Build Bridges And Not Walls - A Christian Mandate!

Bridges and not walls. Acts 11:9
Acts 11:9 But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God has cleansed, that call not you common.

It is said that there are over 25,000,000 illegal immigrants within the boarders of United States.  According to the department of immigration, they got in because there is a breach in the wall and fences that separates Mexico and the United States.

It is said, at night, people from Mexico come over to the United States without applying for citizenship.  One of the front runners for the Republican Party has taken issue with this and has pledged that, if he is elected president, he will build a huge wall, separating the United States from Mexico.

Now, that's politics...  Who knows???  Maybe he would build a wall.  And maybe, such a wall might be good for the economy.  I don't know.

I'm going to leave that alone and let them work that out...

But when it comes to the church, God has given us a mandate to build bridges and not walls.

God wants to build bridges and not walls.

As a nation, we are going through one of the most confusing times that we have ever had in history.   We are bombarded with new stuff everyday that makes us feel like building walls.  A man by the name of Bruce Jenner, a male, changed his name and started calling himself a female named, Katlyn.  If you're a Christian, it makes you want to build a wall to keep the world out of your life. A teenager pretended to be a doctor and opened a clinic as an OBGYN.  He was examining women... And to top it off, he said he got his degree over the Internet!   I know... It makes you want to build a wall.  A white woman by the name of Rachel Dolezal  posed as a black woman and worked for the NAACP eventually becoming the head of the Spokane. After being discovered, she stated that although she was born white, she identified as black.  It makes you feel like building a wall.  Children in California schools, are no longer required to go into restrooms marked male and female.  You can now choose what restroom you want to go into by simply stating, I feel like a woman locked up in a man's body, or visa versa.  It makes you feel like building a wall.   While the world around us might make us feel like building walls and isolating ourselves, we must understand that we as Christians have an obligation to build bridges rather than walls.

In our text, God encouraged Peter to build bridges and not wall.  Not bridges that endorse an ungodly lifestyle...  While sin is sin, and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), Peter was encouraged to build a bridge of compassion for the lost.

So we are not here to endorse an ungodly lifestyle.  For we remember that:
1 Corinthians 6:9
Don't you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality.

But God wants us to build bridges of hope.  Hope that says, though you are messed up, Jesus can straighten you out.

In our text, a man was desiring to know God, but Peter refused to go and evangelize him because he, being a Jew, thought he was better or cleaner than a Gentile.  So Peter had built a wall in his mind against anybody that was not a Jew.

Sometimes, church folks can be so funny acting.  Once we get saved, we can get an heir of snobbiness about us. We have a tendency to build a walls.  Not walls that keep the world's influence out of the church, but walls that keep people out of the church.  We have to watch that...

That while we are closing the door to sin, we don't close the door to people.

I heard someone once say, I would invite my coworker to church, but he isn't  ready.  He has a filthy mouth.  Jesus can handle filthy mouths.  Jesus can handle filthy lifestyles.  Jesus can handle filthy minds.

Peter had a problem with lost folks:  But Jesus does three things that builds bridges and not walls:

1. He looks beyond our faults and saw our needs.
A Roman soldier. A man with bloodshed on his hands.  Needed salvation.  God looked past all of that and her his plea.  You are never too far from God that God is not willing to respond to your need.

2. He nailed our sins to the cross.
Colossians 2:14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross

3. He gives us equal access.
He doesn't care who you are, you have equal access to God.  We have a tendency to stop associating with the lost.   We don't want to have nothing to do with them.  But we must remember that at the foot of the cross, we are all the same.

Gal. 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.