This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom. Welcome back to day 4, week 6 of our look at the book of
Isaiah. We started yesterday a look at Isaiah chapter 49, God's power to
restore.

If you want to be comforted in your life, you've got to let God restore things
many times in your life. And yesterday we began by looking at the truth that
restoration begins with God's timing, God's power, God's word. As we continue
through this chapter, Isaiah next gives some pictures of restoration.

What does restoration look like? I know what it looks like to restore a table. I
enjoy it when they restore an old house or I get to be a part of that.

But what does the restoration of a person look like? How do you picture it? Let
me give you three pictures or reflect with you on three pictures that Isaiah
gives us about what happens when your faith is restored.

As we talk about restoration, by the way, you might need a major restoration. I
mean, really, you look at your faith, it's dilapidated right now. I mean, it
feels like nobody could live there.

That might be where you are or it might be that you need a minor restoration and
we all need those constantly through our lives. Even in a house that's well
taken care of, you get these nicks, you get this thing that needs to be painted,
you get these little scars because you're living in the house. So you need a
minor restoration.

God wants to do that in your life, too. What's it going to look like as God does
that? Three pictures.

First is the picture of abundance. Isaiah 49, 9, say to the captives, "Come out,
those in darkness, be free. They will feed beside the roads.

They'll find pasture on every barren hill. " This feeding beside the roads,
you're just walking down the road, there's food there. No one had to work for
it.

There's just abundance. So they would never hunger, they would never thirst. And
every barren hill, all of a sudden there's pasture there.

This is a picture of restoration. For you and I, to be restored is to have a new
sense of living the abundance that Jesus Christ wants to give into your life.
The spiritual abundance, the abundance of a relationship with him, the abundance
of his promises in your life, the abundance of the blessings that he wants to
give through your life.

If you're living without this sense of abundance in your life as a follower of
Christ, you need a restoration. And if you're living without this sense of
abundance, God can give you restoration because it's his promise. Jesus says,
"I've come to give life and to give it more abundantly.

" He wants to give you a life that's connected to him and that's fruitful for
him. That's abundance. That's a picture of restoration.

A second picture of restoration is guidance. Verse 10, "They will neither hunger
nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has
compassion on them will guide them and will lead them beside springs of water.

" I love this picture. He who has compassion will guide. He will lead to the
springs of water.

He'll lead them right to where they need to be. God would be guiding them. He'd
turn mountains into roads.

There'd be a new sense of ease in the direction that life was taking them. And
God wants to do this in your life, too, to give you guidance, to turn in your
life the seeming mountains into roads. He shows you the way through, to give you
a sense of ease when you thought there was no way you were going to make it.

When restoration happens, you have a renewed sense of you've got this renewed
confidence in God leading in your life. And you also have a renewed willingness
to follow his leading in your life. Now, the truth of the matter is the renewed
confidence begins with a renewed willingness to follow.

It always starts with faith. God, I'm willing to follow you, whatever you say,
then God will give you confidence in his guidance in your life. And he restores
this sense of his guidance in your daily life.

That's this sense of restoration. Now, there's a third picture of the kind of
restoration that God wants to work in our lives in these verses. And it's the
picture of joy, just genuine daily joy.

Isaiah 49 verse 13, "Shout for joy, O heavens, rejoice, O earth, burst into
song, O mountains, for the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on
his afflicted ones. " Now, just look at the beautiful expression of where joy
comes from in this time of restoration in our lives. The Lord comforts his
people.

You don't try to find comfort in the things of this world. You don't try to find
comfort in the things that you can build. You realize your comfort's going to
come from God.

And that's where joy comes from. And then the Lord has compassion on his people.
When you're hurt, you don't run somewhere else to find compassion.

You run to the Lord. And out of running to him, you find joy in your life
because you realize he can handle it. He can carry you through it to a different
place in your life.

Now, all these wonderful pictures, this picture of joy and of God's guidance,
God's abundance in our lives, you might wonder, "This just sounds too good to be
true. Sometimes we can get in a rut so long that we just can't see our way out.
" So our minds, they get filled with doubts when somebody talks about real hope
of restoration in our lives because maybe we've tried before.

So we've got doubts. These are the problems with restoration. And the Lord
directly addresses some of those doubts, maybe some of your doubts, through
Isaiah in these verses.

One of the problems is the feeling, "But I feel forgotten. " "Oh, sure. God's
going to restore me.

God's forgotten me. " Isaiah 49, 14 to 16. "But Zion said, 'The Lord has
forsaken me.

