Simon and Simon (Down by the Sea) - Acts 10:1-16

Bacon

How many of you this morning had bacon? Yesterday was International Bacon Day. Which is kind of funny because National Bacon Day is just after Christmas. So, bacon gets two holidays. “Bacon Mania” was on full display at various bacon events yesterday around the country. The Indiana Bacon fest highlighted a Bacon eating contest as well as a BBQ Cook-off that included bacon-themed food.

But there was a time when being a God-pleaser meant you couldn’t eat bacon. Or a host of other things we don’t even think about today. That all changed with our story today.

The story, though, isn’t really about bacon. God doing away with the Old Testament food categories is simply a means toward a bigger story: Who gets the Gospel? You’d be surprised at how a lot of people answer that question, even these days.

The subject matter today is tough. In fact, there are few things more controversial than our subject matter today. I’ll be shocked if everyone today isn’t upset at the pastor. I mean what do you think when you hear this statement from Peter?

Acts 10:34 God doesn’t show favoritism.

We’re going to get into the story we just read in a minute, but I want to set this out there from the very beginning this morning. And basically, this is just about all we’re going to talk about this morning. “God doesn’t show favoritism.” That statement is a nuclear bomb for a lot of conversations and situations. For us. It’s so easy to be dismissive of even that statement… well… that’s just talking about salvation… it’s not a universal. It’s true that it is talking about the Gospel and salvation. For Peter, that’s a shocker all its own.

Who is my friend?

But what is true about “who gets the gospel” pretty soon has implications about “who is my friend?” Those Old Testament laws about food extended to who was at your table. And then, what you thought about the people who were not at your table.

Worse, Peter’s statement that God doesn’t show favoritism is qualified to suggest that God does show favoritism in other circumstances, in spite of the clear teaching of scripture that God judged Israel in the Old Testament because their lives were all about playing favorites.

Yes, this is a statement in the context of who gets the Gospel, but no, this is not where it stops and is in fact, a universal statement about God’s character. Yet we have people who claim that they are people of the Bible have no desire to allow that statement to stand on its own.

Favoritism and discrimination are part of Adam’s fall

Favoritism and discrimination are universal to us all because we’re all sinners. And all of us do it. We’ve been doing it since Adam and Eve decided they wanted to control access to God. It’s why it’s so controversial. It’s why we’d prefer to just hop, skip, and jump over this section, over this statement. But it’s also part of our culture. “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” is favoritism and discrimination… yet that is a cultural value held by many people. I was in a local establishment recently and overheard someone say, “That’s just the way the world works”… that person isn’t wrong.. but if I had asked them, they probably aren’t thinking there anything wrong with the way the world works.

We also live in a world that insists that the best way to right past wrongs is to discriminate the other direction. Peter’s statement also has implications for that idea. It doesn’t matter what side we’re on, we’re all about control and when control is the name of the game, there will be favorites and there will be discrimination. People in control discriminate, and the those who are not in control can’t wait for the time where they are in control and can discriminate the opposite direction. Everybody wants to be in control of the discrimination game.

“God doesn’t show favoritism” is a blanket statement that rings out over all mankind and over all the centuries, and nobody is spared its implications. Hang on to this statement as we consider just how earth-shattering our text is. We said a couple of weeks ago that Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was an event that changed the world. This is the other side of that event. It involves Peter, which is kind of interesting. But everything about this story is going to set Paul up to be the world’s first and greatest missionary.

Changing the way we view the world

And I can’t begin to say how cataclysmic this is for Peter. For the Jews. This really is like Paul being told on the road to Damascus that you have it all wrong. Everything you think you know to be true is false… is no longer true. It’s as if you woke up one morning to find out that your name isn’t Bresson, you were never born in Ohio, your parents aren’t who you thought they were… it’s the stuff of Hollywood. You’ve seen those movies. That’s what happens to Peter here.

Chapter 10 opens with the story about a Gentile, a non-Jews named Cornelius who lives in a city along the coast of the Mediterranean called Caesarea. We’re given a brief biography… Cornelius is in the Roman military. He’s a soldier… probably had some rank to him. And like a lot of the stories in Acts… his story starts with the spectacular:

Acts 10:3 About three in the afternoon he distinctly saw in a vision an angel of God who came in and said to him, “Cornelius.”

