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Pastor Thom Keller: He says "Never, Lord." That's an oxymoron. You can't say "Never, Lord," can you? Because if the Lord says something, you say "Yes, Lord." If you say "Never," then he's not Lord. You can't put those two together. If the Lord ever tells you something, don't ever say "No, Lord," because you've answered the second word as soon as you say "No." He isn't Lord. You can say "No, Harry," "No, Bill," but you can't say "No, Lord."

Guest (Male): It's been said he is either Lord of all or he's not Lord at all. The importance of obedience is not easily dismissed for those who profess Jesus as their Lord. On today's Study the Word, we open the book of Acts that gives us the historical record of how two men by a vision were directed by the Lord. These two are very different and yet the obstacles they must overcome to be obedient to the Lord are very instructive. Let's learn from their example, shall we? Enjoy Pastor Thom Keller.

Pastor Thom Keller: Acts chapter 10. One very important piece in chapter 10 is this understanding that this chapter occurred about 12 years after the resurrection of Christ. 12 years. You have a tendency, if you sit down and read through Acts in one sitting, which would be quite a read, but you would get the impression that it might have happened over a four-year period. It just reads like that, the way the things progress. But actually, chapter 10 is 12 years after the resurrection of Christ. And that is probably the timing of that is one of the most significant pieces of what we're even going to be looking at today, that it was 12 years later.

Let's read. In Caesarea, there lived a Roman army officer named Cornelius, who was a captain of the Italian Regiment. He was a devout man who feared the God of Israel, as did his entire household. He gave generously to charity and was a man who regularly prayed to God.

Now, Caesarea was mostly a Roman city occupied by Romans on the shores of the Mediterranean. It was a headquarters for the Roman governor in the province of Judea. So it was really a military site, a military city. The story introduces an officer, an army officer by the name of Cornelius. Cornelius was a very common name during this era. It was a name given to thousands of slaves who had been granted freedom by Cornelius Sulla in 82 BC.

So about 100 years before this, thousands of slaves were granted pardon, freedom, by a man by the name of Cornelius Sulla. And as you know, children were named many times, the same name as their father. Remember the story of Zechariah, that he'd be named Zechariah just as his father? But instead, they named him John, which was the Apostle John. So it's a good chance, a very real possibility, that this Cornelius would have been the son, because it would have been 100 years before, a son or maybe even a grandson of one who had been freed as a slave.

And it says that he was a centurion. Now, the way the Roman army was constructed was there were legions of men. A legion was 6,000 soldiers. So one legion was 6,000. And if you remember the one man that Jesus cast the demon out from Gadarene, the demon's name was Legion, meaning we take it to mean that there were thousands of demons within him. But that's where the understanding of that "thousands" came from. There were 6,000 men in a legion.

Under a legion, there were 10 battalions, or some of your translations say cohorts. And that was comprised of 600 men. So you start with 6,000 men, you now go down to battalions, which are 600 men, and then you go down to a century, which was 100 men. So 6,000, under that are 10 600 groups, and under that are six 100 groups. And those are called a century. And the leader, the commander of a century, was a centurion. And that's who Cornelius was. He was a Roman officer in charge of 100 soldiers. Compared to our military, the rank would be the same as, close to a sergeant major.

And it says that he feared God. Now, to us, that's kind of a little bit of a descriptive understanding, but to the Jew, that was a clear title, really, a God-fearer. A God-fearer was a non-Jew. And again, the world is comprised of only two groups of people to a Jew: Jews and Gentiles. If you're not a Jew, you're a Gentile. And so God-fearers were Gentiles, they were not born Jews, and who respected the God of Israel.

They enjoyed the monotheism, the mono-one Theo-god, that the Jews worshipped just one God. They appreciated the laws, the moral code. And so they became God-fearers, but they did not want to go through all of the legal pieces that would have been necessary to become a Jew. They didn't want to go through circumcision. They didn't want to keep the dietary law. They didn't want to keep the festivals and the holidays. But they wanted to know more about this God, this one God that the Jews worshipped. And they were called God-fearers.

It's a little aside, but if you remember where Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees, "You try to convert one man to the faith and then turn him into twice the son of hell itself." Jesus was talking about these God-fearers that the religious leaders would try to convert people in the street to Judaism. But these God-fearers, they would try to get them into the legalism of the faith. So he was a God-fearer.

Verse three: One afternoon about three o'clock, he, Cornelius, had a vision in which he saw an angel of God coming toward him. "Cornelius," the angel said. Cornelius stared at him in terror, this commander, in terror. "What is it, sir?" he asked the angel. The angel replied, "Your prayers and your gifts to the poor have not gone unnoticed by God. Now send some men down to Joppa to find a man named Simon Peter. He is staying with Simon, a leather worker, or tanner would be maybe more accurate, a tanner, some of your translations say that, who lives near the shore. Ask him to come and visit you."

As soon as the angel was gone, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier, one of his personal attendants. He told them what had happened and he sent them off to Joppa. Now, it says that he had a vision. This is not a dream, but neither was it reality. He was not asleep. He was wide awake and he saw somehow, not reality, but he saw this vision of an angel.

It's interesting that it says your prayers and gifts to the poor have not gone unnoticed by God. We mention this all the time, but if you look at the prophets, you look at the minor prophets, even the major prophets in the Old Testament, when you shake everything aside, when you really get to all of the things that God is upset about as he condemns Israel, when you sort through it all, at the root of it all is their indifference to the poor, the widows, and the orphans.

It is a huge, huge deal to God. And again, it's reflected here. He says, "Your prayers and your gifts to the poor have not gone unnoticed by God." There are a lot of things that God could have mentioned. He lived an ethical life. He went to synagogue. He worshipped the one true living God. But it's interesting he says, "Your prayers and your gifts to the poor have not gone unnoticed by God." In Matthew, it says that purity is best demonstrated by generosity. Again, the reason for that is you have to cross a lot of hurdles to get to where you can become generous. Contentment being one of those.

Now, it says in verse five that he went to Joppa. As you can see, Joppa's 30 miles to the south. And it begs a question immediately. Go to the end of chapter eight. If you remember chapter eight, chapter eight is where Philip goes to the Samaritans and preaches to the Samaritans. They convert wholesale. Then the apostles come and they validate the work. But it was Philip who really led that work. And at the end of chapter eight, it's talking about Philip. It says the last sentence, "He preached the good news there and in every city along the way until he came to Caesarea."

Where is Cornelius? He's in Caesarea. Why hasn't God just sent Philip over there? Gas was expensive back then. Why have him get on the turnpike and go up there? Well, there's a specific reason, and we'll see. God knew that the disciples had to see this themselves. What's going to take place in this chapter was so earth-shaking, so revolutionary, that if someone would have come and told the 12 apostles what happened, they wouldn't have believed it. This they were going to have to see for themselves. And especially the one who would lead that understanding to the other 11.

It says that he was staying with Simon a tanner. Now, again, we're going to learn later in the story that Peter would not stay in the house of anyone but a Jew. A Jew was not allowed to stay in a home, walk into a home, of anyone but a Jew. They would never do that. So although it doesn't say Simon the tanner was a Jew, he was a Jew, because Peter, as we're going to see, wouldn't go to a house of a non-Jew. So Simon the tanner is a Jew.

But he was an unclean Jew. The reason is, a Jew was not allowed to handle dead bodies. If they handled dead bodies of people or animals, it made them unclean. They were defiled. Well, you know what a tanner does? He doesn't sit out getting a tan. A tanner, who laughed? That was good. Who laughed? Mike, was that you? Thank you, brother.

No, they would clean animals. How many of you remember the Titan Hallow in Meyerstown? How many of you remember that? You worked there? Wow, then you know. They stink, don't they? You could smell that, Ken, isn't that true? When the wind was right, and all the way to the bridge in Meyerstown, that stank. I remember as a kid going there. You knew it was coming. You never forgot that. Well, that's what Simon the tanner did. And he was in a state of perpetual defilement.

So even here, we see that the walls are starting to come down. Even here, Peter is willing to stay in the house of a man who's defiled. First the Samaritans, that was a first step. We saw that in chapter eight. Now he's staying with this tanner who would have been a defiled, unclean man. Peter's loosening up. And he's going to need to be very loosened for what happens in this chapter.

Cornelius then calls in three of his servants. He tells them what happened, explains what happens, and then he sends them off. And although it's a small statement, it says a lot about Cornelius. He was a wise leader. He explained to his people why they were doing what they were doing. You think about people in positions of power and you think they could just bark the orders. "Don't ask me why, just do it," right? That's never wise leadership. He shows the kind of a man that he is, even though he has that rank, to take the time to explain to these men why he's sending them.

In verse nine, going on: The next day, as Cornelius's messengers were nearing the city, Peter went up to the flat roof to pray. It was about noon, and he was hungry. But while lunch was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat them."

Maybe there was a big whopping cheeseburger in there too. If it was made of camel, it could have been in there. "Never, Lord," Peter declared. "I have never in all my life eaten anything forbidden by our Jewish laws." The voice spoke again, "If God says something is acceptable, don't say it isn't." The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was pulled up again to heaven.

It says that he was on a flat roof. The reason is because land is so valuable, they used roofs—they did then, they still do—as a porch or a patio. So when you hear of someone being on the roof, you picture a flood zone in this area, someone waiting for the boat to come by, but it was just a normal part of their living to live on top of the roof. And it says that they go to prayer. It's 12 o'clock. The Jews would pray at 9, 12, and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So it's his normal time of prayer, 12 o'clock noon. He goes up onto the roof to pray.

And it says that he was hungry. In studying this, only a very small, select group of men would eat at 12 o'clock noon. The reason is that among the culture of the day, the people only ate two meals a day. And as Jewish law would have it, it prescribed everything. This is taken from the Talmud, which was written about 70 AD after the time of Christ. Listen to this. It says, "As the rule, people partook of two meals daily, the exception being made in honor of the Sabbath when an additional meal was to be provided."

Sabbath was what day of the week? Saturday. That's right. So on Saturday they'd eat three meals. The rest of the week they would eat two. The evening meal was taken at home after the day's toil was over, but the morning meal was eaten by the laborer while at work. The Talmud gives a timetable for different classes of people. Now get this. The first hour—and again, the day began at six, so the third hour was nine, the sixth hour was noon by our clock. So the first hour is breakfast time for gladiators. So if you were a gladiator, you ate between seven and eight.

The second hour was for robbers. So if someone was a robber, they'd eat at seven or eight. Wouldn't you want to know who's eating at seven or eight? When you go by the cafe, ho-ho, you're my neighbor, why are you eating between seven and eight? The third hour for property owners. The reason was if you were property owners, you would lease your farm out to someone else and they would farm it, so you would just live off the rent of the one leasing the farm. You didn't have to be out in the fields. You could eat at that time.

The fourth hour was for workmen, and the fifth hour was for people generally. The fifth hour would have been from 11 to 12. But the sixth hour, which is when Peter is getting hungry, getting ready to eat, the sixth hour is for the disciples of the sages. The disciples of the sages, and the sages would have been the teachers, and Peter and the disciples probably still would have considered themselves to be a disciple of the sages. So that's why he's eating at a somewhat unusual time for a Jew.

Going on, it says that he falls into a trance. Again, he's awake, he's not sleeping. He just kind of zones out and he has this vision. He sees the sky open and this large sheet is left down. If you picture a single-size bed sheet, that's probably not the right size. This was the same Greek word that was used for the sail of a ship. This is a big piece of cloth, and a heavy piece of cloth. It would have to be to hold these animals.

Because in chapter 11, verse six, it gives more detail of what he saw. It says that he saw small animals, wild animals, reptiles, and birds. If you go back to Leviticus 11 where this comes from, the prohibitions, it names some of these animals that would have been in there. A big fat whopping cheeseburger would have looked nice. These didn't look nice. These were the animals that were prohibited to be eaten.

And what would have been in the sheet, among others: a mole, maybe a bunch of moles, a bunch of mice, rats, wild animals comprised of pigs, rabbits, camels. See those legs popping through the sheet, breaking through. Groundhogs, reptiles would be snakes, lizards. Birds were buzzards, ravens, owls, vultures, and everyone's favorite, the bat. So he sees all these animals and more in this sheet. The camel just kind of gets me. That one stands out. And he hears this voice, "Kill and eat." And his response is, "Never, Lord. Never. In all my life I've never eaten any unclean animal. Never, Lord. Never."

This is a very, very important point. First of all, he says, "Never, Lord." That's an oxymoron. You can't say "Never, Lord," can you? Because if the Lord says something, you say "Yes, Lord." If you say "Never," then he's not Lord. You can't put those two together. If the Lord ever tells you something, don't ever say "No, Lord," because you've answered the second word as soon as you say "No." He isn't Lord. You can say "No, Harry," "No, Bill," but you can't say "No, Lord." It doesn't work.

