You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink. So, did you know that God is in the business of divine appointments? You mean like getting people together who wouldn't normally encounter each other or would have no expectation to? Right, right.
But they do it because God wants it to happen and for His very important purposes. We'll see it today on More Than Ink. Well, welcome.
This is More Than Ink. Across from the table from me is the lovely Dorothy. And across the table from me is my amazing husband, Jim. Yes, we're glad to be here today. We're excited because we're reading through the Bible and specifically the book of Acts. And we're into chapter 10 today. And, you know, as we've said before, if you've been following with us, Acts is just an amazing narrative to read through as the early church grows up and makes its impact in Israel and lands beyond.
We'll see in a while. It's just an amazing story. It's full of surprises at every turn. And this one is so central and so important that the details of it get repeated two or three times in the next couple of chapters.
Yeah, yeah. And a significant turn is a significant page's turn. There we go. Actually, theologically. So it's a great story. So if you're joining us in the Bible, we're starting in chapter 10 of Acts. Now, chapter 9, as I recall, we sent Paul off on a ship to get away from Jerusalem. And the church had peace.
And the church had peace. And then, poom, then we shifted our attention from Paul, actually it was called Saul, from Saul to Peter. Peter raises someone from the dead, finds himself kind of on the coast to the southwest of Jerusalem, actually near present-day Tel Aviv. And he ends up staying in the house of Tanner, by the name of Simon, in a little beach city called Joppa. So that's where we left him as we finished chapter 9.
Yeah, and I love the way chapter 9 ends, actually. It says, He went about here and there among them. Then he did these things, right? He had healed a man who was paralyzed, and then he had raised Dorcas from the dead. So he's doing things that were specifically attributed to the work of Jesus. Looked a lot like Jesus' ministry. Yes.
On purpose. And probably his fame was spreading. People were hearing about Peter, the guy who did what Jesus did.
Well, after he raised Dorcas from the dead, many people believed. Right, right. So our spotlight is still on Peter, and we're still in Joppa, and some amazing things go down.
So let's just dive into it. It's a great story. Chapter 10 of Acts.
Well, the chapter starts with a jump up the coast to Caesarea, 30 miles north of Joppa. So chapter 10, verse 1, Now there was a man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household and made many charitable contributions to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually. Okay, stop. Because this is a lot of detail about this guy, right? He's a Gentile. He's a Roman soldier. He has some social status and military rank.
But look how he's described. He's a devout man, one who is devoted to God. He feared God with all his household. So not just Cornelius, but everybody who was related to or lived in his household. He had great influence on his household regarding fearing God. Yes, and he made charitable contributions to the Jewish people and he prayed to God continually. Very unusual for a Roman centurion.
A highly placed one. And that made me think of a centurion that Jesus had contact with way back in Galilee, right? Back in Matthew 8. Jesus was healing among the Jews and there was a centurion there who came to him in Matthew 8 who said, Lord, my servant is lying sick. Will you come and heal him? And Jesus said, great, I'll come right now. And the centurion says, no, I'm not worthy for you to come under my roof. I understand how this works. Just say the word and he will be healed.
You don't have to come. I understand the authority that you have. And so Jesus says, I haven't run across this kind of faith anywhere in Israel, right? So that's a Roman centurion there. So that's really interesting how parallel that is to this story. Yeah, what is it with these centurions? Now these were guys of great authority, right?
They commanded 100 soldiers. So yeah, that's the first contact we see that Jesus has a significant Roman Gentile with him. There's the centurion at the cross, seen at the cross. So here we are again with another centurion in Caesarea. Now to tell you, Caesarea, it was a big port town. It was a Roman town. It was the Roman town. It was their central, I guess, operation center for Palestine at the time, Caesarea. So it's named after Caesar, Caesarea.
So this is no small outpost centurion. This guy is well placed in a very important spot. And here he is unusually, unusually fearing of God, praying and contributing to the needs of Jewish people.
That is just fascinating. Yeah, and you know, it's against also, you know, if you were a Roman, especially a well-placed Roman, you didn't fear the monotheist God of the Jews. What you did was you gave respect to gods like Jupiter and to Mars and to Venus. And to Caesar who had proclaimed himself a god. Yeah, Augustus claimed himself to be a god. So that's what you would normally go around, you know, talking about.
