A few years ago my cousin died. He was a good bit older than me.
In our last meeting, he told me a story.
Story was about our aunt. That would be his father's
sister, my mother's sister, our aunt.
Story takes place in 1955. My cousin is a freshman at the
Dubois Business College in the small town of Dubois, PA,
Western Pennsylvania, the town where I grew up.
My cousin is a freshman at the Dubois Business College.
He is walking down the street. This is before the days of air
conditioning, and he walks past a bar.
The door is open. Inside the bar he hears a woman.
She is boisterous. She is cackling, she's making a
fool of herself. She is loud, she's out of
control. She can be heard on the street.
My cousin walks by. He looks in the bar room and it
is our aunt. She was the town drunk.
That was 1955. Father in Heaven, I pray today
that you will enable me, Lord, please, to preach Your word with
accuracy. Lord, I pray that You would fill
me with Your Holy Spirit and enable me and help me.
I pray that I would not just be reading words off of a page.
But Lord, I pray that you would fill me with Your Holy Spirit
and enable me to proclaim Your word so as to help Your people,
Lord, not only to teach them about restoration, but Lord, I
pray that you, more importantly today, would grant restoration
to these dear people through Your mighty power.
This we pray in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, a few observations before we get into the Word.
First of all, I would like to thank the men who came
yesterday, devoted their day to listening to the Word.
And I would like to thank you wives and your mother's who gave
your men away yesterday to come and to hear the word.
I was very impressed by the maturity of the men who were
there yesterday. I was very, very encouraged.
Secondly, I would like to say thank you to Brandon and to
Hannah for housing me last night for the biscuit that I ate this
morning. It was glorious.
I have known Brandon since 2010 and what a joy it is to see this
young man who was once an intern and then an employee of our
church, now serving you so well. Brother, I just want to say that
I love you and I am excessively proud of you.
I know that you hit the jackpot. When got him, and I think you
know that as well. Also concerning the service that
happened this morning, I am still in awe of what I witnessed
this morning, how orderly it was, how thoughtful it was, what
an excellent job Michael did in leading the service this
morning. This is, I don't think that our
church is capable of doing this, but it certainly was enjoyable
for me to observe it. I was very blessed by the entire
service up up to this point. Thank you so much for leading
the service this morning. And then what is obvious to any
visitor that comes in the excessive amount of work that
goes into setting up. I think that you should give a
special thank you verbally in person to those who are
responsible for setting up on Sunday mornings.
They put in a lot of work and it is a grace, great grace of God.
And then something finally that is almost spooky and that is how
abnormally well behaved your children are during the worship
service. I'm not sure that they're
actually real. They might be actors and
actresses that you have hired to impress me.
But that was that was quite a blessing to see how the children
sat through the worship service thus far.
So I bring you greetings from North Shore Baptist Church and I
am really happy to be here this morning going to talk to you
today on the subject of restoration.
Let me illustrate why restoration is needed.
Few years ago I went for a haircut.
I spoke to my Barber. He speaks very little English
and in speaking to him, I said, I need you to just cut a little
bit so that I can move what I have around so as to appear as
though I have hair. And the reason that I said that
to him, Nick, is because I'm not a quitter.
OK, I'm going to. I'm going to fight this thing to
the end. Now as he is cutting my hair, a
friend of his walks in and sits behind him.
My Barber continues to cut my hair but to have a conversation
with the man sitting behind him, he is cutting my hair.
I'm looking at my head because I have mirror in front of me.
He is not looking at my head, he is cutting my hair.
And at the end of that I looked in the mirror and I said
suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be.
I am now in need of restoration. But we need restoration not only
with our hairstyles, we need a we need restoration in all areas
of life. Job put it best when he said man
born of woman is a few days and full of trouble.
All the King's horses and all the King's men are busy.
Entropy has an undefeated record.
Fairy tale endings are reserved for fairy tales.
And you know the reason why this is true is because of sin.
Through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin,
and thus death spread to all men.
