1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.
On Cyprus
4 The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. 5 When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper.
6 They traveled through the whole island until they came to Paphos. There they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, 7 who was an attendant of the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. The proconsul, an intelligent man, sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God. 8 But Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. 9 Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, 10 “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? 11 Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”
Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 12 When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.
Dig Deeper
The other day I was reading a book about biblical teaching. In that book, the author recounted a small story about an biblical teacher that he had met many years before. This influential teacher was observing with a tinge of disappointment and complaint in his voice that everywhere the apostle Paul went they started riots but everywhere he went, they served him tea. This man was wondering what the difference was and why he was politely served tea everywhere he went. The author of the book of that I was reading wondered the same thing without coming to much more of a conclusion than the idea that perhaps the content of Paul’s teaching was a bit more biting than what most biblical teachers would stomach today.
The author was on the right track. Why did they riot wherever Saul went and most biblical teachers, preachers, and Christians are treated as respectable members of their societies? The answer to that probably lies in the word “confront.” We might like to think that once the Messiah had arrived that the world quickly turned to the freeing beauty of the truth of the gospel and that the early church peacefully grew as a force of good and transformation in the world, but anyone who has spent more than ten seconds studying the Bible or early church history knows that that was not the case. The Messiah came into enemy territory to free those who were enslaved to the god of this age and the tyranny of doing their own will and living for themselves. But like an earthly kingdom, this kingdom will not go down without a bitter fight. The true gospel is unlikely to spread without confrontation with evil and the systems of the world. That’s just a reality that Paul and the early Christians understood. Saul didn’t try to make nice with the culture around him. He confronted it. He declared the subversive message of the gospel wherever he went. And make no mistake, the true gospel is deeply subversive because it challenges those in power and positions of authority. Not because it is a political movement that seeks to overthrow kingdoms but because it calls people to live by completely different values. That in itself becomes frightening and threatening to those who find the very source of their authority in the state of people living for themselves. The gospel calls people to lay down that life and those values and live an entirely different sort of life, one that gives allegiance to King Jesus and that is deeply committed to living with the best interests of others and the kingdom of God first. That will cause confrontation, guaranteed.
Wherever Saul went, confrontation was soon to follow. Saul took on the institutions that were opposed to God’s will and declared the kingship of Jesus the Messiah to a world that was not so eager to hear about it. Whether it was preaching the gospel in synagogues in each town or directly confronting pagan powers in a Gentile town, Paul knew that confrontation would be one of the primary vehicles through which the gospel was spread.
But none of this was blind confrontation. Saul and the other Christians weren’t just walking around looking for a fight. These were people that had been commissioned and gifted by God for specific roles and purposes and sent by the Holy Spirit to specific places. Luke describes Antioch as a mature church that had prophets and teachers and an entire church that was attending to the will of the Holy Spirit. They were engaged in regular worship and fasting and were humbly seeking guidance from the Lord. While they were doing that, Luke says that the Holy Spirit called for them to set apart Barnabas and Saul for a specific role. We aren’t told exactly what Luke meant by saying that the Spirit told them this, but he doesn’t give any indication that this was any sort of audible voice. More likely is that as the group was praying and fasting, the Spirit put a strong sense of resolve in the hearts of all of those present that Saul and Barnabas had been set apart for this job. It is typically through the gentle moving of the hearts of those that are deeply committed to finding God’s will that the Spirit “speaks,” and this was probably the case here. It does speak volumes about the church in Antioch, though, that they were so immediately willing to send out two of their most important leaders at the urging of the Spirit. The mission, after all, was God’s. The mission was to spread the gospel to the world, not build up the church in Antioch to ever-increasing strength and prominence. So after feeling that the Spirit had spoken to them and requested Saul and Barnabas, they prayed and fasted some more and then sent them out.
As they arrived in Salamis, they followed Saul’s usual custom of preaching first in the synagogue, before spreading out to the rest of the island. As the pair went around Cyprus preaching, they immediately found the confrontation that characterized the early preaching of the gospel. Before we consider that, however, it is important to note two small details that Luke slips into this section. The first is that John Mark had joined them in their work. That’s a detail that seems incidental here but will become important later. The other detail is that Luke tells us Saul was also called Paul. In fact, Luke uses the name Paul from here on out and so will we. Roman citizens typically had three names. Paul would have been his third name or what is called the “cognomen,” but we are never told his first two names. Saul was his Jewish name, a moniker that he would have proudly used as the name of Israel’s first king, but a name that would not have been helpful in a primarily Gentile setting (in fact some have asserted that the Latin form of “Saul” meant something like “effeminate”). Paul was adapting himself to the situations that the Holy Spirit led him into.
In Paphos, Paul and Barnabas came upon two men in particular. One was the local Jewish sorcerer and man of influence, who was known as Bar-Jesus (Jesus was a very common first-century name). Sorcery was outlawed in the Jewish religion but that didn’t stop many such men from plying their craft and influence nonetheless. The other man was the proconsul, Sergius Paulus. He had evidently already come under the influence of Bar-Jesus but was someone that Luke described as being intelligent, no doubt in part because he was willing to listen to the gospel.
Sergius Paulus wanted to hear Paul speak the word of God as he had surely heard much already of the power of the gospel, but Bar-Jesus immediately understood the threat. If Sergius Paulus were to listen to the word of God and become part of the Christian family it would destroy the influence that he had built up with the proconsul. Surely he tried to convince the proconsul that this man Paul was preaching nonsense. Perhaps he made the argument that the believers were dangerous or that they were a cult (to put it into today’s terminology). Surely Bar-Jesus said whatever he needed to say to convince Sergius Paulus that this man, Paul, was not worth listening to.
Bar-Jesus was filled with his own selfish ambition, but Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit. He understood that the gospel was not going to be spread by being nice. The gospel demands that the truth be boldly declared. There is no mincing or softening to be found in Paul’s words because he understood that Bar-Jesus was not a lost seeker but was one who had made his decision was not only an opponent of the gospel but was actively seeking to keep others from the truth. There was no room for compromise or niceties. So Paul declared him to be full of the devil, an enemy of what is right, a deceiver and one who perverted the ways of the Lord. God’s judgment had come upon him. In fact, his fierce opposition to God’s will was not even the cause of God’s judgment but a sign of it, just as in Romans 1, when Paul declares that the sin of nations is a sign that God had judged them and turned them over to their own sinful desires. The blindness that struck Bar-Jesus was simply a physical reality of the spiritual blindness that he had already been turned over to. The blindness would serve as a physical and tangible example to the proconsul and others of BarJesus’ true spiritual condition.
The proconsul immediately understood the point as well as the power of the gospel and believed. Despite all of his sorcery and claims, Bar-Jesus had never shown any power like this and his spiritual blindness had been exposed. Once again Jesus Christ had been shown to be the true King with the true power. Sergius Paulus was convinced by the combination of hearing the word of God and seeing the power of that word in action. The gospel doesn’t always require miracles like the one that took place here, but it is something designed to be put into action. When the truth of the word is combined with people seeing the word in action, it becomes a powerful evangelistic combination.
Devotional Thought
As Christians we are never called to create confrontation for confrontation’s sake but we are also called to preach the word of God wherever we find ourselves and not shrink back. How about you? Are willing to face the confrontation that truly sharing the gospel with others will inevitably bring or do you soften it up a bit so that you won’t have to deal with confrontation?
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Acts 12:20-26
20 He had been quarreling with the people of Tyre and Sidon; they now joined together and sought an audience with him. After securing the support of Blastus, a trusted personal servant of the king, they asked for peace, because they depended on the king’s country for their food supply.
21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
24 But the word of God continued to spread and flourish.
Barnabas and Saul Sent Off
25 When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.
Dig Deeper
There are various points throughout the Old Testament where someone would violate the holiness of God’s presence and pay dearly for it. Someone would offer an invalid sacrifice to God and immediately be struck with a terrible disease or someone else would reach out and touch the Ark of the Covenant despite God’s warnings not to do so and they would fall dead instantly. There are many such examples throughout the Scriptures of the Old Covenant and yet, there are also many other times when people would disobey God and not be struck down immediately. In fact, as we saw in Acts 5, a very similar situation happened with Ananias and Sapphira. They attempted to deceive God by lying to his people and pretending to be fully part of God’s family when they were not. After being given an opportunity to be honest and repent and failing to do so, they both fell over dead immediately. The repercussions of their behavior were as swift as they were stiff. But, we have to wonder, why them? Why did they keel over dead and not so many others? After all, there are plenty of people who have tried deceive God and be something amongst his people that they were not in their hearts. Why do some die and others don’t?
The answer to that question is not something that we can fully answer. To know the answer to that question one would have to be able to know the mind of God. What we do know, however, is that at certain places and times God allows the judgment and consequences of people’s behavior to come upon them immediately so as to serve as a warning and a cautionary tale for the rest of the people. When we violate God’s laws and word, the spiritual effects and ramifications are just as serious as those who felt their punishment immediately. It’s as if God is telling us, “This is what will happen to you ultimately if you commit these same sorts of acts and don’t repent.” The choice is then ours to learn from those situations or to not learn and be determined to face the consequences in eternity for ourselves.
This situation with King Herod seems to be one of those situations. He was certainly not the first king to begin to think of himself as so powerful that he was divine and he will not be the last, but he did suffer his punishment immediately. He had taken the mantle as king of those who purported to be God’s people and now had the nerve to oppose God’s true people and had finally shown the fullness of his true colors. He was more than willing to be worshipped and treated like a god. He was willing to take the place of the one, true, God and for that, he would be cut down immediately as an example for all.
After leaving behind the debacle of Peter escaping and the ensuing embarrassment of that situation, Herod Agrippa I made his way to Caesarea. The leaders of Tyre and Sidon joined Herod there to have an audience with him. We are not told what quarrel he was having with the people of this region but we do know that this was an area that had relied on Judea for its food supply for hundreds of years, so it was intensely in their favor to remain on the good side of Herod. Whatever the quarrel was, it is somewhat safe to assume that it was his problem with them and not the other way around. This was evidently a region where Herod felt quite comfortable and clearly had the upper hand. After such a humiliating incident with Peter’s escape, Herod would do what many people do after such an event. He went somewhere where he was in control and could dictate events.
As he arrived in Caesarea, the people of Tyre and Sidon quickly sought an audience with the King to ensure that they would continue to curry his favor and much needed support. They ensured that they first secured the support of Blastus, one of the king’s most trusted advisors. We aren’t told the nature of this support but it may have come through bribery or similar means. They wanted the king’s advisor to push for peace and not conflict because they so deeply relied on the King’s support.
The scene described in verse 21 may seem odd but it is really not outside of the normal realm of natural human behavior. They had mistakenly come to believe that their food supply and provision came from the favor of the King rather than from God and that is dangerous. Whenever we confuse the source of our provision, whether it be our jobs or a king, we are quick to give way too much power, adoration, and even worship to our perceived provider. It quickly becomes our God.
This incident with Herod in Caesarea is particularly interesting because Luke was not the only surviving account of this encounter. The Jewish historian, Josephus, also described this account. According to Josephus, “There came together for this occasion a large number of provincial officials and others of distinguished position. On the second day of the shows Agrippa put on a robe made of silver throughout, of quite wonderful weaving, and entered the theatre at break of day. Then the silver shone and glittered wonderfully as the sun’s first rays fell on it, and its resplendence inspired a sort of fear and trembling in those who gazed at it. Immediately his flatterers called out from various directions, in language which boded him no good, for they invoked him as a god: ‘Be gracious to us!’ They cried. ‘Hitherto we have reverenced you as a human being, but henceforth we confess you to be of more than mortal nature’. He did did rebuke them, nor did he repudiate their impious flattery. . . At the same time he was seized with a severe pain in his bowels, which quickly increased in intensity. . . He was hastily carried into the palace, and. . . when he had suffered continuously for five days from the pain in his belly, he died, in the fifty-fourth year of his life and the seventh year of his kingship.”
Luke stresses the fact that Herod was struck immediately with this illness and that it was a direct result of his acceptance of this blasphemy, while Josephus adds that it took him five days to actually die from this immediate illness. The problem was that Herod didn’t just fail to turn away this bit of worship, he had encouraged it and played into it. He paraded around in a shiny silver robe that reflected the sun brilliantly and further fed into the adoration of those around him. They were willing to accept that a normal man couldn’t have the power and the prestige and put this altogether like this. So they were willing recognize that Herod was a god.
Both Luke and Josephus saw the error of this. Herod should have immediately rebuffed such praise as Luke will describe Paul and Barnabas doing in Acts 14 when people take their miraculous actions as something that only the gods could pull off. Paul and Barnabas were horrified by such suggestions but Herod enjoyed it.
Luke has already been drawing a comparison between King Herod and King Jesus and now it comes to a head. Jesus was the true King and Herod was just a shadow of that. Herod was stealing what rightly belonged to the true King and he would pay for it. The contrast is stark. Jesus was the true King but was rejected by men, only to conquer death and demonstrate that he really was the true King of Israel and the world. But Herod was just a parody of the true King. He tried to curry the favor of men, and when he received their praise unjustly he accepted it falsely. And yet, the very foe that Jesus had defeated would humble Herod and show him to be nothing more than a man after all. He had fallen prey to the one enemy that no human had ever defeated, except for the true King Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was now with the Father in heaven, ruling at his right hand, while Herod would be eaten by the worms. He went the way of all things and people that set themselves up against the rightful King.
With Herod firmly in the grave, proving his mortality and weakness, the true power of Jesus would continue to be felt. When Herod died, that was the end. There was no more adoration; no more worship; and no one thought of him as the king or divine anymore. Death proved him powerless. But the word of God in the gospel would continue to flourish. More and more would come to know Jesus as the Son of God and the true King of the world. Death had proved him to be powerful beyond compare.
Devotional Thought
Who do you rely on as your provider? Is it really God or do you tend to view yourself, someone else, or even your job as your provider? It is an important question to really examine because we usually tend to worship our provider with our time, energy, and resources. Look to see who you really believe to be your provider because that is probably your God as well.
21 On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. 22 They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
24 But the word of God continued to spread and flourish.
Barnabas and Saul Sent Off
25 When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem, taking with them John, also called Mark.
Dig Deeper
There are various points throughout the Old Testament where someone would violate the holiness of God’s presence and pay dearly for it. Someone would offer an invalid sacrifice to God and immediately be struck with a terrible disease or someone else would reach out and touch the Ark of the Covenant despite God’s warnings not to do so and they would fall dead instantly. There are many such examples throughout the Scriptures of the Old Covenant and yet, there are also many other times when people would disobey God and not be struck down immediately. In fact, as we saw in Acts 5, a very similar situation happened with Ananias and Sapphira. They attempted to deceive God by lying to his people and pretending to be fully part of God’s family when they were not. After being given an opportunity to be honest and repent and failing to do so, they both fell over dead immediately. The repercussions of their behavior were as swift as they were stiff. But, we have to wonder, why them? Why did they keel over dead and not so many others? After all, there are plenty of people who have tried deceive God and be something amongst his people that they were not in their hearts. Why do some die and others don’t?
