Acts 11:1-18
If you have listened to my sermons over the last couple of weeks, this text sounds very familiar. It sounded so familiar to me, it got me thinking that I should have some recollection of what is basically the same text, being preached over and over again for weeks. I searched my memory, I dug out old bibles where I noted the date a text was preached, I went through my husband’s sermons, and I looked through my own. Nada! I couldn’t find anywhere that Acts 10 through 11 had been preached consecutively.
I can kind of understand why. It could seem redundant or even boring not only to the congregation, but also to the preacher. However, I have to admit that bored is the last thing I feel as I reading and studying this even if I am reading and studying it over and over again.
If we consider the entirety of Acts that we have looked at up to now, we can see that Luke has actually shown us the same thing over and over again already. There is a basic theme running throughout what we have already looked at.
Luke is telling us about the growth of the early church. One of the biggest hurdles to growth was overcoming the prejudices that hindered the spread of the Gospel. However, from the election of the Hellenized Jews in chapter six, to the outreach to the Samaritans and the eunuch, Luke has been preparing his readers to hear, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
As we see from our text though, many still needed to hear it.