We in this world have finances which evaporate.
We have relationships which implode.
We have emotions which disintegrate.
If you can replace a hip or a Fender or a roof in this fallen
world, you're going to make a very good living.
The place where we need restoration the most is the
place where we feel it the least, and that is in our
relationship with God. We all need restoration.
In order to illustrate this, I would like to tell you a Bible
story about restoration. It comes from Second Kings
chapter 8. Would ask please, that you would
take your copy of the Scripture and turn to 2nd Kings Chapter 8.
Here's what I'm going to do. I am going to read these verses.
As I read them, I'm going to make a bit of a running
commentary and then at the conclusion of the reading of
Scripture, I'm going to make 3 points and then we will be
finished. Let's look at the text of the
script. Sure, hear the word of the Lord,
Second Kings 8 verse one. Now Elisha, let's just stop
right there, Who was Elisha? Elisha was the one who came
after Elijah. Elisha was the most prolific
miracle worker in the Bible apart from the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now Elisha had said to the woman
whose son he had restored to life, Arise and depart with your
household and sojourn or temporarily travel wherever you
can. Why?
For the Lord has called for a famine, and it will come upon
the land for seven years. So the woman arose and did
according to the word of the man of God.
She went with her household and sojourn in the land of the
Philistines 7 years. Who is the woman that is being
referred to here? She's commonly called the
Shunamite woman. We are introduced to her back in
Second Kings chapter 4. As she was a very generous and a
hospitable and benevolent woman. She knew that the prophet Elijah
would be passing through her region frequently and so she
said to her husband, why don't we build A room on top of our
house so that the prophet will have somewhere to stay.
So they built those accommodations and whenever
Elijah would come through that way, he would have a place to
sleep. Elisha was very appreciative of
this and he said to the woman, you've done so much for me, what
can I do for you? The woman said, I have
everything that I need. I dwell among my people.
You don't have to do anything for me.
But the assistant of Elisha, a man by the name of Ghazi, that
is the Western Pennsylvania pronunciation of that properly
you would say Ghazi, but I will say Ghazi.
Ghazi said, I know what the woman needs.
She's getting a little bit older and her husband is already old
and they don't have any children.
So Elisha says to the woman, next year at this time, you're
going to have a son. Fade in, fade out.
A year later, the little boy is born.
Little boy grows up. He's out in the field one day
working with his father. He begins to complain of a
headache, comes into the house, crawls up on his mother's lap,
and there, without warning, he dies in her arms.
The woman lifts the child, walks up the stairs into Elisha's
bedroom, lays the child on the bed, and then travels 16 miles
to Mount Carmel where Elisha is. When she greets him, she tells
him what is going on. And Elijah was probably a little
bit older at the time, not as fleet a foot as Gehezy says to
Gehezy. Here is my staff, take it.
Go back to Shunam, go into the bedroom, lay the staff across
the child. Don't talk to anybody along the
way, just run as fast as you can and get there quickly.
Gehezy goes into the bedroom, lays the staff across the child
and nothing happens. Elisha and the woman make the
journey more slowly back to Shunam and Elisha goes into the
bedroom with the child and in what is arguably the most
unusual prayer meeting in all the Bible raises the child to
life and gives the little boy back to his mother.
That is the woman that is being referred to here now.
Sometime later, the Lord revealed to Elisha that because
of the covenant unfaithfulness of the people of Israel, there
was going to be a famine which was going to last for seven
years. Consider the magnitude of this
famine. Back in First Kings chapter 17,
there was a famine which lasted for three years and six months.
And during that time people were dying.
So if you double that time, there is no way that you're
going to be able to stay in the land and survive.
And so Elisha says to the woman in an act of kindness, you've
got to get out of here. And so the woman and her
household move from there and go to the land of the Philistines
for seven years. That is the woman that is being
referred to here, verse 3. And at the end of seven years,
when the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, she
went to appeal to the king for her house and her land.
Apparently, while she was gone, someone confiscated her property
and it appears to have been the government.
