This girl is a lucrative small-business enterprise for the men who own her. Like so many young girls, she is used by others, but her strange public announcements about Paul and his little band of missionaries, we suspect, do not bring much income to her owners. "These men," she cries out, "are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us a way of salvation."
It's amazing what listening will do for you. It often positions you to be in the place and time in which God is speaking. And sometimes you find God speaking in very specific terms. That is what we discover in this portion of Luke's story.
Roxburgh believes that the only way for a church to really grow is by emptying itself. Going out instead of coming in. When we go out into our neighborhoods, the church will become vital to the people in the neighborhoods, and then people will come and will participate. But the key is to challenge our members to get out.
The Gospels give John the Baptist a lot of ink. Christian tradition pays John the Baptist a lot of attention as well. We must conclude that the Baptist was quite important to the Christian story. But you can't tell it by what is said about John, or even by what he says about himself.
I suspect that most of you here today are law abiding citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and of the United States of America; in fact I’m sure that I could rightfully assume that ALL of you are law abiding citizens of Pennsylvania and the United States. OR ARE YOU?!
People have always had a tendency to think that God is on their side. And if God is on your side, those who are not like you are not looked upon by God with the same favor as you. To learn, then, that there is to be no distinction between people when it comes to salvation and table fellowship is a hard lesson to learn.
Peter could have easily said to God when he received the message to go to the home of Cornelius, "God, don’t ask me. I can’t do that. It goes against everything I have been taught and believe. Let someone else go." Like Peter we too are challenged to express the newness that God has created in us.
The question is: Was Jesus acclaimed because of his greatness, or did the crowds pursue him because of what they hoped he could do for them? Were they hoping to be disciples, or were they just hoping to be healed--or to witness a miracle?
The measures of worth we placed upon others as children still color our world even to this day. The labeling process began in elementary school. Ultimately, all labels boil down to just two categories: insiders and outsiders, us and them. For the earliest disciples of Christ, the issue was Jews versus Gentiles.
Cornelius immediately knew what his vision meant and promptly obeyed. But Peter, even though the vision was repeated three times for emphasis, only slowly came to understand what God was saying to him.