You wouldn't be talking about fearing the God of the Jews. That's very unusual, very, very unusual. So this man is there in Caesarea, the hotbed of the Roman occupation in Palestine at the time. Cornelius is his name, and then something amazing, more amazing than that happens in verse three. Okay, so about the ninth hour, which we learned from other scriptures, is a normal hour for prayer, right? Yeah, and by the way, their clocks are the number of hours since dawn. So if dawn is around six in the morning, this is about three in the afternoon. But it's a regular prayer time for the Jews.
It's a regular time when you would stop in the day and pray. So about the ninth hour of the day, he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, Cornelius. And he looked at him intently and became terrified and said, what is it, Lord? And he said to him, your prayers and charitable gifts have ascended as a memorial offering before God. Now, dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who's also called Peter.
He's staying with a tanner named Simon whose house is by the sea. When the angel who spoke to him left, he summoned two of his servants and a devout soldier from his personal attendance. And after he had explained everything to them, he sent them to Joppa. Whoa.
Oh. So he has a vision while he's praying, middle of the afternoon. And God affirms the fact that he sees Cornelius. He sees his prayer, hears his prayers, sees his gifts for his people, the Jews. And so God says, what you need to do right now is send some people down the coast to Joppa.
That's about 30 miles down from Caesarea. He needs to send them down there and fetch a particular guy and have them bring him back. Which is sort of odd. If Cornelius is the one who has been recognized by God, I would have thought in the story that God would have sent Cornelius down to find Peter. But instead what he says is get a couple of guys and have them go down and fetch Peter and bring him back.
And there's a really clear reason for that we'll see in a second. Because Cornelius was not the only one in his household who needed to hear what Peter had to say. Right. So the rest of them needed to as well. Because remember, not only he feared God, but also his household. So he does.
He sends two servants and a devout soldier, trustable people, and sends them with instructions down to Joppa to go get Peter. Now presumably this guy is a seasoned soldier, right? Yeah. And so when the angel appears to him, he looked at him intently and became terrified, right? So something about this angel appearing to him unsettles him deeply, right? He's not easily frightened.
He's a commander of many men. Yeah. But he understands this is from God. It's a big deal going down. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, it's just like when you see angels show up in the Christmas story with the shepherds. Of course you would expect shepherds to be more easily intimidated, but well maybe not. They have to face bears and lions and stuff like that. But even still, it's a terrifying thing. So he's instructed specifically to send some people to go down and fetch Peter who's down in Joppa.
Go find Simon at Simon's house. So the soldier he picks to send with the guys is also a devout man. A devout soldier. Among his household, this man's influence for the God of Israel was significant.
He had soldiers in his personal attendance who were also inclined to be interested in the God of Israel. Yeah. Yeah.
A devout soldier from his personal attendance. Yeah. So there's a lot of people up there in Caesarea at the household of Cornelius that need to hear whatever it is Peter's going to say.
Okay. So this is late in the afternoon, but he doesn't delay. He sends these guys off. And it takes him until the next day to get up to Caesarea, or to get down to Joppa. Right.
I'm looking at the map upside down. Right. Down to Joppa. Okay. So are you ready to go on to verse nine? Let's do it.
Okay. On the next day, so they were overnight on the road. On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray, so about noon. But he became hungry and wanted to eat. But while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance. And he saw the sky opened up and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground. And on it were all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the sky. A voice came to him, get up, Peter, kill and eat.
But Peter said, by no means, Lord, for I've never eaten anything unholy and unclean. Again, a voice came to him a second time, what God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy. This happened three times and immediately the object was taken up into the sky. What?
Oh my goodness. So he goes up to the roof. It's not unusual, by the way, to go up on a roof. The roof was like the outdoor patio.
It was a flat roof kind of thing. And as he's up there, as he's praying, he gets hungry because, hey, it's lunchtime, it's noon. And so God uses this opportunity to do some really crazy things here. So while they were actually making food downstairs in the house, he falls into a trance and he sees this weird thing. He sees what looks like a great sheet coming down, lowered on four corners to the ground. And there's all kinds of animals in there.
