Acts Devotional Week 6

May 20, 2012

Acts 10:34-36

Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism.  In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right.  This is the message of Good News for the people of Israel—that there is peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

Some were excluded from following God.  It sounds unthinkable to us today.  We recognize that all those who call on the Lord are able to find salvation and follow him.  It wasn't always so in the early church.  For many you had to be Jewish to follow Jesus.  If you weren't Jewish you were a Gentile and unable to follow Jesus (unless you became Jewish first).  Peter thought that way for a while…until God decided to change his mind. 

This change of mind came with an encounter with a Gentile named Cornelius.  Cornelius was a Roman army officer.  He was also a devoted follower of Jesus who was well known for his generosity to the poor and being a man of prayer.  In Peter’s world these things didn't fit together.  Cornelius would have always stayed an outsider whose voice could not be heard.  So God stepped in.  He sent an angel (messenger) to Cornelius telling him to invite Peter to his home.  Cornelius did as God directed.  At the same time, God gave Peter a vision.  In the vision, God presents Peter with food that Jewish laws forbid him to eat.  When Peter refuses to eat a voice says “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” (Acts 10:15)  This happens three times.  Just after this, the men with Cornelius’s invitation arrive.  Peter would normally refuse an invitation from a Gentile like Cornelius.  It wasn't something God-fearing Jews did.  But this vision caused him to accept. 

The lesson is in the acceptance.  Peter went where he would not go and discovered God at work.  He learned that God does not show favoritism.  He accepts those who follow him.  Christians everywhere are to do the same.  Different races, denominations, ideas, cultures, and practices are not separate us from each other.  The Holy Spirit is greater than our differences and God will bring all his people together in unity. 

Accepting the outsider is an easy concept to grasp mentally, but a far harder concept to live out practically.  The outsider brings difference which we often resist.  It is time to stop resisting and seek the Lord’s will.  New ideas and new people from new places are benefits to faith not hindrances.  Is there anyone or anything that we are blindly excluding today?  Let’s change that!