Acts 10:9-23, 34-48

Let me begin with a word of advice. Never offer a Jewish person a bacon sandwich. If you did you would be insulting them, because no practising Jew would ever eat bacon or ham or pork. To them such foods are not kosher – they are unclean. That was the teaching of the Old Testament Law and of the Rabbis. Thousands of years of history and custom and culture and tradition told the Israelites not to eat such foods or they will be defiled. If they eat unclean foods they would become unclean too, and that means they would be separated from God and from His people.

So you can imagine the shock and surprise and even anger which the Apostle Peter felt when God presented him in a vision with a basket of the kinds of animals which were ritually unclean and said to him

“GET UP PETER, KILL AND EAT” (Acts 10:13)

Acts 10 ⁹ About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰ He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹ He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. ¹² It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. ¹³ Then a voice told him, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.’

Peter was shocked! We would be surprised too, if God said something as unexpected as that to us. For many folk, God is safe and sure and predictable. Many people think that God would never ask us to break with tradition. God would never ask us to do something new and different. God would never ask us to step out in faith into the unknown, out of our comfort zones to do something uncomfortable. But our reading today shows us that the safe comfortable predictable God of our imaginations is not the God of the Bible. Instead the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a God of surprises, a God who is often on the move and calls us to move on with Him. God commands Peter, “Kill and Eat.” But Peter replies predictably, as any Jew would have done,

“SURELY NOT, LORD” (Acts 10:14)

“Surely not” is actually a very weak and feeble translation. Μηδαμῶς is a forceful, unequivocal refusal. The word really means, “Certainly not!” “Never!” “No way, Jose!” “By no means.” “Far be it from me”. “On no account.” “You must be joking!” “Absolutely not!” “Not a chance!” In the words of John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!”

“Surely not Lord. … I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

But God insisted that was exactly what Peter should do. With the same vision and the same words, not once, not twice, but three times!

¹⁵ The voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’

¹⁶ This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.

It took the same vision three times before Peter realised the contradiction in what he was saying. “Surely not, Lord.” That makes no sense. Because we cannot declare Jesus to be Lord of our lives and in the same breath say, “surely not”. We cannot call Jesus Lord, master, boss, if at the same time we are refusing to do what He commands us to do.

This was a turning point in the growth of the Early Church. Until then the good news only spread among Jews, or Jewish converts, or Samarians who had their roots in Judaism. But now a Roman Centurion called Cornelius had been saved.
Acts 10 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. ² He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.

So people were beginning to be saved who had not been Jews before they were Christians. Here was the problem. Would the Jewish Christians accept them? During his earthly ministry Jesus had sent out his disciples to preach the gospel but He had been specific that they should only go to the Jews. But now Gentiles, non-Jews, were becoming Christians. And God gave Peter, the leader of the Apostles in Jerusalem, this vision so that he would welcome non-Jews to be part of the church.

Peter went with the messengers to Cornelius and by the time he got there he understood the meaning of the vision.
²⁸He said to them: ‘You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. ²⁹ So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection.

Peter had realised that the vision was not about eating unclean foods, but about mixing with people who Jews would have considered unclean – Romans and other Gentiles, even Roman soldiers like Cornelius. It is hard for us to imagine how difficult this for Peter – but nevertheless he obeyed God. And God brought him to a surprising revelation.
Acts 10 ³⁴ Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism ³⁵ but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.

“NOW I REALISE”

Through the visions of the sheets with unclean animals, and the words of God, Peter came to accept that God’s love in Jesus extends beyond the chosen people of Israel to the whole world. This would be shocking to a Jew. It was one of the big reasons why the Jews rejected Jesus and then persecuted the church. For thousands of years the Jewish people had believed that salvation was only for the nation of Israel. But that all changed when their Messiah Jesus came and announced that salvation was for everybody, for anyone who turns away from sin and believes the good news. God shows no favouritism. Do we truly recognise that truth? Do we really believe that salvation is not just for our kind of people, but for everybody? Not just for people who grew up in a Christian home, or have been going to church for decades. Not just for English people, not just for Europeans, but for people from every nation. Whether they look like us or they look very different from us. However rich or poor, educated or uneducated, whatever their background or ethnicity or culture or politics, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved! God treats everybody the same. That was the message of the vision which Peter received, and it is the same message for us. God shows no favouritism.

But did you notice how Peter only came to recognise God’s purposes after he broke with tradition and the culture and the religion he had known all his life and actually went to Cornelius’s house. Peter obeyed before he understood. Sometimes that is the way it works. God asks us to do things before we understand his masterplan. He asks us just to trust and obey Him. So Peter obeys God, and goes and preaches the gospel to Cornelius and everybody in his house.
Acts 10  ⁴³ All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’
⁴⁴ While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. ⁴⁵ The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. ⁴⁶ For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
Then Peter said, ⁴⁷ ‘Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptised with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.’

Peter obeys God and preaches the gospel, and God sends the Holy Spirit down on these Gentiles. That was God’s proof to Peter and to the rest of the Early Church back in Jerusalem that the Gentiles were indeed being saved just as Jewish Christians were. Just think, if Peter had not obeyed the vision and gone to Cornelius’s house, those Gentile Christians might never have received the Spirit in that way. They might never been accepted by the Jewish Christians, if Peter had kept on saying, “Surely not, Lord”.