The answer to that question is not something that we can fully answer. To know the answer to that question one would have to be able to know the mind of God. What we do know, however, is that at certain places and times God allows the judgment and consequences of people’s behavior to come upon them immediately so as to serve as a warning and a cautionary tale for the rest of the people. When we violate God’s laws and word, the spiritual effects and ramifications are just as serious as those who felt their punishment immediately. It’s as if God is telling us, “This is what will happen to you ultimately if you commit these same sorts of acts and don’t repent.” The choice is then ours to learn from those situations or to not learn and be determined to face the consequences in eternity for ourselves.
This situation with King Herod seems to be one of those situations. He was certainly not the first king to begin to think of himself as so powerful that he was divine and he will not be the last, but he did suffer his punishment immediately. He had taken the mantle as king of those who purported to be God’s people and now had the nerve to oppose God’s true people and had finally shown the fullness of his true colors. He was more than willing to be worshipped and treated like a god. He was willing to take the place of the one, true, God and for that, he would be cut down immediately as an example for all.
After leaving behind the debacle of Peter escaping and the ensuing embarrassment of that situation, Herod Agrippa I made his way to Caesarea. The leaders of Tyre and Sidon joined Herod there to have an audience with him. We are not told what quarrel he was having with the people of this region but we do know that this was an area that had relied on Judea for its food supply for hundreds of years, so it was intensely in their favor to remain on the good side of Herod. Whatever the quarrel was, it is somewhat safe to assume that it was his problem with them and not the other way around. This was evidently a region where Herod felt quite comfortable and clearly had the upper hand. After such a humiliating incident with Peter’s escape, Herod would do what many people do after such an event. He went somewhere where he was in control and could dictate events.
As he arrived in Caesarea, the people of Tyre and Sidon quickly sought an audience with the King to ensure that they would continue to curry his favor and much needed support. They ensured that they first secured the support of Blastus, one of the king’s most trusted advisors. We aren’t told the nature of this support but it may have come through bribery or similar means. They wanted the king’s advisor to push for peace and not conflict because they so deeply relied on the King’s support.
The scene described in verse 21 may seem odd but it is really not outside of the normal realm of natural human behavior. They had mistakenly come to believe that their food supply and provision came from the favor of the King rather than from God and that is dangerous. Whenever we confuse the source of our provision, whether it be our jobs or a king, we are quick to give way too much power, adoration, and even worship to our perceived provider. It quickly becomes our God.
This incident with Herod in Caesarea is particularly interesting because Luke was not the only surviving account of this encounter. The Jewish historian, Josephus, also described this account. According to Josephus, “There came together for this occasion a large number of provincial officials and others of distinguished position. On the second day of the shows Agrippa put on a robe made of silver throughout, of quite wonderful weaving, and entered the theatre at break of day. Then the silver shone and glittered wonderfully as the sun’s first rays fell on it, and its resplendence inspired a sort of fear and trembling in those who gazed at it. Immediately his flatterers called out from various directions, in language which boded him no good, for they invoked him as a god: ‘Be gracious to us!’ They cried. ‘Hitherto we have reverenced you as a human being, but henceforth we confess you to be of more than mortal nature’. He did did rebuke them, nor did he repudiate their impious flattery. . . At the same time he was seized with a severe pain in his bowels, which quickly increased in intensity. . . He was hastily carried into the palace, and. . . when he had suffered continuously for five days from the pain in his belly, he died, in the fifty-fourth year of his life and the seventh year of his kingship.”
Luke stresses the fact that Herod was struck immediately with this illness and that it was a direct result of his acceptance of this blasphemy, while Josephus adds that it took him five days to actually die from this immediate illness. The problem was that Herod didn’t just fail to turn away this bit of worship, he had encouraged it and played into it. He paraded around in a shiny silver robe that reflected the sun brilliantly and further fed into the adoration of those around him. They were willing to accept that a normal man couldn’t have the power and the prestige and put this altogether like this. So they were willing recognize that Herod was a god.
Both Luke and Josephus saw the error of this. Herod should have immediately rebuffed such praise as Luke will describe Paul and Barnabas doing in Acts 14 when people take their miraculous actions as something that only the gods could pull off. Paul and Barnabas were horrified by such suggestions but Herod enjoyed it.
Luke has already been drawing a comparison between King Herod and King Jesus and now it comes to a head. Jesus was the true King and Herod was just a shadow of that. Herod was stealing what rightly belonged to the true King and he would pay for it. The contrast is stark. Jesus was the true King but was rejected by men, only to conquer death and demonstrate that he really was the true King of Israel and the world. But Herod was just a parody of the true King. He tried to curry the favor of men, and when he received their praise unjustly he accepted it falsely. And yet, the very foe that Jesus had defeated would humble Herod and show him to be nothing more than a man after all. He had fallen prey to the one enemy that no human had ever defeated, except for the true King Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was now with the Father in heaven, ruling at his right hand, while Herod would be eaten by the worms. He went the way of all things and people that set themselves up against the rightful King.
With Herod firmly in the grave, proving his mortality and weakness, the true power of Jesus would continue to be felt. When Herod died, that was the end. There was no more adoration; no more worship; and no one thought of him as the king or divine anymore. Death proved him powerless. But the word of God in the gospel would continue to flourish. More and more would come to know Jesus as the Son of God and the true King of the world. Death had proved him to be powerful beyond compare.
Devotional Thought
Who do you rely on as your provider? Is it really God or do you tend to view yourself, someone else, or even your job as your provider? It is an important question to really examine because we usually tend to worship our provider with our time, energy, and resources. Look to see who you really believe to be your provider because that is probably your God as well.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Acts 12:6-19
6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.
8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
12 When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
16 But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18 In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.
Dig Deeper
I have noticed an interesting phenomenon amongst many dictators and tyrants in the world. They tend to rule by very harsh measures when need be but most of them also seem to thrive on the approval of their people. They seem to deeply need to believe that their followers love them and they will force the situation if necessary. In fact there is one dictator in Northern Africa right now who is experiencing great unrest in his country. The country is basically in full out revolt against him and has instituted a full-scale and grass-roots civil war against him. Yet, when interviewed he blindly holds to the belief that his people love him and that the violence is simply a result of terrorist groups from outside of his country. He continues to seek the favor of his people and live in the belief that they love him even though that myth is being quickly exposed to the outside world. What it reveals is that this man, like most dictators, seem to be more like spoiled children deeply in need of the approval and support of others. When they don’t get it or they are embarrassed they can lash out in very violent and dangerous ways.
Luke has already been drawing a contrast between King Herod Agrippa I and Jesus, the Messiah, the one whom his followers were claiming to be the true King of the entire world. During the Passover week the people of Jesus were preparing to celebrate the ways in which God had freed them from the slavery of sin and truly brought blessing into their lives. He did this not through violence or coercion but through the death and suffering of the Messiah himself. But Herod was a stark contrast to this. He gained and kept power through political maneuvers, violence, intrigue, and any other necessary means. Rather than celebrating God’s deliverance during Passover, Herod observed the holiday by imprisoning Peter and seeking to crush the very movement of God’s people that was designed to be the true fulfillment of the promise of Passover.
Now in Herod’s prison cell, where he had locked Peter away, the power of these two kings would come to a showdown. Who was truly in control and sovereign? Whose way of doing things would win out? Whose power would truly last? Would the prayer of the Christian community be able to overcome the power and force behind Herod’s rule? These are all valid questions that will be addressed in one strange and miraculous incident.
As we pick up in verse 6, Luke has moved ahead to the night before Herod would bring Peter to trial and have him executed, something that usually happened on the same day. Remarkably, Peter was so at peace and so comfortable with his trust in God that he was deep asleep. There seems to have been absolutely no worry on the part of Peter. Surely he reasoned that either God would rescue him somehow or that he would die like James and go to be with Christ. This was a no lose situation for him. It was as Paul would write in his letter to the Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). If Peter were rescued he would continue to boldly serve God and preach the good news but if he died, then that would be fine too because his work was done and he could finish the race with a clear conscience. So he slept soundly.
Herod was clearly taking no chances by having Peter chained to to soldiers and guarded by sentries at the entrance. Herod was making sure that there would be no great escapes, miraculous or otherwise. He was not about to lose his great prize and miss out on the chance of further cementing his popularity with his people.
Deep in the middle of the night when people just start to reach the deepest reaches of sleep, Peter was startled back to the world of the awakened by a sharp jab in the side. The angel told Peter to grab his stuff and follow him. They would not be coming back and he surely didn’t want to catch a chill in the middle of the night. Peter was so unprepared for this and so startled that it took him a few moments to fully wake up and realize that this was for real. This was no mere vision or dream. God had chosen to hear the prayers of the faithful believers who were petitioning God for Peter’s release. God had no doubt planned for Peter to be released all along but as the believers prayed humbly for God’s will to be revealed, they were allowed to be part of God’s plan. It was not yet Peter’s time to depart and be with the Lord.
At each point, it is clear that Luke is driving home the point that this angelic release was nothing short of supernatural. The chains fell off of Peter’s wrists without so much as disturbing the soldier on either side of him. They went through several guards, doors, and the outer gate without disturbing anyone, culminating in that large iron outer gate swinging open all by itself. If he hadn’t already been convinced that this was a miraculous escape, the gate swinging open by itself must have cemented that reality in Peter’s mind.
Then in the blink of an eye, the angel was gone. I’m sure Peter’s heart was racing by this point, but he needed to think clearly. First he needed to realize that this was the Lord that was at work. It was the Lord’s angel who had rescued him from Herod’s foolish clutches. Herod and his supporters wanted to put Peter to death which might have made Peter begin to question whether he was doing the right thing. Normally you might think that going to prison would make someone question the rightness of their cause all the more but his imprisonment and subsequent release had been used by God to bring even more clarity to Peter. God had opposed the desires of the Jewish people and Herod who wanted Peter dead. Peter had more work to do. Now that he realized that this was none other than the work of God, Peter continued to shake out the cobwebs and determine what must be done next.
He quickly decided that he must go to the the house of Mary, John Mark’s mother, where many Christians, perhaps Peter’s own house church, had gathered to pray for Peter’s deliverance. In the midst of these harrowing and very real events, Luke brings a bit of sly humor that has the ring much more of a true event as opposed to manufactured myth.
When Peter arrived and knocked on the door, the fulfillment of the very thing that the believers were praying for, a servant girl named Rhoda was so filled with joy that she literally left Peter out standing in the cold. We should not miss the details here that this seemingly insignificant servant girl was not only described as being overjoyed but also that she was named by Luke. Both details add up to the strong probability that she was a believer and a sister in the community. It’s further proof that this movement was a family that was open to all, whether they were rich and powerful or lowly servants. She was just as much a member of the family as anyone else.
When she ran back to tell the others, they thought she was out of her mind. There’s a humorous irony in that she went back to tell them the very thing that they were praying for, but that they didn’t believe her. It’s somehow comforting, though, to know that the early Christians could be just as full of faith and clarity at some times while struggling with doubt, confusion, or muddled thought at other time, just as we can surely be. Someone, in their confusion, threw out the idea that perhaps it was Peter’s angel. This was probably a vestige of a sometimes held Jewish belief that people had guardian angels that sometimes looked much like the person themselves. That belief was more of a Jewish superstition than it was solid theology or Luke’s endorsement of that belief (the early Christians still had things that they needed to work through and grow in their understanding just like we do), and Luke’s recording of it is another of those small details in this passage that give it the ring of truth.
After finally being let in and telling them all that had happened Luke tells us that Peter told them to inform James and the other brothers and then “left for another place.” Peter no doubt knew that he would be a wanted man in the morning and didn’t want to bring any other danger onto the other believers, as well as likely realizing that God had further work for him to do and knowing that he should get to safety so that he could carry that work on. Luke doesn’t tell us where he went and it is likely that Peter “disappeared” so well that no one knew for sure where he had gone, including Luke.
When the morning dawned, chaos ensued. No one could understand what had become of Peter. Herod furiously searched for him, no doubt finding this a major embarrassment. What was supposed to be his great moment of further endearing himself to the people and increasing his stature was about to blow up in his face. His response looked much more like a petulant child throwing a fit than a mature king leading wisely. The guards bore no fault in this situation but someone had to pay for this in Herod’s mind so he had them killed. He would certainly not open us mind to the idea that he his true opponent was God not Peter and the Christian community and that his true need was repentance and not public popularity. It also seems, according to the text, that Herod left Judea to go to Caesarea, quite possibly to escape the scrutiny and embarrassment of this situation. People do strange things when what men think of them becomes more important than what God knows of them.
Devotional Thought
What is more important to you? Is it what other people think of you or what God knows of you? Are you truly determined to live a life of honesty, confession, and integrity despite what other people might think so that you can stand blameless before God?
8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
12 When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. 13 Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. 14 When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
15 “You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
16 But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. 17 Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
18 In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter. 19 After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed. Then Herod went from Judea to Caesarea and stayed there.
Dig Deeper
I have noticed an interesting phenomenon amongst many dictators and tyrants in the world. They tend to rule by very harsh measures when need be but most of them also seem to thrive on the approval of their people. They seem to deeply need to believe that their followers love them and they will force the situation if necessary. In fact there is one dictator in Northern Africa right now who is experiencing great unrest in his country. The country is basically in full out revolt against him and has instituted a full-scale and grass-roots civil war against him. Yet, when interviewed he blindly holds to the belief that his people love him and that the violence is simply a result of terrorist groups from outside of his country. He continues to seek the favor of his people and live in the belief that they love him even though that myth is being quickly exposed to the outside world. What it reveals is that this man, like most dictators, seem to be more like spoiled children deeply in need of the approval and support of others. When they don’t get it or they are embarrassed they can lash out in very violent and dangerous ways.
Luke has already been drawing a contrast between King Herod Agrippa I and Jesus, the Messiah, the one whom his followers were claiming to be the true King of the entire world. During the Passover week the people of Jesus were preparing to celebrate the ways in which God had freed them from the slavery of sin and truly brought blessing into their lives. He did this not through violence or coercion but through the death and suffering of the Messiah himself. But Herod was a stark contrast to this. He gained and kept power through political maneuvers, violence, intrigue, and any other necessary means. Rather than celebrating God’s deliverance during Passover, Herod observed the holiday by imprisoning Peter and seeking to crush the very movement of God’s people that was designed to be the true fulfillment of the promise of Passover.
Now in Herod’s prison cell, where he had locked Peter away, the power of these two kings would come to a showdown. Who was truly in control and sovereign? Whose way of doing things would win out? Whose power would truly last? Would the prayer of the Christian community be able to overcome the power and force behind Herod’s rule? These are all valid questions that will be addressed in one strange and miraculous incident.
As we pick up in verse 6, Luke has moved ahead to the night before Herod would bring Peter to trial and have him executed, something that usually happened on the same day. Remarkably, Peter was so at peace and so comfortable with his trust in God that he was deep asleep. There seems to have been absolutely no worry on the part of Peter. Surely he reasoned that either God would rescue him somehow or that he would die like James and go to be with Christ. This was a no lose situation for him. It was as Paul would write in his letter to the Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). If Peter were rescued he would continue to boldly serve God and preach the good news but if he died, then that would be fine too because his work was done and he could finish the race with a clear conscience. So he slept soundly.
Herod was clearly taking no chances by having Peter chained to to soldiers and guarded by sentries at the entrance. Herod was making sure that there would be no great escapes, miraculous or otherwise. He was not about to lose his great prize and miss out on the chance of further cementing his popularity with his people.
Deep in the middle of the night when people just start to reach the deepest reaches of sleep, Peter was startled back to the world of the awakened by a sharp jab in the side. The angel told Peter to grab his stuff and follow him. They would not be coming back and he surely didn’t want to catch a chill in the middle of the night. Peter was so unprepared for this and so startled that it took him a few moments to fully wake up and realize that this was for real. This was no mere vision or dream. God had chosen to hear the prayers of the faithful believers who were petitioning God for Peter’s release. God had no doubt planned for Peter to be released all along but as the believers prayed humbly for God’s will to be revealed, they were allowed to be part of God’s plan. It was not yet Peter’s time to depart and be with the Lord.
At each point, it is clear that Luke is driving home the point that this angelic release was nothing short of supernatural. The chains fell off of Peter’s wrists without so much as disturbing the soldier on either side of him. They went through several guards, doors, and the outer gate without disturbing anyone, culminating in that large iron outer gate swinging open all by itself. If he hadn’t already been convinced that this was a miraculous escape, the gate swinging open by itself must have cemented that reality in Peter’s mind.
Then in the blink of an eye, the angel was gone. I’m sure Peter’s heart was racing by this point, but he needed to think clearly. First he needed to realize that this was the Lord that was at work. It was the Lord’s angel who had rescued him from Herod’s foolish clutches. Herod and his supporters wanted to put Peter to death which might have made Peter begin to question whether he was doing the right thing. Normally you might think that going to prison would make someone question the rightness of their cause all the more but his imprisonment and subsequent release had been used by God to bring even more clarity to Peter. God had opposed the desires of the Jewish people and Herod who wanted Peter dead. Peter had more work to do. Now that he realized that this was none other than the work of God, Peter continued to shake out the cobwebs and determine what must be done next.
He quickly decided that he must go to the the house of Mary, John Mark’s mother, where many Christians, perhaps Peter’s own house church, had gathered to pray for Peter’s deliverance. In the midst of these harrowing and very real events, Luke brings a bit of sly humor that has the ring much more of a true event as opposed to manufactured myth.
When Peter arrived and knocked on the door, the fulfillment of the very thing that the believers were praying for, a servant girl named Rhoda was so filled with joy that she literally left Peter out standing in the cold. We should not miss the details here that this seemingly insignificant servant girl was not only described as being overjoyed but also that she was named by Luke. Both details add up to the strong probability that she was a believer and a sister in the community. It’s further proof that this movement was a family that was open to all, whether they were rich and powerful or lowly servants. She was just as much a member of the family as anyone else.
When she ran back to tell the others, they thought she was out of her mind. There’s a humorous irony in that she went back to tell them the very thing that they were praying for, but that they didn’t believe her. It’s somehow comforting, though, to know that the early Christians could be just as full of faith and clarity at some times while struggling with doubt, confusion, or muddled thought at other time, just as we can surely be. Someone, in their confusion, threw out the idea that perhaps it was Peter’s angel. This was probably a vestige of a sometimes held Jewish belief that people had guardian angels that sometimes looked much like the person themselves. That belief was more of a Jewish superstition than it was solid theology or Luke’s endorsement of that belief (the early Christians still had things that they needed to work through and grow in their understanding just like we do), and Luke’s recording of it is another of those small details in this passage that give it the ring of truth.
After finally being let in and telling them all that had happened Luke tells us that Peter told them to inform James and the other brothers and then “left for another place.” Peter no doubt knew that he would be a wanted man in the morning and didn’t want to bring any other danger onto the other believers, as well as likely realizing that God had further work for him to do and knowing that he should get to safety so that he could carry that work on. Luke doesn’t tell us where he went and it is likely that Peter “disappeared” so well that no one knew for sure where he had gone, including Luke.
When the morning dawned, chaos ensued. No one could understand what had become of Peter. Herod furiously searched for him, no doubt finding this a major embarrassment. What was supposed to be his great moment of further endearing himself to the people and increasing his stature was about to blow up in his face. His response looked much more like a petulant child throwing a fit than a mature king leading wisely. The guards bore no fault in this situation but someone had to pay for this in Herod’s mind so he had them killed. He would certainly not open us mind to the idea that he his true opponent was God not Peter and the Christian community and that his true need was repentance and not public popularity. It also seems, according to the text, that Herod left Judea to go to Caesarea, quite possibly to escape the scrutiny and embarrassment of this situation. People do strange things when what men think of them becomes more important than what God knows of them.
Devotional Thought
What is more important to you? Is it what other people think of you or what God knows of you? Are you truly determined to live a life of honesty, confession, and integrity despite what other people might think so that you can stand blameless before God?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Acts 12:1-5
1 It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. 2 He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. 3 When he saw that this met with approval among the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
Dig Deeper
I grew up watching “Rocky” movies and I always enjoyed them to be quite honest. A few years ago, a new Rocky Balboa movie was made depicting Rocky as an aging retired boxer who is lured out of retirement to fight the current champion. What entices Rocky out of retirement is a fictional computer match-up between Rocky in his prime and the current heavy weight champion. The computer simulates a fight and determines that Rocky would be the winner. The whole idea is quite popular in sporting circles actually. The question is constantly asked regarding who is the greatest team or champion of all time. If we could have a showdown between great teams of different generations who would win? Who is the greatest of all time?
The difficulty with doing such things is that it can be elusive to fairly put two champions or teams side-by-side and examine what would really happen if they ran square into one another. It’s so difficult to do that because there are so many factors that come into play that make it difficult to truly set two great times up against each other and see what would happen if they were to play.
What is so difficult with sports teams or legends, though, is quite doable when it comes to the great kings. This is exactly, in many ways, what Luke is doing throughout his gospel, and the very thing that he reminds us of here. We can look at the results of following King Jesus have in the lives of people and what it looks like when people submit their lives to his rule and reign. We can also look at what it looks like when people live under the reign of the kings of the world like Herod. And in fact, when we put them side-by-side, we see a stark contrast between these two kings.
The Herod referred to here is Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great who was King at the time of Jesus’ birth and nephew of Herod Antipas, the moody figure that ruled over parts of Israel during the time of Jesus’ ministry. After a sketchy and somewhat wild youth, Herod Agrippa settled into a kingship in Israel that was granted to him by the Roman Emperors Gaius and Claudius and one that was almost as large as the territory that his grandfather ruled over. Of course Herod’s rule was subject to the whims of Rome which meant that he must remain popular in Israel amongst the influential and powerful citizens there so that they would not complain to Rome and become a headache for the Emperor. Due to that situation, Herod spent a great deal of time and energy currying the favor of the rich and powerful, especially the Pharisees.
This meant that part of keeping his position of authority stable and strong was to keep the powerful folks around him happy and to show Rome that he would keep things stable and deal with threats to Roman rule swiftly and harshly if need be. He wanted to show the powerful in Israel that he would deal with this upcoming new Messiah movement with no sentimentality and a zeal for ridding the land of any threats to their traditional religious practices. At the same time, he wanted to show Rome that he would be a strong ruler against political threats. This is no doubt why he had James killed with a sword rather than stoning, which would have been the more typical fate.
James was the brother of John and the son of Zebedee, and was one of the three closest apostles to Jesus during his ministry along with John and Peter. He surely continued to carry a great deal of respect and influence among the early Christian community and putting him to death was a powerful statement for Herod. Putting him to death with the sword indicated a political execution. Death by stoning was more typical of a religious blasphemy committed and death on a cross was the death suffered by common rebels and criminals. Putting James to the sword then was Herod’s way of showing that he was not afraid to take out one of the leaders and major figures of this increasingly popular and powerful Christian movement. Evidently Herod found it personally helpful to send a strong message to Rome that the Christian movement was a political threat, one with which he would deal harshly while at the same time showing the Pharisees and chief priests that he would not tolerate this religious threat either. Every way you look at it, putting James to death held personal benefit for Herod Agrippa.
Luke makes it clear that Herod’s shrewd political move paid off. It brought him great favor and further cemented his power among the elite. In fact, it worked so well that Herod decided to take out an even bigger target and go after Peter who was probably the most well known and visible figure in the Christian community. Taking him out would be an even bigger coup for Herod and might permanently cripple the followers of Jesus as the Messiah, at least that was the effect that Herod thought it would have.
The fact that this took place during the Feast of Unleavened Bread was no minor detail and no small irony. This was the Feast during which the Jews celebrated the deliverance of their nation through the saving acts of their God. The Feast led into and became virtually synonymous with the Passover. And that’s where the irony comes in. During the very time when the Jews were celebrating God’s salvation from slavery, Herod was imprisoning Peter who had become one of the spokesmen of the Messiah. Herod’s plan was to keep Peter locked up until after the Passover when he could then bring him out and publicly execute him just as he had done with James the son of Zebedee.
The message of the Christians was that Jesus as the Messiah was the true king of Israel and the world and that his resurrection from the dead was clear confirmation of that. They were declaring that God had brought about through the Messiah the very thing that the Passover promised and pointed to. Israel’s true slavery was not in Egypt but in sin. They and the entire world were enslaved by sin with no hope of enacting their own freedom. But what humans could not do, the Messiah had done. He had taken the place of all humanity by going into death, the deserved fate of all mankind, but the fate that he alone did not deserve. Just when it seemed that the Messiah had suffered the fate of all humans and fallen to the undefeated foe of death, something monumental happened. In fact it was the most monumental incident in all of human history. Jesus the Messiah defeated death by resurrecting, never to die again. He had stormed into death and broke out of the other side. Death had been defeated and God had shown Jesus to be the true Messiah and the king of the world.
But this King was not trying to curry the favor of the people in order to prove himself a worthy ruler. He would not participate in the senseless death of innocent ambassadors of a gospel of peace and reconciliation. He would not exercise worldly power in order to bring about his reign. This King was exactly the opposite of worldly rulers like Herod. He was the King because he had defeated the true enemy of all people not because he got rid of those that people didn’t like. He ruled by being a servant not by lording his power over others. He called people to willing serve him which was a stark contrast to the games that Herod had to play to remain in power. The power of the Messiah brought life while the power of rulers like Herod brought death.
But Herod seemed to have all of the worldly power in this situation. James had already been killed, what could possibly stop Peter from suffering the same fate? Once again, the true King and his people work quite differently than the normal course of events. There was no violent uprising or revolt. No swords or battles. The people of the Messiah turned to the most valuable weapon they had in their arsenal. They turned to prayer.
Luke offers no explanation as to why James was allowed to die but why Peter would be spared the same fate, at least for now. Perhaps that is because there is no obvious explanation. The answer is that God is sovereign and things work in combination between human free will and God’s ultimate sovereignty. The church may not have had those answers but they did know that there was great power in prayer and it was to that that they would turn time and again. I wonder what might happen if God’s church today turned to prayer in difficult situations with the same passion, faith, and earnestness that the early Christians had.
Devotional Thought
To what do you turn when times get challenging or scary? Do you gather with other believers and turn to earnest prayer or do you leave yourself in the hands of much less powerful and effective things?
5 So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.
Dig Deeper
I grew up watching “Rocky” movies and I always enjoyed them to be quite honest. A few years ago, a new Rocky Balboa movie was made depicting Rocky as an aging retired boxer who is lured out of retirement to fight the current champion. What entices Rocky out of retirement is a fictional computer match-up between Rocky in his prime and the current heavy weight champion. The computer simulates a fight and determines that Rocky would be the winner. The whole idea is quite popular in sporting circles actually. The question is constantly asked regarding who is the greatest team or champion of all time. If we could have a showdown between great teams of different generations who would win? Who is the greatest of all time?
The difficulty with doing such things is that it can be elusive to fairly put two champions or teams side-by-side and examine what would really happen if they ran square into one another. It’s so difficult to do that because there are so many factors that come into play that make it difficult to truly set two great times up against each other and see what would happen if they were to play.
What is so difficult with sports teams or legends, though, is quite doable when it comes to the great kings. This is exactly, in many ways, what Luke is doing throughout his gospel, and the very thing that he reminds us of here. We can look at the results of following King Jesus have in the lives of people and what it looks like when people submit their lives to his rule and reign. We can also look at what it looks like when people live under the reign of the kings of the world like Herod. And in fact, when we put them side-by-side, we see a stark contrast between these two kings.
The Herod referred to here is Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great who was King at the time of Jesus’ birth and nephew of Herod Antipas, the moody figure that ruled over parts of Israel during the time of Jesus’ ministry. After a sketchy and somewhat wild youth, Herod Agrippa settled into a kingship in Israel that was granted to him by the Roman Emperors Gaius and Claudius and one that was almost as large as the territory that his grandfather ruled over. Of course Herod’s rule was subject to the whims of Rome which meant that he must remain popular in Israel amongst the influential and powerful citizens there so that they would not complain to Rome and become a headache for the Emperor. Due to that situation, Herod spent a great deal of time and energy currying the favor of the rich and powerful, especially the Pharisees.
This meant that part of keeping his position of authority stable and strong was to keep the powerful folks around him happy and to show Rome that he would keep things stable and deal with threats to Roman rule swiftly and harshly if need be. He wanted to show the powerful in Israel that he would deal with this upcoming new Messiah movement with no sentimentality and a zeal for ridding the land of any threats to their traditional religious practices. At the same time, he wanted to show Rome that he would be a strong ruler against political threats. This is no doubt why he had James killed with a sword rather than stoning, which would have been the more typical fate.
James was the brother of John and the son of Zebedee, and was one of the three closest apostles to Jesus during his ministry along with John and Peter. He surely continued to carry a great deal of respect and influence among the early Christian community and putting him to death was a powerful statement for Herod. Putting him to death with the sword indicated a political execution. Death by stoning was more typical of a religious blasphemy committed and death on a cross was the death suffered by common rebels and criminals. Putting James to the sword then was Herod’s way of showing that he was not afraid to take out one of the leaders and major figures of this increasingly popular and powerful Christian movement. Evidently Herod found it personally helpful to send a strong message to Rome that the Christian movement was a political threat, one with which he would deal harshly while at the same time showing the Pharisees and chief priests that he would not tolerate this religious threat either. Every way you look at it, putting James to death held personal benefit for Herod Agrippa.
