Acts 10:9-16 (NIV)
About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air.
Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.
Peter was an apostle, a godly man, and a successful evangelist, operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. He had stood fast in the face of opposition and persecution and had even stared down the whole power structure of the Jewish nation after he had been beaten and whipped by them.
But Peter was also a product of his upbringing, and a work in progress. As such, he still had some areas of his mind that needed to be reworked. His heart was pure and willing, but a few areas of his life and thought patterns had not yet been addressed and touched by the Spirit of God.
One of those areas was his prejudice against gentiles. It wasn’t that he hated gentiles or wanted to see harm come to them. He just considered them unclean and believed that it was forbidden to have any significant contact with them, that such contact would bring uncleanness to himself. This was based on God’s prohibitions in the law that forbade the Jewish people to intermingling with the people already in the Promised Land, gentiles.
Peter had had some dealings with the Samaritans, some of them in company with Jesus Himself (John 4). In fact, he had recently seen many of them come to faith in Jesus (Acts 8:14-17). But Samaritans weren’t entirely considered to be gentiles; they were looked at more as corrupted believers in the Jewish faith.
But God was, even then, preparing to spread the gospel into the gentile world, and He needed Peter, as one who was looked up to as a key leader in the Church, to be in the vanguard of this new phase of expansion. At that moment, the messengers from Cornelius’ house, gentiles sent on a mission from God Himself, were at the edge of town asking for directions to the house of Simon the Tanner and Simon Peter. So, Peter needed to be prepared for their arrival.
As God often does, He stepped into Peter’s life at a very mundane time to accomplish His ends. Peter was hungry and requested that lunch be prepared. He then went to his room in a walled-off area of the roof to pray while the meal was being cooked.
The symbolism of the vision was carefully chosen. The sheet that appeared descended from God’s presence, showing that the creatures in it were not rejected by God, but had come from Him. All the animals were unclean, unacceptable for the Jewish people to eat, much like the gentiles were unacceptable for them to mix with. God’s verbal message to Peter was, if you are hungry, eat some of these animals, a direct challenge to Peter’s sensibilities, even if the distasteful action was commanded by God.
Peter was disgusted by the very idea. He had always been a fully observant Jew and had never eaten any unclean thing; had never even considered doing so. So, he refused to do so now.
However, God’s response to him was not a pat on the back for sticking to his standards. Instead, it was a rebuke: “If I call something clean, don’t treat it as something unclean.”
The whole scenario, the urging, the refusal, and the rebuke, was repeated three times. Each time, Peter’s refusal grew less confident, and God’s rebuke stronger. As the sheet was finally pulled back up to heaven, Peter was left troubled, pondering what all this could possibly mean.
Father, it is really easy to fall into our old mindsets and accustomed actions, believing that we are being godly in the way that we are thinking and acting, while You are longing to transform us and renew our minds to think and act completely in Your way (Romans 12:2). Help us to ensure that we never allow the world to reshape our minds, but that we are always open to Your reshaping, so that we can be more easily be guided by You, act in accordance with Your commands, and so that we can more easily learn to think Your thoughts after You. Amen.
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