There's four-footed animals, there's crawly creatures, presumably snakes, birds of the sky. And anyway, he's hungry. And so this voice says, well, get up and kill something here and eat that. Well, and the vision is this sheet full of stuff is coming down from heaven. So you would deduce from that. This is what God is providing for him. But he looks in the sheet and he sees all these things that were named in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as things you shall not eat. Right.
So a good Jew would not kill these things. Right. So Peter thinks this is a test. Right. Right?
This is a test. Am I being faithful or not? Right, right. So he says, nope, nope, not going to do it. You know, I have never eaten anything unholy or unclean. So I've been kosher my entire life and I'm not going to change now. Yeah. So isn't it amazing that Jesus had taught, I don't have the verses right in front of me, that he said, you know, it's not what goes into the man that defiles the man, it's what comes out of the man. Right.
And another place in the Gospels that says, so he declared all foods clean. Yeah. Right. So Peter had been there when that happened.
But this is a specific spiritual experience when God is presenting him the opportunity to make this decision. Right. Three times. That's like underlining something three times. Well, yeah, it's emphasizing it. And, you know, if there's any doubt about what this voice was, the second presentation there in verse 15 says, the second time the voice says, what God has cleansed no longer consider unholy. So if you're missing the point, Peter, God has called these things clean because he's offering them to you. So don't, you know, no longer consider unholy. Well, and then a third time happens. And we don't know Peter's response.
It's not recorded in the second and third times, but clearly, clearly this is God through this voice saying, I'm considering these things clean. You need to eat these. You need to kill and eat these. And that's what's left. And when the vision is over, right?
Right. We're picking up in verse 17. Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision might, which he had seen might mean. What was that all about?
Yeah, right. Behold, the men who had been sent by Cornelius had asked directions to Simon's house and they appeared at the gate. And calling out, they were asking whether Simon, who was also called Peter, was staying there.
While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the spirit said to him, behold, three men are looking for you, but get up, go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them myself. Okay, I want to stop there for just a second. Look at the timing on this thing.
Timing, it's all about the timing. Peter's just scratching his head up there on the roof like, what the heck? Right, right. And these guys are approaching the front door asking specifically, he can probably hear them, right? Because he's outside on the roof and they're outside on the street. Right, right.
This is amazing. The timing is everything here. So as he's trying to figure out what he just saw on the roof, I mean, he has not killed these animals, and presumably lunch isn't ready downstairs either. And so someone rings at the door, and these guys have been sent by Cornelius. But the spirit then says to him, right? So he recognizes the voice of the spirit, behold, these guys are looking for you, go down and go with them without any misgivings, for I have sent them myself.
Yeah, yeah. And in fact, see, that's a little sneak preview that the spirit's giving him, because Peter's probably wondering when he hears them down there, what are these guys doing, and why are they here? And the spirit says, well, go with them, I've sent them. So he doesn't even have to hear the request. And he hasn't made the connection with the dream yet.
No, no, no, no. But he will in a minute. No, it'll become very clear in a bit. So sure enough, he goes down, you know, after the spirit says, go with them without misgivings, he goes down, listens to what they have to say, and they basically say, you need to come with us. Okay, so we probably need to read it, because we need to read those verses. So verse 21, Peter went down to the men and said, behold, I'm the one you're looking for, what's the reason for which you've come? They said, Cornelius, a centurion, a righteous and God-fearing man, well spoken of by the entire nation of the Jews, was divinely directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and hear a message from you. Oh, that's a mouthful. So he invited the men and gave them lodging, because it's too late in the day to turn around and head right back to Joppa, or head up to Caesarea.
Sorry, I keep getting my map upside down. Yeah, so they introduced Cornelius, he's a centurion, boom, that's kind of a bad deal. Not only is he a centurion, but he's righteous, God-fearing, crazy, crazy comments that would make your head spin as a good Jew, well spoken of by the nation of the Jews. So, you know, not just by his own estimation, but the Jewish community speaks well of this man. Okay, so saying he's righteous means he observes Jewish law, right? He is considered living according to the law of God as a Gentile. Right, and he respects righteous living. I mean, he respects good and not bad.
So basically, that's his calling card. We're here on behalf of Cornelius and this is who he is. And again, they also say that there's been a divine interaction here. He was divinely directed by an angel to send for you and to come to his house and hear a message from you.
So, I mean, that confirms what Peter was told by the Spirit. These guys are going to ask you to go with them. You go with them. You go with them. Don't you wonder what that conversation was like? He invites them in, gives them lodging, and then they have to spend the night together before they set off the next day. So what is this all about? And what are you talking about, Cornelius?
Oh, my goodness. And he respects our law and what in the world is going on? By the way, this kind of hospitality toward Gentiles was forbidden. Traditionally, it was forbidden.
I don't know of anywhere in the law that says you can't do this. Well, no, actually, they were instructed to welcome Gentiles. Yeah, they were meant to be hospitable even to strangers. But by this time, during the time of Jesus and after that, this whole kind of hospitality, especially the Gentiles, was really, really looked down on. And toward Romans, who were the occupying force.
Right, right. And you had mentioned the other time when Jesus met with a centurion in Capernaum. I mean, that's part of that conversation, too, because the centurion there says, no, no, no, no, don't come into my house. He understands that that's forbidden by tradition. So he says, you don't need to come. I don't need to come in, you know, you don't need to come into my house. That's a bad deal. Just say the word and these things will happen. So that was a component there as well.
But here, here it's totally turned upside down. He invites them in, largely, I would say, because the Holy Spirit said, you know. I sent them. I sent them. So be nice to these guys.
I sent them. And they came looking for you. They knew to come to Joppa and they knew to come to Simon's house because I told them. So that's enough for Peter to say, oh, okay, I guess this is a good deal.
There is so much detail here. The Spirit is rocking everybody's boat. Right, right. Because here's a centurion who is humble enough to send servants to go in search of this Jew. Right. And then Peter has been instructed, you know, I've sent these guys, go with them. It's a humbling moment for Peter, although Peter has already started down this path because he's staying in the home of Simon the tanner.
A tanner. Which by definition is an unclean place. Deals with dead bodies. Right. And that's a problem. Yeah. So there's a lot of things in flux right here.
Well, there's a lot of working, like living outside the specificities of the law, right? Peter is beginning to see that things are more fluid than he had thought, perhaps. Yeah.
And that's just going to be the beginning of fluid thoughts. Thank you. Because indeed we are actually on the cusp of a gigantic change in mindset on the part of the Jews. Yes. And not just, well, Peter and the apostles as Jews. Well, on the part of the believing Jews. Yeah.
Followers of Jesus. Yeah. I mean this is, you know, and Peter's already been slightly prepared for this because he and John went up and did some evangelism up in Samaria. Right. And Samaritans technically are not Gentiles, but they're kind of sorta semi-Gentiles.
Yeah. Because they're an intermix. They're an intermix in terms of the marriages that are up there. So, I think he's already open to the idea that maybe the people we need to talk about Jesus to aren't just the classic Jewish community because he's gone through Samaria. But now he's actually gonna go to a Roman who isn't he technically an enemy of God's people?
But he's not because he respects God's law and so they're gonna go up there. So, on the next day, this is second half of verse 23, he got ready and went away with them. And some of the brothers from Joppa accompanied him, right? They're like, we gotta see what this is about, right? So now there's this big party of guys on the road.
Maybe bodyguards, I don't know. Peter and his friends and the ones that were sent from the centurion. They say, we gotta check this out, yeah.
And on the following day, he entered Caesarea. Okay, so these guys have been two days together on the road. They have begun to get to know each other a little bit, right? They've established some trust. Now, Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. Yeah, yeah.
What a setup. We have a big meeting pending here and we're gonna stop there today. We're not gonna tell you what happens when he gets there, but now he's up in Caesarea. He's come to the house of Cornelius and Cornelius and the entire family are waiting with baited breath for Peter to show up.
They're not even sure what he's gonna say. All Cornelius knows is that God said, go get this guy and he's gonna speak to you. And listen to what he has to say.
And listen to what he has to say. So now we have Peter, we have his Joppa folks that have come with him. We don't know who that is. And now we're poised in Caesarea and you can sense the excitement in the air from Cornelius' family because now that it's been maybe half a week to a good portion of a week, they sent these guys away. And sure enough, they came back with this guy whose name is Peter. They went and got him. And he went to Simon's house and they were in Joppa.
So everything kind of worked out. So what is this Peter gonna say and why is God so intent to bring this guy into the midst of Cornelius' household? What in the world does he have to say to them?
Can you imagine their expectation? Because Cornelius has gone and invited them all. Now come, he's gonna be here probably the day after tomorrow. Y'all come, we're gonna have food.
We're gonna hear what he has to say. And he's got something for us. And God has orchestrated this meeting. God has orchestrated this meeting.
That's what strikes me more than anything here is God's very careful setup. The Spirit has been moving all over this story. He sets Peter up in the house of Simon the tanner. He sets Cornelius up, has prepared his life for this moment, right? And then appears to him and says, go and send for Peter. While Peter is actually praying, he gets this vision from the Lord, kind of preparing his heart and he hasn't pieced it all together. Although you think that probably during those days journeying on the road, he had begun to connect the dots.
He's putting stuff together. So everyone I think is really expectant about what's gonna happen here. But it's very clear that the main character acting here is the Spirit. Totally.
That's totally right. But it impresses on me too, you know, when we talk about sharing the Gospel with people, that we talk about the fact that God works independently in two camps, in the hearts of the hearer and in the hearts of the speaker. And so clearly here's a really great example of that exactly happening. So we have a divinely appointed meeting between these two. God has worked independently in the heart of Cornelius and his family and his household as well as with Peter and his friends in Joppa. And so he's been working on both sides of these things and now the meeting is gonna happen and the Holy Spirit is gonna speak through Peter, something that no one's quite sure who it's gonna be, but Cornelius just can't wait for it.
You know, before we end too, I might make another point. There was another person who sent God's word out from Joppa. And that was Jonah.
Yeah, I just realized that. And Jonah was sent to Gentiles. Peter here is being sent to Gentiles.
So it's an interesting parallel. I really don't know what it means, but as I was thinking about it, I thought, wait, didn't Jonah come out of Joppa? Because sure enough, he does get in a boat and he leaves there. And he didn't want to go.
He did not want to go. And I always wondered whether that parallel figured in Peter's mind. Oh, that's interesting because Jonah took off running the opposite direction. Opposite direction and Peter would know how that worked out for Jonah.
So in this particular case. Oh, that's interesting because God had prepared the Ninevites for the message, right? Jonah didn't want to be there.
He wasn't happy about delivering the message. But the minute he spoke it, they all repented. Right. Okay, y'all go read Jonah.
It's only four chapters. So we always talk about the whale thing. But it is interesting that here a very reticent prophet went to give the good news about God's love for the people up there at Nineveh. Right. And he went the wrong way. And the call to repent. And Peter knows that story. And so maybe that was a factor in Peter's saying, okay, I'll go with these guys.
There might be something up here. I'll go to some more Gentiles and see what God has in store. And the primary message in Peter's sermon so far recorded in Acts is, repent that forgiveness of God can come to you. Right.
That's exactly right. And that was Jonah's message to the Ninevites. That was Jonah's message.
Ooh. That was Jonah's message. Japah, Gentiles, sending the gospel message. And it's the spirit who's doing it. And the spirit that's doing it.
And the spirit that's preparing the hearts on both sides of the discussion. Wow. Yeah.
It's really kind of cool. So they're all gathered together, called together, waiting. Yeah. So we are out of time here. And next time we're going to come together. We're going to start off in the next verse, verse 25 in chapter 10. And we're going to see what exactly this whole meeting was put together for.
Why did God establish and get rid of the hearts on both sides of this? And what in the world is Peter going to say that's going to be so groundbreaking? And you're just going to have to come back next time to hear about it. So I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And we can't wait. We are sitting here with baited breath ourselves, wondering what he's going to say.
And we'll hear it again next time we come together on More Than Ink. Bye. Bye. Thank you. I don't know. Just wing it. We'll find out. Okay. Thank you.
