JUN 5 2016

Sea Change Church · Adam Stadtmiller · June 5, 2016
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them. Well, starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story. I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance, I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was.

I looked into it, and I saw the four-footed animals of the earth, the wild beasts, reptiles, and birds. Then I heard a voice telling me, Get up, Peter. Kill and eat. I replied, Surely not, Lord. Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth. The Lord spoke from heaven a second time. Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.

That's the reading of the Lord. Thanks, Carol. You're so good at that. Seriously, her and Joe and Jim are so good at reading. It's almost like in the four-footed animals. I expect you to have pictures and a flannel gram. So good. Carol, it's an honor to have you here and reading. Yeah, if you have your phones, open up your Bibles. I'm going to read through this scripture again.

Scripture about kingdom expansion and God expanding the kingdom. And we'll talk about it as we go. Lord Jesus, now, God, bring your spirit, the spirit of truth, and speak, God. We bless you. We give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. So let's go through this, because I like to read through it myself before we jump into it. It says, the apostles and the believers.

So we have this group of apostles, and then we have this group of people that are following the lead of those apostles. The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. Kingdom expansion. Remember that there was going to be an expanding of the kingdom of God. It was going to go, as Jesus said, when he ascended into heaven from Jerusalem to where?

Judea to where? And to where? The outermost other parts of the earth. Something like that. And it says, so that was happening. We're seeing an expansion of the kingdom. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers, believers criticized him. Now, who were the circumcised believers? They were Jewish believers that were under the covenant of Abraham, the covenant of Israel, where God had called Jewish believers.

If you were going to be part of God's people, you had to live a certain way. Yesterday, I was at Ralph's, I think it is, up in La Jolla Square, and they have a whole kosher section. Perhaps you've seen it on Thursday and Friday. You can go get, I think it was a Shabbat meal for $25.99 or something like that. It's two kosher chickens and a few other things.

It looks good, so I'm going to go next Thursday and get one. But you see that there is this understanding, and that is a representation. What you see at Ralph's happening and what they are marketing is part of Abraham's covenant. And part of that was this idea that in order to be part of this community, you needed to be circumcised. That the males needed to be circumcised, and it was a huge part of being a part.

If you weren't circumcised, you would be like those Philistines. And we remember that David was not too keen on the Philistines. And when he started talking smack about the Philistines, he said, Who are these uncircumcised Philistines to come against the armies of the living God? And so these Jews were living with this contracted view. It was a contracted view that God had set up in order to establish his kingdom on earth.

And oftentimes God will contract things in order to expand them later on. But these were Jews that were not in place. They had followed Jesus and believed in him. But they believed that certain parts of the Jewish covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, needed to be continued on. And they were holding on to this contracted view, even though God had expanded the view of this.

It says, so they criticized Peter because they weren't even allowed to eat with non-believers. And said, but you went into the house of the uncircumcised men and you ate with them. That was a bad thing. You would make yourself unclean when you did that. Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story. And I love the expansion of Peter.

The kingdom has expanded in Peter. Remember in Acts, the early chapters of Acts where he stood up no longer afraid. He stands up here no longer afraid and begins to speak as a man possessed. A man possessed by the kingdom of God. A man possessed with a heart on fire. I just got to say, if Peter can get it right, so can we. If Peter can get it right, so can we.

The expansion of our hearts. If you were to stop reading at certain points in the gospel with the story of Peter, you could easily say, that guy, he was never the disciple he should have been. But sometimes we need to just continue on. Because he passed through the valley of the shadow of death. And came into greener pastures. And the kingdom expanded.

And we'll talk about expanding that kingdom. So Peter told them the whole story. I was in the city of Joppa praying. And in a trance, I saw a vision. This is a really deep season of prayer. Is he a yogi going into a trance? No. But God had come upon him so powerfully. He was so immersed in the presence of the Lord. That he was no longer at that moment really aware of what was happening here.

He was immersed in that. I heard John Wimber say one time, don't let that word scare you. Because you see someone and they get entranced with alcohol. They fall down and pass out. And we look at them and we don't think anything of it. That's just alcohol. But couldn't the spirit of God? Don't we believe more in the spirit of God? Are we more impressed with the effects of alcohol than we are with possibly the spirit of God?

