Shabbat Shalom.
When I found out I was going to teach today while Stan and several of our members are over in Israel, it didn’t take me long to decide what I wanted to talk about. It is a passage of the New Covenant writings that many of us are familiar with, and one that poses special challenges to our understanding as Messianic believers. I’m speaking of Acts chapter fifteen.
This passage in the book of Acts has become known as the “Jerusalem Council” passage. What we are often taught about the Jerusalem Council is that this is where it was decided that Gentile followers of the Messiah Yeshua can ignore the Torah, because it doesn’t apply to them.
Those unfamiliar with the Messianic viewpoint often use Acts 15 as a basis for labeling us Judaizers. But is that what the Jerusalem Council was all about? Is Acts 15 the chapter that laid the Torah to rest, never to be relevant again?
To find out, let’s take a closer look at this important chapter in the history of the first-century congregations of Yeshua and see if we can determine what’s really going on. We read this in:
ACTS 15:1
Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”
OK, let’s stop right here for a moment because there are many elements to this first verse, and if we misunderstand these elements, we will misunderstand the rest of the chapter that follows.
The first and most natural question that occurs to me is, who were these men referred to in verse one who were teaching the brothers? We get some hints later in the chapter. For example, when they appear with Paul and Barnabas in front of the Jerusalem Council, we read this in:
ACTS 15:5
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.”
We learn two key facts about these men from this passage. First, they are believers. Second, they are from the party of the Pharisees.
For some, that might sound almost like a contradiction. Yet it is an accurate way to understand the identity of these teachers: they were Pharisees who believed in the Messiah Yeshua.
The correctness of this interpretation is confirmed by David Stern in his Jewish New Testament Commentary, where we read this:
STERN, JEWISH NT COMMENTARY, P. 275
But there were in fact some Pharisees who believed in Yeshua. There were not “former Pharisees” but Messianic Jewish Pharisees, just like Sha’ul. “But,” some may object, “these Pharisees were wrong. Their Judaizing view was roundly defeated.” Yes, but they were still believers; not every believer is right about everything! Further, the text does not tell us that all the Pharisees who were believers took this position; but, on the contrary, it does tell us that Sha’ul, who was a Pharisee, took the opposite stand.
Stern’s insight here is perspective-changing. This passage is often interpreted as being between unbelieving Jewish Pharisees and the believing Paul and Barnabas, who represent early Christianity. But that’s not the case.
This is not a dispute among those outside of the congregations of Yeshua! It’s a dispute among those who are inside it and a part of it!
So now we know these men were Messianic Jewish Pharisees. Does the text reveal anything else about them? It certainly does! Even later in the chapter, in James’ letter to the churches, we read this key passage in:
ACTS 15:24
We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said.
So what this letter tells us about these men introduced in verse one is that they were doing their teaching without authorization. In fact, Stern tells us in his commentary that these men were not violating orders not to teach, but had not been commissioned to teach at all.
This happens all the time in congregations even today, doesn’t it? We’ve all seen it, been part of it, even done it ourselves on occasion, right?
People at Oneg or after a service or study will gather people around them and, rather than discussing the sermon given, they start offering up their own ideas; ideas that can sometimes be at odds with what has been taught from the bema.
I’m not talking about those who discuss the sermon or study; I’m talking about those who start teaching their own lessons, without approval, or teach something contrary to what we hold to as a congregation.
So this is a situation we can now begin to understand a little better. We are presented with a few Messianic Jewish Pharisees who have not been authorized to teach, but who show up in Antioch and start teaching the congregation there anyway! And what are they teaching? Let’s read verse one again:
ACTS 15:1
Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Now, we’re still not done breaking down verse one so that we properly understand it. What are these unauthorized teachers teaching? “Unless you are circumcised, according to the CUSTOM taught by Moses, you cannot be SAVED.”
There are two key words we must notice here to understand this verse, and everything that follows it, properly.
The first key word is the word CUSTOM. That should ring a bell for us right away. If we were talking about the written Torah of God, it would not say “custom” there.
