Dear friends in Christ our Savior,
Water has no taste. Yet at times we might find ourselves saying that nothing tastes better than a glass of water. So how can water have no taste and yet taste better than anything else? Usually a statement like that is made when we have been engaged in work that is long, hard and hot. When we are sweaty and exhausted and at the point of breaking, maybe from work in the yard or working out and exercising, that’s when a cold glass of water tastes the best! That is when it’s the most refreshing. That’s when it energizes us. Water that we drink normally throughout the day might not make an impression on us. It might be just practical to make sure we are fully hydrated. But water that we drink after long, hot and sweaty work we find refreshing and enjoyable.
So what does any of this have to do with portion of God’s Word before us? Peter in our text encourages the people to whom he was preaching, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” That isn’t a new message to us. It’s a message we hear each and every Sunday when we come to God’s house. Like water that we need to maintain our physical health, this a message we need to hear to remain alive spiritually. It’s essential to our spiritual health. Yet, hearing it every week may lessen the effect of the message and not leave as strong of an impression on us. Perhaps we hear this message in more of a mechanical, practical way and lose sight of the spiritual refreshment is brings. Perhaps it is only when the message of God’s law as it directly points out our sin in a blunt, harsh way making us realize how truly sinful and helpless we are before our God that we fully understand the spiritual refreshment God brings as he announces the forgiveness of Jesus to us. Today, God offers a message of spiritual refreshment. Yet this is not a soft message. It is a strong, powerful message meant to cut directly to our hearts. It is exactly this strong preaching of God’s law which helps us to know the spiritual refreshing God brings in the gospel message of life and salvation through Jesus our Savior. It is then refreshed in the forgiveness of Christ that we as God’s people can go out and lead lives of repentance in love for our Savior. So we gather today to Be Spiritually Refreshed with God’s Forgiveness.
Peter’s words which begin our text seem simple enough. It was the message that preceded these words which was the hard one to hear. Peter and John had just healed a crippled man and a crowd had gathered around them amazed at what had happened. While this was an awesome display of power, it was not this display of power that would bring people to faith, but only the message of Christ crucified. So Peter and John used this event as a catapult to share the gospel with the people who had gathered. Peter‘s message was a strong preaching of law and gospel, sin and grace, with a call to repentance to the people who were there. The law is nothing more than pointing out the sins of the people along with the punishment that comes with that sin. Peter was very specific in this preaching of the law: “You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. 14 You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 15 You killed the author of life.”
This is a powerful and blunt preaching of the law. No doubt it would have hit these people like a lightning bolt. But that was the purpose. It was tempting for these people to soft pedal what had happened with Jesus and blame the Jewish leaders for causing his death. You know how the human mind works. It tries to find any loophole it can to let it off the hook and relieve the tension and stress of admitting that it was wrong. Peter’s intent here was to help the people see that they were just as guilty of putting Jesus on the cross as those Jewish leaders were. To know the true joy of forgiveness and to be truly right with God, they needed to understand the depths of their sin. Peter was striving to crush their impenitent hearts with the realization of their guilt. It wasn’t enough for them to be vaguely disturbed by the feeling that their leaders had made a terrible mistake in killing an innocent man. He wanted them to know they were just as guilty for Jesus being on the cross and deserving of hell because of that sin. It was only by realizing the greatness of their guilt and being filled with sorrow over it that they would then see in Jesus the Savior he came to be and enjoy the spiritual refreshment which he offered.
Peter was speaking to a crowd of unconverted people who had not yet known the forgiveness and salvation which Jesus came to bring. They were living in impenitent unbelief and needed to recognize the serious nature of their sin so they could be refreshed with the spiritual life which Jesus brought. As I speak to you today, I’m not speaking to unconverted people who need to be jolted from their unbelief by hearing the harshness of the law to recognize their need for a Savior. You are here today precisely because you already recognize that need. Yet, we still need to hear the blunt harshness of God’s law to jolt us out of complacency and remind us of the great need we have for Jesus. An experienced pastor told me when I first entered the ministry, “From time to time it is good for a pastor to sit down with his people and speak openly and bluntly about their spiritual lives with God.” This is true. We need to hear on a regular basis the truth about who we are before God. The temptation for us is to get comfortable with being only vaguely disturbed by our sin and console ourselves that we are still devout people who seek to serve God and live as his people. This leads us to become complacent in our watching and perhaps begin to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. In thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, we lose the fullness of the message of forgiveness and with it the spiritual refreshment God brings. We need to know the blunt truth of the law. We need to have it hit us with the force of the lightning bolt.
