God Loves the Outsider

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This morning I want to talk to you about outsiders. The Bible talks a lot about outsiders and it’s important for us to understand what is an outsider because it is discussed so much in the Bible. And I have a story about a time that I felt a lot like an outsider.

Several years ago my family and I were new in Seminole and Benjamin was enrolled in the kindergarten there in town. And so we were invited to something that they host every year called the Kindergarten Ball. And it’s a royal ball-themed thing.

Benjamin came home all excited, telling us, you know, they have this ball, and they have dancing for the kids, and they have snacks, and the kids and the parents and the teachers, they all dress up for this royal ball, and it’s just a wonderful time. And so we thought we’ll go, and because he’s so excited about it, and we’ll do it up big, and we’ll go all in and participate. And so we went and bought some things, and Brother Jack has a photo to show you.

That’s us at the kindergarten ball, and though your eyes do not deceive you, that is your pastor wearing a crown of a sash like Miss America. The only way I like Miss America is a crown of a sash. Because, you know, I’m willing to forego a little bit of dignity every once in a while to make some fun memories with the kids.

So that’s what we did. And we were all excited. We dressed up.

We decided we were going to participate. Being new in town, we didn’t get the memo that most, actually I shouldn’t say most, no other parents dress up for this thing. We walked in, and the crowd sort of parted.

And I died a little inside. They looked at us like we just arrived in town on a spaceship. And now, my wife likes attention.

Not in that sense do I like attention. And so, like I said, I died a little inside. They looked at us the whole night like we were outsiders.

And I thought, I can’t even take the crown off because I’ve still got this goofy sash on and bow tie and metal and all of that. And then I wouldn’t have matched Benjamin if he would have been sad. So I kept it on all night while people looked at us like we were circus folk.

We were outsiders. We were outsiders being new to town. we were outsiders due to the fact that we stood out from everybody there and they looked at us like we were crazy.

Now the teachers and everybody, they were great. They loved that we got into it, but it didn’t change the fact that everybody else there looked at us like we were from Mars. We were true outsiders and I felt it that night and I feel a little embarrassed even now just talking about it, just remembering it and reliving it.

So what is an outsider? I thought about this feeling of being an outsider, that’s not the only time I’ve ever felt like an outsider, but that’s the only case I really want to talk about this morning. As I thought about what it means to be an outsider and what it means to feel like an outsider, here’s what I settled on.

Outsiders are people that we think do not belong, and they are also the people that we think could never belong and maybe should never belong. And as I’m telling you that, somebody may pop into your mind. You may see somebody that you think doesn’t belong in some particular setting.

Maybe it’s somebody ostracized from the family. Maybe it’s somebody in a social group you’re part of. Maybe it’s somebody that’s been to the church and you just feel like they don’t fit in, they don’t belong.

Maybe it’s not possible they ever could. Maybe you think they shouldn’t ever fit in. They’re just not the right kind of person.

But I would suspect that probably everybody in this room has known at some point or another what it feels like and what it means to be an outcast just because we don’t measure up to somebody else’s expectations, whatever those expectations might be. We’ve probably all been in those situations. And I think it’s just part of human nature.

It’s not something we can ever do away with completely. But let me tell you, it’s not something that should ever happen within the body of Christ. we should not see outsiders within the body of Christ. I’m going to say that again and let that sink in a little bit. We should see no outsiders in the body of Christ. Now, I know there are people outside these four walls or however many walls are in this room.

There are people who are not Christians. There are people who, as it stands where they are in their life and in their frame of mind right now, they would say, I would never darken the doors of the church. In a sense, they are outsiders because they’re not inside.

And I’m talking about people who come to hear about Jesus Christ, people who come to Christ and want to be part of the body and they want to be part of the church. We should never see those people as outsiders, even if they are different, even if from a human standpoint, they don’t fit in because of where they’ve come from. We need to understand that God can work in anybody’s life and by his Holy Spirit, anybody can be born again, even those that we least expect.

And there’s a story in the book of Acts that illustrates what God can do in the lives of an outcast, in the lives of the people that we would least expect God to work in their lives. And it shows us how we ought to respond to what God’s doing. And it started with a man named Cornelius.

