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HOW BIG WILL IT BE?

When we contemplate the size of Jesus' Kingdom, and by that, I mean His Kingdom here on earth, the Church, what are the expectations that come to mind? Will that Kingdom remain in the minority, ever and always in remnant status, never able to gain ascendancy among the competing worldviews and world religions that continually jockey for power in a fallen cosmos? 

Or will His Kingdom grow? And by growth, to what degree are we speaking? Will the visible Church on earth grow to become ten percent of the world's population? Will it grow to over twenty? How about fifty? Or if you are very optimistic, will it become the majority in some way or fashion? And if it is the majority, does that mean fifty-one percent? Or are we talking about something much grander? 

These are the questions I would like us to consider today as we re-enter the book of Acts and examine the eschatological underpinnings of the early Church. But, to do that, we have to understand some essential concepts that Luke springles along the way. 

THE BRIEFEST OF BACKGROUNDS

SERIES BACKGROUND

If you have not been with us over the last eight weeks, in week 1, I sketched out the need for an eschatological series in the book of Acts. In week 2, we saw how Jesus' end-time Kingdom was inaugurated in heaven at His ascension. In week 3, we watched as significant eschatological passages from the Old Testament were fulfilled at Pentecost, bringing that heavenly Kingdom down to earth. Then, in weeks 4, 5, 6, and  7, we examined Peter's deeply eschatological sermon in Jerusalem, which explained the glorious Kingdom that believers were entering and foreshadowed the awful doom all those who reject Christ in Judah would soon endure. 

TEXTUAL BACKGROUND

After Peter's sermon, about 3000 souls were added to Jesus' Kingdom at Pentecost with each receiving the covenant sign of membership in Jesus' Church (Acts 2:41). Early on, Christ began weaving His people together around apostolic teaching of the Word, fellowship and communion, and also prayer (Acts 2:42). The community was also overwhelmed by the miraculous outpouring of the Spirit, which was being manifest through the working of miracles (Acts 2:43). Just as Elisha was given a double miraculous portion from Elijah and did exactly twice the miracles as the former, so the Apostles were given a double portion by Christ, who empowered them to do more miracles in the first century that He did, as a part of their ministry to harken all Judah to repentance (John 14:12-14). And many did repent. But many others didn't. 

Along with the preaching of the Word, prayer, miracles, fellowship, and the administration of sacraments, many of the earliest Christians were selling their property and pooling their resources together to address the needs of the Church. This is not, as some foolish moderns would ascribe, an appeal to Christian socialism. This, instead, is the most unmistakable evidence that the early Church understood the warnings of Jesus and the sermon of Peter. Think about it: Jesus warned Peter and the Apostles that Jerusalem was going to be surrounded by armies (Luke 21:20), set on fire (Matthew 22:7), and the stench of their carcasses placed in heaping piles would attract the ravenous swarms of hungry vultures (Matthew 24:28). If you owned property in Jerusalem and this is what your resurrected Lord predicted was going to happen in that city, wouldn't you sell too? And, if you loved your countrymen as the first-century Jewish Christians did, wouldn't you want to pool your resources within the Church and use that money as a missions fund to reach them? By selling your home, you could live within the city with enough resources to be on mission for many years, and when all of the worst aspects of Jesus' prophecy began happening, you could flee the city and escape its awful downfall without fear of losing your home. In fact, this is precisely what the first-century Christians did (Eusebius, "Ecclesiastical History" (Book III, Chapter 5).

For a time, the apostles were still going to the temple complex, preaching the Gospel there, teaching, and performing various miracles as a sign of Jesus' Kingdom and Lordship. On one such occasion, Peter and John healed a man born lame just outside the temple at its gate (Acts 3:2-). As Luke records it, the man began leaping and skipping for joy, entering the temple for the first time in His life Because the Son of righteousness had just healed Him through His anointed apostles (Acts 3:8). This is a clear fulfillment of both Isaiah and Malachi's great prophecy, which says: 

"But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. - Malachi 4:2

Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah. - Isaiah 35:6

OUR TEXT TODAY

This brings us to our passage for today, where Peter begins his second eschatological sermon. Luke records: 

"Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him.14 But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses. 16 And on the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know; and the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all. 18 But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. - Acts 3:12-18

ESCHATOLOGICAL TIDBITS

Much could be discussed in the first part of this sermon. For instance, Peter does not attribute the power to heal this man to his personal piety or power but to the power and authority of the ascended and glorified Lord. He specifically points out His ascension unto glory because it was from that heavenly enthronement ceremony, that Christ sat down to rule, with His first act as King being to send His Spirit at Pentecost. By doing this, Christ made His power and His Kingdom available and accessible to the people of God on earth, which Peter is alluding to. This was an eschatological event.

