June 19, 2000
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July 16 Lesson
Opening our eyes to a widening world
___Acts 10:1-5, 9-17, 23-48
___1At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. 2He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. 3One 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!"
___4Cornelius 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. 5Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter." ...
___9About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. 13Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
___14"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
___15Then the voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."
___16This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
___17While 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. ...
___23Then Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests.
___The next day Peter started out with them, and some of the brothers from Joppa went along. 24The following day he arrived in Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. 25As Peter entered the house, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet in reverence. 26But Peter made him get up. "Stand up," he said, "I am only a man myself." ...
___34Then Peter began to speak: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism 35but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right." ...
___44While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. ...
___Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have."
___By Rick Willis
___Outside the building where my wife worked several years ago, there was a live oak tree. One spring she and her co-workers discovered a mama bird nudging her babies out of the nest. One chick at a time, she would work them over to the edge of the nest, give them a good push with her head and watch them discover their wings.
___She got all her babies out on their first flight but one. And this one did not want to leave home. For several minutes, mama tried to get junior out to the edge, but he always managed to circle back. Since all the rest of the babies were gone, the nest had more room for evasive maneuvers.
___Finally, the mother bird decided to take extreme measures. Rather than continuing to chase junior around the nest, she began to dismantle the nest right out from under him. After awhile, he had nowhere left to run. He gave one last terrified peep, took to wing just like he was supposed to do and didn't seem to miss the nest a bit once he got started.
___That tree branch drama makes a good parable of parenting and of growing up. It also resembles the way Christianity left its Jewish nest. God took extreme measures with the early church to break it free from obsessive ties to its original setting. This week's text focuses on how God began to dismantle some old ideas nested in Simon Peter's mind. The struggle was not easy, but the result was a church with wings.
___Other sheep, not of this fold
___Jesus had told his disciples he had other sheep, not of the sheepfold of Israel (John 10:16). His prophecy was beginning to come true. Samaritans and the Ethiopian eunuch had received Christ, and they were not considered a part of the Jewish fold. But until the events recorded in Acts 10, the spread of Christianity beyond Judaism was sparse, and the center of the church still stood in Jerusalem with the apostles.
___Cornelius was one of the God-fearers, who were Gentiles attracted to the living God and to the moral standards of the Jews but who would not formally convert to Judaism. He was a centurion in the Roman army, a rank like a captain today. He desired to do right and to know God. He's described as a devout man whose family and employees followed suit. He was habitually generous to the poor. Most revealing of all, he "prayed to God continually."
___Prayer is an essential element in connecting our hearts with God's leadership. Cornelius genuinely was seeking to know God, and God doesn't hide from people who seek him. In fact, the story of Cornelius shows God uses extraordinary means to bring salvation through Jesus Christ to any who seek God.
___In Cornelius's case, God would provide a witness in Simon Peter.
___Food for thought
___As God prepared Cornelius to hear the gospel, God also prepared Peter to deliver it. Another barrier would have to be crossed.
___The biggest barriers we have to cross are the ones in our own attitudes. We live in a world without many physical barriers left. The oceans, once the indomitable chasms that separated people, have long since shrunk in significance beneath the great ships. Now we can fly across in a matter of hours. Yet the distance between a long-held prejudice and an unbiased accord can still seem too far to cross in a lifetime.
___God can close the gap.
___While Cornelius' men were making the two-day journey down the road to Joppa, Simon Peter was crossing an attitude ocean. At the house of Simon the leatherworker, Peter had gone up on the flat roof for time alone to pray. He would have been looking out over the Mediterranean Sea, perhaps under the shade of a canvas awning overhead. The time was about noon, and the smell of lunch cooking downstairs wafted up. It made Peter hungry.
___Then God sent a strange vision. Peter fell into a trance, and three times he saw a big, sheet-like vessel descend in front of him full of animals for food. When a voice told him to kill and eat what was in the vision, Peter protested the food would not be kosher, but the voice pronounced it all clean. Peter was told not to call unclean what God had declared clean, and the sheet went up out of sight.
___Since Peter knew what foods God had declared unclean in Leviticus 11, and since those foods were seen in the sheet, what could this vision mean? Maybe Peter was beginning to feel the nest beneath him unweave a little bit.
___From vision to reality
___Before Peter could get too bogged down in the paralysis of analysis, the messengers from Cornelius arrived. With a clear cue from the Lord, Peter received the men and heard about God working in the Gentile's home in Caesarea. There was a saying among Jews in those days that nobody should help a Gentile woman in childbirth. Considering the racism Peter grew up in, it's no wonder that God had to instruct him point blank to accompany Cornelius' messengers "without hesitation."
___Entering the house, Peter found quite a crowd was gathered. Cornelius already was showing an outreach-oriented spirit. He reminds me of new Christians and spiritual seekers whose enthusiasm and desire to share what's happening to them with family and close friends puts some of us atrophied veteran believers to shame.
___Surveying that house filled with Gentile faces, did Peter again see the image of the menagerie in his vision? He certainly found the meaning of the vision, because he said, "God has shown me that I should not call any man unclean--not "any animal," not any menu item, but any human being. Peter made the connection between what God had revealed to him and the real, live men and women in front of his face. As often happens with a perplexing struggle to interpret God's word, Peter found the key to understanding through his practical obedience to God and his interactions with other people.
___Gospel wings
___After Cornelius testified to the angel's message to him, the Apostle Peter knew he was to preach Jesus to his Gentile listeners.
___Peter's sermon in Acts 10 is a perfect example of what the New Testament means by "preaching Christ." Jesus of Nazareth was sent by God, empowered by the Holy Spirit. He healed and did good, overcoming evil by God's power. He was rejected and executed by his enemies, but God raised him from the dead and proved he is Savior and Lord. The Scriptures point the way to Jesus, and anyone can know him personally and find forgiveness and peace with God by believing in Jesus. Here for the first time in Acts, the gospel's scope is explicitly universal. Jesus is described not just in terms of the Jewish Messiah, but "Lord of all" and "judge of the living and the dead."
___Bill Easum and Tom Bandy study healthy churches to see how they got that way. One key factor they find in the churches thriving at the threshold of the 21st century is a focus on Jesus. Where Jesus is the center of a church's life and everything else is flexible, there is vitality. "What is it about your experience with Jesus that this community cannot live without?" is the crucial question. Bandy has said, "If you don't have the answer to that question, you're helpless. But if you do have an answer to the question, nothing is impossible" in the life of your church.
___Peter had an answer to that question, and when he gave it to those gathered at the house of Cornelius, he and other Jewish Christians with him witnessed a Gentile replay of Pentecost. With apostolic authority, Peter acknowledged a new day and a whole new world for Christianity by formally extending believer's baptism beyond the nest of Judaism.
___Christianity's break with Judaism was a one-time, non-repeatable event in the history of God's people in this world. It was the decisive shift from the Law of Moses--which like a nest had fulfilled its purpose of incubating God's people--to the new covenant in Christ's blood and resurrection wings. That was unique. We don't expect, for instance, that God will give us a vision declaring believer's baptism obsolete before Jesus comes again. There are limits to how far we can apply Acts 10.
___Yet we still can gain wisdom for facing big changes with courage and with fidelity to Jesus Christ. In some ways, Baptist life in these days is a case of nest dismantling. Comfortable old assumptions about how to program our local churches, how to communicate the gospel, how to cooperate as Baptists and with other Christians in the Great Commission--these are twigs and feathers that fall. But Jesus Christ and the message that "every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name" are gospel wings. And we have God's assurance that he only pushes us out of our nests to ensure that the trees stay nice and full.
For thought and discussion
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