Introduction
      Last week you will recall that I talked about the story of Ruby Bridges.  She was the brave six-year-old African-American girl who helped integrate the public schools of New Orleans in 1960.  I also showed you the Norman Rockwell painting of her with four U.S. Marshals, which appeared in Look magazine. 
      This past week, Rochelle Walton shared with me a remarkable book by Ruby Bridges titled Through My Eyes.  It tells her story in greater detail and with some amazing photographs.  On the screens you see a picture of Ruby with the U.S. Marshals mounting the stairs of the school.  Next, I want you to notice this alarming photograph of the crowd of white people who demonstrated outside the school in New Orleans.  They look so normal, don’t they?  Look at the little girl holding a cross there on the right. Christians were at the center of this demonstration. Now look at the little coffin in the center of the picture.  It has a black doll in it.  How disturbing and how sad. 
      However, I also want you to see another picture.  Here is a photograph of Ruby with some of the other students at the end of the year playing together.  Gradually, white kids returned to the school, and folks started to change.  God made a breakthrough, and the power of the Holy Spirit changed the heart of the matter.
      As I mentioned last Sunday, Acts 10 marks a turning point in the history of salvation when the walls of racial separation were broken down for the first time in the church.  God did a miracle back then, too, and if you had taken a photograph of Peter meeting Cornelius, it would have been just as surprising and historic as this last picture of Ruby with her new friends.
      As we consider this passage this morning, I want you to notice: Peter’s visit with Cornelius; Peter’s message of salvation; and Peter’s response to God's blessing.

I.  Peter's Visit With Cornelius
      Last week, we learned of the way in which God prepared for this visit in a miraculous way.  The Lord gave both Cornelius and Peter separate visions which set the stage for this historic meeting.  You will recall that Peter was hesitant and resistant even to meet with a Gentile, let alone share the gospel with him.  It went against everything he had ever been taught as a Jew.  But God had something greater in store, and Peter’s new willingness to make no distinction between people, regardless of their race, made this encounter possible.
      The text tells us that the next day, the day after Cornelius' men visited Peter to tell him of the centurion's vision, the apostle set out for Caesarea with the three men sent from Cornelius, along with six believers from the city of Joppa.  Their number is related to us in Acts 11:12.  This party of ten people traveled on foot the 32 miles and arrived at Caesarea the following day.
      When Peter and his group arrived, they discovered that Cornelius was expecting them, and he had assembled not only his immediate household, but also relatives and close friends.  Cornelius was eager that others might discover what God had in store for them, too.  As Peter entered the house, Cornelius fell at his feet in reverence, but the apostle made him get up and said, "I am only a man myself."  In doing this, the apostle rejected both extreme and opposite attitudes which people sometimes have toward others.  He had come to see that it is inappropriate either to worship someone as if divine, or to reject someone as if unclean.  Peter refused to be treated by Cornelius as if he were a god, and he refused to treat Cornelius as if he were a dog.
      Here we see the apostle Peter putting aside preconceived notions about people.  He went beyond his comfort zone, entered the home of a Gentile and accepted Cornelius' hospitality, something forbidden by Jewish tradition.  Peter came to see that the heart of the gospel goes beyond tradition, form, and "propriety."  It breaks down barriers and reaches into the brokenness of the world.  Peter learned that he could not let anything established by humans stand in the way of the gospel, even if it meant challenging his sense of what was appropriate.
      In the 1950’s, Billy Graham and his organization were exploring the possibility of holding a series of evangelistic meetings in England. There was a great deal of skepticism and resistance on the part of leaders of the Church of England, for they wondered how this fiery young evangelist from North Carolina would fit into the culture of Britain.  Besides all that, he was a Baptist! A meeting was set up for Dr. Graham and members of his team to meet with these church leaders. 
      They all gathered in an oak paneled room and sat in a large circle of chairs.  A waiter began to serve brandy and cigars to the gentlemen gathered.  Each of the men from the Church of England cheerily took a glass and began to light up the cigars.  But as the waiter passed in front of the individuals who were a part of the Graham team, each man declined the offer of the brandy and the offer of a cigar.  With each refusal, tension rose in the room.  The men from the Church of England felt snubbed and judged.  The men on the Graham team felt they were being asked to compromise their moral standards by drinking and smoking. 
