Acts 10:1-48
The Truth Breaks Through
Introduction
There was a Jew in Joppa. God chose him to proclaim his word to Gentiles. But he had a big problem which stood in the way of this happening. So, God intervened in a dramatic manner to make him do what needed to be done. This Jew then went to the Gentiles and proclaimed God’s word to them. And they repented. This only happened because prior to this a man had been raised to life after being in the realm of death for three days. In the story God made it plain that he was just as ready to pour out his blessing on repentant Gentiles as on repentant Jews. Who was this Jewish man?
From the passage we’ve just read in Acts 10 we can easily see that Peter clearly fits this description.
Ah, but can you think of someone else who perfectly matches my description? [Pause: invite response]
Yes, JONAH. He was in Joppa, just like Peter. God chose him to preach his word to Gentiles. Jonah had a massive problem which prevented him from doing this. God intervened in a dramatic way to make Jonah do what needed to be done. Jonah went to the Assyrians in Nineveh, proclaimed God’s word to them and they repented. This too only happened after a man, Jonah himself, had been delivered from the realm of death, as he himself describes it, that is, after being three days inside a huge sea creature. The story makes it clear that God pours out his blessing of forgiveness on these Gentiles who repent.
When we read about Peter taking the gospel to Cornelius, we need to so, while keeping the story of Jonah also in mind.
Let’s focus on what needed to happen in Peter’s life for the gospel to go to the Gentiles. Some years back, before the Opal system came in and people started using smart phones to get through the turnstiles, I walked to Hurstville station to catch a train to the city. I stood before an automatic dispensing machine with my $2.80 in hand for a return ticket. The machine accepted $2.70 OK and I had only a 10 cent coin to go. But each time I put my coin in the slot it just wouldn't drop properly - the stupid thing kept coming out of the change shute. You know what it's like...all the time in the world to deal with the problem, of course - only about 500 people lined up behind you waiting for the idiot in front to learn how to catch up with modern technology. After 3 or 4 times I looked at it to see if it really was a fair dinkum Aussie coin. It was. It was such a stroppy coin it would have to be, wouldn't it? I put it in again and this time, at last, the machine took, the 10 cent coin decided to cooperate, and I got the ticket and caught my train.
Sometimes our minds are like that ticket machine. The penny fails to drop. We come close to getting the ticket, as it were, but we fall short of a proper understanding of the truth. Our mind doesn't want to accept the last coin. In Acts 10 a great truth is taught to us. Sadly, for many Christians in Sydney that vital truth has not dropped into place. The tragic result is that many people are missing the train to glory.
Groping for the Truth
What is this great truth we need to understand? Peter was asking himself the same question. He'd just had an extraordinary experience – indeed, a beastly experience. For God had shown him a most unusual vision - of a vast range of animals in the world lowered on a tablecloth. Jonah was swallowed by a big fish of some kind. By contrast, Peter is asked to swallow food which he found hard to stomach. Out passage tells us Peter was hungry when this vision took place. In effect God was saying to Peter, "I see you are feeling hungry. Well, here's lunch. Look at the menu. All of this meat is now kosher. So go ahead, eat what you want." If you'll excuse the pun, Peter couldn't make head or tail of the vision. In verse 17 we read "Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision". The Greek is stronger than this: "Peter was at a loss to understand the meaning of the vision." "Peter was perplexed, bewildered." He struggled to understand. But it was as if he'd put $2.70 in the ticket machine and the machine wouldn't take his last 10 cents. He knew it all was linked with the issue of cleanness and uncleanness. But his mind could not make the connection.
The Holy Spirit makes the connection for Peter. At the very moment Peter is puzzling over the meaning of the vision three strange men arrive at the house where he was staying (verse 17). At the very moment Peter is pondering over what the vision means God the Holy Spirit talks to him, "Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them" (verses 19-20).
God gives the machine a shake, the coin drops into place and Peter walks off, with the three men, the ticket in his hand. Because now Peter understands. He knows there is an inseparable link between his vision of the smorgasbord dinner and the arrival of the men. He sees that the vision and this new circumstance share a common element. Both of them require him to rethink his understanding of what it means to be clean and unclean.
We must come to the same understanding, not a $2.70 understanding which still leaves us, and therefore others, waiting for the ticket.
Grasping the Truth
What was God teaching Peter, and what is he teaching us today? Peter sums it up in verse 28, when upon entering Cornelius’ house, he says to the non-Jewish people assembled to hear him, "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I must never call any man common or unclean." Jonah wanted absolutely nothing to do with the Assyrians in Nineveh, especially after all the atrocities they had committed against Jewish people. Jonah’s personal failure to mirror God’s mercy and compassion towards Gentiles was a parable of the Jewish nation as a whole. Peter himself, as a Jew, did not think it was right to freely associate with Gentiles.
