Viola Solid Rock Assembly
Our Commitment and God's Response
All right, we're on, you guys can hear me. Okay, hey, thank you all for being here tonight, making it through the rain. It was coming down pretty good out there, so I'm glad to see you guys in God's house. I also want to, before I get started, I want to say thank you all so much. So my family moved here almost two weeks ago, not even two weeks ago yet. So we're still very new, but boy, we have been really welcome with open arms, and you all have been very hospitable, and so it already feels like home in so many ways, and I just want to appreciate you all for that. All right, so we're going to look in God's Word tonight at Acts chapter 10. You can go ahead and turn there, we'll be getting there in a minute, we'll also have the verses mostly up on the screen, but really kind of wrestle back and forth between the word that God might have for us tonight, and I really felt him ultimately leading towards something that's been standing out to me, just came from my daily devotional reading when I was reading through the book of Acts, and a couple of phrases just stuck out to me and haven't been able to get away from it. And really this story, as I thought about it over and over, just fascinated to see the life of one person who's fully committed to God, and then what God does in response to that. So, regardless of where you might feel like your walk with the Lord is tonight, listen, I hope that we all leave here tonight with a willingness to raise our level of commitment to God, and then also just expecting God to in return do more in our lives, constantly expecting him to do the miraculous, so we're going to talk through our commitment to God and our expectation from God, and we're going to look at Acts chapter 10 for that. For the sake of time, I'm going to summarize pretty much this whole chapter, and then we're kind of going to go back and look at a few verses here and there at the life of Cornelius, because this story is amazing, but I'm not preaching on the overall story or the whole story is about, I felt more compelled to preach about Cornelius and his life. So, to talk you through what the story is, the background really quick, Acts chapter 10, at this point in the book of Acts, really it was just Jewish people who knew about Jesus, some of the Jewish people, and people who were not Jewish, they really, really weren't reached out to yet, they really weren't evangelizing to them yet, it was mainly just the Jews, and so people like Peter, but possible Paul had just got saved, people like Peter, they really were just keeping this within the Jewish people, and God, that was about to change, so God sent an angel to a man named Cornelius, this guy was not a Jew, he was actually a Roman soldier from the Italian regiment is what the verse shows us, and that was a group of people who are like the most loyal to the Roman Empire, so they will come on a scene somewhere like the Italian regiment, and they were so, they were over the top zealous for Rome usually, and the Jewish people just like whatever, we don't want any part of that, we don't like you typically, so that's a guy that got sent an angel to this man, this guy, but it tells us that he was very devout, we'll look at that in a few minutes, but the angel gave Cornelius an assignment, and his assignment was simply to send some people to go get Peter, who was about 30 miles away, get Peter back to him and deliver a message, and Cornelius had no idea what that was, so he sends these guys, they go, they find Peter in a place called Japa, they make the day and have journey back to him, and then Peter delivers this message of hope in Jesus, of salvation in Jesus, the whole nine yards, and meanwhile before I skip some stuff, God had also shown up in a vision to Peter showing him, like all the animals coming down, if you know this story in the Bible, three times that happened, and Peter saying no God, I won't eat this, I've been Jewish my whole life, I won't touch anything unclean, and then God is challenging him through this to say, hey, you know, it's not only about the food that you eat, it's also about the fact that the message of Jesus needs to go to the whole world, not just to Israelites, and so Peter says alright, and then these guys show up, Peter goes with them to Cornelius, preaches about Jesus there, and then as he's preaching, they're all baptized in the Holy Spirit, so it's amazing, as he's telling them a message about Jesus, what he did on the cross, faith was birthed in their hearts as they're hearing it, there was no altar call, do you want to ask Jesus into your heart, they believed in that moment, and were baptized in the Holy Spirit in that moment, it was a turning point, a big turning point, and there's a lot of those through Scripture right where you look at the story of God reaching out to humanity, redeeming humanity, this is one of those big moments because before then it was thought of, hey, this message is for Israel and it really wasn't going out from there, and so this is a big moment, and it's there we're kind of in our story and then I want to go back through and look at the life of Cornelius, because he had an amazing life that he was living before and after he heard about Jesus, and he had a few areas that he was really, really committed in, and the first one we're going to look at on our screen is the fact that he was committed to prayer and fasting, so the way