God is Rescuing the Nations- Acts 11
The mission of God is to rescue us from the mess we have gotten ourselves into, and it is a mission to rescue all of humanity, not just one ethnic group.
God does, however, select one family- Abraham’s family. And that might seem like God is prioritizing one ethnic group over others, but when we look at the blessing God puts on Abraham, we see that his family is blessed to be a blessing to all the families of the world (Gen 12:2-3). God’s focus on Abraham’s family was a way of ultimately blessing all of humanity. … The mission of God is to save and bless all humanity, and choosing Abraham’s family was part of that plan. …
Abraham’s family wasn’t really one of the nations of the world. The Bible will often talk about the 70 nations. That is a symbolic number representing all the nations of the world. … One of the ways that scholars look at the Tower of Babel story is that humanity rebelled by trying to push their way into heavenly realities, to try to manipulate the divine realm, but are then judged by being divided and placed under the authority of lesser spiritual beings to govern them. God, in a sense, disinherits humanity. It is dangerous to be in the presence of God in a state of rebellion, so God makes distance. … Those spiritual beings meant to govern the nations, themselves, fall and become the Pagan gods of the nations by accepting worship that belongs only to God.[1] … That is the formation of the 70 nations- People plagued by death and sin, divided, and now under the governance of fallen spiritual powers. These are the people who need to be rescued. …
God creates a new nation from Abraham. Abraham should have never become a nation because he and Sarah had no children. Sarah was unable to have children. God miraculously creates a child in Sarah’s womb, and Isaac is born. Isaac is miraculously brought into the world- he is inserted by God into the human story. He wouldn’t have existed without God’s intervention. So, in Isaac, God brought the Hebrew people into the world to be a new nation. … God didn’t select one of the 70 nations to be the chosen people. He created a new people for himself. And they were created for a purpose. To bring humanity back to God. To be a light to the nations.
Being a light to the nations was a mission that God’s people largely failed at. Often, they became more like the 70 nations, rather that standing apart from them to call them back to their creator. They worshipped their gods, and even in selecting a king they wanted to be like the other nations. … The influence was supposed to go the other way. The nations were supposed to be influenced by Israel.
In the first century, Judaism generally wasn’t very interested in helping Gentiles convert to Judaism. There were, however, a small number of Gentiles who had become very attracted to Judaism. They were called God-fearers. These Gentiles had started worshipping the Jewish God, but hadn’t fully converted to Judaism. This meant they followed fewer laws. They would follow the 7 laws of Noah, rather than the 613 laws of Moses that devout Jews were obligated to follow. So, male God-fearers wouldn’t be circumcised, and wouldn’t follow kosher food laws, which would be required to fully convert to Judaism.
But, without fully converting to Judaism their participation in the Jewish community would be limited in some ways. They would exist on the fringe of the community. For example, they would only be allowed in certain parts of the Temple (the part of the temple Jesus cleared the money changers out of was the court of the Gentiles), and even eating at the same table with devout Jewish people seemed to not be allowed.
Table-fellowship had to do with everyone at the table having a certain ritual purity according to the Jewish Law. The people you are eating with should be following Kosher food rules. They also shouldn’t be involved in Pagan worship. Table-fellowship was a big deal. When you sat and ate with someone you were saying that you were like them, you are happy for people to think of you together.
This is one of the things that got Jesus in trouble because he ate with tax collectors and sinners. He was identifying with them. … This is a bit of an extreme example, but imagine you found an old picture of a relative sitting at a dinner table with Hitler. You might be left wondering what that family member was up to. You might be left rethinking what kind of a person they were. … For the Jewish people of the first century, table-fellowship was a bit like that. Who you ate with signaled what kind of a person you are. As a devout first-century Jew, you definitely didn’t want to eat with a Gentile Roman army officer who was probably involved in making sacrifices to Pagan Gods.
That was the context as the disciples of Jesus encountered Gentiles and shared the news about Jesus. When the disciples of Jesus came to the Gentiles, they were going to have to figure out how Gentiles would be included. Would the old rules be followed, which keep the Gentiles at arm’s length- on the fringe of the community?