Luke makes it clear that Herod’s shrewd political move paid off. It brought him great favor and further cemented his power among the elite. In fact, it worked so well that Herod decided to take out an even bigger target and go after Peter who was probably the most well known and visible figure in the Christian community. Taking him out would be an even bigger coup for Herod and might permanently cripple the followers of Jesus as the Messiah, at least that was the effect that Herod thought it would have.
The fact that this took place during the Feast of Unleavened Bread was no minor detail and no small irony. This was the Feast during which the Jews celebrated the deliverance of their nation through the saving acts of their God. The Feast led into and became virtually synonymous with the Passover. And that’s where the irony comes in. During the very time when the Jews were celebrating God’s salvation from slavery, Herod was imprisoning Peter who had become one of the spokesmen of the Messiah. Herod’s plan was to keep Peter locked up until after the Passover when he could then bring him out and publicly execute him just as he had done with James the son of Zebedee.
The message of the Christians was that Jesus as the Messiah was the true king of Israel and the world and that his resurrection from the dead was clear confirmation of that. They were declaring that God had brought about through the Messiah the very thing that the Passover promised and pointed to. Israel’s true slavery was not in Egypt but in sin. They and the entire world were enslaved by sin with no hope of enacting their own freedom. But what humans could not do, the Messiah had done. He had taken the place of all humanity by going into death, the deserved fate of all mankind, but the fate that he alone did not deserve. Just when it seemed that the Messiah had suffered the fate of all humans and fallen to the undefeated foe of death, something monumental happened. In fact it was the most monumental incident in all of human history. Jesus the Messiah defeated death by resurrecting, never to die again. He had stormed into death and broke out of the other side. Death had been defeated and God had shown Jesus to be the true Messiah and the king of the world.
But this King was not trying to curry the favor of the people in order to prove himself a worthy ruler. He would not participate in the senseless death of innocent ambassadors of a gospel of peace and reconciliation. He would not exercise worldly power in order to bring about his reign. This King was exactly the opposite of worldly rulers like Herod. He was the King because he had defeated the true enemy of all people not because he got rid of those that people didn’t like. He ruled by being a servant not by lording his power over others. He called people to willing serve him which was a stark contrast to the games that Herod had to play to remain in power. The power of the Messiah brought life while the power of rulers like Herod brought death.
But Herod seemed to have all of the worldly power in this situation. James had already been killed, what could possibly stop Peter from suffering the same fate? Once again, the true King and his people work quite differently than the normal course of events. There was no violent uprising or revolt. No swords or battles. The people of the Messiah turned to the most valuable weapon they had in their arsenal. They turned to prayer.
Luke offers no explanation as to why James was allowed to die but why Peter would be spared the same fate, at least for now. Perhaps that is because there is no obvious explanation. The answer is that God is sovereign and things work in combination between human free will and God’s ultimate sovereignty. The church may not have had those answers but they did know that there was great power in prayer and it was to that that they would turn time and again. I wonder what might happen if God’s church today turned to prayer in difficult situations with the same passion, faith, and earnestness that the early Christians had.
Devotional Thought
To what do you turn when times get challenging or scary? Do you gather with other believers and turn to earnest prayer or do you leave yourself in the hands of much less powerful and effective things?
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Acts 11:19-30
19 Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews. 20 Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. 21 The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
22 News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
25 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
27 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29 The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Dig Deeper
There is an old saying that I used to hear a lot as a kid although I don’t hear it nearly as much anymore. It is the classic line, “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” On one hand I understand the point of that saying that is trying to get across to people that we shouldn’t be worried about the labels or names that other people might assign us. On the other hand, I disagree with the mindset of that saying. Names and labels do matter and they do carry meaning and they can really hurt people. But names can also bring a great deal of pride and identity to those who carry a certain name. Family names, for instance, can be very important to people. Your surname carries with it a great deal of history and identity. It tells the world who you are, what kind of people you come from, and even what is valuable to you as a human being.
Just as individuals can be given names and labels that help others identify them or pigeonhole them, so groups can receive names. Sometimes those names are meant to honor or identify them. Other times the name is meant to ridicule the group and put its in its place. When it comes to religious groups, the name that it chooses to give itself often says a great deal about what is truly important to that group. Many religious groups today have chosen to name themselves after a man who was important in their history or even a specific aspect of their belief, which I suppose says something important about what they truly value. Some of the groups, such as the Methodists, initially received their names as an insult from other groups (in the case of the Methodists, they were given the name as mockery of the methodical ways that they received from their founder John Wesley).
The early followers of Jesus seemed to have initially and informally called themselves the Way, and they referred to each other as believers, saints, disciples, or the most common term, brothers. They saw themselves as family and the frequent use of referring to one another as brothers and sisters denotes that belief. In this passage, however, we find the term “Christian” being attached to those who followed Christ. This is no small detail or simply an interesting factoid included by Luke into his account of the spread of the gospel. It probably started out as a bit of an insult or had an intent to demean. But it is important, for in that name we learn a great deal about this early community and what they believed and practiced. The Christians, as many other groups have done in history, took a name that was meant to put them down and instead they found great distinction, identity, and pride in it.
As Luke continued to chronicle the spread of God’s family to the people of all nations, he returned to those that were scattered following the execution of Stephen. Some traveled as far as Antioch, which was the third largest city in the Roman Empire behind Rome and Alexandria, and was something of a cultural center in the Roman world as well as a social and political hub in the region of Syria. Following on the heels of the door to the kingdom of God being thrown open to the Gentiles, big things began to happen in Antioch. This wasn’t just the conversion of one small household, as important as that was. The disciples in Antioch began to see Gentiles in Antioch, many of whom were probably from all types of nations, stream into the kingdom of God. They heard the good news that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, that the family of the Most High God had been thrown open to all people everywhere.
As a result, many believed and joined the family. In fact it seems that such a commotion of good news was beginning to happen in Antioch that the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to report what was going on, surely, but even more importantly to help in the ministry work there. There were several men described in the book of Acts that are described as being full of the Holy Spirit but Barnabas was the only man that was also described as “good.” There was a special quality to Barnabas and his commitment to the other believers that went beyond the norm. Barnabas was highly thought of in the early Christian community and was a man of great godliness. What he saw in Antioch was not some worrisome outbreak of false or compromised teaching. He saw the fulfillment of the door that was opened at Cornelius’ house. He saw God’s one family of all nations finally taking shape.
But he also realized rather quickly that they were facing a problem in Antioch. They were, in fact, facing one of those rare occasions when someone finds that they are up against what we call “a good problem to have.” God was working so powerfully in this Syrian city that the work was evidently overwhelming the brothers and sisters that were there. In response Barnabas displayed the rare ability, through the guidance of the Spirit, to be able to identify the right worker at at the right time for the right ministry.
We aren’t told why Barnabas’ thoughts turned to Saul, only that they did. This was the second time in their lives that Barnabas had paved the way for Saul in the Christian community and we don’t know why he saw so much in Saul, but he certainly was earning his nickname “son of encouragement.” The truly shocking thing is that this was probably ten years after we had last seen Saul in the book of Acts. He had apparently returned to Tarsus and spent his time sharing the gospel announcement with the people in the regions around Tarsus. He also, no doubt, spent that time poring through the Scriptures and learning how the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to a Messiah like Jesus all along. Armed with that knowledge, he was ready to spread the gospel to the Gentile world. Saul was the right man for the job. He would come to Antioch and spend the next year working side-by-side with Barnabas teaching and building up the believers in Antioch.
It was during this time in Antioch that the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. That has come to be a term that has, for the most part, become divorced from its original meaning, but it is worth taking a look at what that term would have meant in first century Antioch because it gives us great insight into what was being taught and lived out among those early Christians.
The term “Christ” now is almost seen as though it were Jesus’ last name but it is actually the English version of the Greek “Chrestos” which means “Messiah” or “Anointed One.” The term carried with it the connotation that the Christ was a king, and in the declarations of the early believers, the true king of the world. The Christ was the one promised by God through the Old Testament Scriptures. He would be the one who would sum up in himself everything that Israel was called to be in the world but had failed to be. He would represent God’s people and take on the punishment due to sinners so that those who had no justification to call themselves part of God’s promised family could do just that. Through the resurrection, Jesus had shown himself to be the Son of God, the Messiah. In declaring Jesus to be the Christ, then, the early believers were declaring that through the resurrection Jesus had shown himself to be the true King of the world. He had thrown open God’s family and called people of all nations to lay down their own identities and lives and enter into his identity by being baptized into his life.
This was the bold declaration of the early church and it was their central message. Jesus was the true King who deserved loyalty and demanded submission. All other ways of life and holders of power were mere pretenders. There was no king except the Messiah. There was no salvation outside of him and his people. And there was no other way to live eternally than to lay down one’s life and live for the Messiah and in the best interests of others. The Greek world saw all of this as mere foolishness. How could an average man who died on a Roman cross possibly be any sort of Messiah, let alone the true King of the World? Only a fool would follow this Messiah. Only a group of “Messiahists” or “Christians” would follow such folly. It may have been an insult on the lips of those who called these people Christians for the first time but they proudly wore the name Christian.
Luke ends this section by giving us two quick snapshots of important elements of the early Christian communities. One is that the miraculous gift of prophecy that came through the laying on of the apostles hands was present in Antioch. Those who were specially gifted, men like Agabus, continued to prepare and edify the body of believers.
They also continued to live like the family that they were. When someone was in need within the family of believers it was the shared responsibility of all of them to provide for their brothers and sisters. The believers in Judea were particularly hard hit by persecution and famines and the other believers, mostly their Gentile brothers and sisters around the world would continue to provide for them. They knew that God would provide for them just as Jesus had promised in passages like Matthew 6, but that he would often do so through th ebrotherhood of the church.
Devotional Thought
If someone who had no previous knowledge of Christianity in any way were to come to this country and observe your church what might they call you? Would they call you the “isolationists”? Would they call you the “holier than thouists”? Would they call you the “bash everybody elsists”? Would they call you the “serve the poorists”? Or would they also see that above all, your church family followed the Messiah as King? Would they call you the “Messiahists”? Is that truly the central message of your family of believers? What are some of the things that churches can start to stress over just following Jesus as the true king of the world?
22 News of this reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23 When he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24 He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
25 Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
27 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) 29 The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. 30 This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
Dig Deeper
There is an old saying that I used to hear a lot as a kid although I don’t hear it nearly as much anymore. It is the classic line, “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” On one hand I understand the point of that saying that is trying to get across to people that we shouldn’t be worried about the labels or names that other people might assign us. On the other hand, I disagree with the mindset of that saying. Names and labels do matter and they do carry meaning and they can really hurt people. But names can also bring a great deal of pride and identity to those who carry a certain name. Family names, for instance, can be very important to people. Your surname carries with it a great deal of history and identity. It tells the world who you are, what kind of people you come from, and even what is valuable to you as a human being.
Just as individuals can be given names and labels that help others identify them or pigeonhole them, so groups can receive names. Sometimes those names are meant to honor or identify them. Other times the name is meant to ridicule the group and put its in its place. When it comes to religious groups, the name that it chooses to give itself often says a great deal about what is truly important to that group. Many religious groups today have chosen to name themselves after a man who was important in their history or even a specific aspect of their belief, which I suppose says something important about what they truly value. Some of the groups, such as the Methodists, initially received their names as an insult from other groups (in the case of the Methodists, they were given the name as mockery of the methodical ways that they received from their founder John Wesley).
The early followers of Jesus seemed to have initially and informally called themselves the Way, and they referred to each other as believers, saints, disciples, or the most common term, brothers. They saw themselves as family and the frequent use of referring to one another as brothers and sisters denotes that belief. In this passage, however, we find the term “Christian” being attached to those who followed Christ. This is no small detail or simply an interesting factoid included by Luke into his account of the spread of the gospel. It probably started out as a bit of an insult or had an intent to demean. But it is important, for in that name we learn a great deal about this early community and what they believed and practiced. The Christians, as many other groups have done in history, took a name that was meant to put them down and instead they found great distinction, identity, and pride in it.
As Luke continued to chronicle the spread of God’s family to the people of all nations, he returned to those that were scattered following the execution of Stephen. Some traveled as far as Antioch, which was the third largest city in the Roman Empire behind Rome and Alexandria, and was something of a cultural center in the Roman world as well as a social and political hub in the region of Syria. Following on the heels of the door to the kingdom of God being thrown open to the Gentiles, big things began to happen in Antioch. This wasn’t just the conversion of one small household, as important as that was. The disciples in Antioch began to see Gentiles in Antioch, many of whom were probably from all types of nations, stream into the kingdom of God. They heard the good news that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, that the family of the Most High God had been thrown open to all people everywhere.
As a result, many believed and joined the family. In fact it seems that such a commotion of good news was beginning to happen in Antioch that the church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to report what was going on, surely, but even more importantly to help in the ministry work there. There were several men described in the book of Acts that are described as being full of the Holy Spirit but Barnabas was the only man that was also described as “good.” There was a special quality to Barnabas and his commitment to the other believers that went beyond the norm. Barnabas was highly thought of in the early Christian community and was a man of great godliness. What he saw in Antioch was not some worrisome outbreak of false or compromised teaching. He saw the fulfillment of the door that was opened at Cornelius’ house. He saw God’s one family of all nations finally taking shape.
But he also realized rather quickly that they were facing a problem in Antioch. They were, in fact, facing one of those rare occasions when someone finds that they are up against what we call “a good problem to have.” God was working so powerfully in this Syrian city that the work was evidently overwhelming the brothers and sisters that were there. In response Barnabas displayed the rare ability, through the guidance of the Spirit, to be able to identify the right worker at at the right time for the right ministry.
We aren’t told why Barnabas’ thoughts turned to Saul, only that they did. This was the second time in their lives that Barnabas had paved the way for Saul in the Christian community and we don’t know why he saw so much in Saul, but he certainly was earning his nickname “son of encouragement.” The truly shocking thing is that this was probably ten years after we had last seen Saul in the book of Acts. He had apparently returned to Tarsus and spent his time sharing the gospel announcement with the people in the regions around Tarsus. He also, no doubt, spent that time poring through the Scriptures and learning how the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to a Messiah like Jesus all along. Armed with that knowledge, he was ready to spread the gospel to the Gentile world. Saul was the right man for the job. He would come to Antioch and spend the next year working side-by-side with Barnabas teaching and building up the believers in Antioch.
It was during this time in Antioch that the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians. That has come to be a term that has, for the most part, become divorced from its original meaning, but it is worth taking a look at what that term would have meant in first century Antioch because it gives us great insight into what was being taught and lived out among those early Christians.
The term “Christ” now is almost seen as though it were Jesus’ last name but it is actually the English version of the Greek “Chrestos” which means “Messiah” or “Anointed One.” The term carried with it the connotation that the Christ was a king, and in the declarations of the early believers, the true king of the world. The Christ was the one promised by God through the Old Testament Scriptures. He would be the one who would sum up in himself everything that Israel was called to be in the world but had failed to be. He would represent God’s people and take on the punishment due to sinners so that those who had no justification to call themselves part of God’s promised family could do just that. Through the resurrection, Jesus had shown himself to be the Son of God, the Messiah. In declaring Jesus to be the Christ, then, the early believers were declaring that through the resurrection Jesus had shown himself to be the true King of the world. He had thrown open God’s family and called people of all nations to lay down their own identities and lives and enter into his identity by being baptized into his life.
