Acts Chapter 3 Con't

[0:00] Well, we are going to take just a slight detour from our study of the book of Acts chapter 3. And the reason I'm doing this is because in this Acts 3 message that Peter is delivering, you will recall, and by the way, this will be our last study.

[0:21] I need to insert this for the CD. This is our last study for the month of May. I was thinking last week was, but I was wrong.

[0:34] There's an old saying that 30 days past September, April, June, and no wonder all the rest have 31 except Grandma and she smokes a pipe. Now, don't ask me where that ever came from.

[0:44] I think it came from one of my grandfathers years ago. And I can see him saying that, and then he'd just rear his head back and chuckle. And it's a very important thing that you need to memorize, you know.

[0:57] 30 days past September, April, June, and no wonder all the rest have 31 except Grandma and she smokes a pipe. You got that, Rocky? Okay. So anyway, this is our last study for the month of May.

[1:13] And next month will be into June. So, in connection with what Peter is saying in Acts chapter 3 about the two-fold necessity for the establishment of the kingdom of heaven come to earth.

[1:33] And this goes all the way back to what is commonly referred to as the Lord's Prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[1:46] And we have explained in time past that the coming of the kingdom is a prayer. It is a prayer that is found there in the Sermon on the Mount.

[1:56] And it is a prayer for the coming of God's kingdom to earth because when that is realized, then God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[2:12] And we are all aware of the fact that it isn't now. We live in a fallen world. Death and disease are a part of it. Crime and criminal activity and war and murder and all the rest is part of a fallen world.

[2:29] That will not be part of the world when the kingdom of heaven comes to earth. But this is not it. And some are of the opinion that there is not going to be any such kingdom.

[2:42] That it is purely a spiritual operation, not a literal thousand year reign of Christ at all. And this is an issue that has divided believers for many, many years.

[2:54] There are those who are called premillennialists. And that is what we are or what we are teaching. Premillennialism says pre meaning before.

[3:08] Meaning before the millennium comes, Christ will have to be here on earth because he is the one who will establish the millennium.

[3:22] Man and society is not going to succeed in bringing in the kingdom. We can't do it. And we were never expected to do it.

[3:33] But some people believe that that is the responsibility of the church is to evangelize the whole world. And as a result, the kingdom of heaven will come because we bring it in.

[3:45] That is that is referred to as man's effort to establish the kingdom. Frankly, fellas, this is essentially what communism is all about.

[3:58] It sees man as perfectible. And it simply says that if you have the right education and if you have the right politics, you will be able to establish utopia on earth.

[4:15] I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but this is exactly what Fidel Castro intended to do in Cuba. He hasn't succeeded. This is exactly what the Soviet Union attempted to do in 1917 when the communists took over and established communism.

[4:34] It turned out to be an 80-year failed experiment because man does not have it with any. The kingdom of heaven will be established on the earth, but it will be as a result of Jesus Christ returning and doing it.

[4:49] So we believe in the premillennial position that is before the millennium is established, Christ must return. That is the premillennial position.

[5:00] And then there is a postmillennial position. I've talked a little bit about that. And that is the idea that as soon as the church has done its job of evangelizing the whole world, then Christ will return.

[5:17] But not until the church has made the world a fit place for him to return to. And that is the postmillennial position, which says that Christ will come at the end of the millennium and that we are supposed to be bringing in the millennium now.

[5:34] And there's even some songs in our hymnal about it. Why say you not a word about bringing back the king? How do we bring back the king? We evangelize the whole world.

[5:46] And when we've got our job done, then Christ will return. And there's a verse in Matthew 24 and 25 in the Olivet Discourse that says, And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached throughout the whole world before the end comes.

[6:09] And that's what it sounds like that I was just describing. That the church will evangelize the whole world and then the end comes after the evangelization. But if you read the context in Matthew 24, it is a tribulational context.

[6:26] And it is saying that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, and it will, during that tribulation period.

[6:37] And at the end of the tribulation period, when this gospel has been proclaimed throughout the whole world in the midst of enormous evangelism and enormous persecution, that Christ comes at the end of that.

[6:52] And that's when Israel has their back to the wall and they're on the verge of annihilation, and Christ delivers his people. So these are really important issues, and they are those which separate earnest, honest believers who just see these issues differently.

[7:10] And Christendom is divided about this. And then there is, of course, the amillennial position, which says you put the alpha prefix, which is the first letter, of course, in the Greek alphabet, alpha.

[7:26] You put that before the word, and it negates the word. Like if you take the word theist, T-H-E-I-S-T, a theist is someone who believes there is a God, there is a supreme being.

[7:45] It doesn't necessarily mean he's a Christian, it just means he believes there is a God. If you are a Muslim, you are a theist. If you are a Christian, you are a theist.

[7:57] But when you put the alpha prefix in front of it, it negates what comes after. And it, atheist, atheist means no God. So if you put the alpha prefix before the millennium, it means no millennium.

[8:12] That is, no literal, actual, thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth. There isn't going to be one. That's the amillennialist position. They see the whole millennial picture as spiritual.

[8:26] They say the kingdom of heaven is within you. It is strictly spiritual. And that's how they interpret it. So there isn't going to be any literal thousand-year reign of Christ.

[8:38] So those are the three basic positions. And what we've got here before us now in Luke 19 is a parable that Christ gives. And it is very critical.

[8:49] It follows right on the heels of the incident with Jesus and Zacchaeus. Remember the song?

[9:00] I remember teaching this to little 8- and 10-year-old jet cadetters when I was a student at Cedarville. I was a young man then, believe it or not, in my 20s. And we used to teach kids this little song.

[9:12] Zacchaeus was a wee little man. A wee little man was he. He climbed up in the sycamore tree for his Lord he wanted to see. And this is the story about Zacchaeus. He was a tax collector, corrupt as all get out, ripped off the people right and left.

[9:28] And he was hated by the people because Zacchaeus was a Jew. But he was a turncoat Jew. He was on the Roman payroll.

[9:41] And he collected taxes from his own people. And, of course, they hated him because he gave that money then to Rome. And following right on the heels of that, Zacchaeus became a believer in Christ as the Messiah.

[9:58] And then in verse 10 on this page, and this would be page 309 down on the bottom, we read in verse 10 where Christ said, For the Son of Man, and this is the most common designation that Christ used in reference to himself.

[10:18] And he spoke of it as though it was in the third person. We would wonder, why didn't he just come right out and say, For I have come to seek and to save that which was lost.

[10:28] Because that's exactly what he was saying. But he uses this term, Son of Man. And I don't want to go there, but let me just say this. Because this really registered with the people to whom he was speaking.

[10:39] Because this term, Son of Man, is used frequently in the book of Daniel. Hundreds of years before Christ ever came.

[10:52] And in the book of Daniel, in the mind of the Jew, when they read that phrase, the Son of Man, Daniel, they always connected it with the coming Messiah.

[11:04] The Son of Man, the coming Messiah. So Christ is making an unmistakable connection between Daniel's reference to the Son of Man and Christ himself being the Son of Man.

[11:19] That is, he is the representative of humanity. And he is also referred to in, I think, Romans 5 as the last Adam.

[11:36] Christ is referred to as the last Adam. So, in a way that Adam represented the whole of human race, Christ is the last Adam who also represents the whole of the human race.

[11:50] And he is the representative figure of humanity in the same way that Adam was. And as in Adam all die, and Christ shall all be made alive, and so on.

[12:01] So here he refers to himself again, as he did many times, as the Son of Man. And he says, The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

[12:14] Thank you, Dan. Now, how was he going to do that? That was the big question.

[12:24] And he made a very straightforward statement. The Son of Man, I, myself, have come, and I'm confident he's speaking in terms of having come from heaven, and the Father who sent me to the earth, and the purpose for which I have come is to seek and to save that which was lost.

[12:46] And again, I ask the question, exactly how was he to do that? The mind of the Jewish establishment to which he had come, and to the nation of Israel, was that he would save Israel by defeating her enemies, by routing the Romans, by driving them out, by rescuing the nation of Israel, by restoring it to its original glory, etc., by ruling and reigning in Jerusalem.

[13:18] That's how he's going to do that. Well, that is a picture that is given of the Messiah, but that coming to rout the enemies of Israel and establish the kingdom, pomp and glory, and everything that goes with it, is a perfect description, but of the second coming, not the first.

[13:40] Both are in the Old Testament, but the first coming in the Old Testament is powerfully overshadowed by the prophecy of the second coming in the Old Testament.

[13:53] They are both there, unmistakably. Bethlehem is where he's going to be born, Micah 5.2. Born of a virgin, Isaiah 7.14.

[14:04] But those spoke of his first coming, and they are overshadowed by the pomp, the power, the glory, etc., of the second coming of the Messiah, which is found so many more times in the Old Testament than is the New.

[14:18] So, when the Jews think in terms of the Messiah coming, they are thinking in materialistic terms, and they are thinking in terms of the second coming, not the first coming.

[14:34] And the absolute riddle, the conundrum, the puzzle, exists over the fact that when Christ said, the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost, let me tell you this.

[14:53] They never imagined in their wildest imagination that he was going to save that which was lost by dying for them on a cross.

[15:07] Are you crazy? That never entered their mind. Yet, that's what he had in mind all along. I've told you, the two things that are essential, that must take place before the kingdom of heaven can come to earth and God's will will be done on earth as it is in him, two things have to take place.

[15:28] One, Christ has to die to reverse the judicial curse that was imposed upon man in the fall in Genesis 3.

[15:40] And the second thing is, Israel, to whom the Messiah was promised, has to receive him as their Messiah and be on board with God's program. When those two things happen, then the kingdom of heaven will come to earth.

[15:54] Well, the first has happened. Christ has paid that price. The second has not happened. Israel still remains in unbelief and in a rejection mode of their Messiah.

[16:09] So, keep that in mind. And then, in verse 10, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable.

[16:26] And, fellas, one of the principal things you have to always keep in mind whenever you read a parable that Jesus gave, and he gave a lot of them, 33 in fact are recorded in the four Gospels, you always have to ask yourself this key question.

[16:45] Why did Jesus give this parable at this time and place? Because his parables always had a purpose.

[16:57] He never went around just spouting interesting stories to entertain people. Never. whenever Christ gave a parable, it always had a point.

[17:08] And, it was always pertinent. It always had something to do with what was going on. And he gave the parable to explain, to elucidate, to enlighten, to put legs on the story, if you will.

[17:23] And we are told that he gave this parable, but look at why he gave it. He gave it because he was nigh to Jerusalem.

[17:36] This is close to his last entry in Jerusalem. This is the Palm Sunday thing. He is on his way to being crucified.

[17:51] Nobody with him understood that. He was the only one who knew exactly what was going to happen when he got to Jerusalem. Others didn't know it.

[18:01] And they would never have believed it. But the reason he is giving this particular parable is because he is near to Jerusalem and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

[18:21] When? Well, just as soon as he gets into Jerusalem. He's going to march into town. He's going to chase out the Romans. He's going to set up his kingdom.

[18:33] It's going to be wonderful. We can't wait. And they lined the road and said, Hosanna, Hosanna. Do you know what Hosanna means? It means save now, save now.

[18:47] Hosanna is a form of the word from which the word Joshua is taken, Jesus is taken, and it means save, deliver, rescue.

[19:01] Do it now. We're waiting. We're waiting for you to rescue us. You are the Messiah and you are going to establish that kingdom. Well, he knew that was not going to be a reality.

[19:15] Even though that's what they were thinking. That's why they were shouting what they were. Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the son of David. They thought the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

[19:33] And he knew that was not going to be the case. So he's going to tell them a parable. They are going to hear it loud and clear.

[19:44] They are not going to understand the significance of this parable until after the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension back to heaven.

[19:56] And this will tie in, we'll see later, how it will tie in with what Peter is saying in Acts chapter 3. Yes? I've got a question for you to get too far past 10. Okay. To seek and save that which was lost, that which was lost is referring to the Jew?

[20:13] Primarily? To all of mankind. Well, it has an immediate reference to the nation of Israel. And I would reference this to John 1 where John says that he came unto his own.

[20:34] And his own, this is the nation of Israel, his own received him not. But as many as did receive him, and what does that mean?

[20:46] That means those besides the nation of Israel, Israel, which includes Gentiles, non-Jews, as many as did receive him, to them gave he the authority or the right to be the children of God or the sons of God.

[20:58] So, this is, Christ came principally to the nation of Israel. He came to Israel, but he came for the whole world.

[21:10] But it was to be through the instrumentality of Israel. When Paul said, writing to the Romans, for Christ is a minister, has come as a minister to the circumcision, and who's that?

[21:24] That's the Jew. Has come as a minister to the circumcision to confirm or fulfill the promises God gave to the fathers. And who are the fathers? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

[21:37] John? Seeking to say that which was lost also could have a wider meaning, the whole curse.

[21:48] Oh, I think it does. Absolutely. Of thorns and thistles and disease. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it does. Yeah. It's not just a lost human.

[21:59] It's everything that Adam lost. Absolutely. Absolutely. Excellent point. Because in his death, he is going to pay that price that will balance that scale, that divine scale.

[22:12] He is going to provide a legal judicial basis for God to lift that curse that was imposed on all of creation. creation. And that was all lost in Adam.

[22:25] You're right. It was forfeited in Adam. And as a result, we've got what we've got today, which is, you know, death and disease and all the rest of it. So, this parable that he is giving is really, really significant.

[22:40] And this is so telling. And he said, therefore, a certain nobleman went into a far country. And who is this nobleman, do you think?

[22:52] It is Christ himself. He is the nobleman. And he went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.

[23:03] And he called his ten servants and delivered them ten pounds. This is money. And he said to them, occupy till I come.

[23:15] So, the word occupy doesn't mean just sit and breathe, but it means be actively engaged. And it means take what I have given you and use it.

[23:31] Put it to work. But his citizens hated him and sent a message after him saying, we will not have this man to reign over us.

[23:46] That's exactly what the crowd is going to be saying when Christ stands condemned before them beside Pontius Pilate. What then shall I do with he who is called the king of the Jews?

[24:00] Ah, crucify him! We will not have this man to reign over us. And Christ is speaking here of himself and of the response he's going to receive from the Jews.

[24:10] And it came to pass that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money.

[24:29] Now, the return here he is talking about is his second coming. but this whole parable has to do with the fact that the one whom they thought was going to establish the kingdom then wasn't going to at all.

[24:47] And Christ knew he wasn't going to. Where is the kingdom now? It is in abeyance. It is set aside. It is put on hold. This is not the kingdom now.

[24:59] This is the church age. This is the age of grace. So, we read on. He commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

[25:16] Now, let me insert this also. What Christ is saying here is that this event, in this parable, this is taking place before the man leaves.

[25:28] Before he leaves, he's going to give these gifts, this money, to these people to use while he's gone. Then, he is going away. And it doesn't say how long he's going to be gone.

[25:41] It just says he's going to be absent. Well, we believe that that absence is right now. He's absent now. He's gone now. But he's coming back. And when he comes back, there is going to be a time of accounting, of judgment.

[25:58] People are going to be held responsible by this one who entrusted abilities to him. And he calls them to see how every man had gained by trading. In verse 16, then came the first saying, Lord, thy pound has gained ten pounds.

[26:16] And he said unto him, well, thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

[26:28] Now, this is nothing more than, I think, a picture of a reward that Christ is going to give to those who have earned a reward by responsible living and behavior with what had been entrusted to them.

[26:44] And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound has gained five pounds. Let's look at the next page. And he said likewise to him. Be thou also over five cities.

[26:56] In other words, all this is saying, and I think all Christ is saying here, is that the rewards are going to be based on the faithfulness and the honor and the activity with which they had carried out their responsibilities.

[27:15] And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin. In other words, didn't do anything with it, he just hid it away.

[27:27] For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man, or a hard man, and knowing that you take up that thou layest not down, and you reap that you did not sow.

[27:43] And he said unto him, out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, taking taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow, wherefore then gavest thou not thy money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury.

[28:12] And he said unto them that stood by, take from him the pound, and give it to him that has ten pounds. And they said unto him, Lord, he has ten pounds, for I say unto you, that unto every one which has shall be given, and from him that has not, even that which he has shall be taken away from him.

[28:41] But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me.

[28:53] Now what this has to do, this is pretty gross, this is pretty severe, what this has to do is, this is going to be the lot of those who are anti-Christ at the time Christ returns for the second coming.

[29:10] This is going to be the upshot of Armageddon. These are all the armies that are massed against Israel and against Israel's Messiah in the last day.

[29:26] These are they whom the birds of the air, the carrion, the vultures are going to feed on as depicted in Revelation 19 and in Matthew 24 and 25.

[29:38] And it's not a pretty picture. This is the end time. This is the payoff for them. And it is extremely, but this is all after or at the conclusion of the tribulation period.

[29:53] And this is before Christ establishes his kingdom because before the kingdom can be set up, the enemies of Israel and the enemies of God, the Antichrist and his forces, all need to be defeated.

[30:08] And then after this carnage at the end of tribulation period, that's when Christ will establish his kingdom. And it will be a kingdom that will survive for a thousand years.

[30:19] And at the end of that, there will be the final rebellion. All right, now we've covered a lot of material and probably generated a lot of questions, but can you not see the strategic nature of this parable?

[30:30] What he is telling them is, fellas, the kingdom of heaven that you anticipate is going to be established now when I get to Jerusalem, it's not going to be that way.

