In the sermon 'The Gentiles Brought Near-Part 2' by Peter Allison, the focus is on the preparation of both the messenger, Peter, and the hearers, represented by Cornelius, for the message of God. The speaker contrasts the initial resistance and later compliance of Peter with the immediate obedience of Cornelius to divine visions. The sermon highlights the importance of the messenger's posture, emphasizing willingness, humility, and equality with the audience. Peter's interaction with Cornelius exemplifies these attributes as he rejects any form of idolatry and communicates as an equal. The dangers of elevating preachers over the message of Christ are discussed, warning against hero-worship which can lead to disillusionment if the preacher stumbles. Cornelius exemplifies the proper posture of a hearer by preparing himself and others to receive the gospel, highlighting the necessity of readiness and expectation in worship. The sermon underscores the importance of family worship in preparing children for public worship, advocating for daily practice at home as foundational. It concludes with a call to approach the preaching of the Word with submission and an expectation to hear from God, rather than through the lens of human wisdom or entertainment.

Last week, we saw that God prepared both the messenger and the receiver of that message. Both received visions directing them what to do. Cornelius, the unsaved man, is immediately obedient to that vision, to that commandment, as he tells Peter when he came. He immediately obeyed what he was told to do. Peter the Apostle, on the other hand, was not.

He pondered the vision that he had received. And the Lord brought him around to be willing to go with the three people who appeared at the door as the Holy Spirit was telling him that three people would come to him and that he should go with them because God had sent them. And so Peter, who had resisted God's command initially, rise, kill, and eat, he said, no, no, Lord, not so. But he was thinking about that and the Holy Spirit brought him around to understand and to be willing. And so this morning we want to look at this preparation for this message that Peter is going to preach that we just read.

We want to look at two things. The posture of the messenger and the posture of the hearers. The posture of the messenger. Posture is your bearing, your attitude, the position that you have, the tone with which you speak. These things are all part of one's posture.

These are the things that we call, in one sense, non-verbal communication. We all know when the child that we tell to do something rolls their eyes, they may not have to say anything. They may not be any expression on their face other than that, but we know from that posture what they are thinking. And so, we want to look first at the posture of the messenger. And the first thing we see is that in verse 23, is that Peter is willing to go with these messengers from Cornelius.

There was a soldier and two servants that were sent. Devout people that He sent. Now you might think it wasn't obvious that God told him to go with them and that he was willing to go because God told him to go. And we would say, well, yes, but just remember a few minutes earlier, the Lord had said, rise, kill, and eat. And Peter said, not so.

Not so. But see, now Peter is willing. Jonah was given a direct command by God to go to Nineveh, and He ignored it. He went the other way. And so Peter here is willing to go.

He's not like Jonah. He's not like he was just a few moments earlier, telling the Lord, no. He's willing to inconvenience Himself. He's willing to leave a successful ministry and field of labor for another field when God calls Him to it. He's willing.

God's messengers, His servants, must be willing. We must recognize that Jesus is our Lord and our Master. And when our Lord and our Master tells us to do something, we must be willing. We must be willing to do it. The second thing we see about Peter and his posture is that He removed Himself from an elevated status.

In verses 25 and following. Peter enters into Caesarea. He comes into Cornelius' house. And Cornelius, no doubt wanting to show honor to Peter, fell down at his feet and worshiped him. In other words, he expressed in attitude and his gestures his complete dependence on or submission to Peter.

Now, it was probably a, you might say, forgivable thing in that he was probably simply trying to honor this person who had come to speak to him. But He went much too far. And the Bible says that He worshiped Him. And Peter could not. And did not accept that because that's idolatry.

He didn't ignore it. And he didn't just say, oh, don't do that, or that's not a good thing to do, or just ignore it and walk by. He lifted the man up himself and said, Stand up! I am just a man. I am also a man.

