A Table for Outsiders

Sermon Notes

What would it take for you to sit down and eat with someone your whole life has taught you to avoid? In Acts 10-11, God sends Peter, a Jewish fisherman, to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and has to rework Peter’s assumptions on a rooftop before he’ll go. Brad Kirby walks through four things God is doing in this story: preparing people, expanding our circles, making room, and sending His church. Along the way, he shows that the nations aren’t only overseas. They’re across the street in Dallas-Fort Worth, and if there’s someone you’ve quietly decided isn’t your people, this one will stay with you.

Key Takeaways

• God’s mission begins with His initiative, not our courage. Before Peter knew Cornelius existed, God knew him by name, so we never show up anywhere God hasn’t already been working.

• You cannot reach people you are unwilling to know. God had to expand Peter’s heart before He could expand his circle, and our comfort zone can quietly become a wall between us and the people Jesus sends us to.

• God doesn’t play favorites, and neither should His church. If we’re going to worship together around the throne someday, we ought to be willing to sit together around a table today.

• Our good works cannot replace the good news. Our lives should make the gospel attractive, but our words must make the gospel clear.

• The church is a launching pad, not a finish line. God saves us, equips us, and sends us, and our mission begins in Plano but must never end in Plano.

  Discussion Questions

1. Who is someone in your life you’ve quietly decided isn’t “your people”?

2. Which fear about sharing your faith feels most real to you right now?

3. How does it change things to know God is already at work before you ever show up?

4. What categories do you tend to sort people into without realizing it?

5. Where might your comfort or preferences be standing in the way of what God wants to do?

6. Which one is God stirring in you right now: to pray, give, send, or go?

This Week's Challenge

Invite a neighbor, coworker, or international student whose background is different from yours over for a meal this week, even if it’s just pizza.

Transcript

What Would It Take?

What would it take for you to sit down and eat with the people who murdered someone you love? Not just forgive them from a distance, but move into their community, learn their language, and share your life with them?

In January 1956, five young American missionaries traveled into the jungles of Ecuador hoping to share the gospel with the Waorani people. They weren’t going to conquer anybody. They believed people who had never heard the name of Jesus deserved the chance to hear it. On January 8, all five were killed by Waorani warriors. Five men. Five families devastated.

One of those men was Jim Elliot, who left behind his wife, Elisabeth, and their young daughter, Valerie. Most of us would understand if Elisabeth went home and said, “Those people have taken enough from me.”

She Went Back

But that’s not what happened. About two and a half years later, Elisabeth took her little daughter and went to live among the very people whose community had killed her husband, alongside Rachel Saint, whose brother Nate had also been killed, and with the help of a Waorani Christian named Dayuma.

The people who had taken her husband’s life were the people she wanted to hear about eternal life. Relationships formed, and the message of Jesus was shared right where those five men had hoped to bring it.

Now, church, that story confronts me. Sometimes we struggle to love people who vote differently than we do! We struggle with anyone whose culture, religion, or language is different. It’s easy to say, “Jesus loves the world.” It’s another thing to love the people in that world who are different from us.

We Don’t Have to Cross an Ocean

God may never call most of us to the Amazon rainforest. But He is calling every one of us to share His heart for people who don’t yet know Jesus. Acts 10 and 11 aren’t just about God reaching people far from Him. They’re about God changing the hearts of His own people so they’ll reach them.

We live in one of the most diverse metro areas in America. We don’t have to cross an ocean to cross a cultural boundary. Sometimes we just have to cross the street! But God’s heart doesn’t stop at Dallas either. He wants His church to pray, give, send, and go.

So as we walk through these chapters, I want you to see four things God is doing, and wants to do in us.

Not Peter’s Dinner Guest

It starts in Caesarea with a man named Cornelius, a centurion in the Italian Cohort. Put yourself in Peter’s sandals. Cornelius is not the guy Peter is naturally inviting over for the Community Group crawfish boil.

He is a Gentile, and for a Jewish man like Peter, sharing a table raised serious questions about dietary laws and ritual purity. He is Roman, and Rome occupies the land. That’s like getting invited to the crawfish boil by the guy who took over your house and now wants you to bring a side dish. And he is a soldier in the very army that can tax, police, and even crucify Peter’s people.

Peter knew the gospel. He had preached at Pentecost. But he hadn’t yet grasped that God’s heart for the nations would have to change Peter’s heart toward the people of those nations.

