Seeking Redemption

There was once a centurion who spent more than 25 years serving in the legions of the Roman Empire. A centurion was a ranking official officer, more or less likened to maybe a high-ranking sergeant or a captain in our modern-day infantry and army. A centurion was an individual who rose through the ranks by virtue of his abilities, and he commanded a hundred men in a Roman legion. He had to have earned that position after 16 years of service. He didn't buy into it, and he wasn't commissioned into it out of any training academy.

He earned his way to the rank of a centurion because of his leadership abilities and his fighting skills. He could carry nearly a hundred pounds on his back, upwards of 20-25 miles a day. He led his 100 men a century into battle. His spear was the first Roman spear to touch enemy flesh when they engaged the enemy. He not only could fight and lead his men well, but he could also build bridges and build whatever was necessary to advance the legion of Rome.

He was also an engineer, as well as a capable leader of men and a fighter. A centurion also was able to lead his men, but also discipline his men. He would have to discipline them very severely in the dictates of the Roman legion because he was responsible not only for inspiring his men forward, but if any of them faltered, or did anything to threaten the entire century, and therefore the legion, which was about 6,000 men, he was responsible for administering punishment over any of those 100 men that were in his care.

But he also had to have their respect to be able to lead them. He also had to pay into his own burial fund. Centurion had to pay for his own burial in the event that he didn't make it out of any of the battles. Now, if he lived through all of his years of service, and he came to his 25th year of service, he would be eligible for discharge. And if there was any money in the treasury, and depending upon the political feelings of whoever was in charge of either the legion, or the armies, or even who was Caesar at that time, he might be given a small plot of land for his 25 years of service to Rome.

Maybe. And a little bit of money. Neither of those existed. He might just continue working as a centurion, hoping to stay alive. It was a hard time. It was hard service. There was one centurion who served his 25 years, and he served well. And when he was done, we read about him in the book of Acts.

His name is Cornelius. If you will, turn over to Acts chapter 10, where we are told in verse 1, There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian regiment, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, who gave alms generously to the people and prayed to God always.

We meet this Cornelius in the context of the opening of an opportunity for Gentiles to come into the church and to receive the Holy Spirit as full-fledged spiritual members of the body of Christ. And the Apostle Peter is the one who is sent to the home of Cornelius. After receiving a vision, both men receive visions. Cornelius sends a delegation to find Peter. Peter then goes to the home of Cornelius, and he meets him and his family.

And he baptizes them, and they receive the Holy Spirit. That's the whole story of chapter 10. We're not going to go through all of that today. That's not the real point of my sermon. But if you look at verse 22 of Acts 10, when it also speaks again and gives us a little bit more of a background to Cornelius, he is described as the Centurion, a just man who fears God and has a good reputation among all the nation of the Jews.

He was divinely instructed by a holy angel to summon you, Peter, to his house and to hear words from you. He had a vision. Go down and sin for this man, Peter, and have him come up, which he did, and that's why he's there. But just look at the character of the man. That's what I want to focus on here in verse 22, as well as verses 1 and 2. A good man, a just man, he feared God, had a good reputation among the Jews. Now keep in mind, Cornelius was a Gentile.

He wasn't a Jew. That was a big thing in the first century. Jews and Gentiles didn't get along. Jews had a high prejudice against anyone who was not an Israelite, not a Jew. Gentiles were looked upon in some pretty severe ways. And so this is why this setup here of even Peter going to his house, baptizing them, and the whole issue of the Gentiles now being given opportunity to worship God and salvation is big. But this centurion was a just man, and he gave generously, it says in verse 2, of what he had, and he prayed to God always.

This is all we're really told about Cornelius in the book of Acts, and we meet him here, and we move out of chapter 10. We don't hear from him again. Some wonder if he is the same centurion mentioned in the Gospels who Jesus healed his servant. We don't know. We don't know is the answer. It's safe to assume that he's a different centurion because they're different locations, number one. Caesarea is several miles away from the centurion of the Gospels in terms of where they lived, and we are given a bit more information here.

I like to imagine that something about Cornelius as to how he got to this point where he was a, what is called in Acts, a God-fear. Verse 22 says that he feared God, but he was a Gentile. He wasn't raised a Jew.

In fact, he was probably raised with either no religion or at best an adherent to one of the pagan cults of the day. And he became a soldier. Why did he become a soldier? It may have been that it was like a lot of young men today who even go into the military. It is an opportunity to do something more than what they have in front of them wherever they grew up and to make something of themselves.

