Getting Out of God's Way

Introduction

Acts 11:1–18 ESV

1 Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, 3 “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” 4 But Peter began and explained it to them in order: 5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. 6 Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. 7 And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ 8 But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ 10 This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. 11 And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. 12 And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; 14 he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ 15 As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” 18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

I did not begin my adult life seeking to be a pastor. I studied electrical engineering as an undergraduate and began my career as a systems engineer in the wireless communications industry working for Motorola. This was in the mid-nineties, and it’s probably my earliest recollection of coming across the use of the word “mission” on a regular basis. Now, it wasn’t an unfamiliar word to me. I remember shows like the Six Million Dollar Man in the 70’s. Steve Austin was launching on a space mission when his spaceship crashed. Then, of course, there was Mission Impossible. “Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it,” were the words spoken on the tape before it self-destructed. But when I began my career with Motorola, it was the first time I came across the regular use of a “mission” statement. The first few months of my career there, I was given a plastic card that stated Motorola’s mission, vision, and values.

Can I tell you something? Today, in 2022, I don’t remember what any of them are. But I will also tell you this. You will not find a company, organization, or church in 2022 that does not have a mission statement. In fact, many of us individually write our own personal mission statement. That is, a statement declaring, “here is what we are, or I am, aiming to accomplish.” Let me ask you this question. Does God have a mission? Does God have something that he is aiming to accomplish in this world? And if so, what is our response to his mission? To put it another way, what is our mission in light of his mission? Believe it or not, God’s mission is nothing short of renewing the entire creation. It is nothing short of setting all things right, making all things beautiful such that nothing that is not beautiful will ever exist again. (And by beautiful I don’t just mean aesthetically pleasing to the eye. I mean harmony and right relationship between God and humanity, among humanity, and among all things.) Such that we will see the fulfillment of what Habakkuk said in

Habakkuk 2:14 ESV

14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

What does that have to do with our text this morning? A few years ago theologian Peter Leithart said, “This is in some respects the whole point of redemptive history, that God is going to knit back the human race in his Son.” When you think about the unfolding of story of Scripture from beginning to end, a covenantal thru-line from beginning to end is God’s commitment to knit back the human race under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And the church is to be the right now reflection of that coming reality. Looking at the church should be like looking at a coming attraction clip when you go to the movies. What’s coming in terms of God’s mission for humanity? Look at the church.

Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation. - Christopher Wright, The Mission of God

The title of this message is, Getting Out of God’s Way. And I want to put forward a thought from this text about getting out of God’s way. By “getting out of God’s way,” the image that I'm trying to project is not the image of God as this bully pushing and shoving saying get the heck out of my way. When Peter faced resistance in v. 2 of our text from the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem about how he shared table fellowship with the Gentiles (the uncircumcised) in Caesarea, he recapped the event for them and asked them a rhetorical question down in v. 17. He said, “who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” So, by “getting out of God’s way,” I mean aligning ourselves, internally, with God’s purposes that he reveals to us in his word, and rejoicing in seeing him work through us. In a sense, that’s what our mission is. Not a method or formula, but an alignment. Let me get on board with what God is doing, and not stand in opposition to it. I have three “R’s” for us this morning. Peter faces Resistance in vv. 1-3. He then Recaps his experience in vv. 4-16. Then he Rests his case in vv. 17-18. The Resistance. The Recap. The Rest.

The Resistance

Peter must’ve been excited about what had happened in Caesarea. Through the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit, he went up to Caesarea to share the good news of Jesus Christ with a Roman Centurion named Cornelius and a whole host of Gentiles. A lot of times I’ll read the Scripture and lyrics from certain songs will pop into my head. So, I’m sorry, but going through this chapter, some lyrics from Run DMC’s song, The King of Rock, went through my head. In one line Run says,

Now we crash through walls, cut through floors, bust through ceilings, and knock down doors.

That’s what Peter and the six believers from among the circumcised (Acts 10:45) who went with him are seeing God start to do. Destroy the walls and the ceilings and the floors and the doors that separated Jews from Gentiles, and they were all amazed. And they stayed in Caesarea with their new fellow believers for some time.

