Stress Test Devotional May 18
May 18, 2024
ACTS 10:13-17 | Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean. The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane. ”This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate.
It is hard for us, in a “foodie culture” where variety is the spice of life, to imagine the role food played in Jewish life. Hospitality was a sacred duty and a sign of acceptance, but food was also a boundary issue. Cleanness, or ritual purity, distinguished a righteous Jew from an unrighteous one or a gentile. Gentile diets included food sources that were by definition unclean and contact with these substances rendered a Jew unfit for worship. Diet and identity and religious devotion were interconnected. It was impossible to be a Jew without observing the food laws. But this meant there was an inseparable barrier between Jew and Gentile, clean and unclean.
What barriers separate Christians today from non-Christians?
Notice Peter’s resistance to the 3 fold vision—he is “greatly puzzled.” What do you make of this?