He put himself on the same level as the people he had come to preach to. And it took an active work on his part to do that. You see, it could have been very easy for him to have simply passed that by and let it slide, But He didn't. Yes, we do need to have respect for men of God. But the preacher is just a man.

And the focus should not be on the messenger, but it should be on the messenger and how accomplished he is or how proficient he is and so on. It should be on the message. It should be on Christ who is the message and how great He is. And anything that is given to the preacher can detract from what should be given to Christ. I think this is one of the problems of the conference circuit.

People don't know the speakers, and so they are built up. And they are promoted as the out of town expert. Their skills are praised. Their accomplishments are recounted. Because that's what brings crowds in, and that's what moves people to come, is to come and see this person.

But it can put the focus on the wrong place. There certainly is a place to introduce people. We have Romans 16 where Paul writes a letter and he commends all the various saints, and commending Phoebe and so on. But we have to be careful to put the focus, not to put the focus in the wrong place. Because it's dangerous for the one bringing the message.

And I think You just have to look at all the big people that have fallen in that situation. Because being promoted like that is dangerous for them. And it's also dangerous for the people. Paul was given a thorn in the flesh for this very reason. He says in 2 Corinthians 12, unless I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of revelations.

Paul was greatly gifted. He was a gifted man. He wrote things that were hard to understand, deep things. He was a deep thinker. And so He had been given revelations that other people had not been given.

And He says, "'Lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to Me, a messenger of Satan to buffet Me, lest I be exalted above measure.'" so this exaltation of Peter, putting the messenger on a pedestal is dangerous to the messenger. Pride is dangerous in anyone, but it's particularly dangerous in a preacher. But elevating preachers improperly is also dangerous for people. It puts their focus on the wrong person, a person who is just a man, and not the God-man. So what happens when that man that's been elevated, who's been adored by people, What happens when he stumbles?

Or what happens when he just disappoints? Or what happens if he doesn't live up to expectations? See, then people who have made a hero out of this person, this messenger, this mere man, when they make a hero out of that, if he stumbles, they become disillusioned. They turn away from everything the preacher said, even the things that might have been true. They may even have a crisis of faith.

And we've seen examples of this of late as well. Somebody that's been elevated and promoted and exalted stumbles. And a lot of people that were worshipping them and not worshipping Christ as they ought to, They were putting their trust and their faith in the person and not in the message of Christ. They turn away from the faith even. When you see that happen, It's a sign that people were following the messenger and not the message who is Christ.

And so no faithful preacher should allow this to develop around them. They shouldn't accept it. They certainly shouldn't promote it. Preachers don't need to be praised for eloquent sermons. If you want to show your appreciation, talk about how the Lord has used it in your life or the points that were especially helpful.

The second thing we see about Peter's putting himself on the same level with those that he was bringing the message to is in verse, is there where it says that He talked with Cornelius. He talked with him. He wasn't too busy. He wasn't this elevated person who was coming in to speak to the crowd who needed his space. He talked with Cornelius.

He's talking with him, man to man. Peter lifts him up saying, Stand up, I myself am also a man. And as he talked with him, he's having an ordinary conversation. He's entering into fellowship with Him. Sometimes preachers are taught, I think very unwisely, that they need to maintain a distance.

And that's not what we see in Scripture. We see that the messengers are people just like their sheep, just like those to whom they are preaching. And they ought to enter into fellowship with them, man to man, peer to peer in that way. And so Peter shows Cornelius respect and he treats him as his peer. Thirdly, with respect to Peter's posture, he presents himself as a forgiven sinner.

See, not only did Peter not tolerate Cornelius' attempted worship, but he went further in removing himself from an elevated status. He relayed to Cornelius, he did it by relaying to Cornelius a lesson that he had to learn. That he himself just had to learn. He acknowledged here this fault, this prior fault. He confessed that he used to think it was unlawful for a Jew to keep company or to go to a Gentile, someone from another country.

