A Bigger Circle

Welcome to our series that we are calling There Is More.

It's a journey through the book of Acts, verse by verse and chapter by chapter.

Why do we call it There Is More?

Because there's more.

There's more.

That's why.

And we go verse by verse and chapter by chapter because we believe it takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian.

One of the things as a pastor and a preacher that I love about doing book studies and going verse by verse and chapter by chapter is it challenges us to preach through passages of scripture that we might tend to overlook because we're more excited about another passage and focus on those.

So that's why I love going verse by verse and chapter by chapter.

How many of you are enjoying it so far?

I thought so.

I got a question as we get started today.

Have you ever met someone and almost immediately thought, we're probably not gonna be friends?

You didn't say anything.

You weren't rude.

You didn't do anything wrong.

You just made a decision.

They're just not my kind of a person.

Maybe they're too loud.

Maybe they're too quiet.

Maybe they're too political.

Maybe they're too religious.

Maybe they're too successful.

Maybe they're too broken.

Maybe they're just too different.

And sometimes we don't even realize that we're doing it.

We simply sort people.

We have our people, you know what I mean?

We have people we naturally connect with, people we trust, people we want our kids around, people we invite to dinner, people we like to sit beside at church.

The people, then we got the other people.

the people we keep at a distance.

So here's my question.

What if God has a bigger circle than we do?

What if the person we've already categorized as outside our circle is actually someone that God has called us to reach?

What if the person you would never choose to be close to is the very person God has chosen to put in your path?

That's what makes Acts chapter 10 so uncomfortable and so important.

Because Peter is about to discover that his circle is smaller than God's.

You can be passionate about reaching lost people and still have a smaller circle than Jesus does.

Acts 10 is the story of God enlarging Peter's heart, and if we are willing, God will enlarge ours as well, and it will become our story.

All right, if you're physically able, let's stand up for the reading of God's word as we look at these verses out of Acts chapter 10, verses 9 through 23.

The next day, as Cornelius' messengers... Now, if you're new to church today, last week we talked about this guy by the name of Cornelius.

He's a Roman officer.

He had an angelic vision.

And this angel speaks to him about Simon Peter, who's one of the disciples and the apostles of the early church.

And he says, I want you to go meet him.

He's got a message for you.

So he sent some messengers.

The next day, as Cornelius' messengers were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat roof to pray...

It was about noon and he was hungry.

But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance.

He saw the sky open and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners.

In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles and birds.

Then a voice said to him, get up, Peter, kill and eat.

No way, Lord.

Peter declared, I've never eaten any bacon wrapped ship before.

I've never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.

But the voice spoke again.

Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.

The same vision was repeated three times.

Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.

Peter was very perplexed.

What could the vision mean?

Just then, the men sent by Cornelius found Simon's house.

Standing outside the gate, they asked if a man named Simon Peter was staying there.

Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over the vision, the

have come looking for you.

Get up, go downstairs, and go with them without hesitation.

Don't worry, for I have sent them.

So Peter went down and said, I'm the man you're looking for.

Why have you come?

They said, we were sent by Cornelius, a Roman officer.

He's a devout, by the way, this is interesting to me, because Cornelius is a Gentile, he's not a Jew, and so they wanna kinda make sure that, hey, don't reject us.

Already, he's a devout and God-fearing man, well-respected by all the other Jews.

You should respect him too.

A holy angel, not a demonic one, instructed him to summon you to his house so that he can hear your message.

So Peter invited the men to stay for the night.

The next day, he went with them, accompanied by some of the brothers from Joppa.

I want to talk on this subject, out of these verses today, a bigger circle.

High five two people and just let them know you're glad to see them at church today.

Glad to see you today.

Amen.

All right, church, let's jump into it.

Let's find out what God has to teach us out of Acts chapter 10.

I want you to understand how significant this moment is.

Because every once in a while, you come to a fork in the road in life.

