Acts 10: Oh , how he loves us...all.

Acts 10

Introduction:
This is one of he longest single stories in the book of Acts.  And it is told twice, in this chapter and the next.  It is obviously very important.  And within the telling of the story, Luke repeats some things a number of times.  He hammers some truths home again and again.  Let's listen to the story. 

Read Verses 1-8
When I preach on this passage I always want to tell the story from Peters standpoint... Luke begins as we should, with the perspective of the outsider, from Cornelius' point of view.   And when we do so we discover that God is already at work by his Spirit, out on the world. Here is someone “spiritual”.  Someone who is seekign God.  He is devout, god-fearing, generous to the poor, and prayerful. He may not understand all the ins and outs of the Jewish religion; but his experience among the Jews has at least convinced him – like so many others – that the “one god” of the Jews makes better sense than the many gods of the Greeks and Romans.   We too often think the world is a "bad place" - a place of opposition, sin, persecution, a Godless environment. And to some extent we are right; but we are still called to be in the world, and we should be there, as agents of hope, not of despair.  We need to be in the world with the realism to accept that the world is in rebellion towards its creator... always has been; always will be until Jesus comes back.  We sometimes talk about Scotland or Britain having turned away from God. Nonsense.   Britain never turned to God properly in the first place!  But we need to be in the world with the faith that the world is still the territory in which the Holy Spirit is at work.

Read verses 9-29
 And as Luke tells the story, it is obvious that it is not only a gentile story, it is a God story.  It is God who is prompting Cornelius to send to Joppa for a man called Peter. It is God who is speaking to peter.  Three times, Peter has the same dream-like experience.  Now at a human level, maybe he dreamed about food because he was hungry.  Maybe he was working out, in the back of his own mind, what it meant to be out in Joppa, by the sea, living in the house of someone whom the Pharisees considered “unclean.”   I guess we shouldn’t be fussy about the means God chooses to use. IF God uses natural means for his own purposes, it's still he who does it.  Last week we talked about healing, and suggested that healings like that of Aeneas or Tabitha, have their place in mission today.  But God sometimes chooses to heal people through medication or surgery or a change in their lifestyle. And these kinds of healing  are every bit as much “Divine healing”.    But this wasn’t simply a dream in sleep but a vision in an “ecstatic” experience,  a clearly supernatural event!  God was involved in this, not just quietly behind the scenes, but powerfully, dramatically, centre stage.

The dream is about treating as unclean  what God has declared  clean. God cancelled the distinction between clean and unclean food, through the ministry of Jesus. See Mark 7 19; “nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? 19 For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)”  cf Romans 14. 14.  It's repeated three times because it's really important.  And it is not allegorical. "The Lord's command frees Peter from any scruples about going to a gentile home and eating whatever might be set before him.”

It's at exactly that moment that the messengers from Cornelius arrive.  And Peter knows he must go with them.  When he arrives, he brushes aside any attempt by Cornelius to treat him as special: “never mind kneeling at my feet: I'm just another human being...”  and talks with Cornelius as an equal as they walk into the house.  And the house is full of family, slaves, friends. 

So Peter speaks openly (v. 28) about the learning curve he is on, as he applies the lesson about “clean and unclean” to the people around him: Jews and Gentiles.  It seems ungracious, to us, but it's honest, and humble, and these are good traits to bring to evangelism.

Read Verses 30-48
When Cornelius tells his story, Peter realises fully that “God has no favourites” - nobody is singled out for special treatment. We all get special treatment.  We all get judged because of our sin. We all are offered grace through Jesus.  (v. 34f)   Nobody gets less because of race, gender, culture, ability.  Nobody gets more because of race, gender, culture or ability.   Do we believe that?  Because if we do, it must affect the way we preach the Gospel. 

We begin where people are.  So much evangelism is busy answering questions people aren't asking.  Peter begins with what these people know... but maybe their knowledge is sketchy or incomplete.  So Peter supplements Cornelius' scanty knowledge of Jesus.   They know a bit about Jesus coming to Israel; Peter identifies him as “Lord of all”; talks about how the Spirit's power in his life and the ways he demonstrated the Kingdom. (That word again.  I didn't pull the idea of  demonstration, “Showing the father's love”, out of thin air. It comes from Jesus!)  He speaks as an eyewitness of Jesus death and resurrection; and as one commissioned by Jesus to declare his victory and announce forgiveness to all who trust in Him.   “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (v 43)  the same point again.  The offer is made to everyone. Nobody's excluded. 