      Then the waiter came to Billy Graham himself.  When the brandy and cigars were offered, Dr. Graham reached out and took both.  He sipped the brandy, and he lit up the cigar, although he had never had a drink or a smoke before in his life.  With this the tension was gone.  Other members of the Graham team accepted the gesture of hospitality, and the opposition to the evangelistic crusade was eliminated.   Billy went on to hold tremendously successful meetings in London and other cities around the British Isles for several weeks.  Dr. Graham, now frail at the age of 86, hopes to hold one last crusade back in London later this fall.  I hope God gives him the strength to finish his public ministry in this way.
      Billy Graham realized what was going on in that room in London 50 years ago, and he determined not to let secondary issues get in the way of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.  He was willing to go beyond his comfort zone in order to reach out in friendship in the Lord.  In what ways is God calling you to reach beyond yourself and be stretched in your witness for Christ?  How might you push beyond your comfort zone to be used of God in the coming week?

II. Peter’s Message of Salvation
      Peter began with a personal statement of what he had learned through his experiences of the previous few days.  He stated that he now realized God does not show favoritism or partiality.  He learned that God's attitude toward people is not determined by external criteria, such as their appearance, race, nationality, or class.  Instead, God accepts people from every nation as they are when they seek to revere Him and do the right thing. 
      After this introduction, Luke summarizes Peter’s sermon.  There were three parts to it (of course!), and they had to do with: 1) the life and ministry of Jesus; 2) the death of Jesus; and 3) the resurrection of Jesus.  The apostle spoke about how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit for His work as the Messiah.  He told of the way Christ went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of Satan.  Peter also affirmed that he was an eye-witness of these things.
      Next, the apostle told of Jesus’ death and His execution by crucifixion.  He shared that behind the human execution was a divine plan, and Jesus bore the punishment of God and His judgment when Christ died on the cross.  Finally, Peter spoke of the Lord's resurrection.  He emphasized that it was both a divine act and a datable event.  He stressed that the resurrection was physically verified, and that Jesus even ate and drank with the disciples.  The risen Lord was not an apparition, a ghost, or a vision.  He was physically raised from the dead, never to experience the grave again.
      Peter concluded his message by saying that Christ would come again some day as judge, and that everyone who believes in Him may find forgiveness for their sins.  The apostle presented Jesus as an historical person, in and through whom God was at work in a saving way.
      Here we see the central core of the gospel message as presented by Peter.  Biblical scholars and theologians use a little Greek word to describe this core message; it is the word kerygma.  The word literally means "preaching," and it represents the essential witness and affirmation of the New Testament preachers concerning the gospel of our Lord.  It is what officer Joe Friday and his partner on Dragnet would have gotten when they asked, "Just the facts, ma’m; just the facts."  The kerygma was the core message of the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ; it was the heart of the matter.
      It is easy for Christians to get distracted with extraneous matters that aren't really the heart of the gospel.  We get sidetracked with secondary issues which are not really at the core of the message of grace.  I can remember some years ago seeing an example of this when I was working with high school and college students on a mission project in the Dominican Republic.  We were there to construct a simple cinder-block church building in a remote village where previously there was no church at all, and we were there to share our faith.  There was a young teen-aged girl we met who was obviously interested in what we were doing and what we had to say about Christ.  She was a beautiful young woman, and she had such a zest for life.  As we shared the gospel with her, it was obvious that she wanted the love of Christ for herself, but there was hesitancy on her part.  She would not come to the point of making a personal commitment. 
      When we pressed her to discover why, we learned that if she committed her life to Jesus Christ, she would no longer be able to wear make-up, and she could no longer go dancing – two things that were very important to her at her young age.  Those were two of the cultural taboos that Christians in that area upheld for believers.  We tried to explain that those things didn't matter, but her response was, "You don't understand."  The day we left the village for the last time, there were tears in her eyes as we said good-bye to each other, and I could tell that she yearned to give her life to Christ, but the restrictions were just too much for her at this young age.
      Christians in that part of the world had muddled the heart of the matter.  They applied extraneous standards of behavior which were not central, and we could even add unbiblical, to the message of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  The sad reality is that a young woman did not come to Christ because of the false barriers that others erected around the fence of the gospel. 
      Now, it is easy for us to write off this situation and take comfort in the fact that we don't do anything like that here.  However, do we?  In what ways are we critical of others, even other Christians, who don't approach the faith in just the way we do?  How do we allow secondary matters to creep into the central message of the truth of the gospel and allow them to displace the essential message of God’s love and grace? 