This man Cornelius was a Roman. He was from a pagan background, but he worshipped the one true God. He even attended the synagogue.

And he needed Jesus because he realized there was something missing. He realized his religious activities were not ever going to be enough to get him closer to God. So he recognized that he needed Jesus.

He knew that he needed to be right with God, but he was still a Gentile. And that meant that in the sight of the Jews, even those Jews that were part of the early church, he was considered an outcast by birth and somebody that would always be an outcast. And so God stepped in and he changed the church’s perspective on Cornelius and the other Gentile outcasts. So if you would, turn with me to Acts chapter 10 this morning.

Acts chapter 10. And if you would, stand with me as we read together from God’s word, if you’re able to. We’re going to start in verse 9.

We’re going to read a few verses. And for the sake of time this morning, we’re going to skip a few verses in the middle of the story and get right to the end. So we’re going to start in verse 9 and go to verse 16.

It says, The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray about the sixth hour. Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat. But while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven open and an object like a great sheep bound at four quarters descending to him and let down to earth.

In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.

And a voice spoke to him again the second time. What God has cleansed, you must not call common. And this was done three times.

And the object was taken up into heaven again. So this is after Cornelius has prayed to God. And God has made clear to him, send his men to Joppa to find Peter.

At the same time, God was preparing Peter. Have you ever been so hungry you fell into a trance? He passed out from hunger or something.

So that’s where Peter was and God sent him this vision. Now we’re going to skip ahead to verse 34. It says, Then Peter, this is after Peter arrives at Cornelius’ house.

Then Peter opened his mouth and said, In truth, I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, whoever fears him and works righteousness is accepted by him. The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ, he is Lord of all. That word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea and began from Galilee after the baptism, which John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed by hanging on a tree. Him, God, raised up on the third day and showed him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us 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 it is he who was ordained by God to be the judge of the living and the dead.

To him, all the prophets witness that through his name, whoever believes in him will receive remission of sins. And while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word and those of the circumcision who believed were astonished. as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also.

And you may be seated. So I realize that we skipped around a little bit there just because the story takes up all of chapter 10. We didn’t have time necessarily to go through all of chapter 10 verse by verse today.

So I want to make sure you understand that what happened here is Cornelius recognized that even though he worshiped the one true God, there was something missing. He realized that his own good works and his own religious rituals were not enough to get him close to God. And he cried out to God about it.

And God led him to send his servants to go find Peter. And God said, you’ll get your answer there. And so while God was preparing Cornelius, God was also preparing Peter with this vision of Peter being hungry.

And suddenly God sends a sheep down from heaven laden with all these animals. It says all sorts of beasts. It says creeping things.

I mean, that’s like snakes and creepy crawly things that you’d never want to eat anyway, or I wouldn’t. He said all these animals, and there was no distinction among them. And Peter said, I’m not eating anything that’s unclean under the law.

And God says, hey, what I’ve called clean, you don’t call unclean or come. And God was preparing him for what was to come. These animals came down on the sheep.

God told him to go and eat them. He says, I wouldn’t go near anything like that. And this process happened three times because God doesn’t usually have to tell us things just once, right?

If you’re anything like me, sometimes I have to learn the same lesson over and over and over. So God sends the big sheet down three times for Peter to get the idea that, hey, what I have called clean, what I have told you is clean, you don’t get to call unclean or common anymore. So the sheet came down and Peter finally got it.

I think he finally understood understood when shortly after that, these Roman servants, these Roman soldiers who were servants of Cornelius, knocked on his door and said, hey, our master wants you to come and talk to him. God apparently talked to him and told him to send us to find you and bring you back. And I think Peter at that point said, oh, this is what the whole thing with the animals on the sheet was about.

God we see that that’s what happened. God was calling the church, calling Peter, and by extension, calling the early church to minister, to reach out to the Gentiles. This vision was to prepare.

It wasn’t just, hey, you can eat whatever you want now. It wasn’t, hey, just bacon and shrimp are on the table, which thank God they are. But it was go talk to the Gentiles.

Be ready. Cornelius is sending his men to come find you. Be ready.

Because no matter how devout they were, no matter how fervently somebody like Cornelius believed in the one true God. Just by his birth, he was considered a lesser person. He was a Gentile.