One seemingly ordinary conversation, one unexpected phone call, one decision, one invitation, one knock on the door from three men like Peter had.

The history of Christianity is at this fork in the road right now.

Because until this point, the gospel has spread primarily among Jewish people.

This chapter changed your story long before you were ever born.

Luke, the author of this book, understood how important and significant this moment was.

He spends more time telling this story than almost any other single event in the book of Acts.

Two chapters out of 28 chapters, he tells this story.

Why?

Because there is more.

Because God so loved the world.

And before God ever expanded the reach of the gospel, he first expanded the heart of Peter.

So here's our big idea today.

God enlarges our hearts before he expands our reach.

And I wanna try my best to help you grasp the enormity of this cataclysmic change happening for Peter and the entire Christian community.

Jesus was born a Jew of the tribe of Judah.

Every disciple Jesus chose was a Jew.

The disciples, Peter, heard Jesus say this.

Jesus said to the woman, I was sent only to help God's lost sheep, the people of Israel.

God chose Israel and the Jewish people to begin his mission to save humanity.

This is all Peter and the other apostles have ever known.

Peter

viewed non-Jewish people, Gentiles, as ritually unclean.

Eating with or visiting with a Gentile broke traditional Jewish laws.

In fact, in a few verses we'll see next week, Peter says in Acts 10, 28, it is against the Jewish law for him to associate with outsiders.

So imagine with me a scenario.

Imagine growing up in a neighborhood split right down the middle by a massive centuries old family feud.

People on the other side of the line, people on the other side of the fence, they are viewed as dangerous, corrupt, completely off limits.

If you reached across the line, you would be viewed as someone who is betraying your entire family.

But one afternoon, God speaks to you and says, cross the line.

Go knock on the door.

Invite yourself in.

Have a meal with them.

Sit down as a Seattle Seahawks fan and watch the game with a Rams fan.

I know, it's that radical.

Or even worse, a 49ers fan.

Sit with them.

Now it's making sense, right?

And then they wear the Seahawks jersey.

It's like, what is going on?

Everything inside of you would say, no way.

Every cell in your body would scream, this is unsafe, this is wrong, and that goes against everything I am.

This is exactly what Peter felt.

So here's the first truth that I want us to draw from this passage of scripture that we read today.

God reveals the borders of our hearts.

Okay, now some of us think, I don't have a border to my heart.

I got Jesus in there, no more borders.

Okay, have you ever been in a situation where you realized you needed just a little more love than you currently felt?

Okay, let me just say one word, traffic, roundabouts,

elderly drivers, young drivers.

God is faithful to reveal to us where we lack and where our hearts are too small.

So in this passage, Peter sees this large sheet

full of borders and full of all kinds of animals and reptiles, way bigger, way more stuff than he's ever seen before.

Now, following Jesus doesn't mean that we've arrived.

It means we're willing to let Jesus keep showing us where we still need to grow.

Now, if God revealed a border in Peter's heart, how many of you are humble enough to recognize God probably has a border in my heart that he wants to reveal to me as well, right?

Now, some people assume that this vision that he has about all these animals is about food.

No, no.

Food is the illustration.

People are the point.

God wasn't changing Peter's menu.

He was changing Peter's heart.

And if God can change Peter's heart, he can change our hearts as well.

Peter isn't the first person that God had to reveal the border of his heart to.

There's this guy in the Old Testament.

Maybe you've heard of him.

His name is Jonah.

Jonah was a prophet and he was told by God, I want you to go to this city called Nineveh.

There are your enemies.

I know you know about them.

I want you to go and preach repentance to them.

And Jonah goes like this.

Listen, I know something about you, God.

You're compassionate.

You're merciful.

You're kind.

And you know what?

You're forgiving.

I don't want to go tell the Ninevites how good you are because you know what they're going to do?

They're going to repent and you're going to forgive them and I want you to send them to hell.

That's the bottom line.