This isn’t always easy to pick out in the text because of the first-century Jewish mindset from which it was written. For the Jewish people of Yeshua’s time, and for many traditional Jews even today, there is no separation between the five books of Moses and the oral traditions of the Pharisees. If you come upon a Jewish person studying the Talmud or the Mishnah and ask him what he’s up to, he’ll reply that he’s studying Torah.
That blending the written Torah and the oral traditions has been part of rabbinic teachings since at least the time of the Mishnah. For we read this in:
MISHNAH, PIRKEY AVOT 1:1
Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the great synagogue. The latter used to say three things: be patient in [the administration of] justice, rear many disciples and make a [protective] fence around the Torah.
In this Mishnaic tradition, it becomes clear that the rabbinic mindset sees the oral traditions as inseparable from the written Torah of Moses. That is the basis of their authority, so that is why they call all of it Torah.
Yet remember, these Pharisees in Acts are believers in Messiah Yeshua. They understand Yeshua made a distinction between what was written down by Moses on Mount Sinai, and the many rabbinic teachings that came centuries later.
And so they don’t call this particular circumcision practice a law, but a custom taught by Moses.
Keep in mind the claim they are making. They are insisting that performing this circumcision in strict accordance with a particular oral tradition is necessary for a person to truly be saved!
You know, it is one thing to embrace the Jewish roots; it’s another thing entirely to embrace Judaism over the teaching of Yeshua. And that is exactly what these teachers are requiring. As Stern comments:
STERN, JEWISH NT COMMENTARY, PP. 273-274
These men from Judah are insisting that Gentiles must become in every sense Jews … This condition goes beyond the requirements for individual salvation set forth in the Tanakh, in Judaism or by the emissaries … The Tanakh says, and Peter quotes it at 2:21, “Everyone who calls on the name of The L-RD will be saved.” … The New Testament books of Romans, Galatians and Ephesians have as a central issue the equality of Jews and Gentiles before God, insofar as salvation is concerned; they make it clear that observance of the Torah, as it applies to Jews, is not a condition for the salvation of a Gentile … The correct conclusion is: a Jew who becomes Messianic remains a Jew, and a Gentile who becomes a Christian remains a Gentile.
So these are the stakes at play here. You have a group of Messianic Jewish Pharisees. They believe Yeshua is the Messiah, but they have come to Antioch without authorization to teach and have started teaching something contrary to the teaching of Paul and Barnabas: that Yeshua’s blood sacrifice was not enough to obtain salvation by itself. That obeying not just the direct commands of God in the written Torah, but also the oral traditions of the rabbis – including specific customs about circumcision – was necessary for someone to be saved!
This is what’s at stake.
With all this in mind, what plays out next becomes far easier to understand. Let’s read on in:
ACTS 15:2
This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question.
I think now we can all understand more deeply why Paul and Barnabas had such a deep dispute with these particular Messianic Jewish Pharisees. This was Paul and Barnabas’ congregation that they were discipling, a suddenly along come some self-appointed experts, people who are not ready to teach, and they start contradicting everything Paul and Barnabas have been working so hard to instill in the believers there in Antioch. Of course that would be upsetting.
Moving on to:
ACTS 15:4-11
When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.” The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: “Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”
So Peter here says that the Torah is done away with and irrelevant and we don’t even need to read it anymore, right?
No, of course not! Because that’s not what’s at issue here, is it?
That may be how we’re accustomed to hearing this passage taught, but through our study today, we know better now, don’t we?
Peter’s ruling is focused; he is saying God makes no distinction between Jew or Gentile when it comes to salvation… the same standard applies to all. And that is, that our salvation comes from God and God alone, though trusting in Yeshua as our Messiah.
So what exactly is this yoke Peter speaks of, that he says, “neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear.” Well, what we often are taught is that the yoke Peter is referring to is the Torah itself!
This is why we hear so many people proclaim, “Praise God, we have been set free from the Law!” The trouble is, that’s not what Peter means here by yoke.
