The Account So Nice, Luke Told It Twice

Acts 11
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.
⁴ Then Peter told them exactly what had happened.

• And here’s the thing: by exactly, Luke means exactly.
• If you’ve read ahead, you look at this chapter and think: We JUST heard this part, what gives?
• NT Wright says:
  “Peter’s telling of the story follows so closely the account given in the previous chapter that we are forced to ask why Luke has run the risk of such major repetition within his normally fast paced narrative…”
  “both cases have to do with remarkable acts of God in doing new and unexpected things in people’s lives, especially in extending the Gospel to the Gentiles.
  “We can ONLY conclude that for Luke the admission of Gentiles into God’s people, reformed around Jesus, without needing to take on the marks of Jewish identity, i.e. circumcision and the food taboos…”

• A vital point for us that we often miss because we’re very uncomfortable talking about circumcision is that we reduce the idea that we should be ‘careful’ with legalism and requirements that ‘add to the things we should do as Christians. Judaism required changing our body (for men) and changing what we do and don’t eat, changing our daily schedule and changing our interaction.

We should note a better translation (NET) of the first few verses of 11:
Acts 11.1-4 (NET)
Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God.
² So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers took issue with him,
³ saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and shared a meal with them.”
⁴ But Peter began and explained it to them point by point …”

• This issue (conforming to the requirements of the Law, specifically circumcision) will come up in Acts 15, and again in 21.
• The body of Christ, His church is constantly under attack from the Enemy who influences those both in and around the body of Christ to compromise the grace of God and poison the reality of God’s grace and mercy in His redemption plan by adding ‘performative righteous acts’ to salvation. I
• n a moment we’ll learn from Scripture how powerful this issue is - it comes up again in Paul’s letter to the Galatians with a very upsetting twist.
• They’re saying ‘become a Good Jew and then you can be saved by Jesus.”

Acts 11
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.”

• We must revisit some important truth from last week: Cornelius was a good, God fearing man who did many good things, but he did not possess God’s salvation.
• That’s a vital ‘new’ detail that Peter recounts @ v14 “He will tell you how you and everyone in your household can be SAVED!”
• This shows that Cornelius was not ‘saved’ already and that info about Jesus would not be simply be a nice ‘topping’ to the salvation he already possessed.
• He needs Jesus to be saved.
• Only Jesus.

• They stopped objecting and began praising God, yet as we mentioned, the issue comes up again in Acts 15 and Acts 21.
• Further, look at what Paul tells us in Galatians 2:

⁶ And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.)
⁷ Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews.
⁸ For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
⁹ In fact, James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews.
¹⁰ Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.
¹¹ But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong.
¹² When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision.
¹³ As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
¹⁴ When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?

¹⁵ “You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles.
¹⁶ Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
¹⁷ But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not!
¹⁸ Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down.
¹⁹ For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God.
²⁰ My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
²¹ I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.

• Even Peter got caught up in human preferences and human ploys to try and re-shape / re- imagine the Kingdom of God.

• And he had heard first hand from Jesus that this pursuit is wrong - it’s copying the Pharisees - a righteousness apart from Christ which is no righteousness at all.

• So what gives then, and what does it mean for us now?

• NT Wright helps us see a possible explanation for this back and forth on circumcision/ Judaism:
  “Things were not static in the social and political world of Jerusalem through the 40s and 50s of the first century. Far from it. The pace was hotting up. Pressure was mounting that would eventually lead to a massive revolt and the bloodiest and most disastrous war in Jewish history, ending with Jerusalem being destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. These were the equivalents of a national flag at a time when the whole nation felt under intense and increasing pressure. To welcome Gentiles as equal brothers and sisters must have looked like fraternizing with the enemy. To be ‘zealous for the law’, including circumcision and the food laws, must have looked like the only way that would fit in with the will of God for his people.”

• Similarly, we see a very frantic spirit among folks in our culture as different sides of politics believes that their security, their future - their perceived idea of a good kingdom are colliding and creating incredible tension.
• Historically, we’ve seen this same spirit result in war - here in the US, both Revolutionary War and the Civil War were predicated on two opposing sides making Their Kingdom Come, Their Will Be Done.

• The question is, has God ever said that his kingdom is of this world at all?
  Jesus says plainly in John 18.36, “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom.

• If we make the aim of our life following Jesus and trusting exclusively in Him, we will get to the Father and the Father will see Jesus’ righteousness as our righteousness.

• What will we aim at, though?
• And what will we aim others at here amongst ourselves, fellow Followers?
• Are we going to insist that we aim at making political activists?
• Are we making tidy-looking clones of what we think goodness looks and acts like? - Or are we aiming at setting all our affection and trust in the life Jesus lived for us?

Galatians 2
²⁰ My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
²¹ I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless.

2 Corinthians 5
¹⁶ So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now!
¹⁷ This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
¹⁸ And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him.
¹⁹ For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.
²⁰ So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
²¹ For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

• Let me borrow words from NT Wright, Tyler Staton, John Mark Comer, John Eldredge and Jon Tyson:
• The Gospel isn’t about us doing things that get us into Heaven, but in trusting Jesus.
• Trusting and following Jesus, Being with Him, Becoming Like Him and ultimately doing what Jesus did.

“It’s not about us doing stuff to go to the Kingdom of Heaven when we die, it’s about trusting in what Jesus Christ has done for us and bringing the Kingdom of Heaven into our live as we live here and now.”