AS IT HAD BEEN A GREAT SHEET … LET DOWN

The timing of this story is rather fascinating. The dispensation of the law had been set aside. The new dispensation of grace has been inaugurated and sealed by the arrival of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. The preaching of the gospel, which started at Jerusalem, had reached out to Judea and Samaria and was now about to reach out to the uttermost parts of the earth as the Saviour had commanded before His ascension, Acts 1. 8.

The sheep from the fold of Israel had been called out and were following the voice of the Shepherd. It was time now for the other sheep, the Gentiles, to hear His voice and to be brought in and become part of that one flock, John 10. 3, 16.

In spite of the setting aside of the dispensation of the law, there remained, in the minds of Jewish believers, that attach­ment to the ceremonial cleanness of food. The original purpose of these laws was to keep the nation of Israel from having any possible contact with idol worshipping heathens around them. Yet, their leaders in our Lord’s time turned this into a wall of par­tition, so impregnable that it seemed to constitute a barrier to the gospel reaching out to the Gentiles.

A sincere Gentile seeker after the truth was Cornelius of Caesarea; God, in His faithfulness, would have the way of salva­tion revealed to such a soul. The task of taking the gospel of God’s grace to him had fallen on the shoulders of Peter the apos­tle of the circumcision. This is in keeping with the Saviour’s words to Peter that gave him the privilege of opening the doors to the kingdom of heaven, Matt. 16. 19.

But how would Peter abandon the idea of never going into the home of an ‘unclean’ gentile, especially at the risk of eat­ing common or unclean food at his place? Therefore, it took a miraculous revelation from God to convince Peter not to call what He had cleansed, unclean. Peter had no doubt where that vessel came from nor did he fail to recognize the voice that spoke to him three times. For a little while he may have doubted in himself what that vision should mean. The confir­mation was not too far away for, ‘behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius. stood before the gate’, v. 17.