daily java

Daily Java:

Soon the news reached the apostles and other believers in Judea that the Gentiles had received the word of God. But when Peter arrived back in Jerusalem, the Jewish believers criticized him. “You entered the home of Gentiles and even ate with them!” they said. Then Peter told them exactly what had happened. (Acts 11:1-4)

If there was anybody who was considered a leader in the early church, it was the apostle Peter. It was he who preached on the Day of Pentecost, it was he who, along with John, was whipped for preaching. As to the kingdom of God, he was a man to be reckoned with.

Yet he did something everybody thought was wrong. He took the gospel to the wrong people and, not only that, but he also ate with them in their own homes. To a conservative jew, this was heresy.

So they called him on the carpet. “How dare you do things differently that how we have done them in the past!”

It didn’t matter that this was Peter, the great apostle of Jesus. All that mattered was that Peter had done something they didn’t want him to do.

When Peter calmly explained why he had done it, that Jesus himself had told him to do it, it stopped everybody. To their credit, their response was:

When the others heard this, they stopped objecting and began praising God. They said, “We can see that God has also given the Gentiles the privilege of repenting of their sins and receiving eternal life.” (Acts 11:18)

No matter how respected the minister of a church is, sooner or later he does something that goes against the grain of the prominent members of the church. It may be his reaching out to the wrong people so that they will come to church. It may be the inclusion of the wrong kind of music in the worship services. He may decide to preach out of the wrong translation of the Bible. he may decide not to wear a tie on Sunday morning.

Sometimes the offense is so small in relation to the outcry. Sometimes it is not.

With his actions at the house of Cornelius, Peter challenged all of the preconceptions of the early church. He said, in effect, there are others besides you that can be in this church. And there will be other ways for the church to go than the ways you want.

That always makes some people mad, when you tell them that they are not in charge. After all, they have seniority, they are charter members, they have given a lot to this church. And because of all that, they feel they should have first say in how things go.

The funny thing is, Peter was one of those people. He went reluctantly to Cornelius’ house. After all Cornelius was a Gentile and Jews considered all Gentiles – 99.5% of the world – to be unclean. Their tiny fraction of the world’s population were the only ones who were “Clean and holy.”

But God made Peter by first showing him a vision of animals considered unclean by the Jews and telling him that what he had made, they were no longer to consider unclean. And then, as Peter spoke to Cornelius and his household, the gift of tongues fell on the listeners.

That was the end. Peter had to accept it. And again to his credit, he did. And because he did, the church had to also.

It is hard to change, but we have to. We are not in charge of how the church will go. God is. And we follow him.