Nothing ever changes and she now goes to the king and says I want
my house back. I want my farm back, I want my
land back. Which brings us to verse 4.
Now I can read the English words of verse 4.
I can tell you what these words mean.
But here's what I'm not going to be able to do for you this
morning. I am not going to be able to
explain to you the why of verse four.
I think it is one of the most bizarre, unusual verses in all
the Bible. Like, I don't know why it
happened. I believe that it did happen,
but it is really crazy. Look at verse 4.
Now the king. Let's just stop right there.
The king is King Jehoram. He is the grandson of Ahab and
Jezebel, and the apple has not fallen far from the tree.
He is a wicked and idolatrous king.
The king of Israel, the northern Kingdom of Israel.
Now the king was talking with Gehazy.
Why was Gehazy available for a conversation?
Well, he was available for a conversation because he was no
longer in the ministry. And the reason he was no longer
in the ministry is because he was now defrocked.
He had been kicked out of the ministry and he was now a leper.
And the reason that this has happened is because he tried to
extort money from a Syrian general by the name of Naaman.
Now the king was talking with Ghazi, the servant of the man of
God, saying, Tell me all the great things that Elisha has
done. This is really out of the
ordinary that this Pagan king would wake up one day and speak
to the leprous defrocked clergyman Ghazi and say, I want
you to tell me all of the great things that God has done through
the hand of Elisha. The reason this is really out of
place is because first of all, this king hated Elisha and on
multiple occasions tried to kill him.
Secondly, this king was actually present for some of the
miracles. Why he woke up one day and
wanted this information I cannot tell you, but it is a key
ingredient in bringing restoration to this woman.
Now look very closely at verse 5 and pay special attention to the
second English word in verse 5. And while WHILE while he gehezy,
was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life.
Behold, or in other words, paint a picture in your mind's eye.
Behold the woman. This is the Shunamite woman
whose son he had restored to life, appealed to the king for
her house and for her land. And Ghazi said, my Lord, O king,
here is the woman and here is her son, whom Elijah restored to
life. Get the picture?
Ghazi is wakened up and he's told the king wants to talk to
you. He goes before the king says,
how can I help you? And the king says, yeah, I'm
just curious. Can you just give me a rundown
of all the great deeds that Elijah has done?
He says why? I don't even know where to
begin. I I suppose I could begin at the
beginning on the other side of the Jordan when we were there
and Elijah got taken up into heaven and his mantle fell.
You remember swing low, sweet chariot coming forward to carry
me home. His mantle fell upon Elisha.
He caught it. He used it to part the waters of
the Jordan River. He walked to the other side.
When he got to the other side, he was in Jericho and the water
was bitter. He like salt, he throws it in
the water. It becomes sweet from there.
He walks on to Bethel. As he's walking on to Bethel,
there are some young people that are mocking him.
And lo and behold, what happens? Some bear come out of the woods
and maul the people that were mocking him.
There was another Cajun king. You yourself were there.
You know it. We went on that military
expedition. We didn't have any water.
We were dying of thirst. And without the aid of river,
without the aid of rain, he produced water.
Our thirst was quenched. It gave the optical illusion of
blood. Our our enemies came out and we
defeated him. You, you already know that,
king. There was another time we were
down at the Jordan River and we had an axe.
It was a borrowed axe. Somebody was chopping the tree
and the axe head fell off, sunk into the water, sunk to the
bottom of the Jordan River. Along comes Elijah with a stick.
He waves the stick over the water and in an axe head
floated. There was another occasion when
we were getting ready to eat and some knucklehead through bitter
herbs into the Stew. It was poisonous.
And along comes Elijah. He puts a little bit of flour in
and the Stew becomes edible. There were so many.
One time, one time, King, he actually blinded an entire army.
There are so many miracles. I, I, I can't tell you all of
them, but by far the greatest miracle, the strangest miracle
that ever happened, there was this this boy over in Shunam.
I'm telling you, King, the, the, the boy wasn't sick.
