Acts 10&11: Chocolate Cake - Devotional Thought

This devotional thought was presented to the Nipawin Leadership Team and Tisdale Corps Council meetings on the week of September 2nd.

We have all had the opportunity to read through the book of Acts together these past couple of weeks. I just wanted to open up today by sharing some devotional thoughts on Acts chapters 10 and 11 for us.

Do you remember the story of Peter and the Cornelius? Here is Peter, not only a good synagogue-going person but also a devout follower of Jesus and one day he has a dream. It is a most peculiar dream. One day he dreams of all these foods that he is not supposed to eat - now I am not talking about chocolate or cake or things that were bad for his diet - but I am talking about things that, in his day, good people who followed God wouldn't touch because well, they were just that; they were good, God-following people.

So Peter has this dream and in his dream the Lord's voice from heaven has asked him to eat this stuff three times. Now Peter isn't stupid and he not too long ago had just been caught denying Jesus three times before the rooster crows (Matt. 26:15, Mark 14:72, Luke 22:61), if you remember, and he is not going to race into any rash decisions here about this kind of thing; he shows the Lord that he is faithful to his Jewish covenant and declines the invitation three times. This is not what is wanted here though and this is not what the dream, it turns out, is about at all.

This passage not about dietary laws and what foods a good follower of Jesus will or will not eat and Peter should actually know this because he was there when Jesus fulfilled/abolished the dietary laws (Mark 7:19) by declaring all foods clean. Peter knows that what the Lord's voice is saying here is true that he should 'not call anything impure that God has made' he knows that. This is not here a new piece of information. But there is something else here.

What Peter and the resurrected Jesus are talking about here is something much more profound than diets. They are discussing the salvation and role of the Gentiles. You see the Jews had not thought to this point that the Gentiles, as they were, could be saved. They knew always that salvation was possible for them; Judaism always had proselytes. There were always people converting to Judaism but here in Cornelius' household, we have God-fearing people who are not like the regular synagogue-goers.

You see with every other Gentile to this point who converted/repented/changed, they all started to dress like the Jews, pray like the Jews, talk like the Jews, eat like the Jews and the men were even circumcised like the Jews - they joined the religion on Judaism's terms.

But now, however, there are people who do not eat like them, do not look like them, do not act like them and who are already in a relationship with God. How can that be? They don't dress like the Jews, pray like the Jews, talk like the Jews, eat like the Jews, and the men aren't circumcised like the Jews and yet they have already received the gifts of repentance and the Holy Spirit.

My question that I am going to leave us with - that we're not going to answer today is - who are these 'Gentiles' in our society that don't dress like us, pray like us, talk like us, eat like us, and otherwise act like us and how do we ensure that we are following God's Spirit in extending His mission to them like Peter did after his dream?