Of course, exciting news like this is going to get back to the main hub of the church. It’s going to get back to Judea and Jerusalem. That’s what Luke tells us in v. 1. The apostles (the other 11), and the brothers and sisters who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. That is, they had embraced the good news about Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. They had repented of their sins and received forgiveness from God. So when Peter goes back to Jerusalem, everybody is excited just like him, right? Everybody’s saying, “this is great! Tell us all about what God did in Caesarea!” Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen with believers? They’re supposed to be excited when people come to faith in Jesus?

Somehow, that wasn’t the response. Instead of excitement and rejoicing, Peter encountered resistance. Luke says, that when Peter went up to Jerusalem, those from among the circumcised criticized him. I know that the ESV says “circumcision party,” but Luke isn’t describing a certain sect of the church in Jerusalem. The NIV gets the point across better when it says, “the circumcised believers criticized him.” The point is, that’s all you had in Jerusalem. You didn’t have a mass of Gentile believers there yet. So the people who were taking issue with Peter openly, were expressing the prevailing opinion. Their resistance wasn’t a minority report. It was the majority report. Their problem with Peter was that he did something, in their opinion, that he ought not do. “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” The testimony of Peter’s own mouth when he began to address the group gathered at Cornelius’s house, back in 10:28 was, “you all know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or visit anyone of another nation.” Peter broke taboo and tradition. Now, it’s coming back at him from his own people.

They had a problem with Peter, but who they really had a problem with was God. What they were resisting was what God wanted to do. God was revealing his desire and his purposes for people. Their resistance to Peter came because God’s purposes and his plan upset their understanding of how things ought to be. If we’re really honest, we know what that feels like. We know what it feels like to resist God because the way he’s going about things disturbs the way we think it ought to be. This is no small point. In this book of Acts, Luke is devoting almost two entire chapters (Acts 10-11) to what happened in Caesarea and its impact on the church. The church cannot talk about mission without asking ourselves, “where are the places that we are resisting God?” Where are the places that we are elevating ourselves and our preferences—preferences that come out of tradition, that come out of culture, that come out of comfort—where are we elevating our preferences above God’s mission? Do you know why we have to ask this question? Because there’s no way for us not to develop traditions. There’s no way for us to be non-cultural. There’s no way for us to not desire the things that make us comfortable. These realities are tied into our humanity. So we have to ask where we’re tempted to resist God because of our our preferences.

There was some major realignment that had to take place with the church in Jerusalem. The Lord wasn’t interested in aligning himself to their expectations of who ought to be included and how they ought to be included. No. He was interested in reforming and realigning their expectations to be in line with what he was doing.

Isaiah 19:23–25 ESV

23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. 24 In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, 25 whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”

When our "oughts" are only run through the filter of our own expectations or standards, we will stand in resistance to God. Who God should love and how he should love them isn’t for us to decide. It is for us to look at what he has revealed about those things and get on board with that.

The Recap

That’s precisely what Peter does in response to the resistance. He gives a recap of what God has revealed. For the third time since the beginning of ch. 10, we are told about Cornelius’s vision and Peter’s vision, and how God orchestrated both to reveal his will. This time, the difference is we get the whole thing from Peter’s mouth. Peter helps them and us live through his experience with him (Stott), and learn just how God had shown him that he shouldn’t call anybody impure or unclean.

Peter describes the vision he saw while praying on the roof of Simon’s house in Joppa. The great sheet that was being let down to him from heaven with all kinds of animals on it, beasts of prey, reptiles and birds. He heard a voice say to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” He told them how he himself resisted, by saying in v. 8, “Certainly not, Lord! I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” He was then rebuked in v. 9 and told, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” Peter said to them, this happened three times. Once wasn’t enough to drive the message home. I needed a radical realignment is his message. God revealed to him the point of the vision when the men from Caesarea arrived and the Holy Spirit, in v. 12, told Peter to go with them without any discrimination. He doesn’t mention Cornelius by name, but tells them what Cornelius said to him about his own vision. In v. 14, Peter says Cornelius told him the angel’s message was that Peter would bring him a message of salvation.