He wasn't injured, he wasn't wounded.
He, he was dead. He was cold.
He was dead. And, and Elijah comes into the
bedroom and he lays on top of the boy.
And King, it was the that's him and that's his mother.
While WHILE while he was talking to the king about the boy and
his mother, the boy and his mother walked into the presence
of the king. Now the king at this point
thinks probably that it is choreographed.
So he needs to corroborate and make sure that this actually is
is factual. And so in verse 6, notice the
restoration and how it comes about.
And when the king asked the woman, he quizzed the woman.
He says it is this. So when the king asked the
woman, she told him. So what did this wicked
idolatrous king do? So the king appointed an
official for her saying restore, that's our word for the day.
Restore all that was hers together with the produce of the
fields from the day that she left the land until now.
In other words, give her her house back.
Give give her her land back. And anything that would have
grown on that property during the last seven years, that is
completely to be restored to her in full right now.
But that is our Bible story. From this I would like us to
derive 3 points of. The first is this #1 the
glorious doctrine of restoration is controlled by the design of
Providence. The glorious doctrine of
restoration is controlled by the design of Providence.
And by that I mean the confluence of of this man
talking about this woman and this boy and this woman and this
boy walking into the room at the exact time.
The Providence of God. What is the Providence of God?
Well, quite simply, it is the fact that God has absolute
control over all things. He is orchestrating the movement
of the largest planet and the smallest molecule and everything
in between. He's got the whole world in His
hands. Or if you want to think about it
in this way, he has a lock. LOCK on all things.
He limits, orders, controls, and knows everything.
The Abstract of Principles from the Southern Baptist Seminary in
Louisville, KY. Article 4 puts it this way.
God from eternity decrees or permits all things that come to
pass, all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds,
directs, and governs all creatures and all events.
End Quote and well said. Presbyterians are much more
succinct. They say God ordains whatsoever
comes to pass. You see, God is in control.
And since God is in control, there are some practical
implications for us. The first is that if God is God
and he is in control, there is therefore now no such thing as
luck. The God of the Bible and luck
cannot exist simultaneously. He is in charge of everything
that is happening. Nothing is random.
It is common for young people today when they see something
happening which is out of the ordinary, they will say this
phrase, oh, that was so random. Well, I understand what they
mean in that it was out of the ordinary, but it was far from
random. It it was all by design.
Everything that happens is by design.
Christian young people will say something like this, something
good happens. They will say that was such a
God thing. Now I don't want to argue with
them and say that it was not a God thing.
I would simply like them to point out something that he's
not a God thing. All things, by definition are
God things. Seeing as how God ordains all
things, He is in control of everything through divine
Providence. Let's just do the math on this
for a second. It was 7 years, but roughly
25150 days. What are the mathematical odds?
I'm in a college town here. There are some bright minds.
There are some bright mathematical minds in the room
right near now. What are the mathematical odds
that after 25150 days, on the exact day, at the exact hour, at
the exact moment when Ghazi would be talking about the woman
and her son, at that moment she would walk into that room?
Can you calculate it? There's a horse race in Kentucky
first Saturday in May every year.
A few years ago there was a horse that won that race and the
odds of that horse winning the race were 82 to one.
What are we looking at here? 83 to 1?
Or maybe the odds are better, like 100 to 1.
Or maybe the odds are even better, a billion to 1.
So you're telling me there's a chance?
No, there is no way to calculate the odds on this.
The odds are 0. The probability of this
happening is 0. Unless someone is directing
traffic. And the point of my sermon today
is that restoration comes about because someone is directing
traffic and that someone is God. Providence is a friend to
restoration. Now let me be clear, I'm not a
fatalist. I fully believe that you make
volitional choices which are uncoerced, but at the same time
you need to know that you are exactly where you are, both
literally sitting in that chair. That is where you have been
ordained to be, and you are where you are figuratively in
life by the design of Providence.
Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine.
