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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week seven of our look for
the Book of Isaiah, day one of this week. Each week we're starting with sort of
a where are we in this study of the Book of Isaiah since it's such a long book.
We're now in the last half of the book and we're talking in this half about what
it means to have a different kind of comfort, about the truth that God doesn't
want you to get comfortable with where you are, but he does want you to be
comforted by who he is.

And we've been looking at the different ways that he does that through his
grace. Isaiah 52, which we're going to focus on today, is a chapter about God's
victory, how he brings us his different kind of comfort through his victory.
It's a chapter that's about the people of Israel being restored to a place of
God's promise.

Now, that needs to happen for you and I. We sometimes need to be restored to
living in the place of God's promise. So how does this happen in your life?

Maybe you need to have your faith restored. Maybe you need to have your hope
restored. This chapter tells us how God can work to restore you.

We're going to talk about some simple ways that this happens, beginning with
number one, you start with the good news of what God promises. Isaiah 52 verse
seven says, "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good
news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who
say to Zion, 'Your God reigns. '" You look to God's promises of good news for
your life.

That's where you start when you want God to restore you. It's easy to focus on
the bad news, but to be restored, you need God's good news. In order for
something new to happen in your life, you need some new news.

In order for something good to happen in your life, you need some good news. So
don't reject those who are sharing this good news with you. Don't reject it when
it comes to you.

This verse says, "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring
this news. " See the beauty of what's being brought to you. Sometimes we want to
reject it at first, we want to stay in the bad news that we're in, stay in the
place that we're in.

We've gotten used to it. We feel like we deserve it for whatever reason, but you
need to embrace, see the beauty of this good news that's being brought to your
life. And you might even need to take this to a different level.

Real victory, real restoration of God's strength and promise in your life comes
not just from knowing the good news, but also from sharing it. In Romans chapter
10 verse 15, Paul writes, and he uses this very verse when he says, "How can
they preach unless they are sent as it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet
of those who bring good news. '" He uses this to refer to sharing the good news
about Christ.

So when you say, "God is giving me peace as I'm walking through this for the
love of Christ," you are the one with beautiful feet. And God will use that to
begin to restore you. So you start with God's good news, the promise of his good
news.

Second thing you do in order to experience God's restoration in your life is you
see a vision of what God will do. Restoration comes not just from knowing that
God has a plan for your life, but also from seeing it, beginning to envision it.
Listen to what happens in verses 8 to 10, chapter 52, "Listen, your watchmen
lift up their voices.

Together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it
with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem,
for the Lord has comforted His people.

He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare His holy arm in the sight of
all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our
God. " So these verses are talking about watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem.

And they're going to see it when the people of Jerusalem who have been set free
from their captivity are coming home. There's this picture of watchmen who,
because they're on the walls, they are watching to protect the city, they're the
ones that are going to see it. And you and I, we've got to be watchful.

Watchmen see what God is doing. When you see what God is doing, it does
something to you. In fact, here it says, "Together they shout for joy.

" So when you want to see God do this work of restoration in your life, whether
it's your relationships or a hope in your life or faith in your life or a deep
sense of God's presence in your life, you ask God to give you a vision, a
picture of what He wants to do in your life. Now that picture may come
instantly, sometimes it does, most of the time I've experienced it does not.
Usually He will slowly give this picture over time.

As you listen to sermons, as you read His word, as you talk to other believers,
He begins to give you this picture of how He wants to work in your life. So you
ask God, "I'm watching," you say, "I want to see a picture of what you want to
do in my life. " That's how He restores you.

And then the third thing you do is you move towards God's promise. You start by
saying, "God, give me a restored hearing of the good news of your promise, and
then help me to see a picture, a vision of the good news, and then I've got to
start moving towards that promise. " Restoration comes not just from waiting for
what God will do, it comes from moving toward what He's doing now.

So Isaiah 52, 11 and 12 says this, "Depart, depart, go out from there. Touch no
unclean thing. Come out from it and be pure, those who carry the vessels of the
Lord.

But you will not leave in haste or go in flight, for the Lord will go before
you. The God of Israel will be your rear guard. " So He's talking to the
captives who are coming out of captivity, heading towards their homeland And He
says, "You've got to do two things if you're going to move towards God's
promise.

You have to depart from the past and you have to move towards God's future. "
First He says, "Depart from the past, depart, come out from there. Once they are
set free, they have to depart.

" He's saying here, "Don't be a released prisoner who won't leave the prison
cell. Once God has set you free, then move out of that cell, move out of that
sin, move out of that relationship that's hurting. Move out of that area of life
that's tearing you apart.

You depart. God's giving you the freedom now to depart, so depart. " Now these
verses in 2 Corinthians 6, 14-17, when Paul is talking to the Corinthians about
some struggles that they're having with not being able to depart, with staying
tied to some things after they were a Christian, that were really bringing them
down, he uses these verses to talk about it.

In chapter 6, verses 14 and 17, Paul says, "Do not be yoked together with
unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what
fellowship can light have with darkness?

Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean
thing and I will receive you. " These very verses we just looked at.

So they had to depart from some partnerships they had with unbelievers that were
bringing them down. What do you have to depart from? How do you have to leave
the past in order to move towards God's promise?

That's one of the ways that we get restored, but it's not just departing the
past. You also have to move at the same time toward God's future. You can't just
walk away from something, you've got to walk towards something.

So he reminded them, "You won't leave in haste or go in flight. The Lord will go
before you and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. " As you move towards
God's future, remember this, first you don't have to move in anxiety.

Don't be in haste. You're not running away, you're running towards what God has.
So you don't have to have this anxious thought about what God's doing in your
life.

You can be confident in his presence with you. In fact, that confidence is
expressed here by this phrase, "The Lord will be before you and he will be your
rear guard. " When you're heading towards God's promise, God's going out in
front of you.

He's preparing the way. He's your rear guard. He's protecting you from those
things that might attack you from behind.

That's the confidence with which you can head towards God's promise. So you want
to see a restoration in your life? This chapter tells us how that begins to
happen.

It begins to happen as I experience and look towards the promise in God's good
news, as I ask God for this vision of what he wants to do in my life. And then I
start to head towards it. I start to head towards what God's promise is for my
life.

If I'm going to do that, you're going to do that. We need God's strength. So
let's pray for it right now.

Lord, I know a lot of us, every day in some ways, we need to be restored. Our
faith needs to be restored. Our hope, our love need to be restored.

Our confidence in you needs to be restored. Lord, right now, we pray that the
truths of this chapter would begin to restore us. The truths of the promise of
your good news, we hold on to it.

The truth of the love that you have for us in every circumstance and that we can
lead the past and head towards your future based not on our strength, but on
your strength. So we ask for that strength right now, Jesus. In your name, amen.

Well, tomorrow, we're going to begin to look at one of the most incredible
chapters in all of scripture, Isaiah chapter 53.