The End of Pride and Predjudice [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Peter was appalled because these foods were detestable to him. He never once tasted pork.

Never would he think of such a thing. And now this voice is saying, rise up and eat. And he says, no, Lord, he said, I've never eaten unclean food.

And God spoke to him and said, what I have made clean do not call common. It's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Unlimited as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'm going to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It could be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Now more on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news?

Yeah. God, that was pretty good. God is not prejudiced, which means that he's not only perfectly fair, but he's perfectly inclined to bless anyone and everyone regardless of age and race and gender, ethnicity or social standing. There's no partiality in God. And today we're continuing in a series that I'm just loving being in in the book of Acts, just marching through the book of Acts chapter by chapter.

And we're in chapter 10 again today, really the sequel to last week. We're going to look at a chunk of scripture, but I want to begin with just these two verses that are the focal point today. Acts 10, 34 and 35. 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. No partiality.

And in every nation, meaning every color of skin, every ethnicity, every spoken language, every culture, God is an acceptor of persons. And that's what we're going to learn about for our own lives as well. Well, with some apologies for kind of bait and switch on the title today, I've entitled this message The End of Pride and Prejudice. But lest some of the men get too excited about me giving you some way out of ever watching this chick flick again, that's not actually what this is about today. I don't know how many times I've seen The Pride and Prejudice.

I have a wife and a daughter. I think they would watch it endlessly. And some of the men would like a way out of it. It's actually a classic. It's actually a classic book of Jane Austen, although Mark Twain in his usual satirical way said of Jane Austen, he said, Any library would be a good library if it had no volume of Jane Austen's, even if it had no other book in it. It's actually the classic tale of love and well, pride and prejudice that have to be overcome if true love is going to be discovered and embraced. Because where there is pride, if you think you're better than someone or prejudice, where you think you know everything about someone, then there is going to be distance and there's going to be brokenness. But when we let go of pride and prejudice, that's where real relationships happen. So I want to talk plainly about this, especially this matter of prejudice.

And sometimes, you know, it just, you just got to just be plain. And I was chuckling to remember the story of a minister, a young minister moved to a rural community that was a logging community. And there are two or three competing logging companies in the area. People in his church worked for one of those. And it was at a river and it was back in the old days, they'd send the logs down the river.

They brand the end of it with their company name. And he looked down at the Riverside one day and saw that some parishioners in his own church, much of his horror were down there and they were pulling the logs out of the river that were being sent down by another company, cutting the end of the log off what had the brand of the other company on it and stealing them and rebranding them themselves. He was appalled at this great sin that was going on amongst his own people. So he came and decided he was going to preach a real pointed sermon about this the next week. And he came in and he said, the title of my message is thou shalt not lie. And he sat there and looked at the very people been stealing the logs and rebranding them.

And those same people walked out at the end of the service and said, good message pastor, you really told him today. And he said, well, that didn't work. He looked down and saw them stealing again that week.

He came back the next week. He said, it got to make this even more direct. And he stood over and said, the title of today's message is thou shalt not steal. And he looked right at those people. He preached his heart out. And at the end of the message, they came out and they said, good message pastor, you really told them today.

And they kept stealing logs. So he thought and prayed about it. And the next week he stood up and he said, the title of today's message is thou shalt not steal thy neighbor's logs and cut the end off and rebrand them as your own. Sometimes we have to just be pretty direct. And I think especially in this day, um, it's really important we be direct about this. There's no place for prejudice in the Christian's heart or anyone's heart. And what I want to show you is how powerful it is when you let go of prejudice. And I want to just keep pointing to this, that every social effort that we make, that's good.

I'm for it. But, uh, the answer for, uh, racial discord and the answer for racism is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this chapter, Acts chapter 10, as much as any place in the scripture shows you why this chapter of scripture is not just pivotal in the apostle Peter's life is not just pivotal in the new Testament, not just pivotal in the Bible, but this chapter of scripture is pivotal in human history in a very real sense. You and I, everyone who's not Jewish would not be here today except for what happened in Acts chapter 10.