we'll break down this message, kind of help you track where we're going is, we're going to talk about the ways he was committed, go through a list of those, and then we're going to talk about the ways that God showed up and really responded to his commitment, so commitment number one, he was committed to prayer and fasting, so the fact that he prayed and fasted, Cornelius did, is emphasized three different times in this chapter, and so verse two, the second part of verse two says this, he gave generously to the poor and prayed regularly to God, verse four mentions it again, and the angel replied, "Your prayers and gifts to the poor have been received by God as an offering," and then in verse 31, he told me Cornelius, "Your prayer has been heard, and your gifts to the poor have been noticed," so the angel, so first of all, in the very first one telling us the writer of the book of Acts is telling us that this characterizes me in prayer and fasting, then when the angel shows up, this is amazing, and angel from heaven shows up and says to him, "Your prayers and your gifts to the poor have been noticed by God," how amazing is that, the fact that God was noticing this, and then again we see in this story when they're describing the whole story to Peter, it comes out again in verse 31, "Your prayer has been heard, your gifts to the poor have been noticed by God," so any phrase or anything we see in God's word, we even see it one time it's important, right? See it two times, okay that's a big deal, if God shows us something three times in one passage, it's like he's flagging us down, he's saying, "Look at this, check it out," and so God wants us to see very clearly that Cornelius was a man of prayer and he was a man of giving, and when we get to the part where we see what God did in his life, we'll tie it together, we'll see that, for God to do the amazing things in our lives, we need to be surrendered with our time and with our money, those are the two areas that sometimes we can kind of clutch on to and say, "Boy, my time is so scarce, I need all the time I can get, my money, I don't have much money right now, I need to hold on to that," but God knows if we can surrender our time through prayer, if we can surrender our finances and just give those to God to do whatever he wants, then he's going to have our whole heart, and so it starts here with Cornelius, and he was a man of prayer and fasting, prayer and giving, and I find it interesting here that the angel says that your prayer and giving has come up as an offering to God, but when we look at it in another place in this chapter, it says he gave to the poor, and so that's interesting isn't it, that in heaven, you're giving to the poor, it's the same as equated as an offering to God, this is what Jesus said, hold on one second, he said, "When you give to the least of these, you give is unto me," you don't know that verse, and so that shows us this here as well, is that when he was giving to the poor, it was though he was giving the very heart of God, and that was reaching, reaching God, alright, so it's important for us to grab onto that as well, so our time and our money, offering those to God, surrendering those to God, and Cornelius was a guy, he had those both surrender to God, commitment number two from Cornelius was the fact that he was obedient, he had a commitment of obedience, verse seven shows us this, "As soon as the angel was gone, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier, one of his personal attendants, he told them what had happened, and he sent them off to Japah," so this angel shows up, you can imagine the terror, if you're sitting in a room praying, and angel shows up, I don't know about you, I'm probably turning his white as a sheet, and I'm scared at this moment, he was too, he was in terror, angel tells them what to do, he gives them very specific instructions, he gave him the address, he said, "In Japah and a man named Simon the Tanner's house is really going to find Simon Peter," and so then the conversation is over, and Cornelius doesn't say, "Okay, hold on, I think I'll get to that tomorrow, I'll send these guys off tomorrow," it was nothing like that, it wasn't delayed obedience, it wasn't disobedience, it was an immediate yes God, I'll do what you want right now when you want me to do it, and for us, listen, sometimes God asks us to do something that is not easy to do, he wants you to go ask that person for forgiveness, he wants you to give in the offering, some that is maybe hard at the moment, he wants you to put away the thing that's distracting you from your prayer time, it could be a litany of things, right? The way we should respond is believers, isn't to put it off till tomorrow, isn't to delay it, it's to ride away, respond to obedience, that's the commitment that Cornelius had, and we'll be doing great to do it the same way, right? Amen. Number three, he had a hunger for God, so verse two says this, "He was devout and God-fearing," it also says that he prayed regularly to God, so this is a continual thing for him, and then verse 24 shows us this, that they arrived in Caesarea the following day, and Cornelius was waiting on them, so that last verse we'll talk about for a minute, so Cornelius sends these guys off, it's a day and a half journey there, day and a half journey back, and in the meantime Cornelius is waiting on these guys to get back, right? And the way this is phrased is that he was waiting