Acts 10:9-16 9Now, the next day, as those ones were traveling on the way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray around the sixth hour. 10And he became hungry and wanted to eat. But while they were preparing, a trance came upon him, 11and he saw the heavens opened and something like a great sheet with four corners descending upon the earth, 12in which were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air. 13And a voice came to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” 14But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” 15And the voice came to him again a second time, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” 16And this happened three times, and immediately, this thing was taken up to heaven.
The scene changed to Joppa, about thirty miles south of Caesarea, where Peter was on the rooftop praying. It was what we might call lunchtime, the sixth hour, and he was getting hungry. Many people get hungry about the middle of the day, which is why lunch is almost a universal experience around the world. In Peter’s case, he was trying to pray on an empty stomach. We cannot tell if his trance was due to hunger or low blood sugar, but the vision he had was about food, so the physical and spiritual seemed to have come together at that moment in his life. God used Peter’s hunger to get a point across. The events were not accidental or by chance but all according to God’s sovereign involvement.
God used the rooftop as a means to communicate to Peter a deep spiritual truth he needed to learn. Peter may have been staring at a sailboat or looking at a canvas covering on the roof. He saw a large sheet coming down from heaven with all kinds of animals on it. The mention of four corners brings to mind the four corners of the world: north, south, east, and west. The sheet represented the “ends of the earth” of Jesus’ commission in 1:8. The animals represented three major categories: land, water, and air. The surprise in the vision is the voice that told him to kill and eat the animals. For Peter, as a kosher Jew, the animals were considered unclean to eat. Jews followed a strict diet according to their interpretation of regulations in the Torah, especially Leviticus 11.
Peter’s answer is surprising since he recognized the voice as the Lord. He used one of the strongest ways to refuse to do something (mēdamōs). There was no way he was going to violate his long-cherished Jewish tradition. His identity was still wrapped up in being Jewish. He had been a good Jew and kept the kosher diet all his life. Peter’s worldview needed to be stretched, and it began with something as simple as food. The voice responded to Peter’s reluctance with a mild scolding that was slow to penetrate Peter’s thinking, because the directions were repeated three times.
Peter and other early Christians faced a dilemma about what to do with eating with Gentiles, whose food was different from the Jewish diet and violated the consciences of Jewish Christians. Peter should have remembered the words of Jesus recorded in Mark 7:19 about how what goes in the mouth is not what makes a person unclean but what comes out. The food barrier between the Jewish believers and Gentiles was keeping them from fulfilling Jesus’ command to go and make disciples.
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