February 26, 2026 –  Double Vision – Two Centurions — Acts #31
Acts 10:1-8

Double vision is an odd thing.  I only experienced it once after a car accident when my jeep rolled several times and ended up upside down on the road.  I had a bit of a concussion and was hanging upside down by the seatbelt.  By the way, if that ever happens, do not release the seatbelt without bracing for the fall on your head.   But I was disoriented for a bit and saw double for just a few minutes.  It is an odd feeling.  

This morning, as we continue in Acts 10, we have a story about a Roman centurion.   But I see not one but two centurions here.  Because this story is tied to another centurion’s story in scripture, and the story of the first centurion is found in Matthew 8.

Matthew 8:5-9 (NIV)  When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”
Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.

Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army, the equivalent of our highest-ranking non-commissioned officers, commanding 80 men.  (It originally was 100 men, thus the name (century =100), but the Romans later reduced the squad to 80 for efficiency.  And what makes this centurion unique is that he recognized Jesus’ authority.  This happens right after the Sermon on the Mount.  And remember that one of the things that most impressed people in Jesus’ sermon was this:

Matthew 7:28-29  And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

Jesus said many good things in the Sermon on the Mount, but what most impressed people was the manner in which he spoke, for he spoke with authority.  He didn’t sound like a commentator or a teacher giving an opinion; he sounded like the author.  

Jesus speaks with authority about the scriptures because they are his scriptures.  And he is trying to correct their misinterpretations of His scriptures.  Several times in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, “You have heard it said, but I say unto you.”  What He is doing is telling them that they need a correct understanding.   And he has the authority to give the interpretation.  Jesus has come to correct what people got wrong about His word.

Then what is the first thing that happens when Jesus walks down the mountain after the sermon?

Matthew 8:1-4 “When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.””

He has just astounded them by his authority over scripture.  And now he shows them he has authority over disease.  He will later show his disciples that he has authority over the wind and waves by calming the sea.  Just as Jesus had authority over the scriptures because they are his, he has authority over the world because it is his as well.  He created it.

So this centurion comes to Jesus and recognizes his authority. Then Jesus volunteers to go to the centurion’s home. Most translations have this as a statement by Jesus: “I will come and heal him.”  But the NIV has Jesus asking, “Shall I come and heal him?”  Greek scholars agree that this indeed should be a question, and it is worded in such a way as to emphasize the “I” — Shall I come?  Because this would be very surprising.  Jews in Jesus’ day did not go into the home of a Gentile, much less a Roman soldier.  The original idea behind this was to avoid ritual impurity from food or utensils, but it had morphed into more of a racial prejudice.  They were the enemy, and they were unclean.  No one would enter his home, certainly not a prophet or holy man. 

Then the centurion reveals his belief in Jesus’ authority.  He is convinced that Jesus is the owner of this world and all that is in it.  He can will for something to happen, and it will happen. But let’s look at Jesus’ response:

Matthew 8:10  When Jesus heard this, he was amazed…

First of all, Jesus was amazed.  Matthew uses this Greek word many times to explain how people, again and again, were amazed by what Jesus did or said.  But this is the only time he uses it to show that Jesus is amazed by somebody.  What left Jesus amazed?

Matthew 8:10-12   When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Jesus is amazed by the centurion’s faith.  This man is convinced beyond any doubt that Jesus has authority over everything, including sickness.  Jesus recognizes that this centurion’s faith is on a completely different level from that of his disciples or any Jewish person he has met.  This didn’t sit well with the crowd.  Jesus points out this Gentile, this Roman soldier of all people, he has more faith than any Jew?   Why, Jesus, he is not Jewish!  He can’t even be part of the faithful!  He is an unclean Gentile!  How can you say that?  But Jesus doesn’t stop there.

Jesus speaks of something his listeners knew well, the great Messianic banquet, when God gathers all his faithful together in the last days for a great feast.  The true faithful are invited, and others are left out.    And every Jewish person there believed the same thing.  The Jews would be invited, but the Gentiles would be left out. They will all dine with God and their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.   And here is Jesus saying that foreigners will come from all over (the east and the west) to sit at the table, many of them.  This is a radical statement.

Peter and the others are standing here listening to this.  Do they understand what he is saying?  No, and this is very important, they didn’t get it at all at this point.  Jesus is not speaking in riddles.  It is stated very clearly.  Still, they did not comprehend.   Because this is counter to everything they have been taught their whole life about these unclean Gentiles.    

Jesus tried to tell them.  And he tries to tell them later.  It is in his Great Commission.  And you all know the Great Commission.  But do you remember how it begins?

Matthew 28:18-20   Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…

Oh, did you see that…. all authority has been given to me.   He is trying to get them to see what the centurion in Capernaum in Matthew 8 knew.  I have all authority.  I created the world, I am the Torah. I am the Word of God. I am the Son of God.   Keep reading….

Matthew 28:18-20   Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all of the Jews, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….