This was the bold declaration of the early church and it was their central message. Jesus was the true King who deserved loyalty and demanded submission. All other ways of life and holders of power were mere pretenders. There was no king except the Messiah. There was no salvation outside of him and his people. And there was no other way to live eternally than to lay down one’s life and live for the Messiah and in the best interests of others. The Greek world saw all of this as mere foolishness. How could an average man who died on a Roman cross possibly be any sort of Messiah, let alone the true King of the World? Only a fool would follow this Messiah. Only a group of “Messiahists” or “Christians” would follow such folly. It may have been an insult on the lips of those who called these people Christians for the first time but they proudly wore the name Christian.
Luke ends this section by giving us two quick snapshots of important elements of the early Christian communities. One is that the miraculous gift of prophecy that came through the laying on of the apostles hands was present in Antioch. Those who were specially gifted, men like Agabus, continued to prepare and edify the body of believers.
They also continued to live like the family that they were. When someone was in need within the family of believers it was the shared responsibility of all of them to provide for their brothers and sisters. The believers in Judea were particularly hard hit by persecution and famines and the other believers, mostly their Gentile brothers and sisters around the world would continue to provide for them. They knew that God would provide for them just as Jesus had promised in passages like Matthew 6, but that he would often do so through th ebrotherhood of the church.
Devotional Thought
If someone who had no previous knowledge of Christianity in any way were to come to this country and observe your church what might they call you? Would they call you the “isolationists”? Would they call you the “holier than thouists”? Would they call you the “bash everybody elsists”? Would they call you the “serve the poorists”? Or would they also see that above all, your church family followed the Messiah as King? Would they call you the “Messiahists”? Is that truly the central message of your family of believers? What are some of the things that churches can start to stress over just following Jesus as the true king of the world?
Friday, March 04, 2011
Acts 11:1-18
1 The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3 and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”
4 Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’
8 “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
9 “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
11 “Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14 He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’
15 “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with[a] water, but you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.’ 17 So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”
18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
Dig Deeper
Last year I was out of town on a ministry trip and my wife was at work at her hospital overnight. We had a friend staying with our boys and taking care of them for the night. While I was still out of town, my son called and asked if he could have our friend take him to a football game up at his high school. I told him that he could and that either our friend would pick him up after the game or I would be back in town by then and could get him. On the way home, my phone had died as I had forgotten to charge the battery but I soon got back into town and went to pick him up. I waited for quite awhile but he didn’t come out. I returned back to our house to find out from our friend that he had called and gone from the football field back to his high school building which was a bout a mile away for a post-game bonfire and dance. I was rather upset and went up to the school to find him and bring him home. When I finally found him I demanded an explanation of why he would have done such a thing. He calmly responded by telling me the narrative of events that night, including that he had tried to call me but my phone was dead. The game had gotten out earlier than he thought and everyone was leaving. He felt that either had to walk up to his school with a large group of friends and try to reach me from there or stay at the field alone. After hearing his explanation I realized that given the situation he had made the right choice and my initial objections were answered. All that was necessary was for me to hear the story and get the details.
This incident between Peter and Cornelius was no small thing and just hearing some of the details clearly made the believers in Judea, specifically in Jerusalem rather nervous. They wanted to know what exactly what went on while Peter was in Caesarea with Cornelius and the household of Gentiles. They clearly felt that Peter had some serious explaining to do. What they had heard seemed to be a massive breach of normal practices, one that would have blown a rather large hole in the worldview of the Jewish Christians concerning what it meant to be part of God’s family.
As Peter returned to Jerusalem, no doubt excited about all that had happened and that God was doing, he was immediately confronted by a concerned group of “circumcised believers.” It is doubtful that this was a formalized faction or group yet but the people that were the most concerned about this issue probably formed the nucleus of those who would continue to battle the issue of Gentiles being allowed into the family of God. By the time Paul wrote the letter of Galatians, he had a very dim view of these people as he believed that by that time they had no excuse for their continuing desire to bind the Gentiles with the law (see Gal. 2:12; 5:12). At that time they had apparently become a somewhat specific faction but the group that confronted Peter was probably little more than the roots of that group.
It is interesting, though, that their first question had to do with Peter eating with the Gentiles. It demonstrates that their concern seemed to have been more with following the Law than with truly inquiring about what God was doing through Peter with the Gentiles, but it also shows that acceptance of the Gentiles into God’s family on the part of the existing Christian community absolutely hinged on the removal of the necessity of the food laws (which explains the reason that God’s vision to Peter removed the food laws and only later did Peter make the connection that this was paving the way for Gentiles to be accepted into God’s family). You could not have full acceptance of the Gentiles into the family of God without the removal of the necessity of the food laws.
At the heart of the concern of the Jerusalem believers was whether or not Peter had accepted these Gentile pagans in the family of the Messiah without making sure that they had become full family members by following the Law and being circumcised, the very things that in their mind were necessary for family status. There may have been a mixture of concern about zeal for God’s Law as well as fear that they would receive harsh criticism and even further persecution from the Jews if it was thought that they were indiscriminately fellowshipping with Gentiles. To do so would have rendered the new Christian community to the status of complete pagans and blasphemers in the eyes of the Jews rather than just an inerrant sect of Judaism. Peter’s response was to simply tell them the story and explain to them everything that had happened.
Luke again takes the time, for the third time now, to recount Peter’s story as he was given a vision concerning the food laws, Cornelius, and the Gentiles. Peter initially protested at the thought of doing anything that violated the Law but it was the divine voice that ordered him to do so. Up until that point, he had been blameless in his observation of the food laws. It took three times, a number that signified completeness to the Jewish people, to fully make clear to Peter that this was God’s will. Immediately on the heels of the heavenly vision, the men from Caesarea came, demonstrating in Peter’s mind that their visit was directly connected to his vision. The Spirit told Peter to have no hesitation about entering into the house of this Gentile, and peter now mentions that he brought six brothers with him as witnesses to all that happened. Peter found Cornelius eagerly waiting for him and mentions for the first time the angel had specifically told Cornelius that the message that Peter brought would bring salvation, or in other words, would finally bring them into God’s family.
Peter then recounted to the brothers how the Holy Spirit came upon them just as he had come upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. It is significant that Peter did not relate the coming on of the Spirit here with the baptism salvation event later in Acts 2. The reason is simple. The pouring out of the Spirit in the upper room on Pentecost was an event that signified that the door to the kingdom was truly swinging wide open and that people could be baptized into Christ and enter into God’s kingdom. It was not a salvation event. The Spirit coming upon Cornelius and the others was a completion of that once-for-all baptism of the Spirit. The Spirit had been made available and salvation had come first to the Jew then to the Gentile (Rom. 1:16; 2:10). The baptism with the Spirit was not some separate event that continues today to be an experience for certain believers who attain a higher spiritual plane than others, but it was door that opened up and poured out on the Jews (Acts 2), then the Samaritans (Acts 8), and finally the Gentiles (Acts 10-11) that made baptism into Christ available for all time and once that door had been opened it cannot be closed.
So what was Peter to do? He asked them quite clearly, “if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way.” Who was Peter to reject what God had accepted? The Gentiles had been given the same gift that had been given to the Jews. They had every bit as much right, just as they were, to enter into God’s family based on their baptism into Christ alone. That was definitive. They were members of God’s family without having to first become Jews. The baptism of the Holy Spirit had come and opened God’s family for all time to all people of all nations.
So Peter had given the best defense for and explanation of his activities that he could possibly imagine in the form of a rather straightforward narrative of events. At every turn, this was not an expression of Peter’s will or explanations but it was the expression of God’s will. The only choice that Peter had was to accept what God was doing and that would seem to have been the only choice that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem had. Their initial reaction was to accept Peter’s words and to praise God that he was so gracious so as to even give the repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles.
But as we well know, human nature is not always that simple either. This issue would pop its head up again and again during the first generation of the church. It is one thing to hear that God has opened his family up to all people and rejoice over that. But the hard work of putting it into practice, dealing with it, and forging unity when dearly cherished practices and beliefs run headlong into differing beliefs and practices of those that were also in God’s family is an entirely different thing. It’s easy to say that the family of believers is your true family but the hard work of actually embracing that through the difficult times and living it out is a much more difficult and ongoing task.
Devotional Thought
Do you truly embrace your church family and the family of believers as your family or do they still fulfill a rather secondary role in your life? What would it look like to truly embrace the family of believers as your primary family of identity and loyalty as the Scriptures call for?
4 Starting from the beginning, Peter told them the whole story: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. I saw something like a large sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to where I was. 6 I looked into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles and birds. 7 Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’
8 “I replied, ‘Surely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
9 “The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ 10 This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.
11 “Right then three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea stopped at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to have no hesitation about going with them. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He told us how he had seen an angel appear in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. 14 He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’
15 “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with[a] water, but you will be baptized with[b] the Holy Spirit.’ 17 So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”
18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
Dig Deeper
Last year I was out of town on a ministry trip and my wife was at work at her hospital overnight. We had a friend staying with our boys and taking care of them for the night. While I was still out of town, my son called and asked if he could have our friend take him to a football game up at his high school. I told him that he could and that either our friend would pick him up after the game or I would be back in town by then and could get him. On the way home, my phone had died as I had forgotten to charge the battery but I soon got back into town and went to pick him up. I waited for quite awhile but he didn’t come out. I returned back to our house to find out from our friend that he had called and gone from the football field back to his high school building which was a bout a mile away for a post-game bonfire and dance. I was rather upset and went up to the school to find him and bring him home. When I finally found him I demanded an explanation of why he would have done such a thing. He calmly responded by telling me the narrative of events that night, including that he had tried to call me but my phone was dead. The game had gotten out earlier than he thought and everyone was leaving. He felt that either had to walk up to his school with a large group of friends and try to reach me from there or stay at the field alone. After hearing his explanation I realized that given the situation he had made the right choice and my initial objections were answered. All that was necessary was for me to hear the story and get the details.
This incident between Peter and Cornelius was no small thing and just hearing some of the details clearly made the believers in Judea, specifically in Jerusalem rather nervous. They wanted to know what exactly what went on while Peter was in Caesarea with Cornelius and the household of Gentiles. They clearly felt that Peter had some serious explaining to do. What they had heard seemed to be a massive breach of normal practices, one that would have blown a rather large hole in the worldview of the Jewish Christians concerning what it meant to be part of God’s family.
As Peter returned to Jerusalem, no doubt excited about all that had happened and that God was doing, he was immediately confronted by a concerned group of “circumcised believers.” It is doubtful that this was a formalized faction or group yet but the people that were the most concerned about this issue probably formed the nucleus of those who would continue to battle the issue of Gentiles being allowed into the family of God. By the time Paul wrote the letter of Galatians, he had a very dim view of these people as he believed that by that time they had no excuse for their continuing desire to bind the Gentiles with the law (see Gal. 2:12; 5:12). At that time they had apparently become a somewhat specific faction but the group that confronted Peter was probably little more than the roots of that group.
It is interesting, though, that their first question had to do with Peter eating with the Gentiles. It demonstrates that their concern seemed to have been more with following the Law than with truly inquiring about what God was doing through Peter with the Gentiles, but it also shows that acceptance of the Gentiles into God’s family on the part of the existing Christian community absolutely hinged on the removal of the necessity of the food laws (which explains the reason that God’s vision to Peter removed the food laws and only later did Peter make the connection that this was paving the way for Gentiles to be accepted into God’s family). You could not have full acceptance of the Gentiles into the family of God without the removal of the necessity of the food laws.
At the heart of the concern of the Jerusalem believers was whether or not Peter had accepted these Gentile pagans in the family of the Messiah without making sure that they had become full family members by following the Law and being circumcised, the very things that in their mind were necessary for family status. There may have been a mixture of concern about zeal for God’s Law as well as fear that they would receive harsh criticism and even further persecution from the Jews if it was thought that they were indiscriminately fellowshipping with Gentiles. To do so would have rendered the new Christian community to the status of complete pagans and blasphemers in the eyes of the Jews rather than just an inerrant sect of Judaism. Peter’s response was to simply tell them the story and explain to them everything that had happened.
Luke again takes the time, for the third time now, to recount Peter’s story as he was given a vision concerning the food laws, Cornelius, and the Gentiles. Peter initially protested at the thought of doing anything that violated the Law but it was the divine voice that ordered him to do so. Up until that point, he had been blameless in his observation of the food laws. It took three times, a number that signified completeness to the Jewish people, to fully make clear to Peter that this was God’s will. Immediately on the heels of the heavenly vision, the men from Caesarea came, demonstrating in Peter’s mind that their visit was directly connected to his vision. The Spirit told Peter to have no hesitation about entering into the house of this Gentile, and peter now mentions that he brought six brothers with him as witnesses to all that happened. Peter found Cornelius eagerly waiting for him and mentions for the first time the angel had specifically told Cornelius that the message that Peter brought would bring salvation, or in other words, would finally bring them into God’s family.
Peter then recounted to the brothers how the Holy Spirit came upon them just as he had come upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost. It is significant that Peter did not relate the coming on of the Spirit here with the baptism salvation event later in Acts 2. The reason is simple. The pouring out of the Spirit in the upper room on Pentecost was an event that signified that the door to the kingdom was truly swinging wide open and that people could be baptized into Christ and enter into God’s kingdom. It was not a salvation event. The Spirit coming upon Cornelius and the others was a completion of that once-for-all baptism of the Spirit. The Spirit had been made available and salvation had come first to the Jew then to the Gentile (Rom. 1:16; 2:10). The baptism with the Spirit was not some separate event that continues today to be an experience for certain believers who attain a higher spiritual plane than others, but it was door that opened up and poured out on the Jews (Acts 2), then the Samaritans (Acts 8), and finally the Gentiles (Acts 10-11) that made baptism into Christ available for all time and once that door had been opened it cannot be closed.
So what was Peter to do? He asked them quite clearly, “if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way.” Who was Peter to reject what God had accepted? The Gentiles had been given the same gift that had been given to the Jews. They had every bit as much right, just as they were, to enter into God’s family based on their baptism into Christ alone. That was definitive. They were members of God’s family without having to first become Jews. The baptism of the Holy Spirit had come and opened God’s family for all time to all people of all nations.
So Peter had given the best defense for and explanation of his activities that he could possibly imagine in the form of a rather straightforward narrative of events. At every turn, this was not an expression of Peter’s will or explanations but it was the expression of God’s will. The only choice that Peter had was to accept what God was doing and that would seem to have been the only choice that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem had. Their initial reaction was to accept Peter’s words and to praise God that he was so gracious so as to even give the repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles.
