By Audrey Bauman

Acts 11: 1 - 18   (NLT)

Peter Explains His Actions

“Soon the news reached the apostles and other believers in Judea that the Gentiles had received the word of God. ² But when Peter arrived back in Jerusalem, the Jewish believers criticized him. ³ “You entered the home of Gentiles and even ate with them!” they said.”

Notice how the news about the Gentiles becoming Christians made it to Jerusalem before Peter got back. Ah … rumors, gossip …  The church in Jerusalem was ready to pounce. Isn't it amazing how we like to stick with what we are used to? Although the Old Testament gave instructions about how to deal with the Gentiles, it never put them as the outcasts and degenerate people that the Jews of Jesus' time practiced. But God had a plan. God wanted his message of salvation to go to the whole world, not just his chosen people in Israel. Change was coming!

I suspect Peter knew he would be challenged when he arrived in Jerusalem. He brought along 6 witnesses to what happened at Cornelius' house. And he was quite willing to tell the whole story in detail.

^“ Then Peter told them exactly what had happened. ⁵ “I was in the town of Joppa,” he said, “and while I was praying, I went into a trance and saw a vision. Something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners from the sky. And it came right down to me. ⁶ When I looked inside the sheet, I saw all sorts of tame and wild animals, reptiles, and birds. ⁷ And I heard a voice say, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.’

⁸ “‘No, Lord,’ I replied. ‘I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure or unclean.’

⁹ “But the voice from heaven spoke again: ‘Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.’ ¹⁰ This happened three times before the sheet and all it contained was pulled back up to heaven.

¹¹ “Just then three men who had been sent from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were staying. ¹² The Holy Spirit told me to go with them and not to worry that they were Gentiles. These six brothers here accompanied me, and we soon entered the home of the man who had sent for us. ¹³ He told us how an angel had appeared to him in his home and had told him, ‘Send messengers to Joppa, and summon a man named Simon Peter. ¹⁴ He will tell you how you and everyone in your household can be saved!’

¹⁵ “As I began to speak,” Peter continued, “the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as he fell on us at the beginning. ¹⁶ Then I thought of the Lord’s words when he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷ And since God gave these Gentiles the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to stand in God’s way?”

¹⁸ 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.”

Change can be quite upsetting. We like things the way they always were. It's more comfortable that way. The pandemic seemed to bring a lot of change. People today seem more likely to get upset about things, to argue about things. We dream to getting back to life the way it was before the pandemic, or we want to change everything now that we were "locked up" and got a chance to rethink life. Even churches experienced upset . The custom of building large churches may have ended as so many more people prefer to “attend church” online. The church is large, but just not the way it used to be. Many people changed churches as that break made them rethink what they wanted in a church.

Peter treats the complaints very graciously. He explains in detail what had happened. He brought along some eyewitnesses to back up what he was saying. And the church in Jerusalem realized God was changing his people. Gentile believers would be accepted. In actuality, it was likely difficult. You might believe that Gentile sitting next to you was a true believer, but you had never entertained or been friends with them before. That change isn't always easy.

As our churches change today, we need to be willing to see how God works in our culture of 2025. We should never change our belief in the truth of Scripture, the deity of Jesus, his virgin birth, his sinlessness, his death on the cross for the sin of humanity, his resurrection, and his coming return to earth. But we may need to be willing to make the changes necessary to spread the Good News to our world today.

Our song for today is Same Power by Jeremy Camp.