Reading
SAA Notes
Being criticized is part and parcel of leadership within the church. This does not make it right, but it is encouraging to know that criticism happened to the Apostles. Notice that in verse 15, Peter says that the pentecostal experience of Acts 2 was not normative for Christian experience but special and unique. It was God’s imprimatur for Gentile believers to be welcomed as brothers in the Church.
SJA Notes
* God Above, please help us today to hear Your word and put it into practice.
“And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction.”
Here again we read the truth that God does not operate as man does.
We humanity often choose to show partiality toward people, to distinguish different people, based on all sorts of external signs. Race, skin-color, personality, birth-place, family-tree, physical prowess, intellectual capacity, body-shape … the list goes on.
Israel had a long history of being set apart, and that led some of them to think they were the only ones who would receive God’s blessing through Jesus (the Holy Spirit).
Instead Peter has learnt an extremely important lesson – That God does not make distinction as we do. His salvation plan was always for the Gentile as well as the Jew.
His salvation plan is for the rich and for the poor, the loud and the quiet, the extrovert and the introvert, the lonely person and the hypocrite, the friendly person and the famous one.
We know that God distinguishes on a different set of criteria, as we read in Malachi 3:18,
“Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.”
* Father God,
Please help us to serve You each day, with everything we are.
Please grow us more like Jesus this day.
Amen.