Accepted By God

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  July 16, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Acts 10:34-48.

            I would guess that most of us here, maybe all of us here, are proud to be Americans.  Not that our country is perfect–we know that it’s not, it never has been, and it never will be.  The main reason for that is that Americans are people.  People are inherently imperfect, and anything people are involved in will be imperfect.

            But while we know our country is not perfect, we think it’s pretty darn good.  And it is.  Over the two hundred forty-seven years that this country has existed, it has been a force for good much more often than it has been for bad.  It has defended freedom around the world.  It has led economic booms and raised the standard of living for many, many people.  

            And one of the reasons for that has been that God has blessed our country.  God has blessed us in many ways.  He has blessed our country with great natural resources.  He has blessed our country with great beauty.  He has blessed our country with courageous, adventurous, independent people who have been willing to take chances and do whatever it takes to make this country a great country.

            Because God has blessed this country in so many ways, it’s tempting to believe that God will always bless this country.  It’s tempting to believe that the United States is somehow special in God’s eyes, that God has specifically chosen us because of how great and how wonderful we are.  It’s tempting, in short, to believe we have somehow earned God’s blessings, and therefore to take God’s blessings for granted and assume they’ll always be there.

            But anytime we start to take God for granted, we get in trouble.  Peter, in our reading for today, tells us we should not assume that we somehow have earned some sort of favor in God’s eyes.  Peter says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”

            Now, it’s important that we understand the context here.  The story takes up a whole chapter in the book of Acts, which is why we did not read it all this morning.  But basically, Peter was at the home of a Roman centurion, a non-Jew, named Cornelius.  Cornelius had a vision from God that he was supposed to send for Peter.  He did, and Peter came.  And there were a lot of people there waiting for him.  Peter said to Cornelius, you know, it’s against our Jewish law for me to associate with someone like you.  Why did you send for me?  Cornelius tells Peter about his vision, thanks Peter for coming, and says, “Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.”

            This had a tremendous impact on Peter.  Peter, was the leader of the apostles, but he was very much still very much in the mode that the Savior had come for the Jewish people.  God had been working on him, trying to widen his viewpoint.  Earlier in this chapter, God had given Peter a vision of various animals that Peter was allowed to eat, even though they were against Jewish dietary laws.  God said to him, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”  

It was shortly after that, that he went to the house of Cornelius.  And it shows he had heard what God said, because in explaining why he violated Jewish law to go there, he said, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”  That’s when he asked why Cornelius had sent for him.  After Cornelius answered, that’s when Peter said, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”

The Jewish people had taken it for granted that God would always bless them.  Even Peter had taken it for granted that when the Savior came, He would offer salvation to the Jews.  But he found out differently.  Peter now realized that God does not care what country or ethnic group someone is from.  What God cares about is whether someone is faithful to Him and does what God wants Him to do.

And that brings us back to this country.  For a long time, the vast majority of people in the United States tried to be faithful to God and tried to do what God wanted them to do.  Again, not perfectly–this country has made plenty of mistakes.  But the goal, however imperfectly approached, of the vast majority of people in this country was to follow God and to do what was right.

That is no longer the case.  The most recent poll I could find was from a couple of years ago, and it showed that the percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians is down to sixty-three percent.  That’s down significantly from what it was just ten years ago.  And of course, there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians who don’t let their supposed belief affect their daily lives in any significant way.  They are what we might call Christians in Name Only.  Only forty-one percent of people who call themselves Christian attend church even once a month.  And that’s self-reported, so that figure might even be overstated.  And yes, one can be a strong Christian without attending church regularly, but that’s still at least one gauge of how seriously people take their Christian faith.

I do not pretend to speak for God.  But it seems to me that God is not likely to continue blessing a nation that does not continue to follow Him.  God is not likely to continue to bless a nation that is not faithful to Him.  God stopped blessing the nation of Israel when it abandoned Him.  It seems to me that God would apply that same standard to the United States.

But at the same time, I do not want you to despair.  All is not lost.  I say that for two reasons.  One of them is that, in the Old Testament, when things got bad for the nation of Israel, they turned back to God.  And when they did, God blessed them again.  They still had to deal with the consequences of what they’d done, but God did bless them again.  If this country turns back to God, we have every reason to think God will bless us again, too.

But you and I, much as we might like to, probably do not have the power to turn this country back to God.  So that brings me to the other reason for hope.  Remember what Peter said.  “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”

That means that, no matter what this country does, you and I can still be accepted by God.  All we need to do is stay faithful to God.  All we need to do is follow God.  All we need to do is do what Jesus told us to do.  Serve God.  Show love to God.  Show love to others.  Keep a strong faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  If we do that, God will accept us, no matter what anyone else chooses to do.

That’s where we need to keep our focus.  That may mean that we need to turn away from society, to a certain extent.  Now, I’m not suggesting that we become monks and wall ourselves off from society.  But if this country continues to turn away from God, it will become harder and harder to stay faithful to God.  Where faith in Jesus Christ used to be considered a positive thing, it will start to become a negative thing.  In some places in this country, it already is.  People will be looked down upon for being Christians.  Some business owners have already been sued because they refused to do things that violated their Christian faith.  If present trends continue, that’s only going to get worse.  For most of us, it has been relatively easy to be open about our Christian faith.  But if things keep going the way they are, it’s going to get harder.

But you know what?  It was not easy for Peter and the other early Christians to be open about their Christian faith, either.  They were persecuted.  Some of them were jailed.  Some of them were killed–you may remember the story of the stoning of Stephen, for example.  For most of the last two thousand years, being a Christian has not been easy.

But while it’s not easy, it’s worth it.  The payoff is tremendous.  The payoff is salvation and eternal life in heaven, by our faith in Jesus Christ and by God’s love and grace and mercy.  And when you think about how long eternity is, well, it’s worth having to put up with some stuff while we’re on earth.

I don’t know what the future holds for this country.  Maybe we will return to God.  Maybe God will continue to bless us.  But I know that, regardless of what the future holds for the country, God will accept the one who is faithful to Him and does what is right.  So let’s do that.  Let’s be faithful to God.  Let’s serve God.  Let’s love God.  Let’s love others.  Let’s keep our faith in Jesus Christ strong.  If we do, God will accept us.  And we will have eternal life with Him in heaven.