Crossing the Line With Jesus|07.20.25|Go.Make.Baptize. pt5
When you drive around the back country roads around our community, every once in a while you come across a sign like this: Do Not Enter. No Trespassing. Private Property.
A couple weeks ago, I took the kids to the movies and we got out right as the last big storm was building up. And so we were driving back home along the back roads as the rain was whipping sideways, and I thought it was funny that the No Trespassing signs weren’t very effective at stopping the rain and the hail from crossing that boundary.
And it got me thinking about how we all have places in our lives where we’ve put up invisible fences. We’ve put up boundaries.
Maybe it’s a person who hurt you. Maybe it’s to block out someone you don’t understand. Maybe it’s someone whose choices and lifestyle make you uncomfortable.
And in our minds and hearts, it’s as if we’ve hung up a big sign on that part of our life that says, “Do Not Enter.”
Maybe you’ve even made up your mind that God could “never” be at work over there…not in THEM…not with THAT GROUP.
But the thing about God’s love is that it’s like the weather. It doesn’t stop at your fence that you’ve put up.
His love crosses boundaries. His love walks straight through locked gates.
These last couple weeks, we’ve been looking at how God is always at work ahead of us as he calls us to join in his work of reaching people far from him. The great mission that Jesus gave to us — to make disciples as we go along in our life, to help people learn how to follow him in every area of their lives — that mission isn’t just for “experts” or “professionals”.
It’s for ALL of us. All of us who have said yes to God’s love and grace, we’ve said yes to his plan for our life as well. And that means we’ve said yes to obediently listening to him when he gives us a nudge.
But the good news is that God never sends us out alone. He never tells us to go and achieve apart from where he is already at work ahead of us. Where he is already preparing the path, preparing the heart of the one we are reaching out to.
Because Jesus would leave the 99 found ones to reach the One lost one, and we join him in that work, even when it causes us to step across boundary-lines we had set up.
[Scripture Reference]
And we’ll see in our Scripture passage today that God’s love is always crossing boundaries to reach the One who needs him. So turn with me to Acts chapter 10, which can be found on p99 of the New Testament in your black, seat-back Bibles.
As you find it, this story picks up right after Peter has experienced some incredible miracles of God’s healing power that we talked about last week. God’s love crossed the boundary of pariah to heal a paralyzed man, and God’s love crossed the boundary of death to raise up a woman back to life.
But now, God is going to be pushing on some deeply held boundary lines in Peter’s heart as he invites Peter to join his work of bringing his love and grace to those outside the people of Israel.
Peter had built fences in his heart… boundaries around who belongs, and who doesn’t. And God shows up and says, “Peter, I’m walking through the gate. And I want you to follow me.”
And we’re going to ask where God might be nudging us toward people who are typically “outside” our circle. We’ll unpack this whole passage as we go, so let’s start reading together
[Acts 10:1-2]
Cornelius is introduced as someone who is OUTSIDE the boundaries of God’s love, because he fits all the qualifications of an enemy of the Jews. He’s a gentile, in fact he’s a Roman Centurion, someone who is actively oppressing the Jews under Roman law.
But wait! He’s DEVOUT. He’s devoted to God. Not just any “god”, but he’s devoted to Yahweh, the true God that the Jews follow. AND he’s someone who LIVES OUT his faith by tangibly caring for others and constantly praying to God.
[Acts 10:3-8]
Read and then… In the eyes of Jesus’ earliest Jewish followers, Cornelius would have been counted as OUTSIDE of God’s plan…outside of God’s love.
But God has already been at work in Cornelius’ life. He prays, he gives to the poor, he has faith in God and is doing his best to honor him.
And God’s love isn’t reaching out to Cornelius because of what Cornelius is DOING. God doesn’t wait for us to act in a certain way, or prove ourselves, or demonstrate our perfection. He’s planting seeds ahead of time. His love is reaching out to us and calling us into those types of actions.
Because the truth we need to always remember is that God is the main evangelist. He’s already at work ahead of us preparing hearts to receive him…preparing moments for people to connect and for the Spirit to work.