So Cornelius gets a vision… there is an angel. Stop it right there. That means everything that follows, isn’t ordinary. By any means. In fact, this is the road of Damascus stuff. And if you look at all the stuff that goes down in just a matter of a day or two… this is the stuff of Jesus’ birth and his resurrection. It’s that big. Heaven is breaking into earth. The wall between heaven and earth is being broken. Just like all the great Old Testament stories of the burning bush and a smoking Mount Sinai.

Grace happens at Joppa

But this is an act of grace. We’re told that Cornelius has come to worship the God of Israel and now God is intruding with heaven itself… and he says you need to send some guys to Joppa to go get Simon.. at the home of Simon. Down by the sea. Simon and Simon… down by the sea.

Peter is in a town called Joppa. Joppa is a small fishing town along the Mediterranean coast. It’s famous for being the town that Jonah ran away to in order to get on a boat because he did not want to preach the Gospel to Gentiles… people who were not Jews. Don’t think God doesn’t have a sense of drama. Hundreds of years later, Peter is going to be in the same town and he’s going to get the same message. But it’s not your typical message. No… this is a vision… a vision that is an all-timer… some theologians think that this may be the most significant vision in all of the Bible, because of its message. It’s so important, the story is repeated three times here in two chapters.

Simon Peter is at the home of Simon the Tanner… which itself is interesting. We’re not told why Peter was at the home of a tanner, but what we do know, because tanners were constantly around dead animals, they were considered impure people. Being in a tanner’s home, Peter is already defying the conventional way of going about your life. But that’ just sets us up for what happens.. while heaven is breaking into Cornelius’ reality, here’s what’s happening to Peter:

Acts 10:10–11 “Peter became hungry and wanted to eat, but while they were preparing something, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened...”

Oh… again. Heaven has been opened. Heaven is intruding into time and space. This isn’t normal. This is an event like no other. Peter will never be the same after today. Ever. Neither will Cornelius. Neither will the world. Again… we have no clue what kind of an earthquake or tsunami this is for Peter… here’s what heaven wants Peter to see:

Acts 10:11–13 Peter saw heaven opened and an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners to the earth. In it were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, and the birds of the sky. A voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.”

Now remember… Peter hasn’t eaten anything so this is playing right into his physical condition here. Heaven is opened and now there’s a voice. Any time you have angels and heaven and a voice… again… this is the burning bush again. This is mount Sinai, Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah.. they’ve all experienced this.. Paul just weeks earlier had experienced this and now Peter is getting the burning bush treatment. That voice that sounds like rushing waters… that voice that is The Word of God himself.. giving the Word. The voice that spoke all things into existence… now speaking something new into existence again.

The Sheet

Peter is shown a sheet of animals and he’s told to get the barbecue ready and to pick something for lunch. What’s interesting about that word “kill” is that it’s really the word for “sacrifice”. Peter is being told to sacrifice and eat, meaning it’s not just food categories being erased, but the sacrificial system is being overturned. Not only could you not eat those animals, you couldn’t use them in sacrifices.

Now the whole thing is bizarre. A sheet that has animals and reptiles and birds. That does sound like a weird dream. But this is no ordinary trance. And it’s all too real. Peter doesn’t response as if it’s not real… because you can almost hear him shouting his answer:

Acts 10:14 “No, Lord!” Peter said. “For I have never eaten anything impure and ritually unclean.”

We read the passage earlier from the Old Testament. It was illegal for a Jew to eat any of the animals that Peter is looking at in that sheet. It was unthinkable. Peter is being told to violate everything he knows to be true. In fact, the suggestion was offensive. And Peter took it that way. The Jews had boundaries. They’d had those boundaries for centuries. Now those boundaries are being erased.

And the voice from heaven speaks again:

Acts 10:15 Again, a second time, the voice said to him, “What God has made clean, do not call impure.”

I can’t imagine what is going through Peter’s mind when he hears those words. His entire life has been built on the idea that there are some things and even some people who are considered impure… and now he is being told that all those categories that control his life are no longer in force. And this is such a shock… Peter isn’t ready to go there. God repeats this sheet exercise three times, meaning Peter didn’t just say “no” once, but twice.