Ask most Jews, and they will tell you that the Torah is not considered a burden, but a joy! That is also how the first-century believers in Yeshua would have seen the written Torah as well, because they understood that Yeshua was Himself the living embodiment of the Torah.
So, again, what is this yoke? Remember, Peter has just stated that God purifies our hearts when we place our trust in Him. So this is a contrasting statement.
What would be the opposite of following God with a purified heart? Well, quite simply, Peter’s referring to those times when we’re just going through the motions, when we’re not really living out our faith by our actions and trusting God.
Whenever we start doing all the ceremonies of our faith because it’s expected of us, but our hearts are cold to God, that’s when our practices become a yoke, a burden. We all go through this at times; the real problems begin when we get stuck there!
Let’s read what Stern had to say about this in:
STERN, JEWISH NT COMMENTARY, P. 276
[Peter] is speaking here of the detailed, mechanical rule-keeping, regardless of heart-attitude, that some (but not all!) Pharisees, including, apparently, the ones mentioned in verse five, held to be the essence of Judaism. This was not the “yoke of the mitzvot” prescribed by God, but a yoke of legalism prescribed by men! The yoke of legalism is indeed unbearable, but the yoke of the mitzvoth has always required, first of all, love of God and neighbor; and it now implies love toward Yeshua the Messiah. But love can never be legalistic.
Do you see the difference now? Obeying God because we’re passionate about our relationship to him is easy! But going through the motions when our hearts are far from him? Insisting others do the same? That’s legalism. And legalism doesn’t save us!
So can we now agree that no one has declared the Torah done away with at the Jerusalem Council so far?
It’s still intact, isn’t it?
What’s being spoken against is false religion and empty rule-keeping. Let’s move on:
ACTS 15:12-19
The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up: “Brothers, listen to me. Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: “‘After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’ that have been known for ages. “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”
Now here’s a critical point. James is handing down the final decision of the Jerusalem Council, and it’s important we understand it properly. What he says here is, “We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.”
From this wording, what are we often taught? “OK, whatever comes next, this is what we Gentiles need to do and understand. Nothing more. Just this. The Jerusalem Council said so.”
But is that the best understanding of the text? Quoting Joseph Shulam, Daniel Stern points out that there is a different rendering for this verse, one that lends deeper insight:
STERN, QUOTING JOSEPH SHULAM
“Or, ‘the Goyim, while they are turning.’ Joseph Shulam expounds the second alternative thusly: Do not put obstacle in the way of Gentiles while they are going through the process of turning away from idolatry to God. Instead, let them use their spiritual energy in repentance. There will be plenty of opportunities later for them to absorb what Moses has to say.”
And that’s the point here! The ruling of the Jerusalem Council is not meant to be taken as a final word on what Gentiles have to observe to please God, now and forever!
It is merely a starting point. A beginning. A minimum standard so that Gentiles turning away from their paganism and coming to worship God can get along with peaceably, and not offend, their fellow brothers and sisters in the L-RD who are coming to Messiah from a Jewish background!
Let’s read what they required to accomplish this:
ACTS 15:20-21
Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
This is what many people mistakenly rally around as the only rules that should ever apply to Gentile believers in the Messiah Yeshua. That they should stay away from sexual sin, from food polluted by idols or the meat of strangled animals, and from blood.
It sounds nice. It sounds Biblical. But I think we’ve explored enough of background on this chapter now to come to an entirely different conclusion than what we are normally taught.
Should we assume, if these are the only rules we Gentiles are to live by, that it is OK to covet?
Is it OK to harbor hatred in our hearts toward our neighbors, in direct violation of Yeshua’s teachings?
Is it OK to steal, since that’s not mentioned either?
I don’t think that’s what Peter and James and the rest of the Jerusalem Council were driving at. If you look at that very next verse again, you’ll notice another key statement.
James says, “For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
Many people wonder what James could have meant here, but I think it’s pretty clear, in context.
He’s saying those who are Messianic Jews have been raised on the laws of Moses! It’s been preached from the earliest times, and still is, every Sabbath!
Understanding all the commands of God found in the five books of Moses comes naturally to them! They were raised on it! It’s what they know, and it’s no burden. It’s second nature!