I had a friend. He lived in another state and
for many years I tried to evangelize this man
unsuccessfully and he had several things going against
him. A number 1, he was from a Jewish
background and so therefore he had an aversion through his
family upbringing to Jesus Christ.
Secondly, he was from a scientific background and was
raised as an atheist so did not believe in God because of his
scientific background. His third problem is that he was
a heroin addict and #4 he was sometimes on and off homeless.
Well, as the story goes, on one of his homeless stints he was
high on heroin, walked into the street and was struck by a car.
He was taken to the hospital and when he arrived at the hospital
and was given his hospital gown, it was discovered that the
clothes that he was wearing were unwearable.
They were filthy and so his clothes were thrown away and he
for the next 8 weeks was in this hospital in a hospital gown.
Now, Providence, you remember Providence, Providence had it
that there was a nurse who was taking care of him every day.
At the time, this nurse was not a Christian, but she was a very
compassionate young lady and she loved this man.
So he is in there. He's being cared for.
His wounds, he's being dried out from his heroin addiction.
He's in this hospital. He spends the eight weeks there.
He's being cared for by this nurse and it's time for him to
leave and to go to a rehab center.
When it's time for him to go, it is discovered that he doesn't
have any clothes. So this nurse goes to one of her
mother's friends who's roughly the same size as this man and
says can you give me some clothes so that he will have
something to wear to the rehab center.
And this man gladly gives his clothes.
He goes to the rehab center and he calls me and he says you're
not going to believe where I have been for the last 8 weeks.
And he tells me the story as Providence would have it, the
town where he was in the rehab center, which was in another
state from me and was 40 miles away from this hospital, the
town happened to be a town where I knew several Christians.
And so I formed a text thread amongst my Christian friends,
about 10 of them or so. And I said, listen, I know that
life is busy and you have a lot of things to take care of in
your own life. But if you have an opportunity,
could you please go by such and such a nursing home or a rehab
center and visit this man and bring him the gospel.
Moments later a woman in that text thread said, I know exactly
who this man is. My daughter is a nurse and she
has been taking care of him for the last 8 weeks.
She loves this man. She is very compassionate toward
him. I know who he is.
Moments later, Chris, the man who had donated his clothes,
jumped in on the text thread and said, On my way to the rehab
center now, don't know this man, don't know what he looks like.
I'll just go in and look for the guy who's wearing my clothes.
Over the course of the next couple of months, my friends
maniacally visited him and brought him the gospel.
Initially he was resistant, but the light came on one day and
when he discovered that the mathematical probabilities of
all of this happening, he said there is no way that my friend's
friend's mother's daughter would take care of me and that the
clothes on my back belong to a friend of yours.
He said there must be a God, and when he concluded that there
must be a God, the House of Cards crumbled and he concluded
that Jesus is the Son of God and he was gloriously and radically
saved. Why?
Through the biblical doctrine of Providence, God uses Providence
to bring about restoration. So I just want to give you some
comfort right now. You might be asking yourself,
what am I doing? What am I doing in life?
Why am I where I am right now? Is there any purpose to this?
Is it all just random? And I want to say to you, no,
it's not random. There is someone who is
directing traffic and in His Providence He is using, He is
using all events and all people to bring about His glory and
your good. Which brings us to point #2 and
that is that the glorious doctrine of restoration is
communicated most effectively in the context of pain.
Pain. Point #2 is pain.
What was the greatest pain that this woman ever felt?
Well, I don't even want to think about it very long.
It was the death of her son. But play it out.
If her son doesn't die, then her son doesn't rise from the dead.
And if her son doesn't rise from the dead, the king would be
unmoved. This woman walks into the
presence of the king and interrupts the king.
He would say to her, who are you?
And she would say, my land, my property has been taken from me.
And the king would say, woman, get in line, we have just had a
seven-year drought, I can't help you.
That which moved the hand of this wicked king was the fact
that he witnessed a boy who had been dead but was now alive.
But unless you die, you can't come back to life.
