Clean and Holy through Christ (Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter: May 18, 2025)
- Samuel Bohnet
- 1 day ago
- 13 min read
Texts: Psalm 148
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Our text for today primarily will be our reading from Acts and in particular verse 9, “But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’” (Acts 11:9).
Let us pray: O God, you make all things new. Grant to us Your Word and Sacraments that through them You may be present with us to make us clean and holy. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Revelation 21:5). These words spoken by God at the end of the Bible in Revelation harken back to the beginning, the very beginning. The God who is powerful to create everything that exists in six days is powerful to recreate everything that exists, to redeem the broken creation. In the beginning, when everything was very good, everything was clean, everything was holy. And it was holy because its holy God, its holy Creator walked with man in the garden. His presence sanctified creation. His presence made creation holy. And then Adam and Eve sinned. And their sin separated the creation from the creator. There was a barrier between God and man and that barrier was sin. Man separated themselves because when God came to walk with them, as he always did, they hid because they knew that because of their sin and guilt, their shame, their uncleanness, they were unworthy to be in the presence of God. And the holiness of God, which should have been a great comfort to them, was instead a source of fear. And at this moment, if he had wanted to, God could have scrapped the whole thing and started over. He could have wiped out creation and nobody would have had to know about it. He could have just turned it off and turned it on again. But God loved what He had created. He didn't want to destroy it. He wanted to recreate it. He wanted to remove the barrier of sin that man had placed between God and man. And so the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the story of God reuniting creation to Himself.
In the Old Testament, we read this whole series of laws regarding the temple. And the point of the temple was so that God could be present with His people. God, the presence of God, the holiness of God, was in the most holy place in the temple. And the Israelites, by coming to the temple and making sacrifices, could have their sins forgiven and they could receive holiness from their holy God. God told them, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). However, there is a catch. Not just anybody could enter the temple. You had to be part of the covenant and that meant you had to be clean. You cannot bring an unclean thing into the holy temple. By nature, all people, including us, are unclean and common. Common is the opposite of holy. Before you could become holy, you had to cleanse yourself. There were ways in which you could do this, first through circumcision by which you entered the covenant in the first place and also through purification washing. This would make you clean and common. You're not yet holy, but you're clean. And because you're clean, you're able to enter the temple and receive holiness from God. Of course, even here, not just anybody could enter the presence of God closely. There were different rings of the temple. So most people could only enter the outer courtyard. The priest could enter the holy place. But the most holy place where God was present, only one man could enter each year. And he would do that on the day of atonement to make atonement for the sins of the people. Why all these levels? Because the presence of God is too holy for people to come into direct contact.
This is the background of our reading from Acts today. “The apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.’” (Acts 11:1-3). So what's the big deal? They heard what Peter had done, which we read about in the previous chapter in Acts 10. Peter had entered their house first, he had preached the gospel to them, he had baptized them. They're saying that he ate with them, he had celebrated the Lord's Supper with them. All of these are ways in which in the New Testament God delivers His holiness to his people. The problem, if you're paying attention to the introduction, is that you can't give holy things to unclean people. Holy things are for clean people, or holy things are for holy people.
So did Peter break the rules? Other Gentiles had entered the church before this. But the difference is that they first entered the Old Testament covenant through circumcision and observance of the Old Testament laws. They had become clean according to the outward signs of the old covenant before they became holy and received the holy things of God. But Cornelius and his household were different. They had not entered the old covenant at all. They were Gentiles, they were uncircumcised, they were unclean. And, according to the old covenant, their uncleanness was contagious. If a dog rolls around in the mud and then comes in and rolls around on your carpet, the dog doesn't become clean; you just have a dirty dog and a dirty carpet. In the same way, when you touch something that's unclean, you don't make that thing clean if you're clean; you just are both unclean. Thus, presence with an unclean thing or eating unclean food would make you unclean. And so for this reason, they criticized him, or maybe more precisely defined, they excluded him or maybe even they excommunicated him. They said, “You defiled yourself by eating with the unclean, unholy Gentiles. And so we're not going to defile ourselves by eating with you.”