And so the spirit of God. And why do you think they call spirits spirits? Because alcohol is something that can do that. But cannot the presence of God overwhelm you? If we allow ourselves to be invaded by the presence of God. We put ourselves in a position to allow God to come in. And so Peter had done that. He was praying and God had come in such a powerful way that he saw this vision in a trance.

He saw something like a large sheet being let down out of heaven of the four quarters. And it came down to where I was. I looked into it and I saw the four-footed animals of the earth. The wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds. Then I heard a voice telling me, get up Peter. Kill and eat. I replied, surely not Lord. Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.

And this is interesting because I think it shows that he was a good Jew all the way through from being a little child. I mean, it wasn't just some fisherman, random fisherman. He was actually a practicing Jew. We need to realize that he might not have been among the educated or among the elite. But he was a man that had a devout faith. And he had never allowed, not once in his life, from the time he was a child, anything unpure or unclean to enter his mouth.

But God here was doing what he had wanted to do. He was expanding the kingdom. I hope you can see where I'm going with this. He wants to expand the kingdom in your life. There are some things he wants to contract, but there are other things that he wants to develop and go on. And so God is expanding the kingdom because he was trying, he wanted the gospel to get beyond just Abraham.

He started with one man revealing himself, but he was taking it to the four corners of the earth. And what he was saying, and Jesus had already declared all things clean, as we'll see, I think it's in Matthew 7. There's a footnote here somewhere in your scripture. As we look at that, that Jesus, when he spoke, it said that at one point in the scripture that he declared all things clean.

We'll see that in a moment. Jesus had already done this, but here it was. And this is just an expansion. And this is God's desired plan to expand the kingdom. Let me ask you this. Is the kingdom expanding, contracting, or is it stagnant in your life? Recently, I got to the realization that the only time the kingdom was expanding in my life was when I was going through times of suffering.

When things were good, I just wanted to get mine. Wanted to enjoy my vacation. Wanted to go surf. Wanted, oh, good, things are good for a while. Now I can just forget about God and enjoy myself. Began to say, that's not the way I want to live my life with God. When things are good, when I have a moment of reprieve, I want to lean in. I want to expand.

One of the things I did yesterday was, you know, this is a really powerful tool for good or evil. For positive or distraction. We have such, the Bible gateway. There's so many tools here to grow your spiritual life. I turned on Proverbs. I listened to 11 chapters of Proverbs yesterday as I was cleaning the house. And I began to feel the expansion of the kingdom.

Began to feel the expansion of hope. As I began to talk about how to live a life to be filled with the things of God. So what we consume, as you'll see. What we consume, what we allow, what we receive. Well, it can expand. Or it can contract the kingdom. Or you can just stay stagnant. I don't want to be leading a church where we stay stagnant, where I stay stagnant.

Peter was not someone who was stagnant. And so he says, Surely not, Lord, nothing is pure as ever gone out of my mouth. The voice spoke from heaven a second time. Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This happened three times. That means that God was super serious about it. And then it was pulled up into heaven. This is a non sequitur.

But I thought last night as I was laying in bed, just kind of meditating. And I was reading a Bernard of Clairvaux. And one of the things he said is it's important to meditate on the cross and Jesus on the throne. And so I just lay in bed and think about God on the throne. Think about different scriptures. And I thought about Peter sharing about Jesus.

And I thought, you know, I bet he, when Jesus was gone and it was in these Acts chapters, he looked back and said, you know, I never really realized who he was. If I could just only have a few more minutes with him knowing what I know today. I thought of the regret he would have felt. But then again, you know, he was not living in shame because he was under the cross.

But it made me think about the humanity of Peter. And so oftentimes we miss the goodness of God in a certain season. I told the team as we prayed for you coming into the church today to enjoy this season at this church. This is a powerful season. When we were in Australia, literally I felt like Paul the Apostle. Not because I am Paul the Apostle, but because all I wanted to say when people said, what's your church like?

