I. Forgiveness of Sin is Promised by God.
Repent therefore and return that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you. Vs. 19, 20
Last week we began to take a look at Peter’s second sermon, this one following the healing of the lame man outside of the gate Beautiful at the Temple in Jerusalem. We pick up tonight with Peter telling them they need to repent so their sins will be wiped away, forgiven. One translation says, Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.
Those who gathered outside the Temple would remember words from the prophet Isaiah which were spoken by the rabbis. The prophet, speaking the words of God, states in Isaiah 43:25 I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.
Paul wrote in Romans 6:4-5 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For it we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.
It is not just that repentance would bring a personal forgiveness of sin, but that it contained within it a promise of blessing, a time of refreshing. The word for time used here in the Greek is Kairos, which is a fixed time. It has been set, it is predetermined. This could well point toward the millennial kingdom. These people could use such a time of refreshing, under the oppression of Rome, but not the first time the Jewish people have felt the oppression of a foreign power. Their history is one of persecution. They had suffered under the Egyptians, they had known the times of captivity by Babylon. And as we know, it was not an oppression which had been completed. In recent history, they had suffered under persecution from Hitler, and under communism, and with battles from Arab adversaries. Then, and now, they could use a time of refreshing, and Peter told them then, and we can tell them now, it comes from repenting for the forgiveness of sin. Not just for them. That same repentance is necessary for us, for all of mankind, in order to move into the refreshing, the blessing from God.
They looked to the day of peace. Again, in Isaiah, 11:6-10 we read of this future:
And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them. Also the cow and the bear will graze; their young will lie down together; and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den. They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Then it will come about in that day that the nations will resort to the root of Jesse, who will stand as a signal for the peoples; and His resting place will be glorious.
There is a responsibility on our shoulders for the second coming of Christ. We have been instructed to evangelize the world. We know the Lord will come when everyone has heard, and there are many efforts which have taken place to reach out to all the people groups of the world, but I believe we have a responsibility to not just reach out to the groups, but we need to begin with fresh vision and fire to reach out to the people who are around us. Daily more people are born who have not had a witness, who have not heard to repent and receive the refreshing of the Lord which is promised of God. This should cause us to take an inward look, and ask, what are we doing outwardly to make His Kingdom come. Are we a conduit for the blessing of God, or a dam holding back the reservoir of blessing?
II. Jesus, the Messiah, will return again.
And that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time. Vs. 20, 21
For the disciples, when they followed Christ, they were looking for Jesus to establish His Kingdom while He was with them. It has been speculated that Judas betrayed Jesus in hopes that He would act immediately to establish the Kingdom, which we know He did not. This was probably a question those hearing Peter now had running through their mind. If Jesus is the Messiah, where is He? Peter points out, this is not something to be unexpected, we have heard it from the mouths of the holy prophets in prior times, ancient times. The prophet Joel, speaking the word of God, said in Joel 2:25, Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust. There is a time of restoration which is coming.
Hopefully all of us are looking forward to such a time of restoration where what the devil has stolen from us is restored. When we will see peace and joy, when holiness will be fully restored in the lives of believers, and the millennial kingdom of God will come down and the curse which is on mankind will be reversed and the world will be renewed, refreshed. The word of God says that time is on the horizon, we can only wait, and do something to make that day closer by sharing the Good News with others.
III. God is Raising Up a Voice In our Time.
Moses said, “The Lord God shall raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed in everything He says to you. And it shall be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.” And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. Vs. 22-24.
No one could expect to point to someone to be the Messiah without pointing from the past great leaders of Israel in order to gain justification. Leaders like Abraham, Moses, Isaac, David. A. Peter points to Moses.
Peter does this in regard to Moses whom he quotes from in Deuteronomy 18:5 The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me. In this, though not stated, but implied by the statement are two things…
1. True belief in Moses will lead to a belief in Jesus.
2. Belief in Jesus places one in true continuity with Moses.
Moses has warned in the past the consequences of rejecting the Messiah when He comes, a rejection which would result in loss of blessings. That warning still rings true today, for both Jews and Gentiles. Rejecting the claims of Jesus Christ is a rejection of the covenant blessing of God, and a choice of eternal destination.
B. Peter Points to David.
By referring to Samuel, Peter was pointing toward David. Samuel was the prophet who anointed David to be king, and David spoke of the establishment of the Messianic kingdom. Nathan had prophesied regarding the establishment of David’s seed, his offspring in the NIV, which is accepted as having Messianic relevance which Christians know has been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Jesus had filled so many numerous Old Testament prophecies that it is hard to understand why the nation of Israel rejected Jesus. Just as the people of the world have in many instances the opportunity to understand and accept Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, Messiah, so we have also seen Jesus rejected by many in our lifetime. And in the end, we stand without excuse.
So as much as Peter is raised as a voice to point people to Christ by sharing the truth of the Gospel, using the thread of the Old Testament leaders, we also stand today as the voice of the Lord to proclaim the truth to those who need enlightened, and in doing so we also, like Peter, need to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us in the same truths.
IV. God’s Covenant Promises are Available to us today.
It is you who are the sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. For you first, God raised up His Servant, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways. Vs. 25, 26
Peter identifies commitment to Jesus as Messiah with the promise God made to Abraham, by quoting from Genesis 22:18 and Genesis 26:4. God’s covenant with Abraham found its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ is what Peter is explaining to those who have gathered. Even though, they who were there when Jesus was crucified, had rejected Him, there was still hope, but it is going to require that they make a choice. God has not rejected them, He instead provided a way for them to enjoy the covenant promise by accepting Jesus Christ as Messiah.
Peter was following the mandate of Acts 1:8 by proclaiming the truth of the Messiah first to the people in Jerusalem.
V. Persecution is not to be Unexpected when the Gospel is Proclaimed.
And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being greatly disturbed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in jail until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who have heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand. Acts 4:1-4
Persecution is not something new to the church, in fact it seems to be more the norm than not. The end result is a strengthening of the church and a maturing of believers. Tertullian, one of the early church fathers said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” The church is under attack today in America. The separation of church and state which anti-Christian forced allude to has worked in our generation to the stripping away of the civil rights of Christians. It is to be expected however, for it was the case in the day of the writing of the New Testament, here we find it in Acts 4 happening to Peter and John as they explained what God was doing. Far from the celebration of the healing, an incensed minority of people became enraged and worked to take away the right to be heard of Peter, going as far as to have him and John jailed.
Jesus said in John 15:18-25 If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me. If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you. When that happens, remember this: Servants don’t get better treatment than their masters. If they beat on me, they will certainly beat on you. If they did what I told them, they will do what you tell the. They are going to do all these things to you because of the way they treated me, because they don’t know the One who sent me. If they hadn’t come and told them all this in plain language, it wouldn’t be so bad. As it is, they have no excuse. Hate me, hate my Father—it’s all the same. If I hadn’t done what I have done among them, works no one has ever done, they wouldn’t be to blame. But they saw the God signs and hated anyway, both me and my Father. Interesting—they have verified the truth of their own Scriptures where it is written, ‘They hated me for no good reason.’
A. Opposition first starts among the Religious Community
The first group of people who stood in opposition to what Peter was saying included the priests, the captain of the Temple guard and the Sadducees. It is should be noted, the Sadducees, who held to the position of the Maccabean heroes, that the Messiah was not a person but an ideal presented in the Scripture, that the Messianic Age was a process not an event which could be dated or pointed to. The Sadducees stressed the importance to them of cooperation with Rome and the complete maintenance of the status quo. Most of the priests at the time were of the Sadducean persuasion.
It is an amazing thing to ponder. Here Peter and John had participated in the healing of the lame man, then taking the time to explain what had happened, Peter points to the healing power of Jesus and then goes on to identify Jesus as the Messiah put to death but as been resurrected and now the religious community, who was responsible for the death of Messiah, moves quickly to end the conversation with the people by jailing Peter and John. Here there were already working in the cover-up of the resurrection and now they begin another cover-up before things get out of hand in their view.
The priests and Sadducees were greatly disturbed about two matters:
1. The apostles were teaching the people.
This was an activity which had been limed to the Sadducean ranks which they undoubtedly saw as a threat to their status within the Temple as the teachers of the people. here was Pete and John rallying popular support which was in an unofficial way disrupting the established authority.
2. They were proclaiming the resurrection of the dead.
They never believed in the resurrection of the dead and now Peter and John were stating that not only was resurrection a reality, but that Jesus who they had put to death, but one who had been resurrected.
B. Some think they can stop the truth by silencing the Messenger.
Unable to tolerate the teachings of Peter and John, they had them imprisoned to stop the message. An event we will see continued over and over then, and over and over again in our generation. In truth, the message cannot be silenced, Jesus is the Messiah, our Lord, King and Savior. We read later that not everyone agreed with the response of the Sadducees, there was a sense of moderation of the Pharisees and the desire of Rome, at least for a short period of time, for peace to reign in the land.
What we find here is the choice of the moment was to jail Peter and John, at least for the night until the court can be assembled to determine what to do out their statements.
C. Persecution leads to the Expansion of the Church.
Throughout history we have learned this statement to be truth. Here, with Peter and John jailed for telling the truth, five thousand men who had gathered in Jerusalem embraced Jesus as the Messiah they had long awaited. And from this time on, we will read how, not only did the church grow, but it grew at a rapid rate. And still in many quarters of the world today, it still remains the case as the church is experiencing rapid growth predominately in third world countries.