But let me be very sympathetic right now and say I want to
acknowledge that pain by definition is painful.
Not trying to be redundant. I know that we live in a fallen
world where there is such a thing as pain.
And I want to be sympathetic to your pain.
And I don't know what your pain is.
Maybe you're sitting beside someone right now and you are
contemplating divorce. Maybe you don't know where the
money is going to come from at the end of this month to pay
your rent. Maybe you are going through
depression. Maybe cancer is currently
galloping through your body. I don't know what your pain is.
But you're living in the same world that I'm living in.
And we live in a world that is filled with pain.
I just want to point out to you today that in God's process of
restoration, pain is not meaningless.
Let's consider the story of Joseph.
If Joseph is not the favorite and he doesn't get the coat of
many colors. If he doesn't get the coat of
many colors, then his brothers don't hate him.
They don't hate him. They don't sell him into
slavery. If they don't sell him into
slavery, he doesn't go to Egypt. He doesn't go to Egypt.
He doesn't meet Potiphar. If he doesn't meet Potiphar, he
doesn't meet Potiphar's wife. If he doesn't meet Potiphar's
wife, he doesn't get falsely accused of rape.
If he doesn't get accused of rape, he doesn't go to jail.
If he doesn't go to jail, he doesn't meet the cupbearer.
If he doesn't meet the cupbearer, then he doesn't
interpret the cupbearer's dream. If he doesn't interpret the
cupbearer's dream, then the cupbearer doesn't know that he
can interpret dreams. So when Pharaoh has his big
dream, you remember the big dream of the seven years of
plenty followed by the seven years of famine.
If that dream is not interpreted, then they're going
to squander the produce from the seven years of plenty.
And if that happens, then the people in that region of the
world are going to die. And if people in that region of
the world are going to die, then his family is going to die.
And if his family dies, his brother Judah is going to die.
And if his brother Judah dies, there's no King David.
If there's no King David, there's no King David's greater
son. If there's no King David's
greater son, Jesus Christ, you're going to hell, and so am
I. But put all of those things
together, and many of them are painful.
In the end, it leads to what restoration?
Now, if you put blinders on Joseph in any segment of that
story, let's just say, for example, we are talking to
Joseph and he is in prison for a crime that he did not commit,
and he has been forgotten for two years.
And you interview him and you say to him what's going on right
now There would be cause and there would be reason for
bitterness. But when you lift off in your
Romans 828 helicopter and you see that God causes all things
to work together for good, including the pain that we are
going through to those who are the called according to his
purpose for those who love God. Then when your brothers come to
you at the end of the story and they give their half hearted
apology, you can say to them sincerely, you meant it for
evil. I'm not giving you a pass on
this. You, you guys really are bad.
You meant it for evil. But there is something greater
at play here. And so I'm not going to be
vindictive toward you. You meant it for evil, but God
meant it for good to bring it about this day, to save many
people alive. And he himself didn't even know
the magnitude of that at the time.
But none of it happens without the pain.
Consider the greatest pain that the world has ever known.
For six hours the spotless Son of God is hanging on a cross.
Prior to hanging on that cross, they flog him, and they jerk out
his beard, and they put upon him a crown of thorns, and they
place a Reed in his hand. And then they take the Reed out
of his hand, and they strike him on the head, pounding the thorns
into his skull. Isaiah says his visage was
marred more than any man. In other words, he doesn't even
look like a human being. He bore in his body our sins
upon the tree. This is pain, but it's not just
the physical pain that Jesus endured.
There was something far worse than that, and that was the
spiritual pollution that He endured.
We're all like sheep, we've all gone astray, but the Lord hath
laid upon him the iniquity of us all, that he who knew no sin
became sin for us. And so He is suffering in His
body. He is bearing our sins, but
worse, worse than that is the payment that He makes for our
sins, and that is that God the Father is pleased to crush him
and that for six hours on the cross God the Father hammers him
to death. The full vented wrath of God is
spent on him to the point where Christ cries out.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Such pain the world has never known.
