Soul Restoration
Introduction: I enjoy restoring things, whether its old vending machines, pop machines, old gas pumps, etc. There is something rewarding about bringing these old things back to life. It may be the nostalgia of an era long gone, or perhaps it is the thought of seeing what can be accomplished when thought and effort are applied, or perhaps it's a way to escape all the drama of social media. We have all seen those home make over shows where we see some dilapidated house in shambles and then after some hard work and creativity, the home has all the elegance and charm that welcomes a new family to a dream come true. Looking at something as it was and seeing what it has become is rewarding. What many do as a hobby, our Lord does as a part of his profession.
Our God is in the restoration business, He is definitely a god of restoration. He can restore all things, He can restore our bodies, as he did with the paralyzed man at Bethesda; He can restore our sight as he did with blind Bartimaeus; He can restore our hearing as he did with his enemy Malchus who lost his ear to Peter's sword; He can restore our minds as he did with the possessed man living among the tombs; He can restore nature itself; as he did when the storm that raged against the boat and he came out and said "Peace. Be still."; He can restore our resources as he did with the large quantity of fish that nearly broke the nets and nearly sank two boats; He can restore our finances like he did when the disciples went and got the coin out of the fishes mouth; He can restore our hearts, as he did when he said to God's people "I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh" and he can restore our lives as he did when he brought Lazaras back to life, after he had been dead three days; and He can even restore our very soul!
Transition: We read from the psalms of how God restores our souls. In Psalm 23:1-3 "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, 3 'he restores my soul. ..."
I. Jesus restores our soul back to its original responsibility
Notice How he starts this Psalm? He begins with "The LORD is my Shepherd" It is our responsibility to stay near the shepherd.
Our soul only needs to be restored if our soul has been neglected. If you leave your lawn mower, or car, or a chainsaw or atv out in the rain, snow, and heat and never use it or bother to work on it, the more difficult it will be to use it once you decide to do so; after being neglected for so long, it will eventually be reclaimed by nature itself. There is an old saying "the longer you are out of church the harder it is to get back in."
During an episode of American Pickers - The two friends looking for treasures in old barns and buildings to resale in their store, came across a friendly old couple, Jan and Sandy who lived in South Dakota. In the back of their barn under a mountain of dirt and trash was an old Auburn car (stopped being made in 1937). A deal was made that if the car was restored it would be driven back and let the old man drive it one last time. After being restored in Broken Arrow, Ok the old Auburn was on its way back to South Dakota where the old man had already passed away.
After years of neglect we shouldn't wait another moment to have a soul restored for it might be too late
The fact that David is praising God for restoring his soul, tells us that his soul was in need of restoration. And tells us that our soul at times is in need of restoration also. David says the LORD is my shepherd, there is not another creature that is so easily lost than a sheep.
If you are prone to stray, you are also prone to getting lost or worse getting devoured by the wolf that stalks our souls. It isn't merely the careless souls the Devil tries to destroy but all of the souls on earth. If he can get them he will. He is not intimidated by those who have walked with God a long time. If he had the audacity to tempt God in the flesh, not once but three times, it should be obvious that he is not afraid to tempt us. He coms up with the most ingenious devises and the most tempting lures to steal you away from the good shepherd.
We are the LORD's sheep and its our responsibility not to stray away from the Lord and his flock. But if we should find ourselves in such a position, he will restore our souls back to its original responsibility. Your soul must be fed by the Lord and you must be surrounded by his followers because we are just as likely to stray away from the flock and get lost as David was. Do you ever notice how easily we backslide? If our soulwasn't deviating from the Lord our soul wouldn't need to be restored. We see a pattern throughout the old testament of God's people leaving God, then returning to God and then falling away from him again.
David says "I shall not want" I think we stray so often because we tend to want what we don't have at the moment or we tend take for granted what we do have and assume we will always have it. We can get into a comfortable complacent place with the lord and assume that we will always be there. Once we get to a state of happiness that what we have desired, and we have been there for some time, we want something else. We want change as soon as we have it. Our soul is constantly greedy for something different, something new, something that is not what we have now. And then once the novelty of that wears off, we simply want something else. As the apostle points out to the Hebrews and the Philippians: it is truly a Godly characteristic to be content with what you have.
Not being content with what we have at the present has caused man to steal out of envy, commit adultery out of lust, kill out of jealousy, betray out of greed, and abandon God out of selfish ambition and vain conceit. Like the old broken down lawnmower left out in the rain and cold for years, our soul is in a terrible need of restoration when it has been neglected. The longer the neglect the greater the need of being restored.
In Matthew 16:26 we read "...For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul. If our soul is neglected to the point of disrepair and would otherwise be ready for outer darkness of Hell, there is one who can restore it - that one, is the Lord.
Transition: He not only restores our soul to its original responsibility of keeping your soul close to the shepherd who watches over it and protects it, but he restores your soul back to its original purity.
II. Jesus restores our soul back to its original purity
Our enemy the devil may come to steal, kill, and destroy, but Christ can restore everything the devil destroys. our soul that has wasted away in the darkness of sin because it has spent too many days and months and years in the absence of HIS light can only be restored in Christ. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!" 2 Cor. 5:17
I don't know that there is anything that sums up soul restoration better than 'the old has gone, the new is here!' but it doesn't happen to just anyone, it only happens to anyone who is in Christ. You can not, I repeat CAN NOT restore your soul yourself! You may be able to restore cars, you may restore gas pumps, you may restore houses, but there is only one who can restore your soul and it is the one who created it in the first place and that is God!