And I kept saying things like, you've got to come. You've got to meet them. And one of the things these surf churches did is we're putting up a map and we're going to have a little like a road where people can go and visit these different churches. Maybe we'll stamp your passport or something, but we can come visit each other. But I said, you've got to come meet these people.

The kingdom is expanding and this is a special time right now. So that was just a thought about Peter enjoying that. And I hope you're enjoying and inviting others to be a part of what God is doing. Here's the keys. Look at your notes for today's sermon. Number one, and this has to do with going back to verse one of them receiving the word of God.

Okay? What you receive or reject dynamically affects God's kingdom expansion in your life. Let's say it can. But I will say for the most part, what you receive or reject can dramatically affect God's kingdom expansion in your life. We see in verse one that the people received what? What did it say they received? The word. Receiving the word of God.

Not just reading it, but receiving it. Letting it do its heart's work. Consuming the word of God. Not letting it just be a mental picture. Something that you understand and you know because there's a great desire in the Christian, Western Christian world to know the scriptures. But when God talks about knowing the scriptures, he wants you to know them where?

In your heart. He wants you to know them intimately. And that's why when I was singing today, It Is Well, I was singing it with my mind. But part of my heart was saying, no, no, it's not. It ain't well. Sing it. Just sing it. And I said, Lord, how can I sing with my being to know It Is Well? It Is Well. What you receive and what you reject will greatly affect kingdom expansions or the stagnant place of the kingdom in your life or perhaps the contraction of the kingdom in your life.

What are you allowing? What are you accepting? What thoughts are you allowing? What programs are you watching? Things like 24-hour news cycle. Let me tell you what. Unless you're reading that with the Bible in the other hand, it is going to contract you. The talk radio. I'm not saying that we shouldn't listen to it. I'm not saying it's forbidden. But what I'm saying is what we put in front of ourself, what's your main news source?

What's your main perspective? What do we entertain? Even the thoughts that we entertain. I was talking to my prayer captain from a praying team. They pray for me every week, about 10 people. I send out a weekly prayer newsletter, and some people in the church here are on that. And my prayer captain, I began to share different things that are on my mind.

And they said, why are you entertaining that thought? I have a tendency to have a negative thought come, and then I think, my thing is to think, well, if that happens, I'll do this. I figure out what the next step will be. And Patrice said to me, why are you even entertaining it? When a thought like that comes, just rebuke it. Don't allow that in.

That word was so strong for me this week because I realized how much I entertain it. I'll even say, well, I'll take God's word, and I'll do this, and then God will do this. I don't even need to entertain those things. I need not to receive them because when I entertain those thoughts, I begin to receive those thoughts, and they begin to put a seed in my mind, which puts a seed in my heart.

I'm going to reject those things. So let me say again, what are you receiving and what are you rejecting? It'll bring kingdom expansion, or it can bring kingdom retraction or contraction. The second point for today that we'll see is do you understand what is holy before God and what is not? Let me say that again. Do you understand what is holy before God and what is not?

Peter had to have his mind renewed. Now, God had had some things that he had contracted, small things that he had contracted for the purpose of making his people separate. You would call them weird customs. The Philistines would have looked at them and said, that's a weird custom, that circumcision thing, or the way, the thing they will eat. I know it's in the book of Daniel that as we look in the Babylonians, when they were looking at Daniel, they thought that they were weird, and Daniel, remember, would not eat the certain foods.

God gave a lot of rules. Some of those rules carry on in regard to things that are still sin today. But there are certain things that God did for the purpose of drawing his people apart, so that he could set up the expanding kingdom for when the Holy Spirit was to come. So there are certain rules of the Old Testament that were laws and regulations that he would cause to pass away.

But he did that so that the Jews could become a specific people. Had he not done that, the Jews would not be able to be in Jerusalem today as a people. You see, the Jews that continued to follow these dietary laws continued on for 2,000 years. Think about just in regard to prophecy. To take a people and disperse them for 2,000 years, and then try to gather them back together as a people with the same bloodline still going through.

