This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back for day three of week six of our look to the book of Isaiah. We're
going to jump into Isaiah chapter 49 today, which is all about restoration.
Sometimes as Christians, instead of growing, we find our faith eroding.

Our faith seems to be weakening, our commitments waning, our service for the
Lord lessening, our relationships deteriorating, our energy is dissipating. When
that happens, we need the restoration that God can give into our lives. God is
willing to restore us, and just like a fine piece of furniture that might need
to be restored, or like a beautiful old mansion that might need to be restored,
true restoration brings back the shine, and it restores the usefulness, and God
is in the business of restoration.

Some of his greatest servants have needed this restoration in their lives. Just
ask Moses, or Elijah, or Peter. God's work of restoration continues today.

Now, restoration for Israel was very literal. He was going to restore them to
the promised land, restore them back to their home. Restoration for us means
that our usefulness is restored, our faith is restored, our relationships are
restored, our commitment is restored.

We're going to look at this the next couple days in Isaiah chapter 49, and I
want to begin with God's promise. In order to understand God's promise of
restoration, how it happens in a person's life, you have to understand that
restoration's promise is fulfilled with at least three things specifically in
view in your life. God's timing, God's power, and God's word.

First, this promise of restoration comes about in God's timing. It comes about,
God says, you're going to hear a phrase in these verses we're going to read, "In
the time of my favor. " Isaiah 49, 8, this is what the Lord says, "In the time
of my favor I will answer you.

In the day of salvation I will help you. I will keep you and will make you to be
a covenant for the people to restore the land and to reassign his desolate
inheritances. " So God says, yes, I'm going to restore the land, but it's going
to be in my timing.

They didn't get restored immediately when they were taken into exile. No, it was
in God's timing. Why wouldn't God's timing be my timing?

Why wouldn't he restore right now? There are a couple of possibilities. It might
be that I've not yet learned the lesson I needed to learn in the circumstances
that I'm in, and God is giving time for the lesson to be learned, because what
he's doing in you is as important as the restoration that he's going to
accomplish.

It might be that his discipline in my life is not yet complete. God disciplines
us as his followers. He disciplines us for our good.

He disciplines us for others' purity. Maybe other people need to see that it's
taking time for God to do this work in your life. Or it may simply be that the
timing is not yet right.

Moses had to wait 40 years out in the desert until the timing was right in his
life, Israel's life, the life of those who were in the promised land, the lives
of the leaders in Egypt. It wasn't totally his fault that the timing wasn't
right, but he had to trust in God that the timing was not yet right. So if
there's going to be a restoration of ministry in your life or a restoration of a
relationship, you just keep trusting, keep trusting, waiting on God's timing.

You're also waiting on God's power. 49 verse 8 again, "In the time of my favor I
will answer you. In the day of salvation I will help you to keep you.

I will make you a covenant for my people to do what? To restore the land and to
reassign his desolate inheritances. " So God's power here, two powerful things
are happening.

First, the land is being restored, so it's the power to restore. God's power to
take a land that had seemed dead and barren and to restore it to a place where
the people of Israel would live, where they would hope. God's power to restore a
life, your life, it's simply awesome.

He's willing to forgive us, to patiently work his will into the fabric of our
lives. He has the power to take what we said could never happen and to make it
so. He's working to restore you.

And what's interesting, we skip by chapters 45 to 48, they are chapters that
tell how God is going to use Cyrus, the king of Persia, to restore the nation.
Now, Cyrus is not a believer and he's called in these chapters God's shepherd,
God's anointed, because God's going to use him, his influence, to restore the
people back to their land. God's power often works through others, can even work
through unbelievers, and yet you know, you know it's still God's power at work
to restore.

He also says here is the power to reassign, to reassign the inheritances. So he
says you're going to get your land back. You're not just going to go back into
the promised land, but the inheritances of your family, they're going to be
reassigned.

These inheritances, that was all that had belonged to them. They've been
precious to them. It seems like they've been lost forever.

God's going to reassign them. Sometimes it feels to us like we've lost it all,
as if we could never recover. Maybe you're feeling that way right now, but God
has the ability to reassign his inheritances into the midst of your life.

And his inheritance for you is not the promised land of Israel, it's the
inheritance of eternity with Jesus Christ, the inheritance of all the blessings
that we have in Jesus Christ. He will reassign those into your life. Now the
third truth that we look at when we talk about you and I trusting in God's
promise as we look towards restoration is the need that we have for God's word
in our daily life.

That's where the power comes from. So in Isaiah 49, this will all happen so that
we can say to the captives, "Come out. " And to those in darkness, God says, "Be
free.

" They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. The
promise is coming straight from God. God is the one who speaks so that his
promise can be accomplished.

Say to the captives, "Come out. " Say to those in darkness, "Be free. " Your
restoration is going to be based on God's word.

Sometimes we want a restoration that's based on our terms, our word. We want to
like speak it into existence or make it happen on our own. Well, of course you
can do good things on your own.

Of course you can do positive things on your own. But that's very different than
the restoration of God, which is a more powerful thing, more lasting thing. What
we can do on our own, on our word, pales in comparison to what God wants to do
based on his word in your life.

So when you think about the restoration that God wants to work in a relationship
or in a career of a ministry in your life, of a confidence in your life, of
faith in your life, start with his word. Don't start with your determination.
Start with his word.

That's where the power is going to come from. And you listen. You listen to his
word.

You listen to what God is saying about the truth that he wants to restore your
life. And you hang on to that promise. You don't hang on to your circumstances.

You don't hang on to what you believe to be true. You hang on to that promise.
That's going to give you confidence all the way through.

Because any restoration, there's going to be ups and downs. If you restore a
house, if you've ever done that, you know sometimes it looks like it looks worse
before it gets better many times. You've got to take all the junk off of the
wall in order to put the new wall board up on the wall.

For a little while it looks worse. God's promise will keep you going through the
time when it looks a little bit messy in your life. So you listen to the truth
that he wants to restore your life.

You hang on to that truth. And you also listen along the way to what he says
about how he wants to restore your life. He will give you directions.

Here's what you need to do. Here's how you need to do it. Here's what you need
to say.

Here's how you need to say it. How do you get those directions? Well, you read
the instruction manual.

Make sure during this time of restoration you're reading God's word on a daily
basis. Studying God's word, drive time devotions, other ways on a daily basis.
Because each day as you study God's word, he's going to give you what you need
for that day, for that week.

Now sometimes you only need one thing for a whole month and you can work on that
for the month. Don't ask God to tell you more than you can do because you'll get
overwhelmed. If he's giving you something to do, you act on that and that's how
he restores you.

So this great chapter about restoration begins with the promise of the truth
that God is working to restore in our lives. Let's hang on to that promise for
just a few minutes together now in prayer. Lord, thank you for your promise that
when it seems to us that things might have been lost or fallen apart, that God,
you are at work to restore in ways that we may see, in ways that may be beyond
what we can see.

So God, we put our trust in you right now and you know as we trust you, we often
want it to happen just like we want it to happen. We set that aside and instead
we trust in what you want to do. Let our trust in you for this restoration lead
to the great things that you want to do, the new things that you want to do, the
powerful things that you want to do.

We trust you right now Jesus, in your name, amen. [Music] Tomorrow we're going
to continue to look at what God has to say about restoration in Isaiah 49.