Blotted and Refreshed

Continuing from the last post on 'Acts 3'...


Peter knows the crowd is cut to the heart by the demonstration and explanation of God's power and at the realisation of their separation from Him. Let's have another look at what he encourages them to do and what he promises will happen:

"Repent therefore and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord" (Acts 3:19)

All From His Own Experience 
Peter is only sharing what he himself has experienced:

1) Realising His Need To Repent

After denying Jesus three times and leaving Him to die alone, Peter didn't doubt that he was far from God. He must have felt dead inside as he realised that he didn't have what it takes to be with Jesus. In his two speeches in Acts 2 and 3, we see Peter helping others to realise what had already dawned on him; that we have all done wrong and that justice must prevail. After telling the crowd that they were responsible for Jesus' death, he tells them that they need to repent just as he did.

2) Receiving Forgiveness

1 Corinthians 15:3 tells us that Jesus met privately with Peter before the other disciples after his resurrection. In this encounter, Jesus must have explained forgiveness to Peter – perhaps even using the imagery that Peter uses in this speech; having our record of debt ‘blotted out’. This is powerful imagery, have a read of Colossians 2: 13-14…

"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross."

Imagine the written record of everything you have done to offend God; an itemised list of all your acts of selfishness, and cruelty. Next to each point God has written the legal demand, the perfect judgement because He is perfectly just. Now imagine that this written record of debt being nailed to Jesus cross, and slowly you start to see His blood seeping through the paper until it is utterly indecipherable, completely stained red, the original ink washed away - your sin blotted out!

This is irreversible, forgiveness of God. This is the all-permeating forgiveness that Peter knew from Jesus; and now he was telling the crowd that they can know the exact same thing.

3) Regularly Refreshed

After describing this forgiveness he says that they can receive times of refreshing. In his speech at Pentecost he says that once they have received forgiveness they can receive the Holy Spirit. Here he phrases it slightly differently, because now he's a couple of months older,  and he's happy to tell everyone that this isn't a one-off thing, but a regular refreshing. This isn't a chore like re-filling the car, but a cool drink after some heavy work. 'Refreshing', what a great word!

"And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart" (Ephesians 5: 18-19)

From study of the language we know though this is a continuous encouragement, not a one-off, to go on being filled. Paul is saying to the Ephesian church, “You don’t need wine, you need the Holy Spirit to get you through life, and you need it regularly”.
How regularly? Jesus teaches us to ask the Father for our ‘daily bread’, but we must not let this make us feel guilty when we don’t. Jesus isn’t saying that there is a minimum amount of time we need to spend with God, He’s saying that there is no maximum!

Enjoy The Show 

God has chosen to use us to display His glory. As John Piper has powerfully advocated for many years, God it most glorified when we enjoy Him. When this gets into our hearts, it changes everything. The most important thing I can do with my time today is enjoy God. 

More on what it means to enjoy God in the next post!

Explanation Follows Demonstration In Years AD

There's a great story that spills out of Acts 3 into a bit of chapter 4. I think there's a lot we can learn from the events and the people involved. Let's have a look. 

Explanation Follows Demonstration

Peter and John arrive at the gate of the temple and Peter grabs a lame beggar by the hand and tells him to walk. The 40-year old has been lame from birth; his legs would never have properly formed, he would have been wasted away from the waist down. On the surface, then, this looks like a pretty malicious thing for Peter to do, but as he grabs his hand, the man's legs, ankles and feet are 'made strong'; bone, muscles, tissue, tendons, nerves and ligaments grown in a millisecond. There's no limit to God's power! He makes the lame from birth leap in an instant! 

Explanation follows demonstration of God's character, and here, just like he does at Pentecost, Peter tells the crowd what's happening. He starts by telling them that it is faith in Jesus' name that has made this man well (you can imagine many of the crowd to cringing with pangs of guilt as they remember getting caught up in the anti-Jesus rally that led to him being executed only months before). Peter doesn't go lightly on them but quickly throws a lifeline of hope by saying that Jesus is alive:

"15 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One...14 and you killed the Author of Life whom God raised from the dead"

 At a similar moment in his speech at Pentecost it says that the crowd were "cut to the heart" and asked him, "Brother, what can we do to be saved?". This time round, Peter knows that the power of this message and the kind of effect it has on listeners, so he moves straight on to the recommended response and what they can expect:

"19 Repent therefore and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord"

And just before he's interrupted by the temple police, he explains in verse 25 and 26 that Jesus has been raised up so that they can receive blessing, so that through them the whole world will be blessed. 


Here we have an example of healing as a demonstration of God's blessing being followed by an  explanation of the bigger picture of the good news of Jesus. This is the number-one type of evangelism in the years AD; here's how Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 2: 4-5:

"and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."

I think I often forget that God wants to demonstrate his blessing and I just rush straight into explanations that sound rehearsed. If there's an 'AD' after today's date, then God still wants to demonstrate His blessing to people to turn them back to Him.