And the point is, Peter knew better. He is just shaken to his core that God would be telling him you can eat any of these animals. All of his life, he grew up with this dietary law that was a part of him being a Jew, which was a part of him being clean, not defiled. It was incredibly important to him.

The second point, and we want to park here a little bit to make this point, it is very telling. As we said before, whenever you read the Old Testament, whenever you read the New Testament, a question we ought to ask ourselves is what does this tell us about Jesus? Because it's all about Jesus. Anything we can learn, glean, about Jesus from the Scriptures, that's the ultimate goal. What more can we learn or know about Jesus? Well, this is a pretty profound understanding of the life and ministry of Jesus is told in what Peter just said.

Remember, this is 12 years after the resurrection, right? So for 12 years, Peter's been keeping the dietary law, right? And he kept the dietary law before that during the three or three-and-a-half years of Jesus' ministry, because he said never. And that means that he kept the dietary law before he ever met Jesus. Now, why do you think for 12 years he has continued to keep the dietary law when he travelled with Jesus?

Why do you think he and probably no doubt the other apostles keep the law? The reason is probably because they were modelling what they saw Jesus do. Doesn't it make sense that once you really kind of understood the whole thing, because they didn't during the three-and-a-half years, but doesn't it make sense once he's gone, he's resurrected, they see him ascend to heaven, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, they're filled with wisdom and boldness, don't you think they're going to see Jesus in a whole different light than they did during those three-and-a-half years? And they're going to model their lives after him.

I think the reason they kept the dietary law was because they saw Jesus keep that. Before you get upset at me for saying this, I want to make a couple points. If Jesus ate pork and rabbit and shrimp, don't you think they would have? How many here like shrimp? Okay. If somebody came along and said it's fine to eat shrimp, you wouldn't look real hard to find a reason not to, would you? You'd say I can eat shrimp. If the disciples would have seen him eating shrimp, rabbit, pork, it would be hard to imagine they wouldn't have done the same.

But I don't think they did. And you say, "But Jesus broke the dietary law. I remember reading something about that in the Bible." Did he? I went and researched this. Turn back in your Bibles to Matthew 12, verse one. This is where they were harvesting grain. About that time Jesus was walking through some grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, so they began breaking off heads of wheat and eating the grain. Some Pharisees saw them do it and protested, "Your disciples shouldn't be doing it. It's against the law to work by harvesting grain on the Sabbath."

Jesus said to them—then he goes on and tells them of King David, when he was hungry he went into the and ate the showbread that was dedicated to the Lord, which wasn't legal either. Jesus defends the disciples for what they did. But do you notice what it says? It says the Pharisees saw them do it, "the disciples, your disciples shouldn't be doing that." Now, were they after the disciples? Were the scribes and Pharisees trying to nail the disciples as law-breakers? No, they're after Jesus. If Jesus would have been doing this, don't you think they would have come to him and said, "Aha! Harvesting grain on the Sabbath! We have you! The law says not to do it." Well, they didn't say Jesus. They said your disciples. What did he do? He defended his disciples.

Go on, Matthew 15, verse one: Some Pharisees and teachers of religious law now arrived from Jerusalem to interview Jesus. "Why do your disciples disobey our age-old traditions? Why do your disciples disobey our age-old traditions? They ignore our tradition of ceremonial hand-washing before they eat." And Jesus said, "Why do you by your traditions violate the direct commandment of God?" And again, he goes after them then on their blindness to the law. But again, if he would have broken the law, they wouldn't have gone after the disciples. They would have said, "Aha! Why don't you wash ceremonial hand-washing? Why don't you wash your hands? We've caught you, Jesus."

Guest (Male): Pastor Thom Keller is leading us through Acts on Study the Word. And we thank you for taking part in today's study. If you'd like to give this a second listen, go online to ccleb.com. Where at ccleb.com and there you'll find Thom's teachings in the Book of Acts and more. Or call and request a CD copy at 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862.

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We'd like to take this time to invite you to join us for a worship service here at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, where Thom serves as pastor. Visit ccleb.com for service times and more information and download our free Android app. Search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play Store. Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Lebanon. Another look into Acts, that's what's ahead of us next time on Study the Word.