The Time of Refreshing and the Kingdom.
Acts 3:20-21
Peter is not talking about
the prophets just in terms of those who gave prophecy about Jesus but about
those who were the divine representatives who challenged the nation with its disobedience
of the Mosaic Law. In doing that the prophets always foretold the time in the
future when
Peter is making a very strong
case to his Jewish audience based on a shared foundation, and that is the
belief that the Hebrews Scriptures are from God and are true. He doesn’t have
to worry about and audience that doesn’t believe that the Torah was inspired by
God. Everybody there believed that God revealed His Word to them. On that foundation
he could go to the Old Testament prophecies and show that they were all
fulfilled in Jesus. Then he comes to the challenge in verse 19 NASB
“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away,
in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” He
is offering the kingdom and he offers it on the term that Moses used in
Deuteronomy 30:2 which is telling the Jews that when they have been scattered
through all the nations on the earth and they return back to Him, then He would
restore them to the land. But the full restoration was based on the fact that
they turned back to Him away from the false gods and idols. As a result of that
God would forgive the nation of their sins. In Acts 2:38 he used the word aphiemi [a)fihmi] related to forgiveness of sins
and here he uses a different word but one that means pretty much the same
thing, something being wiped out or cancelled out.
People get really confused about this word
“repent,” and that is because down through the centuries this has been used as
a salvation of justification verse that before you can be saved you have to
repent of your sins, and if you don’t repent of your sins then you can’t be
saved. The word in the Greek does not have any kind of emotional attitude, it doesn’t
talk about repentance in the sense of doing something that somehow assuages
your guilt complex and also satisfies God that you are serious about doing
business with Him with regard to your sins. That is not what the word means. metanoieo [metanoiew] has the
idea of changing your mind. It is often translated “repent.” If we look up the
word in an English dictionary it has the idea of remorse or sorrow, but that is
not what is present in the Greek word. The Greek word metanoeo is used by Paul in 2 Corinthians and is
distinguished from another word he uses in the same context—metamelomai [metamelomai], which
means to be sorry for something; it is an emotional word; metanoeo is a thought word. In the Old
Testament the word “repent” occurs 46 times and in 37 of those God is the one
repenting. God doesn’t sin!
So Peter comes here and is
challenging them using a word that is loaded. It has so much baggage from the
Old Testament that they should be hearing this in the light of what Moses said,
i.e. until you turn God is not going to restore all the Jews to the land or
bring in the kingdom. He says: “Repent and be converted [NKJV].” He uses
the two primary words that mean change and turn that are used to translate the
Hebrew word from Deuteronomy 30:2. The best way to translate this would be,
“Change your mind and turn.” Then there is an aorist passive infinitive with an
eis [e)ij] preposition, indicating a purpose clause: “for the purpose that your
sins be blotted out.” It is a passive because we don’t blot out our sins or
erase them; God does. We simply receive the benefit of that action. “…so that
the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” The Millennial
kingdom will only come if Jesus is on the earth.
There is no kingdom without
What does it mean to blot out
your sins? This same word is used in Colossians 2:13 NASB “When
you were dead…” This is a temporal participle which expresses the condition of
every one of us at the point just before we trusted in Christ. It is an aorist
participle. “… in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He
made you alive together with Him…” That is the main verb. So the action of
being dead precedes the action of the main verb. “… having forgiven,” the ‘ing’
is indicating a participle, but a participle has a number of different nuances.
When Paul says “having forgiven” it is a causal participle—because He forgave
you. He made you alive together with Him because He had already—it is an aorist
participle again which means the action of the participle precedes the action
of the main verb. The main verb is also in the past tense. He made you alive,
but before He made you alive He had to forgive you of all trespasses. The word
there for “forgive” is charizomai
[xarizomai]
which is also used as an economic context of wiping out or eradicating a debt.
He had already forgiven you by eradicating all your trespasses—“all our
transgressions.” Then we have another participle at the beginning of verse 14.
Again it is an aorist participle, which means the action of wiping out here has
to have preceded being made alive—“having canceled out the certificate of debt
consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it
out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” So sometime before we were
regenerated our transgressions were wiped out. “Wipe out” or “cancelled out” is
the same verb as used in Acts 3:19 for blotting out. When did He do that? He
did it, we learn from the last part of the verse, because He nailed it to the
cross. So in this verse our sins weren’t blotted out when we trusted in Jesus,
they weren’t blotted out when we were regenerated or just before we were
regenerated; they were blotted out when they were nailed to the cross. They are
not the issue anymore. The unbeliever is still spiritually dead; that is the
problem. And he is still minus righteousness; that is the other problem. You
can’t get into heaven unless you are righteous and unless you are regenerate
and not spiritually dead, and unless the penalty is paid. What Jesus did on the
cross was pay the penalty, which only He could do; but that still left us
experientially spiritually dead, and it left us without a new nature.
So we see in Colossians 2:13, 14 is the
use of this word “blotting out” to refer to one of the four kinds of forgiveness
that we have in Scripture. The first one is called forensic forgiveness. This
applies to everybody because what Paul says in Colossians
What
we are talking about in Colossians 2:14 is a forensic forgiveness which applies
to all, and it occurred at the cross. What we are talking about in Acts 3:19 is
the blotting out in terms of what we would call positional for the Jews by
turning to Jesus. This is not a justification verse per se. It is implied there
but he is addressing them in terms of the Old Testament promises. He says you
have to turn back to God and accept Jesus as the Messiah so that He can send
Jesus Christ who was preached to you before. There has to be a turning of the
nation to God so that He can send Jesus Christ: Acts 3:20 NASB “and
that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, [21 whom heaven must
receive [ascension-glorification] until {the} period of restoration of all
things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient
time.” So the chronology is that Jesus has to turn and accept Jesus as the
Messiah. That has to happen before the restoration of all things, which is the
kingdom. This whole process, Peter says, was “spoken by the mouth of His holy
prophets from ancient time.” Going all the way back to Abel this has been the
message.