We talked about this a little bit in Sunday school. The point was brought up that a lot of times the word dog would follow that. He was a Gentile dog.

Less than they were. So those who were in the church were primarily from a Jewish background, and they had been trained. They had been trained from an early age that these people were outside the covenant.

They were outside of any relationship with God. They were worshipers of pagan gods. They were spiritually, it’s like they could never even know or understand God.

Why even try? They were just filthy. You can’t really say enough about the disdain for the Gentiles.

And Peter even told Cornelius in verse 28 that he wouldn’t even have darkened the doors of a Gentile’s house if God hadn’t sent him specific instructions to go to this outsider. If God hadn’t given Peter this vision, Peter would never have stepped foot in this man’s house because he was that much of an outsider to God’s people and to God’s covenant. And so for God to tell Peter, go and treat this man and his family with no distinction as though they were any different from you.

Go to them. It was a turning point in the life of the church. It was a turning point for the church.

It was a call to action to the church that they needed to reach out to the outsiders around them. It was marching orders to the church to fulfill the promise that really we see all the way back in Isaiah that Jesus wasn’t just coming to be the Messiah of the Jews. He was coming to be the savior of the entire world to everyone who would believe from whatever nation they’d come from.

And they needed this turning point. They needed this wake-up call, this call to action, because God’s covenant had always been with the Jews. You go back to the earliest days of the Old Testament, God’s covenants, God’s agreements had been with the Jews.

They’d been God’s chosen people. And the Gentiles had always been outside of that unless they had gone through the process of converting. They had to become Jews in order to have any kind of relationship with God.

And so So it’s hard for us to understand because most of us, as far as I know, come from a Gentile background. And we grow up in what has been called a Christian culture, or at least a Christian-influenced culture. So it’s hard for us to understand, but for them to reach out to people like us was unthinkable.

To these earliest Christians, it was sort of like, why bother with those people? You can imagine it being said with a little sneer. But those people, they’re so sinful.

They’re so lost. There’s no way they’ll ever get right with God. And I think it’s unthinkable for us to, it’s hard for us to understand that they would think about the Gentiles that way because so many of us have come to Christ. And yet I think we do this. Sometimes we do the same thing with other people, maybe even with other groups of people.

We’ll say the same thing. Why bother with them? Why bother with that group of people?

Why bother with my neighbor? I’ve met him. There’s no way that man will ever come to Jesus Christ. That’s exactly how the earliest Christians looked at the Gentiles.

But then God said, what God has cleansed, you must not call common. And this vision was the point for Peter and for the church where it began to sink in that the gospel makes salvation available to all people, regardless of where they’ve been. Regardless of where they come from, regardless of the stock they come from, regardless of their past, their history, regardless of where they are now, the gospel, the same gospel makes salvation available to anyone who will believe.

And so Peter went to this family that didn’t fit with the church’s idea of good prospects. I mean, they weren’t from a respectable Jewish background. And so he went to them and he gave them the gospel just like God told him to.

That’s in that second portion of the text that we read this morning. He told them how God is not a respecter of persons in verses 34 and 35. That means God doesn’t look at people and see us as any different from one another.

I think God will see our actions differently. But God doesn’t say, oh, you’re an American. You get into the better part of heaven.

It’s not how it works. God doesn’t say, oh, you’re from Afghanistan. No gospel for you.

He says, God is not a respecter of persons. and he told how God sent a message of reconciliation to Israel through Jesus Christ that even though they’d had these covenants with God throughout the Old Testament, they were still spiritually estranged from God. And so God sent them a message of reconciliation that he was going to make peace between himself and Israel through Jesus Christ. And he explains in verse 39 how Jesus was crucified, in verses 40 and 41 about how Jesus rose again from the dead and how he was seen by eyewitnesses.

He explains in verse 42 how Jesus will come again one day to judge the sins of all the living and the dead. He explained in verse 43, though, that all who believe in him will be saved. That doesn’t mean all that believe in his existence.

Not everybody that says Jesus was a real historical figure, but those who have put their faith and trust squarely in Jesus Christ for salvation. It doesn’t matter where they came from. God will save them.