We were there last week. So let me give you a little recap of the first part of Acts chapter 10. So Peter, who we know and love, a disciple who had denied Jesus three times, but Jesus loved him and Peter had been there along with the others at Pentecost and they'd seen the Holy Spirit be poured out in their midst and they were preaching the gospel and talking to everyone within amongst the Hebrew people. But this big change happened because Peter has a vision that corresponds with a vision that God gives to an Italian soldier, a Roman centurion named Cornelius. And Cornelius is, we call it, the Jewish people call it a Gentile because Gentile just means not Jewish. And so he's a Gentile who lives in the seaside city of Caesarea, beautiful place that King Herod had built.

He oversees a hundred troops and he's well respected. But Cornelius, unusually, is though not Jewish, he is a man of prayer. And the scripture said that he prayed and he gave alms to the poor and that his prayers had risen as a memorial to God. They'd risen his prayers as compared to like incense that the priests burn at the temple that you breathe in. And so it's like God breathed in the prayers of this Gentile Roman centurion Cornelius. So Cornelius was seeking God. Well, God sent an angel in a vision to Cornelius and told him to send some of his men down 30 miles south to another coastal town, Joppa, and to find a man named Simon who's called Peter, that's our apostle Peter, and to bring him because there was something God wanted to say through Peter.

Well, while those men are traveling down to Joppa, Peter goes up on the rooftop at the house where he's staying with a tanner named Simon, coincidentally, and he goes up on the rooftop at noon to pray. And while he's praying, he gets hungry. So he's thinking about what he'd like to eat and somebody downstairs in the kitchen, some Jewish mother's down there fixing a nice kosher meal. And by kosher, we mean in accord with all the Jewish dietary laws and customs. The book of Leviticus spelled out some special dietary restrictions for the Jewish people. Most famously, they don't eat pork, but there are a lot of other animals they don't eat as well.

It's all specified. And it's a very important part of Jewish culture. It was God's way of saying you're a distinct people and three times a day when you eat your meal, I want you to remember you're not like everybody else. Some health benefits to the dietary laws, but more than anything, it was to point out the distinctiveness of this people.

So Peter had never had a barbecue sandwich in his life. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Pastor Alan and his wife, Ann, lead you and your spouse into a fresh encounter with the God of grace. You'll learn a simple grace-filled process that makes great communication easy. You'll discover the freedom of forgiveness and the power of celebration. You'll also learn how to pray for your spouse and how to bless one another with a faith-filled vision for the future.

To help you grow, when you order the video series, we'll also send you two copies of the accompanying study guide. Whether your marriage is going through some special challenges or your marriage is in a season of health, you'll find powerful transformational truth in good news for your marriage. Make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and fill your marriage with the grace of God. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Peter had never eaten an unclean animal. And he's up on the roof and he's hungry. He's thinking about, I wonder what they're fixing for lunch downstairs. And he has a vision. And God sends him this vision actually three times because he wants to make the point, make sure Peter gets it. It's a vision in which he sees, he's caught up in the spirit. And he sees this very vividly, a big sheet like a sail from a boat that Peter would be familiar with.

And it's being lowered down by four corners to the earth, huge. And on it are all kinds of unclean animals, the kind that Peter had never eaten and never would think of eating. And a voice spoke to him and said, rise up and eat.

Well, Peter was appalled because these foods were detestable to him. He'd never once tasted pork. Never would he think of such a thing. And now this voice was saying, rise up and eat. And he says, no, Lord. He said, I've never eaten unclean food. And God spoke to him and said, what I have made clean, do not call common. Three times this happened to get this point across because it was unthinkable for Peter to eat unclean food. But God was setting him up for what we're going to learn about today because what God really wanted him to see was that there aren't certain people that he was supposed to avoid either because just as much as Peter avoided eating pork, he also avoided associating with anybody that wasn't Jewish. Jewish people didn't go into the homes or lodge with Gentiles.

They tried to remain completely distinct from them. They thought this was what God wanted. And as we'll discuss today, there was a lot of misunderstanding about the heart of God in this.

They were a holy people and they considered the Gentiles common. But God is getting ready to send the gospel through Peter to Gentiles. So to set it all up, he started with a vision of Peter and these unclean animals.

He says, you can eat them. And now Peter is brought up from Joppa by Cornelius' servants to come to Cornelius' house and goes into a Gentile's house. And we're going to pick up and read sort of the rest of the story starting at Acts 10 at verse 25.

Here's exactly what happened. When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up and said, stand up.

