In Missions Week 1991, John Piper concluded a sermon with the following:
So there are really two lessons in this text for today. One is that no human being is common or unclean. None is to be spurned, shunned, rejected, despised because of his ethnic origin or race or culture or physical traits. Christians should have no part in the kind of renewed racism that is cropping up around our land, for example, in the white supremacist groups on the university campus.
The second lesson from the text is that in every nation—that is, every ethnic people group around the world (v. 35)—there are people being prepared by God to seek him with acceptable prayer. This means two things for us as we approach our annual Missions Fest.
One is that many of us should go. Cornelius would not have been saved if no one had taken him the gospel. And no one will be saved today without the gospel.
The other is that we should be full of hope and expectancy that this is the sort of wonder God is willing to work in making connections between the groping of unreached peoples and those willing to take the gospel to them.
So let us wash our minds and our mouths of all racial slurs and ethnic put-downs and be done with all alienating behaviors. And let’s be the good Samaritan for some ethnic outcast, and let’s be the Christ for some untouchable leper, and let’s be the Peter for some waiting Cornelius.
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