That is what happened with the Israelites. Now try to do that with the Incas. You couldn't do it today. Try doing it with certain parts of empires. You think of the Mayans or different civilizations. Once a civilization disperses, it is gone. Unless there is something that they hold on to. Part of the reason that Israel in the 1940s was able to go back was because many of them held on to these customs.

As I traveled, I saw a lot of Hasidic Jews. We live in a Jewish neighborhood. A lot of Jews up near UCSD by the synagogue. And I see many of them will come and they'll walk. And they'll still be, many are in their Orthodox outfits as they go. And they walk on Saturdays by my house. Because of this contraction, God allowed the future expansion and for Israel to become a nation again.

I see just that fact alone. I was sitting with a Jewish man on a plane a couple trips ago. And I was beginning to talk to him about his Jewishness. And I said, man, you're the chosen people. And he said, I don't know about all that. I said, what? And I'm convincing. I start telling him about the history of the scriptures. And he's debating me. And I said, well, what about this?

What about Israel becoming a nation again after 2,000 years? He goes, yeah, I don't know how to get my head around that one. That's interesting. That's an interesting one right there. It's true. So that is what God did. So understand that many of these things that he says eat again, he did it so now he's saying that the kingdom is being expanded.

But that doesn't mean that everything in God's law you can do now. So there are certain things that you will see carry on in the New Testament. And this is why it's important to understand what the New Testament says is forbidden and what is not holy and what is now allowed. But that isn't for today. But just let me tell you why that we had that.

So those are those two points. What you receive or reject will dynamically affect God's kingdom expansion or contraction in your life. And do you understand what is holy before God? First of all, in Acts 11 here we see a fulfillment of long-awaited prophecy. The kingdom of God was expanding to the Gentiles and to the nations that they dwelt in.

But many Jewish believers did not want to receive them into their ranks. The Jews were holding, as it shows in verse 2 and 3, to a contracted view of the kingdom of God. The Gentiles now, if you look in the notes, the Gentiles now were the next stop on God's kingdom expansion tour. In Acts 8, the Samaritans. Remember that. We read this in Acts 8 where it was Simon the sorcerer.

Where was he living? In Samaria. And so the gospel in Acts is following the same road or the same map that Jesus had laid out for them. From Jerusalem. We see that the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 comes in Jerusalem. Then it goes on to Judea. And then it goes on to Samaria. And now it is going to the other places of the earth. And I love at the end of this passage we read where in the final verse, as you continue, if you were to read down chapter 11, would say, wow.

Now the Gentiles have even got the gift of God of grace. They receive. And at the end of this story, we know that these Jewish believers, after Peter speaks to them, say they're overwhelmed. Can you imagine that? That all of a sudden in just one talk from the Holy Spirit, they realize that it wasn't just about them. That it is about them first, because the Bible says first to the Jew and then to the Gentile, but that it had expanded.

So they were holding on to this and it had gone through. So this is a fulfillment, though, of a long-awaited prophecy. Now the one thing is that many of the Jews didn't understand that it would ever go beyond the Jewish nation. There's many Jews that live in that today. That it was never going to go beyond that. It was never going to expand beyond what they thought.

Let me say this for our own lives, because we want to continue to take the Scripture and say, what does it mean to me? Perhaps God has a view of your life that far exceeds anything you've ever thought. Perhaps you have this contracted view of what it would look like. Of how much you can really love God. Of how much you could serve Him. Of how much you can give your life to Him.

Of how much hope that you can actually have. Of how much peace you can have in your life. Of how much power. There's this contracted view. But God has an Ephesians view of you. Ephesians 4.20 that says, more than you could ever hope or dream. What's the next word? Imagine. That we want to live in the imagination of God. And I want to say that God created you in His imagination and in His image.

And He has a view of you that is so grand. As a matter of fact, He sees the final picture. Because you will be perfected to stand before God. And He's moving you towards that. And how much of you that you want. How much of that vision that you want today on earth is unlimited. How much of that do you want? The problem I find for myself is, I want it when I'm struggling.

But I don't want it when I'm doing well. What does it look like? I've been asking myself, what does it look like to really go after God when things are going well? Do I want an expanded view? What about sitting for five minutes and saying, God, can you show me a picture of who you see me as? What if God could show you a picture of what you're going to look like when you receive Him in fullness.