So Jonah pays the fair fee, jumps on a ship, and goes the exact opposite direction.

If you're not a Christian today and you're in the room or listening online and you don't know much about the Bible, you've probably heard a story about a guy named Jonah who got swallowed by a big old fish.

And so a storm comes up, he gets cast off the boat, and a big old fish swallows him up.

And guess what God does?

Has that fish, spit him up, vomit him out on the beach right by the city of Nineveh.

You know why?

Because God's going to have his way with you, so you might as well give up now.

So Jonah, yeah, go ahead and you can clap for that if you want.

He's going to have his way with you.

So here's what God says to Jonah.

Check this out.

He's revealing his heart.

He goes, is it right for you to be angry about this?

Is it right for you to be angry about this?

And Jonah, God's not asking for an actual answer.

He's asking, I want you to see your heart.

I want you to see where your priorities are.

I want you to see your motives.

And then he has this, you know, he's like baking out in the sun and this plant grows up and he finds shade and then the plant gets scorched by the heat.

And it says this, the end of the book.

The Lord said, you feel sorry about the plant, though you did nothing to put it there.

It came quickly and died quickly.

But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness.

God challenges Jonah's heart.

Here's what happens in life.

God will put people in our path who expose a boundary we didn't even realize was there.

People we naturally avoid.

People we assume they'll never come to Christ.

So why bother?

People who make us uncomfortable.

People who aren't like us.

And Acts 10 reminds us that the gospel has always moved outward.

Every time the church gets comfortable, God widens the circle and says, come on, let's get going.

Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, now into the entire Gentile world.

And Walla Walla peeps, you should be happy about that.

Ha!

Sometimes the borders of our heart aren't hatred.

They're simply the limits of our understanding and the limit of our love, which leads me to the second truth I wanna draw from this passage, that God enlarges our hearts.

This is one of the things that happen when you become a Christian.

You get a heart transplant.

God will enlarge your heart.

Now what takes place is so obvious that we can miss it.

Cornelius and Peter both have a God encounter.

Cornelius sees an angel and the angel talks to him.

Peter has a vision and the Holy Spirit speaks to him.

They both encounter God and what happens?

The borders of their hearts are enlarged.

God expanded the border of their heart.

Now you have family and you have friends that just do not understand why you would take a Sunday, sunny Sunday morning in August and show up in church and many of you have served another service and you serve kids, you help park cars, you give of your time sacrificially, you

give of your finances sacrificially for the extension of the gospel.

And people just do not understand that.

But you just do not understand not doing that because you've encountered God.

We've encountered God and his love has changed us and made us brand new.

Can I hear an amen to that?

All right.

It was April 7th.

1985, a Sunday night gathering in a small church in Walla Walla, Washington.

I was there as a teenager.

I don't remember what the pastor preached, which never happens in this church.

You always remember what the pastor preaches.

I don't remember what he preached that night.

I don't even remember what got me out of my seat to come forward to this side of the altar.

I don't remember, but I for sure will never forget all my life what happened when I stood there.

The pastor laid hands on me and all of a sudden my feet felt like they were nailed to the floor and this electricity of love flooded my being.

I have never in my life experienced that kind of love ever.

It was beyond anything I could articulate in human language.

I had never cried like that.

I had never felt anything like that.

And it was not just what I felt for me.

It was what I felt God felt for all humanity.

I couldn't move, I was shaking, I was crying, I couldn't speak, I was full of this love of God until finally I could start to walk and I walked from here and I walked across and I walked down the aisle and I sat next to my parents.

And when I sat next to my parents, I wanted as a young man to tell them what happened and I opened my mouth and I just cried all over again.

And I just started crying.

I couldn't talk about it.

I was so overwhelmed by this love, this encounter I had with God.

Now listen to me, lean in.

That love didn't make me perfectly love people the rest of my life.

But I will tell you what it did for me.

It made me realize that the kind of love God wants to do through me is not something that I can manufacture on my own.