Were they right that Peter skipped a step? Did Cornelius and his household have to be clean under the old covenant before they could become holy and receive the holy things of God? Peter understands their objection. He understands that their problem comes from primarily is a lack of understanding. And so instead of pulling rank and saying, “I'm Peter, I'm an apostle”, he just explains it to them in order. He has trust in the word of God that when they hear it, they will agree with him and believe what the word of God says. So he tells them just what happened. He doesn't add anything to it. He says, “‘I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. And I heard a voice saying to me, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”’” (Acts 11:5-7). He's clear to emphasize that the sheet came down from heaven. It came from God. This is not some weird vision that he's having. This is from God Himself. And on the sheet, there are animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. Some of these animals no doubt were clean and acceptable to eat but some of them were unclean. Yet God tells Peter to kill and eat.
Is God skipping a step? Is God saying to eat the unclean things? Peter doesn't like this because he had followed the dietary restrictions his whole life. He's thinking, “If I eat these unclean foods, I will become unclean and the Holy Spirit cannot dwell with me. I cannot be holy if I defile myself with these foods”. And so he says, “‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth’” (Acs 11:8). He had followed the rules perfectly up to this point, and he didn't want to stop now. He had stayed clean his entire life as a good Jew so that he could receive the holiness of God. So what's his problem? Because it should set off some alarm bells when somebody has a direct command from God and they say, “No, no God, I know what's going on, you must be mistaken. There must be an error here, of course.” So what is it? His problem was that he trusted in his external obedience to these laws. He had pride even in his external obedience in these laws. He thought that his holiness depended on what he did. He thought it depended on his works. Not just any works, specifically the external works. This is kind of a nice idea. I think we like this idea more than we care to admit. There's reasons for this and they all come from sin; external actions are doable and measurable. I believe Peter when he says nothing common or unclean has ever entered his mouth. There are plenty of Jews and Muslims who have gone their entire lives without eating pork. There are plenty of Hindus who have gone their entire lives without eating beef. This is a doable commandment. The other part is that these external actions are seen by other people. It's not easy to see God, but it's easy to see men. It's harder to fear God than it is to fear men.
We do the same thing. We fear men instead of God. We're motivated by the same idea that it's the externals that matter and not the internals. We put on a good face, look clean and respectable during the day, but engaging in shameful vices and sins at night when nobody can see us. It manifests itself by saying, “I'm going to go to church on Sunday so people think I'm a good Christian, but not actually reading the Bible the rest of the week or doing what it says”. This comes from a fear of man. We care more about what other people think of us than we do what God thinks of us. If we feared God, we would be clean on the inside and out; if we fear man instead, we are dead on the inside, but clean and shiny on the outside, like the whitewashed tombs that Jesus calls the Pharisees.
“But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’” (Acts 11:9). With these words, God declares all animals, all foods to be clean, maybe even all creation to be clean. Everything created was good in the beginning and it's good now. But Jesus has already declared all foods to be clean. He says it's not what goes into a person's mouth that defiles a person but what comes out of his mouth that defiles a person. So how are they clean? How are these animals that were previously unclean made clean? How are we made clean even though we’re not part of the old covenant? Because Jesus came to dwell with us, with sinful men in creation. He became a man. While He was here on earth, He walked with us as He had walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. When He came into contact with people, He touched them and He made them new. He made the deaf new by restoring their hearing. The blind He made new by restoring their sight. The lepers He made new and clean by cleansing them of their leprosy. And the dead He made new by raising them to life. These last two are important. Touching dead people and lepers is an easy way to become unclean. And yet He didn't become unclean because His holiness was greater than their uncleanness. He took their uncleanness upon himself and cleansed them without becoming dirty himself.
Where did He do this once for all? He did this on the cross when He took all of our sins, all the punishment for our sins, all of our uncleanness upon His own body. The rules were broken. You can't bring unclean things, you can't bring unclean sins to a holy God. And yet He did on the cross. So what was going to win? All of man's uncleanness and sin, or all of God's holiness? It's no contest. God's holiness is greater than our uncleanness. Christ took it all on himself and in this way He made all things clean. As a sign of this, when Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the temple which separated the most holy place where the presence of God was, which separated the presence of God from man was torn in two. There is now no barrier between man and God. Christ fulfilled the Old Testament cleanliness laws.