No, that is not what he said. But listen, that was still what they thought.  Even after Jesus’ encounter with the first centurion, they still think God is only for the Jews.  But Jesus said this:

Matthew 28:18-20   Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.   
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Go and make disciples of all nations.   Jews and Gentiles.  Greeks and Romans.  Americans and Iraqis.  No one is off limits.  The Gospel is for everyone.  There is no one so unclean that they can not be my disciple.  But they still didn’t get it…

So this encounter with the centurion is the first time Jesus shows that He is here for all people.   Jesus will concentrate his time on earth with the Jews as predicted in the scriptures, but he is very clear that it is not the end but the beginning.  As Paul stated it:  

Romans 1:16  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

There is salvation for everyone who believes.  “Jews first and then Gentiles.”  But again, at the time Jesus gives the Great Commission and then ascends to heaven, and even 10 years later in Acts 10, Peter and the other disciples don’t get it.   They are still thinking “Jew only, not Gentile.”

How will God pierce their prejudice and finally teach them this lesson?

That is why we have the story of the other centurion.  So we return to Acts 10.  Last week, we discussed Peter’s travels along the coast and through the plain of Sharon, including the towns of Lydda and Joppa.   The action in today’s story takes place in Caesarea.

Many cities in the times of Roman Emperors were named “Caesarea” as a way to honor the emperor, Caesar.   If you want to get in good with the new emperor, build a big city and put his name on it.   There were two major cities in Israel with that name.  Caesarea Philippi was located north of the Sea of Galilee, and was where Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  But we are speaking today of Caesarea Maritima, or Caesarea “by the sea.”  This city was built by Herod the (not-so) Great between 22 and 19 BC, and he named it after Caesar Augustus.   It became the administrative and military capital of the Roman province of Judea.   This is where Pilate and other Roman officials stayed.

Acts 10:1-8   At Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.

Cornelius is described as a “devout man.”  He and all of his household are worshipping Yehovah, the God of Israel, but they have not converted to Judaism.  The common name for people who worship but don’t convert to Judaism is “God-fearer.”  He was generous to the poor and prayed continually, meaning he kept the Jewish order of prayer throughout the day, reciting the Shema 2-3 times a day and maintaining regular prayer times.  Two of the regular prayer times coincided with the Tamid offering in the Temple at 9 am and 3 pm, and then there was an evening prayer time, typically after sundown.  But he had not become a full proselyte, which required formal questioning and circumcision.  So the Jews in Jerusalem would have considered him pagan.  Like the centurion in Matthew 8, no Jew would ever enter his home.

But that attitude didn’t stop Jesus from entering the centurion’s home in Matthew 8.  And it didn’t stop God from being willing to send a messenger from his throne room to Cornelius’ home.

Acts 10:3 About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, “Cornelius.”

It was the 9th hour of the day, that is, 9 hours from daybreak, so about 3 pm.  And Cornelius is in his regular prayer time, the same time all devout Jews gathered to pray.  And God sends him a message in the form of a vision.  An angel who calls his name.  And he reacts the same way everyone reacts to one of God’s messengers.

Acts 10:4  “And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.

The language the messenger uses to address Cornelius speaks of his donations to the poor and his prayers, as if they were the smoke of a burnt offering ascending to God. Have you thought about this?  We bring offerings in the form of money to God, but have you stopped to consider that our prayers, devotion, praise, and good deeds are also offerings to the Father?

After the Jerusalem temple was destroyed and they could no longer do animal sacrifices, Jews today consider their prayers, their giving of alms, and their praise as acceptable sacrifices instead. This thought is seen throughout the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments.

Psalm 50:23 “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
Hebrews 13:15 “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”

Paul said it this way:

Romans 12:1  “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Our devotion to God, what we say, what we do, our whole life is a living sacrifice.

So the messenger tells Cornelius that God sees his devotion as an acceptable sacrifice.  Can you imagine how Cornelius felt?  He has been worshipping the God of the Jews for some time, but the Jews who claim this God do not in any way see Cornelius as acceptable.  The Jews do not accept him, but God does accept him.  This is good news!

And then the messenger says:

Acts 10:5-8 “And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter.   He is lodging with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea.  ” When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.”

Cornelius is to send for Simon Peter to come to his house.  He has heard of Peter.  He is a Jew.  And he was also one of Jesus’ 12 disciples.   What could this mean?   Will Peter come to the house of a Gentile?  Even if God has accepted Cornelius, does that mean Peter will?  And if God’s messenger asked him to send for one of Jesus’ disciples, does that mean that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, as some people say?

What do you think?  Will Peter ignore the Jewish ban on entering a Gentile’s home?  Will Peter accept an unclean Gentile Roman Soldier?  We will discuss this next week, but I am going to let you know now.   Peter will end up coming.  But it is going to take something really big for God to convince Peter that it is okay to visit Cornelius.  God is going to have to do something dramatic to change Peter’s prejudice against the Gentile world.  It will take something big to end Peter’s racism.   You see, the prejudices that you were raised with die hard, because you don’t even realize those things you learned were racist.  You were just told that is how it was.  And you accepted it.  Many of us here were raised in an area of the country that embraced racism for many years.  And it took a lot to break us out of thought patterns that were embedded deep within us.  