It gives them opportunity to travel. Today, you know, to get an education, to fight, or to do things. Why did he become a centurion? I don't know, except that he had the abilities to even raise himself to the rank of a centurion. He was more than just an enlisted man. He had leadership skills and he had certain abilities there. I happen to think that at some point, as Cornelius thought and did the bidding of Rome, either in Judea, parts of what became Europe, north of Italy, or in Asia Minor, wherever his Italian regiment had been sent, that Cornelius, as he led his men, he fought.

He probably fought valiantly. He survived through the years. Every engagement that his legion took part in, he lived. He probably was wounded, received many scars. And knowing the brutality of the Age and of Rome and of the Legion of Rome, I imagine that Cornelius did some very bad things. That he killed a lot of people with that Roman short sword. He would have had to. As I said, a centurion's sword was the first Roman medal to meet the enemy in any engagement.

He led from the front. And I imagine Cornelius killed a lot of people, looked into their eyes, and saw them breathe their last. In villages, along rivers, on plains, wherever the Legion engaged. And I like to imagine that in one of those moments, Cornelius, as he had done so many times before, led, killed, and came up to one person, maybe an elderly woman or man.

Maybe it was a young teenager who was out there trying to defend his village and his people's honor against the incursion of Rome.

And he thrust his sword, but just as he was thrusting it, he looked into the eye of his victim and he saw something.

That terrified him. He had not seen that in any eyes of any of his other victims. And it convicted him. And he probably thought, what have I done? Oh God! Oh Jupiter! Oh Minerva! What have I done? And whatever the phrase of the day was, whatever expletive would have come out of his mouth, what have I done?

And he began to feel guilty for what he had done. And the guilt didn't go away. He couldn't sleep it off. He couldn't drink it off. He couldn't carouse it off. And the guilt stayed with him to where he had to find peace. And somewhere in another village, on another place and time, Cornelius came across a synagogue, or a Jewish rabbi or teacher, or a group of Jews. And he began to learn about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel.

And that was a different God than whatever God he had worshipped or heard about or just brushed off in his life. The God of Abraham, for Cornelius, was a different God. And he began to learn about the blessings and the promises that God had made to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and to the children.

And he began to hear the stories of the Exodus and of a Passover night and what God had done for his people and of a temple and of the worship of one God. And he began to learn about an ethic and a religion that esteemed others. And the way he heard about it was different than what one might hear about the God of what we would call the Old Testament today.

It was of a loving, kind, gracious, just, firm, but merciful God. And he began to attach himself to that God. Because when you come to chapter 10, you find that he has a good reputation among the Jews. And for a Gentile to have a good reputation among the Jews in the first century was big. He gave of what he had. He wasn't a wealthy patrician of Rome. Whatever he had, he'd earned. Maybe he'd invested wisely in whatever, but he had a bit that he not only could take care of his family and his household, but give to others.

Because he'd learned that out of the book of the law. In whatever form he'd heard it, he'd talk to him, or if he'd learned to read it, he learned about giving. Because in that law, it talked about leaving the corners of your field for others poor to come and glean, and to give, and to be just, and to treat people with dignity and respect.

And even how to humanely treat those who became indebted into your service. All of that he had learned, and he began to pray to that God. And it changed his life. But he wasn't a Jew. Strange thing was, as he began to do this, he was no longer a Gentile. He was somewhere in between. Because he didn't worship any of the Gentile gods in religions, and though he was not an Israelite, he was trying to become an Israelite, or a Jew, so to speak. He would have had to have been keeping the Sabbath, and the Holy Days, as he could.

And as we find in the book of Acts, these people were even within the synagogue, allowed within the synagogue. He could not have gone into certain parts of the temple in Jerusalem, because there were restrictions there, but he could have gone into a synagogue, and probably did, to learn, to engage in the readings of the law. And because of his stature, God, in his wisdom, chose this man and his family to be the case into which the opening to the Gentiles was now fully thrust upon the church. It had already begun incrementally, as we read in the book of Acts, through an Ethiopian eunuch, through a group of people in Samaria where Philip had baptized some of them.

And now, Peter and others, no doubt, had begun to realize something's different, really different now. He goes to Caesarea, goes to the homeless man, and as you will read there in Acts 10, they receive the Holy Spirit. Peter says, they're just like us. And he has to go back to Jerusalem and to the other Jews and tell them this. Cornelius, I think, spent a long period of time seeking redemption. This is my point today.