But is that true of the Gentiles who are just beginning to turn away from their paganism, from their idol worship and from the worship of false gods? Have they had Moses preached to them from the time they were children until now?
No! Of course not! They don’t have the same background! They don’t have the same context! They don’t even have the same language, in some cases!
So the desire of Paul and Barnabas and the Jerusalem Council isn’t to do away with the written Torah of God! It’s to ease the transition of these new Gentile believers into the first-century congregations of Yeshua, to give them a bare minimum, a starting point at which their presence won’t be chaotic and disruptive to the rest of the community!
Remember, this part of the ruling isn’t a salvation question; it’s a question of how righteously they have to live in order not to be disruptive to the congregation of Yeshua they are not a part of, until they learn more about living a God-pleasing life. This is about that next step.
Ultimately these Gentile believers will spend more time with their Messianic brothers and sisters. They will be discipled. Are they never expected to advance in righteous living and deeper obedience to the Torah?
No, of course not! As they grow in maturity, more obedience will be expected of them; not as a means of salvation, but as a means of living a purer life, a life empowered by the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit!
God treats all of us the same. He accepts us where and as we are! But He calls all of us to ever-greater obedience, ever-greater trust, as we grow in our knowledge of Him.
I came to know the L-RD personally in college. And I was able to give up some of my sins immediately. But when I look back at how I lived in those first couple years of walking with the L-RD, there was a lot to be desired.
As the years went on, I learned more about prayer, more about distancing myself from various temptations, more about who God really was and what He expected of me. I walked with and grew in the L-RD for almost fifteen years before I ever discovered the Messianic movement.
I’ve been in the Messianic movement for over a decade now. When I first started attending, some things were easy for me to grasp right away, like celebrating the Sabbath on the seventh day.
Others, like avoiding unclean meats or keeping the Festivals of the LORD, took more time for me to get used to. And here’s the thing: both God and the people here at Sar Shalom gave me time and opportunity to grow into greater obedience.
They didn’t chase me off with a stick the second time I walked in the door! They didn’t debate me when I had questions or I stated something that didn’t perfectly line up with our doctrine at KKS. Even after a couple years of coming here, I still had a lot of growing to do! Yet they welcomed me here at Sar Shalom throughout that growing in obedience process, just as God does!
And if God and Sar Shalom were willing to be that patient with me, how can we be any less patient with anyone else coming here for the first time?
See, that’s the real message of the Jerusalem Council! Despite what we may have been taught traditionally, it was not an event in church history where the disciples declared the Torah to be done away with!
It was, more accurately, a ruling against legalism! It was a ruling in favor of patience and tolerance toward all who follow the Messiah Yeshua!
It was a ruling allowing them to grow and mature in trust and love and knowledge and obedience to the L-RD, as He draws us all continually closer to Him, knowing that He will build us always toward a higher standard of obedience, far above the minimum requirements, not a lower standard.
That’s the true heart of the Jerusalem Council. And that spirit of love and mercy, not legalistic observance, is what should be in all our hearts whenever we encounter newcomers. Let’s make them feel at home. Let’s make them all feel as welcome as we did the first time we walked through those doors.
Shabbat Shalom.
Sermon: Peter’s vision
July 1st, 2011 by Craig Hansen
Here is the text of my most recent sermon, delivered in late May at Kehilat Sar Shalom. It’s a message I’d prepared last fall and had in reserve for a while. Enjoy!
Shabbat Shalom.
You know, there are certain passages in the New Covenant writings that present challenges to us as Messianic believers. If we are not careful in our study, they can cause us to question whether what we believe is actually correct. Yet with the prompting of the Holy Spirit, careful study, and some effort to read these writings through first-century Messianic Jewish eyes, there is always an answer to be found.
One such case is the case of Peter’s vision, detailed initially in Acts chapter 10. As this passage has been historically taught, we have come to view it as one of the key moments in which God repealed all the kosher laws, the rules about which animals were either clean or unclean as food for us. It is why so many congregations hold bacon-and-egg breakfasts, pig roasts, and serve Easter ham at gatherings even today.