But as we well know, human nature is not always that simple either. This issue would pop its head up again and again during the first generation of the church. It is one thing to hear that God has opened his family up to all people and rejoice over that. But the hard work of putting it into practice, dealing with it, and forging unity when dearly cherished practices and beliefs run headlong into differing beliefs and practices of those that were also in God’s family is an entirely different thing. It’s easy to say that the family of believers is your true family but the hard work of actually embracing that through the difficult times and living it out is a much more difficult and ongoing task.
Devotional Thought
Do you truly embrace your church family and the family of believers as your family or do they still fulfill a rather secondary role in your life? What would it look like to truly embrace the family of believers as your primary family of identity and loyalty as the Scriptures call for?
Monday, February 28, 2011
Acts 10:36-48
36 You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. 37 You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, 40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41 He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. 46 For they heard them speaking in tongues[b] and praising God.
Then Peter said, 47 “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.
Dig Deeper
A few years back the church at which I now minister had a member of the church family who happened to be a player for the local professional NFL team in our area. That was before we moved here but many of the people who are still in our church family here knew him and his wife (he was injured and eventually retired from professional football before moving back home). I thought about that recently, though, when my youngest son asked me about going up to the stadium and maybe catching a game. He said that he would like to watch the game and then go into the locker room and meet the players. That’s a great idea, but of course I had to explain to him that we didn’t have tickets and couldn’t afford to buy any. Then he thought that perhaps we could just go up to the stadium and go into the locker room without getting tickets for the game and going to that. What he didn’t realize is that there is no way that we could ever get into that locker room. We could try and plead and beg and do everything else that came to mind but they would not let us anywhere near the locker room. We are not members of the team and you don’t get in unless you are a member.
But the brother that I mentioned was a member of the Green Bay Packers. He could go into the locker room whenever he felt like it because he belonged to the team. Of course no one else in the church at the time was a member of the Packers and so they could not go in even if they wanted to. But from time to time, this player would take a couple of disciples from the church with him into the locker room. They could go where they normally would not have been allowed simply because he told the security guards that they were with him. Because he belonged, he had the right to bring them in with him and his endorsement signified to the security people that it was okay for them to enter. Any of the normal objections would be voided by the fact that he had vouched for them.
Now that’s not a perfect analogy, analogies never are perfect, but it does start to help us understand some of the confusing aspects of this scene here. We can easily recall passages like Acts 2:38 where it is promised that all who enter into the life of Christ through repentance and baptism will receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here, at first glance at least, it looks as though the Spirit is being given before baptism. That can be confusing for some folks. But first we must remember that there is an important difference between the Spirit of sonship that we receive at baptism, that subtle indwelling that guides us through the process of growing into Christ’s family and being transformed into the image of Christ, and the outpouring of the Spirit that enabled people to display the miraculous gifts of the Spirit as a verifier of the truth of their message. It is the difference between the “gift” of the Spirit and the” gifts” of the Spirit.
The reality is that what is going here is not at all confusing when we look at it from the perspective of the above analogy. The Gentiles could not previously enter into God’s family but they would be allowed now. And just so that there was no confusion and no arguments, one who belonged to the family, the Spirit of God himself, would vouch for them. The Holy Spirit would give them his special outpouring, something that for the early church usually only came through the laying on of hands by the apostles. But this was not a normative event. This was a once-and-for-all opening of the door to the Gentiles that was similar in its magnitude to the outpouring of the Spirit that came upon the apostles in Acts 2 at Pentecost. He poured himself out on them, enabling them to perform signs and speak in tongues to show that the door to God’s family really was opening and that people really could be baptized into God’s family. He was pouring himself out on these Gentiles now to vouch for them and show the Jewish Christians that God’s family door was opening to them as well. If the Spirit had vouched for them then they all they could really do was to endorse the Spirit’s call and baptize these folks into God’s family.
Throughout Peter’s speech to the household and friends of Cornelius he continues to stress that everything that has happened and everything that he was claiming about Jesus Christ was a result of God. Cornelius was not a Jew but he was a God-fearer. He was one who had been staring in through the shop window for a long time and had liked what he had seen about Judaism but he could not realistically become a member of God’s family. So Peter makes it clear to him that this was the same God. Everything that Cornelius admired and desired about this God had come to fulfillment through Jesus Christ, and what was more was that he no longer had to stand on the outside and look in admiringly. He and all other Gentiles could finally come in.
At every turn in this section, Peter brings out that the promised salvation that would make people of all nations God’s people had come through the agency of Jesus Christ but it was orchestrated through the hand of God. It becomes clear that when Peter referred to God, he was primarily referring to the Father whose role is to appoint and ordain the actions of the Son and the Spirit. God sent Jesus Christ to announce peace to the people of Israel. He, through the power of the Holy Spirit, went around showing people that he truly was the Messiah, but he was able to do all that because God was with him. He was put to death on a cross, but God raised him from the dead. This was not an event that was witnessed by all people but was witnessed by those whom God chose to serve as witnesses to his resurrection to the rest of the world. They were the ones that were appointed to preach that God had appointed Jesus Christ as the judge of the living and the dead.
Finally, said Peter, all of the prophets testified about Jesus, declaring that everyone who believes in him would receive forgiveness of sins through his name and life. The person who insists on finding a specific prophecy or passage that makes this exact statement will have some trouble. Peter was not claiming any such thing. He was not claiming that there was a specific passage in the Old Testament that made this prophecy. His point was that the whole of the Old Testament promises that came through all the prophets pointed to this exact concept. God’s people would always be built on faith and the specific expression of that faith would come through dying to self and having resurrection faith in the life of Jesus Christ (see Romans 4 where Paul expounds upon this exact idea).
It appears that verse 43 was not the end of what Peter was planning to say because he was interrupted by the Holy Spirit. We can speculate that perhaps Peter was ramping up to give a similar call to Acts 2:38 where he called his listeners to repent and be baptized in Christ for the forgiveness of sin and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But God knew how challenging this was going to be for the Jewish Christians and the watching Jewish world. Many would have a hard time accepting the entrance of Gentiles into the family of God based solely on being baptized into Christ and reception of the subtle but powerful gift of the indwelling Spirit. They were so conditioned to think of things like circumcision and following the Law as one’s uniform of the people of God. It would have been easy for them to continue to question the validity of the Gentile believers and to eventually splinter God’s people into two groups of Christians. But this would have gone against the very point of God creating his one people out of the two (Eph. 2:11-22).
In fact, this was such a challenging concept that the Spirit considerately stepped in and gave a clear sign that God was accepting the Gentiles just as they were based on nothing more than their belief and baptism into the life of Christ. What God was calling clean, no man should call unclean. That this was a monumentally difficult acceptance for Jewish Christians is evidenced by much of the rest of the New Testament. Books such as Ephesians, Galatians, and Romans have the difficulty of fully accepting Gentiles into God’s family despite not being circumcised or following the Law as a primary theme. And that is after the Holy Spirit broke in upon the Gentiles and poured out the miraculous gifts upon them.
Some have wondered, though, if the Spirit coming upon them meant that the Gentiles were already saved without really needing to be baptized into Christ through water baptism. In some ways this speaks more to our Western need to break everything down into its smallest parts to understand it, and usually winds up in us separating things out that don’t need to separated from one another. But this passage has led to so much confusion for some that it is probably a legitimate question to consider. The key, as mentioned above, is to understand the difference between the outpouring of the Spirit and the indwelling. Even in Old Testament times, the Spirit would occasionally come upon one person or a small group of people in a special act and enable them to partake (including someone like King Saul who was certainly not a man after God’s own heart but could be used occasionally for God’s purposes), however temporarily, in specific work of God. This practice would continue for a brief time after the coming of Christ. But this is separate to the gift of the indwelling Spirit that was received only when one entered into Christ and received a new heart through the work of God’s own Spirit (Ezek. 36:26). What the Gentiles received, then, in the outpouring of the Spirit and the ability to demonstrate the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, was not entrance into the family of God. It was a voucher from the Holy Spirit. It was a one-time, non-normative event that was showing God’s people that this group of non-Jews really did belong into God’s family. The only thing that one needs to enter into the life of Christ through baptism is faith in his life; nothing more and nothing less.
Devotional Thought
Chances are pretty good that you are a Gentile. Have you really ever spent some time thinking deeply about the great lengths that God went through to bring you into his family. Not just as a Gentile but even as an individual. Spend some time today praying through your own salvation story and how God brought you into his family. Express your deep gratitude for how much he has done to bring you into his family.
39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, 40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41 He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. 46 For they heard them speaking in tongues[b] and praising God.
Then Peter said, 47 “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.
Dig Deeper
A few years back the church at which I now minister had a member of the church family who happened to be a player for the local professional NFL team in our area. That was before we moved here but many of the people who are still in our church family here knew him and his wife (he was injured and eventually retired from professional football before moving back home). I thought about that recently, though, when my youngest son asked me about going up to the stadium and maybe catching a game. He said that he would like to watch the game and then go into the locker room and meet the players. That’s a great idea, but of course I had to explain to him that we didn’t have tickets and couldn’t afford to buy any. Then he thought that perhaps we could just go up to the stadium and go into the locker room without getting tickets for the game and going to that. What he didn’t realize is that there is no way that we could ever get into that locker room. We could try and plead and beg and do everything else that came to mind but they would not let us anywhere near the locker room. We are not members of the team and you don’t get in unless you are a member.
But the brother that I mentioned was a member of the Green Bay Packers. He could go into the locker room whenever he felt like it because he belonged to the team. Of course no one else in the church at the time was a member of the Packers and so they could not go in even if they wanted to. But from time to time, this player would take a couple of disciples from the church with him into the locker room. They could go where they normally would not have been allowed simply because he told the security guards that they were with him. Because he belonged, he had the right to bring them in with him and his endorsement signified to the security people that it was okay for them to enter. Any of the normal objections would be voided by the fact that he had vouched for them.
Now that’s not a perfect analogy, analogies never are perfect, but it does start to help us understand some of the confusing aspects of this scene here. We can easily recall passages like Acts 2:38 where it is promised that all who enter into the life of Christ through repentance and baptism will receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here, at first glance at least, it looks as though the Spirit is being given before baptism. That can be confusing for some folks. But first we must remember that there is an important difference between the Spirit of sonship that we receive at baptism, that subtle indwelling that guides us through the process of growing into Christ’s family and being transformed into the image of Christ, and the outpouring of the Spirit that enabled people to display the miraculous gifts of the Spirit as a verifier of the truth of their message. It is the difference between the “gift” of the Spirit and the” gifts” of the Spirit.
The reality is that what is going here is not at all confusing when we look at it from the perspective of the above analogy. The Gentiles could not previously enter into God’s family but they would be allowed now. And just so that there was no confusion and no arguments, one who belonged to the family, the Spirit of God himself, would vouch for them. The Holy Spirit would give them his special outpouring, something that for the early church usually only came through the laying on of hands by the apostles. But this was not a normative event. This was a once-and-for-all opening of the door to the Gentiles that was similar in its magnitude to the outpouring of the Spirit that came upon the apostles in Acts 2 at Pentecost. He poured himself out on them, enabling them to perform signs and speak in tongues to show that the door to God’s family really was opening and that people really could be baptized into God’s family. He was pouring himself out on these Gentiles now to vouch for them and show the Jewish Christians that God’s family door was opening to them as well. If the Spirit had vouched for them then they all they could really do was to endorse the Spirit’s call and baptize these folks into God’s family.
Throughout Peter’s speech to the household and friends of Cornelius he continues to stress that everything that has happened and everything that he was claiming about Jesus Christ was a result of God. Cornelius was not a Jew but he was a God-fearer. He was one who had been staring in through the shop window for a long time and had liked what he had seen about Judaism but he could not realistically become a member of God’s family. So Peter makes it clear to him that this was the same God. Everything that Cornelius admired and desired about this God had come to fulfillment through Jesus Christ, and what was more was that he no longer had to stand on the outside and look in admiringly. He and all other Gentiles could finally come in.
At every turn in this section, Peter brings out that the promised salvation that would make people of all nations God’s people had come through the agency of Jesus Christ but it was orchestrated through the hand of God. It becomes clear that when Peter referred to God, he was primarily referring to the Father whose role is to appoint and ordain the actions of the Son and the Spirit. God sent Jesus Christ to announce peace to the people of Israel. He, through the power of the Holy Spirit, went around showing people that he truly was the Messiah, but he was able to do all that because God was with him. He was put to death on a cross, but God raised him from the dead. This was not an event that was witnessed by all people but was witnessed by those whom God chose to serve as witnesses to his resurrection to the rest of the world. They were the ones that were appointed to preach that God had appointed Jesus Christ as the judge of the living and the dead.
Finally, said Peter, all of the prophets testified about Jesus, declaring that everyone who believes in him would receive forgiveness of sins through his name and life. The person who insists on finding a specific prophecy or passage that makes this exact statement will have some trouble. Peter was not claiming any such thing. He was not claiming that there was a specific passage in the Old Testament that made this prophecy. His point was that the whole of the Old Testament promises that came through all the prophets pointed to this exact concept. God’s people would always be built on faith and the specific expression of that faith would come through dying to self and having resurrection faith in the life of Jesus Christ (see Romans 4 where Paul expounds upon this exact idea).
It appears that verse 43 was not the end of what Peter was planning to say because he was interrupted by the Holy Spirit. We can speculate that perhaps Peter was ramping up to give a similar call to Acts 2:38 where he called his listeners to repent and be baptized in Christ for the forgiveness of sin and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But God knew how challenging this was going to be for the Jewish Christians and the watching Jewish world. Many would have a hard time accepting the entrance of Gentiles into the family of God based solely on being baptized into Christ and reception of the subtle but powerful gift of the indwelling Spirit. They were so conditioned to think of things like circumcision and following the Law as one’s uniform of the people of God. It would have been easy for them to continue to question the validity of the Gentile believers and to eventually splinter God’s people into two groups of Christians. But this would have gone against the very point of God creating his one people out of the two (Eph. 2:11-22).
In fact, this was such a challenging concept that the Spirit considerately stepped in and gave a clear sign that God was accepting the Gentiles just as they were based on nothing more than their belief and baptism into the life of Christ. What God was calling clean, no man should call unclean. That this was a monumentally difficult acceptance for Jewish Christians is evidenced by much of the rest of the New Testament. Books such as Ephesians, Galatians, and Romans have the difficulty of fully accepting Gentiles into God’s family despite not being circumcised or following the Law as a primary theme. And that is after the Holy Spirit broke in upon the Gentiles and poured out the miraculous gifts upon them.
