This past Sunday, we talked about the mysterious vision given to the Apostle Peter in Acts 10.
11 He saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, as well as birds of the air.
He saw what looked like a huge “sack” of animals, both “clean”, meaning they were “kosher”, and “unclean” creatures, which the Jewish people were forbidden to eat. To make things a bit more confusing, the fact that all the animals were together and “touching” made them all “unclean!”
And yet, the voice of the Lord speaks loud and clear:
“Arise Peter, kill and eat!”
14 “No, Lord!” Peter answered. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
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 all at once the sheet was taken back up into heaven.
The fact that it happened three times must have been especially impactful to Peter. Remember, Peter had denied the Lord three times, but Jesus had reaffirmed His undying love for Peter three times and recommissioned him as an apostle three times. Peter remembered that Jesus had promised that after He was crucified, died and was buried, He would be raised to life on the third day. He could not ignore this vision.
Of all the apostles, I believe Peter was probably the most zealous about personal holiness, after what he had experienced in terms of his personal failings, and the great weight of responsibility he felt as an appointed leader in the early church. I think we can see some of this in the ways he reacted to both Ananias and Sapphira’s sins and the attempted “simony” of Simon the Samaritan.
Can’t we all relate to Peter in some way? The man actually walked on liquid lake water, but gets understandably freaked out by the whole experience, takes his eyes off Jesus and sinks. I wouldn’t have even gotten out of the boat, so if I wore a hat, I would take it off to Peter. Also, remember when Peter was about to have his feet washed by Jesus? “Not just my feet, but my head and hands as well, Lord!” But Jesus lovingly lets him know that he is not giving sponge baths to the disciples but taking the role of a servant and mandating that they follow His example of humility and sacrificial love. And who can forget the incident in which Peter, fresh from his mountaintop experience of blurting out the Spirit-led confession “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” actually took Jesus aside to “rebuke” Him? He actually became a powerful weapon for Satan in that moment and Jesus had to address the devil directly who had been speaking through Peter in those pivotal moments before Golgotha and Calvary.
So we can’t blame Peter for doing his very best to “toe the line”, even when the Spirit of God shows him a powerful vision three times for emphasis. It’s as though he responded to the vision by saying:
“No way, Lord! I’ve never eaten meat from those animals that You said were unclean and I’m not about to start now…even if YOU command me!”
And yet, Jesus had already been preparing Peter for the outworking of His Great counterintuitive Commission. I say “counterintuitive” because there were many things Jesus did, without ever sinning, that appeared to be “breaking the Law.”
Peter watched Jesus repeatedly heal people (considered work ironically) on the Sabbath day and get in trouble for it.
Peter was probably puzzled that Jesus took them through Samaria and even spent time alone talking with a Samaritan woman, to say nothing of the kindness Jesus showed to all the dinner-party-crashing “sinful” women that anointed His head and His feet with scandalously expensive perfume.
Peter and the other disciples might have been the most surprised when one day Jesus took them to Caesarea Philippi, a particularly unpleasant place for Jewish people. At the foot of Mount Hermon was a cliff with a large rock outcropping. This was the place where pagans committed detestable acts in service of a filthy god named Pan. In this rock there were many carved out niches for many perverse accouterments of idolatry. Out of a cave flowed an underground spring of water. The locals believed it to be a gateway to the underworld. They called it the gates of Hades.
Peter must have been wide eyed with fear filled wonder to see His holy Rabbi stand on this rock and ask, “who do you say that I am?” And seemingly out of nowhere, I believe Peter just spoke up impulsively, as he was known to do, and blurted out a beautiful Heaven-sent revelation. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” To see the fire in the eyes of Jesus as He pointed to Simon and said “from now on your name will be Peter-Rock”, and then say “Upon THIS rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” must have been glorious beyond description.
So Peter was walking in the most Torah observant ways he could, and yet was mindful that even his own Rabbi, Messiah and Lord walked “outside the lines” to obey His Father from time to time.
So, when he was urgently called upon to quickly make the 12 mile journey to where Tabitha, a precious sister/disciple in Christ had died, he did so. And when he made it to the house, the widows that depended on this compassionate lady, led him to her body that had been washed and put in an upper room. Burials normally happened very quickly in this part of the world, for a variety of reasons. So the fact that they waited for Peter to come indicates their belief in a potential miracle for this sweet lady.
Strictly speaking, being in a room with a dead body would make a Torah-observant Jew ceremonially unclean for over a week. But Peter probably remembered his Rabbi, Jesus, who touched scores of unclean lepers, sinners and even women who had hemorrhaged blood for 12 years. So, he did what he had seen his Lord do. He asked all the mourners to leave, and prayed. And then, this same Jesus who told Peter He would build His Church so strong that even the gates to the underworld would not be able to withstand it, raised that precious woman back to life!
Whether Peter realized it or not, this “messy miracle” and everything else he had experienced was preparing him for his meeting with Cornelius, an unclean Gentile Roman soldier.
It’s also humorous that Peter receives his “heavenly-bag-of unclean-but-edible-animals” vision while he is staying at Simon the tanner’s home in Joppa. The coastal winds may have helped a bit, but according to many sources, the smell that accompanied his trade was so putrid that even Rabbis began to write that wives must be allowed to divorce their husbands if they cannot endure the putridly foul odors that came with their husband’s vocation!
But the biggest bridge in realizing the full vision Jesus laid out in Acts 1:8 needed to be fully crossed. The Gentiles needed to have the Gospel preached to them, or else the great commission would remain unfulfilled. The people at the “ends of the earth” were waiting and Cornelius, his family and some other Roman soldiers were first in line behind an Ethiopian eunuch.
But to Peter’s credit, he crossed that bridge when he came to it and it marked the most important step forward in the history of the Church of Jesus, the Messiah, up until that point, and perhaps for all time.
PRN: Lord thank you for seeing us in our uncleanness and sin and reaching out to us. Instead of pulling back and retreating from our wickedness, you touched our lives and transformed us from the inside out. Even now, you are conforming us to the image of your perfect Son, Jesus and we embrace the transformation. Use us Lord to bring about your beautiful messy miracles. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen.
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