Acts 10:34-48 - Homiletics

The great surprise.

How seldom do things turn out as we expect! What frequent proofs we have that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways! And yet we are always making iron cages in which we think to confine the operations of God's Spirit, as well as the thoughts of men, and are surprised when either God or men refused to be confined within their bars. The pride of caste is perhaps that which, more than any other one cause, tends to mislead our judgment and to narrow our conceptions. The Jews thought that all God's grace and favor was reserved for themselves alone. The Pharisees thought that true holiness was confined within the still narrower circle of their own sect. The Romanist conceives of salvation as tied within the four corners of the Church of Rome. Each narrow sect thinks of itself as being exclusively the people of God. Even various parties in the Church can hardly think of grace being found in any party not their own. The great truth that burst upon Peter's mind, that God is no respecter of persons, is one which we are all very slow to admit. Peter and his companions learnt it with astonishment when the Holy Ghost fell upon the mixed multitude in the house of Cornelius. They were, perhaps, half surprised at their own liberality in sitting in the same room with the uncircumcised soldiers of the Italian cohort, when lo! all difference between them was swept away in an instant, and, to the utter amazement of the condescending Jews, those Gentiles spake with tongues and magnified God. They had received the very same gift of the Holy Ghost which the Jewish disciples had received on the day of Pentecost. They were on an equal footing with them. The middle wall of partition was fallen to the ground. There was not any longer Jew and Gentile, bond and free—they were all one in Christ. "One body, and one Spirit, even as they were called in one hope of their calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who was over all, and through all, and in all." It was a great surprise, but it was a great and new discovery of the hidden mind of God, a blessed manifestation of the width of that saving grace which embraces all who believe those glorious truths which Peter opened his mouth to declare to the assembled company.