Last week after reading of the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Dorcas, in the name of Jesus, we left Peter in Joppa at the house of a tanner named Simon.
God was introducing Peter to new and challenging opportunities!
It was an interesting choice of places to stay considering the work that tanners do.
Not only was working the hides of animals no clean matter and the smell of the industry quite… noticeable.
It also was at odds with the Jewish customs of holiness, for anyone touching a dead thing was considered unclean.
But under the New Covenant of grace written and purchased by the blood of Christ, many things were changing and coming together in a new age, the age of the church and the dispensation of grace!
The reality of God not only allowing, but making the unclean things, clean, would shortly become center stage in the progress of the church and Peter’s growth as an ambassador for Christ!
Have you ever considered what is meant when scripture declares “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved?”
It is a statement made by God through the prophet Joel in Joel 2:32
It is a statement made by God through the Apostle Peter in Acts 2:21
It is a statement made by God through the Apostle Paul in Romans 10:13
It is a statement God is still making today through ambassadors like you and I when we proclaim that truth today - “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” How amazing! ANYONE can be saved – if they will just call on the name of Christ Jesus in faith to save them! In today’s passage we are going to see this dramatic truth not only proclaimed by God – but lived out through a man the self-righteous would have immediately rejected for no other reason than where he was born, and what he did for living.
As Peter was in Joppa “many days” – likely teaching and encouraging the many newcomers of the faith following the raising of Dorcas, God was working even further to the north in the Judean town of Caesarea. 10:1-2 Now there was a man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household and made many charitable contributions to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.
Okay, consider this guy!
Cornelius is about as Roman a name as Bob is to America, Jose is to Mexico, Vladimir is to Russia or Sven is to Sweden!
And not just your average Roman, oh no. Cornelius had enlisted in the Roman military, advanced through the ranks and obtained the rank of Centurion.
A Centurion was a military officer commanding approximately 100 legionnaires. He was responsible for their training, their discipline, and for leading them into battle.
Cornelius had found himself posted to the Roman garrison in Caesarea in Judea during these interesting days.
History does not record how long Cornelius had served in this region. But it does record the effect this region had on him.
Caesarea was a coastal town in northern Judea established by Herod the great for commerce. It also was home to the palace of Antonius Felix, Procurator and Governor of Judea in those days.
Somehow, during his service in these lands, Cornelius came to appreciate the God of the Israelites over the gods of his own people.
He came to appreciate God’s people, Israel, the Jewish people.
Scripture remembers Cornelius as a devout man being pious, that is showing devotion and reverence for the God of the Jewish people.
Though he had likely grown up in the shadows of the temples of the gods of his people, known to both Romans and the Greeks-
Jupiter (Zeus), Juno (Hera), Neptune (Poseidon), Minerva (Athena), Mars (Ares), Venus (Aphrodite), Apollo, Diana (Artemis), Vulcan (Hephaestus), and Mercury (Hermes)
But Cornelius had come to honor only ONE God – and to “FEAR” Him. And not Cornelius alone, but his entire household.
In Proverbs 1:7 we read: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.”
In the book of Job it was declared; “ ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.’” Job 28:28
This fear speaks to the reverence, caution and awe due when considering the nature of the One, True, Living God of all creation and of the scriptures.
And well placed this fear is as we read in Matthew 10:28
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Many, many, gods have come and gone through the power of the will of man.
But through them all, there is only ONE God.
God has declared, “See now that I am He; there is no God besides Me. I bring death and I give life; I wound and I heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand.” Deut. 32:39
To Moses He declared, “I AM.” Exodus 3:14
How had Cornelius and his household come to this amazing fear and understanding?
Through the life and the testimony of people like you and I who are not ashamed of the faith and the truth within us and are not ashamed to live it out in the world and declare it to people who we have an opportunity to share it with.
That’s it.
That’s the simple summation of our responsibility. – Live out your faith– and share it with others.
God takes it from there. The Holy Spirit empowers the recipient to hear, to receive and believe, or not.
Our responsibility remains, – Live out our faith – and share it with others.
Cornelis had heard the word of God of course. As a Centurion in the land of the Jews he would have been exposed to it frequently.
But as a military man, he could have easily brushed these things off as the ramblings and moaning’s of religious zealots praising yet some other god of the heavens.
But in his heart, there was something more. Something that connected with a voice in his soul he longed for more.
And not only in the words. Not only in the rituals of the devout with their prayers and sacrifices.
But in the lives, the commitment, the candor, of these people to their God that was so different than the casual, flesh-filled, and empty worship of the gods he had grown up with.
And that fear, that understanding, demanded a response.
We read in Acts 10:2 that Cornelius the Centurion of the Italian cohort-
Was to God a devout man,
To the Jewish people, a generous man, giving much in charity
And in his personal life, a praying man – who prayed to the God of the Israelites continually.
BUT... for all his religiosity, Cornelius was NOT a SAVED man.
While many would call him a “GOOD” man…
Neither He nor his household were a part of the family of God, washed by the blood of the lamb, forgiven, or having gained access to the Kingdom of Heaven.
How many? – How many people acknowledge that God is with their head – but have no relationship with Christ Jesus is their heart?
You can ask them – “Do you know that God is?” – Oh yes. They reply.
“Do you fear His awesome power and majesty?” – Oh yes. They reply.
“Have you called on the name of Christ Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, who came from Heaven to earth, was born of virgin, lived a sinless life, was put to death by sinful man, was buried in a tomb that could not hold Him and three days later rose to eternal glory at the right hand of the Father having overcome sin and the grave so as to offer forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all those who proclaim His name by faith?” – Well, I don’t know about all that. They reply
This is why it is so important for you and me to be consistent in our daily walk to live out our faith and share it with others. This is what it means to be an Ambassador of Christ.
An amazing truth is this– when you and I do that – God works through people like you and me to bring even the most unlikely people into a right relationship with Jesus.
Another amazing truth is that God has declared that for those who sincerely seek Him, He will reveal Himself to them.
Deuteronomy 4:29 But if from there you will seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Proverbs 8:17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me early shall find me.
Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
Matthew 7:7-8 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. / For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Most people ignore God. Many people inquire conversationally. But to those who purpose in their heart to find the truth of God – to these, God WILL reveal Himself.
Cornelius was such a man. He was seeking God – and to him, God revealed Himself.
In the nineth hour (3pm) in observation of the traditional prayer times of the Jews and offerings at the temple – Cornelius was praying to the one true God and received from a vision –
Acts 10: 3-8 3 About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, “Cornelius!” 4 And he looked at him intently and became terrified, and said, “What is it, lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and charitable gifts have ascended as a memorial offering before God. 5 Now dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter; 6 he is staying with a tanner named Simon, whose house is by the sea.” 7 When the angel who *spoke to him left, he summoned two of his servants and a devout soldier from his personal attendants, 8 and after he had explained everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.
I would lose all account of time trying to rationalize the people throughout the church age until today who declare to have received a vision from God. So I won’t.
What I will say is that God is fully capable of revealing Himself in many different ways.
Sometimes directly through visions. Sometimes through angelic visitations.
Sometimes by a moving of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes through the witness of other believers.
Sometimes through His written word, and the preaching and the teaching thereof.
What I will say, is that WHEN God chooses to reveal Himself, and His will, it is never contrary to anything revealed in His word or contrary to His character.
As for the character and the commitment of Cornelius – In Him God saw one who was seeking Him. And God chose not only to honor his faithfulness with the full revelation of Christ Jesus – but also to work through Him in demonstrating to Peter that God was truly working to make all things new.
To reveal a mystery. That Christ had come to be the first born of all the saints that would call on His name in faith – Jew and Gentile alike. To every tribe, nation and tongue of mankind. One church.
I love how God is always at work!
Caesarea was 35 miles north of Joppa. A two-day walk.
