Living Stones – Friday, February 2, 2018
New foods
Acts 10:14
But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.”
God, who has declared that He is one who does new things, has a hard time getting His people to come along. We observed that Jesus was tossed out of the temple and had an attempt made on His life by the congregation at a Galilean Synagogue because He healed a man on the Sabbath Day. This wasn’t impulsive mob behaviour. This attempt on His life by the mob was as a result of leadership consultations because Jesus dared do a new thing and heal a sick man on the Sabbath. See Luke 6:11.
Despite the fact that at the Crucifixion “the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Mark 15:38 the disciples kept going back there for all of the ritual prayers and activities. “Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour.” Acts 3:1. That is when they encountered the cripple and healed him, fortunately for him.
God was doing a “new thing” that He told them about a long time ago, but because of the traditional and religious box that they were in they still weren’t open to what He was about to do. Jesus, just before the Ascension explained the new programme to them. Jesus told them specifically, “and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8.
Now, who are you going to encounter after you leave Jerusalem and head to the “end of the earth”? You are going to encounter more and more Gentiles. However, this was not a problem for them because they wouldn’t budge from Jerusalem.
It is only after Stephen was stoned and the persecution got intense in Jerusalem that they finally left Jerusalem for all Judea, and Samarian and the ends of the earth as it were. “At that time a great persecution arose against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” Acts 8:1.
But the guys still didn’t get the message fully, they only witnessed about Jesus to Jews, we know this because “those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.” Acts 11:19. It was always God’s intention that the Gentiles would be ingrafted into the Kingdom of God but the disciples, having been brought up in the tradition of exclusion of non-Jews, were having none of it.
So, God now addressed the leader of his group of Apostles. The Apostle Peter himself. Peter is out by his rich friend Simon the Tanner, in a city called Joppa. God had just worked some extraordinary miracles at the hand of Peter and the ministry there was set to flourish. Food wasn’t ready, but the hungry Peter had to get in his ritual prayers so he headed for the roof garden of the big house.
In the Spirit at the hour of prayer, God gives Peter a vision of the new thing that He was about to do. God chose to use diet as an entry point because, as we know, Peter was hungry. So in the vision came the instruction, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Acts 10:13.
However, Peter, the good Jewish Christian was blunt and direct. Here is my paraphrase of his response to God – I don’t know if you have started eating pork in heaven but down here we are not going to eat that! He may as well have said that.
Look, the stuff on that sheet could make many people squirm. This was stuff fit for wild meat night. This potential meal would have had in it “wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.” I and some friends I know would have fired up the grill, but not brother Peter. He knew the old rules and not even the voice of God from heaven would make him change the way he was taught to eat.
Of course, the sheet with all of this wild meat fair was a metaphor for God bringing to an end the Jewish exclusivity of the Gospel but Peter missed it for a while. Many of us would have. Some would have missed it because like Peter you don’t eat wild meat. Others, like me, would have missed it because we would be at the grill cooking and eating the meat and miss the lesson.
New people were about to come into the Kingdom by God’s grace, but the church leadership wasn’t ready to let them in.
Today there is no Jewish exclusivity, but we have generated new exclusivities of our own. Today, in America there are still white churches and black churches, and they could use history, culture, and demography to justify that. In Guyana and the Caribbean, we may not acknowledge it, but there are predominantly Afro-Guyanese churches and Indo-Guyanese churches. We too could justify that by geography, history, culture and politics. And so it goes.
In our communities, God is still at work to let others into the Kingdom whether the differences be social, cultural, economic, ethnic, racial, political or some other. But I don’t know if many of us are really ready for new foods.
Think about these things:
- How diverse, racially and in other ways, is the church you attend?
- What are the factors that contribute to diversity in your church or the lack of diversity?
- What needs to be done to make your church more diverse?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would be open to embracing in the Kingdom people who are different to us.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex