1001. The Times of Refreshing
The Times of Refreshing
"When the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord" (Act_3:19)
1. The times of refreshing promised, in our key verse will come to Israel. A people downtrodden as they have been, a people scattered to the ends of the earth as they have been, a people persecuted and hated during twenty-three centuries as they have been, will certainly appreciate the blessed "refreshing."
Let us observe one of the beautiful Scriptures which portrays for us some of the joys of these refreshing times.
The whole Book of Hosea pictures backsliding Israel. The story is one of perfidy and perverseness on the part of a people greatly beloved. The last chapter however gives the story first of Israel's repentance and then of her national "refreshing." Let us read Act_2:5-7 :
"I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.
"His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and smell as Lebanon."
"They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon."
That we are in the mind of the Spirit in connecting this repentance of Israel and her glorious refreshment with the Lord's return is assured in Hosea, chapter 3, where we read in Act_2:4 and Act_2:5 :
"For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image and without an ephod, and without a teraphim.
"Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king: and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days."
2. Israel being herself refreshed, will in turn become a refreshing. The Lord will bless her and make her a blessing.
Joel plainly emphasizes this:
"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
"And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit.
"And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
"The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.
"And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call" (Joe_2:28-32).
While these words had their first fulfillment at Pentecost, that fulfillment was only partial. It is only when Israel is forgiven and the Lord has returned that the Gentiles will fully receive the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us read again, "Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?" (Rom_11:12).
Wonderful, is it not? When Israel is saved they will become world-wide evangels of salvation.
When Saul of Tarsus, whose conversion was throughout a type of the conversion of Israel, was saved, God said: "Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel" (Act_9:15).
Thus Israel, converted, saved by grace, shall at once be sent to the whole Gentile world with the Gospel of which Paul was never ashamed.
The world-wide refreshing through Israel is beautifully foretold by Isaiah:
"I am sought of them that sought not for Me; I am found of them that sought Me not: I said, Behold Me, behold Me unto a nation that was not called by My name" (Isa_65:1).
Just as Jonah, forgiven, restored, cast back upon the land and sent to Nineveh; so Israel, forgiven, restored, and back in the land, will go to the whole wide world, and the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR