He Restoreth My Soul
We are in the midst of a series on Jesus who is the center piece of civilization, the summa theologica of all truth, the first born from the dead, the one whose eyes are a flame of fire, The Word that became Flesh, the one who led captivity captive, who conquered sin, hell and the grave, and is coming to judge the living and dead, to name just a few of His appellations.
Last week we began talking about Jesus as the good shepherd, and we looked at John 10, and Psalm 23 and spoke of how the Good Shepherd takes care of His sheep and leads them beside still waters, and to feed in green pastures.
Today we are going to look at another aspect of the Good Shepherd, and that is, that He is the one who, as David said,
Ps 23:3 He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.
In the scriptures we see God restoring many things, the joy of salvation (Ps 51); the rain (1 Ki 18); lost years (Joel 2:25); relationship with the Father (Lk 16); and lost wages (2 Ki 8) among others. I will touch on all these briefly today.
Today we are going to talk about restoration, I will briefly explain what restoration is, then we will talk about restoration in the paths of righteousness, and we will wrap up with a discussion on restoration of the soul.
The Hebrew word translated restore is shoob and it means to turn back to God, to refresh and to repair. When we restore something we bring it back to original condition.
Christian singer Andre Crouch wrote a song entitled, "Take me back," I have sung it many times in my private moments with God. In part it goes:
Take me back, take me back dear Lord
To the place where I first received you.
Take me back, take me back dear Lord where I
First believed.
We are not alone in these feelings:
Jer 2:1 God’s Message came to me. It went like this:
Jer 2:2 "Get out in the streets and call to Jerusalem, ’God’s Message! I remember your youthful loyalty, our love as newlyweds. You stayed with me through the wilderness years, stuck with me through all the hard places.
Jer 2:3 Israel was God’s holy choice, the pick of the crop. Anyone who laid a hand on her would soon wish he hadn’t!’" God’s Decree.
Jer 2:4 Hear God’s Message, House of Jacob! Yes, you—House of Israel!
Jer 2:5 God’s Message: "What did your ancestors find fault with in me that they drifted so far from me, Took up with Sir Windbag and turned into windbags themselves?
This passage clearly shows that God wants us to be restored as much or more than we sometimes do. If you can remember that God wants you to be on fire for Him it will always make the journey back home much sweeter.
So restoration is to bring back to the original condition, but it means much more than that also. It means to take something from the garbage heap and make something very special out of it. I don’t know how many of you have seen the show American Restoration, but I really like the guys attitude, everything he sees, he sees its potential, and everything is awesome to him. No matter what the condition of something is in that is brought to his shop for restoration, he gets excited about it. I think God is that way also. I believe He enjoys restoring things to their intended purpose.
Not only does God take things off the rubbish heap, but he is able to do some things that only God can do.
Joel 2:25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
How in the world can years be given back? How can they be restored to us? I find an answer in the book of Ruth:
Ru 4:13 So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife, and he went in to her. And the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.
Ru 4:14 Then the women said to Naomi, "Blessed is the LORD who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel.
Ru 4:15 "May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him."
Ru 4:16 Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap, and became his nurse.
Ru 4:17 And the neighbor women gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi!" So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
The only way you can truly appreciate this passage is if you realize all that Ruth and Naoimi have been through. Naomi is married and has an affluent life in Israel. Times get tough, and famine causes her, her husband and two sons to leave Israel and sojourn in Moab for some years. (10) During that time her sons marry Moabite women. Her husband gets sick and dies, and then her sons get sick and die. She hears things aren’t so bad in Israel and begins returning to the land of her birth. One of her daughter-in-laws abandons her, but the other (Ruth) is a true daughter and wonderful woman. When the two return to Israel the whole city is moved and is shocked to see the financial and horrible personal state into which Naomi has fallen. She tells the people of the city, "Don’t call me Naomi (pleasant one), anymore, call me Mara (bitterness), for the Lord hath dealt bitterly with me." Who could blame her for feeling that way with all she had been through. There are a lot of people who can relate to the way she felt. There is a wonderful change in her circumstances, her daughter-in-law Ruth, is loved and married by a wealthy man named Boaz, they have a child, named Obed who is the grandfather of King David. The women of the city pronounce the blessing we just read in the book of Ruth, and in part they said, "may he also be to you a restorer of life..."
Years are given back by God cramming so much happiness in them that we forget the sorrow we once had, that is how years are restored to us!
There is a song we used to sing in the church, it goes like this:
From the door of an orphanage to the house of the King,
No longer an outcast, a new song I sing;
From rags unto riches, from the weak to the strong,
I’m not worthy to be here, but praise God I belong!
I’m so glad I’m a part of the Family of God,
I’ve been washed in the fountain, cleansed by His Blood!
Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod,
For I’m part of the family,
The Family of God
When God takes us off the trash heap of life, He can cram so much happiness into our lives that it becomes as if the bad years have been restored to us.
God can restore lost possessions and wages:
In 2 Kings chapter 8, a woman who had befriended Elisha the prophet, ultimately had to leave Israel because Elisha told her God had called for a seven year famine on the land. After seven years she returned and others had taken over her land, and she appeals to the king to intervene. It just so happened that Elisha’s former personal servant had been talking with the King of Israel and recounting all the miracles Elisha had performed, one which included the woman we are talking about when Elisha was used of God to raise her son from the dead. While telling the story, is exactly when she showed up in the kings court. The king is amazed to meet her, and asked her if the story is true, she says yes. The king then orders her land to be returned, and any profit the people who had taken the land had made in the last 7 years be returned to her. Thus the years were restored to her. Her possessions were restored, and lost wages were returned!
Here is a promise of God, that if we sacrifice for Him, all will be restored us, and we will be paid back with compounded interest:
Lu 18:29 "Yes," said Jesus, "and you won’t regret it. No one who has sacrificed home, spouse, brothers and sisters, parents, children—whatever—
Lu 18:30 will lose out. It will all come back multiplied many times over in your lifetime. And then the bonus of eternal life!" (MSG)
Ok so that is just a little bit about what restoration is, let’s talk about restoring our soul, and that is joined in Psalm 23 by the phrase, He leads me in paths of righteousness.
I don’t think I damage the text at all if I were to say, He restoreth my soul in paths of righteousness, because isn’t that what salvation is all about anyway?
I want to break that thought down into two points:
1. The First is the restoring of my soul in righteousness. (Salvation, rededication)
2. The second is the restoring my soul in paths of righteousness. (Convictions)
First God restores us in righteousness. He does this two different ways, 1 is happy, the other is slappy. Happy refers to people who come to the Lord and experience great joy, slappy refers to people who come to God/come back to Him, but don’t sense joy.
Let’s talk about happy restoration first. The example we would give is the prodigal son. Put shoes on his feet, my regal robe on his back, my ring of authority on his finger.
The ring of authority given to the chief of sinners, imagine that! You see restoration in the kingdom is not second class citizenship, but first class sonship! Kill the fatted calf, feast at the father’s table. That is happy restoration, that is the kind everyone wants.
Now let me tell you the secret you already now, before there was the happy, that boy experienced the slappy. If he didn’t run out of money he may have never returned home. That boy had a miserable time, and then a long difficult walk home, struggling with his conscience, his errors ever before him, and wondering if his father would receive him back.
Let’s talk about slappy restoration.
That is what David experienced. That is why his desperate cry in Psalm 51 is, restore unto me the joy of my salvation. You don’t pray for what you have, you pray for what you don’t have. David didn’t have the joy of the Lord at that time in his life, though he had repented and been forgiven. He went through a long season of horrible self examination, he didn’t have the joy he once had, though he was still sure of his salvation. (He prayed, "take not thy Holy Spirit from me." Not, give me the Holy Spirit, he has left also.) Why is it that some people when coming back to the Lord don’t feel joy and some others do?
As always the answer is in scripture. Let’s look at another text that sheds light on this:
2Co 7:10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. (NAS)
2Co 7:10 Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain.... (MSG)
In other words there is restoration process that is marked by a profound sense of having failed God, ourselves and others. That sense of failure is a good thing, because we will make a decision that we never again want to do anything that causes that type of hurt again. (Please understand I am not advocating for condemnation, but what the text plainly calls, "Godly Sorrow.") It is kind of like burning your hand on the stove. That only has to happen once and you will be careful the rest of your life. Godly sorrow hurts, but in the end it helps us stay away from things that, "burn our soul."
Let me show you another example from scripture of slappy restoration:
Nu 12:14 But the LORD said to Moses, "If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp, and afterward she may be received again."
Aaron and Miriam got mad at Moses for marrying an Ethiopian, and started speaking against his leadership.
Miriam was smitten with leprosy, by God. God forgave her at Moses request but states that she should feel shame for at least 7 days. There is a place for shame in being restored, and when you feel shame it doesn’t mean you haven’t been forgiven, it is simply God bringing you back to the path with a sense of the wrongness of what you have done.
Now quickly let me discuss being restored to the path of righteousness. By that I don’t mean we are restored spiritually, we just covered that, but I mean we are restored to proper attitudes and convictions.
