Mis-Reading Acts: Restoring the Kingdom to Israel

With this piece, I’m beginning a series for those who love the Acts of the Apostles. Acts has been a favorite book among my tribe, the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, primarily because of it’s value in establishing certain soteriological and ecclesiological norms. And because of this, those of us so trained naturally interpret Acts to say what we thought the text needed to say. I have become quite taken with the number of times Acts really does not say what I was taught that it did. So here we go.

A traditional reading of Acts 1:6, for example, is that the apostles were still naive about Jesus’s intent to restore the kingdom to Israel because they were still hoping for a physical kingdom.

Lord, are you at this time restoring the kingdom to Israel?

To which Jesus answered,

It is not yours to know the times and seasons which the Father has established in his own authority but you . . .

Jesus does not tell them “no” but instead that what they were asking depended on God’s timing.

There are several reasons to suggest that the apostles asked a very pertinent question and one consistent with what Jesus (and Luke) taught.

1. Jesus had just spent some 40 days teaching them, have “given instructions (commanding) through the Holy Spirit to them” (1:2) and speaking to them about the “kingdom of God.” This raises the question as to what Luke means by the kingdom of God in relationship to the kingdom of Israel. Why ask a question about the kingdom of Israel if Jesus had just spent forty days speaking about the kingdom of God?
2. The people of Israel are quite important to Luke. Just do a word search on Luke and Acts to see this. A few examples of this focus include Simeon’s waiting for the “consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25), the apostles will “judge the twelve tribes of Israel” (22:30), and the disciples on the road to Emmaus “hoped that Jesus… would redeem Israel” (24:21). In Acts, one finds from Paul’s sermon that from Abraham’s descendants “God brought to Israel the Saviour Jesus as he had promised (13:23)” Later Paul stated for the “hope of Israel” that he was under house arrest (28:20). These texts are enough to show that Luke’s sees his narrative to be about God’s continued relationship with Israel.
3. What if Luke saw the early church in Jerusalem as the beginning of the restoration of Israel. Let’s take a closer look at how Luke guides us to understand the events leading up to Pentecost and then Pentecost itself.
4. 1. Repentance and forgiveness of sins will reach to all nations beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:47; cf. Isa 66:20; Jer 3:17; Ezek 5:5; Mic 4:2: Zech 8:22).
   2. The “royal” family has assembled among those praying as the early disciples waited for power to come on them from high (Acts 2:14)–after all, we do have a coronation coming soon.
   3. Replacing Judas is driven by the need to complete the Twelve, a number symbolically connected to the twelve tribes of… Israel.
   4. Pentecost is the Jewish celebration of feast of weeks during which God is given the first fruits of the harvest. And who are these first fruits? None other than Jews gathered from among the nations (Acts 2:8–11; cf. Deut 4:27). By the way, Pentecost always occurred on the first day of the week.
   5. And about those Jew from the nations. God had promised repeatedly that he would gather his people from among the nations (Ezek 39:28; Hos 8:10; Zech 8:3; et al.). Again, we have another item connected to the restoration of Israel.
   6. Acts 2:21 stops Joel 2:32 short. In Joel, the text continues, “for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the LORD has said, even among the survivors whom the LORD calls.” The original audience of the text is Israel.
   7. According to Peter, Jesus is the rightful heir to the throne of David (Acts 2:25–31). What difference would this make if the “kingdom of God” had nothing to do with the “kingdom of Israel”? To bring David into view is to emphasize that Jesus is the rightful heir to Israel’s throne. But now as Peter portrays Jesus, he is both Lord (YHWH) and Messiah (YHWH’s representative or king). If this is not saying that God has restored Israel, from Luke’s perspective, what else would be required?

For good measure, one more example seals the deal. James, the Lord’s brother, is clearly the leader of the law-observant Christians. As he asserts that Gentiles do not have to become Jewish in their practices to become believers in Jesus, he affirms that the prophets agree that the influx of Gentiles is God’s plan when he cites Amos (9:11–12):

After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’ — things known from long ago. (Acts 15:16–18 NIV)

This phenomenal text places the rebuilding of the fallen tent of David as a pre-condition to the Gentiles seeking the Lord. In other words, James saw the early church (both Jews and Gentiles) as the rebuilt, restored kingdom of Israel.

So did those apostles before the Ascension really asked a misguided question? How do you read it now?