What God Has Made Clean

What God Has Made Clean

Acts 10:9-16, 30-35

I want you to imagine, if you would, a man who had spent years in prison promising himself that if he ever got out, he would never return of his own free will. While in prison, he spent the vast majority of his time doing those things that would help keep him from ever coming back. He took innumerable Bible studies and every religious course he could find in order to deepen the faith he found in county jail and help him stay on that journey toward faithfulness, holiness, righteousness, and sanctification.

Years went by and miracle of miracles, he did get paroled. He got a job and eventually went to college to complete the education he had begun in prison. In college he met his wife, they had kids, and after graduation he got a very good job which eventually transferred him to Kentucky. He had been out of prison for 10 years by then. Prison was far behind him and seldom in his thoughts.

Then one night he had a dream which disturbed him so much that he woke up in a cold sweat. His waking was so abrupt that it woke his wife as well. He dreamed he was back in prison, and the thought of that really bothered him. Why did he dream this? He had made a point of blocking that part of his life out of his mind, and he had blocked it so well that it was as if he had never been in prison in the first place. That was someone else—not him. That night he had great difficulty getting back to sleep. The dream haunted him the rest of the day.

Then, the following night it was as if someone had pushed the “repeat” button. Same dream. Same reaction. Both husband and wife woke up in the same fashion, and he went through the previous day all over again, even more disturbed than the day before. Twice in a row, the same disturbing dream? He had never had this happen before. He just could not figure out what was going on. Why was he dreaming of being back in prison?

A third night, the same thing again. Same dream. Same reactions. Three nights in a row, only this time he began to wonder if the Lord was speaking to him. He knew the stories in the Scriptures where dreams were sent by the Lord for a specific purpose. Joseph, Pharaoh, Paul, and others warned or led by God to some purpose through dreams or visions. He began to wonder if God was leading him back into the prison system to lead others to His Son. That thought led him to contact the chaplain of the prison in Eddyville, KY which set him on course for years of prison ministry which he continues to this very day.

I want you to imagine now, another man, a very devout man, raised in a culture with very strict boundaries, when suddenly he is confronted by a heavenly vision that shattered everything he thought he knew about purity, holiness, and acceptability before God. Picture him on a rooftop in prayer. He’s hungry, but this is the hour of prayer. So, while he waits for lunch, he prays and sees a vision of a sheet descending from heaven filled with all sorts of animals he had been taught all his life were unclean and forbidden as food. But a voice from heaven tells him, Act 10:13 …"Get up, Peter, kill and eat!" So, let’s read about that now…

Act 10:9-16 On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. [10] But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; [11] and he *saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, [12] and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. [13] A voice came to him, "Get up, Peter, kill and eat!" [14] But Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean." [15] Again a voice came to him a second time, "What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy." [16] This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.

Now obviously, the link between my man in prison illustration and Peter in this story is the three dreams or three visions. But the link runs deeper than that. In both stories the dream and vision led the protagonist into doing something they never would have done in themselves. I never would have called that chaplain at Eddyville and began a ministry in prisons had it not been for the three dreams, and Peter might never have considered what things he had been taught all his life and believed to be unclean as something that was in fact, considered clean by God. He never would have thought that. In fact, he even slipped back into that frame of mind years later and had to be corrected by Paul.