with anticipation for them to get back, Cornelius knew that when Peter came back he had something from God for his life, and he could have got distracted, he had all these duties I'm sure as a Roman soldier, he had responsibilities, he had things that, like us, right, that could distract us, but for him this was his obsession, he was devout and God-fearing, he constantly prayed and gave, and then when he had a chance to hear from God, he really, really wanted to hear from him, and so he anticipated that, then in verse 48 we see this, "After we're Cornelius asked him to stay with them for several days," so this is the last verse in this chapter, after Peter gave that message, he ever filled the Holy Spirit, you know, Cornelius could have said, "Hey, cool, we're good here, have fun on your trip back to Joppa, we'll see you later, pray for us," no, he said, "No, hold on, don't leave." I recognize that you've walked with Jesus, I need what you have, I want you to stay here with me, that's the kind of hunger that Cornelius had for God, and listen, for us and our lives, we will be doing good if we could just park ourselves wherever God is, if there's a prayer meeting here Tuesday night or Thursday morning, God, I want to be here because you're here, if there's an opportunity the doors are open for service, God, I want to be wherever you are, maybe it's a Bible study with your friends or someone at work or whatever it might be, God, I want to be there, Cornelius had a hunger to be where God wanted him to be, to be wherever God was, and that's the same way we should live, right? Amen. All right, last theory that we're going to look at for Cornelius' commitment is that he told other people about God. So verse two shows us this, "He was a devout God-fearing man, as was everyone in his household." So Cornelius had influenced everyone in his immediate family, everyone in that house that lived there, they also believed in God. Verse seven shows us this, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier, one of his personal attendants. So his co-workers, so we had co-workers around him, his personal assistant, a devout soldier, he was devout following the Lord. So we had an influence in his house and he had influence in his job and his workplace. Verse 24 then shows us this, they arrived at Caesarea the following day, Cornelius was waiting for them, like we read a minute ago, and then he had called together his relatives and his close friends. So he had already lived out his faith every day with the people right in front of him, his family, his co-workers, and now we see when he's waiting on Peter to come back, we know he's anticipating that return, but he didn't just wait around, he waited around with action. Sometimes when God wants us to wait, it's not a wait as though we're just twiddling our thumbs, it's a waiting with anticipation, waiting a while God's going to do, and for him that translates to, hey, I want to bring everybody I can in with me. I don't want, I just want to eat this up myself what God has for me. I want everybody to join in with me. I want everybody I know to have what I have in God. God's bringing this message, I want to bring people with me. Who do you know that needs to be in church? We all know somebody that needs to be here, we want to be here, be thinking and praying about how you can influence the way that Cornelius did to bring people into church. Maybe they have their own church, and they're not just following the path that God has, you don't have to pull them away from their church, just be that light and that influence that God wants you to be, for them in your workplace, wherever it might be. All right, so those are the ways that Cornelius was committed, prayer and giving, he was obedient, he had a hunger for God and he influenced other people, and now we're going to take a look at the activity from God in the life of Cornelius. Listen, sometimes God will work in our lives despite not making the right decisions. I'm sure we can all think back to times where we just weren't fully committed the way we should be, and God worked anyway. God has grace and mercy on us, aren't you thankful for that? I am very thankful for that. I know I've been a dummy sometimes, so I need the grace of God in my life, but there's a principle here that God really wants us to learn in this passage, and that's that when we line our hearts up with God through the right commitments in our life, we put ourselves in a position where God can come in and do the miraculous, and I want to list through some things that God did in the life of Cornelius. We've seen his commitments. Now, here's how God spoke to him and used him. Number one, he spoke to Cornelius. He did this by sending an angel, so it's not likely, you never know, but it's not likely that God's going to speak to you that way, but God speaks to us through his word every day. Every time we open it, he speaks to us through that communion we have with him. If we're talking with him, having communication with him, walking in obedience with him, we put ourselves in a spot where we can hear his voice, we can develop that ability to hear the voice of God in our lives. God wants you to hear from him, and God spoke to Cornelius. God also heard the prayer of Cornelius. The angel said to him, "Your prayers have been heard." God noticed Cornelius' giving. There's one translation that says that his prayer and giving came up as a memorial to God. I like