Some have wondered, though, if the Spirit coming upon them meant that the Gentiles were already saved without really needing to be baptized into Christ through water baptism. In some ways this speaks more to our Western need to break everything down into its smallest parts to understand it, and usually winds up in us separating things out that don’t need to separated from one another. But this passage has led to so much confusion for some that it is probably a legitimate question to consider. The key, as mentioned above, is to understand the difference between the outpouring of the Spirit and the indwelling. Even in Old Testament times, the Spirit would occasionally come upon one person or a small group of people in a special act and enable them to partake (including someone like King Saul who was certainly not a man after God’s own heart but could be used occasionally for God’s purposes), however temporarily, in specific work of God. This practice would continue for a brief time after the coming of Christ. But this is separate to the gift of the indwelling Spirit that was received only when one entered into Christ and received a new heart through the work of God’s own Spirit (Ezek. 36:26). What the Gentiles received, then, in the outpouring of the Spirit and the ability to demonstrate the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, was not entrance into the family of God. It was a voucher from the Holy Spirit. It was a one-time, non-normative event that was showing God’s people that this group of non-Jews really did belong into God’s family. The only thing that one needs to enter into the life of Christ through baptism is faith in his life; nothing more and nothing less.
Devotional Thought
Chances are pretty good that you are a Gentile. Have you really ever spent some time thinking deeply about the great lengths that God went through to bring you into his family. Not just as a Gentile but even as an individual. Spend some time today praying through your own salvation story and how God brought you into his family. Express your deep gratitude for how much he has done to bring you into his family.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Acts 10:17-35 Commentary
17 While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate. 18 They called out, asking if Simon who was known as Peter was staying there.
19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Simon, three[a] men are looking for you. 20 So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.”
21 Peter went down and said to the men, “I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?”
22 The men replied, “We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.” 23 Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.
The next day Peter started out with them, and some of the believers from Joppa went along. 24 The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25 As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. 26 But Peter made him get up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself.”
27 While talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. 28 He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. 29 So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?”
30 Cornelius answered: “Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me 31 and said, ‘Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. 32 Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, who lives by the sea.’ 33 So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.”
34 Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 35 but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.
Dig Deeper
Not all that many years ago a young woman that I know was born into a family many miles away from where I was born. She was, it goes without saying I guess, born into a different family than mine. Once that happened that was it. Once you’re born into family, of course, you cannot go back and be born into another family. And so there it was. She and I were part of a different family and would remain that way all while growing up. We never met while growing up, but we finally did meet almost 17 years ago now. It didn’t take too long for that beautiful young lady and I to decide that we wanted to get married and be together for the remainder of our lives. We did so and we got married and something rather interesting happened during that wedding. Based on nothing more than being married to me, my wife became a member of the Burns family. She had not been born into but she was now as much a Burns as I was. Yet, in many ways she was very different than any of the other Burns family members. She is not related by blood to any of the Burns’ and she couldn’t really change that. All of the Burns ancestors are white and my wife is black but she could not change that. She doesn’t have the same sort of characteristics and attitude that seem to be something of a hallmark of Burns women and she did not need to change that. She is a member of the family.
My wife was accepted into the family despite all of that because she was my wife and for that reason alone. Can you imagine, though, if my family had reluctantly accepted that she had become my wife but did not really accept her as part of the family? Oh, she could marry me, and that was all fine and good, but what if they still didn’t view her as part of the family? What if they began to tell her that it was nice that she had married me but to truly be part of the Burns family there were a few things that would have to be taken care of? First, she would need to go through a series of treatments to whiten her skin because Burns women have lighter skin than her and that’s just how things are. Then, they told her that she would need to change certain things about her character and personality to fit into the model of Burns women. She would have to cook like a Burns woman, keep house like a Burns woman, and follow many of the patterns and typical behaviors that Burns women had always done. Only then, could she really be part of the family. Not only would that be discouraging and unrealistic in many ways, it would certainly make her feel inferior. It would also indicate that marrying me did not accomplish all that much as far as making her a Burns. In fact, it meant virtually nothing as far as that was concerned.
For hundreds of years the family of God belonged to the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people. The family had been promised to descendants of Abraham and they believed that membership into this family was quite literally their birthright. Sure, there were promises to Abraham and through subsequent promises that the whole world would be blessed through this family, but they assumed that that would all somehow happen when God had exalted the nation of Israel, dealt with and judged the pagan nations, and cleared the world of evil and oppression. Only then, in the age to come, would God somehow bring about blessing to the Gentiles. And there were a handful of Jewish converts over the centuries who became Jews but in order to join the family of God, they had to literally become Jews. They had to get circumcised and follow all of the Law of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was only in circumcision, following the food restrictions, and the other laws that people would show themselves to be part of God’s family. There just was no other way that the people of Israel could conceive of being part of God’s people.
This whole issue can be difficult for us, two thousand years later, to connect with and understand but the analogy above (although it’s not a perfect analogy) starts to give us a bit of insight. It seems outrageous for us to see how the followers of Jesus could not grasp that Gentiles could not be saved but that really wasn’t the issue. They knew that God had not promised individual salvation the way we tend to view things nowadays. God had promised a family and had promised that blessing, forgiveness of sin, and salvation would come to those in that family. Jews believed that they would always be that family and failed to understand Old Testament passages that hinted at the fact that they would one day not automatically be so but that it would be passed on to others. They grew furious when Jesus asserted that he was the fulfillment of that promised family and that only those who came to him would be part of it rather than physical descendants of Abraham (see John 8:31-41). So when Jesus told his disciples that Gentiles would come streaming into God’s family as well, they naturally assumed that God’s family was synonymous with being Jewish, with being circumcised and holding to the Law. So they assumed that to be part of God’s family one must do all of those things.
The problem with that, as Paul argues so ably in Romans is that “For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless. . . Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations’” (Rom. 4:14-17). In other words, if one is shown to be in the family of God by following the law, then there is no point in faith. It must be faith in the life of Christ alone that places someone in God’s family or it is nothing at all.
This is the issue at hand that Peter and the other disciples had failed to grasp. This is what God would show Peter as he made his way to the house of Cornelius. This was a big moment in the history of God’s people which is why Luke gives so much attention to it and why the circumstances surrounding it were so non-normative. This was nearly as big a moment as the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost (and in actuality was something of a completion of that event) because this was the time when God’s people finally began to fully grasp what God was doing and that this truly would be one family of all nations, all peoples, all language, and all tribes.
When Peter arrived at Cornelius’ house it became quickly apparent that Cornelius had not known exactly what would happen but he must have sensed that God was going to do something big as he had invited a large number of his family and friends. He was so excited that we can easily understand his slight breech in getting carried away and going overboard by dropping to the feet of Peter in reverence. Peter quickly corrected him, reminding him that in God’s kingdom, there was no hierarchy, just a brotherhood of believers.
As Peter began to address the large gathering of Gentiles at Cornelius’ house, he put the primary issue on the table, so to speak. Normally it would be against common practice for a Jew (and up to that point, a Jewish Christian) to eat with or associate with those outside of God’s family, the Gentiles. But God had shown Peter in his vision that the time for the food laws and dietary restrictions were over and he quickly realized that this meant that God would not be excluding Gentiles from his people any longer. It wasn’t that the law was bad, but the Messiah had come and the law was no longer necessary (Gal. 3:19) as it separated Jews and Gentiles in its very purpose. Now God had made the two into one and destroyed the barrier between the two (Eph. 2:14-15). Just as you might tell a child at a busy street to stop and not walk, but then tell them to go quickly once the crossing light comes on because the situation has changed, so the time to follow the Law as a necessary aspect of being God’s family had passed. The Messiah had come and that was all anyone needed to join into his family.
Thus, Cornelius recounts his encounter with the angel to Peter. The reasons for Cornelius’ re-telling of his encounter and eagerness to hear what God has to say through Peter are obvious, but the only reason that Luke would basically repeat the very details that he has already given is to stress to his readers the importance of what was going on.
Peter had already stressed that his coming into their home was in and of itself a sign that something big had happened to change his worldview and he quickly began his address to his riveted audience by getting to the heart of the matter. God had promised to Abraham that one day God would create one family of all nations and that time had truly come. There would be no special hoops to jump through to be part of God’s family. It was not required that one be physically born into this family or become like those that viewed themselves as already part of it in order to fit. Entrance into this family was based on faith in the life of Christ alone and nothing else. One could not be born into it but one could be born again into this family through Christ (Jn. 3:5) Peter had finally come to realize that “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” This message is as true today as it was when Peter first uttered those words nearly two thousand years ago.
Devotional Thought
In Galatains 2:20, Paul described the moment that he died to his own life and will as being crucified so that he no longer lived for himself but for Christ alone. Have you ever had a clear moment like that in your life when you died to self and was baptized into the life of Christ alone? If you have, have you truly been living a crucified life?
19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Simon, three[a] men are looking for you. 20 So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.”
21 Peter went down and said to the men, “I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come?”
22 The men replied, “We have come from Cornelius the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.” 23 Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.
The next day Peter started out with them, and some of the believers from Joppa went along. 24 The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25 As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. 26 But Peter made him get up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself.”
27 While talking with him, Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. 28 He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. 29 So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?”
30 Cornelius answered: “Three days ago I was in my house praying at this hour, at three in the afternoon. Suddenly a man in shining clothes stood before me 31 and said, ‘Cornelius, God has heard your prayer and remembered your gifts to the poor. 32 Send to Joppa for Simon who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, who lives by the sea.’ 33 So I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.”
34 Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 35 but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.
Dig Deeper
Not all that many years ago a young woman that I know was born into a family many miles away from where I was born. She was, it goes without saying I guess, born into a different family than mine. Once that happened that was it. Once you’re born into family, of course, you cannot go back and be born into another family. And so there it was. She and I were part of a different family and would remain that way all while growing up. We never met while growing up, but we finally did meet almost 17 years ago now. It didn’t take too long for that beautiful young lady and I to decide that we wanted to get married and be together for the remainder of our lives. We did so and we got married and something rather interesting happened during that wedding. Based on nothing more than being married to me, my wife became a member of the Burns family. She had not been born into but she was now as much a Burns as I was. Yet, in many ways she was very different than any of the other Burns family members. She is not related by blood to any of the Burns’ and she couldn’t really change that. All of the Burns ancestors are white and my wife is black but she could not change that. She doesn’t have the same sort of characteristics and attitude that seem to be something of a hallmark of Burns women and she did not need to change that. She is a member of the family.
My wife was accepted into the family despite all of that because she was my wife and for that reason alone. Can you imagine, though, if my family had reluctantly accepted that she had become my wife but did not really accept her as part of the family? Oh, she could marry me, and that was all fine and good, but what if they still didn’t view her as part of the family? What if they began to tell her that it was nice that she had married me but to truly be part of the Burns family there were a few things that would have to be taken care of? First, she would need to go through a series of treatments to whiten her skin because Burns women have lighter skin than her and that’s just how things are. Then, they told her that she would need to change certain things about her character and personality to fit into the model of Burns women. She would have to cook like a Burns woman, keep house like a Burns woman, and follow many of the patterns and typical behaviors that Burns women had always done. Only then, could she really be part of the family. Not only would that be discouraging and unrealistic in many ways, it would certainly make her feel inferior. It would also indicate that marrying me did not accomplish all that much as far as making her a Burns. In fact, it meant virtually nothing as far as that was concerned.
For hundreds of years the family of God belonged to the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people. The family had been promised to descendants of Abraham and they believed that membership into this family was quite literally their birthright. Sure, there were promises to Abraham and through subsequent promises that the whole world would be blessed through this family, but they assumed that that would all somehow happen when God had exalted the nation of Israel, dealt with and judged the pagan nations, and cleared the world of evil and oppression. Only then, in the age to come, would God somehow bring about blessing to the Gentiles. And there were a handful of Jewish converts over the centuries who became Jews but in order to join the family of God, they had to literally become Jews. They had to get circumcised and follow all of the Law of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was only in circumcision, following the food restrictions, and the other laws that people would show themselves to be part of God’s family. There just was no other way that the people of Israel could conceive of being part of God’s people.
This whole issue can be difficult for us, two thousand years later, to connect with and understand but the analogy above (although it’s not a perfect analogy) starts to give us a bit of insight. It seems outrageous for us to see how the followers of Jesus could not grasp that Gentiles could not be saved but that really wasn’t the issue. They knew that God had not promised individual salvation the way we tend to view things nowadays. God had promised a family and had promised that blessing, forgiveness of sin, and salvation would come to those in that family. Jews believed that they would always be that family and failed to understand Old Testament passages that hinted at the fact that they would one day not automatically be so but that it would be passed on to others. They grew furious when Jesus asserted that he was the fulfillment of that promised family and that only those who came to him would be part of it rather than physical descendants of Abraham (see John 8:31-41). So when Jesus told his disciples that Gentiles would come streaming into God’s family as well, they naturally assumed that God’s family was synonymous with being Jewish, with being circumcised and holding to the Law. So they assumed that to be part of God’s family one must do all of those things.
The problem with that, as Paul argues so ably in Romans is that “For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless. . . Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations’” (Rom. 4:14-17). In other words, if one is shown to be in the family of God by following the law, then there is no point in faith. It must be faith in the life of Christ alone that places someone in God’s family or it is nothing at all.
This is the issue at hand that Peter and the other disciples had failed to grasp. This is what God would show Peter as he made his way to the house of Cornelius. This was a big moment in the history of God’s people which is why Luke gives so much attention to it and why the circumstances surrounding it were so non-normative. This was nearly as big a moment as the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost (and in actuality was something of a completion of that event) because this was the time when God’s people finally began to fully grasp what God was doing and that this truly would be one family of all nations, all peoples, all language, and all tribes.
When Peter arrived at Cornelius’ house it became quickly apparent that Cornelius had not known exactly what would happen but he must have sensed that God was going to do something big as he had invited a large number of his family and friends. He was so excited that we can easily understand his slight breech in getting carried away and going overboard by dropping to the feet of Peter in reverence. Peter quickly corrected him, reminding him that in God’s kingdom, there was no hierarchy, just a brotherhood of believers.
As Peter began to address the large gathering of Gentiles at Cornelius’ house, he put the primary issue on the table, so to speak. Normally it would be against common practice for a Jew (and up to that point, a Jewish Christian) to eat with or associate with those outside of God’s family, the Gentiles. But God had shown Peter in his vision that the time for the food laws and dietary restrictions were over and he quickly realized that this meant that God would not be excluding Gentiles from his people any longer. It wasn’t that the law was bad, but the Messiah had come and the law was no longer necessary (Gal. 3:19) as it separated Jews and Gentiles in its very purpose. Now God had made the two into one and destroyed the barrier between the two (Eph. 2:14-15). Just as you might tell a child at a busy street to stop and not walk, but then tell them to go quickly once the crossing light comes on because the situation has changed, so the time to follow the Law as a necessary aspect of being God’s family had passed. The Messiah had come and that was all anyone needed to join into his family.
Thus, Cornelius recounts his encounter with the angel to Peter. The reasons for Cornelius’ re-telling of his encounter and eagerness to hear what God has to say through Peter are obvious, but the only reason that Luke would basically repeat the very details that he has already given is to stress to his readers the importance of what was going on.
