As we learned in the previous study, the church at Antioch of Syria follows God’s leadership by setting aside Barnabas and Saul as missionaries. In the process of beginning his missionary career, Saul transitions to being known as Paul. As the missionary band…
As we look at a long section of Scripture today, we will see how that God is methodically moving Peter to see that the gospel is for everyone—not just the Jewish elite. In His sovereignty, God moves Peter from one situation to the next, opening his heart to ‘the Nations’ and releasing a lifetime of bigotry and prejudice. It is sometimes hard for us to imagine the Apostle Peter as bigoted or prejudiced, but we must consider who he is within his cultural context and the Jewish people looked down upon the Gentiles. In this passage, God uses a series of events to open Peter’s eyes to the simple truth that the gospel “is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile” (Romans 1:16b). So it is time for us to ask, “When will we get beyond our prejudice, our misconceptions and our elitism and be willing to seek after all people with the gospel?”