[30:42] The kingdom is going to be in abeyance. I am actually going to the cross, and I'm going to die on that cross. And they did not understand that at all. In fact, for many of the Jews, you have to understand this, for many of the Jews who were not decided as to whether Jesus was the Messiah, was the one sent from God or not, they couldn't make up their mind.

[31:09] They were impressed by the miracles, they were impressed by the teaching, but if he is the Messiah, where is the kingdom? Why didn't he bring the kingdom in?

[31:20] Remember John the Baptist, who even introduced Jesus, wondered if he made a mistake. Are you the one that should come? Or are we to be looking for another?

[31:31] Because if you are the Messiah, you are the king, you're going to bring the kingdom in. What am I doing here in jail? I'm on your side. And here he's going to lose his life.

[31:44] So he has his doubts. He's wondering about this. And for many of the Jews who couldn't make up their mind whether or not Jesus really was the Messiah when they saw him on that cross, that settled it for him.

[32:01] Many of them. Well, I thought possibly, maybe, Jesus really was the Messiah because so many things he said and the miracles he did really pointed to that, but there he is, hanging on a Roman cross, dying there.

[32:21] Well, if anything is proof positive that he was not the Messiah, that's it. That's it. And those who thought he was, had their hopes all dashed.

[32:35] Remember the two guys on the road to Emmaus? We trusted that it was he who should deliver Israel, but now it's the third day since that happened, and they killed him.

[32:49] They crucified. It's all over. They had never had an idea that he was coming back after the third day. Never entered their mind. Proof positive that he was not the Messiah was the fact that he died on the cross.

[33:02] God would never, God would never send someone down here to the earth to deliver the earth as a rescuer and then let him end up on a Roman cross. That's crazy. That would never happen.

[33:14] But that is precisely what happened. That was the plan all along. Questions or comments? Food is here. Anybody? Yes, Dana. And Adam, this is probably a dumb question, but whether it's a pre or post-tribulation thing, I can see where that's important from an academic viewpoint, but it really doesn't matter to us.

[33:39] The odds, it may happen in our lifetime, but the odds of that happening are pretty slim, and the way we live our life, it really doesn't matter one way or the other.

[33:52] The way I'm thinking, whether it's pre or post, we should still live our life the same way. Well, absolutely. Absolutely. And these are good people.

[34:04] These are good people that hold these differing positions. And they may disagree with me 100%, but they love the Lord, and they're loved by the Lord. And as I've often said, every one of us has blind spots in our theology and in our understanding.

[34:22] Nobody has it all together, and when we get to heaven, everybody's going to get straightened out. Because there's going to be a lot of straightening out to do, and the Lord's the only one capable of doing it.

[34:33] So here we just kind of muddle through, and we get it the best we can, but we know we get some things right and some things wrong, and that's what study is all about. Roger? Would anybody at that time have enough information in the Scriptures to know that he had to suffer and die?

[34:51] Was it Isaiah? Was anybody making connections or was it in from him? Well, you know, the Old Testament, and you talk about Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and all these passages that talk about a suffering servant, a suffering Messiah, they still didn't know.

[35:12] They didn't put it together because it was just inconceivable to them that God could accomplish anything through somebody suffering and dying.

[35:24] You don't get anything done that way. But in the economy of heaven, that's the only way anything did get done, really. there was probably a lot of confusion.

[35:35] Oh, my yes. Oh, tremendous confusion. You know, they were thinking, well, you know, we've seen all this and we witnessed all this and we were reading our text back then.

[35:47] Yeah. Absolutely. There had to be a lot of confusion. Oh. People probably just killed them. Yeah. The confusion was the order of the day. not only before he was crucified, after he was crucified, and even years later, even after he ascended, there was still confusion.

[36:06] And a lot of it had to do with, well, he said he was coming back, but he hasn't come back. And then somebody posed the idea, well, well, maybe on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, maybe that was the return of Jesus in the form of the Spirit.

[36:25] maybe the Second Coming has already happened, and Pentecost was it. The confusion was just rampant. And some thought, well, you know, since Israel rejected their Messiah, God has rejected them, and he's replaced them with the church.

[36:46] And this is replacement theology, and this is where we are today. So, confusion was the order of the day then, and it still is. And, fellas, there isn't anything that will resolve confusion about interpreting the Bible more than good old Miles Coverdale.

[37:03] 1535. Read it. Nothing will help you to understand the Bible more than following the rules of the man who gave us the first complete printed English Bible in 1535.

[37:15] time.

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