Peter was taught all his life that Gentiles were ceremonially unclean.  There was no hope for them unless they converted to Judaism.  They ate unclean food and did unclean things.  And if you went around them, you would also be unclean.  But that wasn’t God’s teaching.  That was man’s perversion of God’s teaching.   God never said an entire people group was unclean.  But Peter learned these things as part of the tradition of his faith.  Not scripture, but tradition.  Jesus told the Pharisees:

Mark 7:8 “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.

We cannot accept things just because tradition says so.  We have to put everything to the test of scripture.  I am reminded of a discussion I had with a friend back in 2015.  We had been discussing the doctrine of Original Sin in our Bible Study, and it turned into a several-month-long email discussion with others.  

So we exchanged emails for months discussing scripture as it pertains to this doctrine, and I learned a lot from our discussions.  But at one point, one of my friends in the discussion said to me, “You just frighten me because you’re really smart and apparently read everything ever published. But you’re also a bit of an iconoclast, which makes me nervous.”   While I appreciated his compliment, I have to admit I had to look up the word ‘iconoclast’ to make sure I understood what he meant.  

According to Google, an iconoclast is “a person who attacks or challenges cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, or widely accepted practices, often viewing them as superstitious or erroneous. The term originates from the Greek words for “image” and “breaker,” historically referring to those who destroyed religious icons.  A sacred image breaker, challenging cherished traditional beliefs.”

Well, once I knew what it meant, I thanked my friend for the compliment.  Yes, I told him, I feel the responsibility to challenge all traditional beliefs in light of the scripture God gave us.  I told him that the best compliment I had ever received was that it was exactly what I saw Jesus doing with the religious leaders of His day, challenging all their traditions in light of scripture.  

When I was young, I read a tract that someone left in our mailbox from the KKK that used scripture to say how people of dark skin color were cursed by God.   I bet some of you saw it too.  God, please forgive them for this perversion of your word.  Racism runs deep in my part of the country.  Who is acceptable and who is not.  That is what is at stake here in Acts 10.   Do you have to be Jewish to worship God?  Do you have to be Jewish to encounter Jesus?

Peter’s answer on the day that Cornelius got his vision would have been, “Yes, you do.”   But God will deal with Peter, and next week we will talk about Peter’s vision and why it is so critical to Jesus’ movement in Acts.   But for now, consider these two centurions.  They are not random characters. 

The centurion in Matthew 8 is a prophecy.  Cornelius in Acts 10 is the reality, the fulfillment of that prophecy.  The first shows that Gentiles can have faith.  The second shows that Gentiles are fully welcomed into the family of God.  God did not change His plan; He revealed it progressively. Together, these two centurions reveal that from the beginning, God’s plan was never limited to one nation.  The gospel was always meant for the world.   As God told the children of Israel after they passed through the Sea, 

Exodus 19:4-6   You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

A kingdom of priests to take the message of the one true God to all the nations.  But they held the gospel too close.  They kept it to themselves.  They said, ” You must become like us to share in our God.  You must become Jewish.”  It is no different than the mistake made by early missionaries to the Native Americans here, who forced them to become like us to worship our God.  You must wear our clothes, follow our customs and traditions, and sing our hymns to worship our God.   

God does not want us to become like someone else.
He wants us to become like Him.

But the nation of Israel never accepted the role of priests to the world.  They were priests only to each other.  So God comes in the form of a Jew who is not bound by the tradition of isolationism.  Jesus comes as a son of Abraham who will be the priest to the nations, and lead a group of his brother Jews to become priests to the nations.

Oh, they came reluctantly, but they came.  It took many years to convince them.  God has to shock Peter; he has to basically hit him on the head to wake him up to the truth that he tried to explain way back in Matthew 8 with the first centurion.  And don’t think Peter totally understands it yet in Acts 10.  We will see how he still does not completely buy in.  But he eventually does.  And when Peter finally understands, he goes 100%

For it is Peter, just another Jew who hated the Romans; Peter, who at one time would not dare consider entering a Roman house; who at one time felt they were not worthy to worship his God.  It is Peter who ends up going to Rome to lead as many Romans as he can to Jesus.  And from Rome, he writes a letter to the Gentile church in Asia Minor.  And he gives them the same charge that God gave his ancestors thousands of years ago:

1 Peter 2:9-10    But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter has finally understood what God said back in Exodus.  And now he preaches that same message to the Gentile followers of Jesus in Asia Minor.   Once you were not a chosen people of God, but now you are the chosen people; in fact, all people are chosen by God, and we are a nation of priests whose job it is to spread the name of Yehovah to everyone, for no one is unclean.