Because of accepting Christ as your Savior and your sins being covered by His blood. A picture of who you were created to be. It says in Revelations that He has a stone. And on that stone is a name. And it says that only He and you will know that name. It is a special name and it is your true identity. And in that name is going to be a fullness on that white stone that it says.

It's a really interesting passage. If you want to look it up, you haven't heard that before, Google Revelation, Book of Revelations, white stone name. And you will find it if you look it up. God has this view of you. That is this beautiful view. One of the reasons that we have monogamous marriage is because it represents this intimacy between one and another.

If you were to bring another person into it, a third person into that relationship, into that intimacy, into that knowledge, it would not be as intimate. Because it is private. It is special. There are things that only one other is meant to know. There is a relationship that is so sacred. That is why God has monogamous relationships. I went to the beach yesterday.

You can't go to the beach anymore. Because everyone wants to show you what only maybe one other person in the world should see. It's just on offer. I don't know if you've been to the beach lately, but fashion has changed. How can a young man keep his way pure? Proverbs says, look straight ahead. Psalms says, I don't know. You figure it out. Yesterday I was thinking to myself, you're just giving away what's supposed to be special for one person.

And it just represents. That's the thing. And the lie of the world is, love is love. Just as more love you can give around, the more the better. It's just all love. We just love each other. And we can love many people as you want. It takes intimacy. The deepest intimacy can only happen between one and another. To be able to share things with that other person that only one other person knows.

If you haven't allowed that in your life, recommit to it. Recommit to that intimacy. Because that's the intimacy God wants to have with you. He has an expanded view of who you are. And he wants to share it with you. He wants to have intimate things with you that you share only, only between him and you. I remember the Lord, he speaks to me often and gives me these words.

And whenever I would get a word, I would run around and say, oh, I feel like the Lord said this. And the Lord said that. The Lord said this. And I felt like the Lord said to me one time, can you ever keep a secret? I forget if God told me, everybody else is supposed to know. Or God will tell me something. I think he'll share something about another person.

And the Lord will say, that's just, maybe you'll never tell them. I just want you to know that. I don't know if it's true. I'm not saying I hold on to those things and claim them as truth. But there's certain things that are intimate. Do you have an intimate relationship with the Lord? That's something I really want. I really want to expand it. What would it look like to have just a secret relationship, just you and him?

No one knows about it. Just secret. I said, that's the picture of marriage. That's why marriage, that's just one element of marriage that is being just spat upon in the society. As we see that it just doesn't even matter anymore. Moving on, there's this intimacy and there's this expanded view of who God wants you to be. But this is a fulfillment of a long-awaited prophecy because as God expands it, there's still things that he wants them to stay away from.

And here's the verse out of where we see it start happening in Genesis chapter 12. Let's go back to the original story because this prophecy, or this story, and this expansion of the kingdom creates a tension. And there will be a tension in your life as you decide what you accept and what you reject. What you decide to receive into your life, what ideas you receive, there will be a tension, and there is a tension here.

And I think that that tension is healthy. But being able to hear from the Lord so he can speak to you directly and say, this is yes, and for you this is no. And some of those things will be individual because we know the scripture says that to one man something is sinful, to another it is not. For me, alcohol is sinful. I proved that by the time I was 19.

I've been sober now almost 30 years, getting on there. I think it'll be 30 this year. Completely sober. For me, to drink would be a sin. I just know it. But for others, it's not. They don't have the same problems that I have. They have these different issues. And so we need to know. But here we look back at Genesis 12 and we see this original calling.

Here's the contraction. The Lord says to Abraham, go from your country, your people, your father's household, to the land I will show you. Don't you love that? I talked about that a few, about a month ago. It's like my wife telling me, go out and get me something. What do you want? I'll let you know. Where am I going? Just go. Just start. Should I go that way?

Just head on out. I'll give you a text. All right, you know better yet, you'll just know when you get there. I'll be like, what? That's how God rules. Do you know he rules that way? Because it's not about the destination. He's the destination. Yeah. It's not about the way. It's not about the place you're going. It's about the way maker. That's what he wants.