The Lord has forgotten me. '" Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and
have no compassion on the child that she's born? "Though she may forget, I will
not forget you.

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are ever before
me. " When we go through tough times in our lives, whether it's because of some
choices we've made or other people have made, when we go through times of
barrenness in our lives, they make us feel like God has forgotten us.

And it's so important to remember that although sometimes we might have to face
God's discipline, although sometimes we might get caught up in the barrenness
that comes from the sin of others, sometimes we go through emotional deserts,
that the Lord never forgets you. In fact, God says three things to Israel here
that you and I need to hear that remind us of the truths that make us secure in
the fact that God will never forget us. First, he says, "Can a mother forget the
baby at her breast, have no compassion on the child that she's born?

" He says, "Even if she could do that, I won't forget you. " That's how
powerfully God has decided he's never going to forget you. He will never forget
you.

He will always have compassion on you. God is your Father, so don't forget that.
Because he's your Father, you can recognize he's not going to forget you, but
you can also see here a second truth, that he's going to have daily compassion
on you.

And then there's this truth in verse 16, "See, I've engraved you on the palms of
my hands. " Now, in the original meaning, in this time, it was the idea of never
forgetting somebody, remembering somebody through a sort of a tattoo on your
hands. But on the other side of the cross, as we look back to what Jesus did for
us, it's not too hard to see a deeper meaning here.

Jesus' love for you is engraved on the palms of his hands in the nail prints
that are there. He cannot forget us. He cannot forget you, because every time he
looks at his resurrected hands, he sees the nail prints that declare his eternal
forgiveness, eternal love for you.

Jesus is your Savior. That's what you hang on to. He'll never forget you.

Another problem that people face as they wonder, "Could I be restored? " is they
have this feeling, "But I've faced failure so often in my life. I've even tried
to be restored before only to fall back to where I am.

" God reminds them here to look beyond their failure. They had had children in
that desolate land that they were in. God was working in their lives even during
those times of difficulty, children who would someday live in the promised land.

So verse 21 and 22, "Then you will say in your heart, 'Who bore me these? I was
bereaved and barren. I was exiled and rejected.

' But then looking at these children who were born in the exiled land, they say,
'Who brought these up? I was left all alone. But these?

Where have they come from? ' This is what the Sovereign Lord says, 'See, I will
beckon to the Gentiles. I will lift up my banner to the peoples.

They will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their
shoulders. '" Failure. When we face failure in our lives, it's a horrific thing
to face.

And it is easy to come to believe that the failure that you've faced leaves you
entirely without a future. Like the people of Israel here, exiled, rejected, no
future. But he's reminding them here, even in that place where you thought there
was no future, God was working.

He was preparing for your future. Your identity is in being a child of God. The
end of your story is not going to be failure because you're God's child.

Your identity is not in the failures that you've had, as great as those might
have been. As a follower of Christ, your identity is in being a child of God.
That is your future.

That's what you hang on to, to let God restore you. A third problem that we face
with the restoration that God might want to work, they faced it, is this
feeling, "But I'm just so tired. I'm not sure I want to be restored.

I'm just sort of worn out inside. " In verse 23, "Kings will be your foster
fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you
with their faces to the ground.

They will lick the dust at your feet, and then you will know that I am the Lord.
Those who hope in me will not be disappointed. " If you feel like, "I don't have
the strength to be restored.

You're just so tired. " Restoration, I want to remind you, was a surprise for
Israel. They felt worn out.

They felt like there was no way out. But God provided. He provided kings and
queens to serve them.

God will provide what you need in this restoration. It's not all dependent on
you. It is dependent on God.

And when you see God do it, then you will know that those who hope in the Lord
will not be disappointed. Your answer for weariness is to hope in the Lord. Not
to try harder, but to hope in the Lord.

Because those who hope in the Lord, the promise is true. You will not be
disappointed. Father, as we pray, we remind ourselves that there is no
disappointment in you.

Oh, there's disappointment in this world. There's disappointment in our
circumstances, in our relationships. There's even disappointment in ourselves.

But you will never disappoint us. And so we hang on to you right now. You are
the one who restores.

So God, whether it's the daily restoration of our faith that we all need, as
we're worn down by the dailiness of life, or whether it's a restoration that's
been a long time coming, we need to make a U-turn, entirely turn around in our
lives. Restore us, we pray. By your power, restore us.

In Jesus' name, we ask it. Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to end this week by
looking at four confessions of strong believers.