Peter had already stressed that his coming into their home was in and of itself a sign that something big had happened to change his worldview and he quickly began his address to his riveted audience by getting to the heart of the matter. God had promised to Abraham that one day God would create one family of all nations and that time had truly come. There would be no special hoops to jump through to be part of God’s family. It was not required that one be physically born into this family or become like those that viewed themselves as already part of it in order to fit. Entrance into this family was based on faith in the life of Christ alone and nothing else. One could not be born into it but one could be born again into this family through Christ (Jn. 3:5) Peter had finally come to realize that “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” This message is as true today as it was when Peter first uttered those words nearly two thousand years ago.
Devotional Thought
In Galatains 2:20, Paul described the moment that he died to his own life and will as being crucified so that he no longer lived for himself but for Christ alone. Have you ever had a clear moment like that in your life when you died to self and was baptized into the life of Christ alone? If you have, have you truly been living a crucified life?
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Acts 10:1-16
1 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. 2 He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. 3 One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”
4 Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.
The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. 5 Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. 6 He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”
7 When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. 8 He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.
Peter’s Vision
9 About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
Dig Deeper
I seem to get a lot of questions wherever I go about what my plans for the future are. People are constantly interested in whether we plan to stay in the ministry where we are at or if we would hope to move somewhere else one day. Or they want to know what is in store as far as the teaching ministry goes. Usually I tell them that it is all up to God. I say that because it is true. We don’t have any plans to go anywhere and I pray constantly that the teaching ministry will go exactly where God wants to take it. At the same time, we are always open to God’s call upon our life. Every now and then, though, someone will ask me quite specifically if I would ever be open to moving to one place or another to serve in the ministry in that place or even to plant one where there is a gap. Sometimes the places that people mention are actually quite attractive and I just tell them that if we ever felt God calling, we would be happy to go (usually those places involve somewhere with rather consistently warm weather, at least those are the places that sound most attractive to my wife and oldest son). On occasion, though, someone will bring up a place that I just don’t want to go and ask me if I might ever consider going there, like my hometown for instance. In those cases, I usually joke that I would be more than happy to go once the actual hand of God appeared and wrote specific instructions on the wall for us to go. Anything short of that, I jest, and I would not go. I usually say this jokingly, but the point is real. There are some things that are so challenging to our way of thinking that it would take something out-of-the-norm, something monumental, in order for us to be willing to do it.
Throughout his ministry Jesus had hinted that the time was coming when the physical Israel would no longer automatically be the children of God, God’s people. Jesus had said that a time was soon coming when the people of Israel would say “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But, Jesus responded that he would reply, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!” Jesus went on to promise that there would “be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last” (Lk. 13:26-29). This was nothing new. After all, the prophets had declared that God’s intention was to bring all nations into the kingdom of God (see Isa. 56:1-7 for instance).
This was no easy concept, however. It wasn’t something that Jews, even Jewish Christians could easily understand or accept (in fact it would take them the first entire generation of Christianity to start to sort it all out), even though Jesus had clearly told them that their mission was to involve going to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). If one held so tightly to a certain definition and understanding of what it meant to be part of God’s people, it would be easy to miss what God was going to do with the Gentiles. After all, the Jews had kept themselves apart from the nations for hundreds of years, at God’s behest, by not intermingling with Gentiles. They circumcised themselves to demonstrate their covenant with God and to show themselves separate from the pagans. They kept the food and dietary laws as a powerful separator between the people of God and all of the other nations. Jews had been persecuted and killed upholding these laws and the honor of God’s people. Changing that mindset would not come easily. Perhaps Jesus had called them to include all people but weren’t these markers like circumcision and the food laws the very things that God had given his people to show them and the world that they were his people? Surely, if anyone wanted to join the Messiah’s family they would have to realize that it was still the family of God. They would still need to follow all of the laws and standards of being part of God’s people in order to number themselves among God’s family that was being formed in the Messiah.
It would take something big and something rather clear to help the apostles, and the entire Christian community, to accept the Gentiles fully into the family of God. If for no other reason, that is exactly why Luke will spend so much time on these dual visions of Cornelius and Peter. This was big. It was the final door that needed to be opened as God’s family became open once-and-forever to people of all nations. This would be difficult for the Jewish Christians to accept, but it would be equally big and encouraging news for Luke’s presumed audience of Theophilus and the other Romans around him.
Cornelius wasn’t just a Gentile. He was a Roman. He wasn’t just a Roman, he was a Roman soldier. He wasn’t just a Roman soldier, he was a centurion that was in charge of a hundred men. He didn’t live in just any city. He lived in Caesarea, a city that the Jews hated and called “the daughter of Edom”; it was a city within Israel but it served as the administration center for Rome in Palestine and boasted more Gentiles than Jews. There was much that was going against Cornelius in the minds of Jews and Jewish Christians alike. But there was also some things that would make him favorable in the eyes of those groups. He was a God-fearer, meaning he greatly respected much about the Jewish religion and observed certain aspects of it, but had not become a full proselyte or been circumcised and would still have been considered an unclean Gentile by most Jews and certainly not part of God’s family. But Cornelius was still a devout man who observed regular Jewish prayer and the consistent giving of alms.
During the regular Jewish afternoon prayer time Cornelius was visited by a divine messenger. Cornelius had been noticed by God as an authentic believer and had been chosen for a great task. The thrust of the message was that Cornelius should find Peter and bring him to Caesarea. What would happen once Peter got there would be directly from God. Of that Cornelius need not worry.
The next day we are told that Peter went up to the roof to pray, at the same time as trusted servants of Cornelius and a fellow devout soldier went to Joppa to find Peter. As Peter was praying, he had a vision. This vision was particularly appropriate because he was hungry and his vision involved food. In his heavenly vision, Peter saw something like a large sheet open up that contained all kinds of animals, both clean and unclean. The voice in the vision told Peter to eat but Peter was immediately horrified. As a devout member of the people of God he would never agree to eat such things. This would be unthinkable in Peter’s mind because in the very act of eating such things, he would be showing that he was not a member of God’s people. Following the Law, including the dietary restrictions was the uniform of the Jewish people that showed the pagan world that they were indeed God’s people. It was, in other words, the sign of their justification, a term that referred, at least in part, to being part of God’s people.
Peter did what Peter seemingly tended to do and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, for better or worse. He would not eat unclean food, divine voice or no divine voice, in a protest that bore similarities to Ezekiel’s in Ezekiel 4:14. How could God be commanding him to eat such things? Just to make it clear, the voice rebuked Peter for his objection and urged him not to call anything impure that God has made clean. The obvious implication was not that these things were always clean but that God had now made them clean.
The great issue of this vision that has been disagreed upon by Christians down through the centuries is whether the vision referred to the declaration that all foods were now clean for eating or whether the vision was allegorical and was referring to the coming inclusion of the Gentile people in the kingdom of God. The arguments generally seem to focus on the belief that it must refer to one or the other. It is true that Peter had heard Jesus basically declare all foods clean (Mk. 7:14-19) but it was perhaps not until this vision that he truly grasped the shocking point that Jesus had made (it is quite possible that this vision helped Peter come to the clear conclusion that Mark declared in Mk. 7:19). But there was an inextricable link between the dietary restrictions and the barrier between Jews and Gentiles (see Lev. 20:24-26). The food restrictions were designed to teach God’s people of the deep dangers of taking sin into their lives and binding themselves with sin. They would continue to learn that important lesson by remaining separate from the pagans and the food restrictions were one of the primary means of doing that.
Now that Christ had come, the Law, including the dietary restrictions were no longer necessary. The lesson had been taught and God’s family was now open to people of all nations, just as God had promised all along. In being told to accept all foods as permissible, Peter would inevitably realize that he was also being prepared to accept all human beings. One was connected with the other as Peter will soon learn. God had promised Abraham that he would one day have a family of all nations and one thing is for sure, God always keeps his promises.
Devotional Thought
The vision that Peter received was certainly jarring news for him but Peter was constantly seeking God’s will for the life of the believers so when he received it he was immediately willing to change lifelong practices. Are you equally in constant search of God’s will and open to new ground and new adventures? What might God be calling you to do today?
4 Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.
The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. 5 Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. 6 He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”
7 When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. 8 He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.
Peter’s Vision
9 About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
16 This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
Dig Deeper
I seem to get a lot of questions wherever I go about what my plans for the future are. People are constantly interested in whether we plan to stay in the ministry where we are at or if we would hope to move somewhere else one day. Or they want to know what is in store as far as the teaching ministry goes. Usually I tell them that it is all up to God. I say that because it is true. We don’t have any plans to go anywhere and I pray constantly that the teaching ministry will go exactly where God wants to take it. At the same time, we are always open to God’s call upon our life. Every now and then, though, someone will ask me quite specifically if I would ever be open to moving to one place or another to serve in the ministry in that place or even to plant one where there is a gap. Sometimes the places that people mention are actually quite attractive and I just tell them that if we ever felt God calling, we would be happy to go (usually those places involve somewhere with rather consistently warm weather, at least those are the places that sound most attractive to my wife and oldest son). On occasion, though, someone will bring up a place that I just don’t want to go and ask me if I might ever consider going there, like my hometown for instance. In those cases, I usually joke that I would be more than happy to go once the actual hand of God appeared and wrote specific instructions on the wall for us to go. Anything short of that, I jest, and I would not go. I usually say this jokingly, but the point is real. There are some things that are so challenging to our way of thinking that it would take something out-of-the-norm, something monumental, in order for us to be willing to do it.
Throughout his ministry Jesus had hinted that the time was coming when the physical Israel would no longer automatically be the children of God, God’s people. Jesus had said that a time was soon coming when the people of Israel would say “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” But, Jesus responded that he would reply, “I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!” Jesus went on to promise that there would “be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last” (Lk. 13:26-29). This was nothing new. After all, the prophets had declared that God’s intention was to bring all nations into the kingdom of God (see Isa. 56:1-7 for instance).
This was no easy concept, however. It wasn’t something that Jews, even Jewish Christians could easily understand or accept (in fact it would take them the first entire generation of Christianity to start to sort it all out), even though Jesus had clearly told them that their mission was to involve going to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). If one held so tightly to a certain definition and understanding of what it meant to be part of God’s people, it would be easy to miss what God was going to do with the Gentiles. After all, the Jews had kept themselves apart from the nations for hundreds of years, at God’s behest, by not intermingling with Gentiles. They circumcised themselves to demonstrate their covenant with God and to show themselves separate from the pagans. They kept the food and dietary laws as a powerful separator between the people of God and all of the other nations. Jews had been persecuted and killed upholding these laws and the honor of God’s people. Changing that mindset would not come easily. Perhaps Jesus had called them to include all people but weren’t these markers like circumcision and the food laws the very things that God had given his people to show them and the world that they were his people? Surely, if anyone wanted to join the Messiah’s family they would have to realize that it was still the family of God. They would still need to follow all of the laws and standards of being part of God’s people in order to number themselves among God’s family that was being formed in the Messiah.
It would take something big and something rather clear to help the apostles, and the entire Christian community, to accept the Gentiles fully into the family of God. If for no other reason, that is exactly why Luke will spend so much time on these dual visions of Cornelius and Peter. This was big. It was the final door that needed to be opened as God’s family became open once-and-forever to people of all nations. This would be difficult for the Jewish Christians to accept, but it would be equally big and encouraging news for Luke’s presumed audience of Theophilus and the other Romans around him.
Cornelius wasn’t just a Gentile. He was a Roman. He wasn’t just a Roman, he was a Roman soldier. He wasn’t just a Roman soldier, he was a centurion that was in charge of a hundred men. He didn’t live in just any city. He lived in Caesarea, a city that the Jews hated and called “the daughter of Edom”; it was a city within Israel but it served as the administration center for Rome in Palestine and boasted more Gentiles than Jews. There was much that was going against Cornelius in the minds of Jews and Jewish Christians alike. But there was also some things that would make him favorable in the eyes of those groups. He was a God-fearer, meaning he greatly respected much about the Jewish religion and observed certain aspects of it, but had not become a full proselyte or been circumcised and would still have been considered an unclean Gentile by most Jews and certainly not part of God’s family. But Cornelius was still a devout man who observed regular Jewish prayer and the consistent giving of alms.
During the regular Jewish afternoon prayer time Cornelius was visited by a divine messenger. Cornelius had been noticed by God as an authentic believer and had been chosen for a great task. The thrust of the message was that Cornelius should find Peter and bring him to Caesarea. What would happen once Peter got there would be directly from God. Of that Cornelius need not worry.
The next day we are told that Peter went up to the roof to pray, at the same time as trusted servants of Cornelius and a fellow devout soldier went to Joppa to find Peter. As Peter was praying, he had a vision. This vision was particularly appropriate because he was hungry and his vision involved food. In his heavenly vision, Peter saw something like a large sheet open up that contained all kinds of animals, both clean and unclean. The voice in the vision told Peter to eat but Peter was immediately horrified. As a devout member of the people of God he would never agree to eat such things. This would be unthinkable in Peter’s mind because in the very act of eating such things, he would be showing that he was not a member of God’s people. Following the Law, including the dietary restrictions was the uniform of the Jewish people that showed the pagan world that they were indeed God’s people. It was, in other words, the sign of their justification, a term that referred, at least in part, to being part of God’s people.
Peter did what Peter seemingly tended to do and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, for better or worse. He would not eat unclean food, divine voice or no divine voice, in a protest that bore similarities to Ezekiel’s in Ezekiel 4:14. How could God be commanding him to eat such things? Just to make it clear, the voice rebuked Peter for his objection and urged him not to call anything impure that God has made clean. The obvious implication was not that these things were always clean but that God had now made them clean.
The great issue of this vision that has been disagreed upon by Christians down through the centuries is whether the vision referred to the declaration that all foods were now clean for eating or whether the vision was allegorical and was referring to the coming inclusion of the Gentile people in the kingdom of God. The arguments generally seem to focus on the belief that it must refer to one or the other. It is true that Peter had heard Jesus basically declare all foods clean (Mk. 7:14-19) but it was perhaps not until this vision that he truly grasped the shocking point that Jesus had made (it is quite possible that this vision helped Peter come to the clear conclusion that Mark declared in Mk. 7:19). But there was an inextricable link between the dietary restrictions and the barrier between Jews and Gentiles (see Lev. 20:24-26). The food restrictions were designed to teach God’s people of the deep dangers of taking sin into their lives and binding themselves with sin. They would continue to learn that important lesson by remaining separate from the pagans and the food restrictions were one of the primary means of doing that.
Now that Christ had come, the Law, including the dietary restrictions were no longer necessary. The lesson had been taught and God’s family was now open to people of all nations, just as God had promised all along. In being told to accept all foods as permissible, Peter would inevitably realize that he was also being prepared to accept all human beings. One was connected with the other as Peter will soon learn. God had promised Abraham that he would one day have a family of all nations and one thing is for sure, God always keeps his promises.
Devotional Thought
The vision that Peter received was certainly jarring news for him but Peter was constantly seeking God’s will for the life of the believers so when he received it he was immediately willing to change lifelong practices. Are you equally in constant search of God’s will and open to new ground and new adventures? What might God be calling you to do today?
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