OPEN: Back in 1912, Ford Motor Co. had a production manager named William Knudsen - considered one of the best in his field. Knudsen became convinced that the Model T (which had been in production for 4 years now) had to be updated. But, the only problem was - Henry Ford loved his creation so much it was well known that he opposed changing anything about the car.
According to Robert Lacy (in his best selling biography, Ford: The Man and the Machine) Knudsen thought to convince Ford by building an updated and impressive model to show what could be done with a few changes in color and design.
Ford had just returned from a European vacation, and he went to a Highland Park, Michigan garage and saw the new design created by Knudsen.
On-the-scene mechanics later revealed how Ford responded.
They say that the car was it was a four door job, and the top was down, painted gleaming red and built on a new, low slung version of the Model T.
One eyewitness tells how "Ford had his hands in his pockets, and he walked around that car 3 or 4 times…. Finally, he got to the left hand side of the car, and he takes his hands out, gets hold of the door, and bang! He ripped the door right off!… How the man done it, I don’t know! He jumped in there, and bang goes the other door. Bang goes the windshield. He jumps over the back seat and starts pounding on the top. He rips the top with the heel of his shoe. He wrecked the car as much as he could."
Knudsen left for General Motors. Henry Ford nursed along the Model T, but design changes in competitors models made it more old-fashioned than he would admit. Competitive necessity finally backed him into making the Model A, but his heart was never in it.
APPLY: Henry Ford was one of the most creative men of his age. And yet… Henry Ford - one of the great minds of his day - resisted the obvious need for change.
Most people don’t like change in their lives any more than he did. One man once observed that the only people who DO like change are "wet babies" … and even they aren’t too excited about it.
(pause…) Churches are notorious for that kind of attitude as well. You’ll find church boards saying things like “we’ve never (pause to let them complete it) done it that way before”
Someone once said that when it comes to change the church is often like the snail riding on the back of a turtle (repeat for emphasis)...
…and do you know what a snail does when it rides on the back of the turtle?
It goes: "Whee!"
Many churches bulk at even the slightest change in their routine. Even when they’re fairly sure the changes would be something pleasing to God they still resist.
I. Now, things weren’t a whole lot different back in the days of the early church.
People back then didn’t like change anymore than people now do.
When we read about the events in Acts 10, it may be hard visualize how earth shaking the events actually were, but the changes God brought to pass reverberated in the early church for the next 50 or 60 years.
If you had any question about how monumental this event was, you’d at least get a hint about how disturbing it must have been for the New Testament Christians by the way in which God introduced the idea to Peter.
Read with me Acts 10:10-17 (Peter) became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air.
Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."
"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."
The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." (continued next page)
This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. While Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate.
In these dreams, God was telling Peter – He was going to do something new. And that “new thing” was waiting at the gate.
Now, Peter was a good Jew. He had been raised to obey the Law of Moses, and one very prominent part of that law dealt with what animals you could eat…and what animals you couldn’t.
In Deuteronomy the Israelites were told:
“You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud.
However, of those that chew the cud or that have a split hoof completely divided you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the coney. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a split hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you. The pig is also unclean; although it has a split hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses….
… anything that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; for you it is unclean.
(and, of the birds) you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon, any kind of raven,…" And the list goes on and on and on. (Deuteronomy 14:6-8,10,12-14)
From their childhood, every Jewish child learned which foods were clean for them to eat… and which were not.
Now, at the time Acts 10 was written, the church has existed for somewhere between 3 or 4 years on up to maybe as many as 10 years. And ALL during that time, the church consisted ONLY of Jewish believers.
They no longer offered sacrifices… because Jesus was the perfect Sacrifice
And they no longer kept the Sabbath as their holy day… because they now celebrated Sunday to remember Jesus rising from the dead on the 1st day of the week
But, in spite of the fact they didn’t do THOSE THINGS any more… the Christians in this early church were still - very much - good Jews.
