No Favourites (4) (Acts 11:1–18)

Well, it's been a very big few weeks for us at 11:30 studying Acts chapter nine and Acts chapter ten, and been a very big few days for Peter, who actually lived through these events that we have.

Um, and now if you keep it open, page one one zero five, verse one, look at how badly it goes next.

So I don't know if you have ever gone home with a, what you thought was a piece of really, really good news.

"Honey, I've sold the car." And y- you get sort of the reaction you're not expecting.

Uh, verse one.

The apostles and the believers, they hear that the Gentiles have received the Word of God.

That's the big news, the good news.

The Gospel, it has broken out of just one nation, and now it can spread everywhere.

Peter goes home, verse two, with this great news, and they criticized him and said, "You went into the house of an uncircumcised man and ate with them." It's disappointing, isn't it, I guess, for Peter? Um, David Turner was preaching a few weeks ago.

He gave us a fantastic image for what was going on.

I think probably David must have had a traumatic, uh, holiday to Spain, somewhere like that, in the summer.

This was on his mind, 'cause he asked us to imagine the book of Acts like a wildfire.

So the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, spreading out from Jerusalem like an unstoppable fire of new life.

So the, the whole world, from God's point of view, was tinder-dry, just, just waiting for the match.

And David had us to imagine this from the point of view of Satan.

So not an individual who, you know, often gets a bit of empathy and sympathy, so that's what we were asked to do.

Imagine Satan watching this happening.

His, um, smart plan of killing Jesus has turned into his worst nightmare, uh, and people are escaping death and guilt and sin all over the... everywhere.

And what Satan does in the book of Acts, he mobilizes all of his forces to try and prevent this spread.

So there are threats of violence.

There is internal division and sin.

It's like he's, um, dumping on the water from the helicopter, trying to put out the fire.

But he is also, David said, um, cutting fire breaks.

So if we can just limit the damage, if we can keep the Gospel penned up in just a few places.

And the greatest fire break of all is the one in verse three.