LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 86

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86

CONVENTION ESSAYS AND BIBLE STUDIES

die again. This vindication that God the Father gave to His
Son by raising Him from the dead belongs to everyone who
calls upon the name of this Lord, Jesus. God has forgiven
our sins, because we are baptized into, joined to this risen
Lord. And God will raise us up on the Last Day and heal
our bodies and heal the whole dying creation and renew it
all to perfect harmony with Him and for His praise—because we are joined to Christ who has been vindicated.
B. So, the Last Days have begun, and Jesus, resurrected
and ascended to the Father’s right hand and now filling all
things and with us forever, He will come again, the angels
said, as you saw Him go. He will come again, and He will
bring the final victory of God. He will restore all things, all
things! When will that be?
1. This is what is behind the apostles’ question in Acts
1:6; please turn there with me now. We learn here that the
disciples, though still uncertain about one thing, knew
when they were living. Acts 1:6 reads, “So when they had
come together, they asked Him, ‘Lord, will You at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?’ ” Now this question isn’t all
that bad. There is something very right about it, even
though there is also something wrong about it.
First, let me offer a clarification for a common misunderstanding. The apostles, whom Jesus has been teaching
about the kingdom of God off and on for 40 days after His
resurrection, are not asking something like this: “Lord,
when are You going to give to us some earthly kind of kingdom?” If they had asked that kind of question, Jesus would
have said something such as, “Are you still without understanding? There will be no earthly kingdom; My kingdom
is not of this world!”—or something like that.
No, the apostles have begun to grasp that the last days
have begun. They will learn this more fully on the day of
Pentecost, but they are getting it now. God’s kingdom has
come, in Jesus, to minister to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel. And He has been resurrected. And what they are
asking about is God’s timing. “Is it at this time that You
will restore the kindgom to Israel?”
Because after all, Jesus had fulfilled the ancient
promises made to Israel. Simeon and Anna knew at the beginning of Jesus’ life that He would bring the consolation
of Israel (Luke 2:25), the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke
2:38). And the disciples on the road to Emmaus had the
right question, though they didn’t yet understand God’s answer: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”
(Luke 24:21). Jesus did redeem Israel. By His death and
resurrection, He has brought into being a “true” Israel, or a
“new” Israel—all those who call upon His name for forgiveness are members of God’s true Israel—Jew and Gentile!
Jesus did fulfill the promises to the fathers, to bring God’s
kingdom to His people. In Acts 1:6, the apostles are asking,
“Now that you have done these things, is now the end? Will
You, now already resurrected never to die again, also now
grant to Your people the final gift of resurrection and the
complete victory over death and every power of sin? Will
You now restore the Kingdom to Your Israel?” Do you see?
The apostles have begun to learn WHEN they are living.
2. But their timing is off, as it is elsewhere, and so Jesus
corrects them here, as He does elsewhere. He said to them,

“It is not for you to know the times and seasons which the
Father has fixed by His own authority.”
3. And the apostles’ preaching shows that they seem to
have understood and received Jesus’ corrective. Turn again
to Acts 3, this time to verses 17–22. There Peter preaches
as follows:
And now, brothers, I know that you acted according
to ignorance, just as also your rulers did. But God has
fulfilled in this way the things announced through the
mouth of His prophets, that His Christ should suffer.
Repent, therefore, and return so that your sins may be
taken away so that times of refreshing might come from
the face of the Lord and so that He might send Jesus,
the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive
until the times of the restoration of all the things about
which God spoke through the mouth of His holy prophets
long ago.

4. What the apostles needed to know was this: The last
days have begun. But the restoration of all things and full
expression of God’s promises to Israel will come at a time
that you do not know.
This is the first answer to the question, why did they go
to the ends of the earth? They went because they knew that
they were living in between the two parts of the one great
event, God’s one great deed, the first coming and the second coming of Christ. They thought in these terms; they really did. Christ came, suffered, died, and was raised to resurrection life. He has already come and given us a restored
relationship with God. And, one day, at a time that is utterly unknowable, Christ will come again, and restore all
things, bring the New Jerusalem, remove every trace of and
temptation to sin. He has come. He will come again. And
so, they were tuned in to when they were living. And they
believed that Christ really could return at any time, and
their lives were being lived out in a very special time.
5. And that’s precisely what we need to recover. The first
Christians were focused on living in the “in between” times.
They looked back in faith at Christ’s resurrection. And they
eagerly, really, looked forward in hope for Christ’s return
and their resurrection on the Last Day.
a. We don’t live that way. There are probably a lot of
reasons. We think it’s been a long time, but it hasn’t. It’s
only been about the same amount of time as that from the
promise to Abraham to Christ’s first coming. About 2,000
years. And a thousand years with the Lord is as a day,
Peter teaches us, so it’s only been about ... two days? Christ
is risen. He is ascended. He is coming again, just as they
saw Him go. It hasn’t been that long. Behold, He is coming
soon!
b. Another reason: We are too focused on ourselves as
individuals, and upon “dying and going to heaven.” Let me
try, briefly, to explain. God does love each of us dearly, as
individuals. Each of us, as an individual, is baptized and
forgiven, one at a time. But over the years we have come to
place too much of our attention on something that, when
you get right down to it, we don’t know too much about and
that the Bible doesn’t emphasize all that much. Our focus,
our hope for the future has become individualized to the
point that what we tend to emphasize is what happens to
us when, trusting in Christ, our bodies die and our souls
are separated from our bodies. When we talk about