Here’s the reality: we had just as much to do with the killing of Jesus as the people to whom Peter was speaking and the Jewish leaders as well. Still today, you may hear the anti-Semite philosophy which blames the Jews for killing Jesus. It is true that they were the ones who forced the issue that day before Pontius Pilate. But it was not just the Jews present that day who made it necessary for Jesus to be on the cross. The book of Hebrews tells us in many places that Jesus died “once for all.” That is for all sins of all people of all time. That puts you and me in that same group with those Jews that day. We need to face the reality of this statement. It was our sins that made it necessary for Jesus to die. What a crushing blow that is to our egos and to our self-esteem. We are not as good as we think. We are not as blameless as we try to appear to be. This strong message takes away any hope that we might have had to save ourselves. The sins that you have committed already today in heart and action, not to mention the ones from yesterday and throughout this past week and throughout your life made it necessary for Jesus to be on that cross. Those little lies, those thoughts of hatred, the gossip and slander, the selfish actions which seemed so selfless on the outside but were only self-serving on the inside—all of this is sin which made it necessary for Jesus to come into this world and go to Calvary’s cross. Perhaps you have never been in an adulterous affair, but the lustful thoughts make you just as guilty. Perhaps you’ve never stolen anything outright from another person, but the covetous and jealous thoughts make you just as guilty. Or…maybe you have done these things. Maybe your present life masks these sins you have committed in the past but never admitted to anyone!
We can pretend and hide all we want, but God knows. When we stand before him all of these sins will be laid bare before him! These are the sins which put Jesus on the cross. You and I are just as guilty! I don’t know about you, but hearing this makes me feel spiritually about the same as I do physically when I have been out working in the yard in the heat of summer and I’m hot, sweaty, about at the point of breaking and in need of a refreshing glass of water. Thankfully, neither Jesus nor Peter disappoint! Peter follows up this harsh preaching of the law with the sweet comfort of the Gospel. When we recognize our sins and lay them before our Savior in repentance,
God wipes those sins away. What a beautiful picture this it. Because of Jesus, it’s as if our sins never existed. When you have a white board and you spray on the cleaning solution to wipe the board clean, you no longer see any trace of the writing or the marker. It’s as if they were never there. The same is true before God with our sin. When we recognize and confess our sin before God, he wipes them away from his sight and it is as if they no longer exist before him. They are gone completely from his sight. May we never lose sight of the refreshment God offers in the wonderful announcement: your sins are forgiven!
A number of years ago when I still served in Minnesota, a young man said to me, “Pastor, I get it. I finally, really get it.” This young couple had been married only a few years. Yet during that time, he continued an affair with a co-worker without the knowledge of his wife. As you can imagine, it was devastating when the affair came to light. He was embarrassed, ashamed and full of guilt. He didn’t love himself because of what he had done yet God still loved him and forgave him. God still offered him the forgiveness of Jesus and the promise and certainty of heaven. Prior to this, while he admitted he was a sinner, I don’t think he ever really fully understood the depths of his sin. Because of that, I don’t know that he fully appreciated the joy of God’s forgiveness nor the spiritual refreshment God offers through Jesus.
Unfortunately, it took an incident like this where he ended up losing not only his job but his wife too to fully grasp the refreshing forgiveness and love of his Savior. You don’t need to endure something like this to fully understand God’s love for you. Every single week, we gather together in God’s house and confess our sins and lay ourselves bare before our Him. We confess that we have sinned against him in thought, word and deed. We confess we have not love him or others the way that we should. We confess we deserve nothing but his wrath and punishment. Take some time to ponder what this truly means and what you are truly confessing. These aren’t just words that we speak or a ritual which we go through. This is a confession from our heart about how truly sinful we are through and through and that we recognize we deserve nothing but God’s wrath.
Then as you realize this, be refreshed with the message which God provides: Your sins are forgiven. He loves you. You are restored to live a new and holy life. You are now at peace with God. Drink from the glass of cool spiritual refreshment God provides for you in the forgiveness of your sins. Be refreshed and energized to go out and live a life of glory and praise to God. As a restored, baptized child of God, go out and follow the advice which Luther gave in the Small Catechism: let your new person daily arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Spiritually refreshed in the forgiveness of Christ, you can live the life of repentance as you look forward to the coming of your king.
Be Spiritually Refreshed with God’s Forgiveness. Amen.