A Face, a Name, and a Dinner Invitation

Peter may have been willing to preach to people he wasn’t yet willing to welcome into his home. It’s one thing to announce, “Jesus is Lord!” It’s another thing to pull up a chair next to a Roman centurion and realize “all nations” includes people you’d rather avoid.

This matters, CityBridge! It is easy to love the idea of reaching the nations until God puts a face, a name, and a dinner invitation in front of us.

And Cornelius is devout. He fears God, gives generously, and prays continually. If he lived in Dallas today, he’d help you move and have a steadier prayer life than some of us! But his generosity cannot erase his sin. In Acts 11:14, Peter’s message is the one by which Cornelius and his household “will be saved.”

It Begins With His Initiative

God sends an angel to Cornelius: send men to Joppa and bring back Simon Peter. Cornelius doesn’t know Peter. Peter doesn’t know Cornelius. God knows them both! Before either man knows what God is doing, God is already doing it.

God’s mission doesn’t begin with our courage. It begins with His initiative. I get it, sharing our faith can be intimidating. “What if I don’t know what to say? What if they think I’m weird?” But we aren’t showing up anywhere God hasn’t already been working first. Peter is not the hero of this story. God is.

Faithful Witnesses

We get nervous about sharing the gospel, like it’s all up to us. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”

Our job is to be faithful, not to produce the results. We can’t argue someone into the kingdom. But we can pray, love, listen, and speak the truth about Jesus. We can cross the street, cross the cultural divide, cross the awkward silence, and trust God with the outcome.

God doesn’t ask us to be the Savior. He asks us to be faithful witnesses to the Savior.

It Could Be Anyone

So who might God be preparing right now? Maybe a coworker quietly wrestling with guilt or purpose. Maybe an international student at UTD, far from family, more open to a conversation about Jesus than we realize. Maybe God is preparing someone through a loss, a friendship, a Bible they found, or a question they cannot shake.

You don’t have to know what God is doing in someone’s heart to be faithful in the opportunity He puts in front of you.

But get ready. It could be anyone. God didn’t send Peter to someone who looked like Peter, lived like Peter, or belonged to Peter’s social circle. He sent Peter to Cornelius. A Gentile. A Roman. A soldier. God is preparing people.

When Circles Become Boundaries

Second, God is expanding our circles, but we must be willing to step outside them. We all have circles we’re comfortable with, and that’s fine, as long as our circles don’t become our boundaries. Our comfort zone can quietly become our border wall to the mission field.

Sometimes God has to change the messenger before He uses the messenger. Peter goes up on a rooftop to pray and gets hungry. He’s praying, “Lord, speak to my heart,” and his stomach says, “Lord, speak to somebody in the kitchen.”

Then he sees a sheet come down from heaven filled with animals Jewish law called unclean. A voice says, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter answers, “By no means, Lord!” “No” and “Lord” in the same breath. He isn’t rebellious. Those dietary laws had marked God’s people as distinct from the nations, and he’s responding from convictions woven through his whole life.

Not Just the Lunch Menu

Three times the voice says, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” Apparently, the Lord knows Peter might need forty-seven reminders.

God isn’t simply changing Peter’s lunch menu. He’s challenging who Peter is willing to eat with. Whose home can he enter? Who belongs, and who’s an outsider? Peter explains it himself in Acts 10:28: “God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”

This is where it gets uncomfortable. We all have categories. People we like and people we avoid. People we quietly write off before we’ve had a conversation. We may never say, “Those people aren’t worth reaching.” We just arrange our lives so we never have to reach them. We love the idea of a multicultural heaven. We’re less enthusiastic about a cross-cultural dinner. You cannot reach people you are unwilling to know.

Before There’s a Conversion, There’s a Conversation

While Peter is still puzzling over the vision, Cornelius’s messengers arrive, and the Spirit tells him to go. God is knocking the dominoes over. Peter doesn’t understand everything yet. He only has enough direction to take the next step.

He travels to Caesarea and enters Cornelius’s home. That’s not a small detail. Peter has crossed a boundary. Before there’s a sermon, there’s a journey. Before there’s a conversion, there’s a conversation.

And what does he find? A waiting, eager audience. Cornelius has gathered his relatives and close friends, ready “to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord.” Peter couldn’t see that room from a rooftop in Joppa. God knew. Peter obeyed and walked into a room God had already prepared.

