Some have speculated that it is because the Lord
had arisen from His seat to welcome into His presence one faithful
unto death. However, the martyr’s crown (see Rev. 2: 10), like all
rewards, is not given at the point of death, but prior to the Lord
setting up His kingdom in power.
In many ways, the
book of Acts is the continuation of the Gospel of Luke—and it is in
Luke 19 that we read that “A
certain high-born man went to a distant country to receive for
himself a kingdom and return
… But his citizens hated him, and sent an embassy after him, saying,
We would not that this [man] should reign over us” (vs. 12, 14). The
parable is clearly intended to correct the feeling of some around
the Lord that “the kingdom of God was about to be immediately
manifested” (v11), when in fact He would go away to a “distant
country” (v12), before coming back again to reign. Now in the story,
the high-born man had already left when His citizens sent their
message after Him, and it therefore follows that in the historical
fulfilment that the embassy must have been sent after
the Lord’s ascension. But when exactly?
In answering that question, we might ask another:
why would the Jews send an
embassy after the Lord’s death when killing Him was surely enough of
a rejection? The plain implication is that the prospect of His rule
over them had resurfaced. Clearly the resurrection
made such a thing possible—but in resurrection the Lord only ever
appeared to His own, not the Jews generally. No, what infuriated the
Jews was that five weeks after His death, His disciples
began to testify that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that He was
Israel’s rightful king. Thus, in Acts 2, Peter declares to the “Men
of Israel” (v22), that “God has made him, this Jesus whom ye
have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (v36). The Jews had rejected
the rule of “this Jesus” at the cross and God had responded by
reiterating that Man’s title to rule, raising him from the dead (see
v24) and exalting Him to His right hand (see vs. 33, 34). Then in
Acts 3 a lame man is raised up “in the name of Jesus Christ the
Nazaraean” (v6). The miracles of the Lord in the Gospels were signs
of the Kingdom (see Is. 35: 5, 6 etc.) and those signs now continued
under the apostles. That the lame man had been raised up in
the name of the King that had been rejected was hugely
significant. Following the miracle, Peter puts the crucifixion down
to a sin of ignorance (see Acts 3: 17) and promises the Jews that if
they repented of their sin in putting Christ to death, then “times
of refreshing” (v19) would come from God. The Jews would understand
“refreshing” to speak of a rejuvenated earth in the Kingdom (see
Matt. 19: 28 etc.); Christians by contrast are promised suffering
(see John 16: 33; Phil. 1: 29 etc.). That the heavens would receive
Christ “till [the] times of [the] restoring of all things” (Acts 3:
21) is also a reference to the kingdom, when everything would be put
back in its proper order—“of which God has spoken by the mouth of
his holy prophets since time began” (v21). In addition to all this,
the Lord (the Jehovah of the OT) promised—if they repented—to “send
Jesus Christ” (v20) to them. This is a Messianic and not a Christian
hope (which is to go to be where the Lord now is—see John 14: 3).
Yes, we know now that Christ’s return would be delayed
for many centuries, but that is not how it would have been
understood at the time. The reason the promise was delayed is not
because it could not have been fulfilled then, but because the
nation did not repent (Peter’s preaching leads to his arrest—see
Acts 4: 3). Of course, God knows the end from the beginning, but
neither does God make empty promises. If they had repented, the Lord
would have returned (comp. Matt. 11: 14).
The fall out from the healing of the lame man continues into Acts 4,
and there are then more miracles in Acts 5: 15, 16 and 19. In Acts
6, Stephen “wrought wonders and great signs among the people” (v8),
and in Acts 7 he delivers his withering résumé of Jewish history.
This culminates in his testimony to the Lord standing at the right
hand of God—the place of exaltation and honour. It is at that
point that the Jews hold their ears, and stone Stephen to
death. They would not have Jesus Christ reign over them.
Of course, if they had repented, then He would have been sent to
them—which is why He is pictured standing (and therefore ready to
return). It would perhaps be too dogmatic to confine the fulfilment
of the prophesied embassy of Luke 19: 14 to Stephen’s martyrdom but
his death encapsulates the consistent message of the Jews in the
book of Acts. Acts describes a transitional state, and it is not
until we get to the epistles that we find Israel finally set on one
side and the Assembly manifested in its mystery character as Jew and
Gentile equal in one body. Thus, in Colossians 3: 1 the Lord is
sitting at the right hand of God as the prospect of the
Lord returning to His people Israel had then retreated far into the
future.