It was predictable that Peter would criticised for what he had done, by others who had not received the same vision. This shows us just how shocking it all was to Jewish Christians.
Acts 11:1 The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. ² So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised him ³ and said, ‘You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.’

Peter was criticised – which just goes to show that can happen even to people who are most in tune with God’s will! Which is why it is essential that Christians and churches are always listening to God. But it was so important that Jewish Christians welcomed Gentile Christians into the church that for the first half of Acts 11 Peter tells the other apostles what had happened.
Acts 11 ¹⁵ ‘As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. ¹⁶ Then I remembered what the Lord had said: “John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁷ So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?’
¹⁸ When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, ‘So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.’

So it came to be that the Early Church welcomed non-Jewish Christians into the fold, because of God’s vision to Peter. Peter gives us an inspiring example of true faith – going out on a limb for God. Peter stepped out in faith taking the risk that if it was not God speaking he would fall flat on his face, and be rejected by the rest of the first Christians. Jesus had mixed with the kinds of people respectable religious Jews considered to be unclean, lepers and tax collectors and prostitutes, and welcomed as his disciples. But it still took a special vision to convince Peter and the Early Church that even non-Jews could become Christians.

This story of Peter’s vision was of enormous importance in the spread of the Early Church. But it also has implications for us today. Because there are times when God calls believers in every generation to step out into the unknown, to reach people we might not expect to come into the church, Sometimes God can call us to leave behind the security of our habits and traditions and to step out of our comfort zones for Jesus. And sometimes we can respond just like Peter did. “Surely not, Lord.” “Absolutely not.” “You cannot be serious!”

Perhaps we say that when God calls us to show His love and share the gospel with what we might consider to be “hopeless cases”. People who are so far from God that we can’t see how they could possibly be saved. “Surely not, Lord.”

Perhaps it is when God calls us to draw closer to him in patterns of worship which are unfamiliar to us. “Surely not, Lord.”

Perhaps it is when God is calling us to devote ourselves to prayer in new ways, to listening to God speaking to us in dreams and visions and prophecies, “Surely not, Lord.”

Sometimes it can be when God calls us to show his love to others we find to be unlovely, or to show his kind of forgiveness to others who have hurt us deeply. “Surely not, Lord.”

Perhaps it comes when God calls us deeper discipleship, to repentance, to commit ourselves to greater holiness. “Surely not, Lord.”

Sometimes it is when God calls us to open our lives to the Holy Spirit working in new ways. Signs and wonders, miracles of healing and deliverance. “He longs to thrill us and surprise us with His sovereign power.” No thank you, Lord, I’m comfortable as I am. “Please accomplish in me today some new work of loving grace I pray. Unreservedly, have your way.” “Surely not, Lord.”

Sometimes it can be when God is calling us to some new area of service in the life of the church. But I’m too busy. “Surely not, Lord.”

Or maybe it is when God calls us to talk to our friends and neighbours and colleagues about Jesus. We feel scared and nervous. “Surely not, Lord.”

For every Christian, there are occasions when God calls us to step out of our comfort zones. Perhaps it is as simple as when He urges us to take the next step in our faith by being baptised as a believer, or by becoming a member of the church, or even before that by accepting God’s free gift of forgiveness and eternal life and committing our lives to Christ for the first time.

Sometimes it is not just individual Christians, but whole churches who end up saying “Surely not Lord” when God calls them to do something new. That’s what the church at Jerusalem initially did when Peter shared his experience with them. The truth is, we live in a changing world, and sometimes the ways we do things need to change to reach people in new ways. Activities which in earlier decades brought people into the church just aren’t working any more. We may have our ways of being church and doing church which we enjoy and are comfortable with. But then God may call the church to change, to let go of the past and do new things. When that happens we must make sure we don’t find ourselves saying, “Surely not Lord.” 

This can especially be a danger when a church is between ministers. We can be comfortable in our familiar spaces and scared of trying new things. When God wants to lead us forward it feels so much easier and safer to say, “Surely not Lord.” On the other hand, any prospective minister will be looking for a church who are eager to move forward with God: a church who will listen to proposals to do things differently and say “yes, please, let’s do it.” No church should ever respond to new ideas by saying, “Surely not, Lord!” 

So it’s the same for individuals and for churches. In any situation when God is asking us to move on with Him and do something new and unexpected, it is so easy for us to answer as Peter did at first, “Surely not, Lord.” But if Peter had persisted in that attitude he would have blocked God’s blessing. He would have obstructed God’s purposes in his own life and in the lives of others also, and in that instance in the whole history of the church. Peter discovered that he needed to obey God first and understand God’s purposes later. Only after he had obeyed was Peter able to say, “Now I realise.”

It makes no sense to call Jesus Lord yet at the same time say to him, “Surely not, Lord.” “Certainly not!” “No way!” “Not a chance!” “You cannot be serious!” If Jesus isn’t Lord of all He isn’t really Lord at all. When God calls us to do something, the only appropriate response is to say, “Yes Lord.” “Yes Lord.” “Yes Lord – Your will be done!”

Response: ABBA Father let me be yours and yours alone.