Get Out of the Way!

By now, if you’ve been keeping up with the past week of devotionals, you’ll have read the famous passage in Acts 10 where Peter sees a vision of animals and here’s a voice say “Kill and Eat.” This is perhaps one of my favorite stories in the book of Acts. Admittedly, part of me finds the words “kill and eat” very humorous in the context of animals and food. But when I stop to actually think what God was trying to teach Peter with this vision, I’m astounded and amazed by His grace. God was basically telling Peter that despite what Peter thought as acceptable or unacceptable when it came to God’s people, God had an all together different plan. Because of God’s grace, gentiles have been grafted in to the covenant community. For every non-Jewish believer, it goes back to that revelation of God’s design for us, that He desires relationship with all of us, not just the Jews. Amazing. What we come to today is what happens when Peter takes this news of God’s grace back to the Jewish believers in Jerusalem.

Read Acts 11:1-18


Upon Peter’s return, some of the Jewish believers immediately jump on his case about associating with the Gentiles, since it was unlawful for the Jews to associate with Gentiles. Peter then in detail explains to the Jewish believers what God had revealed to them. Peter explains that after his vision, he went and preached the gospel to the Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit fell on them. How was it that they would deny the Gentiles entry into their faith community because of their ethnicity when God had so clearly accepted them and brought them in, as evidenced by the Holy Spirit descending on them?

But perhaps, the thing I liked most about Peter’s response to the Jewish believers is found in Acts 11:17. Peter says, “if then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” I look at Peter’s life and this one verse demonstrates to me just how much God has changed this simple fisherman. This is the same Peter that told Jesus he would never let the Pharisees take Jesus to kill him; the same Peter that cut off a man’s ear to stop them from arresting Jesus.

Peter for so long thought he understood God’s plan. He thought he had it all figured out, and time after time, God revealed to him that his plan was bigger. That Peter’s expectations would not be met unless they were expectations that came from God. So now, this Peter, so different from the fisherman that is first introduced in the gospel of Matthew grasps it. “Who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” This is the attitude that we should have when we consider how God may want to work in and through us. Are we standing in His way and preventing Him from using us to impact our schools and friends and homes because we think we have it all figured out? Ask God to help you not stand in the way, and to reveal to you what His plan is.