But he said God had shown him that he must not regard anyone as common or unclean. Now, it wasn't wrong for a Jew to keep company with a Gentile. Jesus often ate with sinners and common and unclean people. The Jews wrongly considered it wrong. And that's why they were so scandalized by Jesus eating and drinking with prostitutes and sinners and publicans and tax collectors and all these people that the Jews regarded as unclean.

And they were unclean ceremonially according to the law. You see, they were scandalized by this because it exposed their partiality to these people. Now, you can see how this arose if you look back into what the law did require. Deuteronomy 7.3 said that they should not make marriages with them. They should not give their daughter to their son or take their daughter for your son.

So that is a command. They were not to marry into these families. But it never said that they were not to associate with them. And Jesus did associate with them. And so you can see how this desire to avoid their children intermarrying would lead to a separation in terms of their life.

And there's a sense in which that is good, because our children will marry the people with whom we associate in general. It takes very deliberate forethought for children not to marry among the people that your family lives with, and associates with, and recreates with, and fellowships with. You can think of Abraham or Isaac and the deliberate forethought that went into finding a wife for them that wasn't from among the Gentiles among whom they were living. So you can see how this desire to keep this commandment and not have their children marrying the Gentiles around them led to them being separate, but they had added to what God commanded and had become partial against these people. And so despite being with Jesus for three years, Peter was still deeply affected by the Jewish culture that looked down on other people as common or unclean.

And that was why He was so vehemently opposed to killing and eating these unclean animals when God told Him to do it. Because He had imbibed deeply this sinful Jewish culture of partiality toward other people. And so he relates then to Cornelius. He relates the evidence that he had learned this truth that God was communicating to him. He says, and so that's why I came without objection as soon as he was sent for.

Because he had learned the error of his thinking. And so Peter, you see, presents himself as a forgiven sinner. Somebody who is just a man, just like Cornelius. He doesn't rebuke Cornelius for it. He simply lifts him up and says, I'm just a man.

Don't do that. And then he gives this example of his own failure that just happened in the last couple days. He said, I came without objection. You see, true obedience is cheerful. It is willing obedience.

It is compliance without internal or external objection to what is asked. Peter came without objection. And this is in contrast, of course, to when God told him to rise, kill, and eat, when he objected. Now he is obeying without objection. The second thing we see here about true obedience is that it is immediate.

I came without objection as soon as I was sent for." True obedience is immediate obedience. And this is something that we, as parents, if we were to be faithful in training our children, need to teach them that true obedience, and they are commanded to honor their father and mother, true obedience is without objection, either internal or external. True obedience is an obedience from the heart, a willingness to comply and to perform what is asked. A desire to do so and doing so without voicing objections to it, or giving unvoiced objections to it. But it's also immediate.

It's not I'll do it when I get around to it or when I want to do it. True obedience is obeying as soon as we are called to do something. And this is the obedience that Peter gives. It's without objection and it's immediate. The fourth thing we see about Peter is that he seeks to know the needs of the people.

To be an effective messenger, the word needs to be adapted to the people that he's speaking to. The Holy Spirit only told him to go with three people. He didn't tell him why he was to go or what he was supposed to do. The soldier and the servants from Cornelius' house told Peter that Cornelius had been divinely instructed to summon him and to hear his words, But they didn't give any more context to that. And so Peter asks, when he gets there, he asks, I ask then, for what reason have you sent for me?

He wants to know the needs of the hearers, so that the message that he brings is suited to those needs, and not the needs of some other group that he might have ministered to the day before. That's one of the challenges of a preacher who goes from place to place, is that the needs of people are different in every place. And so he needs to adapt to those differences. Of course, the advantage is that he can bring the same message because he's speaking to different people all the time. And so Cornelius then gives a fuller explanation of how he had been praying and of the circumstances that led to Peter being called by the Holy Spirit to come to his house.

