Acts Chapter 9:36-10:2

There's a lesson in here that you should be able, as a believer, you should be able to point to certain deeds and actions that indicate that you are actually a believer. You should have spiritual fruit in your life.

Now if you're here this morning and for whatever reason you can't point to any, then friend, that indicates that there might be a problem. Because fruit should come in the natural way in your Christian walk. Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee. David is a senior pastor of the Bridge in Kernersville, North Carolina. As a follower of Christ, our life is going to be filled with fruit. Fruits like praying and giving. Today, Pastor David explains more about these fruits as he continues in the book of Acts, chapter 9.

Now here's David McGee with his teaching, Fruit Happens. And we are in Acts chapter 9 now. This book is called the Acts of the Apostle, but it's more like the Acts of Peter and Paul.

Really it is. It follows Peter and Paul and actually once we get into it, it will just proceed with Paul mostly and what happens through his life. But right now we're looking at Peter and let's pick it up with Acts chapter 9, verse 36. At Joppa, there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds, which she did. But it happened in those days that she became sick and died. And when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room. And since Lidda was near Joppa and the disciples had heard that Peter was there, they sent two men to him, imploring him not to delay in coming to them.

Now we talked about this last week and we're going to talk about it a little bit this week. Let me point out a couple of things. Number one, she had an upper chamber or an upper room, it says in the New King James. The significance of that is that this woman was probably of means.

She was probably well to do because if you had an upper room, it meant you had basically you had a nice house. Now a lot of people think that if somebody has substance, has wealth, has finances, that they're very unspiritual. They're obviously carnal and chasing this world. And certainly, you know, there's these vows of poverty that people say that you should take and yet now it is an area to be careful in. But to assume because somebody has been blessed financially that they're unspiritual is not scripturally accurate. I have, I know people have friends who have been really blessed financially who are extremely spiritual. I know some people have been really blessed who aren't spiritual, but also know people with very, very little that are very carnal. So I think that attach any sort of spiritual significance to whether somebody has been blessed materially or not I think is a dangerous thing.

It's speaking of danger. First Timothy does say this. First Timothy chapter six, verse 17 says, command those who are rich in this present age, not to be haughty nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy, let them do good that they may be rich and good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life. Now, evidently this Dorcas or Tabitha was living this out. She was doing good to others and given her life away and given her goods and her resources to minister to people. And she was, if you will, investing in to the kingdom and notice they could see the good things that she had done. They could see the good things that she had done.

It wasn't. Yeah. I think Dorcas is a believer. I think Tabitha is a believer.

No, they, they knew in part because of the fruit that was coming out of her life. There's a lesson in there for us. And I know we talked about this last week and we're not going to spend the whole service on it, but there's a lesson in here that you should be able as a believer, you should be able to, to point to certain deeds and actions that indicate that you are actually a believer. You should have spiritual fruit in your life. Now, if you're here this morning and for whatever reason, you can't point to any then friend that indicates that there might be a problem because fruit should come in the natural way in your Christian walk. Now I'm not talking about you forcing fruit. I'm talking about the fact that just as you live for the Lord, as you read his word, as you're praying, as you're serving, as you're giving, as you're doing these things, fruits begin to happen.

A lot of times, you know, we say, well, do you believe? And, and, and we make that the thing. And that is the thing. That's where everybody starts.

Everybody starts the ground at the crosses level. Everybody comes to the cross for their forgiveness. The question is once that happens, what's going on in your life. Are you walking with the Lord?

Are you loving one another? And again, this is not meant to stress you out. It's meant to encourage you because as you walk with the Lord, as you do these things, fruit begins to occur. It happens.

It happens naturally. Now I used to live on a farm in Summerfield and we had fruit trees and all sorts of things. And as I would walk around and take my prayer walks and walk by the fruit trees, you know what I never heard a fruit tree doing? Well, I never walked past an apple tree and an apple tree going, I'm making apples.

It wasn't, you know, that wasn't happening. It made apples because there's an apple tree. That's the fruit that comes out of an apple tree is apples. The fruit that's supposed to come out of a Christian is Christian fruit. And so, you know, there are things that you need to do. Like, you know, I would get out there and trim and prune the fruit tree and, you know, the bigger trees, you could spend eight hours just pruning one tree and hardly moving, but you do things and that helps to produce fruit.

Just like we talked about last week. Here's the life lesson. Our life should be filled with good works. Our lives should be filled with good works.