that song we're just saying. Actually, all the songs we're saying really could tie into this sermon. It's the way God works sometimes, but really, you know, another translation has kind of like prayer and giving coming up as a memorial to God, and that song we're saying let incense arise, and I kind of get this picture of Cornelius as he's praying, as he's giving God on his phone sitting there and just this sweet aroma of his giving, the sweet aroma of his prayer just reaching up to God as worship to God. When we give, and when we pray, it is worship to God. It comes up to God as a sweet aroma of worship, and so that happens in our lives. God also provided a much needed solution to Cornelius, so Cornelius didn't know that he needed a solution, but he needed Jesus. He knew to follow God. God had put in him a hunger for God, put in him all these right qualities, all these right commitments, but he had was missing the most important piece of that puzzle and that's Jesus. And what God did is miraculous in the way that he did it. He sent an angel, he sent Peter. He gave Peter a vision. He got Peter to go 30 miles on foot all the way to him and deliver this message. He got the solution that he needed from God. God was faithful to do that because of his commitment. And listen, there are people in here, they need a solution for God today. Some of you in here do. That might be a number of things. It might be finances. It might be help with something that you need. It might be emotional in nature. It might be relational in nature with somebody. I don't know what state you're in today, but God has the solution for you. I'll tell you a quick story and I'll try to hold it together as I tell this story about my mom. I'll give you some background. My dad was a pastor for 40 years. He was a Vietnam veteran. And about two and a half years ago, he is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, early onset Alzheimer's, and it runs my family. And the PTSD that he went through in Vietnam from being exposed to Agent Orange intensified that. So we saw a very, very rapid decline in my dad's health. He passed away in March. Godly man, one of the most gentle, great man you'll ever meet. And that left my mom in a bit of a bind financially because she was relying on his VA benefits as well as Social Security to take care of her, not just her, but she's adopted my brother's three daughters. And they're all living in the same house. They're all the ages of 17, 16, and 11. And they're all in the same house together. So all of a sudden, these benefits cut off. They're in financial straights. Really, really not good. So over the summer, they've been battling through, waiting on a decision from the VA on what percent disability my dad was when he passed. And we've been praying, praying, have people praying. God, let it be 100%. Let them come back with a decision quickly. And we've been waiting and waiting. What's supposed to be six weeks is turned into six months. They still don't have a decision from the VA. The one thing we thought would really pull her through. And even got to the point about a month ago where she called me and she said, hey, we went to buy groceries. There's nothing in the bank. I said, okay, mom, let's figure this out. How much do you have in the pantry and nothing in the pantry? Okay, mom, when do you get money again in a week? One week was zero money and zero dollars. And God provided some things. We were able to help out a little bit and get her through. But the overall financial problems were still there. She has $600 a month payment from credit card consolidation. She has another credit card payment, a car payment, a number of other things. And then my dad's funeral bill that she had not paid a dime on at this point, which was over $12,000. So a week and a half ago, we'd already moved here when this happened. But she had posted on a Facebook group, hey, I'm trying to figure some things out. Does anybody know of some solutions or ways I can come up with an idea of how to tackle this thing? She didn't know that my cousin's wife was on there. And they called her up. They took her out to lunch. And my cousin, his name's Stanley, my mom's cousin, Stanley, he took her out and said, hey, we want to be able to help you out. What do you need? She's like, well, just a couple car payments would help us a lot right now. And he said, no, no, no. What do you need? Well, long story short, he took her by the bank that day, paid two car payments. And I thought, mom with my mom's telling me, it's from a praise guy, mom, that's great. She said, no, no, no, you need to sit down. It's okay. She said that Stanley is a part of a group of wealthy men who help out people who are in need. And we have pulled together. Some of them are Lutheran, some of them are Methodist, some of them are Pentecostal. We have pulled together and we're paying for all of your credit cards. We're paying for your car. We're paying up on your mortgage sum. We're going to pay off my dad's funeral expenses. All went full sweep. Our God is a God. Yes, give it up for God. Our God is a God that has unlimited resources. And sometimes we pray specific, which is okay, we're praying, right? And God already knows he's got a different answer lined up. He's not tied by the hands of Veterans Association, whoever it might be. In your situation, he's not tied to what you think the answer might need to come from. He owns the cattle of a thousand hills. And