Have you ever had to eject the way you were taught all of your life to now do what is undoubtedly the right thing?
The only way you know it is the right thing to do is that you are receiving your instructions from someone you have complete trust in. Either you have achieved trust or you have strong conviction to change your attitude towards those who you have despised, have had strong animosity for, or have been unjustly treated by, and yet you are commanded to serve these people.
Jonah comes to mind when he was instructed by God to warn the Ninehvites, enemies of the Israelites, of impending disaster. Jonah was so against being an instrument of God’s mercy, he did his best to run far away. That resulted in the first submarine ride in the Bible via the “big fish”.
In the New Testament, there is the account of Peter and the Roman convert.
Peter grew up as a Jewish fisherman, but he was steeped in the Jewish traditions and the idea the gentiles both unclean and not God’s chosen people, at least that in the Pharisitic tradition that led to the Israelite nation becoming more insulated from the gentiles and the gentile world than God intented.
In this encounter between Peter, an Apostle of the first order of Jesus Christ and Cornelius, a commander in the Roman army, a Gentile, we see the grace of God helping bring two very strong minded men, one, a leader of the church focused on evangelizing the Jews and, the other, Cornelius, a Roman citizen steeped in the Idolatry and paganism of the Roman Empire.
To begin with, both Peter and Cornelius are men dedicated to the one true living God, they are coming from different backgrounds. With both men, praying is a discipline. With both men, God chooses to smooth out the way for a meeting by blessing both with visions and instructions.
To Cornelius, God commends his humble service to others and give him a direct instruction to send loyal, trusted, and men who respect their master’s worship of God, to summon the Apostle Peter. Exact instructions are given on where to find Peter.
To Peter, God approaches the problem in a more comparative and teaching way, knowing the strong prejudices Peter would have to a summon from a Roman officer. Normally, summons from Romans usually means trouble with Roman Law, and secondly, Gentiles were coniusdered unclean.
This is too good to try paraphrasing, so I won’t:
And on the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat. And while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance and *saw heaven opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the sky. And a voice came to him, “Rise up, Peter, slaughter and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything defiled and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider defiled.” And this happened three times and immediately the object was taken up into heaven. -ACTS 10:9-16.
God works with Peter in many ways. He knows Peter is literally hungry and He shows Peter a vision of a cornucopia of food normally unclean to Jewish people. And like many of God’s important instructions, they are iterated multiple times to get through thick skulls, preconceived notions, and downright disobedience to God’s will.
It should give you some heart to know that even Peter at the stage of ministry still struggles with prejudices and temptations.
Church-going congregations are often slave to rituals and lack of relationship to Christ (Matthew 7:22). In Peter’s case it was the prohibition of certain foods that are deemed unclean. Jesus already clarified in this famous quote and passage:
After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”
Then the disciples *came and *said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?” – Matthew 15:10-12
We can argue that swallowing a bottle of Tequila may very well defile a man in a physical way, but what draws a man to do that is what is more defilng. As the Lord states, in my paraphrase, the verbal sewer (I’m not talking about vomit) that emits from people’s mouths is a reflection of the fallen and degenerate nature of their heart. What is further convicting is how the nearby Pharisees (who Jesus had intended for them to hear) were simply bent out of shape by this teaching. There is too much emphasis on ritual. God wants obedience that leads to action! God’s will be Done! Amen!
Quickly, Peter gets the idea from God that people who were considered unclean by Jewish tradition are not considered unclean by God, and certainly not so unclean that they cannot be accepted by God into His kingdom. So what does it mean? It’s means “Get ready Peter for the next knock at your door. And soon, the men from Cornelius appear and they offer Peter a substantial introduction focused on their master, a respected and God-fearing man.
God prepares you for opportunities the more in tune you are with God’s will. They may not be the opportunities you had previously sought for your life, but they are ones that will further the Kingdom of God.
The next selected passage from ACTS 10 is striking to me showing the strong desires of Man and how they need to be trained in the ways of truth of the Lord. So this is a major reason the study Scripture, not only to learn but also the be corrected.
Now Cornelius was waiting for them and had called together his relatives and close friends. And when Peter entered, Cornelius met him, and fell at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter raised him up, saying, “Stand up; I too am just a man.” As he talked with him, he entered and *found many people assembled. And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man defiled or unclean. That is why I came without even raising any objection when I was summoned. –Acts10:24-29
Here is perhaps the MOST UNPOPE-ISH event here as an illustration of Peter’s Christ-Centered understanding of his position in the Church.
We are not to bow down before men, only to God. It’s one thing to show respect, it’s another to worship anything or anyone but God (ref: First and Second Commandments). We are to seek to give God glory for all that is worthy.
The problem with many churches is that those who lead large congregations are often drawing people to themselves for their own self-gratuitous reasons. If Peter was the kind of person to play it big, which he was not, he could have played these people who sought the living God for all they were worth. He would have been a heretic if he had done so.
For we are all sinners before God and God is the only one worthy of worship. You are called to live in support of one another as Peter among this new family of believers illustrates.
Despite Cornelius’ high position in the community as an a Roman officer, he bows down to Peter. It is a sign of sincere humility and reverence, but therein still lays a warning. Being in awe of power is natural for man to do, to submit themselves, to worship those or that which is deemed worthy of worship. The human soul desires to worship, we are made to worship. We cannot be complete without the very expression of worship in some form. All will come up short when they are tested by holiness and righteousness of a morally perfect God.
Without a reverence and fear of God, and an ever present discipline of walking in the seeking of God’s will, a man is apt to fall into idolatry, covetousness, because of our inherent wiring growing in a worldly society.
But Peter was walking in the Word and knew the humility required of God for leadership of God’s children. Peter had become, like many examples of angels who have had to courteously remind many prophets who stood before God’s throne in visions, that he was not to be worshipped. Peter was very much aware of his shortcomings and yet Christ was able to be glorified through his humble and obedient servant.
Only God, the Son and the Holy Spirit are worthy of the kind of worship people are willing to submit their lives to.
TEASER:
In a glaring example of self-promotion turned radically bad, can be learned from the Book of Esther, when Mordecai, a Jew, refused to bow down to Haman. Haman, an anti-Christ type figure, just attained a prime minister power and played it along with his family and friends, for all it was worth, or so they thought. God had other plans.
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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5-30-2024