Amen.

It's the kind of love that only Jesus can supply.

He wants to give us a heart transplant and to help us love people that we wouldn't otherwise love.

Listen, Jesus said it like this in John.

He goes, I'm giving you a new commandment.

Love each other.

How are we gonna do it?

As I've loved you.

You have to first be loved by God.

The source is him.

The reason some of us struggle to love quote unquote difficult people isn't because we're trying too little.

It's because we're trying to love out of an empty cup.

Gods, you need to encounter me.

Don't miss this in the story.

Peter encountered God.

Cornelius encountered God.

This commandment that Jesus gives is not a religious commandment.

Now go try harder.

He goes, you've got to experience and encounter with the love of God yourself.

And when you do, freely you've received, freely you will give.

The source is Jesus.

Paul wrote about it in the book of Ephesians.

He says, may you have the power to understand as all God's people should.

Turn to your neighbor and say, you're one of all God's people.

You should get this.

You should get this.

This is what all God's people should understand.

How wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.

May you, what is it?

Experience the love of Christ.

Well, I looked up the Greek definition and found out that the kind of love that Jesus is talking about is agape.

And I know there's other kinds of loves.

There's the sexual of Eros.

And I know there's the lay on this friendly love.

Okay, that's great.

I'm glad you're studying.

But at some point, you have to encounter him.

Because your neighbor...

Your lost family member doesn't need to know the Greek word for love.

They need someone who's encountered the love of God, who pours it out.

It's only after we experience the love of Christ that we will see infinitely more than we might ask or think.

It's only after that.

It's only after experiencing the love of God myself will the gospels reach, expand through us.

This is exactly what happens with Peter.

This is exactly what happens with Cornelius.

Let me tell you about a woman who discovered what this feels like, what this looks like when the boundary isn't theoretical anymore.

When what happens when the person standing in front of you is someone you have every human reason to keep outside of your circle.

Her name, Corrie Ten Boom.

Some of you know her story.

I wanna read it.

During World War II, Corrie and her family hid Jewish people from the Nazis.

Eventually, they were discovered.

Corrie and her sister Betsy were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Corrie had spent the war in this concentration camp and her father died shortly after their arrest.

her sister Betsy eventually died in that camp as well.

But Corrie survived.

And after the war, Corrie began preaching a message that she had learned in that terrible place, Jesus can forgive the worst of sinners, which by the way, was the heart cry of her sister Betsy who died.

One night,

Corrie was preaching in a church in Germany.

She had just finished telling the crowd about God's forgiveness.

And as people were leaving, she saw him, a man,

walking toward her.

She recognized him immediately.

He had been one of the guards at Ravensbrück, one of the men who had been part of the system that had abused and humiliated her and her sister.

And now years later, he was standing in front of her, but he wasn't wearing a Nazi uniform.

He wasn't standing there as a guard.

He was standing there as a man who had heard the gospel.

He reached out his hand and he said something like this.

How grateful I am for your message.

To think as you say, he has washed away my sins.

Will you forgive me?

Corrie said she froze.

Everything inside of her wanted to pull away.

She knew theologically what she was supposed to do.

She had just preached about forgiveness, but now forgiveness wasn't a sermon.

It was standing three feet in front of her.

She thought about the camp.

She thought about Betsy, her sister.

She thought about the suffering.

She thought about what that man represented, and she couldn't lift her hand.

She couldn't shake his hand.

She couldn't manufacture the love she had just preached.

And then she prayed.

She said, in essence, Jesus, I cannot forgive him.

Give me your forgiveness.

And her hand began to move.

And she reached out her hand and she said that as she took his hand, something extraordinary took place.

She experienced the love of God flowing through her, not because she suddenly decided this man deserved her love, not because what he had done didn't matter, not because the past

wasn't horrible, but because she realized something, God was asking her to love somebody she could not love in her own strength and God would supply it and God didn't change him, God changed her.