And then we'll see when we look next week, Lord willing, at the message that Peter takes this information and adapts his message to it. But the second thing we want to look at this morning is the posture of the hearers. The posture of those who were listening to Peter's message. And the thing that we see in all of these postures of Cornelius is that he made preparation. He made preparation to hear.

Now we think about preparing to speak, to be the messenger. But we maybe don't think as much about preparing to hear, to be the hearers. But Cornelius made preparation. And if we are wanting to worship the Lord with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength, we will do like Cornelius and make preparation to hear the preaching. So the first thing we see in the way of preparation is that he invited others to hear.

While he was waiting for his servants, and it was a couple days here, because he had the vision at the ninth hour on day one, he immediately sent this soldier, who was a devout soldier, with two messengers away to Joppa, which is 30 miles, 31 miles away. So if you walk two miles an hour, that's 15 hours. If you walk three, that's 10 hours. So It's a little bit long for one day. So they got there the 6th hour of the second day.

They stay overnight. And then the third day they set out. And then it's the fourth day that they arrive before the hour that Cornelius was praying. That's what Cornelius says. And so he had some time in there.

But he invited other people to come hear the Gospel. He invited his relatives and his close friends. Here's somebody he hasn't even heard the Gospel yet, and he's inviting others to come and hear. So if we have heard the Gospel and we do know its power, how much more ought we to be inviting others to come to hear the Gospel and to hear the preaching of the Word. Notice he starts with the people that he knows well.

Relatives and close friends. He didn't go out and try and bring people he had no idea who they were in. You often don't have much credibility with those, although we can invite those kind of people if the Lord gives us an opportunity to have a conversation. We can get to know somebody pretty quickly and we can invite them. I know I am very inconsistent in that.

I want to do better in that. It's easy just to forget. You have good intentions. I know I carry tracks with me, but I often forget that they're there or forget to use them. So we want to invite.

He invited others to hear. And He gathered this small crowd of people. Secondly, in His posture, He assembles the people ahead of time. That shows He put value and importance and honor on this occasion. In verse 27, it says, Peter went in and he found many who had come together.

So they were already there when he arrived. This took some deliberate planning and preparation to have everyone present before Peter gets there. Now, he may have had some advanced notice of Peter's progress. He was, after all, a centurion. He was the military outpost there.

He probably had some kind of intelligence about what was happening. He may have had a report on that, or he may have just anticipated when they would arrive simply by knowing how long it was going to take. Remember, he had sent along a trusted soldier. So he probably knew, may have had some knowledge about how long it would take to get there and get back. It doesn't say.

We don't know. But whatever the reason, He has everybody assembled there and waiting. He didn't wait until they showed up and then try and round everybody up. He has everybody gathered together and they're waiting when Peter comes. That speaks of immense respect for the preaching of the Word.

It speaks of immense respect that the people had, that they're willing to come and wait for somebody who's not there and may not have known what time they would come. But if you have guests coming to your house, you would make preparations so that you can welcome them when they come. That you've got your house affairs arranged so that when they come at the appointed time, you're there to welcome them. And how much more should we be ready to enter into worship? The third thing we see about this in verse 33 is that all were present.

Now it could mean that all that were coming were already there. Sometimes the Bible uses all in that sense. All of a certain group. But verse 1 says that He feared God with all His household. So when Cornelius says we are all present, I think that would include his household.

But also this is confirmed in Acts 11, the next chapter, verse 14, when Peter is recounting the events to the Jerusalem church, and he's recounting what Cornelius told them. Cornelius was told by the angel that Peter would speak words by which he and all his household would be saved." So all are present. That's not an insignificant point because it's consistent with what we see in worship elsewhere in Scripture. It includes all the household. In Deuteronomy 31-12, gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates.

