Acts – Lesson #5

Acts Lesson #5

Topic: The All-Encompassing God and the Inclusive Believers
Memory Verse: Acts 11:1 And the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.

Let the children pick a song from a previous meeting, if you are finished singing the assigned songs.

Talking Points:

  1. Our God loves all different kinds of people. He is not a respecter of persons, but He is for everyone. In Acts, the first believers learned the lesson that God wants to take care of all mankind.
  2. In the Old Testament, God’s people were the Jews. All other people from all other places were called the Gentiles. In Acts, God showed the early believers that He wanted to care for the Jews and the Gentiles.
  3. To help the early believers understand God’s heart for all people, God gave Peter a big lesson. One day, Peter was praying and he felt hungry. Then, he saw a big sheet full of animals. Peter only ate certain animals because he was a Jew, and this was the tradition of the Jews. However, God encouraged him not to refuse to eat any of the animals, but to eat any of the food.
  4. At that same time as Peter’s vision about the animals, there was a centurion (soldier) praying to God. He was not a Jew, but a Gentile from Italy. God told this man that He had heard his prayer and that he should send a servant to find Peter. Immediately after God gave Peter the lesson with the sheet full of animals, a Gentile man knocked on Peter’s door asking him to come
    to Cornelius’ house.
  5. Peter might have turned him away because he was not Jewish. Instead, Peter went with him and met Cornelius, the centurion who had been praying. Peter spoke the word of God to him. Cornelius and his friends received the gospel gladly.
  6. Through Cornelius, Peter and the other early believers found out that the gospel was not just for Jewish people only, but for everyone on the whole earth. Although most people are often afraid or uncomfortable to be with others who are different from themselves, God is for everyone. He sends His believers to care for everyone.