He doesn't care where you go. He says that. And it says, Romans 8.28. It says, whatever you do. Obviously, we're assuming that you're doing things for God. You're not sinning. But it says, whatever you do, all things will work out for what? For good. That love God and are called according to whose purposes? His purposes. Proverbs 16. Who directs your steps?

He directs your steps. Man makes the plans in his heart. But God determines their what? Just go out the door. Go whatever way you want. Tell God you love him the entire way. And trust me, you're going to end up where you're supposed to go. I'm not saying be an idiot. I'm not saying don't use wisdom in your decisions. That means that you're talking to the way maker.

You're on the road to Emmaus the entire time, speaking with the Lord as you go. God is so good. He's not going to let you go. Don't be in bondage to your purpose because it's never your purpose anyways. It's his purpose. Let's relax. Let's exhale and enjoy the way maker along the way. Whatever God calls us to. So we see the contraction here of that.

I will make you a great nation. So there we see the expansion. First he says go. Don't take Lot with you. But he takes Lot with him, doesn't he? Remember? Can't go without Lot. And then he has to give half of his country away to Lot. You guys remember that story in Abraham? He takes Lot with him. And then Lot starts getting blessed because he's near Abraham.

And if you're following God, trust me, the blessings are going to fall off you to other people. You're going to become a sustenance in a well. As you begin intimacy, as you grow in kingdom expansion, the kingdom is expansive. Do you realize that if you follow God, those around you will be blessed? Your neighbors will be blessed. The people at the places you go will be blessed.

That's how God's kingdom works. And so if somebody goes with Abraham, they're going to get blessed because Abraham has so much blessing, it can't be contained. You want to be a person of blessing. One of the reasons we want kingdom expansion to expand on the corner of our heart, so that the territory of our heart will be owned by God, is that we might bless others.

That we might be the sustenance. That God would be the sustenance for others through us. And so we see this expansion happening with Lot going out with him, but then Lot having to separate. But he tells him, I will make you a great nation. So now it's not just one person and his family. It's a nation. Do you see the expansion there? How awesome. He said that you will be like the what in the heavens?

The stars and like the what on the shore? Sand. If you can count those, you'll be able to count your nation. And it says, I will bless you. I love that. God wants to bless you. The things you receive bring blessing. Or we can bring things that bring curses to our lives. Curses. We use that word curses. There are things that are away from God that are accursed.

And if we receive those things into our heart, you will receive, not that you are going to be cursed, but you will receive the bounty of that. Because like blessing that is exponential, curses lead to death. Because all sin, the scripture says, leads to where? To death. And so if we choose things that lead to death, we will be affected by it. It will affect our state of being and our mind.

On the way home, I was bored, and there was a psychological thriller, and I watched it. At the end of it, I thought, that's just dark. I came home, and for a couple days, I just had this darkness over me. And I was asking the Lord, where is this coming from? And I sat and just waited on the Lord. And regularly, I ask the Lord, where is this coming from?

It's a great question. He'll show you. And the Lord brought up this show that I had watched. And I thought, I need to repent of that. I've allowed that into my heart. I've allowed it into my mind, and I've allowed it. And I'm receiving the fruit of it. And so I prayed, and all of a sudden, I felt this lifting in my spirit. I felt it just leave. Am I saying that a demon was possessing me?

No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is, as a person, the Scripture says, believes in their heart, as the heart goes, your life goes. What you receive is what you will experience. What are you allowing in? What are you allowing in? I saw news headlines recently, that there's this really popular show, it's an HBO series, and they are suing a pornography website.

Why? Because the pornography website has taken the HBO scenes and are showing them on their pornography website. So basically, because it's HBO, I guess it's okay. Because it's only HBO, right? They only show movies. A pornography website, it says, that's good enough to qualify for our website. We're putting it on there. But how easy is it for us just to look at something and just rationalize it?

It's just HBO. It's just a little sexuality. It's just a little darkness. It's a little bit, the fascination. If we were as fascinated with life in our entertainment as we are about murder, what would our world be like? We are fascinated with murder. We are fascinated with the morose. We are fascinated with the grossest stuff. It's just about clicks over and over.