The
key, the focal point in v. 21 is the restoration of all things. The Greek word
is a noun apokastatasis [a)pokastatasij] and it means the
restoration of all things, the renovation of all things. The verb form is apokathistemi [a)pokaqisthmi], and it is used
in Acts 1:6. Jesus has been teaching the apostles about the
This is really important for a number of
people who are getting into that already-not-yet view of the kingdom and being
suckered into a lot of really distorted teaching about the future; because it
is not just about the future, it always ricochets back in terms of their
understanding of the church. Then it impacts their understanding of the
spiritual life of the church. The whole concept of progressive
dispensationalism is built on this idea of the kingdom is already here but not
yet. What they mean is it is here in some ways but not fully.
This is even more clear in Acts chapter
fifteen which describes what is known as the
Acts
In Acts
chapter three Peter is clear that the Jews have to change their mind and turn,
and accept Jesus as the Messiah before the times of refreshing will come. And
of they do that then He will come. But now by Acts chapter fifteen God is doing
a work among the Gentiles, bringing out a new people for His name, and it is
only after He does that that He will return and rebuild the tabernacle of David
which has fallen down. The term “tabernacle of David” is the dwelling of David,
which is a picture of the Jewish nation based on the Davidic covenant. The
house of David has fallen down. You can’t point to somebody out there and say,
He is the son of David; He is the heir on the throne. It has fallen down, it
has collapsed; the nation is going to be out under discipline.
So he says:
“AFTER THESE THINGS I
will return, AND I WILL REBUILD THE TABERNACLE OF DAVID WHICH HAS FALLEN, AND I
WILL REBUILD ITS RUINS, AND I WILL RESTORE IT. [17] SO THAT THE REST OF MANKIND MAY SEEK THE
LORD, AND ALL THE GENTILES WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME, [18] SAYS THE LORD, WHO MAKES
THESE THINGS KNOWN FROM LONG AGO.” There has to be a process. There is going to be something that
intervenes between now and the restoration of the nation. There is a calling
out of the Gentiles.
One other passages talking
about these times of refreshing is what Paul alludes to in Romans
Isaiah
28, just like Amos 9, is a condemnation of the northern kingdom of
Isaiah 28:7 NASB
“And these also reel with wine and stagger from strong drink: The priest and
the prophet reel with strong drink, They are confused by wine, they stagger
from strong drink; They reel while having visions, They totter {when rendering}
judgment.” Isaiah is speaking right through verse 9, and then in verse 10 the
false teachers respond with their sarcasm. Then Isaiah throws it back on them
in vv. 11-13. They are drunk. We would say to day they are into all the
pleasure drugs because all they are about is their own personal pleasure, their
own personal power and success; they don’t care about the people. [8] “For all
the tables are full of filthy vomit, without a {single clean} place.” What God
is picturing here is basically the teaching in 99.9% of the universities in
They come
back and say, You think you know so much Isaiah. There is real sarcasm in vv.
9, 10—who will he teach knowledge to?
Isaiah 28:9 NASB “To whom would He teach knowledge, And to
whom would He interpret the message? Those {just} weaned from milk? Those
{just} taken from the breast?” Then they imitate and mock what Isaiah was
saying in verse 10 “For {He says,} ‘Order on order, order on order, Line on
line, line on line, A little here, a little there.’”
Then Isaiah
throws it back on them and announces judgment. Isaiah 28:11 NASB
“Indeed, He will speak to this people Through stammering lips and a foreign
tongue.” That is the verse that Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 14 for the purpose
of tongues. It is a sign of judgment to a nation. Isaiah announces that when
the Assyrians come you are going to hear this foreign language and that is a
sign that God is bringing judgment upon you. Isaiah is saying they were going
to be hearing truth from a Gentile language.
Isaiah 28:12
where we get this idea of refreshing NASB “He who said to them,
‘Here is rest, give rest to the weary,’ And, ‘Here is repose [refreshing],’ but
they would not listen.” Isaiah is the one He is talking tom here and the
message of Isaiah is the message that if you are going to have the rest of God
(a term for the kingdom) then you have to trust in God and turn away from these
idols and false teaching. From Isaiah 2 he is talking about the future kingdom.
This is his message; he is offering the refreshing—a term that summarizes the
kingdom.
Isaiah 28:13
NASB “So the word of
the LORD to them
will be, ‘Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little
here, a little there,’ That they may go and stumble backward, be broken, snared
and taken captive.” Remember is the one who told Isaiah that when he preached
the Word people were going to either accept it or reject it; either act on it
or react against it. What we see here is that they are going to react against
it. There is nothing harder than to be a prophet or a preacher to people who
react all the time to what you are saying. What Isaiah says in these verses is
that the message that was given to him was a message related to the future time
of rest when the Messiah would come. Yet it was rejected.
Acts
Notice how
Peter has grounded everything he said in the Old Testament. If you don’t
understand the Old Testament you can’t understand the New Testament. If you
don’t understand the Old Testament you don’t understand the messianic message,
which is that God promised an anointed one who would come and would do exactly
what Jesus did.