How Could I Hinder?

INTRODUCTION

For the last few months we have been journeying through the book of Acts, exploring the stories of the church in action. Some of your Bibles refer to Acts as “The Acts of the Apostles,” as in, an account of the Twelve leaders of the early church. And yet it wasn’t until the Second Century that the book had this name. Until then, it had names like the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of the Resurrection, or just simply, The Acts. And honestly, the more we read, the more I’m coming to appreciate just how much the activity of the church is driven, not by a few important heroes of faith or a handful of cultural influencers, but by the grace of God, the power of the Spirit, and the resurrected life that flows through the “ordinary” folks of the early church. I think it is a profound and necessary; no longer is God’s presence located in the temple, in Jerusalem, mediated by priests and gatekeepers. God is found in you and me, in Cottonwood, CA, in homes and neighborhoods and schools; God’s presence is living and active in us, and as a result, we continue the mission to make all things about Jesus. It doesn’t end with Acts 28. It continues with you.

PRAY

A couple weeks ago, we looked at the church in Antioch, one of the first church plants among those called “Gentiles” which is a bit of a strange word in common language today. The word in Greek is ethnos where we get our words ethnic or ethnicity. And that’s really what the word ought to mean to us. It’s a cultural diversity word, about groups of people different from another. In the early stages of the church, the people were all culturally homogenous—they all looked the same because they were all Jews! And in fact, the people of God had largely looked the same for thousands of years. And for the longest time, it was a given that God’s presence could only be found among those who were integrated into the Jewish community, who observed Jewish rituals, and it was always assumed that the ultimate goal of God was to bring all peoples to the center of God’s presence, Jerusalem, and there, all nations (Gentiles) would come and worship the God of the Jews. (I’d like to do a Bible study on Temples in the near future, if anyone’s interested. We can go through this on a WAY deeper level later).

And yet, here’s this little burgeoning church in Antioch, of all places, that has no Jews, no Apostles, no OT identity. They are truly and uniquely connected to Christ and Christ alone—the first honest to goodness “Christians.”

And I felt God drawing me back just a little earlier to gentile origin story, and I’ll explain why in a minute. So we’re going a bit out of order today, but bear with me, because I think there’s something there that our church needs to hear today.

FOR CONTEXT

We’re diving into Acts 10:44-48 today, but I want to begin with some of the backstory first. There’s this Roman centurion named Cornelius who has following YHWH for some time now, and he gets this vision to send for one of the Twelve, Peter. At the same time, Peter has a vision, and in his vision, this sheet filled with “all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, and the birds of the sky”. All of them; I believe that word is important. And God tells Peter in the vision to kill and eat the animals, but Peter refuses, because they are ritually unclean foods to a Jewish observant. To eat foods like these would cause Peter to become ritually unclean, meaning he would be unworthy to enter the holy places of YHWH or to offer sacrifices to YHWH; for a Jew, eating or even touching unclean animals would result in being unfit for God’s presence.

But then YHWH responds in the vision and says to Peter, what I have cleansed, do not call unclean.

This happens three times, and then Peter wakes up.

Suddenly Cornelius’ men show up at his door, and Peter goes with them. He meets with Cornelius who tells him that they are in the presence of God and ready to hear whatever it is Peter has to say to them. In that moment, the vision of Peter unites with the vision of Cornelius, and Peter realizes that God welcomes in anyone from any nation who fears him and follows his ways. So Peter gives a short gospel message. He tells them about Jesus. How he rescued mankind from the tyranny of evil. How he was betrayed and killed. And how he was raised to life and is appointed to judge the living and the dead. And through him is forgiveness of sin, if they would believe.

Now, here were are in verse 44:

Acts 10:44–48 CSB

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and declaring the greatness of God. Then Peter responded, “Can anyone withhold water and prevent these people from being baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” He commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for a few days.

Now, this is an incredible act of God. Seriously. In the beginning of Acts 2, right at the beginning of the church’s inception, the Jewish disciples are waiting on God to show up, and the Holy Spirit rushes into the room and falls on each person, and they have tongues like flames of fire on their heads, and they all declare the magnificent acts of God in different languages. It marked the birth of the church. But now, look! The same thing has happened again—to gentiles! Peter hasn’t even finished his message, he hasn’t mentioned repentance, he hasn’t even baptized these people, and here they are, these unclean people, unfit for the presence of God according to the standards set by his culture and heritage, are declaring the greatness of God in different languages.