And they still thought like Jews
And so they still avoided things like the unclean foods listed in the Law of Moses
II. But… they also avoided something else
After Peter returned to Jerusalem from baptizing Cornelius & his household, we read:
“…the circumcised believers criticized him and said, ‘You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.’” Acts 11:2-3
From their birth, good Jewish boys and girls were taught that the Gentiles (that’s everybody that wasn’t a Jew) were unclean.
Jews referred to non-Jews as "Gentile dogs" (this was not an affectionate term – it was an insult)
They wouldn’t sit down to eat with Gentiles
They wouldn’t spend the night in a Gentile home
And, if they had to buy something from a Gentile merchant, a good Jew would. wash that item before they ever used it.
In fact, some Jews actually had pools (called Mikvehs) in their homes designated for washing larger items such as tables and chairs.
Jews would accept Gentiles ONLY on one condition: they had to convert to Judaism. And that meant that the men had to go under the knife… get circumcised.
(pause…)
Now, however, God intended to change all of that.
God planned to bring the Gentiles into His church
And He had NO intention of requiring them to be circumcised before they were baptized
Circumcision was the mark of the Old Contract… baptism was the mark of the New
So God intended to bring about a major change in His church. And God knew that people are no different than people now… they hate change. So, He had to bring about this adjustment in the most powerful way He could manage.
This is how God did it:
1st He chose a man named Cornelius as his test case: a man who was “a righteous and God-fearing man… respected by all the Jewish people…." Acts 10:22
- Cornelius was someone that the Jews knew and liked
- Cornelius was NOT some stranger to their country
- He was a man who known as a man of prayer and a man who gave to the poor
- This was a man the Jews could respect
Then, God chose the most obstinate, stubborn, hard headed, uncompromising man in the entire church to witness what He intended to do – the Apostle Peter.
Now how do I know that Peter was an obstinate, stubborn, hard headed man???
Because God had to repeat His dream for Peter 3 separate times.
Nowhere else in Scripture does God repeat a dream 3 times. Sometimes God would repeat a dream twice… and sometimes God would give the same kind of vision in different forms… BUT NOWHERE in Scripture did God repeat the same vision 3 separate times.
God said “kill and eat”… and Peter said “NO!”
And 3 separate times God had to tell Peter “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Acts 10:15
III. Now… in spite of the fact that God had softened Peter up with this dream God still didn’t explain to Peter that the Gentiles didn’t need to be circumcised…
God left that lesson for a time of “show and tell.”
God waited until Peter and his friends actually got to Cornelius’ house to show him that circumcision was no longer necessary.
When Peter got to Cornelius’ house along with 6 circumcised Christians brothers (the text emphasizes that these men were “circumcised”) he preached about Jesus. How He had lived and died, and rose from the dead. And Peter preached about what God had done in the church since that day.
BUT while Peter was still preaching, before he got the invitation… before the audience is said to have believed or repented or confessed Jesus, God interceded and poured out His Spirit on the entire audience. Cornelius and his household began speaking in tongues and praising God.
Now that hadn’t happened like that since Pentecost (In Acts 11:15 Peter said "As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us AT the beginning.)
Then Peter asks this question:
“Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water?” Acts 10:47
Now… why would Peter ask that question?
Who on earth would want to “keep these people from being baptized?”
Well that thought had crossed the minds of Peter’s companions.
Acts 10:45 tells us: The CIRCUMCISED believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.
Why would these ‘circumcised believers be “astonished?”
Because, there was ONE MINOR DETAIL that hadn’t been dealt with yet
Can anybody tell me what that little detail was??? (circumcision)
That’s right – they intended to circumcise these Gentiles before ever allowing them to be baptized. I can visualize, in my mind’s eye, that all while Peter and these 6 circumcised companions made their way from Joppa to Caesarea, they were sharpening their knives!
They had every intention of circumcising these Gentiles before allowing to be baptized.
That was their intention…
But, here, in Acts 10 - we find that God short circuited the entire process, and showed that He accepted the Gentiles without circumcision.
That’s what Peter told the conference held at Jerusalem about a year later. This was such a divisive issue, that they had to hold a gathering to deal with the objections to Gentiles being allowed into the kingdom with circumcision. And even after that conference, there Jewish Christians that went around to the Gentile congregations attempting to convince them that they still needed circumcised.