Again in Psalm 51 David talks about restoring and renewing a, "right spirit," within me. What I take this to mean is that not only are we restored to a right relationship with God, but our attitude towards sin, is restored to it’s proper place. Samson grew comfortable being around Delilah, the prostitute, while Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife. One had the right attitude towards sin and temptation, the other had no problem with being very close to it. When we are restored to the paths of righteousness our lax attitude towards sin is replace by a sense of attempting to live a holy life and avoid all things that defile. We stop watching certain TV shows, we become very conscious of where we are on the Internet. We try to bring all our thoughts an actions under the control of the Holy Spirit. I am not talking about legalism, I am talking about living in a way to honor God, and being careful to avoid the worlds dirt as much as possible.
So when we talk about being restored in paths of righteousness we are talking about coming back to place where we have proper attitudes about sin, prayer, fellowship and convictions.
Let’s talk about the restoration of the soul.
I don’t think God is only in the business of restoring our soul to paths of righteousness, but He is also very involved in simply restoring our soul. Healing what we call a broken heart. Healing the wounds of life that touch us in our inner core.
Lu 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, (KJV)
Lu 4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, (NIV)
Anoint means to set aside for a specific task, it also means to empower to complete that task. So Jesus says He has been set apart by God, and given the power to do among other things, heal the brokenhearted and release the oppressed.
I am not sure why the NIV doesn’t include heal the broken hearted no explanation given nor could I find one in researching. But it is certainly a biblical principle that God heals the broken hearted. There are a lots of different kinds of broken hearts, but consider this scripture in Isaiah 54
Isa 54:4 "Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; Neither feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.
The text is alluding to the fact that certain life situations are conducive to producing in us a sense of shame, and humiliation, which the bible calls reproach. When a child is given up for adoption they may for life struggle with questions of why they were abandoned or why didn’t their parents love them. That is a type of broken heart. We usually only think of broken heart in the sense of a love relationship that went sour. But it also applies to lots of other types of relationships, like The relationship between friends, or family members. Your heart can be broken in a thousand different ways. The good news is that Jesus can heal them all.
Sickness tends to make us feel God doesn’t like us. (That also is a type of broken heart) (While the opposite is often very true, cf. "He whom YOU LOVE is sick," (John 11) (Note also the disciples question in John 9 who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind. Jesus knocks out of the park the idea that sin was the cause for blindness, He says it was for the glory of God. Yet many people who get cancer wonder how God could love them and let that happen. Those feeling hurt us in deep places of our heart.)
I remember hearing of a woman going through divorce who would call up her husband just to hear him say, "hello," then hang up. Her heart was broken in the worse kind of way, because of her husbands casting aside of her. Difficult life experiences, like those Naomi had, create ideal conditions for the bacteria of "God doesn’t love me," to grow. Such feelings can rightly be called a broken heart.
And consider this one which is similar
Jos 5:9 And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day. {Gilgal: that is Rolling}
This text speaks of a feeling that perhaps was in a lot of Jews in Joshua’s day, "if God loves us why were we slaves, why did He allow our children to be murdered by the Egyptians." When such questions are asked they are a flashing arrow pointing to a wounded heart/soul. How wonderful it was to hear God say that He was rolling that off of them even as we would swat a mosquito away. Only God, can in an instant, remove long held and deeply seated feelings of shame and reproach. For the record I think in this passage He did it two ways: one was instantly, this day have I rolled off of you... This day, not this week, or in the next couple of years, but this day, that is an instantaneous miracle. The other was progressively.I think this story parrallels the story of Naomi that the Jews would enter a season or properity, a land of mik and honey if you will, that will be a continuing sense of the favor of God. Even as Naomi and Jewish nation had years of troubles that made them doubt Gods love, He would now give them years of blessing that would solidify their understanding of God’s true favor and good will towards them.
He restores the soul whatever kind of hurts it may have faced.
Listen to the last part of Luke 4:18 to set at liberty them that are bruised, and the NIV says to release the oppressed.
Both of those texts remind me of the woman in Luke 13, she was not healed from her bent over back, she was loosed from it. Woman thou art loosed. With a word Jesus has an anointing to loose the oppressed and to heal the broken hearted. Counseling has its place, but no counselor can say with the same authority Jesus has, that He has an anointing to heal the broken hearted. Some hurts in life cannot be talked out of us, they have a way of binding to us like skin. Jesus releases the oppressed, He can do, and does do, far more than any counselor ever thought of doing. Come all ye that are burdened and heavy laden, take my yoke upon you and learn of me and you WILL FIND rest for your soul." Only Jesus can give that kind of guarantee.
Close: Prayer for those who can relate to having a broken heart.
