10:9
While God was speaking to Cornelius He was also dealing with Peter. This was not just a simple matter of telling Peter what was going to happen, He also had to deal with wrong presuppositions in Peter. If we look at the whole situation of the gospel reaching the Gentiles it is quite amazing really. The gospel is firmly rooted in Judaism, it came out of the Old Testament, the key events involved Jewish people, the Messiah, Jesus, was Jewish. The Jews had a deeply ingrained distrust of Gentiles. As Paul says in Ephesians, there was a wall of hostility.The rational assessment of the situation would be that it was impossible for the gospel to become a “world religion”, and if it did, the converts would need to become Jews. But as we know, this was not the case. God can overcome, or even work through, all sorts of situation. Here He uses a dream or vision to communicate with Peter. Later on the Council of Jerusalem will be a key event, and this was a very human happening. God uses all sorts of methods. Peter went up on the roof of the house to pray. Something quite amazing was going to happen in this prayer time. Most prayer times will be “normal”, but sometimes amazing things will happen.
10:10-13
Peter was hungry, so a meal was being prepared for him. While this was happening he fell into a trance. In this trance he had a vision of a sheet coming down from heaven to earth, and it contained all sorts of unclean animals on it. Peter was told to “kill and eat”. See how God is using the natural events (ie Peter was hungry) together with supernatural (ie the vision and the voice from heaven) to communicate the message to Peter.
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