And whenever any of us finds the Messianic movement and begins to consider observing God’s regulations for what is clean and permissible as food, and what is unclean and ought not be eaten as food, this is one of the first passages we are pointed to by our well-intentioned friends who don’t want to see us “going back under the law.”
But is that what Peter’s vision in Acts 10 is all about? Let’s take a closer look, and see if the traditional arguments of the last sixteen hundred years or so actually hold water.
In Acts 10, there is an important preface that many who study this issue overlook; yet it is critical for understanding the events in this chapter properly. So let’s read what precedes Peter’s vision in:
Now, for our purposes here today, I don’t want to spend too much time on Cornelius and God’s selection of him, other than to point out that Cornelius was not a practicing and faithful traditional Jew. He was not a proselyte convert to Judaism, although it is believed he had studied and had, like Ruth, embraced the Jewish people as his people and the Jewish God as his God. This is demonstrated by his compassion and charitable acts on behalf of the Jewish poor, as mentioned in the passage.
But the point is, he had not undergone circumcision, or full conversion to Judaism, at the time this angel appears to him and promises to bring Peter to him. This all happens without Peter’s knowledge, and then what follows next is Peter’s vision. Let’s read on:
Now, certainly it is understandable how this passage might be taken out of context and thought to be a vision concerning the dietary kosher laws. All sorts of animals, both clean and unclean, are part of Peter’s vision, and a voice does instruct Peter to kill and eat three times. It’s certainly a forgivable misunderstanding.
But we must not make the mistake of taking any part of the Bible out of context; whenever we do, bad theology is the result. Wrong thinking about God is where we end up. So let’s challenge ourselves to go against centuries of teaching to the contrary; let’s forget what we may have heard taught elsewhere and examine what the Scriptures really say here. This is not the end of the story.
Now, if anyone other than God was ever going to know the meaning of this vision given to Peter, it would have to be Peter, right? After all, he’s the one God was communicating with.
Initially, Peter is indeed puzzled over the meaning of this vision. Surely the same thoughts we have today must have been going through his head. Could God really be undoing centuries of Torah tradition on what is good for food and what isn’t? Remember, each of the three times this vision was given to Peter, he replied that he had never let any unclean meat touch his lips. This means Peter was indeed devout; he was a Torah-keeper even as a disciple and emissary of Yeshua Himself!
As Peter is puzzling over the meaning of his vision, though, let’s notice that immediately there’s a knock at the door; messengers from Cornelius arrive and ask Peter to come with them, explaining in:
So after inviting the men to stay for the night, they set out in the morning for Cornelius’ house and Peter goes in to meet with him. Let’s read this next bit carefully, as we skip down to:
This will be the crux of how we should properly interpret Peter’s vision. Right here, in verse twenty-eight, Peter himself explains the interpretation of his vision. He says, “But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.”
Where did God show Peter this great message? Just a few verses earlier! Peter is telling us that this is what that vision about clean and unclean animals was all about! You see, if God had not tapped Peter on the shoulder like this, he very likely would have refused to come to the house of Cornelius.
Why? Peter himself tells us why right here. “It is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.”
You see, by the very act of visiting Cornelius, Peter was, by the standard Jewish custom of his day, making himself ritually unclean – unfit to visit the Jerusalem Temple and in need of a cleansing – a mikveh – to regain his ritual purity.
Even though Cornelius was a God-fearer whose actions spoke of his love for the Jewish people and their God, he was not yet a convert; he was not yet circumcised; and therefore, he was a source of uncleanness, in the first-century Jewish mindset.
I’d like to read you a passage I found in Stern’s Jewish New Testament Commentary that addresses this issue.
So we have Peter’s own testimony that his vision was not about food at all, but about the inclusion of Gentiles into the first-century congregations of Yeshua. If this is the proper way of understanding Peter’s vision, then there must be some divine confirmation, right?
