 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to unfiltered. Thank you for tuning in. Pastor David. Thank you for joining us as always Yeah, a pastor that we recently had a meeting right before we came on on camera here And you mentioned something out of acts chapter 11 that kind of peaked peaked my interest in you know Peter had to do something very difficult Going against tradition of religion and everything that he was taught According not to the mosaic lies you just shared but to a lot that was probably more pharisaic When he went to Cornelius's how or he went to Simon the Tanner's house and ate with him Some of those are the circumcision came and contended with him because he ate in an uncircumcised person's house Cornelius with Cornelius and You know today we see that There are some that well if you do Ministry with this group of people or do ministry with that group of people you can't do it because They're not of the quote-unquote circumcision. I want to use that just for example How dangerous can that be and how can we put God in a box? Doing some stuff like that. I was mentioning on Sunday, and I'll be reiterating this on this upcoming Sunday that You know it's interesting how Jesus when he had been resurrected had given The command to go out into the whole world and preach the gospel So he already had let them know that It was the world they were to reach and yet at the same time it appears that the The Jewish apostles had yet to understand that God's love embraced all not just the Jew But also Jew and Gentile in reality You know there were no such things in terms of from a biblical worldview of we'll say we'll say Italians or You know Mexicans for that matter or Germans or whatever, you know just kind of given a Wide approach to that there was Jew and Gentile and so either you were Jewish or you were Gentile You're one or the other right so the Jews had established their their their rights and and their religion and all and so they They were not evangelistic in the sense that we as Christians are They had the temple so people would come to temple, you know, so there were mandatory festivals that they were to Observe three times a year every male 20 years and above So they would go to temple. They would go to the temple, but they were not necessarily Going out from the temple Evangelized in the world to become Jewish It was more like The people with curiosity who would encounter the Jews it had become that way so you have in scripture you have Roman occupiers who are centurions you see them in the New Testament in the Gospels as well as the book of Acts and these are people that Occupied as foreign oppressors and some of them had become aware of the Jewish faith and they became what are called God Fearers they were never fully indoctrinated into the Jewish religious system. They They held to many of their Their laws, but they would not be fully circumcised and thus they never became a Jew through conversion They were a God fear they held to the moral absolutes and traditions and all of that to a certain degree And so you see that with centurions, you know, there was a centurion at the foot of the cross that That saw Jesus and and as a centurion he said surely this was a good man This was the man of God. You see him in a good light Well, you end up with a centurion by the name of Cornelius in the New Testament And so God is doing a work because in Acts 1 Excuse me in Acts chapter 1 you have Jesus giving the promise of the Spirit and saying you'll be witnesses to me To the entire world Then you see it starting to expand in terms of the day of Pentecost arrives and the Holy Spirit baptizes the church becomes Born the hundred and twenty in the upper room. You see them outreaching in Jerusalem They begin to move into other areas in Judea Ultimately, they go into Samaria and then the Samaritans receive the word of God and Peter and John go and pray for them that they receive The baptism of the Holy Spirit and you see it expanding when an Ethiopian Unic is returning from from Jerusalem as it was therefore worship and yet He's brought to faith in Christ and though he's Undoubtedly an Ethiopian convert to Judaism because he had come to worship It's not stated that he's a a God fear He goes back and so ultimately you end up with with Peter going into Samaria and As well as Philip and then you encounter Cornelius and so in a nutshell what happens is the the people who at one time Were called to go to temple are now the temple of the Holy Spirit who were called to go out to people and so that was quite a difference because when Peter Perceived that God was not a respecter of persons he says and Preaches the gospel because people had assembled to hear all that God had commanded him to say which I was sharing on Sunday That's what the church ought to be doing every Sunday every time we gather is to hear what God has to say and then to do it Well, that's what happened with them And that's how they got saved is even though they while Peter was preaching they got saved well that calls the Those of the circumcision to begin to question because all the way from the north where they were at word has already been trickling down to the south and They now hear that the Gentiles have received God's word and they're upset because he was eating with the with the Gentiles and all and so you see how God is teaching the church to be open to people To reach the world with the gospel because even the centurions Who are outside even the Romans who were outside of the promise of God even the Gentiles? We're outside of the the promises of God could be brought into the gospel Amen, and so we're so thankful for the gospel that is powerful and alive. Amen Thank you for that pastor. I want to remind you that we have our services at 7 p.m. On Wednesdays. You're taking us through Romans chapter 13 and After that we're gonna be celebrating communion as a church family So I want to invite you guys to come out invite your friends and family to come join us We'll have a great time worshiping the Lord spending time in Bible in the Bible Bible study and then celebrating communion Thank you guys for tuning in and God bless you