Times of Refreshing
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Review ALL IN series. Purpose for the series: how our discipleship process is just beginning like it was for them…
Review where we are: we are studying Peter’s second sermon. He preached this sermon in the temple just after he and John healed the lame man at the gate called Beautiful .
Review Last Week: One of the four prophetic categories Peter declares Jesus as fulfilling: A Prophet like Moses…
There are four sets of prophecies mentioned by Peter that we are exploring…
Peter mentions (1) the “seed of Abraham” (2) the prophet like moses, (3) the prophecies fulfilled in his suffering, and (4) the agreement of all the other prophets in history.
17 “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also.
18 “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
19 “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;
20 and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you,
21 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.
22 “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything He says to you.
23 ‘And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’
24 “And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days.
25 “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.’
26 “For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.”
Peter is here referencing a depth of 1st century Jewish understanding , making layered points that those in the temple where he’s preaching would’ve understood immediately.
Because we are 2000 years removed from the context, we need to reference the Old Testament to see what he’s talking about.
Peter has just told them that Jesus is the Messiah and references prophecies that He fulfilled, thus proving this to be true.
These are all prophetic elements that were understood to be revelations about the coming Messiah and Peter is telling them, “Jesus fulfilled them all.”
He throws the whole gambit at them, he’s careful to talk about every prophetic cornerstone the first century Jewish believers would be familiar with when it came to the Messiah.
In other words, He’s not just the fulfillment of part of what God had, He’s all of it.
Jesus isn’t a bridge to another coming Messiah. He’s not looking forward to another messenger from God to be the anointed one…
Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He is the fulfillment of all the prophets spoke of.
We have spent the last few weeks exploring each of the prophetic categories mentioned by Peter, working from the last one he mentioned backward.
There are two more verses I want to look at from the passages we just read before we move into chapter 4:
18 “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
19 “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;
Title: Times of Refreshing
Times of Refreshing
Times of Refreshing
Pray
Last week, we took a look into many of the prophecies fulfilled by Jesus and talked about the chances of one man fulfilling even a fraction of those that Jesus did.
There was one category of prophecy I didn’t get to last week and that was what is mentioned in verse 18, the prophecies about Christ’s suffering.
One of the things we often take for granted being in a moderately Christian surrounding is the idea that some of the Old Testament verses are looking forward to Jesus.
In fact, when we read them we jump straight to the fulfillment, as many of these verses are read around Easter or Christmas, which makes them at least vaguely familiar to even twice a year church visitors.
Take Isaiah 9 for example:
6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.
This is a Christmas mainstay, but this section of scripture was written 600 years before Christ walked the earth…
The prophet was looking forward in the foresight of God and seeing the messiah hundreds of years before His arrival…
Or Isaiah 53, which is a popular Easter verse:
1 Who has believed our message?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of parched ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we should look upon Him,
Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.
3 He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
On and on we could go, verse after verse talking about a suffering savior, yet when the time came they did not recognize Him.
Even when He cried out on the cross, quoting Psalm 22, another prophecy about His own death, they did not understand:
1 My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest.
3 Yet You are holy,
O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
For 31 verses, the psalmist prophecies and laments seeing his own circumstance, but prophetically speaking of a greater time to come…
The psalm ends with this prophetic utterance:
30 Posterity will serve Him;
It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation.
31 They will come and will declare His righteousness
To a people who will be born, that He has performed it.
Jesus… the fulfillment of all the prophets spoke of concerning the Messiah…
Jesus the suffering servant…
Jesus… God in the flesh…
Jesus… The prophet like Moses…
Jesus… The Christ…
18 “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
So given all the evidence… All the prophecies… The mathematical probability…
What are we to do with this information?
Peter tells us:
19 “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;
Mention and explain the Jewish relationship with the Law and the covenant requirements of work…
One author called this an “allusion to the custom of labourers, especially in Eastern countries, of retiring to the shade during the heat of the day to recruit their exhausted strength.”
These “times of refreshing” are intimately connected with the Jewish way of life that included constant devotion, sacrifices, rituals, routine, and traditions… but every 7 days came Sabbath…
There is a pattern of refreshing built into the Hebrew worldview from the very time of creation, exemplified by God in that He created the world in 6 days, but on the 7th day, He rested…
This was not because He ever grows tired, but so that we would have a pattern to pick up on and an example to live by…
The tricky thing about resting on the 7th day is that the count starts over every week.
So no matter how rested you may be on the 7th day, the first day of the week was always coming…
But this time of refreshing mentioned by Peter is something different than a periodic break…
This time of refreshing is a picture of entering into a land of promise…
The author of Hebrews picks up on this by saying:
1 Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.
2 For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
3 For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said,
“As I swore in My wrath,
They shall not enter My rest,”
although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.
4 For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”;
In other words, the picture Peter uses with this phrase is one where the unbeliever is in a type of wilderness just as Israel was before they entered the promised land…
Peter is preaching to those who were used to trying to earn their salvation, but he tells them, REPENT that times of refreshing may come…
Repentance isn’t a work, it is entering into rest…
Now that Jesus has come.. because He is the fulfillment of all the prophets said He would be…
Because He suffered…
Because He became the perfect sacrifice…
we can now enter into a rest from the labors of our seeking salvation, because our sins have been wiped away!
Jesus said.. .
28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Call worship team
Look again at Peter’s statement in Acts:
19 “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;
Notice where the refreshing comes from…
It’s not found anywhere but in the presence of the Lord!
Before Jesus came, the presence of God was limited. He would appear in the temple and rest on the ark of the covenant…
But when Jesus died, the bible says the veil of the temple… The veil that separated the rest of the temple from the Holy of Holies where the presence of God was…
That veil was torn from top to bottom…
The tearing of the veil was symbolic of the presence of God moving from visiting the temple to living in the hearts of the believers…
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
Our refreshing comes from His presence, dwelling on the inside of us… Made manifest when we gather together…
So let us worship together, repenting of our own pride in thinking we can somehow bear the burdens of this life without the supernatural power of God fresh in us.
Will you enter His rest? Admitting that you need Him…
Will you enter times of refreshing, believing your sins have been wiped away?
Let us worship together, entering His rest, allowing Him to be God in our lives…