And are we given any? Certainly. Because as chapter ten continues, Peter begins sharing the good news about Yeshua the Messiah with Cornelius and all of his household, and an amazing, unheard-of thing happens. We read this in:
Does God pour out his Ru’ach haKodesh – his Holy Spirit – on people He does not bless or accept? Of course not! So a person must believe one of two things here. Either Cornelius and his household faked the gifts of the Ru’ach so ingeniously that they fooled Peter and the other emissaries of Yeshua, or God was indeed speaking to Peter about Gentile inclusion into the communities of Yeshua, and the vision was indeed not at all about food.
Peter’s actions with the household of Cornelius is soon brought under criticism, as we read in:
Now carefully notice the objection here. No one is saying that Peter ate pork. No one is suggesting he had a ham sandwich and lobster bisque. The criticism is focused not on what Peter ate, but who he ate it with! He ate with uncircumcised men! The accusation was about his ritual purity because of who he ate with, not what he ate! If what he had eaten had been at issue, it would have been mentioned. The fact that it’s not further underlines the point that this whole episode was not about food, but Gentile inclusion.
Peter goes on to recount everything that happened in detail, and at the end of this, he concludes this way in:
Now, this is great news! When understood properly, it all fits together much more coherently. If Peter’s vision had been about making pulled-pork barbecue sandwiches OK to eat, it would seem out of place in the text of Acts. Properly understood as being a symbolic vision about Gentile inclusion in the first-century communities of Yeshua, the thematic unity of the text is restored.
Now this is where some of us, before we became Messianic, would have begun to get uncomfortable. And it is where, even now, those who know us but do not yet embrace a Messianic understanding, begin to raise questions.
Recently, I had a friend object to our interpretation of this text; he was adamant that it was about doing away with the concept of unclean food because, he reasoned, God would never be so petty as to worry about what we eat and what we don’t eat. It’s all cultural. It’s all about personal tastes.
God doesn’t care about what we eat or don’t eat? Really?
Let me share with you an insight I received while studying through Acts 10 for this very message: Sin entered the world because of a dietary command of God.
Let me say that again: Sin entered the world because of a dietary command of God. Let’s take a look at:
This one, simple command is all Adam was given in the Garden. One simple command, and it was a dietary command. Eat from any tree in the Garden except this one tree. Eat from any tree except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat from that tree.
It was just one command. That’s all Adam had; one dietary command: don’t eat from this one, particular tree. And because Adam and Chaveh couldn’t keep even that one, simple command, sin entered the world. Rebellion against God’s instructions entered the world because we decided that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was “good for food and desirable for gaining knowledge.”
Sin entered the world because we refused to let God tell us what to eat and what not to eat.
Now, is that to suggest that disobeying the clean and unclean dietary laws are more important than the other commands of God? Not necessarily.
If I get absent-minded at a gathering and eat a slice of pizza that looks like a cheese pizza, but turns out to have some sausage in it, does it mean I’m in danger of the fires of hell? No. But it does make me unclean. The solution is not the death penalty; the solution is that I immerse myself and I’m unclean until the start of a new day, at sunset.
So, let’s not go overboard here. Dietary laws are not as critical as His command not to murder. We know this because the penalty is different. But dietary laws are an excellent temperature-taking set of commands when it comes to determining our willingness to accept God’s sovereignty in our lives.
It is easy for anyone to say they want to make God the Lord of their life. Anyone can say that. Yet we all know our actions prove our words, don’t we? And we are all familiar with the first-century Jewish argument style known as kol v’chomer, arguing from the lesser to the greater, correct?
So let’s imagine a scene. You are in your prayer closet and while praying, you say, “LORD, I want you to make my life a testimony to you! I want you to use me in powerful ways! Make me a missionary and anywhere you send me, I will go. Africa, Siberia, anywhere.”
So the LORD replies to your prayer and he says, “Give up your pepperoni pizzas.”
Indignant, you reply, “LORD, I love pepperoni pizza! Let’s not focus on such a trivial thing! You’re missing the point! I’m willing to be your missionary to anywhere in the world you wish to send me.”
