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Scripture Reading: - Acts 10: 1-23
Text: “Peter said, Not so, Lord for I
have never eaten anything that is common or unclean”. As we live our lives day by day we tend to follow a set pattern; we seem to be unwilling to reach new heights. We often take the attitude that because we have always followed a certain pattern in living or religion, we should never do anything else. We plod along in the same old ruts that our grandfathers followed. But God is always breaking forth new truths; He continues to reveal Himself more and more to us if we seek Him. The story which we read for our lesson is an account of the breaking forth of a new truth. It was a new and definite step in the development of the Christian Religion. Peter had gone upon the house-top to pray, and being very hungry after the long journey, he fell into a faint, and while in that faint he had a dream or a vision. He dreamed that he saw the heavens opened, and descending from the heavens was a great sheet, held up by the four corners, filled with all kinds of animals, birds and reptiles. As Peter watched the sheet descending towards him he heard a voice telling him to rise up and kill and eat. But as he looked more closely at the contents of the sheet he saw that most of the animals, reptiles and birds were those that were listed as unclean in the Scriptures. When he saw that, he turned away in horror and said, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” Peter was a good Jew. He tried his best to obey all the commandments, to follow the Jewish religion in its every detail as his father had done for generations. The voice told him three times to kill and eat, and ended by saying, “What God hath cleansed, thou must not call unclean”. When Peter awoke he wondered what the dream could have meant. He was to find out before long. For just as he was thinking of the dream three men came to see him. They had been sent to him by one, Cornelius, a Gentile, a roman army officer. Cornelius, though a Gentile, was a devout man. He was a religious man, and he had sent to Peter for advice. He wanted to become a Christian. But until that time it was thought that Christianity was for Jews only, and not for Gentiles. The Jewish religion was a very exclusive religion. None but those of Jewish blood were allowed to take part in all the religious activities. Now when Peter heard of this request of Cornelius, he knew at once the meaning of his vision. God had revealed something new to Peter, namely that Christianity was not just for a certain race of people, but for all people everywhere. Peter now hastened to the home of Cornelius in Caesarea, where, before a large crowd of Jews and Gentiles, he preached concerning Jesus Christ. Many Gentiles confessed Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and as many as did so were baptized by Peter into the Christian Faith. This was a new and a great step for Christianity. Can you imagine what would have happened to the Christian Religion if Peter had not broken convention and baptized Gentiles? Christianity would have remained the obscure religion of a handful of Jews in one little corner of the world. But because Peter listened to God, heeded God’s Word and broke convention, Christianity became the force in the world that it is today. We are often afraid to break convention. WE will not do something new and different because it has never been done before. We are afraid of what others will say; we are afraid that it will be the wrong thing to do, or that it will cause embarrassment. Not only in religion but in all walks of life we are hesitant to break convention. There is a little proverb which says. “Be not the first by whom the new is tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside”. We tend to obey the first part of that proverb too strictly. For if everyone took that advice there would be no progress at all. For instance, progress has been made in farming in the past fifty years. New methods have been introduced and have been proven successful. New machinery has been used to great advantage. Convention was broken. This is an age of progress and development, but if we refuse to break convention and build anew it will become an age of stagnation. Yet, on the other hand, we must not cast aside all conventions, traditions and customs. These are vitally necessary. We would have utter confusion indeed if we did not make use of what has been done in the past. If we went about doing things without any regard for the way they were done in the past we would have completer chaos. Customs, traditions and conventions are necessary. For example, the scientist does not discover a new scientific truth because he disregarded all that was known before. Rather he uses the knowledge that has been gained by previous experience, either of himself or of others, and he goes just one step further. He builds on the past. We build our society, not by disregarding all customs, tradition and conventions, but by building upon them. Our civilization has made great progress since the days of our early ancestors. This has not been accomplished because each generation has discarded and scorned the knowledge, tradition and conventions of the former generation, but because each generation has added something of its own. We must not be content with conditions as they are, for they are never perfect. We must build for the better. We must make improvements; we must make progress. We must benefit by what others have done before us. We must learn from their successes and mistakes and then make our own contribution. WE must always be pioneering in the realm of religion as well as in other realms. We must daily seek new truths. Christianity has always been pioneering. Abraham might have observed custom and convention and might have remained at Ur of the Chaldees, keeping flocks with his father Terah. But he broke convention and custom. He obeyed the voice of God, and went forth to a new land, worshipping god in a new way. For he looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. Abraham began a new chapter in the history of the Religion of Israel. Christianity might have continued to be the Religion of an exclusive group of poor Jews if Peter had not heeded the voice of God, and had not broken convention by admitting Gentiles into the Christian faith. Christianity might have continued to remain in ignorance and superstition, and the people under Papal domination, if men like Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox had not broken convention; if they too had not perceived the new truth that God broke forth from His Word. People sometimes sing about the “Old Time Religion”-it was good enough for Abraham, or Moses and it is good enough for me. But the religion of Abraham or of Moses is not good enough for us. The religion of the years immediately preceding the protestant Reformation is old time religion, and it is not good enough for us. It was not good enough for Luther, Zwubgkukm Calvin and Knox. It might have been good enough fro some people then, but it was not good enough for those men, for God had revealed new truth to them. After Peter discovered the meaning of his vision of the animals in the sheet, his old religion was not good enough for him.
God is still breaking forth new truth from His Word. He continues to reveal Himself to us, to those who care to seek Him, to those who wish to know the truth. We do not know all the truth yet. We do not know all about God yet. We have mush to learn. Our lives have not been perfect in the past. They have not been what God wants them to be. So let us go forth in the spirit in which the pioneers of the Christian faith lived. Let us seek new truth. Let us seek the true way of life, let us cherish what has been good in our lives, and discard the wrong; and then let us continuer to live better lives that we have lived in the past. The Chambered Nautilus is a shell fish which continues year after year to build a better shell that the one in which it has lived, and when the new and more beautiful shell is completed it discards the old to dwell in the new. When Oliver Wendell Holmes saw the Chambered Nautilus he was inspired to write a poem concerning it, and he ended that poem with a prayer. We may well make it our prayer too.
May this be the prayer of our hearts; to build more stately mansions, to reach new heights of living and of religion. Rev. Fred W. Bradbury, |
