“Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”
(Acts 3:19-21 ESV)
I love this bit from a sermon of the Apostle Peter. The people in the streets of Jerusalem just witnessed an amazing miracle. A lame man, who had been begging for many years right outside the temple, just got healed miraculously. Nobody could deny what happened. So in response to all the attention, Peter seizes the opportunity to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and utters the words I just quoted from Acts 3.
What Peter does is that he builds on a discussion he and the other disciples had with Jesus in Acts 1. They asked him: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (v.6)
Those who do not believe in a coming millennial reign of Christ will then say: “What a silly question to ask. It’s a spiritual kingdom, isn’t it? Look at Jesus’ response!”
But look at how Jesus really said in response to the disciples’s question:
“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 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 1:7-8 ESV)
But Jesus wasn’t saying or even implying that the disciples were asking a stupid question. The only thing he was saying was that they had the timeline wrong, and that instead of pondering questions like these, they should keep themselves busy with their part of the job, which was being his witnesses (cf. Acts 1:8).
If Jesus thought they were wrong, he would have been crystal clear, and would have corrected their thinking already in Acts 1, so that Peter wouldn’t have preached the wrong thing in his sermon in Acts 3, that this “Christ” (=anointed King) would one day come back and restore all things – including the Messianic Kingdom of Israel! This was a promise God made long ago to Jesus’ forefather, King David, a promise which one day would be fulfilled in Jesus, Yeshua, the Messianic King.
So the call to action Peter gives in his sermon is one very similar to the one Jesus and John the Baptizer gave, and many other Jewish preachers before them. Peter said: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” Jesus and John said: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven it as hand.”
For us to be ready for that Kingdom of Messiah, we need to REPENT. Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of heart that leads to change in actions. It’s all wrapped up in the Hebrew concept of Teshuvah.
Are you ready for the coming Kingdom? Are you ready for the restoration of all things? Repent!
PS: What this “restoration of all things” looks like will be the theme of the KNGDM Conference in Hilversum, the Netherlands on January 26-27, 2024! Have you signed up yet?
Photo credit: Yasir Gürbüz on Pexel
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