But there's something very odd in this verse. And it puzzled me for a long time. God says what God has made clean do not call common. But it doesn't really make sense because on the one hand you have clean which is the opposite of unclean. And on the other hand you have common, which is the opposite of holy. These are not mutually exclusive descriptors. A thing could be unclean and common, or it could be clean and common, or it could be clean and holy. So God has made it clean, but has he also made it holy? God doesn't just want us to be clean, He wants us to be holy. He wants us to be holy through His church. If Peter were to make it common, it would be for Peter to refuse to preach the gospel, to refuse to baptize, to refuse to commune these people whom God has made clean. God is telling him, “Do what I say, deliver My holiness to My people whom I have cleansed.”
“‘This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house’” (Acts 11:10-12). This vision and then Peter's summoning to Cornelius' house are not a coincidence. They were placed together by God. God orchestrated this entire course of events. God had to teach Peter that all things had been made clean. If Peter could lawfully eat unclean animals, then He could certainly go to an uncircumcised Gentiles’ house without being made unclean. And so God tells him to put his new knowledge into action, to go there and make no distinction, which is what the circumcision party tried to do to Peter.
So Cornelius tells him his side of the story, “how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’” (Acts 11:13-14). The Holy Spirit wasn't only working to correct Peter's error. The Holy Spirit, working through an angel, was working to get Cornelius to invite Peter who will declare to you a message by which you will be saved. So what's the message? God became man sending His son as a man to die on the cross for your sins and He resurrected him from the dead. And now whoever believes in Him will receive forgiveness of sins. This is the same message that Peter preached at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit fell on them, when the Holy Spirit came to dwell with them and God made them holy by dwelling with them. It's the same message you hear preached here every Sunday. Christ crucified and risen from the dead. It's the same message that saves you. And as Peter told them this, the Holy Spirit fell on them and he says, just as on us at the beginning at Pentecost.
“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’” (Acts 13:15-16). How does he know that the Holy Spirit fell on them? In chapter 10, it says that the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word they were speaking in tongues and extolling God. So there was an external sign of the internal granting of the Holy Spirit. They spoke in tongues. What's the point? At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit had given the apostles this gift to help them in their mission so that they could convert people of every nation. Here at Cornelius' house, He gives the same gift to them to show that they have the same spirit. God wants to emphasize that it's He who's doing this and not Peter going out on a limb.
And then Peter says, “‘If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?’” (Acts 11:17). What he means by this is if God has given them the Holy Spirit, who was he to refuse to baptize them with wate, to refuse to give them the Lord's Supper? You might ask, well, what's the point of baptizing them with water? They already received the Holy Spirit, right? You can check that box off. And maybe you wish that that was how God had given you the Holy Spirit. Because, I mean, it's cool to have special powers to speak in tongues. And so we think that because the Holy Spirit poured out directly like this, has special powers attached to it. We think it's better, but that's not how the Bible talks about it. The promise is given about baptism that it's baptism with water. The baptism with water is better than the baptism directly from the Holy Spirit because it has God's promise attached to it directly. And you received the Holy Spirit in your baptism, and the Holy Spirit dwelt with you, and He still dwells in you. God is present with you, making you holy. And then he distributed the Lord's Supper with them, as we can tell because the circumcision party criticized him for eating with them. And so here, Peter delivers the three main means of grace. He preached the word to them by which the Holy Spirit created belief in their hearts. He baptized them by which the Holy Spirit entered them again. And he gave them the Lord's Supper. And these are the three means of grace that you have access to as well. These means of grace are where God dwells. And these are how He dwells with you and in you. The word of God that you hear and the baptism with which you were washed and in the bread and wine which you eat every Sunday, where God dwells with you bodily. And by dwelling with you, He makes you holy.
What about the circumcision party? “‘When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’” (Acts 11:18). Being rebuked from God's word is never fun and they fell silent. But then they glorified God because he had given repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles. The Gentiles got repentance, but so did the circumcision party from the same word of God that was preached to the Gentiles. The circumcision party was given repentance that leads to life. They had separated themselves from Peter. They had separated themselves from the church, which is where God is present and from which he makes you holy. And so they had cut themselves off from the holiness of God. But they glorified God, saying then to the Gentiles, also God has given repentance that leads to life. Because God didn't just leave them in their error. He wanted them to be holy. He wants you to be holy too. He doesn't abandon you to your errors. He doesn't abandon you to your secret sins and your misplaced fear of men rather than God. He desires your repentance, your repentance that leads to life. And He desires to give you the holiness through his word and his sacraments. “When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” (Revelation 21:3).
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
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