I too am a man. And as he talked with him, he went in, goes into this Gentile's house and he found many persons gathered. There are lots of Gentiles there. Cornelius' family and he's just brought all the neighbors.

There are probably other soldiers there. It's a big crowd in the house. And he said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation. He said, he walks in the house. He said, you know, because they all knew this.

The Jews didn't associate with them. He said, it's not even lawful for me to do this. He said, but, he said, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.

The world's getting ready to change because of this right here. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I asked them why you sent for me. Because Cornelius responded to him at verse 33, Cornelius said, I sent for you at once and you've been kind enough to come. Now, therefore we're all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord. He says, we want to hear what you've got to say.

Obviously God has done a miracle to make this happen. So you couldn't have a group of people more full of expectancy than this group of Gentiles that knew nothing of Jesus. And yet they wanted to hear what he had to say. And what follows starting at verse 34 is the first Christian sermon to non-Jews. 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's right is acceptable to him. As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, he's Lord of all.

You yourselves know what happened throughout all Judea beginning from Galilee after the baptism that Jesus proclaimed. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. And he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for God was with him and were witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear not to all the people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. And he just preaches, he just tells them about Jesus. And what happens is this glorious miracle at verse 44, while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. He just started talking about Jesus and the Holy Spirit fell upon these Gentiles. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter, that's amongst the Jews, they were amazed, amazed. You can't even imagine what they felt like because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles for they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God exactly what had happened to them at Pentecost. And Peter declared, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

And then they asked him to remain for some days after that. They were just stunned that the Holy Spirit had come upon the Gentiles. Their whole understanding of life, of people, and of the world, all of it changed that day.

It was the end of all pride and prejudice in this regard for them and it changed the world. So I want to focus in our attention on this verse that there's no partiality in God, but I want to start with Peter opened his mouth and said, truly I understand. Because I think this means more than what we think of when we hear the English word understand. It comes from two Greek, a prefix kata, which means coming down, like in the sense of something from above that comes down. So that gives you the idea of something transcendent that then moves downward into us.

And it also lombano that means receive or take. So literally this is like the taking into from above something that you receive. So it means like to grasp what previously was beyond someone or to realize the truth that previously was not known. We all know what we mean when we say the light turned on for me. It dawned on me. I came to understand this. It's like saying, um, there was something of massive importance that I had not understood.

And then I came to understand it. It's like saying I woke up to a reality that I'd been missing. The word woke is, is slang. It means being attuned to the social and especially racial issues that are going on.

Someone who's woke and someone who's tuned in to, um, to all of these issues. He was awakened to something that he hadn't previously known. That's, that's the context of saying, I now realize that, um, there is no reason to say that God is just for the people of Israel. Alan Wright today's good news message. The end of pride and prejudice it from our series unlimited and pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing our parting good news thought for the day. In just a moment, unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing it's free and just a click away at pastor Alan.org. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice.

You need more good news. Marriages like people aren't changed by human effort or even by applying principles. Marriages are changed by the gospel of grace. In six video sessions, pastor Alan and his wife and lead you and your spouse into a fresh encounter with the God of grace. You'll learn a simple grace filled process that makes great communication easy. You'll discover the freedom of forgiveness and the power of celebration. You'll also learn how to pray for your spouse and how to bless one another with a faith filled vision for the future to help you grow.

When you order the video series, we'll also send you two copies of the accompanying study guide. Whether your marriage is going through some special challenges or your marriage is in a season of health, you'll find powerful transformational truth in good news for your marriage. Make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and fill your marriage with the grace of God. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here with Pastor Alan and our parting good news thought for the day.

And by the way, the series we're in is unlimited and there's a lot to unpack here. And as we close out here in place of bookmark in this teaching, The End of Pride and Prejudice, what are we leaving with folks today Alan? Well, God through the Holy Spirit can open up your eyes to what you had not seen before.

And it really means is there's an invitation to what we might call from a sociological point, a paradigm shift, but to see something totally different. And the way out of our pride and the way out of our prejudices is by the same grace that God showed us in the coming of Christ in the first place. And so we pray for our listeners, every one of you today, that the eyes of your heart would be opened up so that you could see from God's perspective.

And when you do, I think humility follows and our judgments melt away. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.