He said, God sent Jesus to bring reconciliation between him and Israel, but he’s made that reconciliation available to everyone. And so Peter had come to realize that the same Jesus who died for him also died for those people. The same Jesus who died for him died for the Gentiles.

The same Jesus who died for the Jews in the church who were looking down at others died for the ones that they were so vehemently looking down on. the same gospel that saved Peter that also saved the Gentiles. And for us, that means the same gospel that saved you and me and saved those around us, those outsiders, those people we look at and say, they’ll never come to Christ. Look at the way they live.

Look at the way they act. Look at the things they think, their opinions. Look how they dress.

Look how they smell. Look how they vote. They’ll never.

The same gospel that saved me and saved anyone of them. it is possible I’ve written in my notes that it’s possible for us to become like those earliest christians but I think it’s more than possible I think it happens every day I catch myself thinking this way and I have to snap myself out of it and say well that’s not right because we’ll we’ll write off certain people or certain groups of people I had a neighbor in seminole that my goodness after talking to him a few times I’d rather had dental surgery than carry out a conversation with him I know I’m not alone in that, right? All the rest of you love everybody around you, right?

Okay. This woman was nuts. Half the time I talked to her, I think she was on something, because one day she’d be screaming at me, because my dog barked at her.

Well, I wonder why if you’re screaming. Words that I didn’t know you could combine. I’m thinking, I’ve never heard that word as an adverb before, but anyway.

Then the very next day, she’d be talking to me like we were old friends. And I just told Charla sometimes I would hide if I knew she was outside. Because I didn’t know which, I didn’t know I was going to run into Dr.

Jekyll or Mr. Hyde that day. I felt myself at times thinking, as Charla would even say, she just needs Jesus.

I know she does, but do I have to be the one to give it to her? And I would catch myself thinking, that woman will never, that woman will never come to Christ. Why would I waste my time? And then I realized that.

hello Cornelius I’d love to tell you that I led her to Christ I didn’t but I think how wrong my attitude was because churches are filled with people who used to be that person the kingdom of heaven is going to be filled with people who used to be that person and Jesus worked in their hearts and their lives Jesus did something that we thought was impossible that just like the angel told Mary when Jesus’ first coming was expected. With God, nothing is impossible. And so I just bring that story up to illustrate that we do that.

We will write off certain people. We will write off certain groups. We will look at them like they are permanent outsiders when it comes to the family of God.

We’ll think they’re too broken ever to be right with him. We have to remember we are all saved by the same gospel. And it is important that you and I be willing to reach out to the outsider.

Because what they need is that gospel. You and I need to have more confidence in the power of the gospel. To save anybody.

That have more confidence in the power of the gospel to change anyone’s life. Realize that the power of this gospel that God has given us, this message of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the free offer of salvation that God makes as a result of it, that gospel has far more power than we give it credit for. And if it can transform broken people like anybody in this auditorium, it can transform anybody outside of this room.

These Gentiles believed in Jesus, and verses 44 and 45 tell us they received the Holy Spirit, and their lives were so radically transformed from that moment on that it shocked the Jewish Christians who had come to see what was going on. They could not believe what they were seeing because they saw God do what only God could do. I’m here to tell you the gospel still changes lives today, even among people that we least expect.

There’s been a big push in our state convention over the last year or so to emphasize the theme of embracing brokenness as opportunities to advance the gospel. And I’ve heard people telling stories in some of these meetings about families that were headed the wrong direction, people that were headed the wrong direction, but someone somewhere in one of our churches, somewhere in Oklahoma, stepped in and carried the gospel into a broken situation, and a life was changed. A family was changed.

Generations were changed. And I’ve thought about these stories, and I’ve thought about my own family, and I hope I can getting through this because I didn’t anticipate sitting here today in this room. But I was incredibly blessed to grow up with Christian parents who raised me right, I think, who taught me what I needed to know, who led me to Christ. My father didn’t have the same advantage.

Now, I loved my grandparents. By the time I came along, they had sobered up and had become reasonably responsible members of society. My grandfather was a tremendous impact on my life, tremendous influence.