And then the LORD replies, “If you cannot obey me in this small, simple command to give up pepperoni pizza, how can you obey me to go into the mission field wherever I wish to send you?”
Are you beginning to get the picture? Dietary laws may not be the most critical laws in terms of the penalty for violating them, but that also makes them the simplest to obey! And if we’re not willing to obey the LORD in the small, easy matters, how can we claim we are willing and able to obey Him in anything bigger and more important?
But let’s focus back on Peter. What we have seen in our look at Acts 10 and 11 is that Peter’s vision was not about food, but about Gentile inclusion.
Another objection to this understanding I was recently challenged with, by a friend, is this. “OK, so even if Peter’s vision isn’t about food, that’s certainly what was going on when Peter was confronted by Paul, as related in the book of Galatians! Peter was eating pork with the Gentiles, and that’s a known, indisputable fact!”
Is it?
Since this ties in directly to Peter’s vision, let’s take a look at this related incident in the book of Galatians. We read this in:
Now notice the careful wording here. Paul does not write that Peter ate, “like the Gentiles.” He says that Peter ate “with the Gentiles.”
And why? Because God had shown Peter that it was OK to eat with uncircumcised Gentiles.
There is absolutely no verbiage in this passage that suggests that Peter and the Gentile believers were having ham sandwiches. That would have been the furthest thing from his mind! As a first-century Messianic Jew, the idea of eating anything unclean wouldn’t even cross his mind – it was not something he even considered food.
And when the members of the circumcision group show up, does it say Peter started reaching for the roast beef instead of ham? No, what does it say? It says, “he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles.”
Peter, always rash and eager for acceptance, knew the truth God had shown him in that vision – that it was OK to eat with uncircumcised Gentiles, but he didn’t always live up to that truth. He sometimes would slip up and allow the opinion of others to matter more than God’s opinion of him.
Stern agrees with this interpretation in his commentary, as we read:
So why did Paul “oppose him to his face?” What made Peter “clearly in the wrong?” Was it all over the food on his plate? Not at all. It was the sudden shunning of the uncircumcised Gentiles he had previously been treating as friends and brothers. And his hypocrisy spread quickly to others, as we read in:
So what laws is Paul referring to here? Traditional teaching has been that it is the dietary laws, but that is not the case. After all, the people who show up and cause Peter to start shunning the Messianic Gentiles was known as the circumcision group, not the Clean Meats Only group, right?
We get further verification of this in Stern’s commentary, where he quotes an early Messianic Jewish Rabbi. We read:
What we see here, then, is that the source of many of these episodes of controversy is, if not the same individuals, at least members of the same group. The Messianic Jewish Pharisees who insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised to be genuinely saved first spring to life in reaction to this new work of Gentile inclusion into the Messianic communities of the first century.
After this, they showed up and began “teaching the brothers at Antioch” without authorization, and disturbing the congregation there since their teaching contradicted that of Paul and Barnabas, who were assigned to Antioch at that time. This lead to the Jerusalem Council decision of Acts 15; there, the legalistic interpretations of the Circumcision group was defeated by James and Peter.
Yet the circumcision group did not go away quietly, we can see, because some time after the Jerusalem Council, the circumcision group shows up again, which leads Peter to forget himself and start shunning the Gentile believers, contrary to the truth of his vision.
In these incidents, the real issue at hand has been that uncircumcised Gentiles are no longer considered to be a source of uncleanness. Yet our twenty-first century cultural blinders mislead us so that we miss that truth and assume it’s about whether it’s okay to eat bacon. Can you see now why it’s important to understand these passages properly and in their first century context?
In the first century, the main problem was cultural pressure on Gentiles to conform to Jewish customs and traditions. How unfortunate it is that the far more common problem today is just the opposite: that we as Christians too often put pressure on Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua to abandon their Judaism and conform to our customs and traditions.
So my prayer today is that God, through Messiah Yeshua and the ministry of his Ruach haKodesh, would bring all of us together to worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. After all, that’s what our Messianic community, Kehilat Sar Shalom, was founded on.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Peter's vision
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