As Cornelius’ servants were approaching Joppa – God was getting Peter ready with another astounding revelation!
Acts 10: 9-16 9 On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. 10 But he became hungry and wanted to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; 11 and he *saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, 12 and on it were all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the sky. 13 A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” 14 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.”15 Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” 16 This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.
I remember when I was stationed in Korea, a group of us were exploring the local area along with a Korean soldier assigned to our unit. He explained various traditions of the culture as we walked through the local agricultural and business districts.
At some point we got hungry, but there weren’t any restaurants in the immediate area. Kim, our guide, stepped into a small shop and emerged a few minutes later with a handful of a traditional Korean snack of long tentacles of dried squid.
Being the adventurous type, I took one of the tentacles, and mirroring Kim, stuck one end in my mouth to chew a piece off.
The experience was... unique. Think jerky. A slimy, rubbery, salty, fishy, jerky.
For me, dried squid became the manifestation of something gross
Now for Peter, who was also hungry, God gave him a vision of foods that were also culturally gross to him.
In the law of Moses, God laid out many commandments and restrictions on His people to set them apart from the other peoples of the earth.
Some of these were relational – some were financial –some had to do with grooming, hygiene, marriage rights, birth practices and certainly in matters of worship.
Another commandment had to do with dietary restrictions. In Leviticus 11, numerous restrictions were placed on the Israelites as a sign of them having been set apart for God during their time with those ancient nations of the world.
In conclusion, God declared-
Leviticus 11:44 For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.
Leviticus 11:46-47 This is the law regarding the animal and the bird, and every living thing that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, and between the edible creature and the creature which is not to be eaten.
Therefore, the vision troubled Peter greatly! Because Peter had lived his life according to the customs and commandments of his people.
He was certain the vision was the Lord. But he had no idea what to make of it!
For Peter, the creatures walking, flopping and creeping about the “sheet” were GROSS to him.
“By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.”
Peter had made the intentional choice during his life to live according to the Law of Moses regarding the foods he consumed.
Remember Peter’s family were fishermen by trade – their whole livelihood was based on the food industry!
What a scandal it might have caused if they were found not to be compliant with the Law in regard to eating only that which was “Kosher”
But as a matter of honoring the LORD as well. You can hear Peter’s passionate reply, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.”
Now, God was not asking Peter to break the Law or to violate his conscience. But The Lord was using imagery that Peter would graphically understand to make a point.
Three times the dramatic scene plays out. And Peter hears a voice declaring to him-
15 Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.”
But what did this mean?! Peter surely thought to himself.
Matters of the Law of Moses and the ordinances of the church were some of those hard hurdles to overcome in those days.
Religious leaders on both sides struggled to find a balance. We will learn about some of these in coming chapters of the Book of Acts.
It may surprise you to learn that some of these struggles still exist today!
But friends, understand, historically, biblically, and prophetically, the Church, the people of God, are in a different place and under a different ordinance from God than was the nation of Israel as they wandered in the desert, entered the promised land, and struggled through the times of exile.
Those days were known as the Dispensation of the Law.
But that time came to an end with the introduction of the church age and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to those who receive Christ Jesus by faith!
Hallelujah, praise the LORD!!
Among the unbelieving, unredeemed, unfaithful of the world, there are some who are spiritually ignorant and will argue against moral lawlessness in sins of the flesh (abortion, homosexuality, LGBRXYZ) while calling those of faith hypocrites for claiming biblical morality while not obeying the law of Moses.
These are foolish arguments for Three Reasons-
First: the Law of Moses contained Moral Laws, Civil laws and Ceremonial Laws.
But… One purpose of the coming of Christ was as He said, not to abolish the Law or the prophets, but to fulfill them. Matthew 5:17
Second: The Ceremonial Laws relating to sacrifices ended when Christ Jesus closed out the Dispensation of the Law and ushered in a New Covenant, in His own blood.