But what is that pain? That pain is your salvation.
It's not just an ingredient in your salvation.
It is the essence of your salvation, the just for the
unjust, in order that he might bring us to God.
Do you understand that we today are restored and will be
eternally restored because of the pain which Jesus endured on
the cross? God uses pain to bring about
restoration point #3 And finally, the glorious doctrine
of restoration must be accompanied with a demonstration
of divine power. The glorious doctrine of
restoration must be accompanied with a demonstration of divine
power, specifically here, the power of a risen sun.
You see, the only reason why the king was willing to restore her
property, It, it had nothing to do with sympathy.
It, it had nothing to do with justice.
It it it had nothing to do with equity.
There was a reason that this wicked king was willing to
restore her property. It was because her previously
dead son was now alive and was standing by her side.
Let me speak to you about this objectively and then
subjectively, and then we will be done.
Think about what is happening here objectively, and I will
make the argument from the lesser to the greater.
If a wicked, idolatrous king, hearing the testimony of a
leprous, defrocked clergyman, was willing to grant total
restoration to a woman that he didn't even know, based solely
upon the appearance of a boy who was dead but was now alive, but
a boy who would eventually die and die permanently if that
happened, that's the lesser. Here's the greater.
How much more will a good, loving, eternal, intentional God
not grant ultimate eternal restoration to his elect when he
sees his perfect, eternal Son standing by our side, proof of
our justification. A son who was dead, but a son
who is now alive, alive, alive forever more.
In other words, before the throne of God above.
I have a strong and perfect plea.
And God the Just is satisfied to look at him and to pardon or to
restore me. Brothers and sisters, I want you
to see this more than anything else that I'm saying this
morning. Jehoram was not looking at that
woman at all. She was irrelevant.
That woman walked into his presence and he said, who are
you? She said, I'm a woman whose
property has been taken away, and I believe it should be
restored to me. Yeah.
Why is that? Because I am a benevolent woman.
Because I am a generous woman. I I I built a room for the
prophet Elisha. The king would say to her, I
ought to have you imprisoned. I hate that prophet.
In other words, your righteousness is like filthy
rags. It means nothing in this court.
No, the woman comes in and her plea from beginning to end has
nothing to do with her and her merits.
It is a son that is standing beside her, which caught the
attention of the king. And I am a happy, happy man
because in the final day in that judgment room, God from his
throne is not going to be looking at me at all.
Nothing, nada. He's going to be looking at one
who is standing beside me, a son who was dead but now is alive
forever more. The risen son standing by my
side. And that is the gospel.
And that is your only hope, your restoration, the sum total of it
is that Jesus Christ died for you, is risen for you, and in
the final day we'll be standing beside you.
That's the gospel. And the gospel is of first
importance. That's how it works objectively.
Now subjectively. How did that boy get into that
room? It's an honest question.
He was outside of the room and then he was in the room.
How did he get into the room? I know this is a Nine Marks
church, but you can answer how, how, how did he get into the
room? Anyone.
This is important. Yes.
He walked in. Yes.
Which makes you the smartest boy in the room.
That's right. He walked in.
If the woman walks in and she is carrying a corpse or a skeleton
and she says I want my property back, well, before I ask you who
you are, what is that that you have in your arms?
Oh, this is my son. He, he, he, he was dead.
And then he came to life. But, but he's, he's now dead.
Hand of the King would not have been moved.
There was subjective proof of life.
A boy who had been dead came to life and under his own power
walked into the room giving proof of life.
Restoration yields proof of life.
So it's 1955. My cousin's walking down the
street, walks past a bar room. My aunt is in that bar room,
drunk out of her mind. A woman that was so shameful in
our town that my father didn't even tell people that he was
related to her. Fast forward to 1959, my aunt is
drunk again. This time she falls down a
flight of stairs and she breaks her back and she is in the
hospital and she wants to be left alone.
She is in excruciating pain. She had been raised with the
gospel but had obviously rejected it.