That's what Cornelius did. He gathered all his household and his close friends and relatives that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law. God says that our little ones are to come into the assembly so that they can learn how to fear God. That's where they're going to learn. In Joshua 8, there was not a word of all that Moses had commanded, which Joshua did not read, before all the assembly of Israel with women, the little ones, and the strangers who were living among them." The little ones are there to hear the reading of the law.

2 Chronicles 20-13, when Moab and Ammon attacked Judah, Jehoshaphat called for a national assembly to seek the Lord in prayer and fasting, and now all Judah with their little ones, their wives and their children, stood before the Lord." Little ones. Ezra 821 says, Ezra says, "...I proclaim to fast there at the river of Ahava that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him the right way for us and our little ones and our possessions. And in Joel 2 it goes even farther and it explicitly says, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes. So this isn't just older children, but nursing children are to be gathered in this congregational assembly. Let the bridegroom grow out from his chamber and the bride from her dressing room.

So all were gathered. The whole household was gathered. And that would include any children that were in that home. And I would suspect there were some. He had many hundred servants.

He had servants as well, a hundred soldiers, servants as well, and many people. I don't know if all the soldiers would have been there, but certainly all his household and others were there. So not only are all gathered, but all are present to hear. They're prepared to listen, verse 33. They were all prepared to hear.

Now this takes some preparation of the mind, but also of the body. It's really hard to listen when you're short on sleep and your head is just nodding, I know I've been there. And it's very hard to listen. So they were prepared to listen. They were all present for the purpose of listening.

It's hard to listen if you're distracted by unfinished work or distracted by other things. So we need to have our affairs buttoned up in order so that we can be prepared to listen to the preaching of the Word. I think this sort of advance preparation is a strong incentive and motivation to preachers to be ready to bring the Word. If people are going to effort to prepare for it, that's certainly an encouragement and a motivation for preachers to meet that. If People are anticipating with high expectations of receiving the Word.

That puts a burden on him to prepare. But also preparing to assemble with little ones takes a lot more preparation, doesn't it? Both to get there, which is an accomplishment, but also to prepare them to participate in the worship. Because remember, these little ones in Deuteronomy were to hear and learn the Word of God. Now sometimes training little ones can make it hard for mom and dad to worship and to hear the sermon themselves.

That was our experience at times. And so this was I think a motivation for the 20th century innovation of having children's church. To give mom and dad a break and let them focus on worship and let the children be taught at their own level. But actually, moms and dads and children are losing that arrangement. The children lose the opportunity to learn how to worship.

Where else are you going to learn how to worship unless you worship? Where else are you going to learn the Scriptures? Putting immature children with a whole lot of other immature children on a couple of adults just doesn't help their maturity. And what happens instead of bringing them up, it usually brings them down. And when they come back into the service at some later date, they're simply completely unable or unprepared to listen.

But also, parents lose a chance to assess their training efforts. Think about it. This is why piano teachers have recitals from time to time. This is why sports clubs, chess clubs, have tournaments. They provide a goal to work toward.

And we all work better when we have a goal to work toward, don't we? And so, preparing little ones to listen takes this preparation. And the key to preparing little ones to have children in worship is daily family worship. That's where they learn. Daily family worship.

You don't learn to play the piano at the recital. You learn to play the piano practicing every day at home. And that's where children learn to worship. They're not going to learn to worship if this is the only time they worship. It's daily family worship, where they can sit them on your lap and you can speak to them.

And you're right there to correct them. And if you need to stop the worship time to address behavior, you can do that. It's a lot harder to do that in an assembly like this. Family worship is where they can be taught to how to sit still. And you can freely adapt that worship to whatever is needed at that moment to teach them how to sit still.

It's also a chance to teach them how to comprehend the Word. You can ask them questions much more easily about what is being read. You can explain it to them. It's where they learn to sing. Little children can learn to sing just like they can learn to talk.

But some of them have to be taught. Some just kind of learn on their own. Some children just learn to read on their own. I think we've had some of those. I know one of my siblings learned to read just without anybody teaching.