He did some bad things. He killed a lot of people, and it changed him. And one of them was just one too many, and he began to seek some type of redemption. He wanted to get clean of it all.

I've known men who have served in combat in our armies of this day and time, who have been changed by the experience and who've done some bad things. I've known people who've done just bad things on the streets of wherever they grew up and in their life, done bad things to their wife or to their children, other people, and are wracked by guilt and seek redemption. They want to be bought back. You know, redemption is nothing more than being repurchased, being bought back at a price and made just before God. That's what redemption is all about. Cornelius knew that there was something still lacking, which is why he responded to the vision to send for Peter. When he received the Holy Spirit, as he did beginning in verse 44, and they were baptized, I have to imagine in my own mind that from that point forward Cornelius' guilt was fully lifted. That's how I imagine it. I understand that I'm taking a bit of a license as I think about this, but I think that it's well within the possibility of what we read. And I think it does help us to at least understand how this man pops up in chapter 10, verse 1, and why him and why them. Sometimes when I teach Acts at ABC, sometimes I usually get this question, how was Cornelius in the church and in the army? You know what my answer is to that? Don't worry about it.

The big lesson that any of us want to take out of Cornelius is what we read about right here. This is what he was like. I don't care what he did, that doesn't justify killing today.

That doesn't justify bearing arms and killing today. I think Cornelius was a past part of his life. The important thing for any of us to note from this story is what I just read to you about him from these verses that he had just devout man who prayed always, gave, and feared God. That's what I want to learn from Cornelius. But at some point then, at this, he realized it was past and he was redeemed.

Redemption is something that should be on our mind as we prepare ourselves for the Passover service coming upon us. In Colossians 1, verse 13, he God has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. We have redemption through His blood, the blood of Christ shed for our sins as the Passover lamb.

That is how we have redemption. That's how we're bought back at a price. The shed blood of the perfect sacrifice, the Passover lamb slain from the foundation of the world. That's the only means by which we can ever have a hope of being redeemed from our past, from our sins. The small sins, the medium sins, the big sins, all the sins that we have committed, and we can be redeemed. In Ephesians 1, Paul repeats the same theme here, in the first chapter of Ephesians, verse 7, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.

We're bought back at that price of His shed blood. Verse 14, again speaking of Christ, let's read verse 13, In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory. A purchased possession by the life, suffering, the death of Jesus Christ, and by His blood. We'll be taking the symbols of that blood, the symbol of that blood, the wine, as well as the unleavened bread, which is the symbol of His broken body, the suffering and the beating that He took place, in a few weeks when we gathered for the Passover service. We don't have a lot of rituals in the Church of God. We don't have icons and imagery and idols and physical things to represent what we believe. We don't have that in the Church except when we come to the Passover service. We have some bread and we have some wine, and they represent the two most important things that we can focus on. The body of Christ and His blood shed for our redemption and our sins. We take those symbols every year at the Passover service. We have a foot washing service, which is a ritual in itself, a service in humility that we do as Christ did. We have a few other rituals. We'll lay hands on people to anoint for the sick, to ordain to an office. When they're being baptized, that is a ritual too. Beyond that, we're pretty short on rituals in the Church of God. You want rituals? I see there's an Orthodox Church right around the corner here. We have rituals out to Wazoo. The Catholic Church has lots of other rituals too. We used to share space in Indianapolis. In the Adventist Hall, Adventist would meet on Saturday morning. On Sunday morning, they had an Orthodox Church that would set up in there. They would set their big room like this up in the octagonal shape of an Orthodox Church with all the incense and candles and iconography that they have. I would sometimes see it as I would have to walk around it. That's about as close as I've ever gotten to it. That's a wow, what they do. We don't have a lot, but what we do have is important. That bread and the wine are kind of at the heart of our symbols and our ritual. That wine that represents that blood is what we focus on as part of all of that, by which we are redeemed.