God leads Peter to see that he “must never call any man common or unclean.” Do note what Peter is not saying. Peter is not saying all people are clean. Later Peter reflects on his time with Cornelius and his household, before the council which meets in Jerusalem (15:8-9), "God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he made their hearts clean by faith." Peter makes it clear that the only people who are clean, and therefore 'saved', are those whose hearts have been made clean by faith; those who, according to verse 11, believe that it is through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved.
If you are not solely depending on the grace of Jesus then you have not experienced this cleansing and remain in the uncleanness of your sin.
When Peter says, "God has shown me that I must never call any man common or unclean", he is not saying, "God has shown me that all people on the face of the earth are clean." As we have seen from Acts 15 he is really saying, "God has shown me that I must never call any man common or unclean simply because he is not a Jew."
Gagging the Truth
Woolies and Coles have self-service machines. Some Aussies would rather queue in the aisle and be served by a real person, even if it takes longer. But in many cities around the world if you want to catch a train you will only get your ticket from a machine. It is hard for people who have learnt one way of doing things for most of their lives, to suddenly learn a new way. It is very hard for many Anglo-Celtic Protestants to come to terms with what it means to do church in a multicultural society. Also, many of our ethnic minority churches, with few exceptions, minister almost exclusively to people from their own ethnic group. Sometimes, very much like Jonah, church members harbour negative and at time hostile thoughts about another ethnic or religious group in their locality. Years ago, when I was serving the Sydney Anglican Diocese as trainer in cross-cultural ministry, I remember one church in which many members openly expressed their dislike of Muslims who had moved into their suburb. Even if feelings are not this extreme, relating to and ministering to people who are not like us, in the minds of many Christians, is more complicated than trying to learn to use a new ticket machine or learn to use a computer.
"God has shown me that I must never call any man common or unclean". This did not come naturally to Peter. It is not automatic for us either. God called upon Peter to do something which ran counter to almost everything he had ever been taught. God ordered him to relate to some non-Jewish people in the same way as he related to his own people. To help Peter come to terms with this God gave him a very disagreeable experience - a vision in which he told him to eat meat which, since childhood, Peter had been taught to regard with a sense of revulsion. Peter had once heard Jesus pronounce all foods to be clean when Jesus told the crowd, "Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'" (Mt 15:10-11). It is one thing to taste the truth but quite another to digest it. Peter couldn't yet say what Paul later was able to declare when he said, "As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food is unclean in itself" (Rom 14:14).
Centuries before God commanded Ezekiel to eat unclean food - food cooked on a fire fuelled by human faeces - as a sign showing in advance (like a movie trailer) the pitiful condition to which God's people would be reduced (Ezekiel 4). Understandably, Ezekiel protested against using human excrement (4:14). God, in recognition of Ezekiel's squeamishness, permitted him to use cow pats instead. I myself, in Pakistani villages, have eaten food cooked over fires fueled by cow dung mixed with straw. Peter makes almost the same reply as Ezekiel, "Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." He is shocked when, like Ezekiel, he finds God sweeping aside his objections and compelling him to eat, despite the sense of loathing and abhorrence that wells up within him! No matter what Peter has been taught since childhood! No matter how hard it is for him emotionally and psychologically to comply with God's demand! He must obey God.
The matter of clean and unclean food is a lead-in to a much more fundamental issue namely, relationships between people. From Joppa to Caesarea is about 50 kilometres. Peter and his entourage took over a day to reach it on foot. In Caesarea there are people ready to hear about the Lord Jesus and believe in him. Since infancy Peter had been taught that these people, because they are not Jews, are people he must avoid; that if he associated with these people he would become unclean, and that his relationships with God and the people of God would be spoiled. The thought of sitting down at a table with these uncircumcised, unclean non-Jewish people and eating the food they offer him is something he cannot stomach. Emotionally and psychologically it is extremely difficult for Peter to move outside his normal circle of personal relationships and to associate with non-Jewish people.
Like Peter, unless we are at work or in other situations where we have little choice, we are disinclined to move outside our normal circle of relationships and to build friendships with people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds, some of whom, like Cornelius and his household, want to hear about Jesus. Generally speaking Anglo-Celtic Protestants, and many Christians from other cultures too, operate on the policy of waiting until other people come to us. Until God gave Peter the shove this was the assumption of the Jerusalem church: any Gentiles, non-Jews, who want to become Christians must first come to us and accept our Jewish way of being Christians. Their males must be circumcised and they will have to accept our laws such as learning to go on a diet for the rest of their lives. And we have this same mentality. We wait for people from other ethnic backgrounds to come to our church services and when they come we expect them to fit in with us and learn to speak our language and worship God the way we have learnt to do.