In becoming a follower of the Jewish Messiah, it would make sense that you should have some connection to Judaism. The followers of Jesus believed that they were part of the continuation of the covenant of Abraham, where God promised that Abraham and Sarah’s children would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The mark of the covenant of Abraham was circumcision. So, it made all kinds of sense that the followers of the Jewish messiah, the fulfillment of the covenants with Abraham and Moses, that they would receive the mark of circumcision and follow Kosher food laws as a part of becoming disciples. Jesus was circumcised, and he followed kosher. … So, how Jewish do you have to be to be a disciple of Jesus- the Jewish Messiah? It would make sense to say, very Jewish.
But to fully convert to Judaism meant that you were no longer a Gentile. The Bible regularly talks about the nations, the peoples, the Gentiles, coming to worship God. Do they come to God by becoming Jewish, or are they called to God even as they remain the nations, as Gentiles, as their own people group? … The question for the church was, do you have to become Jewish before becoming a Christian?
This is the atmosphere for our reading from Acts. Peter has to respond to accusations regarding eating with Gentiles. Peter answers saying he saw a vision having to do with ritual purity that came with a voice saying, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” As Peter is wondering what this means he is invited to a Gentile’s home. But this isn’t just any Gentile. He is a Roman Centurion, but he is also very devoted to in prayer God and is known for his charitable giving. He is a God-fearing Gentile. …
When Peter speaks to these Gentiles about Jesus, the Holy Spirit descends on them and they start speaking in tongues, just as happened to Jesus’ Jewish followers on Pentecost. … To Peter, God is clearly saying something. These Gentiles are acceptable to God as they are- Without converting to Judaism- Without needing to follow all of the Laws of the Torah given to Israel- Without receiving the mark of circumcision. They could follow Jesus as Gentiles without having to become Jewish. They can come to Jesus as Gentiles. … The Nations are being brought back to God, not by become Jewish, but as the 70 nations, each with their own cultural identity.
For Peter, the evidence of God’s approval of these Gentiles was so strong he was convinced that Gentiles did not need to convert to Judaism. If the Holy Spirit accepted them and was pleased to fill them, then who can contradict the witness of the Holy Spirit? How can they call these Gentiles unclean if, God has made them clean by placing his Spirit in them? … The Holy Spirit was saying that they could come to Jesus as Gentiles. The wisdom of the early church saw that the sign of circumcision, along with many of the purity laws, did not have to apply to those who were non-Jewish followers of Jesus. … How the Scriptures of Israel would apply to them would still have to be worked out. The Scriptures are still important, but it applies to Gentiles differently than it applies to the Jewish people. … They were in a new age. God was doing something new. God was restoring the human family.
God desires us to be drawn together and unified, but this doesn’t mean we all become the same. The Gentiles didn’t have to become Jewish, they could still remain diverse in being Gentiles, but they were still unified in Christ. … As Christianity has gone around the world it has picked up the cultural style of the people. Christianity in 1st century Israel looked stylistically different than in Greece, or Rome, or Ethiopia. As Christianity went to the British Isles it took on a Celtic style. … As Christianity was adopted in certain countries, there were certain cultural and stylistic adjustments that were made. The Bible known as the Book of Kells looks artistically different than Bibles produced elsewhere. … The story of Christ connected with certain traditions within that culture. I recently heard an Alaskan Indigenous man talk about how in their traditional understanding of hunting, an animal wasn’t caught because of the skill of the hunter. The animal gave up its life so the family could live. That teaching connected with the understanding of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the eucharist. … The nations did have to change in some ways. There were sins that had to be given up as they turned to Christ, but that didn’t mean they gave up their culture. They came to Christ as a part of a people.
So, the caution for us is about putting up unnecessary barriers as people seek to follow Jesus. If we do, we might find ourselves working against God’s mission to draw humanity together under Him as their Father, as one family. … Maybe we hold too tightly to our denomination. Or to our worship style. Maybe we divide people on the basis of money, gender, or education, or ethnicity, or occupation, or politics. … What the Church realized is what Paul wrote in Galatians 3 (Gal 3:28)
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
It’s not that those distinctions are illusions, they just don’t matter in our standing before Christ. That was a revolutionary idea in the ancient world. I suspect it is still a revolutionary idea if we truly grasp its full meaning. AMEN
[1] Fr.
Stephen De Young and Michael Heiser
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