Peter also refers to Jesus as the "Prince," which is an apparent reference to the anointed Messiah of Daniel 9:25. In one of Daniel's most Christocentric prophecies, Messiah (The Prince) would come and finish the transgressions of Jerusalem by destroying it, He would make an end to His people's sin by atoning for their iniquity, and He would usher in His earthly Kingdom of everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:24). By Peter calling Jesus the "Prince," he is reminding us that Daniel 9 was being fulfilled in his day and hour. 

In addition to the specific reference to Daniel 9 (especially of the Messiah being cut off in verse 26), Peter tells us that numerous other eschatological passages in the Old Testament were fulfilled in the suffering of Jesus. You may think of passages like Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and Zechariah 12 as clear examples. 

GETTING BACK TO THE QUESTION

Now, with all that as background, let us return to the question of how large Jesus' Kingdom will be? How much territory will it reclaim from the clenches of Satan? And more specifically, what percentage of the world population will finally and totally be added into this Kingdom of our Prince and Sovereign? Peter's sermon addresses this point with precision and clarity in the following three verses. Verse 19 begins: 

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 - Acts 3:19

THE TIMES OF REFRESHING (THE CHURCH AGE)

Peter demonstrates that entering Jesus' earthly Kingdom is contingent upon repentance. For a man to be a part of His earthly Kingdom and eternally in His heavenly Kingdom, they must first come with sorrow over sin and a turning unto righteousness. By doing this, Peter promises that their sins will be wiped away by Christ and that soon, a time of refreshment from the Lord's presence will come upon them. 

Now, while this word for refreshment (ἀναψύξεως) is only used once in the New Testament, and while it does not refer to any explicit promises or prophecies in the Old Testament, the meaning could not be more clear. In the same way, a weary desert traveler is refreshed by a sip of cool water, so the people of God will enter into a unique period of refreshment with God, where they will be enlivened by His personal presence, even amid a world that is still mired in tremendous conflict and strife. This refreshment would no longer come from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem's temple, as it did in the Old Covenant. Now, in the New Covenant, and in fulfillment of Ezekiel 47, the streams of life-giving water have burst out of the temple through the work of the Living Water, Jesus (John 4), whose life-giving flow is spreading and working its way out into the nations. 

This time of refreshment Peter is describing is the reign of Christ on earth during this period we call the Church age. It is when God will dwell with His people by issuing the Holy Spirit. And it is the epoch of redemptive history where He will refresh His saints with His life-giving presence while they serve Him in His Kingdom here on earth. 

RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS (WHAT THE CHURCH AGE ACCOMPLISHES)

As we will see, this period of refreshment, which is another way of speaking about the age of the Church, lasts as long as Jesus reigns in heaven and will not conclude until He accomplishes everything He intends to complete here on earth. To say that another way, He is working in God's throne room so that His Kingdom will come, and so His will will be done, on this earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-13). At that point, when everything is restored, Jesus will stand up, return to earth, and end human history to usher in His eternal Kingdom. This means that world history is not destined to continue going from bad to worse, as our futurist brothers moan, but instead to go from fully broken to fully restored in Christ. 

We know this because verse 20-21 tells us: 

and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, 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. - Acts 3:20-21

Peter tells us that Christ must be received into heaven, and He will stay there for a specific amount of time. That time is the church age, where we are His witnesses on earth. According to Peter, that time has a limited duration and will only conclude once Jesus has restored everything that was broken in the fall. That inevitably means Christ will not return to an irreparably damaged world. He will not secretly whisk away his hidden, huddled saints from the cataclysmic end. Instead, it means He will return once everything has been set back right again. While it is beyond the scope of this article to go through every Old Testament passage depicting this, I would invite the reader to examine passages like Isaiah 11:10 to see how the Messiah will restore the nations of the earth. Or how about Isaiah 11:4-5, where His royal reign, high up in the heavens, will bring justice and righteousness to the people living here. Look at Isaiah 9 and notice how the expanse of His government and peace will be limitless (Isaiah 9:6-7). Examine how, in Isaiah 2:4, the Messiah will eventually bring God's restoring peace to a world plagued with war. Notice how, in Isaiah 11:9 and Habakkuk 2:14, the reign of Christ will usher in the glory of God so thoroughly that it covers and blankets the entire world. Pay close attention to Isaiah 19:23-25, which looks forward to the day when the pagan nations, the very enemies of God, are called by the same title as Israel, which is "my people." Observe the glorious promise of Micah that in the Messiah's Kingdom, which is during this period we are living in on earth, at some point, all persecutions against His people will end, and His elect saints will dwell on earth in safety and in blessing (Micah 4:4). And, notice how our Messiah's reign of peace will cover the entire world and all the people in it (Zechariah 9:10). 