Grounding the Truth
Peter said to Cornelius and the other non-Jewish people gathered in his house: “All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (v43).
However, it’s a mistake to think that prior to his vision Peter was himself a rigid, tradition-bound Jew. The house where Peter was staying indicates that Peter was poised to receive the truth God was about to reveal. For he was staying with none other than Simon the tanner (9:43; 10:6).
Remember, the vision and its meaning are centrally concerned with the distinction between what is clean and what is unclean. It is therefore most telling that Peter, at the time he receives the vision, should be staying in the home of a man who was spurned as unclean by orthodox Jews. A tanner was a man who treated the skins of dead animals, that is, unclean animals. Leviticus 11 stated that anybody who touched the carcass of a dead animal was unclean till evening, and according to law all unclean persons were like lepers, all had to remain outside the camp, separated from the community of God's people until they were clean.
Peter was well aware of the laws regarding uncleanness, as his protest indicates. "Surely not, Lord!" I have never eaten anything common or unclean" (verse 14). How ironical! He claims obedience to an obsolete law as his excuse for disobeying God's new command.
But if Peter was so zealous to obey the law what was he doing staying with a man, who according to that same law, was unclean? Peter had obviously picked up a lot from Jesus who touched lepers, rubbed shoulders around the meal table with tax-collectors and even was found in the company of prostitutes. Peter was no snob. He was there when Jesus had torn strips off the Pharisees because of their hypocritical preoccupation with ritual and ceremonial cleanness: "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?" (Lk 11:39-40). What matters, Jesus said, is whether a person is clean or unclean on the inside. The Pharisees were unbelievers, and like all non-Christians who have not experienced God's forgiveness and the inner moral transformation of their hearts and minds, they were unclean.
Peter had learnt from his exposure to Jesus, not to have any problems with eating food in the house of a Jew regarded as unclean. He now must take the next logical step. What is the difference between being a supposedly unclean Jew and being a supposedly unclean Gentile? Peter had to learn there is no difference at all. If Simon the tanner is clean in Christ, then so too is Cornelius the Roman centurion and any other person who believes in Christ. There must, then, be no difference between the way Peter relates to Simon the tanner - a Jew - and Cornelius the representative of the invading forces - a Gentile. If he can enter Simon's house and eat with him, then he must also be ready to enter Cornelius' house and fellowship with him. Peter had to learn that if all people in Christ are on the same footing then he must relate to all of them in the same way. He must treat them alike.
Many fine Christian people have seriously erred in times past. For example, in our own country many fine Christians wanted to show their compassion and the love of Christ to Aboriginal people. So, they received Aboriginal people into their homes as servants. I imagine they tried to treat them with kindness and decency. They provided good food and even tried to educate the Aboriginal servant. But they would be deeply shocked when despite all they'd done the Aborigine suddenly took flight back to his or her traditional community. "What ingratitude!" they thought. But the truth is that at least some of these fine decent Christian white people, despite their noble intentions, were condescending and patronising. They conceived of their relationship to Aborigines as one of being a benevolent master to a highly privileged servant.
There is not a lot to distinguish this unfortunate mentality from that of many Christians who are friendly enough in their relations to other migrant people who come into their church, but who still adopt the attitude that they are the ones with the right to unilaterally determine how life within the church household should be ordered.
If we are serious about following in Peter's footsteps then obviously we must not communicate the gospel only to those who fit our own cultural heritage. We must communicate the gospel cross-culturally. What does this passage say to you and me? It issues a challenge: What are you doing to win people from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds with the gospel? What is your church doing?
Acts 2 is stage one – the Holy Spirit being poured out on Jews, with the resultant church community being entirely composed of Jewish Christians. Acts 10 is stage two – the Holy Spirit being poured out on Jews, with the church, the people of God, now being composed of Jewish and Gentile Christians. I don't know how many people were assembled in Cornelius' household to hear Peter. Perhaps the Holy Spirit was poured out upon 30 individuals, or maybe 40 or even 50 persons were swept into the kingdom that day.
What potential does your church have to reach individuals from cultural and ethnic backgrounds that are not currently represented in your church – people whom God may well be preparing to hear about Jesus and coming under his lordship? Could it be that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, as he once spoke to Peter, telling you to go to the people he has prepared to know Jesus, even as you yourselves know and love him.