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As I came up into the pulpit I was blinded by this light - it's a bit like a theatre - you can see me but I can't see you! My name is David Brown. I work with a mission called France Mission. I'm a pastor of a small church which started 3 years ago. I live in Paris, to be exact I live in the north-east suburbs of Paris, in a place called Le Blanc Mesnil. You've probably never heard of it, but if you took a map of Paris and drew a line from Notre Dame to Charles de Gaulle airport, we're exactly half-way between the two - that's a way of situating us. I was born in Great Britain. My wife and I were naturalised French about 11 years ago. All our 4 children were born in France. So I feel very much at home speaking at an international students'service.

I'll tell you why - first of all, as I said we have dual nationality. Our eldest daughter is married to a Frenchman and is a teacher in north-east France and we have two students in the family. My wife's parents were Polish Jews who had to flee Poland at the beginning of the war. Her father was a journalist with the BBC in the 2nd World War. Although they're Polish, my wife's father was actually born in Vienna and her mother in Moscow. My wife also spent a year in Africa, in Uganda, and her sister is married to a Texan. So we're quite an international family which helps me to realise how many different cultures there are in this world. Where I live in north-east Paris, in a département called Seine St Denis, there are people living there from every country but four recognised by the United Nations. So it's quite a mixed area.

Now some of you, I've been told, may feel a little bit nervous this morning that you won't understand everything that's said, especially if you haven't been in Britain very long. I'd like to put your mind at rest, and let you into a little secret - I'm probably more nervous than you are, because it's the first time I've preached in English for over a year, and if I'm looking for my words, then you'll understand why. Language and culture are fascinating things. It's fascinating to travel, to come to another country, to compare customs, traditions, world views, and using a language which isn't your own. Even the language influences the way you view the world. There are words in French which don't even exist in English, to express certain views. If you've ever been in a bicultural, bilingual family or group of people from 2 or more cultures, it's absolutely fascinating to share all the differences. Now these differences can be simple details, you might think - in France we drive on the right side of the road, in Britain you drive on the wrong side (oops, the left side!). Those are the little differences. But the more you look into it the more you see how different people are in their way of viewing history, geography, philosophy and politics. All this can be very different as you compare customs to dishes to world views, even more interesting if you're doing it in a language that is not your mother tongue.


First, Peter and Cornelius

In the text we read from the book of Acts (the book of Acts in the Bible is the story of the first Christians and the beginning of the Christian church), we see a very interesting cross-cultural discussion, a fascinating inter-cultural meeting. We have a Jewish fisherman, a follower of Jesus by the name of Peter, who is talking to Cornelius, who is an Italian soldier living in Caesarea (because at that time Israel was an occupied country). Peter is going to try to explain to Cornelius what he believes. Cornelius had received a vision to get Peter to come and to ask Peter to explain what he believed. We read in this chapter that Cornelius was a devout man and from the very beginning of the chapter that he was a God-fearing man and prayed to God regularly. But he was not a Jew, he was an Italian. So he gathers his friends and family together and asks Peter to explain his faith. Peter starts by saying,

I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. (Acts 10:34)

That is a wonderful statement. There's no favouritism. The first important thing to say is God has no favourites. He doesn't love one person more than another, he doesn't love one culture more than another. Each one is interesting, but God has no favourites. God is above these differences. He loves each and every human being. No-one has more value than another. There is no favouritism. God is above culture. Culture is fascinating, but there is something higher than culture, and that is God himself. Peter continues in verse 36,

You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

Secondly, JESUS

The Good News is the Gospel, the good news of peace. We'll find out later why it is good news of peace. But Peter starts by saying that in order to communicate this good news of peace, God sent to the people of Israel 1st of all, this man Jesus Christ. There was a very popular song in France a few years ago, which started by saying "Everyone is born somewhere" - a very obvious thing to say, but everyone is born into a certain culture. Because we're born somewhere, we're influenced by where we're born and we grow up within a certain culture. The 1st thing we can say about this man Jesus is that he was born in the land of Israel, as a Jew, to a young peasant woman, Mary, and he grew up in the culture of that time and place. But who was he? We can see in v37-38 what he did -

Beginning in Galilee, [in the north of Israel], after the death of John the Baptist, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and he went about doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil.

He went around healing people, teaching them and freeing them from all sorts of bondages. But who is this man Jesus who is born somewhere? He was born in fact in Bethlehem. As Christians we know that he wasn't just a man. The astonishing thing is: Jesus is God who took on human form, to come in the form of a human body and live among us. Why did he do this? Why was it necessary?


Thirdly, Why did Jesus come?

I think that basically there are 2 reasons. The 1st is that God is so great. How could we possibly know the Creator of the universe when even the universe blows our mind? How can we understand how many light years the nearest star is from us? And then there are other stars and other galaxies. It's difficult to take it in. And God the Creator is so great, so how could he speak to us? And the 2nd reason why Jesus had to come to us is that although God is great, we didn't want to hear. Human beings are selfish - the word we use is sinful - sin meaning when we do what we want and not what God wants. We want to live our own life. We don't now, as human beings never did, really want to hear what God has to say. In ourselves we want to go our own way. So God became one of us.

