Transcript Divine Restoration - diane avenue church of christ

1
Have mercy on me, O
God,
according to your
unfailing love;
according to your great
compassion
blot out my
transgressions.
2 Wash away all my
iniquity
and cleanse me from
my sin. Psalms 51:1-2
 Colossians
1:27-28 (NIV)
To them God has chosen to make known
among the Gentiles the glorious riches of
this mystery, which is Christ in you, the
hope of glory. 28 He is the one we proclaim,
admonishing and teaching everyone with
all wisdom, so that we may present
everyone fully mature in Christ.
 27
 What
is divine restoration? What does it mean
spiritually? How does it heal my broken soul?
Can I ever return to God? Will he accept me?
If I fall away , can I come back?
 These are some of the many questions we may
ask ourselves as we continue on our glorious
journey in Christ.
 Today
our focus will be on the latter prophets
 Which include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
the Twelve Minor prophets. The period that
we will discuss is found in the book of Isaiah
warning the people of the Babylonian’s and
the destruction of Judah; God will restore
them
 if …….

Restoration "in the beginning" (Gen. 3:21)
The biblical theme of restoration is found in
the beginning of all things: the book of
Genesis. God created the human being in his
own image, man and woman. The human
being enjoys God's image, his intimacy and an
uninterrupted companionship with Him.

However, the human being decided to eat of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By
doing so, he wanted to take his life in his own
hands. Instead of depending on God's
wisdom, righteousness and resources, he
would live by his own limited resources,
according to his own opinion.
 With
this tragic decision, the human being lost
his divine image, as well as the intimacy and
companionship of the Lord, his Creator. But
God's restorative work began immediately. As
the human being was already self-conscious,
trying to cover his nakedness by his own
hands,
 So
what did God do? He provided him clothes
made of animal skins (Gen 3:21) 21 The LORD God made garments of skin for
Adam and his wife and clothed them. This
revealed with complete clarity God's
redemptive and restorative plan for the fallen
human.
 After
being expelled from the Garden, and
separated from the Tree of Life which was in
its midst, Adam had sons in his own image,
disobedient and self-centered, and not in
God's image. From this moment forward, the
human being fell further and further into
depravity until God decided to destroy the
race, and begin again through one single
family, Noah's.
 The
covenant of the rainbow (Gen. 9:13) was
one of the most important signs given by God
during this period, a sign through which his
desire was indicated to restore that which had
been lost in Adam and Eve's time.
 With
the calling of Abraham (Gen. 12), he
began to develop this plan, by manifesting
God's will through a specific individual. the
"great nation" that he promised to prosper
through Abraham began to gestate with Israel,
but was destined to be transformed in the
Church, the house of God.
 2. Biblical
definition of restoration (Job 42:10-
12)
According to the dictionary, "restore" means
to reestablish something to its original
condition. Therefore, when something is
restored in Scripture, it always grows,
multiplies or improves, so that its final
condition is superior to its original state

Job 42:10-12 (NIV)
 10 After
Job had prayed for his friends,
the LORD restored his fortunes and gave him twice as
much as he had before.11 All his brothers and sisters
and everyone who had known him before came and
ate with him in his house. They comforted and
consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought
on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a
gold ring.
 12 The
LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more
than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep,
six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a
thousand donkeys.