Nobody owns God

And the reality is this: it was hard for Peter because Peter was absolutely convinced that God does play favorites. Jesus challenged this notion when he was in conversations with the religious leaders. Peter thought that the Jews owned God and the reality is that that was never the case. Yes, there were food boundaries between Jews and non-Jews. And yes, if you were a non-Jew who embraced the Promise of the Messiah, you had to do some very specific things that were part of the Jewish religion. But that never meant that the Gospel was exclusively for the Jew.

This is why it this vision happening in Joppa is not an accident. Hundreds of years earlier, Jonah had to learn the hard way that the Gospel is for everybody. It was never the exclusive property of Israel. It was always for everybody… and in fact, you look at how the Old Testament law talks about foreigners and strangers and you get the sense that over time, all of those verses were ignored or forgotten.

Peter’s protest sounds an awful lot like Jonah. It’s how we know this isn’t just about bacon. It’s not just about food. Peter’s protests show what’s going on in the heart. Peter did not know of a world in which the non-Jew, the Gentile, wasn’t impure. And that colored the way he thought about the Gospel message… just like Jonah. And now his world is turned upside down. The Gentile is clean.. having been cleansed in the cross. The Gospel is for everybody. And while Peter knows this already, he’s not ready for all the implications. “The Gospel is for everybody” turns all of world history upside down.

Pentecost 2.0

And if we keep reading, the sheet of animals is only the beginning of heaven intruding into Peter’s time and space. He is soon with Cornelius and an entire room full of Gentiles and Peter gives them the Gospel and here’s what happens:

Acts 10:44 “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who heard the message.”

This is Pentecost 2.0. The first time the Holy Spirit descended like this Peter was at the temple in Jerusalem. And here he’s with Gentiles in one of the most important Roman cities on the coast. The Gospel, the Holy Spirit, all of salvation… life and forgiveness… it’s for everybody. God plays no favorites.

You want to know why playing favorites isn’t a good thing? Because Jesus died for the one who is being discriminated against. We’re all equals in the Gospel. We’re one. We are all equally family in Jesus. There is no distinction with God and by implication, there’s no distinction with us either. People from every nation, every ethnicity, every economic category, are the recipients of the Gospel.

And if everybody has access to the Gospel, then Jesus and His cross have no barriers. And that includes you. and me. That’s kind of offensive. This forces us to consider the Gospel all over again. God didn’t play favorites when it came to giving you and me the Gospel. There was nothing innately good about you that God said, OK, yeah, you can have the Gospel message. We claim we’re all about grace. But the way we talk about our behavior and our lives and the way we define success, you’d get the sense that God saw something good about us and then said… OK, yeah, I’ll make you my child.

Grace is for everybody

In fact, that’s how we read this story. I read more than once this week that all this good stuff happened to Cornelius because he was already a good guy. That’s not the Gospel. That’s not the Gospel message. That’s not the Gospel story. That’s not how Jesus determines who is in and who is out. There are no favorites with Jesus based on who has been a good boy or girl. It’s all grace. It’s all free. It’s all about His love for us in spite of who we are and what we’ve done. That’s what it means that “God doesn’t play favorites”. We are all equally loved “just because”.

And if it’s that way for us… well then, that’s the way it is for our neighbor here in San Benito. That’s the way it is with each other. That’s the way it is in our relationships. Our businesses. Wherever we live, learn, work, and play… we don’t play favorites because Jesus did not play favorites with us.

This story is all about Gospel expansion. If the Gospel is going to go from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, it cannot be controlled by any one group. Jesus didn’t come to save Israel. Jesus came to save the whole world. Peter is shown a new way… the Gospel is going to go to places he never dreamed of because those barriers that controlled his religion and his life were being erased.

That means there are no barriers to the Gospel here in San Benito or at the Table. No boundaries. Our boundaries between us and the other guy are exposed for being the un-Gospel that they are. Playing favorites is a barrier to the Gospel. Discriminating is a barrier to the Gospel. What God has cleansed.. what God has called clean, we have no business calling something else. The Gospel is for everybody. Our lives are for everybody.

Let’s pray.

The Table

Peter gets a lesson in who’s at The Table. Jesus had already taught this… Jesus told the story of a king who gave a banquet and by the end of the story, the people at the Table were all the people who weren’t supposed to be there… because Jesus went and brought them to His table without them doing a thing to be there. And now Peter is being told, “My Table is for everybody”. Jesus doesn’t give His grace based on how good you are… in fact, anyone coming to this table hasn’t been good this week.

Benediction