Which leads me to my last thought and then I gotta ask us all a question as we leave today.

God will send us across our comfort zones.

Look at it.

Get up, go, go downstairs, go with them without hesitation.

Don't worry for I've sent them.

If you assume Jesus will never ask you to talk to someone or get to know someone you are uncomfortable getting to know, you're in for a shock.

Jesus will absolutely send us across our comfort zones.

God is always asking us to leave room at the table of our life for one more.

I love what Pastor Craig Groeschel has said for many years.

We will do anything short of sin to reach people who are far from God.

That is a statement that shouts, God, send us across our comfort zones.

And something that I love about this passage that I see in other parts of the book of Acts, God speaks specifically to people about certain individuals.

Philip, we already talked about it.

It's in the book of Acts.

Philip, go down this road to the south.

Overtake that chariot.

Talk to that Ethiopian eunuch.

Peter, meet Cornelius.

Cornelius, meet Peter.

He lives at this address.

And here's what the text teaches us.

God is always thinking of someone.

And he's thinking of someone he might wanna talk to you about.

I wanna be the person who God can talk to someone about specifically.

I just don't want to love everybody.

I love the world.

Oh, dear God.

To say I love everybody can be a cop-out for actually not loving anybody.

At some point in my life and at the end of the sum of my life, I want those who I've loved specifically to stand up and give me honor.

Not the whole world.

Well, I think he loved everybody.

Who did he love?

I don't know.

He said he loved everybody.

At some point, the love's got to become specific, and God does this right with Cornelius, does it right with Peter.

The challenge for us in this text is for us to never allow our life to be so full of great people and godly people that we forget to leave an empty seat.

Peter

Again, let's think about Peter for a moment.

Peter had 10 best friends.

They had the best life group ever on planet Earth.

You wanna know why?

Well, first off, Jesus was their leader, so that's the best life group leader ever.

They worked through jealousy.

They worked through selfish ambition.

They worked through their fears for their life.

They did it all together.

They grew in their faith and their walk with God together.

But Jesus made sure that Peter left room at his table for just one more.

Never be so satisfied.

With your community, I got a great life.

God, good friends, that we forget someone else has yet to experience the wonder of the gospel and the wonder of biblical community.

The part of the story that's so beautiful to me is Peter welcomes them into his home.

Cornelius welcomes Peter into his home.

So who do you need to invite over to your house?

Is there someone that you've written off?

Someone you've quietly decided is too far gone.

Quietly decided, they're not gonna be my friend.

I've just made the decision.

They're too much, fill in the blank for me.

They're too difficult.

They're too important.

They're too successful.

They're too worldly.

They're too political.

They're too, I don't know, you fill in the blank.

But sometimes again, listen, sometimes,

The walls that we have around our heart aren't hatred.

Sometimes they're insecurity.

So it was 2021 that I first had the opportunity to meet Lisa Bevere.

Lisa Bevere was at our church and she was ministering at the Women's Conference and then preaching for the weekend.

We had such a great connection, wonderful time at dinner.

And at dinner with my wife and a couple others of us, we're having such a great talking about whatever.

And she goes, I want to give you my husband's phone number.

Now, she travels the world all the time.

And I'm thinking, you want to give your husband's phone number, John Mavure's phone number?

She said, yeah, put it in your phone right now.

I'm like, okay, yes, ma'am.

You're the boss right now.

So I put John's phone number in my phone.

And then she goes, I want you to text him tonight.

And just tell him about, you know, what we talked about right here.

I didn't say okay, I just listened.

The very next morning, I think it was Sunday morning, she's about ready to preach.

First time I see her, she goes, why didn't you text my husband last night?

Now, if you know Lisa Bevere, it's only like Lisa Bevere can.

In your face.

And I just went.

I should have said the truth, and it was this, because I was too insecure.

That's what I should have said.

I should have said, here's what she was doing.