I used to read the sermon Peter preached as a bit of stalling for time – as though he didn't want to bite the bullet of welcoming Gentiles into the faith.  I now believe he was doing an important job by presenting the facts.   The right way to share the Good News, if we believe that “God has no favourites” is like Peter did.  We start where people are.  We focus on Jesus, his life, his kingdom, his death and resurrection; forgiveness of sins becomes not just a commodity we need to get, but a privilege that opens up a new relationship and wraps us up in the eternal purposes of god.  Jews could feel they were part of those purposes.  So could these Romans; so can we; so can our neighbours and families. 

And it's at that point, when they understand who Jesus is; when they understand that he came to bring God's Kingdom, died for sin and rose again to give us new life, that there's yet another God moment in the story.  Because as soon as Peter says  “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” the Holy Spirit comes, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied, as they had at the beginning, on the day of Pentecost (Acts 11. 15).  In that moment, Cornelius and his guests knew that they believed this story of Jesus.  So the Holy Spirit “came upon them” .  The Greek word means seized or embraced them.  Isn't that lovely.  These men and women from the outside, who had come together to hear what Peter had to say about finding God; who had just begun to believe in Jesus, were taken hold of and embraced by the Spirit of god in a wonderful Holy Spirit Hug.  John Mark McMillan put it like this...

He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy...

And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss 

And my heart turns violently inside of my chest … 

Oh, how He loves us, oh Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all 

And once the Holy Spirit of God had come and overwhelmed these outsiders, had embraced them; once they had spoken out in tongues and prophecy, what could Peter do?  As Marshall says, “if God had welcomed the gentiles it remained only for the church to do so” … the right thing was for them to be baptised, welcomed, instructed. Baptism is the church's way of echoing what the Holy Spirit of gdo has done for these guys; and wrapping them up in a welcoming embrace.   God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.  God has no favourites. 

Conclusion
If you're tempted to think God couldn't possibly love you, Cornelius' story tells you God has no favourites. If you're tempted to think you don't need God's grace, that you're good enough for him already, rememberGod has no favourites.    And if we're tempted to think God has favourites, if we're tempted to to see anyone as common, impure or unclean; if we struggle to “show the father's love”,  we need to have our hearts enlarged, by the love of God. We need, once again,  to be overwhelmed by God's love.  Oh, how He loves us, oh Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all.

© Gilmour Lilly October  2013

Acts 9 . 32ff Miracles and Mission

Acts 9 . 32ff
After telling the story of Philip (chapter 8) and Saul (chapter 9 v 1-31) Luke suddenly focuses our attention back onto Peter.  Peter is centre stage and, taking advantage of the season of peace, travels to the coast to give leadership input to the new groups of Christians that have sprung up after Philip the Evangelist turned up in the area (8. 40)

All the signals are now giving green lights, to the gentile mission that God has already started (through the conversion of the African official).  Philip is moving among clearly “Greek-speaking Jews (remember the source of the division that occurred in the Church in Acts 6?)   Luke knows where he is taking this story. He knows where God has already taken the story.  But isn't it just a wee bit sad that  - and we shall encounter this problem again – what God is doing by his Spirit and has said in his word, sometimes has to wait for the approval of the Church? 

So, Peter goes to encourage the new believers in Lydda, on the way to the Mediterranean coast. It was an ancient city, had belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, had been governed by Samaria for a time and had  a strong Jewish population: after the fall of Jerusalem it became a place where Rabbis gathered.  In Lydda, among the believers, Peter found a man called Aeneas, who had been crippled for eight years, and said:

Firstly, “Jesus Christ heals you” or “Jesus Christ is healing you.”  Peter can see what Jesus is doing, and participates in that process by speaking it out.  That's a good model for the healing ministry: seeing what Jesus is doing and joining in. 