Our past, way back within the past year, within the past six months, our past is forgiven. And that, of course, is available to us any time throughout the year, whenever we do repent. In 1 John 1, verse 7, it says that if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

We say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, when we sin, when we are guilty, when we are convicted, when we confess it, He's faithful and He's just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's there upon the moment of our confession, if you will, whenever. We do that every year with the symbols to renew the covenant, as Jesus taught us to do on the night before He died, as Paul instructed. But forgiveness is available whenever we are convicted and we repent, and we confess our sins to God. He's faithful and He's just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, if we confess it. And in a sense, then, that redemption is always available to us, and it's important we understand that. Verse 10, He says, if we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word's not in us. When we know we have sinned, indeed, at a particular point, or by a way of life that we've lapsed into and cannot extract ourselves from, when we are convicted of that, we need to take the steps to get out of it, to overcome it, to let that guilt work on us. I think that Cornelius lived with guilt for a long time over some of the things that he did. That's how I imagine it.

Some of us live too long with the guilt that we have. Sometimes we live too long with the sin that may overcome us. And this redemption business is important. That we know how it works, and we don't want to make God a liar by hiding our sin, by ignoring our sin, by excusing our sin.

That makes Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you in verse 1 of chapter 2, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He Himself is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

That's how we're redeemed by His blood, by His sacrifice. Do you know that you are redeemed? Do you know you've been brought back?

And do you understand that? That is the question that I put out for us to consider today, as we begin to think about whatever way, shape, or form you go about your preparation for the Passover service. This is an important, obviously, service. It's always an important time, because we're told to examine ourselves. 1 Corinthians chapter 13. And verse 5, Paul writes this. He says, Examine yourselves as to whether you're in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you are disqualified? But I trust that you will know that we are not disqualified.

Two simple verses.

It packs a wallop anytime we seriously look at Him. Examine ourselves to be in the faith. Test ourselves. Stick that needle in and draw a little blood. Whatever you need to do, figuratively speaking. To test yourselves. To see what's going on where we may be. And the key answer is Christ in us. But Paul says in verse 6, I trust that you will know that we're not disqualified.

Redemption works in a dual way to cleanse us of our sins. And to also give us a confidence that we know that we are not disqualified.

And we should come to that end after we examine ourselves. After we think about where we are before God. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul carries the thought a bit more. In 1 Corinthians 11 and 27, he gives instruction about the Passover service. How the church should conduct themselves and do it. From this passage we get a lot of instruction about that. But in verse 27, Paul says, Whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Too often we may read these words in what we just read in 2 Corinthians 13.5 from a negative point of view. We can beat ourselves up far more than we should. And come away thinking, I'm not worthy.

I've had people through the years that would call me the day of Passover on some occasions and say, I can't come tonight.

Mr. McNeely, I can't come. I'm not worthy. And I would tell him, talk with him for a while and say, yeah, you need to come. The very fact that you're calling me tells me that you are worthy. And don't beat yourself up and don't stay home. I don't know if any of you have ever felt that way. But if we take it to that point and we get consumed with guilt, we're neglecting the truth of these scriptures. That is, we are redeemed by his blood. And what Paul is talking about is that we take it in an unworthy manner.

It is the manner by which we approach the whole thing. He goes on in verse 28. He says, Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. He says, then examine yourself, then go take it. Then take it. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. And then he goes on to talk about the weakness and judging one another. But the unworthy manner speaks to an overall approach that we might have that we take God for granted, we take the body of Christ for granted, we take the church for granted, we take this way of life for granted.

And it speaks to a whole approach that we might have. The bottom line is, none of us are worthy, and will ever be worthy, of and by ourselves, to take those two symbols of the bread and the wine. Nothing that we can do makes us worthy. And if you beat yourself up to the point where you feel, I can't go to Passover service, you're guilty of being a legalist, because you think you can do it yourself, and you can't.

You can't do it yourself. Nothing you can do merits any amount of forgiveness and the mercy of God. That is by God's grace.

Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.

And that redemption is really speaking to, again, a full knowledge that we understand fully the body of Christ. We are to discern the body of the Lord. And in doing that, we have an appreciation for what Christ went through.

And we understand that, and we recognize that the power is in the beating and the scourging that Christ underwent. And as we appreciate that, and have a complete appreciation for the body of Christ, the spiritual and the physical manifestation of it through the organization of the church that we are a part of, as part of that spiritual body, we're properly examining, not just ourselves, but every aspect of the body of Christ and its work. And we then come to understand our need to take those symbols and keep moving forward.

True redemption comes to our understanding when we realize that it is by the blood of Christ that the guilt is washed away. I think it was in the Shakespeare play, Lady Macbeth was involved in a murder, as the story goes, and she is wringing her hands trying to get the blood off of her hands. And she can't get it off. She can't remove the guilt. The amount of hand-wringing that you and I can do can remove any of our guilt. No worry, no fretting, no amount of being just consumed with us can do it. It has to do with the complete faith in the blood of Christ to remove the stain that we have. And when we come to that, then we are understanding more fully what this is all about. And we come to understand the grace of God. And we approach everything in a very positive manner.

We come to understand that Passover is not about our sins. Passover is not about your sin. Passover is not about you. It's about Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us. When we come at it from that angle, then we understand it. Then we are properly discerning the body of Christ. Passover is about Christ. Passover is about His broken body, His shed blood. That's what it's about. He was the one slain from the foundation of the world. Not me, not you. He overcame the world. I didn't, I haven't, nor have you, and we never will completely have anything we do ourselves. We will overcome it only as Christ is in us. And we open ourselves to that reality and the possibility of that. He's shown how it can be done. That's why He says, don't fear on that night. He said, do not be afraid. You're not alone. I will send a comforter. His emphasis during that time is He is really showing them, don't worry. Don't be afraid. I will help you. I've overcome the world. His death paid the price for the sins. We have to have the faith to accept that sacrifice. And we have to come to the point where we forgive ourselves. And that's sometimes the hardest thing to do, to forgive ourselves.

Sometimes we do a better job of forgiving other people than we do forgiving ourselves in our life. Again, I wonder if the experience that Cornelius went through that brought him to the point where he joined himself to a group of Jews, to the Jewish nation, and tried to be a Jew. How many of you have ever been accused of being a Jew because you keep the Sabbath? I'll raise my hand on that one. I went to the Feast of Tabernacles.

When I was a kid, I went to the Feast. After the first couple of years, I had to have this pink slip to get back into class at school. Remember the pink slip's excuse sign? I remember writing down why I was gone. I just wrote down. I went to the Feast of Tabernacles. Nobody questioned it until I got to one class in the afternoon, and a teacher looked at it.

She said, Feast of Tabernacles? And she looked at me. She said, I didn't know you were a Jew. She kind of spit that out. I didn't know you were a Jew. I didn't make the connection. I said, I'm not a Jew. Just sign it. I want to get out of here. Do what you're supposed to do. It's already been approved by the principal.

It's funny how people look at us, you. You keep the Sabbath. You keep the Holy Days. People are saying, well, you're trying to be a Jew. You don't eat pork. You're trying to be a Jew. And the funny thing about that is you're not a Jew.

Because the Jews don't accept you, or me, or us. Don't ever try to get close to a Jew and tell them, well, I keep the Sabbath, too. Or I don't eat pork. If they're a non-observant Jew, they don't care. Because they're not doing it either. They're going to think you're weird, just like any other non-religious person. If they're really an observant Jew, and really a strict Jew, they're going to look at you as really a complete idiot.

It goes, in their mind, you're a Gentile. Goim, as they call it. You're a goi. You're a Gentile. What are you trying to do? I've been to Israel, been around the Jews, been to New York. They're a different breed. Just like we're a different breed. We're not a Jew. Every time I've seen people in the church try to become like a Jew, either through their music, or a little bit too close to the traditions of Judaism, I have to put my arm around and say, you're not a Jew. We're not Jews. We have an affinity in that we keep the Sabbath in Israel and all that, but we're not Jews.

Don't try to be a Jew. One of the saddest things that I've seen over the years is people have been scattered in the church, and some of them take up with Messianic Judaism as a solution to the great breakup that went through the church and the shattering of faith, and they latch on to Judaism. I'm not judging them. God's their judge. You can't mix the two. You don't put tassels on, and you don't try to be a half Jew, half Christian approach. That's not it. The funny thing about the story here in the New Testament is that people like Cornelius, and Ethiopian Eunuch, and others that Paul came into the synagogues and talked to, they were God-fears, and they were a class of Gentiles.

What they wanted was the blessings that God of Abraham promised to them, and they saw that this was good. It gave them hope. And they wanted that as close as they could. The men didn't get circumcised, and they were never fully assimilated or taken in by the Jews. And it was not until the church comes along, Peter through Cornelius, Paul to the Gentiles, and the Gospel goes to them, that then they realize it's neither Jew nor Gentile. Neither male nor female, but we are all in Christ.