Now, every time I talk about works, I'm going to talk about something else. We are not saved by works. We are saved by grace alone. You ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins. He doesn't look at your life and go, well, let's see how you're doing. You've been to church lately. How much of the Bible have you read?

No, He forgives you when you ask Him to forgive you of your sins. Okay? But that decision should, those fruits should follow that decision. And I talk about serving. I talk about these things as we come across them.

Why? Because I want to encourage you guys in good works. You see, a lot of churches nowadays, all the focus is on getting people saved. And that's great. I definitely want to see people get saved. Every Sunday morning, I present the gospel and give an invitation to ask people if they want to come to the Lord and say the prayer, but there also should be an emphasis on discipleship. And we have that here.

And that's part of why I talk about serving. Here's what Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24 says, and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Do you know another word for stir up? Agitate.

I'll let you make any connection that is pertinent. If I have to in love, in love as your pastor, if I have to agitate you into serving, I'm okay with that. Okay. And you got to know that because there are some people that won't do anything until they get agitated.

Hey, you know what? I love you enough to be that agitator. Okay. Now, if it's encouragement that will get you to begin to focus outward and not to be so inward focus, I I'll take that role. And to be honest, I'd rather take that role than to be the agitator, but I'll play whatever role I need to be. The King James says, and let us consider one another to provoke and to love and the good works. Then the new living translation says, think of ways to encourage one another to outburst of love and good deeds. So, you know, provoke, encourage, stir up. These are what we're, this is what we're supposed to be doing in the body of Christ to stir one another up to good works. And verse 39, then Peter rose and went with them.

And when he had come, they brought him to the upper room and all the widows stood by him weeping, showing the tunics and garments, which Dorcas had made while she was with them. You see they could show the good works that she had performed in her life. Let me ask you a question. Are there things that you've done in the last week that would indicate that you indeed are a Christian?

Are you able to point at something? Are you maybe going into children's ministry after the service to serve? Maybe you served Thursday night. Maybe you shared your faith with somebody this week. Are you able to point at something and say, this is an indicator that I'm walking in my faith. That old saying of, if you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Each one of us has to answer that question.

There should be. And if there's not friend again, it doesn't mean, okay, you know, just give up this Christian thing, obviously, and working out for you. No, it means you make some course corrections. If you will, you realize that maybe you're a little too focused on you, maybe on the stuff that's in your life and you need to be more kingdom minded and oriented. Let's see what Peter does in verse 40, but Peter put them all out and knelt down and prayed and turning to the body. He said, Tabitha arrives and she opened her eyes. And when she saw Peter, she sat up.

Well, this is interesting. Peter put them all out to me. That's just very fascinating because it shows what a spiritual man Peter is.

He put them all out. I think he knew what God was getting ready to do, but he asked everybody else to leave. Well, pastor David, where are you?

Where are you going with us? Well, what didn't happen is he didn't all of a sudden begin Simon Peter healing ministries, international incorporated and begin touring the world. It's not what he did. He said, you know what? Everybody needs to step out, man, may you and I be that humble when God uses us in mighty ways, he has everybody step out. What would you do if you knew you were getting ready to pray for somebody that was dead and God was going to bring them back to life?

What would you do? This is so convicting. Golly, isn't it? I know what I'd do. I'd ask him if they could, you know, lay them out here on Sunday morning.

I'm being honest. I mean, I hope that, you know, in part because I think it would be very encouraging for us all to see a dead person get up and walk away. It's a little, it's getting quiet.

It's kind of, that's real convicting, isn't it? That's what Peter did. You're listening to pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge. He'll be right back with more in just a moment, but I want to remind you of the free resources available to you on crossthebridge.com. There's a team of hundreds of people that will pray for somebody to be saved. You have a loved one that needs to know Jesus as Savior. You need people to pray for them.

You need someone to present God's word to them. Every day, we're presenting God's word to them here on Cross the Bridge with pastor David McGee. We can pray for them as well just by simply going to crossthebridge.com and click on the pray for the lost button. All you need to do is put in the first names of the people you love that need to know Jesus as Savior, click on submit, and immediately hundreds of people will begin praying for your lost loved ones.

And what an awesome way to bring your loved ones to Jesus. Here's a word from associate pastor DA Brown. We want to take just a minute to pray for some cities in our listening audience, specifically York, Pennsylvania, and Bluffton, Charleston, Columbia, Conway, Florence, and Greenville, South Carolina. Lord, thank you for the people living in these cities.

