In Acts 3:18-26, Peter declares that before the blessing of the kingdom prosperity comes the blessing of repentance. God will bring this about and that’s why Christ came to show Israel and the world the heinousness of their sin and that God’s people Israel must return to him. That has always been the teaching in Scripture, in that God will not bless unrepentant idolatry. And when people turn to God, it is obvious that God brought about that heart change. So, repentance is the ultimate blessing because wickedness is man’s ultimate problem. This means that the ultimate problem of the 1st century Jews wasn’t the oppressive Roman rule, nor the prevalence of disease or poverty. Their ultimate problem was their disobedience and rebellion toward Almighty God, the one who had graciously made a covenant with their Father Abraham and redeemed them from the land of Egypt. That’s what they should have been concerned about and then they wouldn’t have killed the Messiah. But they did that because he was unnecessary and a hindrance to the pursuit of their earthly desires.
Lest we judge the descendants of Abraham, we must admit that even after we come to faith in Christ, we don’t seek him through repentance how we ought. We lose sight of the fact that our greatest problem is our wickedness, even though we have been released from the penalty and power of our sin. Jesus teaches to those who are kingdom bound in Matt. 6 that they should pray daily for the Lord’s forgiveness. Assumption: There is daily sin that is in our lives. Despite that, it’s easy for us to get in the mindset of “I can’t stand my circumstances instead of I can’t stand my sin.” Living in that first category will not cause us to turn to God in humility, but rather come to him with presumptuous charges of injustice, just like the Israelites did in the wilderness wanderings in Ex.-Numb. Peter’s sermon in ch.3 ends with a concept we have been mentioning for weeks now, there is no blessing from God unless there is a turning to God through Christ.
But God is so faithful to us, isn’t he? He endures our weakness and stubbornness because he is determined to get glory through the sacrifice of his Son, so he will bring the redeemed safely to himself by pouring out the grace of repentance.