Ill. Years ago an angry man rushed into a museum in Amsterdam and took a knife to Rembrants painting Nightwatch. A short time later an angry man took a hammer into St. Peter's Cathedral and smashed Michealangelo's sculpture 'The Pieta' These two cherished works of art were severely damaged. So what did the curators do? Did they throw these treasures out? No. They gathered the greatest experts who then delicately and pain stakenly restored these artifacts to their original purity.
Thanks to the grace of God, he restores our souls back to its original purity. The soul that was at a previous time made new, has since been severely damaged by sin. It has gone so far away from God and only become worse and worse in its corruption and rebellion. If a person who travels down that road is unaware of their need for "soul restoration" they will eventually be turned over to a reprobate mind in which there is no hope for them to recover. If a sheep has set its mind to get lost and remain lost, after being brought back to the fold over and over and over and over again and still has a desire to get away there is a point that the shepherd turns them over to the wolves, who the 'sheep' seems to prefer the company of anyway.
C.S. Lewis said "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end: that the doors of hell are locked on the inside." In other words the door to heaven is open to all, but for those who refuse to open the door of their own hearts nothing can be done for them.
After all, what good is it to have a dark soul lying down in green pastures? What good is calm and still waters for someone who has a turbulent soul? Having said that, for all those who desire the grace of God and want to return to their original purity that they once embraced, they can easily be restored byt he hands of God.
Transition: We think that sin is joyful, it is not. It is however, pleasurable, but only for a season. And for the one who relizes the emptiness of sin ans wants to have their joy restored there is hope, which brings us to our final point this morning.
III. Jesus restores our soul back to its original felicity
Felicity is the state or quality of joy. We read about this state in another portion of David's psalms. "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." -Ps. 51:12 God never took away his joy of salvation, David admits that he had lost the joy of God's salvation. The joy of our salvation grows cold once we doubt or dismiss the great goodness of God or some how are blinded to his eternal love for us. God doesn't say "I will rob you of your joy today." But we know one who does. There is one who is constantly whispering in our ears that what we have found so much joy in, is not real. Satan has perfected his craft, he knows how to convince even the most sincere believer away from his joy.
Church, you know that sinners are all around us living in thier sins. Tens of millions in our biggest cities, and our little towns are living in their sins. Tens of millions in our biggest cities, and our little towns are living in the densest spiritual darkness. They do not know their right hand from their left when it comes to eternal things. And there are just as many people who do know something about the gospel, but even thought they see it, they don't believe it, they hear the gospel but they don't understand what they hear. Some of these unbelieving drifters are in great misery every day, as the result of their sins, impossible not to, if we knew just a fraction of their secret groans.
All around us there is a dangerous work going on to hold these sinners in their sin, and prevent their escape into a better life. We may be idle, but I can promise you our enemy is not, the powers of darkness are very busy - they're busy in working mischief, they are busy in leading men into one type of error or another, they are busy setting traps for the men and women of God. If there is no revival from heaven brought to the church, there is certainly a revival from hell brought to the earth among her enemies.
Even today we are seeing first hand how they are spreading the world over to make converts, even though when they make converts, even though when they make them, they become ten times more the children of hell than they were before.
Meanwhile, every hour another group is flushed down into eternity. They are driven from the presence of God, and from all hope of restoration because they never knew the author and perfector of our faith, Jesus.
Like a desert needs the rain, we all need showers of joy during spiritual drought. David says "he restores my soul" Here we see David asking the LORD to "restore unto me the joy of my salvation" But why? he says it is so that he can share it with others. We share what excites us, what encourages us, what gives us joy! The cup has to filled and then overflowing if we want others to get a drink. We aren't going to make much of a difference in this world without the joy of the Lord overflowing out of us and to others around us.
I have seen some somber, serious, and religous people who adhere to the word of God strictly, I see them roar against blasphemy like a lion. I see them run from the very appearance of evil like Joseph ran from Potiphars wife. I see them rebuke sincere disciples like Paul did with Peter. All of which is commendable, but I thing I never saw- I never saw them smile and I never saw them laugh
Conclusion: We live in perilous times and if we are caught sleeping like the virgins, will we have enough oil in our lamps to be ready when Christ returns? Samson awoke to the scream: "Arise, for the Philistines are at your gates!" Do you have the strength, the energy, the will to shake off the enemy, and rise to receive the joy of his salvation?
The men and women who have encouraged and inspired me the most are those who own the joy of our Lord's salvation. When I hear the joy behind their words that unintentionally rebukes the deep dark gloom lurking way back in my heart and inspires me to higher hieghts than I had before, I feel then I too am missing something that I want.
I have seen from my in laws a new light and and a new life and a humilty that brings laughter to not only them but to all of us who know them. I had nearly forgotten how that joy is made possible. Our soul can only be restored to its original responsibility, purity, and felicity by the one who created our soul in the first place - Jesus Christ.
Amen.