So God has been at work in Cornelius’ heart, preparing him for what is coming next, and he’s also at work reaching out to Peter, to prepare HIM for what he’s asking him to do.
[Acts 10:9-13]
Read and then… Peter gets a dream or a vision of something that would have weirded him out: a voice from heaven telling him to eat animals that weren’t allowed for Jews.
Because Peter had been raised as a good Jewish boy. And ever since God had brought his people into the promised land over a thousand years earlier, he had given them specific instructions for how they were to act because they were set apart as his people.
[Leviticus 11:44; Deut 14:21]
And part of those instructions were about the types of food they were supposed to eat. In the same way that there are some Christians who have a strong belief about alcohol because of their personal experience with addiction, or because they had addiction in their family, so they stay away from the stuff as a way of not engaging in the culture around them.
God says, “I WANT you to stand out from the rest of the tribes there, who all follow other gods and other traditions. So I’m giving you some instructions on how to stand out so people know you’re different. You follow me.”
And these included instructions on how to care for widows and the poor and foreigners. How to engage in letting the land rest fallow every once in a while to allow it to produce better crops. And, yes, what foods were okay and which ones they should stay away from.
[Acts 10:14-15]*
So Peter (in his dream) says, “No way! I’m a good Jew, I won’t disobey your rules.” This was a locked gate in Peter’s heart. It’s a boundary that he thought God would NEVER cross.
But the surprising response is that the voice from heaven kind of scolds him and corrects him. “Don’t call unclean what I have MADE clean.” This happens 3 times, and then the vision ends. And Peter wakes up pretty puzzled.
[Acts 10:17-20]
Read, and then… Peter was puzzled, because the truth is when we hear from God or read something in Scripture, we don’t always immediately GET it, right? Anyone else feel like they’ll read something in the Bible, and it’s standing out to you, but you don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to DO with it right away?
“But suddenly…” men show up. Perfect timing. God’s timing. He’s not giving the full plan or roadmap to Peter, but he’s guiding and directing the steps AS they happen. And Peter is just supposed to be obedient to what God is doing.
Because if Peter had been told, “There’s some Gentile guys, maybe they even are soldiers…” he would’ve been super suspicious or guarded and definitely not jumped at the chance to connect with them.
They were OUTSIDERS. They were people that good Jews were supposed to stay away from. And God knew that was how Peter had been raised, so he gives him a vision in a dream about unclean food, but it’s not about the food. It’s about people.
And then some people show up that Peter would have thought were unclean, not righteous, not the kind of people that God loved…they show up right away and God’s Spirit tells Peter, “Yep, I sent them. Trust them and go with them.”
How would you have reacted if you had just woken up from a midday nap, the kind that you’re a little extra groggy from, and then were told, “Hey there are some strangers, men, at the door to see you…”?
And then you felt that nudge in your heart where God is telling you to definitely connect with them?
How would I have reacted? Especially if it turns out that there is some boundary that is being exposed to me?
Because this story is about God’s love crossing boundaries, but we all have types of people, we all have places that we think are off-limits. Where we give them a wide berth.
What places in your life are you saying, “Surely not, Lord!” Where are we still keeping an arms distance, even if God is inviting us to follow him there?
[Acts 10:23]*
Well, Peter listens to the prompting from God, gets some introductions with the guests, and the next day, they hit the road, bringing along some other believers from where Peter was staying.
Because following Jesus is always more fun when we do it together!
[Acts 10:24-26]
Read, and then… So Peter and the troupe arrive and meet Cornelius, and Cornelius bows down in a worshipful, reverent way, but Peter says, “Whoah whoah whoah, I’m just a human.” Then Peter goes in a meets the rest of the household of Cornelius.
[Acts 10:27-29]
Read 27-28, and then… Peter just calls out the elephant in the room, “You all know that this totally breaks all the cultural norms, right? Jews don’t hang out with Gentiles, and we DEFINITELY don’t visit each other’s houses.”
“But…God told me not to exclude people in my mind.” read v29
Then Cornelius recaps everything in verses 30-33, and we get to v34.
