The Always God
Part 7 - Always Restoring
Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 61. We’ll start off there, but like we often do, we will end up in a different place than where we started, so you might want to go ahead and bookmark John 9 as well.
We are getting close to the end of our series called The Always God. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. It’s been a blessing exploring all the ways that God has moved and interacted with His people in the past and learning how He is still moving in these same ways today.
Next week, we will observe communion together, and I really hope you will be here for that service. This is something we only do about once a quarter, and it’s really the one thing that you can’t get from watching the service on YouTube. So if you are physically able, please join us in person next week as we celebrate the Lord’s table together.
Today, we are going to look at the God who is Always Restoring.
The word “restore” or “restoration” probably brings up something specific for many of you. If you are into antiques or carpentry, maybe you think about restoring a piece of furniture.
If you are a fan of HGTV, the word “restore” might make you think of Chip and Joanna Gaines, and the TV show. If that’s you, then the word “shiplap” also undoubtedly came to mind for you just now.
But for me, when I hear the word “restore,” I always think about Trish’s dad Bennie.
Bennie’s passion was the restoration of Ford Mustangs. Specifically, the 1966 Ford Mustang.
You talk about “Always Restoring…” well, Bennie was never finished with his Mustang. Trish told me about one family vacation down to Florida from Kentucky. As they were passing through Chattanooga, Bennie pulled into a salvage yard at one point. He told his family, “I’ll just be a minute.” And he came out with a muffler and exhaust assembly that ran all the way from the “backy-back” of their station wagon to the dashboard, and the Maffet family rode the rest of the way back to Frankfort with a Ford Mustang exhaust assembly dividing the passenger side from the drivers side of the car.
But here’s the thing with Bennie, and this seems to be a common theme with a lot of auto enthusiasts: the holy grail is getting the car back to its original. Factory. Condition. Trish remembers going to car shows with her dad, and him turning his nose up at anything anyone did to “soup up” a Mustang. FM Radio? Not for Bennie’s mustang. It had to be the original AM radio with the five pushbuttons. Bennie wouldn’t consider any color of paint that wasn’t an option from the factory in 1966.
And so I think about that when I think about the work God does to restore humanity to our original factory condition. God is always restoring. And there is no project too big, too broken, or too far-gone for Him to tackle.
Our Scripture passage this morning illustrates this beautifully. If you are physically able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word, from Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;[a]
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;[b]
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.[c]
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me.
[Pray]
I’d like you to underline, or highlight, verse 4: “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” What was this about?
As we’ve talked about before, the prophet Isaiah was ministering in the Southern kingdom of Judah from roughly 740 BC to about 681 BC. The northern kingdom of Israel was wiped out by the Assyrian’s when Isaiah was in his early 20’s. And Isaiah knew through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the day was coming when Judah would also be overrun and carried off to exile. This happened in 586 BC, about a century after Isaiah’s lifetime.
And so Isaiah is writing to a people are stressed out and anxious about what they are seeing in their nation. I’m sure there were old timers who would shake their heads and say, “I just don’t know what this world is coming to. I never thought I would see the day when the Assyrians could just march in and take over like they’ve done.”
In other words, kind of exactly what you hear people saying today.
And so here’s Isaiah, prophesying that there will come a day when one whom God anoints will make things right again. He’s going to preach good news to the poor. He’ll heal the brokenhearted. He’ll proclaim liberty to captives. And he will proclaim “the year of the Lord’s favor.”
For the Jew, “The year of the Lord’s favor” referred specifically to something God set up back in Leviticus called the Year of Jubilee. According to Leviticus 25, every 50 years Israel would get a reset. All debts would be forgiven. Any Hebrew slaves would be set free. Any land that had been sold would revert back to its original owners, according to the boundaries that had been set for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. And for the entire year, the land would have a rest from planting, and the people would rely on the Lord’s provision.
The idea of Jubilee was to keep the playing field level. There wouldn’t be inherited wealth, but there also wouldn’t be generational debt. No one would be born into slavery. Every generation would get a reboot.
Now here’s something that I think is sad, and tragic, but also completely predictable:
There’s no evidence that the Year of Jubilee was ever actually observed. We know it couldn’t have been observed after the time of Isaiah, because after the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 and the exile of the southern kingdom in 586, the boundaries for the twelve tribes no longer existed. But there’s no mention of its observance anywhere in Joshua, when Israel conquered and settled the Promised Land, or the time of the Judges, or at any time during the united or divided monarchies. After the decree is laid out in Leviticus, it’s never mentioned again, aside from one reference to its future fulfillment in the book of Numbers.
We can understand that, can’t we? Our entire financial system would collapse if all debt was cancelled every fifty years. Can you imagine anyone arguing that we need to give Manhattan back to the Lenape Indians (some of you would say, “Sure. Good riddance.”) Well, how about giving most of Tennessee, Kentucky, and parts of Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas back to the Cherokee?
What if every farmer let their land lay fallow for an entire year, trusting that the Lord would provide?
You see, most people would write off Jubilee as impractical. Idealistic. Unattainable. Yet, Isaiah prophesies that “the year of the Lord’s favor” is coming. How could that even be possible? Isn’t our world too broken? Too complicated? Too selfish? Too sinful?
And notice that Isaiah didn’t stop with simply restoring society to its factory settings. According to verse 3, anyone who was mourning would be given a beautiful headdress (like what a bride would wear) instead of ashes (what a widow would smear on her forehead).
There would be gladness instead of mourning. In other words, funeral homes would be empty, and dance halls would be overbooked.
People will wear garments of praise instead of a faint spirit. Picture the red carpet at the Academy Awards, compared to dressing out for gym in middle school! Instead of meekness and timidity and lack of self-assurance (a faint spirit) people are strutting around in their best New Year’s Eve party tuxedos.
The citizens of this restored Zion will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord. They will be walking definitions of the godly men and women Psalm 1 describes—trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season.
Finally, cities that had been devastated for generations will be rebuilt and repaired. Ruins will become refuges.
What a picture of restoration and renewal! When this anointed One comes, we won’t just be “good as new,” we will be “better than new.” The goal won’t be to make everything how it used to be. Instead, the Anointed One will make everything like it never had a chance to be. We’ve never seen things restored to their original factory condition, because all we’ve ever known is a world after the fall. After sin entered the world.
Again, how could this even be possible?
Because the truth is, it feels like we are just too broken. We are all broken spiritually. This is what sin does to us. It corrupts us…it mars us. It breaks the relationship between God and humanity.
Romans 3:23 – “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Left to ourselves, there is no way our world could ever be restored to mint condition.
But here’s the Good News. Here’s the Gospel.
Let’s fast forward about 600 years. One Saturday morning in a tiny, backwater village called Nazareth in southern Galilee, a local boy named Jesus is invited to read the designated Scripture passage for the synagogue liturgy.
He stands up, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah is handed to Him.
He unrolls the scroll, and finds the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
And right there, in front of his hometown crowd, in front of the old women who changed His diapers in the nursery; in front of the guys He ran track with in high school, the Bible says that Jesus
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Can you imagine the buzz going through the crowd? “Did He just say this Scripture is fulfilled? This is the year of the Lord’s favor? Is this really the Jubilee?” They had been living under Roman occupation for roughly 100 years by this point. Was it possible that God was about to perform a factory reset?
And there’s something else, too. If people had been listening closely to Jesus, and knew their Old Testament, they would have picked up on two differences between what Isaiah said and what Jesus said. I’ve got them up on the screen side by side. See if you can spot the differences.
[slide]
Ok, for one thing, Jesus stopped just before He got to the line about “the day of vengeance of our God.” Jesus was aware of just how much the people of His day were looking for a political Messiah that would lead a military insurrection against the Romans, so He very wisely tamped down the “day of vengeance” part.
But notice what Jesus substitutes in His proclamation that wasn’t part of Isaiah’s prophecy: Jesus said He came so that the blind could recover their sight.