They just pick it up. But other children, it's a great struggle. I know it's a struggle for me because I think I realized in my adulthood, many years later, that I'm very dyslexic and didn't realize that, but I think it made it very hard to learn to read. But I learned. And children can learn to sing.

Some of them, it takes a lot more work, but they can learn to sing. And You can do that in family worship because you can stop and just help them learn to go from one note to the next note. And so in family worship is the key to preparing children to worship in the public assembly. And this is one reason why we provide a room with a speaker and speakers outside of this room so that parents with little children still learning to listen, can train those children how to listen, where they can be a little bit more free to speak with them and provide instruction and feedback and correction if it's needed, without hindering other people's ability to hear the message. And so Cornelius had assembled all the household, and he had assembled them ready to hear.

But he had high expectations. He was present before God, he said in verse 33, to hear what Peter was commanded by God. He was expecting to hear God speak. And that's why we set apart public worship. Because we want to have high expectations of what happens here.

We want to hear the voice of the Lord. Think of the preparation that God required Israel to go through before He appeared to them at Mount Sinai. It was three days of preparation, setting themselves apart, of cleansing themselves ceremonially and preparing themselves physically for God to speak to them. Sixthly, Cornelius put himself under the preaching of the Word. He said we are present to hear all the things God has commanded.

He was expecting to hear what He needed to do. He assumed the position of a learner and the posture of submission to the Word. This is how we have to come. This is the posture that we have to come to the preaching. If we come as critics, if we come sitting on the edge of our seat to find all the errors, we would probably be less likely to profit from it than if we come seeking to be in submission to it.

You see, even when preaching has errors in it, it's still possible to profit from it. I'm not at all justifying any errors. But I'm speaking to our posture as we come to a sermon. Even where there might be errors in it, we can still profit from that. We can still use it as an occasion to look up the Scriptures and to study those Scriptures and maybe to come to a better understanding than what was given.

And even where there are errors, there's many things in a faithful preacher, there are still many things that are said that are true that we can't profit from. And so we need to come with an attitude of submission to the Word of God to put ourselves under the preaching. And we do that with our physical posture. We don't stand up and walk around while God's Word is being proclaimed. We sit down and we give it our whole attention.

That's putting ourselves under preaching. I've seen several occasions where people don't have that posture. And so they'll go up and stand at the back and look at their phone or something while the preaching is going on. That's not a posture of submission to the Word of God. Cornelius put himself under.

He submitted under the preaching of the Word. And Cornelius came, as we said, expecting to hear God. He's expecting to hear what God has to say. He's not coming to hear the ideas of men. He's not coming to hear persuasive words of human wisdom.

He's not coming to hear great rhetoric. And He's certainly not coming to have glorious music or to be entertained. That's not why He was coming. That's not why He gathered the people. That's not why He made all these extensive preparations.

He made these preparations because he expected to hear the voice of God. It is what God says through His sinful human messenger, but primarily he is coming to hear what God has to say through the messenger. And with that posture, we come then to the message that Peter brought to Cornelius' household. May the Lord give us the grace to prepare our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our families, our households, to profit from the preaching of the Word of God. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You bring the Word to us.

We thank You that You give to us Your Holy Spirit by which we can understand it. And we thank You that You send messengers to bring it to us, to proclaim what we need to hear. Lord, may we be more faithful, and more faithful to prepare ourselves to receive Your Word with meekness as the engrafted word which is able to build us up in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. As that word of life. With you, Lord, and with you alone is the fountain of life.

And it is in your light that we see light, for there is no light in human words of wisdom. There is no light in rhetoric, there is no light in entertainment. But there is light, Lord, with you. You are light. And in you is light.

And in you is life. Father, grant to us a desire for the pure milk of your word and for the meat of your word. Grant Lord a desire for the preaching of your word. We pray Lord that you would prepare both the messenger as well as us who hear in Jesus name amen.