SINS BLOTTED OUT AND REFRESHING FROM THE LORD

Acts 3:19,20 – Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before,

This passage became very precious to me in the early days of the outpouring of the Spirit in 1994. One of the things I love about this passage and the promise it holds is that it describes two major ingredients of the message Peter preached that day. Peter described it as repentance and refreshing. In this message we can see the important connection between repentance and refreshing. This is the message of Jesus and His followers, turn away from a life of sin and allow the Holy Spirit to begin His beautiful work in and through your life. Repentance in our lives is the work of the Holy Spirit changing us simply to be more like Him. The more we draw near in His presence, the deeper the work of repentance and refreshing becomes. Here is how the Christ Centered Expository describes it,

“Regarding the first, he says that through repentance, “your sins may be wiped out”. This is a beautiful word picture. Parchment was expensive, so sometimes scribes used acid-free ink as they wrote on it. The ink just lay on top of the parchment, so a person could take a wet sponge and wipe a message away, blotting it out. To put Peter’s point in modern terms, imagine having all your sins listed on a dry-erase board. Now, imagine sitting there pondering the weight of your sin record and the certainty of coming judgment without having any hope of changing your sad reality. But then, when you feel eaten by shame and fear, someone marches in and forever wipes that record of your wrongs off the board. He declares you innocent….Through repentance you can also enjoy spiritual refreshment. The language Peter uses here speaks of respite, rest, refreshment, or relief. It’s a word about the messianic age, when the Spirit will be poured out. It’s a reminder that those who turn to Jesus find rest.”

These two works of the Holy Spirit are priceless. He grants us repentance by convicting us of our sin and then the Holy Spirit grants us refreshing by actually entering our lives. So this becomes a sign and a wonder, we give up the pleasures of sin that we have always enjoyed and have found a new kind of happiness through the refreshing work of the Spirit. What a great surprise, we walk away from sin which convinced us that it was the source of our joy and embraced the Lord who refreshes us and fills us with joy that can’t be described.