What are we clicking and allowing into our lives? What do we receive? One will expand the kingdom. One can contract the kingdom. So we see it going forth. And it says in verse 3, I will bless those who bless you. I love that. And whoever curses you, I will curse. All peoples on the earth will be blessed through you. You know, a lot of Jews miss that.

You see that at the end of it? He basically, he takes it from a contract of view in the entire gospel. The purpose of the gospel is seen in this verse. He takes it from one man's heart. And let's just remember this. The kingdom always starts with human beings' hearts. It starts with individuals. And then it goes, and those individuals begin to expand to become a nation.

And then that nation begins to be blessed because of the things that they receive and the things that they reject. Let me say, we are blessed today as a nation because of the things that we have received. We are blessed because of it. Look at Christian nations. Just look at the, I read a study on the economics of Christian nations. Nations that have accepted and then followed Christ.

Blessed those nations and looking at the economics of those countries. High and above the blessing that is on those countries. I believe that it is tied because what you receive. We are beginning to reject things that this nation has held true for years. My prayer is that we won't receive the consequences that come with that. Those are things we need to be praying for and praying over.

So we see that contraction, but we see the entire expansion coming to all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. Peter's expansion, and here's this verse, his vision that we saw had two results. And we've already spoken about this, but let me quickly go through it. Circumcision was a primary sign of the separation. Dietary laws were another.

And cohabitation with Gentiles or non-Jews was a third. Peter's vision now expands it. He has a vision, and the food laws are fulfilled. And those were ended with Jesus. I told you we'd find that verse. It's Mark 7, 19. It says in that verse that Jesus expanded the food laws. And the people they kept you from separated, or the nations of the Gentiles, are no longer to be considered unclean or common.

Here's one thing that came to my mind as we read this, as I read it this week. Is there a people group that you consider unclean or common and not want to have anything to do with? Is there a group of people that follow a certain lifestyle? Are there a certain ethnicity? Are they have a certain cultural understanding? Is there a prejudice in your heart to saying that group of people, they'll never be saved?

And like Ryan said three weeks ago, and it's stuck with me since, are we more impressed with their what? Anybody know what he said? Unbelief than with the ability of Christ to change their hearts and perhaps an entire community. Are we more impressed with people's sin? Are we more impressed with people's doubt? Where we lose a love for all people? It is so easy to look at the people that you feel are going to infringe upon your boundaries and to categorize them and to ultimately hate them in our hearts.

Not willing to believe that they could be saved. And that was really stuck out to me as I read that, that there was a group of people that they finally said, no, no, no, these Gentiles that had, when they said Gentiles, they meant every group. And I guess they were surrounded by some crazy groups of people. Different religions, temple prostitution, I mean some craziness.

But they said, no, we believe that these people can understand the word of God. They had a heart for evangelism that said we will reach out to them. I want to say maybe we need, maybe you, maybe I, maybe we as a people need to repent for those people groups that we have turned against in our hearts. That we end up hating or disliking or not praying for and saying, God, give me a heart for that group of people.

That the kingdom of God might expand into that group because God wants everyone to come to know him. Closing down shop here, coming in for a landing. God's desire is kingdom expansion for the earth to resemble heaven. That's his desire. He wants to expand to make earth look more like heaven. Do you get that? That's what kingdom expansion means. That he wants to take the things, the character of heaven, the nature of heaven.

He wants your home to feel more like heaven. He wants your personal life, he wants your heart to experience more of the things that heaven experiences. When you think of heaven and you get a vision for heaven, that's what he wants to have here at this church. That's what he wants to have here in La Jolla. And as a church, as we begin to follow God and God blesses us, and let me tell you this, God is blessing us here.

God is blessing us. La Jolla will be blessed. As God blesses you in this church, and you live in PB, and the reason we have all the different names of the different cities on the back of the church is because we realize not everyone lives in La Jolla. Some of you are in Point Loma, Bird Rock, South Mission, Ocean Beach, UTC, Carmel Valley, that that blessing that God is doing here is gonna overflow.