There is loads to unpack here, and we could go a number of different ways with this. But this week, I was drawn to the perspective of a certain group in the narrative. The circumcised believers. The long-time, culturally appropriated, homogenous churchgoers. Because their perspective has been shifted. Not just shifted, but shaken up and turned upside down. As the church today, if we want to embrace God’s heart for mission and his desire to see mankind united with him, it’s quite possible we need to have the same perspective shift brought to our own eyes as well. I want to draw your attention to three responses given in this account.

GOD WILL BUILD HIS CHURCH HIS WAY

First, they were amazed. The believers whom Peter had brought with him on the journey were filled with shock and awe by what had happened before them. Why were they amazed? Because the Holy Spirit had been poured out, even on other nations besides themselves. I mean, the work of the Holy Spirit animating and bringing death to life before your eyes is incredible enough, but what is really getting to them, and this gets to the heart of the matter, is this little word Luke sticks in there: in Greek, it’s the word kai, and it means and, even, or also. Normally not a very important word, but it is weighty here. Because to a Jesus following Jew, there’s a process. You must be circumcised. You must submit to Jewish ritual living. You have to be a good Jew first. And THEN, you have to be baptized, ritually cleansed, before receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. Because, to a Jew, the holy presence of God cannot be in contact with unclean things; that would defile God’s purity!

But before their eyes, the process is upended. And not by the Gentiles, but by God himself. This is the amazing thing.

It’s funny that our heritage today is not Jewish, but Gentile. We are here today, living in the 21st century, in the United States. My heritage is about half British, half Scandinavian, all Western Europe; and yet, somehow, I have to reconcile with the reality that for me, I connect with the amazement of the Jewish circumcised believers. The roles have been reversed as time and tradition and culture have weaved their ways into the church. We find comfort in homogeny, we settle into rituals and roles, and we expect the align the word Christian with a certain type of person. We may not judge clean and unclean according to Jewish OT ritual practices, but I bet if we were to dig down deep, we’d have our standards. You have to dress a certain way, speak a certain way, eat or drink certain things, align with a certain politic, the list goes on. And while we would not necessarily deny Jesus to someone would doesn’t fit the criteria, if we are honest, there might be a little be of “even” in us as well.

I guess God accepts all kinds, even her. I guess forgiveness is available to everyone, even to him. I guess we ought to love everybody, even that family. You see where that little word gets us into trouble? It’s a word of amazement, almost of inward disbelief. And it plagues the church. We have our own rituals, and when they get circumvented, our offense meter goes up.

So with this first response, I want you to spend some time today doing an inventory of your heart. What sort of things do you get offended by in the church? What’s your secret list of welcoming? The scary thing about that word even? It puts us at odds with the very notion of God’s grace. Because when somehow, God’s love is extended even toward another, it means that you, obviously, are worthy, but others? You and your upbringing, and your commitment to church, and your Bible reading habits, and the fact that all your friends are Christians, and that you do and say and watch the good Christian stuff, that qualifies you for the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. After all, you have prepped your heart well! You have done some good house cleaning to ready God in! But I guess God will love anyone, even the unclean. If we are amazed because of how awesome we are and how wretched someone else is, we have to go back and take stock of what grace what it is. Because when it comes to religious devotion, our m.o. is to make it about us, who we are, how we work, how we deserve the life we have. And so we build the church, stone by stone, person by person, vetted and cleansed by our own proprietary solution, to warrant welcome in the community.

And yet, what God teaches the believers in that moment is that he will build his church his way. And it turns out that God is pleased to build up his church with people who recognize their need for him, rather than those who think they deserve him.

If you are amazed by how God is working in his church, good. You should be! It’s an incredible work of supernatural power! But let it not be because we expect God to work our way and our offended when he does not.

FOLLOW GOD’S LEAD

Second, they did not resist. Watch what Peter says here: Can anyone withhold water and prevent these people from being baptized? Baptism meant union with the people of God, a welcoming into the fold of God’s family. And up until this time, the ONLY people who were called the people of God, the ONLY people considered part of God’s family, were Jews. What Peter is asking here is significant. Because in this moment, he is faced with a choice. He can either build a wall, or build a bridge.

His heritage and culture told him to build a wall. For example, In the first century, only Jews were allowed into the area nearest the Temple. Archaeologists have found an engraved stone from the first century that proclaims in Greek: No foreigner is to go beyond the balustrade and the plaza of the temple zone. Whoever is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his death which will follow.

He will have himself to blame for his own death, just for going beyond the outer, outer court area of the temple grounds, just for the audacity of encroaching on the holy presence of God. The Jewish people built walls to protect their purity.

