June 19, 2000
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July 23 Lesson
Moving the institutional fences to include all
___Acts 11:1-4, 15-26
___1The apostles and the brothers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him 3and said, "You went into the house of uncircumcized men and ate with them."
___4Peter began and explained everything to them precisely as it had happened: ...
___15"As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. 16Then I remembered what the Lord had said: 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.' 17So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?"
___18When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God saying, "So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life."
___19Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. 20Some 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. 21The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.
___22News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. 23When he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. 24He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
___25Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, 26and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught a great number of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.
___By Rick Willis
___The Bible assures us that following Jesus always results in growth and fulfillment for us and in the spread of God's blessings to others. The Bible also gives us fair warning that to follow Jesus often results in opposition.
___Growth and fulfillment come wrapped in a bundle with tests of courage and of conviction. Simon Peter's actions recorded in Acts 10 led to wonderful results, but not before he had to take full responsibility for his actions and their implications. His discernment of God's leadership needed testing in a bigger group.
___Taking the heat
___The news of Peter's visit to the house of Cornelius got back to Jerusalem before Peter did. In the eyes of some, he had flagrantly broken the law of Moses, and he deserved to be confronted and reprimanded. The fact he shared meals with Gentiles provoked some of the Jewish disciples who (perhaps like Peter himself before his vision in Acts 10) could not yet see the Christian faith was going to be something entirely new and distinct from Judaism. By eating with Gentiles, Peter had run the risk of eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. He certainly had taken food not prepared according to Jewish law. He had disregarded strict Jewish taboos.
___The rules about food, which were the hot button issue raised against Peter, are alien to Texas Baptists. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that nothing's off limits at a potluck. Lay out that table with any and everything, and the more the better!
___The one matter of table fellowship that gives us an inkling of how to relate to this week's text is alcohol. If you think of Peter as having been at a cocktail party over in a wet county, you might begin to catch the sense of scandal at Jerusalem. We would come close to sympathizing with the strict Jewish faction of the church at Jerusalem if we considered that, on our scale of moral infractions, what Peter did would be tantamount to visiting a strip club.
___The difference is that what Peter did was not wrong. As Jesus already had implied in his teachings (Mark 7:18-19), as God revealed to Peter at Joppa, and as Paul made explicit in 1 Corinthians 8, the Old Testament dietary laws were matters of indifference in God's salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As an instrument of judgmental attitudes and social barriers against the Gentiles, the food rules were nullified by God.
___What Peter did was right. He was following God, and he was leading the way across a barrier God wanted down. But for doing the right thing, he got opposition in the church. It wouldn't be the last time the barrier of prejudice combined with religious fervor would cause division among Christians.
___T.B. Maston is best remembered as a longtime Christian ethics professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In one of his last interviews, he admitted he was among the handful of people whose work had most influenced race relations among Baptists for the better, but he observed there still is a long way to go. As early as the 1920s, Maston began to write against racism. At the 1956 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Kansas City, Maston gave an address in support of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision two years earlier to desegregate public schools.
___Maston had the courage to call for a major attitude change that was clearly supported by the Bible. "When your teaching, preaching and action is grounded in the Scripture," he would say, "there is a conviction that you do not have otherwise." That conviction carried him through bitter opposition. Vitriolic letters, some from prominent Texas Baptist pastors of the time, still are on file in Maston's archived papers at the seminary's library.
___Doing the right thing is not always met with enthusiastic support. Followers of Jesus discovered that fact from the very beginning. Peter provides us a model for coping with the test when others personally "take issue" with us.
___Just the facts
___The key to handling the kind of confrontation that begins Acts 11 is to cling to the truth and to resist the temptation for personal defensiveness.