[Acts 10:34-43]
v34-35… Then Peter recaps the covenant history of how God chose his people Israel, and all of that points to Jesus… read 36-43
[Acts 10:44]
And then here’s the kicker, “While Peter was STILL SPEAKING…” God’s Spirit fell upon everyone listening to him.
Notice, it wasn’t because Peter was giving an amazing sermon. He was literally just giving like 5 bullet points of recapping what he had grown up with and what he had experienced in his life.
He literally just gave a few sentences about what he had witnessed with Jesus, and God took over after that. God’s Spirit fell upon the people listening. And I love this little tidbit, the verb that is translated into English as “fell upon” can also be translated as “happened to.” God’s Spirit HAPPENED TO those listening.
[Acts 10:45-46]*
And the group of believers that came with Peter were amazed because they could clearly see that these GENTILES were given the gift of the Holy Spirit, because they were praising God and speaking in tongues JUST LIKE AT PENTECOST.
[Acts 10:47-48]*
So Peter asks a rhetorical question, “Can we withhold baptism from people whom God has so CLEARLY already adopted into his family?!”
God hasn’t withheld his Spirit, so there’s no way we can withhold the ceremony of baptism, and so they all get baptized. Baptism followed because God had already acted.
God’s love had ALREADY crossed the boundary towards this Gentile family. God’s love had already prompted Peter to get over his childhood assumptions and racism to reach the One that he would have never reached on his own.
God’s love is already at work ahead of us. And he’s inviting us to join in his work of reaching the One that needs him, no matter what boundary has been set up, because nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus.
[Acts 11:1-3]
But that doesn’t mean that everyone is always happy about that… read v1-3
They criticized Peter, not for sharing the message of God, but for being NEAR these Gentiles. They criticize him because he was present with them. He shared a meal with them.
How often was Jesus criticized for “spending time with” the “wrong group”?
Well, Peter recaps the whole experience, starting with his vision in the dream, his unwillingness, God’s declaration, the visitors from Caesarea, his companions from Joppa, the trip to Cornelius’ house, and the message that Cornelius received about how Peter would bring a message of salvation.
[Acts 11:15-17]
Read… If God gave them the same gift he gave us, who was I to stand in God’s way?
[Acts 11:18]
Read… They started out fully entrenched in their assumptions, but when they saw God’s work, their objections were silenced and they praise God because God had given the gift of REPENTENCE that leads to life.
For the first time since Jesus had given them his command to go and make disciples, they finally understood that Jesus actually meant it when he said “go to all nations.”
They finally understood what the Apostle John would articulate when he wrote that “God so loved the WHOLE WORLD that he sent his son…”
[blank]
They finally got to see that God is already at work, reaching EVERY PERSON with his unstoppable love, even those we’d least expect.
So that means that we don’t carry the pressure to save people. We don’t carry the pressure to try and convince people.
God is the one at work, opening the door to his love by offering repentance to all. God is the main evangelist, but he chooses to work through ordinary, flawed people just like us.
And when we say yes to the Spirit’s nudge, when we are OBEDIENT to where God is calling us, we experience the joy of seeing what only God can do.
Because God’s love knows no bounds. Nothing can separate us from God’s love, because God’s love crosses boundaries.
[God’s love crosses]
God had been calling Cornelius to himself for some time because we see Cornelius has developed a reputation for loving God and even following his commands of caring for the poor.
But then God works explicitly through a vision to Cornelius to connect him with Peter. At the same time, God connects with Peter to invite him to trust the Holy Spirit and take steps beyond his cultural comfort.
And then he turns Peter into a messenger for boundary-crossing love when Peter brings news back to Jerusalem.
God not only wanted to reach Cornelius, he wanted to reach Peter and help Peter understand the depths of his love at a new level.
And then God wanted to reach the disciples in Jerusalem to help them experience a new depth of faith and love also.
God’s love crosses boundaries, and his love crossed boundaries to get to YOU.
Some of you might remember my story about how my grandparents were both alcoholics when my dad was growing up. They wanted nothing to do with God, and so my dad had zero faith connection through his parents.
But it was a friend from high school that invited him to youth group, and then helped him put his faith in Jesus in college. God’s love crossed the boundary of upper-middle-class addicted household to reach my dad, and that led him to meet my mom in Bible school after college and choose a life of international ministry, where I was raised.
And my faith came alive because of a retired school teacher who had moved to the Philippines to teach missionary kids, who taught my Bible class when I was 16 and helped me see that following Jesus was more than rules, it was a relationship that led to LIFE.
And then I ran from the idea of becoming a pastor for over a decade. But God’s love never gives us. And it crosses boundaries in order to reach the One who needs him.
What boundaries did God’s love cross to reach YOU? What obstacles did he overcome to make sure that you encountered him? And where is he inviting you to follow him to reach others?
Because each of us are being invited by Jesus to reach out to our “One”, the person who isn’t connected to church or Jesus. The One that is lost that the good shepherd would leave the 99 to find.
[Who is outside]
Who is your One? Who is “outside” your circle? Who is someone who feels like you wouldn’t normally connect with them, but you feel that nudge from God to connect with them?
We've said it before, but there's less than 10% of the people who live in our community who are connected to a church and regularly part of a church family.
That means 90% of the people who live around us aren't actively a part of a church family and therefore aren't experiencing the security, the hope, the support, the empathy, the growth, the encouragement that we get to experience by being part of a church family.
And God has placed us here for a purpose. Yes, he’s placed this church here for a purpose, but he’s also placed each of us individually here for his purpose, to be a light and to reach those far from him.
And what's the old saying? The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago or today.
Now, we can't go back in time to reach people, but God has been reaching them already. God has already been at work, God has already been planting seeds, and he's inviting us to be a part of what he's doing by watering, by tending, by cultivating, by sometimes planting and by sometimes harvesting.
Who is someone who feels outside your circle? Who is someone that God is nudging you toward?
Maybe it’s someone who is battling an addiction.
Maybe it’s a coworker who seems to be against religion and church.
Maybe it’s a family member you’ve been estranged from.
If God is putting them on your heart, let’s take one simple next step to connect with them this week.
Because the eternal life that is offered to every person who puts their faith in Jesus is at stake. It's being offered right now.
So, why wait? Why wait in helping the people around us experience hope and love? Why wait in helping the people around us experience help and support? Why are we waiting to point other people to Jesus when we know that Jesus offers the best life now and in eternity?
And Jesus isn’t calling you to be weird, just to be willing. We can’t let the fear of how people might judge us stop us from following God’s nudge.
We can’t let our own insecurity or awkwardness outweigh the upside of helping people experience full, abundant, true, fulfilling, eternal life in Jesus.
[What is one simple step I can take this week to share life with my One?]
Who is God nudging you toward? Let’s take a step towards them this week. Ask God who he’s nudging you toward, even if it’s someone that seems to be across a boundary that we have put up. Write down their name.
Maybe there is someone across a cultural boundary. Maybe there is someone on the other side of a relationship boundary we’ve put up. Maybe it’s someone we’ve distanced ourselves from because of a past hurt or because of fear.
But remember, God is already at work ahead of us. We aren’t the ones who carry the pressure to create any faith in them. We just take a simple step to share life.
Maybe it’s saying hello next time you see them.
Or ask them about their weekend, or their kids, or their work.
Or show care without any agenda. Just love them because God loves them.
God just wants your “yes.” He just wants you to be willing, and to be obedient to his nudge. And obedience is like a muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger and easier it gets.
The first step is the hardest, but after that, you’ll experience the JOY of joining Jesus in what he’s already doing ahead of us.
All of us have locked gates in our hearts. A person you’ve written off. A neighbor you’ve avoided. A coworker you’ve decided you’ll never connect with.
But remember, God’s love crossed boundaries to reach you.
So which boundary is God asking you to cross? Which locked gate is God asking you to open and walk through?
It doesn’t take a whole sermon. It doesn’t take us having a perfect understanding of the Bible. It takes one step. Maybe just a hello. Maybe just an act of care.
Because when we say YES to Jesus, when we walk through the gate he’s leading us through, we get to join in with what he’s already doing. We get to see how his love is reaching those in need of him.
And we get to grow in the process as we help others meet the creator of love and author of life. Isn’t that good news?