Ending the age of continual sacrifices and introducing the Dispensation of Grace. (Luke 22:20)
Third: The Civil Laws were in place for Israel as they entered into the land God had prepared for them.
But now the Church Age has come. The message of the gospel had gone out from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth!
As the Spirit of God wrote through the Apostle Paul to the church of Galatia
23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.
Galatians 3:23-25
Or to the church in Rome – But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Romans 7:6
Another thing I consider important to mention here-
When it comes to matters of ceremonial laws, including what foods or drinks are clean or unclean, consider the words of the Lord Jesus Himself-
In Matthew 15, Jesus was speaking to the pharisees who were chastising Him for the actions of the Apostles for a violation of ceremonial law regarding foods.
Jesus replied-
“It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” Matthew 15:11
Peter then, seeking to understand this revelation better, asked Jesus to explain it further.
Jesus said, “Are you still lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated?
But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.” Matthew 15:16-20
“Defile” – Koinoō – {coin-awe-ōh} To make common, unclean, impure.
We as the faithful unto God, disciples of Christ, are UN-common. Set apart. Sanctified. We have been made clean, pure, by the blood of Christ.
But it is not rituals, or religious customs that made us that way. We were not saved by them, therefore, it is not the perceived violations of these that is “SIN” that defiles us.
When we elevate to highly matters of religious civil and ceremonial law, we run the risk of becoming legalistic, and becoming much more like the pharisees, than obedient followers of the Risen Lord.
This is what Jesus wanted the world to know in His day and for us to know today.
It's not about what goes in – it's about what comes out!
But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man;
Surely Peter remembered these things,
John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
But still Peter struggled with the application that God decides when and what thing is clean or unclean.
God decides.
This is what it means when we say God is Sovereign.
But as Peter pondered these things, he surely wondered what God was trying to convey to him.
And over the next couple days of Peter’s life, God would make this lesson abundantly clear for him.
ACTS 10:17-18
17 Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision which he had seen might mean, behold, the men who had been sent by Cornelius had asked directions to Simon’s house, and they appeared at the gate;18 and calling out, they were asking whether Simon, who was also called Peter, was staying there.
You can’t not love how God works.
Peter is still on the roof top where he had gone to pray – Peter is still trying to get his head around the vision and what it means –
And at that some moment – the servants sent by Cornelius arrive at the gate of Simon the tanner.
What an amazing coincidence!
Remember that Cornelius had been told exactly where to find Peter.
On the rooftop, Peter receives further instruction –
In Vs 13 and Vs 15 it was a voice who spoke with Peter – Now in Vs 19 we are told it is The Spirit Himself who speaks.
ACTS 10:19-23
19 While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. 20 But get up, go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them Myself.”
As I said before, God speaks to us still in many ways. But I will tell you this, I long for the day to hear His voice.
As for Peter, he was learning well that when God instructs you stay- STAY. When God instructs you go- GO. And when God tells you to fear not- FEAR NOT.
23 Peter went down to the men and said, “Behold, I am the one you are looking for; what is the reason for which you have come?” 22 They said, “Cornelius, a centurion, a righteous and God-fearing man well-spoken of by the entire nation of the Jews, was divinely directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and hear a message from you.” 23 So he invited them in and gave them lodging.
Again, Peter had to wonder what God was working at.
From the healing of Aeneas to the raising of Tabitha.
The days spent here at the house of Simon the Tanner.
The vision on the roof just a short time ago.
And now here stood two servants and a Roman soldier – underlings of a powerful Roman officer, whom these men clamed loved the One, True God.
What’s more, these men claimed an angel of the Lord had spoken to this man.
And to top it off, the Holy Spirit Himself had vouched for these men, even as they stood at the gate.
Friends, all too often we do not see all that God is doing in our lives.
But trust me when I tell you that God is working in your life, IF, you are intentionally seeking Him with a humble and service-oriented heart that desires to serve Him.
As we read in Malachi 6:8
He has told you, O man, what is good;
May we all endeavor to live our lives in this manner, to the glory of the Lord!
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?