Summary of a published sermon by Cornelius Williams, prepared from the YouTube recording. No transcript is published for this record — the sermon itself is linked below. An attributed summary — not Acts 2:38 Life doctrine text.
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Summary
Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.
Williams preaches a Sunday morning at his home church, Bossier City, from Jeremiah 13:23 — "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" — with John 3:5-6, the new birth of water and Spirit, as its New Testament answer. His framework is the difference between nature and nurture. Nature is how you were born; nurture is how you were raised — environment, culture, influence, habit. Jeremiah's Judah had been nurtured so long in the ways of the heathen that evil had become second nature, and the prophet's question is whether people accustomed to doing evil can do good at all. Williams' answer is the sermon's title text in reverse: the Ethiopian cannot change his skin and the leopard cannot change his spots — but God can change anybody.
He is careful about what cannot and should not be changed. The Ethiopian did not choose his skin; God fashioned every person, fearfully and wonderfully made, and the preacher rebukes prejudice from the pulpit — no one has the right to hate a creation God took time to make, when the same blood was shed so all might come to repentance and His house is open to every background. Skin, he says, has nothing to do with choosing to sin.
What God targets is the nurtured normal. A culture can normalize depression, suicidal thoughts, addiction, perversion and fear until even Spirit-filled people call them normal — and "just because you made it normal doesn't make it normal." Leviticus 18 is read as God's own word on one such normalization, preached, he insists, as love speech rather than hate: the God who made people with purpose wants them fruitful and free. Against every settled habit stands John 3: except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom — and the God who gives new birth is not trying to save your skin but your soul, your mind, your heart and your family. The close is an altar appeal to stop defending the unchangeable as a reason nothing can change, and an open invitation to baptism in Jesus' name.
Scripture index: Jeremiah 13:23; John 3:5-6; Leviticus 18:22.
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Scripture index: Jeremiah 13:23; John 3:5-6; Leviticus 18:22.