if you have a problem, he's got the solution figured out. But leave him and trust him for it. Our God is a God of provision. He provided for Cornelius that day. That's one of the ways he interacted in the life of Cornelius. Another way we're going to see really quick is he poured out his Holy Spirit on Cornelius. Not only for him, but his entire household. How much would you love it if God showed up in your house in one day and every single person was baptized in the Holy Spirit at one time? God used Cornelius to lead his family and friends to God. So God made him this person of faith and influence to his family and his spread to everybody. Not just like the family right here, but like outer family, friends, you name it, coworkers. How much would you love it if God used you as an influence to spread around everybody you know? God gave Cornelius favor with the people around him. So despite being what we found is a very loyal Roman soldier who the Jewish people typically like really be at odds against. Verse 22 says this, it's not going to be on the screen, but it says this, that Cornelius was very well respected among all the Jews. That was against all odds that he was respected among the Jews. Wouldn't you love to have favor with the people you need to have it with? And then finally, God gave Cornelius an attitude that expects more from God, an attitude of expectancy. That's what God wants us to have. In this story we really see, you know, to put it in our terms and in our terms maybe a person who's on the edge of his seat. He's anticipating what God might do next. He's waiting on God to get back. He gets his vision from the angel. Peter's on the way back. He's anticipating what God might do to the extent that he brings others along with him. Wouldn't you love for your mentality to shift? So where when you come in the doors of church, you're like, God, why are you going to do today? How are you going to impact my life today? How are you going to show up today? When I go to work, God, who are you going to use me to impact today? God wants us to have that mentality. It's hard to have it sometimes though, which is being busy with the world, but God wants to shift your mentality. And so I want to conclude and if we would all just stand together. Heavenly Father, we just love you so much. We thank you for your word. We thank you, God, for giving us godly people in the Bible, who we can look at and pattern our lives after. We can learn so much from. Sometimes that's thanks to avoid. Sometimes it's thanks to pursue. And today we've learned to pursue some certain things through the life of Cornelius. And I ask for each person in this room, wherever they are in their walk with you, that you would right now, God, as we just pause, take a deep breath, we want to invite you to settle in on this room and do things that only you can do tonight. We ask for salvation. God, if there's healing that's needed. God, if there's just God revving up our hearts for you again, jump starting some things that maybe have dwindled down a little bit. God, I ask that you would do it tonight. Do it tonight, God. Do the miraculous that only you can do in this place. We invite you, Jesus. With every eye closed, every head bowed. Just want to first extend an offer of salvation. God's offer of salvation tonight. We saw that Cornelius didn't have that and God sent it in an awesome and powerful way. And that was actually what kick started. A lot of what kick started, the word of God spreading throughout the world, we're a byproduct of that today. And today, just like God sent a word to Cornelius, God is calling out to you. God is saying to you, I am the way the truth in life come follow me. And if you're here today and you've not made that decision to follow Jesus, to allow him to be the Lord of your life, the King of everything, if you've been holding back and you wanted today, say, today's my day, I just want you to lift up your hand. For others here, it could be a number of things. Maybe you're looking at your life and you know there's areas that you need to better commit to God. I think we can all probably say that. But maybe in this message, something specifically really struck a chord with you and you want to come down and just lay it at the altar and say, God, there's an area of my life I want to be more committed in, whether it be obedience, prayer and giving, whether it be telling other people about him. If that's you and you just say, I've got that area in my life, I want to better surrender to God, better commit to God. If you will, just make your way on down. We want to pray over you. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. I'm going to pray a general prayer over us and then after that we could have some leaders help us pray down at the front. Lord, we just thank you so much for your grace and your goodness. Thank you for the hunger and the people here tonight, God, God, we cannot do life without you. We desperately need a move of you in our lives. We need our lives impacted the way that you've impacted Cornelius, the way that you met with him and used him and shook up everything around him. God, use us, use us, God, but do a work in us that you carry through us to the people around us. We desperately need you tonight, God. And as we seek you, we just ask for results that only you can do, God, we can't manufacture it. God, we have to have you come down and touch us. And we thank you for that, in Jesus' name.