Lord, thank you for what you're doing there. We pray that your Holy Spirit would pour out and draw many people into a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus. Father, that people would put their trust in you, receive your forgiveness, and get plugged into a local Bible teaching church. Give the pastors discernment and wisdom on how to bless and lead these people, Father. Lord, we pray that we'd walk in unity. Lord, we pray for the city leaders that you would bless them and give them wisdom, the mayor, the fire chiefs, the police chief, Father. Lord, that we would be admirable servants of you so that people might see our unity and want a relationship with you also. Lord, we love you.

We thank you for these people. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, brother. And now, let's get back to David McGee as he continues teaching verse by verse. Verse 41, then he gave her his hand and lifted her up. And when he had called the saints and widows, he presented her alive.

Man, do you think that was encouraging? She had been dead and now she's alive. You got to say that slow to get the full effect.

She was dead and now she's alive. That's an amazing thing. And you know what?

I'm sure that encouraged the people. Let me ask you a question. I've never personally prayed for somebody that was dead and seen them come back to life. Don't know if I'll ever get that privilege or honor. God still does that. He does it here in a spiritual sense all the time. And this is something that just fascinates me and I've been thinking a lot about. You know, it's an amazing thing that we get to see week in, week out here because there have been missionaries that have gone to other countries who have toiled and labored for 20 years to see one convert.

Some told for 20 years and never saw one. And you think of what we get to see here. Of course, scary part of that is he who has been given much, much is required.

So as we see these things, we need to understand there's a responsibility here. Verse 42, and it became known throughout all Joppa and many believed on the Lord. So it was that he stayed, it was that he stayed many days in Joppa with Simon, a tanner.

Now, Joppa is a modern day Yaffa and it's a suburb of Tel Aviv. Notice it says a tanner. What does a tanner do? A tanner creates leather from animals. Now, when you are getting this leather from the animals, let me just ask a fairly obvious question. Is the animal alive or dead? The animal's dead. When you begin working with the leather, the skin of the animal, and there's various skins, there's goat skins and cows and stuff, but, oh, Pastor David, what's your point? The animal's dead.

What do you think the Jewish people thought of people who were tanners? Because we know from Leviticus and other places that they weren't supposed to touch or be around dead animals. And now we have Peter who was raised from his infancy as a Jewish young man and a Jewish nation, and he's hanging around a guy that hangs out with dead animals.

God's beginning to soften his heart. Now, not only, I probably ought to get a little more graphic. Not only was he working with dead animals, but you probably ought to understand. I mean, I don't want to get too graphic, but you know, there was like dead animals laying around and hanging in this guy's house. How do you think that smelled? It probably didn't smell real good. As a matter of fact, they tell us that you never had to really ask for directions to the tanner's house.

You could find it with your nose. Now, I remember being in Chinatown in San Francisco when we were traveling around in ministry and it freaked me out that they had like chickens and stuff hanging from the ceiling that they would cut your lunch from and serve you. That's all weird to me, but to have these dead animals serve around this guy's house.

And then I got to tell you this because I know part of the way they processed these skins was using dog manure. I know that's a pretty graphic picture, but here is Peter again, raised from his infancy as a Jewish man to avoid dead animals and all things unclean. And all of a sudden he finds himself lodging, staying with some in a tanner. They were looked upon so bad that in the Mishnah, a Jewish commentary, a woman could divorce a man for simply being a tanner.

That's how low on the corporate totem pole you, if you will, a tanner was. So we see Peter he's getting ready. Chapter 10, verse one. There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian regiment, a devout man, and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always. Now it mentions him being a centurion. What a centurion was is a man who was over, a Roman soldier who was overseeing about a hundred Roman soldiers himself. Now to be a Roman soldier, you had to be very disciplined and you had to be very submitted to authority. And it's interesting when you look through the New Testament, now in the book of Acts later, there's an exception, but centurions are seen in a good light, Roman soldiers. And certainly we have the time when the Roman soldier, the centurion came to Jesus and said, I'd like for you to heal my servant. And Jesus says, okay, you know, where do you live? And he goes, you know what?

I'm not worthy that you should come to my house. Just say the word and he'll be healed. And Jesus said, I found no such faith like this in Israel. And it was a centurion that stood by the cross and said, surely this was the son of God.

So this is a centurion. Cornelius was. We're told a lot of stuff in verse two, a devout man, one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always.