Except for Jesus. Jesus did not shield himself from impurity. He engaged it. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman and initiates fellowship with her. Jesus touches the unclean woman. Jesus touches the dead. Jesus touches the leper. All out of compassion and love. Jesus absorbs sin and eradicates it by his holiness. He does not fear the unclean. He invades it.

Peter knows this. He knows the Jesus he served. And yet he also knows the law. He knows he was a good Jew, and he abided by all the states that said things like a Jew could not drink milk drawn by Gentiles or eat their food. Jews could not aid a Gentile mother when she gave birth. Jewish physicians could not attend to non-Jewish patients. Jews built walls. Jesus built bridges.

Peter was faced with a choice. But then, God makes it for him.

Remember, as Peter is preaching the gospel of Jesus to Cornelius and his household, the Spirit falls upon them. But that word in Greek for fall is not a reluctant falling, a begrudging acceptance. The word literally means to throw oneself upon. Think about that. The Holy Spirit threw himself upon the Gentiles and embraced them and filled them and empowered them with the same missionary ability, to speak the greatness of God in the tongues of men. It’s like when you see a loved one from afar, and you run and throw yourself upon them with the force of love and care and acceptance. Peter sees this and realizes, there’s nothing he can do to resist the will of God.

The temptation when we hear Peter’s question, Can anyone withhold? Can anyone prevent?, is to throw our hands up in the air. Of course we object! Our standards of right and wrong, our expectations of worth, have not been satisfied! And I know this because of the great many barriers we put up to qualify our fit for fellowship. A great many divides have come when we prioritize process and policy over people. Our prides and our prejudices have become the scale by which we judge right and wrong, and it has defined the church. What I have recognized over the years is that many who reject Christianity do not reject Jesus and what he stands for; rather, they reject how we have fashioned a new law of faith for ourselves that hinders and withholds and prevents.

But Peter realizes in the moment that baptism is no longer a prerequisite, at least not like he thought. It’s almost like God gets to do what he wants! He cannot hinder the work of God.

In fact, later on chapter 11, a bunch of conservative believers—the circumcision party—come and rebuke Peter for hanging out and eating with the Cornelius and the other gentiles. So Peter recounts his vision, and he concludes by saying this:

Acts 11:17 CSB

If, then, God gave them the same gift that he also gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God?”

How could you possibly hinder God? And the answer is, you can’t. Nothing you can do will stop God from building his church his way. And it’s probably going to mess with you a little bit. Because the second you think you have God figured out, that he only works once the house is in order, once we open in prayer or sing three songs, or that the professional ministers have to administer something because only they have the gift to disperse any kind of spiritual nourishment, whatever process and policy you think God needs to have happen for the Spirit to fall, know that he cares much more for you and for people than any of that. If God wants you, he will break down whatever barrier he needs. If God wants you, nothing will stop him. God is concerned about uniting heaven and earth, about reconciling all people to himself, and he doesn’t need your boxes to tell him how to do it. So you can resist, you can set up your walls, or...

JOIN THE PARTY

You can join the party. Peter and his crew baptize the gentile believers, and then they are invited to stay with them for a few days. And that might not seem like a big deal. But it is. Remember, Jews cannot eat or drink food provided by Gentiles. It makes them ritually unclean, unfit for the presence of God. Peter, when he agrees to stay with Cornelius, violates his ritual cleanliness and loses his status as welcomed into the temple grounds of the Jews. In joining with the Gentiles, he is ceremonially rejected by his family from the “presence of God.”

But Peter gets it. He gets that the command to love your enemies is not a begrudging love, not a reluctant love; it is not loving at arms length. It is eating and drinking, it is relationship, it is brotherly love and care and real fellowship (oneness!) with those “strangers” that God has made “friends.”

It is the very definition of hospitality. Hospitality in Greek is the word philoxenos, philo meaning love, and xenos meaning stranger, different, foreigner, enemy. Hospitality in the Bible is not potlucks, it’s not hosting parties; it’s welcoming those whom your culture and your society have deemed unwelcome. It’s eating and drinking with those who would tarnish your reputation if others found out. It’s sharing life with those on the other side of the wall.

Notice actually, who extends hospitality? Cornelius. The Gentile! Of course, he has no barriers here. He has no cultural sensitivities. He sees a new brother and invites him into relationship. But Peter’s acceptance means leaving behind his legacy as a Jew so that he can embrace the whole people of God.

What legacy do you need to leave behind to embrace the whole family of God?

Shari: “Make this Your Church”