And from that bed in that hospital in 1959, she prays to
the Lord and says, have mercy upon me.
Her testimony was that she saw a picture of herself and it was
extremely ugly. She cries out to Christ and says
have mercy upon me, heal me, deliver me, save me, and I will
live the rest of my life for you.
The Lord touches her, the Lord saves her.
The the Lord raises her off of that hospital bed and the first
Wednesday night after she returned home from the hospital,
she walked down the street into our tiny little Christian and
Missionary Alliance church on a Wednesday night.
Now the custom in those days was before the prayer meeting, the
pastor would stand up and would say, does anybody have a word of
testimony that they would like to give concerning their love
for the Lord? Not like a testimony of
salvation, but just someone getting up and just saying how
much they love the Lord. It was very spontaneous.
Several people would stand and do it.
The opportunity is given and my aunt stays silent.
She leaves the prayer meeting that night, walks back to her
home, goes into her bedroom, gets down on the floor and
begins to weep. And she says to the Lord,
tonight I was ashamed of you. Tonight I disowned you.
If I were to die before I could get back there and tell the
people what the Lord has done for me, it would be a horrible
thing. Lord, I'm asking you, please
just give me one more chance to tell of my love for you.
And if that opportunity is given to me, I will never deny you
again. That is in 1959.
I'm not born until 1961. And in western Pennsylvania, in
small churches, things usually don't change much over the
decades. But I can remember for the
entirety of my life growing up in that church in the 1960s and
in the 1970s, on Wednesday night, when the pastor would
stand and he would say, would anybody like to give a testimony
of their love for the Lord? What he meant in reality was
this. Would anybody like to go second?
Because before he could even get the words out of his mouth, she
would stand and interrupt him and she would talk about her
love for Christ. And it was always fresh and it
was always real and it was never choreographed.
She was alive and there was evidence of life.
Friends, I don't want to know, are you a member of a church and
have you been baptized? It is good to be a member of a
church. You are commanded to be
baptized. That is a good thing.
I don't want to know. Have you at some time in the
past read the Sinner's prayer? My question to you is simple.
Could you walk in that room and stand in front of that king?
In other words, are you alive? Do you love the Lord Jesus
Christ? Is there evidence of life?
You see, when God brings about restoration, Amen.
Hallelujah, praise the Lord. It is objective.
And before the throne of God above I, I, I, I have a sure and
a perfect plea. But there is also a
manifestation of that in the here and now, and that is that
if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation and that the old
is gone and that the new has come.
I don't want to know about your doctrine.
I don't want to know about your theology.
It's good to have good doctrine and good theology.
Here's what I simply want to know.
Are you alive? Do you love the Lord Jesus
Christ? Paul writes in First Corinthians
chapter 16. If anyone does not love the Lord
Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.
So I want to give you encouragement with respect to
restoration. We are living in a funky, messed
up, fallen world where we have pain and sorrow and we will have
for the rest of our days when not only are we going to get bad
haircuts, we're going to have really bad things that are going
to happen to us. I want you to take courage
today, brothers and sisters. That absolutely none of it zero
is random. That God in His Providence is
controlling all of it. And I want you to know that when
these bad things happen, they are not out of God's control.
But God, in fact, sometimes and frequently does use the painful
things in our lives to bring about restoration.
Most importantly, I want you to know that this restoration comes
about through the power of a risen sun, the power that you
will possess in the final day to stand in front of him unashamed,
and the power to Live Today a restored and a new life, because
he, through his regenerating spirit and his sustaining
spirit, has restored you. And it will be evident to all.
Thank you for your attentiveness today.
I must confess, this is kind of a creepy attentiveness.
I'm not accustomed to people paying attention this well.
I want to thank you for that. Father in Heaven, we love you.
Thank you, Lord, for looking upon us in our unrestored state
and having mercy upon us now, Lord, as we have learned about
this. Amen.
Hallelujah, may we remember it. But more than that, I would ask
your God that you would bring restoration to our lives.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.