Do not shut out the other.” It is also, “Do not elevate your customs until they prevent you from sharing Christ.”
An audience every preacher hopes for
Peter asks why Cornelius sent for him. Cornelius recounts the angelic visitation and then says, “Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord” (Acts 10:33).
No preacher could ask for a more attentive audience. Cornelius has gathered his household, family, and friends. They are not there for entertainment, social standing, or habit. They are there because they expect to hear from God.
That is how we should come to worship. We should pray for the Holy Spirit to make us receptive, and we should pray that he will take imperfect human words and use them to convict, encourage, strengthen, and bless his people. May we become as eager to gather around the Word of God as Cornelius and his household were.
Something larger is happening as well. The promise to Abraham is being fulfilled. God promised that Abraham’s descendants would become too numerous to count. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s people could often still be counted. But now the family of Abraham is expanding in a way that reaches beyond ethnic Israel. Through Christ, people from every nation are being grafted into God’s family.
The Church becomes a people too numerous to count—not because one human strategy succeeds, but because Christ is victorious and keeps drawing people to himself.
March forward in Christ’s victory
When we feel small, outnumbered, or uncertain, the temptation is to return to our little bubble. We may want to avoid the challenges God places before us. But Peter does not do that. He goes to Caesarea. He enters the home. He speaks to the people gathered there. He sees ancient promises unfolding before his eyes.
Our calling is the same. We are not to raise ourselves up as saviors. We are not to pick and choose who may hear the gospel of grace. We are called to move forward in the confidence that Christ has already won the victory.
We may not know whom God is preparing in our community, among our friends, or within our families. But God knows. He may be preparing a Cornelius even now. He may be preparing us to speak, welcome, invite, or go.
So let us proclaim Christ boldly and humbly. Let us refuse both self-importance and isolation. Let us trust the Holy Spirit to prepare hearts. And let us give all glory to the One who has already won hearts and souls for himself.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Comments