The Nations Are Already Here

We want our neighbors to come to church, but have we ever invited them into our homes? We don’t have to get on a plane to reach the nations. God has already sent them to us. More than 1.5 million of our neighbors in this metro were born in another country, and at least 156 languages are spoken here.

The question is whether we’re willing to cross the street, pull up a chair, and tell them about Jesus. Maybe it’s learning the name of the family next door, inviting an international student to lunch, or welcoming a family into your home for a meal.

I know that last one freaks some of you out. Stop! Your house doesn’t have to be a mansion. Pizza usually works fine. God can overcome a burnt casserole. You can’t keep your circle closed and expect your reach to grow.

A Bigger Table

Third, God is making room. A Jewish apostle stands in a Roman officer’s house, and his first words are astonishing: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.” In other words, “God, I get it. Your table is a whole lot bigger than mine.”

God doesn’t play favorites, and neither should His church. We may never say, “We don’t want those people here,” but we can communicate it in a hundred quieter ways. We make no effort to learn someone’s name. We ignore the visitor who doesn’t know where to sit.

Revelation 7:9 shows us where history is headed: a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne.” If we’re going to worship together around the throne someday, we ought to be willing to sit together around a table today.

Jesus Is Lord of All

Peter doesn’t give a flowery speech. He simply preaches Jesus. Jesus lived. Jesus died. Jesus rose again. Then he offers the invitation in verse 43: “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Everyone. Not just those who become culturally Jewish, adopt Peter’s customs, speak his language, or eat his food. One Lord. One cross. One empty tomb. One invitation offered to the nations.

This is missions. We aren’t exporting American culture, although some of you are convinced gumbo or Hutchins BBQ should be in the church’s statement of faith. We go because Jesus is Lord of all and people everywhere need the gospel. Our kindness matters, but our good works cannot replace the good news. Our lives should make the gospel attractive, but our words must make the gospel clear.

He Stays

After the Holy Spirit falls on Cornelius and his household, they’re baptized. Then Luke adds a detail I don’t want us to miss. They ask Peter to remain for some days, and he stays.

At the start of this story, Peter needed a vision from heaven just to walk into a Gentile’s home. Now he doesn’t rush back to his familiar circle. He shares life with his new brothers and sisters. The gospel doesn’t just bring people to Christ. It brings people into a family.

God is making room. Will we? Room in our schedules for relationships that take time? Room at our tables for people whose backgrounds are different from ours? Room in our hearts for people we wouldn’t naturally choose as friends?

A Church He Intends to Send

Fourth, God is sending His church. Here’s Acts 11 in a nutshell: God isn’t calling His church to sit back and watch His mission. He’s calling His church to get up and join it.

He doesn’t just gather people into a church. He gathers them into a church He intends to send. The church is not the finish line of the mission. It’s the launching pad. God saves us, equips us with His Word and Spirit, and sends us out to engage and make Jesus known.

Guarding the Furniture

So what’s stopping us? Sometimes it’s our preferences and comfort. When Peter returns to Jerusalem, the first thing he hears is criticism: “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” People have come to Christ, and the first question is about the dinner arrangements!

We laugh, but it happens in the church today. Somebody walks in for the first time, and we’re more concerned about what they’re wearing than what’s in their heart. Somebody new sits in our usual seat. God is opening doors, and we’re guarding the furniture.

Peter answers in Acts 11:17: “Who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” When God opens a door, we don’t have the authority to slam it shut. The gospel is nonnegotiable. Our preferences are not. A church that wants to reach the nations must be willing to be uncomfortable.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things

Luke shows ordinary believers, scattered by persecution, carrying the gospel to Antioch and preaching the Lord Jesus to Greeks. These aren’t apostles with official titles. We don’t even know their names or whether they were outgoing or painfully shy. They just spoke about Jesus, and God used them.

The question isn’t, “How did I end up here?” It’s, “Now that God has placed me here, how can I make Jesus known?” God uses ordinary faithfulness to accomplish extraordinary things.

It Must Never End in Plano

Our mission begins in Plano, but it must never end in Plano. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” He said we would be His witnesses “to the end of the earth.” Many people around the world still have little or no access to the gospel.

So we need to pray for the nations by name, give sacrificially, send people from our own church, and help plant healthy churches around the world. Some of you need to ask God if He’s calling you to go.

CityBridge, I don’t want us to be a church that simply talks about reaching the nations. I want us to be a church that prays, gives, sends, and goes!