 In The
Book of Joel,
 Joel is what we call a minor prophet or the
Twelve, in chapter 2 we see serious call to
repent.
A
further description of that terrible
desolation which should be made in the land
of Judah by the locusts and caterpillars, Joel
2:1-11. II. A serious call to the people, when
they are under this sore judgment, to return
and repent, to fast and pray, and to seek unto
God for mercy, with directions how to do this
aright, Joel 2:12-17.
 But
God Loves his people - A promise that,
upon their repentance, God would remove the
judgment, would repair the breaches made
upon them by it, and restore unto them plenty
of all good things, Joel 2:18-27.
A
prediction of the setting up of the kingdom
of the Messiah in the world, by the pouring out
of the Spirit in the latter days, Joel 2:28-32,
Acts 2:16-18. Thus the beginning of this
chapter is made terrible with the tokens of
God’s wrath, but the latter end of it made
comfortable with the assurances of his favour,
and it is in the way of repentance.
 Jesus
told his disciples that everyone who left
something to follow him would receive 100 times
more (Mark 10:29,30).(NIV)
 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied,“no one who
has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or
father or children or fields for me and the
gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as
much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters,
mothers, children and fields—along with
persecutions—and in the age to come eternal
life.
 God
multiplies when he restores, and thus, to
restore nowadays, God not only returns to the
Church the glory that it reached in New
Testament times, he wishes to make it more
powerful, glorious and majestic, like nothing
the world has ever seen!
 But
yet there are many of those who refuse to
believe in the Christ Jesus his own family
would not accept him : John 1:10-12 - 10 He was
in the world, and though the world was made
through him, the world did not recognize
him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but
his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who
did receive him, to those who believed in his
name, he gave the right to become children of
God
 Before
we move further in our lesson , before
with discuss the coming of the Messiah, before
we talking about anything else. I think we
need to get a better understanding of the core
problem with mankind.
 Sin
& Satan!....
A
Portrait of Sin - Isaiah 44:19-20
 Hebrews
7:25 NIV
 “Therefore he is able to save completely those
who come to God through him, because he
always lives to intercede for them.”
 As
a Christian there are certain elements that
make us feel secure in our journey and one of
them is assurance. Faith and Assurance is the
kind of knowledge of God in Christ that
carries within it an absolute confidence that
what it knows is surely true, and therefore,
completely trustworthy and reliable.
 Paul
knew whom he had believed, and was
therefore persuaded that Christ was able to
keep what Paul had committed to Him, against
the day of destruction In 2 Tim 1:12 it reads
12 that is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is
no cause for shame, because I know whom I
have believed, and am convinced that he is
able to guard what I have entrusted to him
until that day.
 Assurance
is a sense of relief and a sense of
joyous freedom. Faith is confident of the good
news that God in Christ has once and for all,
and in a manner that cannot be undone,
overcome sin, death, judgment and hell, and
provided a freedom from the past that justifies
and forgives and opens up the future to
eternal life.
 The
believer, therefore, experiences a joyful
sense of liberation. Assurance is the quiet joy
and joyous cry that nothing can separate the
believer from the love of God in Christ.

 Well
what’s the problem; we should be the
most joyful people on earth.
 In
actual life however, the believer is often
anxious, vacillating between faith and doubt.
The joyous, liberating assurance of faith is
often lacking in the true believer’s life. He is
often caught between storms without and
doubts within.
 This
lack of assurance does not flow, however,
from the nature of faith, but from his disbelief
and faithlessness. Though the night of struggle
be long, he knows that joy will come in the
morning. Even when the judgment of God is
upon him, he cries—“Though he slay me, yet
will I trust in him” Job 13:15 ……..as did Christ
Himself did on the cross.
 Knowing
this and our sinful nature sometimes
we need to be restored. But we need to
understand what sin can do to the believer.

Today I would like to paint a picture, a portrait
of sin.
 There
are many descriptions of sin in the
Bible. They are given in order to arouse the
mind, awaken the conscience, and save the
soul from damnation. The words "asleep,"
"lost," "blind," "deaf," "dead," are all
Scriptural figures to illustrate the state of a
man out of Christ. Any one of them should be
sufficient to start a soul on its way to Jesus for
salvation and restoration.
 Paul
knew whom he had believed, and was
therefore persuaded that Christ was able to
keep what Paul had committed to Him, against
the day of destruction In 2 Tim 1:12 it reads
12 that is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is
no cause for shame, because I know whom I
have believed, and am convinced that he is
able to guard what I have entrusted to him
until that day.