___Coming under personal attack as he did in chapter 11, Peter had two basic options for response. He is depicted in the book of Acts as the leading apostle, so he might have appealed to his own status and retorted, "Who are you?" When Paul was frustrated with an opposing faction at Corinth, he hinted at his right to invoke apostolic authority in his defense (1 Corinthians 9). Likewise, Peter's attitude could have been: "I'm the Rock, remember? Jesus gave me the keys to the kingdom! Who are you to challenge me?" (Matthew 16:18-19). Considering Peter's typical behavior recorded in the Gospels, it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine him making an impetuous reaction like that to such a challenge against him.
___Instead, he appealed to his own experience of God's power as well as to the word of the Lord, and he said, "Who am I?" He carefully recounted for the disciples his vision and the voice from heaven. What happened at the home of Cornelius had been witnessed by others with Peter. They saw the "Gentile Pentecost" with their own eyes. Peter related the events to the teachings of Jesus for decisive support. Seeing that God made no distinction between the Jewish believers and the Gentiles who received Christ, Peter said, "Who am I to stand in God's way?" The implication, of course, was, "Who is any one of us to stand in God's way?"
___Moving the institutional fence
___Faced with the facts, the disciples at Jerusalem came to the consensus that what happened at Caesarea followed God's design. Religious customs could take a back seat to the true movement of God's Spirit. Details of what it would mean for Christianity to embrace the Gentile world were yet to be worked out. However, the major hurdle was formally overcome. There would be further painful struggles to release old wineskins for the sake of the new wine. But the first step was now taken toward moving the institutional fence.
___William Barclay recounts a story from World War II: A group of soldiers came to a churchyard cemetery in France. They brought the body of a man from their company who was killed in battle. At the church, the priest explained this was a Roman Catholic cemetery and he must ask them if the soldier who was killed was Catholic. They had to admit they just didn't know. The priest said, although he regretted it, he hoped they would understand he could not permit the man to be buried in the cemetery.
___With that, the soldiers took the body to a place outside the cemetery fence and buried him, finishing just as it got dark. They came back the next morning to add a marker to the grave, but they couldn't find it. They located all the landmarks and stood at the spot where they were certain the grave should be. It wasn't there. Just then the priest joined them.
___The priest told the soldiers that after he sent them away the evening before, he couldn't rest. He watched them gently bury their comrade. He kept thinking about the dead soldier's sacrifice for France. After spending the night with his troubled conscience, the priest had gone out in the early morning hours and, so that the soldier's grave would be within the cemetery, he moved the fence.
___The unassuming, matter-of-fact statement of Acts 11:18 refers to a monumental event. In principle, the "fence" of Christianity was moved to include the whole world.
___A new missions base
___The Holy Spirit gave a surge of power to the birthday of the church in Jerusalem at Pentecost. That spiritual ignition was a very pleasant growth spurt. Then came the violent death of Stephen with persecution that drove many believers out of Jerusalem. Although surely unpleasant, that event too became a means of God's Spirit for the spread of the gospel.
___As salvation and new churches began to sprout in unexpected ways, God helped the disciples to adjust--first one by one and then as a body. Jesus gave them a new way of seeing the world. Conversion and relationships with each other helped them to nail down their calling. The Spirit nudged them out of the nest. They moved the fence.
___All God was accomplishing in ever-widening circles of the Great Commission came into focus at Antioch. There so many Gentiles became believers the Jerusalem church sent someone to offer mature support (and maybe to keep an eye on things). The missionary to Antioch was Barnabas, who had stood up for Saul when no one else trusted him. In Antioch, Barnabas found an outpouring of God's grace and a need for encouragement and leadership. As the church there grew and Barnabas himself needed help, he went to recruit Saul from nearby Tarsus.
___"In Antioch, the disciples were for the first time called Christians." Perhaps the label was meant to be derogatory at first. So was the name "Baptist." But the name "Christian" revealed Christianity was now recognized as a full-fledged identity independent of any other religious or ethnic group.
___Peter had the courage to take the heat for following God's lead into uncharted waters. His courage ultimately resulted in the way paved for Antioch to become a thriving missions base for the Gentile world and a full partner with the Jerusalem church.
For thought and discussion
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