Because these people, they were leaving becoming a Gentile. They were coming over here trying to be a Jew, but they weren't Jews. They're kind of like you and I. We try to be a Jew. We come to church on the Sabbath. We keep the Holy Days. We're no longer like we used to be, keeping Christmas, Easter, cavorting, just like all the others. You know, your family, my family. We're not like that anymore. But we're not Jews either. We're a new creation in Christ.

That's what a God-fear is. That's what we have to become. And it's through that redemption that we have that opportunity to fully live and stand in that new creation. In Romans 8, when we're redeemed, when we're baptized and we receive the gift of God's Spirit, we become a part of the body of Christ.

We enter into a different relationship with God that Paul talks about here in Romans 8 and verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. The penalty of the broken law is removed. But we don't walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. We live a different Spirit-led life. And what he says in verse 1 is that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is a carry-on from what he said back in chapter 5 and beginning in verse 1. Turn back there to Romans 5 and verse 1. This is really the message that Paul is trying to get across. He's not doing away with the law. He's not tossing the law out the window.

He's showing what we become as we are redeemed and into a new relationship. He said in verse 1 of chapter 5, Therefore, having been justified by faith, made just, brought into a right relationship with God, by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. That's why again he said back in chapter 8 and verse 1, There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Now, does that mean you don't sin? No. You still sin. As we read in 1 John 1, we must confess our sin, but he's just to forgive us when we do. But we don't walk around like the Peanuts character with the cloud hanging over our head, thinking that if we step out real quick, we're going to be condemned. There's no condemnation. We stand in this grace. It's one of the most important concepts for us to understand. Grace doesn't throw the law out the window. Grace is a relationship with God. Grace is what Cornelius wanted, or the Ethiopian eunuch, or any Gentile in that day when they recognized that their religion didn't give them any encouragement, didn't give them any more hope. They listened to the message of the synagogue, to the Jews. They heard about this God of Abraham, and they began to learn about his grace.

He said, I will make of you a people that you will write upon the high places of the earth when they read the prophet Isaiah. They read the promises of a Messianic kingdom. When they read the book of Deuteronomy, they saw that God said, I will bless you if you obey me.

They wanted what that God promised. They wanted that grace. They wanted to stand in that because their religion, a pagan cult, didn't give it to them. And a hard, hard reality of life in the Roman world didn't give them hope. They wanted what they saw and heard through the teaching of the God of Abraham. And so, they got as close as they could to the Jewish synagogue without ever fully being accepted. And certainly, if they were a male, they didn't go through the rite of circumcision, which would have been required. But they liked what they heard. They liked what they saw. And they wanted that. They wanted to stand in that grace.

And so, they sought for that. And it was not until then that they fully came to understand what that redemption made possible that they accomplished that. You and I stand in this grace today. There is no condemnation to us by these words. And as we take the Passover symbols every year, we are reminded of that and so much more. And the need for God's sacrifice, Christ's sacrifice, to be applied to us. And we come to appreciate that redemption. And we should be able to come and take those symbols without that guilt being unencumbered by that. Think about that as you prepare your heart and your mind for the Passover service. And one other thought, in terms of how we view each other, be willing and able to forgive each other. And be able to apply the hope of redemption to others as well. Because, just as you and I can be redeemed, others can be redeemed as well. And it's important we allow for that in our relationships. That we allow for other people to grow and that we acknowledge that. And that we allow for that redemption to impact our relationships. And if in your own mind you can redeem somebody else and say, you know what? You have really grown. You have changed. You can say to a young adult that you may have known from their youth, their teen years, and you've watched them become a father, a mother, a full member of the church.

And the problem is, you know too much from their past. Let them be grown up. Let them be an adult. Redeem them. Not by your blood, but at least by your humanity that you extend, hey! You're not that same person anymore. And you redeem them in your relationship. When we can do that, then we have a healthy approach toward ourselves. We know that then we can be redeemed and we forgive ourselves and we can forgive others or we can adjust our opinions, viewpoints of one another and recognize that we are all growing in the grace and knowledge of God. And when we can do that, we have a tighter-knit body of people. Cornelius, I think, and again my ability to put a little reading between the lines, came to a point where he finally then realized he was redeemed. And he knew that his past, whatever it may have been, and however bad it was, had been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ. It's a good lesson for us all to think about as we prepare ourselves for the Passover service. Christ has redeemed us by his blood. Let's forgive ourselves. Let's accept that. Let's redeem one another by our own actions and our love toward one another and let us know then by that that Christ is in us.