I understood this very clearly one day. I was with my wife and walking through the forests around Nancy where I used to live - (unfortunately half the forest has now been blown down in the gales a year ago) - I was walking through he forest on the forest path and we suddenly saw 2 lines of ants crossing the path. They were following each other one way and following each other coming back. We stopped and looked at the ants. Supposing we wanted to communicate to these ants who we were and where we live and what we do, that we appreciated watching them and what they were doing. How could we? We could shout as loud as we could - in English or French -I don't think they'd understand. I couldn't send a letter or even an e-mail. What could I do to communicate to a group of ants? The only way that we could have communicated with those ants would be to somehow become an ant and live among them and communicate as one ant to another.
And in a sense that's what God did. He became a human being. He came down to our level and communicated in a human body with human language. And that's why the apostle John in the first letter that he wrote, said,

We touched him with our hands, we saw him with our eyes, we listened to him with our ears. (1 John 1:1)

So this God became a man and went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil (v38). He went around freeing people from everything which caused their bondage. We might have thought this man, doing so much good, would have been a star, someone so well thought of that everyone would have accepted him. What did his fellow-citizens do?

They killed him [as it says in v39] by hanging him on a tree

- by the method we call crucifixion - nailed to a cross of wood. That means in terms of Roman civilisation, that they hung him on a cross, a piece of wood, where they nailed his hands and his feet until such time as he died of exhaustion or of muscular fatigue in his heart, his lungs filling with liquid until he couldn't breathe. A long, horrible death. The death that was reserved for criminals or terrorists. They killed him.

We might have thought, "That's the end of the story. A great man. What a pity that it ended in that way." I think that's what the disciples thought too. They barricaded themselves in a room, probably fearful for their own lives, thinking that the same thing might happen to them, and were talking about maybe going back to their jobs. Probably they were disappointed that everything they'd put their hopes in had now disappeared. In the Old Testament of the Bible that they knew perfectly well there is a text that says that any man that is hung on a tree is cursed by God. Maybe some of the Jewish leaders said to the disciples in effect, "You believe that Jesus was the man who had come from God, the Messiah. But just admit that you were wrong. He couldn't have been. He wouldn't have hung on the cross."

And in this context, when the disciples were expecting nothing at all, suddenly Jesus appeared to them. He'd risen from the dead. Death couldn't hold him. They didn't believe. At first they said it was old wives' tales, because at first he'd appeared to some of the women. Some of them who weren't there, particularly Thomas, didn't want to believe until he personally touched Jesus' wounds from the crucifixion. This is not some kind of collective hysteria, they weren't expecting it. Little by little, they were convinced. They came to the conclusion that this man, that they'd already begun to realise was more than a man, after crucifixion had come back to life.


Fourthly, Jesus the Judge

But you might say, "So what?" What difference does it make? Peter goes to talk to Cornelius the Italian soldier and says this,

he commanded us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the [Old Testament] prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins in his name. (v42-43)

The 1st 'so what' is this: because Jesus has proved he is who he says he is - God made a human being, he is also now the Judge of everything we've done in this life. God has no favouritism. He is the one Judge - it's difficult to face up to that. We know from the scriptures - for example in Psalm 139:

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. (Psalm 139:1-4)

- that God knows every action we've ever done in our lives, God knows every word we've ever pronounced in our lives, God knows every thought that we've ever had in our lives. When we begin to take that in it makes us uncomfortable - we know we've done, said and thought many things that we shouldn't have done. There's no hiding from God. God knows all that. And when we realise that in the course of our lives we've done many actions of which we're not particularly proud; we've spoken many words we've regretted bitterly; we've thought many things that fortunately, in one sense, only God knows. Jesus is now our Judge. We're accountable to him. We have to appear before him, and the only thing that we can say is 'guilty'.


Fifthly, The Good News

But that's not the end of the story.

all the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. (v43)

There is a judgement, but we don't fear this judgement because when Jesus died on the cross, he died for us. He didn't die for his own sins, faults, errors, behaviour. He was completely sinless. He died for us.

Let me just illustrate that with something that happened to me when I was only 6 years old. In the playground at school I fought my friend Paul and tore his raincoat. Paul's father was a Canadian lumberjack - he was very big. Paul said, "My dad's going to come round and see you." When I got home from school I remember going up to my bedroom. My parents didn't understand why. I was trembling with fear. Later on there was a knock at our door and I heard my father talking to Paul's father, then I heard Paul's father going away. So I came down the stairs and my father said, "I've heard what you've done and I've given some money to your friend Paul's dad so he can have his raincoat repaired." So the next time I saw Paul there was no problem - I was no longer fearful, even when I saw his father, because my father had paid the price for what I had done. I didn't have any pocket money - I couldn't have paid for that myself.

I have no way of managing to pay for all the wrong I've done in my life - but Jesus has paid for me. That is the good news of peace. That's just a glimpse of what Jesus has done for us. If you are a Christian I think you'll agree that there's no better message than that in the world - no political or philosophical message can match the fact that God has accepted me and forgiven me and I can know him and have eternal life. And that's what happened at the cross. There's no way that we could have paid for the wrong that we have done. Jesus paid it for us. That is the good news of peace that I talked about. If we look at the peace as being peace in this world we might be disappointed - there are so many areas of conflict in the world. But it is peace with God, forgiveness for our sins. We can know him all through this life and for ever. That is the good news of peace.

If you're not a Christian, if you'd like to know more, if you're seeking, can I encourage you firstly to get hold of a Bible and start by reading the four gospels, the accounts of Jesus' life. There's no better news than this. This is our path to knowing God. Take it seriously. Look through the gospel and Acts. You'll never regret the day that you ask God into your life. Who is this Jesus? I would say that this good news is fantastic. I believe in different cultures, which is what I said at the beginning. They're fascinating. But there's something higher than cultures, more than culture, God himself, who wants to be our God, our Father, our Saviour, who wants to put us together in a family with other Christians in the church. If you don't know God personally, have a chat with one of us afterwards. Ask us. Thank you for listening to me this morning. May God bless you.