Peter, in his recap, is driving home the point that everything that took place in Joppa and Caesarea was orchestrated by God. His encounter with all of these Gentiles was a divine appointment. He didn’t plan it. It wasn’t his idea. God was separately preparing these people whom I had no desire to go to, were the least likely for me to associate with, who I would never imagine wanted anything to do with the Messiah—he was preparing them to hear the message at the same time he was preparing me to deliver the message. And here’s the deal y’all. Guess who needed the most adjusting? In the way we are given this account in chs. 10 & 11, guess who needed the most radical work to be done in their hearts? It was the believers! It was the believers in Christ who had to be pushed way way beyond what they were comfortable with. A lot of times Christians think that the only folk who need to have their understanding of God changed are non-Christians… (reformed and always reforming)

They had built centuries of tradition based on a misunderstanding of Scripture. Jesus had strong words against the Jewish leadership in Mark 7, about the traditionalism they established concerning what it common or unclean. Jesus said to them in Mark 7:8ff, “you forsake the commandment of God to hold on to the tradition of men… you reject God’s commandment to establish your tradition… you void the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” Jesus was repulsed by the practice of establishing traditions that were actually hindrances to the purposes of God. Peter addresses the fact that he would not be a hindrance to God’s purposes because of some long held tradition.

In v. 15 Peter tells them, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. He’s saying, the light came on for me. I remembered the word of the Lord. I was brought back to what God said. “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 11:16) That’s the driving force. That’s the driving principle; the word of the Lord. Not our traditions.

Let’s not be naive enough to think that we are free from or immune to the same type of traditionalism that hinders us from getting out of God’s way and getting in line with his purposes. As Christians, we still have our ways and traditions that go along with whatever camp we find ourselves in. Be it the Presbyterian camp, the charismatic camp, the Baptist camp, the Methodist, Lutheran, non-denominational, etc. I’m not anti-tradition. Good tradition can be defined as the living faith of the dead that has been passed down to us. Bad tradition can be defined as the dead faith of the living. This is stuff we do and how we operate because we’ve always done it this way. And there are without a doubt, aspects of each camp that says by their traditions, even without verbalizing it like the circumcised believers do in this text, “your kind isn’t really welcomed here.” Whoever the “your kind” is.

Rest

But Peter put his case to rest in v. 17. In the last chapter, when he saw that the Holy Spirit had been given to the Gentiles, he asked a rhetorical question of the circumcised believers in 10:47,

Acts 10:47 ESV

47 “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

Here, in v. 17, it’s one of those drop the mic and step off the stage deals. “If God gave the same gift to them that he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” Bam. Case closed. What can you say to that? The answer is nothing. Luke says in v. 18, “when they heard these things they fell silent.” They shut up. They had nothing to say. Do you know what the only viable response could be? Precisely what they did. They glorified God saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” We stand corrected. God be praised for correcting us, for showing us that his plans for humanity are even greater than we could’ve imagined. Their rejoicing was an expression of agreement with Peter. We have no right to get in God’s way, especially now that we’ve been shown what that way is. How can we think that our prejudices could, would, or should hinder God?

Commentator John Stott rightly says that, “the church has never learned irrevocably the truth of its own unity or the equality of its members in Christ.” There were “isms” of discrimination at work in our text. There was racism against the Gentiles. There was nationalism, a suspicion that anything happening outside of Jerusalem had to questioned as to whether it was really a work of God. But Jesus’s resurrection was a game changer. The case has been put to rest through his resurrection and ascension. Everything they understood, everything that we understand about God, about his love, about his desires, about our very lives and expectations—all of it must now be filtered through the lens of the cross and the empty tomb. God had to recast all of their understanding in the light of Jesus’s death and resurrection, and he has to recast all of our ours as well. To get out of God’s way is to not stand in opposition to the purposes of God. And that happens only as, by God’s grace, we daily have our expectations, our understanding of God, our hopes, dreams, desires, for ourselves and others, realigned in light of the cross of Jesus Christ. Sometimes we will find that God is going to shut our mouths and silence our resistance and lead us to rejoice in his work that he delights to do through us.