Let's, let's look at those four things. A devout man, that means a spiritual man, one who feared God, he respected God and noticed that God is singular, which was unique for a Roman Romans. They believed in a lot of different gods and, and understand that, you know, the Romans never killed Christians for believing in God. The persecution happened because they believed in God alone. They said there is one God, that's why they were persecuted. And you know, you look into the world today and the followers of Jesus are being persecuted because they're saying, no, there really is only one God. And then it says feared God with all his household.

Cornelius obviously was leading his family. Well, now that's a difficult task. If you know, you're a father in here or a mother, or especially if you're a single parent, that's, that's a difficult thing to lead your household. And, you know, one of the things we want to do is, is help people to do that. That's why it's one of the reasons that this morning, as we're in the book of Acts in here, right now in children's ministries, they're learning the exact same passage. Why do we do that? Because we want families and households to be able to learn the word of God.

And here's the cool thing. You can come in here, not knowing anything about the Bible, you can sit through this Sunday morning service. And then when you go to pick your child up, you've already learned a lot of stuff about this chapter. So you can come off to your child like a biblical genius some mornings.

And so we want to help you guys to lead your household. Now says, who gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always. What we're going to discover, Cornelius is looking pretty good right now. Any, I mean, you read this verse, I go, Cornelius is a good guy.

He's a good guy yet. Had he been forgiven of his sins? No.

Yeah. Acts 11, 14 will tell us that in more detail, but we can see right here. God's about to do something. Cornelius, good person looking after the poor, looking after his family, praying to God, devout is unsaved. He has not been forgiven of his sins. So you have to stop and ask yourself, what does it take to be forgiven of your sins? See, because a lot of us, especially if you grew up in the South, I grew up in the South.

My family's been here like 280 years, but we grew up and we're told, well, you do the best you can. And God honors that. God honors that. As long as you're good, outweighs your bad.

You're in. Is that biblical? Absolutely not.

Absolutely not. Now, maybe you're sitting here this morning. You think, well, pastor, do people really think that? Well, do me a favor. Ask them, ask your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, how they're getting to heaven.

Well, first ask them, you know, are you going to heaven? And the most everybody around here says, oh yeah, oh yeah. And then the next question is very telling. Why do you think that? You'll get some interesting answers. I guarantee it. You'll get, well, because I'm basically a good person.

Really? You want to know what the Bible says about you being basically good? It says you're not. Romans 3 10, 3 23, there's none righteous, no, not one, all fallen short of the glory of God. Or how about the classic, why do you think you're going to heaven? Cause I go to church. So you think you're going to heaven cause you go to church. So going into a building actually makes you a Christian. That's an amazing thing.

No, no, no, no. That's not the way that it works. And we're told later Romans 10, 9, and 10, and 13, how it is you get saved. You ask God to forgive you of your sins. You believe that he died for you and you call on him before the service ends.

I'll give you that opportunity to do that. If you're sitting here now wondering, well, I was one of those people. I'm one of those people thinking that I got to be good enough to gain entrance into heaven. Friend, do you know for sure that your sins have been forgiven?

You can know right now. I want to lead you in a short, simple prayer, simply telling God you're sorry and asking him to help you to live for him. Now God wants you to pray this prayer so much that he died to give you the opportunity and the ability to ask him to forgive you.

Please pray this prayer with me out loud right now. Dear Jesus, I believe you died for me that I could be forgiven. And I believe you were raised from the dead that I could have a new life. And I've done wrong things. I have sinned and I'm sorry. Please forgive me of all those things. Please give me the power to live for you all of my days. In Jesus' name.

Amen. Friend, if you prayed that prayer, according to the Bible, you've been forgiven. You've been born again. Jesus said he would not turn anybody away who comes to him.

And he came for those people who knew they needed forgiveness, those who were sick, not the righteous. So congratulations, friend. You just made the greatest decision that you will ever make. God bless you. If you prayed that prayer with David for the first time, we'd love to hear from you. Visit crossthebridge.com and click on God's Plan for New Life to receive our First Steps package with helpful resources to help you begin your walk with Christ. God wants to bless you and encourage your relationships today. Whether you are married, considering marriage, or engaged to be married, we have a resource for you. Pastor David wants to send you his four-part video series, Allies Stay Friends. Allow God to minister to your marriage through his Word today. This was an unforgettable weekend that encouraged many marriages, and you and your spouse can be encouraged too. Allies Stay Friends is our thanks for your generous gift today to help more people hear God's truth on this station and beyond, so they can cross the bridge from death to life. Please visit crossthebridge.com today to give a gift of any amount and get your copy of Allies Stay Friends. Well, DA, before we go, what are some ways that we can bless our listeners? through the book of Acts.