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God's Emerging City
When God used Peter and John to heal a lame man at the temple, the gathering crowd began to focus inordinately on them. So Peter spoke up to redirect their attention.
Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?
The man’s healing was not about the two apostles, their power, or their piety; it was about Christ arising for the sake of His name and His purpose.
Sometimes long seasons go by when even though God’s people have prayed faithfully, it seems as though He is just not manifesting His power as at other times in Church history. And then when He does arise to reveal His power through one of His servants, the tendency of many is to focus on the one He uses.
But we need to understand God’s priorities. Otherwise we will allow others to draw attention toward us when He is arising to reveal His glory. To misunderstand this most basic of issues is to invite His discipline in our lives.
Peter targeted his listeners with the defining words Men of Israel. Then he continued:
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go.
Was Peter speaking to more than simply those at the present gathering? Was He in fact prophesying to the nation of Israel as a whole? Notice how he stated that they had delivered up and denied the Lord Jesus when Pilate would have freed Him. But is the Scripture telling us that Peter’s listeners were the specific ones who had turned down Pilate’s offer to release Jesus? Had these men and women been actual participants in the mob that cried out to crucify Christ and to free Barabbas?
Of course, that is possible. But maybe there is something more significant here. In His earthly ministry, Jesus spoke about the principle of representation where someone present stands in place of another.
He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.
Just as Adam represented all mankind when he fell into sin, and God’s servants represent Him to the nations, so also it is possible that Peter’s listeners stood representationally in place of the nation of Israel. Let us consider Peter’s message in that light.
But you (i.e., as a nation) denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses.
Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers.
Notice that Peter addressed the whole Israeli nation. Nationally, they had failed to understand the implications of their actions. Messiah had come, and they along with their leaders had in ignorance crucified Him. Yet through it all, God in His sovereign providence was accomplishing His purpose.
But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
Initially, Peter had resisted the idea of Christ having to suffer (Matthew 16:21 - 23). But now, after the Lord’s death and resurrection and having been filled with the Holy Spirit, his perspective had changed.
So His advice for the nation was simple.
Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
Peter promised that when they repented, seasons of refreshing would come and God would send Jesus back from Heaven. Of course, many of his listeners did repent (Acts 4:4) and I am sure, did experience some measured seasons of personal spiritual refreshing. But to this day, God has not sent back His Son from Heaven. Why? It seems that Peter was speaking not simply to the gathered crowd, but to the nation of Israel as represented by them. So he was actually prophesying an eschatological truth.
Though Israel’s rulers and people had not fully understood what they were doing in rejecting their Messiah, yet God had still fulfilled His purpose. But now, since Christ’s resurrection, Israel as a nation must repent and return to the Lord. And when they do so, God will release seasons of refreshing into the Earth.
How long these times of spiritual revitalization will last, no one knows. Paul tells us that the spiritual riches poured out among the nations during those coming seasons will eclipse those received during the centuries prior to Israel’s repentance (Romans 11:12). In other words, a whole new era lies yet in our future. Paul says that the coming time will be life from the dead for the world (Romans 11:15). Only after these seasons of refreshing during the times of the restoration of all things foretold by all the prophets, will God send His Son from Heaven.
Clearly, God’s program for the Earth continues to involve the nation of Israel.
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