Bob's Sermons

PETER’S FIELD OF DREAMS - Acts 11

Bob Pittman 9/10/2024

As I prepared for the sermon this morning, the 1989 movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner came to mind. The main character hears a voice and has a vision. The voice and the vision compel him to build a baseball park in the middle of a cornfield. The message he receives from the "voice" is, "If you build it, he will come". Throughout the movie you wonder, along with the Costner character, who the “he” is in the message. In the end, the “he” turns out to be his father whom he had been estranged from for many years. Costner’s character always felt guilty because he could not live up to his father’s dream of his son becoming a major league baseball player. The guilt caused the estrangement, and the baseball field was the method by which the estrangement and the guilt would be resolved. Dad comes back from the dead as a young man, Costner's character calls him dad, and they have a catch, and the movie ends with thousands of cars descending on the baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield to watch baseball played by reincarnated players from the 1920s. It’s a very touching movie. A tear or two wandered down my cheek as I thought about how father and son were now reunited in soul and spirit through the medium of baseball. But what does any of that have to do with the Book of Acts and Peter’s encounters with some men in Jerusalem?

There are some parallels. Peter hears a voice and has a vision. His passion for obeying God leads to the inclusion of a group of people who the Jews could never imagine as brothers. There is a uniting of soul and spirit between two groups of people who had been estranged from one another for centuries. Those are the main similarities. However, the message the voice delivered to the Costner character is what I fixated on: “If you build it, he will come”. I thought for a long time about what that might mean in the context of Acts chapter 11 and Peter’s experiences. What was Peter, the other apostles, and the disciples building? And who was going to show up when they built it? We will look at Acts chapter 11 this morning and see if we can answer these questions. But, before we do that, let’s see where we are in the text and in the geography of the text.

The Book of Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament. Luke’s purpose for writing the book is summarized in Acts 1:8. The first six chapters tell us about the spread of the gospel in Jerusalem. In chapter 7, Stephen is stoned to death by a mob, making him the first martyr of the church. Persecution of the disciples begins, and many leave Jerusalem, going into the surrounding areas of Judea and Samaria. Chapter 8 follows the deacon, Philip, as he moves from Samaria to Gaza and then to Azotus. True to Jesus’ words, the gospel is beginning to spread to other parts of the world. In chapter 10, Peter has a vision, is visited by Cornelius’ men, and eventually visits Cornelius in Caesarea and presents the gospel to Cornelius and his family. They believe and Peter heads back to Jerusalem to tell the good news to the other apostles.

The voice the disciples heard was that of Jesus before he ascended. The message Jesus gave the apostles was not as vague as the voice in the Field of Dreams movie. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Like Costner’s character, they wondered what it meant before they understood its true meaning. The day of Pentecost, the filling of the Holy Spirit, gave them the courage to move out into their field of dreams and make reality of the words the Savior had spoken to them. They were to build the church. What did this building process look like?

Acts 9:32-43 give us of a part of Peter’s ministry to fulfill his call. He goes from Jerusalem to Lydda, from Lydda to Joppa. In Lydda he heals Aeneas, a paralyzed man “And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him (the healed man) and they turned to the Lord” (Acts 9.35). In Joppa Peter raised to life Dorcas who had died “And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord (Acts 9:42). The next verse, v43, is very interesting and we need to stop and spend a few moments asking why Luke gives us this information and why it is repeated in Acts 10:6. 

“And he stayed in Joppa for many days with one Simon, a tanner” (Acts 9:43). Luke is revealing something to us here in v43 about Peter’s heart. Peter has not had his vision yet. He is moving throughout the territory preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, healing and raising people from the dead, without consideration of the ethnic background of the people he is with. Simon, the man he is staying with, is a tanner. Jews were not allowed to associate with such people. The tanner of animal hides was an unclean person. Peter should not have been associating with Simon, the tanner, let alone staying with him at his house where he probably conducted his tanning business. We can see that Peter’s heart is already beginning to change. And the change is for a specific purpose, God’s purpose, not Peter’s.

In chapter 10 of Acts, Peter has his vision, meets a Gentile named Cornelius, and comes to understand and accept the vision he was given. The voice tells Peter, “What God has made clean, do not call common”. Peter repeats this message to Cornelius: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean” (Acts 10:28). I don’t think Peter really understood how his heart was being prepared by staying with Simon the tanner, for the message he would receive in the vision. Peter presents the gospel to Cornelius and his family, a family of Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit falls on them just like the Holy Spirit had fallen on the disciples at Pentecost. He showed up! Not Peter the apostle, or Simon the tanner, or Cornelius and his family. The “he” in “build it and he will come” is the Holy Spirit in Peter’s Field of Dreams. This answers our first question, who is the “he” in, “build it and he will come. Let’s read the first 18 verses of Acts chapter 11 and see what the Holy Spirit lead is guiding Peter to build.

“Now 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.” But Peter began and explained it to them in order: “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.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ 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. And he told us 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.’ 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.’ 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?” 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.”

This is the second time Luke relates Peter’s vision in the narrative. Repetition always has a purpose in good narrative writing and while the vision’s details are nearly identical in each case, it is the context in which the vision is told that Luke wants us to grasp. Peter’s vision experience is first a private encounter that is meant to teach Peter a lesson. The truth God leads Peter to see through the vision is affirmed by Peter’s encounter and experience with Cornelius and his family. And now in verse 1 of chapter 11, we see that Peter and Cornelius’ private experiences are becoming known throughout Judea. The Gentiles also received the word of God! This is great news! Praise God! But wait, some of his Jewish brothers ignore the work God has done in the hearts of people that the Jews would not even speak to, and attack Peter for breaking tradition. A tradition that never brought people together, but rather, separated them from one another. The “circumcision party” understood God’s covenant with their father Abraham to be an exclusive covenant to include only those who God had chosen and marked through the physical marks of circumcision. They could not accept what Peter was telling them because in their heart of hearts, it did not fit with the tradition they had been taught and lived with for generations. There was something the brothers of the uncircumcised party were missing. Something that Peter revealed to the Gentiles in his gospel message to them.

Acts 10:43 reads, “To him (meaning Jesus), all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his (Jesus’) name”. “All the prophets bear witness”. One of the most familiar prophets to the Jews would have been Isaiah. In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 8, God asks who shall I send to these lost people of mine and Isaiah says, “Here I am! Send me”. And thus begins the ministry of Isaiah to God’s people who had wandered so far from God. In chapter 49, verses 5 and 6 of Isaiah we read, “And now the LORD says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him— for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD, and my God has become my strength— he says (God says): “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth”. Isaiah’s prophecy echoes God’s call on the father of the Jewish people, Abraham: “The LORD said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?’” (Genesis 18:17,18).

Peter has a personal encounter with God that led him to Caesarea. He preached the gospel, people believed, which was affirmed by the people being filled with the Holy Spirit, and he gave testimony of these events to the brothers in Jerusalem. Then even those who first opposed Peter’s mission to the Gentiles believed: “When they heard these things they (the uncircumcision party) fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’”

Peter’s Field of Dreams was not a geographic location. It was the hearts and minds of those who had not heard the gospel or who did not understand the gospel. At the end of chapter 11 we see that the gospel message that changed hearts and minds birth many churches. From Cyrene in northern Africa to the island of Cyprus, to the first church where the members were called “Christians”. 

Jesus told his disciples this after his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well: “Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” (John 4:35,38).

Our focus should be the same, to reap the harvest that we did not labor to sow. That is the hearts and minds of those who walk through our doors or who we go out and meet and share the gospel. The Holy Spirit is always present in the Field of Dreams sown by the gospel of Jesus Christ.