Towards the end of that conference Peter stood up and said: “God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted (Cornelius and his household) by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.” Acts 15:8
IV. People are afraid of change.
It makes them anxious.
ILLUS: Philippians 4 tells us that we should never be anxious… but that we should turn our hearts in prayer to God. This morning, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and I was anxious.
(This was the first Sunday for us to try an early service to deal with larger crowds).
I was anxious because I wasn’t sure how many people would be here this morning.
Because I wasn’t sure how the worship service would go.
Because… Well, I was just anxious
Almost instinctively I turned to prayer - and it dealt with my anxiety just like Philippians 4 said it would. I got to thinking – if God wanted this early service it would… and if He didn’t it wouldn’t. It wasn’t my problem… it was God’s.
But this change in how we do worship here caused me to become anxious and worried.
God knows that’s how change effects us, so throughout Scripture, He put stories like this one, where His people struggled with change in their lives. And we can learn at least two things from stories like this
1st we can learn that Christians should NOT be afraid of change.
Our God is a God of change.
In Revelation 21:5 He declares “Behold, I make all things new”
God does all kinds of “new things” in our lives every day.
When we first become Christians, we die to our past, are buried in the water’s of Christian baptism and rise up a “changed” person. A new creature in Christ.
Our God is God of change, and God can do great things when His people allow Him the freedom to change their lives and their church.
2ndly we learn that God wants His church to reach out beyond it’s comfort zones to reach more and more people for Christ.
The early Church was repeatedly challenged by God to do things they were uncomfortable doing so that more and more of the lost could be saved.
That’s why I’m so proud of this church.
We are a church that’s not afraid of change
We are a church who looks toward God - with anticipation.
We’re always asking – “What’s He going to do next???”
From the day you hired me, I knew this was a church willing to take risks to please God
Just to have the money to hire me, you folks dug deep to pay me enough money - to survive
Then, you stretched yourselves a bit and built the picnic shelter… and paved the parking lot
Then, you stepped out on faith and hired Brad as our Youth Minister
And in the past few weeks, a few people have become so excited about what God is doing here
They’ve paid for a new roof on the building
Bought new chairs for the sanctuary… and new glass doors for the entryway
And a number of people have committed themselves to setting up a fund to hire Gregory Peck (not THE Gregory Peck) as a part time children’s minister for JAM.
And then, of course – this Sunday we’ve begun a 2nd Worship Service …
This morning, I got to asking myself why people fear change, and my mind went back to the day that the Israelites were at the border of the promised land for the first time… and they were afraid of the change. What made them afraid? The size of the giants and strength of the walled cities. They were afraid of change because they had their eyes on the giants, and not on God. Their fear came from the fact that their God wasn’t big enough to face the challenges they were faced with.
We don’t have that problem here. We dream big dreams because we serve a big God.
CLOSE: John Huffman in his book, "Who’s In Charge Here?", tells about Robert Dick Wilson, a great professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. One of Dr. Wilson’s students had been invited back to preach in Miller Chapel twelve years after his graduation.
Old Dr. Wilson came in and sat down near the front. At the close of the meeting the old professor came up to his former student, cocked his head to one side in his characteristic way, extended his hand, and said, "If you come back again, I will not come to hear you preach. I only come once. I am glad that you are a big-godder. When my boys come back, I come to see if they are big-godders or little-godders, and then I know what their ministry will be."
His former student asked him to explain, and he replied: "Well, some men have a little god, and they are always in trouble with him.
He can’t do any miracles.
He can’t take care of the inspiration and transmission of the Scripture to us.
He doesn’t intervene on behalf of his people.
They have a little god and I call them little-godders.
Then there are those who have a great God.
He speaks and it is done.
He commands and it stands fast.
He knows how to show Himself strong on behalf of them that fear him.
You have a great God; and He will bless your ministry."
He paused a moment and smiled, and said, "God bless you," and turned, and walked out.