I'm opening up my circle to allow you in to our world.

But if you're too insecure to stay out, you can stay out.

Oh, dear Lord.

Acts 10 reminds us that all of us can get comfortable with the size of our circles.

And God is always inviting us to leave room at the table for just one more.

So here's my question that I want to land the plane with today.

Who is your Cornelius?

God's not asking you to love the world.

He's laying somebody in your life, someone in your path.

Who's God specifically placing in your life?

Maybe it's someone at work.

Maybe it's a family member who you've avoided talking to.

Maybe it's the new neighbor.

Maybe it's the parent sitting next to you at the ball game.

Maybe it's the person who's been on your mind all morning.

Amen.

I don't think those thoughts are random.

Stop putting it into some, I wonder why I was thinking about them.

Duh.

Why did Cornelius think about some guy by the name of Simon Peterson, some crazy address somewhere?

Why do you think about that?

Maybe God is putting them on your mind.

The Holy Spirit, sometimes the Holy Spirit is working on both people.

He's preparing two hearts, yours and theirs simultaneously.

Don't miss divine appointments God places in front of you because they don't look spectacular.

Peter could have easily missed it.

It's just three men knocking on the door.

This is the greatest fork in the road.

in Christian history for you and I. And what it looked like was just three men standing at the door.

Could have missed it.

What if God has a bigger circle than we do?

What if Acts chapter 10 happened again?

Not because the gospel needs to go to the Gentiles, the gospel has.

But maybe the next frontier isn't across the ocean.

Maybe it's across the room.

Maybe it's across the office.

Maybe it's across the school cafeteria in a couple weeks when you start school.

Maybe it's across the backyard fence.

Maybe it's across the aisle in church to somebody you've never met before.

The gospel has always moved outward.

Church, there is more.

There are more people to reach, more of God's heart to discover, and may we never become so comfortable that we stop allowing God to enlarge our hearts and to give us a bigger circle.

I want to pray for us today.

that you and I will hear and see someone specific this week and not live so important lives that we miss the miraculous in the middle of the Monday.

Father, thank you for Acts chapter 10.

Thank you that God so loved the world and then he loved Cornelius.

thank you for someone specific that you spoke to Peter about it just makes us believe there's someone on your mind right now that's in our lives someone right now you're going to put in our path today tomorrow this week somewhere you want someone to be invited into our circle

God, enlarge our hearts.

May we encounter your love in greater capacities.

Help us to understand how amazing you are and to make the most of every opportunity that you put in our pathway.

With every head bowed and every eye closed, you could be the person that's on God's mind right now.

You could be the individual, the specific person that Jesus is saying, you're my Cornelius.

I got you here for this reason today.

You might feel like you're not sure if you're right with God.

You're pretty sure maybe you're not, but you would love to leave this place knowing that you are.

If that's you, we'd love to get you an opportunity to begin the journey, to begin the journey of following Jesus.

And we just want to say a prayer with you right now.

And if that's you and you would say, Bob, I would love to pray a prayer to begin my journey.

If that's you,

Then I want to know between you, me, and Jesus who wants to pray this next prayer with me.

Would you just look up at me right now and wave your hand so I can catch eyes with you?

Lift your hand up right here.

Thank you so very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I want to catch eyes with you.

Just keep it up for a moment.

Thank you so very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, now if I miss you, I promise you Jesus does not.

But we're going to pray this prayer.

everyone's gonna repeat it after me.

Let's just start a journey together.

Come on, church, you know what to do.

Let's pray this after me.

Dear Lord Jesus, I come to you today in need of forgiveness.

Forgive me of all my sins.

Come into my heart.

I wanna be born again.

Fill me with your spirit.

Fill me with your love.

Change my life forever.

I wanna start my journey of following you

this very day.

I pray this right now in Jesus' name.

Come on, everybody, shout amen.

Come on, let's give God praise today.

We love you, Lord.