Thursday 07 May 2015

Psalm: Psalm 3

Background

As Peter continues to preach to Cornelius and hisfamily holy chaos descends upon proceedings. The passage tells usthat Peter was still speaking, maybe even coming to thatwell-crafted illustration he had spent all morning on, when he isstopped by the Spirit's interruption.

The Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word,much to the surprise of those who had come with Peter. The signs ofthis outpouring are similar to those found in Acts2, with reference to speaking in tongues and the praising ofGod. Peter can only react to what he sees by exclaiming "can anyonewithhold the water for baptizing these people".

It has taken Peter some time to get to this pointwhere he can enter the house of a Gentile (non Jew) to speak tothem and then affirm the need for them to be baptized in Jesusname. He has moved from a view of Jesus coming to save the Jews (Acts2:14, 22, 29, 36) to this point where he senses God's biggerplan at work. For those "circumcised believers" with him this wasall too much, they were astounded at what they saw happening (verse45).

This astonishment reveals that many earlyfollowers of Jesus saw him as coming to the Jews only. For theSpirit to be shared with Gentiles was outside of this rigidunderstanding and was hard to take. Yet we today are stillastounded when God does something different, when God works throughsomeone that we believe he shouldn't. It is in these moments thatGod is often revealing to us the truth, breaking in to our limitedunderstanding to show us the bigger picture.

To Ponder

• Have you ever seen a church service stopped because Godinterrupted? What would you do? And how do you think you or otherswould feel?

• In what ways do you think you limit what God can do and willbless?