Then: “get up and make your bed...”  And what does that remind you of?  Compare Lk 5. 17-26.  What Peter does is closely modelled on what Jesus did.  It's just possible that the implication of “making your bed” as opposed to picking up your bed, was that that the couch was to be covered with a cloth to be reclined on for a meal; so Peter could be advising Aeneas to have something to eat,

As a result of this miracle, many people in Lydda turned to the Lord.  It's important to understand the way this process worked.  Aeneas was probably indoors.  His bed or couch was there, needing to be made up (the word means “spread” not rolled up! The NIV is wrong!) The healing wasn't' a highly public event. The conversions weren't the result of people seeing the miracle happen followed by a powerful Gospel message.  The healing wasn't used as “proof” that forced people to listen to a message.  Rather, people in the course of the next  few days or weeks, saw Aeneas, healed and active, and began to ask questions. Healing is not associated with aggressive evangelism.  Rather, Peter lets “the results of his actions embark on their own natural course.” (according to Jewish scholar Joshua Schwartz.)   And that, gentle, tentative approach to healing, is much more in tune with the way Jesus worked: instead of allowing a fanfare drawing attention to the healings he did, Jesus tried to play things down, even to keep the miracles a secret.

While all this was happening in Lydda, another story was  being played out eleven miles west, in the seaside town of Joppa.  A Jewish Christian called Tabitha (her Hebrew name, which translates into Greek as Dorcas and English as gazelle) took ill and died. She was obviously one of those very special ladies, a skilled seamstress, and a generous giver.  When she died her body was washed and laid out in a quiet, airy upstairs room; and as they knew Peter was only down the road in Lydda, they sent for him urgently. Maybe they thought that Jesus had to come back before anyone died of natural causes; maybe they simply recognised the anointing that was upon Peter at that time; whatever the reason they showed some sense of expectation that God was still on Tabitha's case.  They had some faith for a miracle. 

When Peter arrived, he went into the room, put everyone else out, (does that remind you of another story?) and prayed, before saying “Tabitha, arise.”  Now Luke, being a Greek, doesn't give us the Aramaic words.  But we know that these words were “Tabitha, coum.”  Just one letter different from what Jesus said to Jairus' daughter in Mark 5. 41. The words came, an echo of the words of Jesus a few years before.  Then like Jesus he took Tabitha by the and and lifted her up. Indeed the whole of this incident is reminiscent of the healing of Jairus's daughter.  It looks like Peter got called into this situation, through the faith of the Joppa Christians; he asked himself “What did Jesus do in this sort of situation?” 

And,  as in the healing of Aeneas, the  raising of Tabitha “became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord.”  Again, the miracle wasn't used as an intellectual cosh to beat people into believing the Gospel, but was allowed to start a process of reflection that resulted in many conversions.

Conclusion
E M Blaiklock heads this little section “Peter uses the keys”.  The keys were those of the Kingdom.  Peter was stepping into the authority that Jesus had given him.  I believe we need to step into the authority Jesus has given us, and like Peter – who was not a Pope but a representative of the Church – to reach out to touch broken people with the Love and healing of the Kingdom, the reign of God.  As a Church our mission statement is “Learning to show the Father's love”.  The healing ministry is one way in which we can demonstrate God's love to others.

And if we are going to do that, then we need to learn from the master. We need to engage in any healing ministry, the Jesus way.  And Jesus way treats each person as unique: like Aeneas and Tabitha, no two are exactly the same.  What  do we  see Jesus doing in situation?  That is what we do.  Clearing away the cynics and voyeurs. Speaking words of tenderness and authority.  Taking people by the hand.

And we need to have the values of Jesus.  The supernatural is meant to have a missionary impact.  That was the Jesus way.  But that impact was not forced, not coercive but compassionate; not based on proof but on demonstration of Father's love, on having the confidence and faith to let the Spirit who heals, also convict and convert. 

So Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon:  a Jew but one who because he worked with animal carcases would most of the time be considered ritually “unclean”. And from that address in Joppa, he will springboard into the next big step in mission, an Apostle preaching to gentiles.  The healing ministry that shows us God's compassion, beckons us to show God's compassion inclusively to the whole of the world, to reach out in adventures of mission.

© Gilmour Lilly October  2013