Sharing The Gospel With Others

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here this day, and happy Mother's Day. We definitely want to share that with those both online and in person today. It's great to celebrate this day, and I hope it's not just a day where you go out to brunch although I'm glad you do that, and maybe go out and do a few other things with your mom, but also a time to really share with her personally what she has meant to you, especially if you've still got her alive, okay? But even if you don't, share with someone else what your mother has meant to you, okay? And I'm glad many of you have already been doing that all day, so that's great. We are in our fifth week of a series here on the Book of Acts called Neighborhoods to Nations. And here's the historical reality behind this Neighborhoods to Nations theme. And that is, that's kind of the outline of the Book of Acts, by the way. So it started in the neighborhoods in Jerusalem. It started at the temple among the disciples following Jesus. They waited for the gift of the Holy Spirit. But Jesus had said, as he had commissioned them in the end of Luke and in the beginning of Acts, that you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. That's kind of an outline of the whole book. From neighborhoods to the nations. Now, did they get it? Not so much. Which in one sense is very comforting to me. So that, you know, since the disciples didn't quite get it, and it took again and again the Holy Spirit to intervene for them to get it and understand it, that helps me understand, because I don't know if we get all the implications of this amazing gospel message we had. The reality is, though, that early church did expand explosively in the first three centuries. And they did it because they did, slowly but surely, by the gift of the Spirit, get it. Get that this message was not just for people like them, with people with a background and understanding like they had, but it was also for anyone, anywhere, and everywhere. This week we're looking at another case of that. Next week we get an even more profound case of that, when we look at the church of Antioch. And this happened in the background, as we've said in the past, against a church that was misunderstood, this Christian gospel, misunderstood by people outside of it. No one was as strong, they had no marketing campaign, they had no buildings, they had nobody of great influence that was involved, nobody was pushing it for hundreds and hundreds of years, and yet it grew explosively. And I think if we follow their pattern, if we understand the implications of the gospel, in our day and age, I am hopeful, even in a culture, as you know, across the world, but in the United States, where both church membership has declined, and basic understandings of the faith have declined in our society. I am hopeful that we can see, in our lifetime, a huge expansion of gospel ministry, if we understand it fully and properly. So we're going to be looking now at the implications of the gospel today, that the disciples, Peter specifically, didn't get it, until he got it. But you'll see it kind of in this text. And we're going to be reading in Acts chapter 10. It's kind of a long story. I could have actually started a lot before this, because Peter, prior to this, has a couple of visions that God has been giving to him. And then after, it took, yeah, but we're only going to try to do this section, when he finally shows up at a Roman centurion's house, and what happens there. Okay. So we read in Acts 10, starting, I believe, at verse 27. While talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them, you are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile, but God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me? Cornelius answered, three days ago, I was in my house praying at this hour. At three in the afternoon, suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me and said, Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. Send to Joppa for Simon, who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the Tanner, who lives by the sea. So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us. Now that's a setup I'd love someday. You know, wow! And 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 happ...