That’s not in Isaiah’s original prophecy! And if you can hang with me through this, I want to point out something to you that blew me away when I was studying this week:
For the majority of Jesus’ miracles, you can point to someone in the Old Testament that did something similar:
• There was a miraculous multiplication of food when Jesus fed the 5000. Well, there was also a miraculous multiplication of food when Moses led the children of Israel through the wilderness. Manna fell from heaven. Quail dropped from the sky.
• Jesus demonstrated a miraculous control of nature. He calmed the storm. He walked on water. Well, Moses parted the Red Sea. Joshua crossed the Jordan River on dry ground.
• Jesus raised the dead. So did Elijah.
• Jesus healed leprosy. So did Elisha.
But let this sink in: there is no story in the Old Testament about anyone being cured of blindness. But there are at least seven instances, and possibly eight, of Jesus healing the blind in the New Testament.
Let this sink in: when Jesus preached His inaugural sermon, He told his hometown crowd that recovery of sight to the blind would be one of the signs that God had anointed Him.
When John the Baptist was in prison, he apparently began to wonder if Jesus really was the anointed Messiah. So he sent a couple of his disciples to Jesus to ask Him,
2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers[a] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.
John 11:2-5
What was the first thing out of Jesus’ mouth? Tell John that the blind are receiving their sight.
This was THE sign that God was doing something through Jesus that had never been done before!
One more: Please turn to John 9. [wait]
Jesus heals a man born blind. He spits on the ground, makes mud with the spit, puts it on the man’s eyes, and he “came home seeing” (v. 7).
And of all the miracles Jesus ever does, this one stirs up the most controversy. His neighbors want to know how it happened. So he tells them,
11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.
Then the Pharisees launch their own investigation. They are really bothered that Jesus did this on the Sabbath, because they considered making mud pies was working on the Sabbath. Which… well, ok. Whatever. Kind of feels like they’re missing the point.
But they ask, how come you’re not blind anymore, and the dude gives the same answer:
“He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
Then they ask his parents about whether or not this was their son, and whether or not he was really born blind. Then they brought the guy back for more questioning, and the guy gives them the fourth line of Amazing Grace:
One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
They ask him a third time how it happened, and by this point the dude is getting a little salty:
27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
And it just keeps going on and on. Why does this miracle get so much attention? Simple: it had never been done before. The man who was born blind even pointed this out to the Pharisees:
32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind.
Beloved, Jesus did not merely come to make everything the way it was. Jesus came to make things like they had never been. True restoration and renewal wasn’t going to come through political or military processes. It wouldn’t come by politicians who promised to get the country back to traditional values.
No, Jesus came to do a brand new thing. (Real quick, if you go back to Isaiah 61, and then flip backwards just a few chapters, Isaiah predicted this, too. He said, in 43:19, that God would do a new thing. Don’t get stuck on the former things. Don’t get hung up on the way things used to be.
18 “Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
Jesus’s brand of restoration will not be just a new and improved version of keeping the law. Jesus came to usher in “the year of the Lord’s favor.”
You know what another word for favor is?
GRACE.
Grace restores what’s broken.
Grace releases what’s bound.
Grace renews what’s lifeless.
Grace rebuilds what’s ruined.
Grace opens blind eyes. Jesus did it for the blind man, and He can do it for you. He can be your Jubilee. He can forgive your debts and set you free.
Here’s how he did it for the blind man. The man born blind had been rejected by religion. The legalistic, self-righteous Pharisees did everything they could to shame him and ridicule him:
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
As if they weren’t.
And this is where Jesus found him. Thrown out, cast aside, and rejected.
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
I think there might be someone here this morning in the exact same spot as this blind man. You’ve been cast aside and rejected. Maybe even by religious, good people.
I’ll ask you the same question Jesus asked”: Do you believe in the Son of Man? Do you believe that there’s Someone who loves you, who cherishes you, who has always pursued you, who gave his life for you, who is able to restore you, is always speaking to you, and in fact is speaking to you now?
If so, open your eyes, and see Him. See Him, maybe for the first time.
Believe in Him. And worship Him.
[Touch of the Master’s Hand, if there is time]
Let’s pray together.