This is just a sketch of what the reign of Christ will accomplish. According to Peter, these acts of restoration and others like it will not occur after Jesus raptures away the Church and then returns. No. Peter tells us that they must happen before Jesus leaves His throne in heaven and that these things will be a consequence of His glorious heavenly rule. 

I hope that the picture is beginning to come into focus. The world you are living in will be restored. God will take all of the brokenness that seeped into the world in its first four thousand years, and under the reign of His Messiah from heaven, He will bring the restoration back to this very earth. He will bring peace and end wars. He will restore the nations to the worship of God. He will extend His government so that no rogue atom is outside of it. And, all of this is promised to come upon this physical world that you and I are living in. 

And if that seems impossible for you to believe, understand that the problem is not with His promises; the problem lies with our impatience with His process. We look around and see all kinds of evidence of brokenness, and we throw our hands up and despair, incapable of imagining God will eventually sort these things out. We know from Scripture that God is not like us. His ways are higher than our ways, and His plans are better than our plans. We tend to want things to happen in milliseconds when God works in millenniums. And since His restoration process is far from complete, it may be time to unpack our heavenly handbags and get to work in His Kingdom to see the restoration come on our small corner of the earth as it is in heaven. 

SO… HOW LARGE WILL HIS KINGDOM BE?

If all of this was not astounding enough, Peter connects the great promise of the Abrahamic covenant to the reign of Christ in heaven. Again, in case you missed it, Peter is claiming that Jesus' reign in heaven, which corresponds to this period of time on earth, will bring about the completion of Abraham's covenant. And this will happen BEFORE Jesus returns. 

Look at what Peter says: 

 And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. 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.' For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways." - Acts 3:24-26

This could not be any clearer. All of the prophets from Samuel to this sermon of Peter announced this. When Christ ascended into heaven to reign, one of the results of His rule on earth, through His Spirit working in His Church, would be the fulfillment of Abraham's promise that all of the families on earth would be blessed by His seed. Since that seed of Abraham is Christ (Galatians 3:16), and since these things pertain to the time of His heavenly rule and not to some period after His return, then we can know for sure that He will not return to this earth until all the families on earth have been brought under His covenant blessing. That does not mean that every member of every family will be saved, just like every tare in the wheat field will not make it to the barn. But it does mean no family will be left on earth, no hidden tribesman or isolated aborigine who will not come under the canopy of His blessing. No one will be left outside it. All the families on earth will be under His blessing, which means His Kingdom expansion will be total, global, and cosmic.  

Thus, when you are tempted to doom and gloom or discouraged about the state of the world, do not pray that the Lord would rapture you out of here. The Lord did not die and ascend to heaven to rescue you out of the world. Nay (John 17:15). He did these things to fully restore the world by the Spirit's work through you. 

Today, when you look around and see brokenness in this world, attempt to fix it. If you see sickness, pray and labor to heal it. When you see corruption, expose it. When you see violence and devastation, end it. Christ put His Church here so that through His Spirit we can bring about the restoration promised in the Holy Prophets. This means we must preach the Gospel so that more men will be saved, but it also means we must teach those men how to live like Christians and obey everything Jesus says (Matthew 28:18-20). And when we do that and begin discipling the peoples and nations, His restoration program will noticeably come. It already is coming; it has been coming for 2,000 years, make no mistake, and it will continue to come until the Lord is finished. 

Therefore, stop wishing to escape this world; stop staring out the clouds and daydreaming about heaven! Instead, start supporting your King's mission to restore this world now. Heaven will come soon enough in His good timing. Loving obedience to His commands is the work He has called you to while you wait. 

Until next time, be blessed and get to work.