      As most of you know, I have very strong ideas about the moral issues of our day, and I have taken the opportunity to speak on a number of these issues in this pulpit from time to time.  However, I will never allow secondary matters to crowd out the centrality of the gospel.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture is of the utmost importance to me, and while there are other matters that are important and need to be addressed by the Church, they will nevertheless take a back seat to the message of salvation.  A correct view on the moral issues of the day will never save a person; only the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and His death on the cross for our sins will!  Let us never forget that.

III.  Peter's Response to God's Blessing
      As Peter was delivering his message to Cornelius and those gathered in the house, the Holy Spirit fell upon all the people who were there.  They began to speak in tongues, just as the believers had done on the day of Pentecost.  The Jewish Christians who had accompanied Peter were astonished by the fact that these Gentiles had received the Holy Spirit and the same sign which had marked the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost.  The gift of tongues authenticated that these Gentiles were recipients of God's grace in the very same way as Jews had received it in the beginning.  The experience struck like a thunderbolt, and emotions ran high.
      Peter responded with the declaration that since these new friends in Christ had been given the gift of the Spirit, then they, by right, should also be baptized and welcomed into the covenant community of faith.  This was very significant for Peter and his six companions, for in baptizing these Gentiles, they confessed that God in His sovereignty does indeed bring Gentiles directly into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ apart from any prior relationship to Judaism.  This was revolutionary for the early church, and history would never be the same again.  Later on, when others heard about this experience, they would see that the conversion of these Gentiles was entirely of God, and no one could revert to their old prejudices and relegate these new converts to the role of second-class Christians. 
      Peter and his companions saw once again that you cannot put God in a box.  He is forever breaking out of our categories.  God is sovereign; we are finite.  He is almighty; we are limited.  He is in control; we can only respond to His gracious invitation.
      A number of years ago, John Hess, Gary Johnson, and I tried to climb Long's Peak, but we were turned away near the Boulder Field because of 60 mile-an-hour winds and the threat of bad weather.  It was so cold that our teeth were chattering, even though it was July.  We were disappointed that we didn't make the assent all the way to the top, but we were also grateful that we had the good sense to know when to turn back.  There is something about being middle-aged and having a wife and kids that brings sense to decision-making.
      As we walked down the trail back to the base of the mountain where our car awaited, I couldn't help but think about the strength of that mountain, how it was in control and we were not.  Try as we might to be in charge, the mountain reassured us that we weren't.  What a metaphor that is for God!  Try as we might to be in charge of our lives, to be the masters of our own fate, to be in control, the Lord reasserts over and over in the course of our lives that we are not.  God is the One who is in control, and it only takes a correction in the stock market, a physical illness, or the loss of a loved one to reveal to us just how fragile our lives really are.  I didn't get to climb to the top of Long's Peak that day, but I did come away with a mighty powerful reminder of the sovereignty of God and the way in which He is in control.  Whenever I try to put Him in a box, He will always break out of it over and over again.

Conclusion/Application
      As we close this morning, let me ask you, who is the Cornelius in your life?  Who is there that is either hard for you to love, or who makes you very reluctant to reach out to them?  They are Cornelius to you, and God wants you to take the message of God’s love to them. 
      Maybe your Cornelius is a child who has wandered away, and they have caused you a great deal of pain.  They are in a place you don’t want to go.  Or perhaps your Cornelius is a spouse who cannot get free from his or her addictions, and you are afraid of their black hole of need.  Or maybe your Cornelius is a co-worker who bugs the heck out of you.  They appear to be as far away from God as a person can be, and there are so many things about them that just drive you crazy.  God wants you to reach out to them with His message of love.
      Maybe your Cornelius is a Hispanic kid who is at risk and who attends Columbine Elementary School.  God wants you to reach out to them through our Kid’s Hope USA ministry and volunteer your time as a mentor.  Maybe you’re reluctant to go on a short term mission trip because you think, “I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m not in control.  And besides, I don’t speak the language, and you can’t drink the water there.”  Cornelius needs you to go.
      Peter left his comfort zone and reached out to someone who was very different from himself, someone he thought was beyond God’s reach, and he went to Cornelius on his terms and his turf.  Push past your fears and your reservations.  Venture out into the unknown, and take a risk.  God just might have a miracle waiting for you if you do.  Amen.