And as you go to those places, that we are gonna change your corner. For if you don't live in this church and in this area, we want you to love where you live. But come here for sustenance and lock shields with us. Get that fullness because that blessing is gonna overflow. And the more we receive the things of God, the more we're gonna receive that together.

Do you believe that? Jesus says in Matthew 6, 9 through 10, when talking about this change, he said this about our life becoming more like the kingdom. This then is how you should pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be by your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Think about the profundity of that statement. He wants it to look like heaven here.

And finally, when the apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles had received the word of God, I've already said this multiple times, what you receive directly influences the kingdom expansion or contraction in our lives. They received the word and what did they get in verse 15? The Spirit of God. All they did was receive the word.

They received it, not knowing what the consequences of that be, the very presence of God himself, the Spirit. Are you experiencing the Spirit? Let me tell you one road to get there. Go into the word and receive it. Go into the word and consume it. Turn on your iPhone. Listen to the whole book of John in a day. Just turn it on. We'll binge watch TV. How about binge listen to the Bible?

How about binge read the Bible? I mean, seriously, you know, I've been guilty of it on vacation, you know, just hours of just binge watching, something. What about binge worship? What would that look like? I'm serious. Like, is that a new thought? It was for me. Binge worship. Turn it on. Binge read the Bible. Just binge God's presence. Go away for a weekend and just go with God in your Bible and take walks in his presence.

We understand how to do it with this. How many times do we check Facebook? Do you check God as much as you check Facebook? Or the news? Or your email? I mean, seriously. Sorry, I hit it too close to home. Welcome back, Adam. Final things, final verses. Voice from heaven spoke. I'm just telling you to go get it. It's good. Oh, yesterday, I just dove in yesterday.

It was so good. I was like, oh God, I remember you. He's like, welcome back. They used to say in college, if you want to, if you want to starve Adam, hide his lunch card under his Bible. Get it? Because you don't pick it up and the lunch card's underneath it. Here's a, here's a big thing and this is it. We need to know the difference between what is clean and unclean.

That's getting more difficult because there's a lot of really persuasive arguments about why this is good and why this should be and why that should be. You know, at the end of the book of Joshua, he says to him, you know, for years, your ancestors have just rationalized, allowed things in, allowing temple prostitution, other wives, all these different things.

He goes, you know what, in the end, as for me and my house, I don't know what you're going to do, but as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. You're going to have to make a decision in this day and age. What you say in your house and what we say in this house and as long as I'm the pastor of this house, I want to follow the word of God and I want to follow his covenants.

He says in Isaiah 520, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Second Timothy 4.3, listen to this. Tell me if this doesn't resonate. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine, instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

Read that again. Just let that soak in. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine, instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. We live in a world that doesn't know the difference between a man and a woman anymore. Straight up. We would be laughed at by other cultures.

The 6,000, this is a thought that is newer than cell phones. And if you don't believe it today, you're on the outs when I believe every civilization before us for 6,000 years of written history would mock us. It is ridiculous to believe that we do not have fathers. I do believe there will come a time where Mother's Day or Father's Day will be seen as politically incorrect because not everybody has one and it might hurt somebody's feelings.

We need mothers. We need monogamous relationships. We need binary sexuality in relationships. These are the things we need. And God has set them up. I'm not on this platform every single day, but somebody has got to speak truth. And that is, I want to tell you where I stand and what I believe and what I believe that God is calling us to. And there will come a time, it says, when people will take sound doctrine basics, basics, gender's not fluid.

It's basic. My six-year-old, eight-year-old knows that. But to tease our itching ears to hear what we want to hear, well, just because it makes us, that's what we want to hear. We're not going to hear it here. We need to know what's clean and what's unclean. And so somebody's going to stand up. Yeah. So with that said, I ask the band to come forward. One of the things we want to do is we want to learn how to speak to culture, and I understand I'm speaking to believers today.

But let's go back to your life. Let's go back to your life. God wants to expand the kingdom in your life. Do you get that? He has a view of you that is sacred that he wants you to see, and he wants to present to you a vision of who you are. Let's binge on God this week. Let's stand. We have communion coming.