The Spirit of Restoration - Part 2

Now dear friends, let's turn to Isaiah chapter 61. What a comprehensive statement we have here of the spirit which is upon our Lord Jesus. The first verse reads, The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek.

He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. Now note this fourth verse, and they shall build the old ways. They shall raise up the former desolations and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.

You know, to build something from scratch, something which never existed before, is relatively an easy business compared to taking up a desolation, someplace that has been wrecked and restoring it. You know, dear friends, there is a strong strength strain in our makeup, which says, get all that you can get, putting in the least effort. Now, as anybody knows from history, or should know, if such an attitude had characterized the early pilgrims and the Puritans who followed, if this was their mental makeup, then many of those freedoms that we enjoy today, and which the rest of the world enjoys, would be purchased as an outcome of what these forerunners purchased with their blood and toil and tears.

You know, my dear friends, as those who are in this age of delusion, disappointment, and despair, think of the very spirit of Jesus. It is a spirit of restoration, a spirit of redemption. It is a spirit of recovery, of rebuilding the waste places.

Do we see in every desolation a glorious restoration? We don't. We only condemn. We don't see things as Jesus sees.

We don't see things as through Jesus, who is the redemption. You know, what is it? What did God do for you? If you say, and if you see the redemption wrought in you, if that is real, you will be able to see the redemption which God can bring in a hopelessly lost situation. So today, you know, friends, we are looking upon a scene of such suffering and economic gloom when there are no ready answers.

But we do not want to own up and say somewhere we have messed it up. You see, repentance is at the heart of the restoration. As we see in Esther, we see that the whole nation was under the sentence of death.

A despotic tyrant, you know, resistance to tyranny comes from, you know, one of those very root principles behind the revolution, a resistance to tyranny. But here, you know, when Mordecai heard of this sentence that had gone out and the execution which was to be performed across the many intercontinental countries which were ruled by Babylon of that day, by King Assurus. Now, what did he do? He put on sackcloth and ashes and went on to the midst of the city and cried with a loved and a bitter cry.

And it came even before the king's gate. He was not going to do it in secret, you see. He was not even going to be afraid or even ashamed that he who had sat in the king's gate was now clothed with sackcloth.

You know, my dear friends, during the critical phases of the last war, don't let us mix it up with the small skirmishes and battles of today, the great war. Now, at all those critical junctures, the allies, Britain and America, called for days of prayer when all the cabinet in England, the king, everyone were called to prayer. Today, what is happening today is a kind of amalgam.

I saw an advertisement in the New York Times, the collegiate, marble collegiate church, which is, has been a seat of modernism, says, oh, we are going to have united prayer. So we are calling in all these religions. Sounds nice, but does it work? All right.

Here is a target, and here's a man whose barrel is turned in the opposite direction. And you say, I've got a team of sharpshooters here. We are going to deal with this target.

We're going to bring it down. And so here's a man firing off to the east and the west. The target happens to be in the north.

How does it help? What kind of firing squad do you have there? Now, this is the kind of thing which is taking place, a religious syncretism, as it is called, where people like to experiment with the old failures, the known failures of the ages. No repentance, then there is no restoration, no redemption. Here is repentance.

In the third verse, you will notice there was great mourning and fasting and weeping and wailing, and many lay in sackcloth and ashes. Then was the queen exceedingly grieved, and she sent clothing to her guardian, Mordecai. Now, change this sackcloth.

Here are some wonderful robes. You will be more impressive in these robes. You will excite more interest in our cause with these kingly robes.

You know, the way of repentance is not acknowledged or appreciated. You know, when there is no recognition of my broken system, how am I going to mend it? When there is no personal acknowledgement of my own wrongdoing, how am I going to amend? Never. How at best I'm going to do some superficial surface job, surface job which looks nice.

Here are king's garments now. My sackcloth is put away, and for the time being, the crisis is over. There is a recovery in sight.

Yes, that's how people try to fix this deep perversions of the soul, and you can't fix them that way. You just can't fix them that way. The first message of our Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, was repent and believe this good news.

We've done neither. You know, we are still going on with that vague symbol, in God we trust. Well, of course, it represented a great deal when it was first put in its place, but today there is no acknowledgement of that.

If in God we really trust. You know, my dear friends, they say at the heart of the revolution was a great change in the nation, the nation's morals and manners after the great awakening of 1730 to 1770. So they said revival, no, actually revolution actually was born in the hearts, you see, and that great revolution.

Washington in his first inaugural address said the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained. We are expecting heaven to smile today contrary to its own ordered roots. That cannot happen, and Washington recognized it right in the start.

The smile of heaven can never be there upon a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained. Those eternal rules are set aside and we have a situation of decay. I don't know how you feel, but when I go by those vacant lots and those huge plants that have been shut down, I feel terrible.

I feel terrible. It represents so much suffering driving the nation deeper into debt and dependence on unreliable sources from abroad. And when everybody is pretty happy to say okay, the predominance of this nation is at an end, they are secretly very happy to say so.

They have no regrets. They have gained a great deal from the knowledge acquired by hard work here. They have enriched themselves from the opportunities that were freely offered to them.

And now all that they have is a mocking response. Hey, you're down now and we hold the reins. Okay, let that be as it is, but let us look at the heart of the problem.

They that shall be of you shall restore the fallen desolations. They will rebuild the ways. Have we got that kind of grit? Have we got that kind of prayer? Have we got that kind of humbling in our souls that we owe it to our neighbor? We don't.

Now that's not the spirit of Christ. It's an alien spirit which wants to take advantage of the good things which come by other people's sweat and labor. That's an alien spirit.

My heart revolts at such a spirit. I shall be a part of the suffering. I will put in the plowing.

I will put in the hard work required for rebuilding. I will sacrifice. I will love.

I will repent that I did not take advantage of all the opportunities to lift up the restorer, the Lord Jesus. My dear friends, that's the heart of a Christian. The ways shall be built.

Someone said to me many years ago in Sears, one of the salesmen, yes, Thanksgiving, oh, people open their gifts, my children come home, and then they take their gifts and they're gone. There's no heart of Thanksgiving. There's no repentance.

There is no redeemer in sight, and therefore we are missing the boat. But when Esther the queen said, if I perish, I perish. I will run the gauntlet.

I will take the risk. I will present my petition before the king, though it is illegal to enter into his presence without being caught. Has it become illegal for us to enter into God's presence? Never.

We gain instant audience by his blood, and yet we little use it. Alas, my dear people, the spirit of Christ is the spirit of restoration, of revival, of recovery, of redemption, and retrieval. Let us pray.

Oh, Lord, our God, we humble ourselves. We can be so full of the spirit of criticism and denunciation of the faults of others, but the spirit of retrieval, of redemption, of repentance is so far from us. Forgive us, and yet the spirit which you give us is the spirit that restores, that rebuilds, that raises out of the ashes the fallen desolations.

Won't you cause that spirit to dwell upon us, upon this whole land? In Jesus' holy name, amen.