Acts 3:17-26

17 “Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. 18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. 19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20 and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. 21 Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. 22 For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. 23 Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from their people.’[a]

24 “Indeed, beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold these days. 25 And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’[b] 26 When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”



Dig Deeper
A couple of years ago I was out for a morning run. If my memory serves me well, I believe I was out on a 14 mile run that morning. I had, however, made one small but rather consequential mistake. I had failed to take any fluid with me on the run. I normally won’t take anything with me if the run is 6 miles or less, but on longer runs like this one you really need something to drink. I was about half way when I realized that I had left my bottle back at my house. I was stuck without a drink because I had no money with me to stop somewhere and get something. I began to get quite thirsty and couldn’t wait to complete my run and get home so that I could feel the nice, cold water flowing down my throat, bringing badly needed refreshment. At that point, about the only thing on my mind was getting to the end so I could get a drink. Just then, though, I turned a corner and realized that although it was still very early on a Saturday morning, that people were setting up for the weekly Farmer’s Market. That didn’t help me much because, as I stated, I had no money. But then I saw some friends that were setting up their own food tent. I had forgotten they were done there. As I ran by I asked if they had any beverages and they threw me a small bottled water. Unexpectedly and somewhat “out of nowhere” came this refreshment while I was still in the middle of my run. It was incredible not just because it was so needed but also because it was so unexpected. It had come during the run and not at the end as I had anticipated but it gave me the strength I needed to carry on to the end and finish strong. It was as though I had received a small taste of what was in store for me at the end of my run right there in the middle of it.

Whether they realized it or not, Israel, and all of the people of the world were like me on that run in a sense. They were a long way from home without any seeming hope for refreshment. All that Israel could really hope for was that the time of God’s age to come would happen soon. If they could just hang on to the end, to that coming time, then the incredible gift of God’s age to come would pour out on Israel, exalt them among the nations, and as those blessings flowed through Israel, they would also somehow flow out to the other nations through the dual realities of God’s judgment on the pagan nations and his blessings that would come through his son Israel.

In the previous passage Peter set out to explain to the amazed Israelites that were gathering around himself, John, and the recently healed lame man, that the power to heal had not come from them or anything they had done but from the very same God that Israel saw as their God. It was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob working through the power of the name of Jesus the Messiah. Peter could have left his explanation at that, but he well knew that his mission went far beyond just explaining to people the difference in the lives of the apostles and the power that was manifesting itself in their community. His mission was to explain to people how they could become part of God’s true people themselves. This was no small task when it came to the Jewish people whose very self-identity was that they were already the children of God.

When the Israelites went along with the leaders who wanted to put Jesus to death on a Roman cross, they were largely ignorant of what was going on. They acted in ignorance, as did the leaders, said Peter, in generous move. They didn’t reject God’s Messiah intentionally but because of their own hardness of heart and ignorance to Gods’ plans in the world. They couldn’t put the pieces together before it all happened, but they could connect the dots now. If they would go back to the Scriptures in humility and with a desire to truly see what God’s plan was rather than what they wanted it to be then they would see that the Messiah had to suffer and die and they would see that Jesus really was the Messiah.

But if they would look and consider what the prophets had said carefully they would see much more than just that. There was a great time of renewal and refreshing to which God, through his prophets, had always pointed. The Jewish people had looked forward to that time and built much of their belief system around its eventual appearing but they were convinced that it would only come in full at the end. But now, in Jesus the Messiah, they needed to radically re-think that. If they would repent and turn from their own way and their lives right now, the times of refreshing and renewal that had actually burst into the present age through the resurrection of Jesus could come into their own lives. They could begin to taste of that future right now and be refreshed while they were still in the middle of the run, so to speak.

That, of course, didn’t mean that the time of the resurrection age wasn’t coming. That is not what Peter was saying at all. He was saying that a small crack of the light of the future had appeared into the bleak night of the present age and they could allow themselves to experience that light right then and there. But Jesus had ascended into heaven. What Peter meant by heaven here, was God’s space or realm. Heaven is, after all, wherever God is and it is the place where God’s will is done; it is the place of the presence of God, so wherever God is, there is heaven. The resurrected Jesus, in the flesh, had returned to that realm, into heaven until the coming of the great time of resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3-5; Col. 1:3-5; Acts 1:11; 1 Thess. 4:16-17) when heaven and earth are brought back together as one (Eph. 1:10) as the new heavens and new earth are constituted (Rev. 21:1-5; 2 Pet. 3:13) and God’s sons are finally and fully revealed (Rom. 8:21) so that God “may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). The prophets had long spoken of this age and it will come in all fullness at the appointed time but in the Messiah that age may be tasted and entered into now in the last days, that strange time between the breaking in of the kingdom of God and the final resurrection and coming of the fullness of God’s kingdom.

Luke’s point in referring to the prophets that spoke long ago was not that there are just a few plum passages that can be plucked out to indicate that a Messiah like Jesus might come someday, but that the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the prophets pointed to Jesus Christ. If they would go back and look with an open eye and heart they would see that. In verses 22-23 he gives one small example of how things were pointing towards a Messiah like Jesus all along and what would happen if they didn’t come and partake in his refreshment. God would raise up a prophet that was like Moses in that he would lead his people out of slavery and towards the promised land. But what Moses did only pointed to and served as a foreshadowing for the ultimate freedom from sin and death brought by Jesus. If Jesus and his kingdom are a drink of God’s future ahead of time then Moses and the Exodus were just a photograph of that drink. But if anyone rejected Moses and didn’t follow him they would have stayed in Egypt and never been freed. When it came to the Messiah, Peter declares, ignorance is no longer an excuse. If anyone does not listen to him then they will be cut off from God’s people.

And what was the great promise that the prophets all pointed to? It was the great promise of God’s one blessed family of all nations. All of the promises of God’s coming salvation and his promised blessing that would be poured out on the nations of the earth could be summed up in the original promise given to Abraham for all the peoples or nations of the earth to be blessed through this promised family. That was what the Messiah had come to do. He was the descendant, the offspring, that would bring about the family that God had sworn to Abraham would come one day. This is so vital for us to grasp because it is the culmination of God’s promised salvation. God never promised to save individuals through private spiritual experiences and then loosely gather those individuals together into religious institutions as it met the needs of each individual. We are brought into salvation as individuals, yes, but what we are brought into is the family of God. Jesus came to bless the nations and turn them from their wicked ways by offering them the opportunity to leave behind their born identities in the family of fallen humanity and being born again (Jn. 3:5) into our new family (Eph. 2:19) and take our place as the sons and daughters of God (Rom. 8:14-17). We end with Paul’s words in Galatians 4:4-7 which so eloquently and succinctly sum all of this up: “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.”



Devotional Thought
Who do you know that is running life right now without a water bottle? How can you go to them today and share with them about the times of refreshing that are available for them who will turn around and repent and taste of God’s age to come through the family and life of Christ?