They came to faith late in life, but my dad did not necessarily have a great story starting out. And I won’t go into all the details, but I will say my grandparents spent a lot of his childhood drunk and rowdy, hanging out at the dance halls, things like that. Didn’t necessarily always take care of him, didn’t always pay the bills.

He never knew if he was going to have a home to come home to. And the story I’ve heard, hopefully I’m remembering it correctly, at one point dad just got tired of it. He moved out.

He got a job. He moved out, I think lived in his car for a while to finish high school. But my dad will tell you today that one of the things that made a tremendous difference in his life was that there were people at a little Southern Baptist church there in the Capitol Hill area of South Oklahoma City where he grew up, who saw past a teenager from a broken home or dysfunctional, a great-grandfather state barrier, certainly a dysfunctional home.

They saw past that. There were people in the church that dad will tell you treated him like the permanent outsider, but there were enough people there who loved him, he pulled him in, took him under their wing, shared with him what it meant to follow Jesus Christ, shared with him how to show him how to love your spouse and your children, how to be the right kind of husband and father. They invested in him.

I think it was those people being willing to see past this perspective of the outsider, the person from the dysfunctional background. I think it was those people who were willing to look past what so many other people would write off and were willing to love him and point him to Jesus Christ that made him the incredible father that I had grown up and who pointed his children to Jesus Christ and I believe I’m able to stand before you now and preach God’s word and I believe I’m able to disciple my children because of his influence, because of those people because of those people back in 70s who were willing to love somebody that some in their church thought was an outsider. And I’ve asked him multiple times if it was okay to share that.

Like I said, I didn’t anticipate sharing it with him in the room because I don’t want to embarrass him. But I love that story. I love what those people did.

I know some of their names because of the impact they had. And I think it illustrates for us that the gospel can not only change a life, it can change a life, and that’s incredibly important, but it can also change a family. It can change, it can have an impact for generations.

We don’t know what the gospel can do. We’ve got to quit writing off the outsiders just because they’re different. Just because we think, oh, they’ll never come to Christ. We need to step up and be obedient and share the gospel with everybody the Holy Spirit lays on our hearts, whether they look like the right kind of prospects or not, and trust that God will do what only God can do.

And so this morning, if there’s a Cornelius in your life, if there’s somebody from the wrong kind of background that you’re saying, I really want to fool with you. Maybe they’re like my neighbor. God, do I have to talk to her?

God’s landed on your heart that the gospel can change that life. I’m not saying everybody we talk to will come to Christ. But if there’s somebody that even now as I’m talking, God has landed on your heart saying, I told you to talk to him. I’ve told you to share the gospel.

I’ve told you to invite them to church. I’ve told you to invite them over for coffee. Just be a friend.

Love them to Christ. If the Holy Spirit’s letting somebody in your heart this morning, understand that God could save Cornelius. God could save us. Save anyone.

Save anybody that we come in contact with. Any outsider. And this morning, if you’re sitting here feeling like an outsider, you’re saying, yeah, I don’t think that about other people.

think that about me. I think I’ve wandered so far away that I can never get right with God. God could never love me.

God could never forgive me. I’ll never be able to get straightened out. Understand that all of us are broken by something called sin.

We are all outsiders from God’s family because of something called sin, which is where we have disobeyed God, where we have broken His law and we have turned our backs on Him. All of us, everyone in here is in that same boat. not one of us are getting to heaven not one of us are coming any closer to god because of how good we are how lovable we are peter said god is no respecter of persons he’s not impressed by any of us it’s the fact that jesus christ died he shed his blood on that cross and he died to pay for our sins in full so that our slate could be wiped clean so that god could look at us and not see our sin but see the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Jesus died and rose again so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be saved, so that we could have eternal life.

And this morning there’s nothing good for you to do, nothing you can earn or deserve that’s going to add one bit to what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross. Instead, this morning, all that’s there for you to do, the only response required of you is to admit that you’re a sinner, to acknowledge you believe Jesus died in your place, taking the punishment you deserve to pay for your sins in full. And then on that basis, you ask God to forgive you, and He promises you will.

You don’t have to be an outsider from the family of God. Jesus Christ died to bring you right into the family, to bring you right into the covenant, to purchase your forgiveness and give you eternal life.