Restoration

What does restoration mean to you? 

• Hosea 4:6, “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge…” 

• Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction.” The same verse in the King James version starts, “Where there is no vision, the people perish…” 

In order to restore anything, you have to have a vision of what it should look like and knowledge about what is needed to complete it. That’s true for renewing anything: cars, houses, furniture, or lives. 

Jesus often encountered people with broken lives that needed restoring, and some of them weren’t the people you’d expect. 

In Matthew 8:6, a Roman centurion came to Jesus and said, “Lord, my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” We often focus on his confidence in Christ’s authority to heal from anywhere. And Jesus praises him for his faith that was unseen anywhere in Israel (Matthew 8:10). Immediately before this though, Jesus had just finished a sermon that was meant to mimic Moses’ address on Mt. Ebal (Deuteronomy 27-29), a sermon Moses had given right before he sent the people over the Jordan towards the Promised Land. In that instance, God was going to drive out the faithless Canaanite people. Now, Jesus had a non-Israelite come and demonstrate tremendous faith in who he was. 

The Israelites needed restoring, but some of the first examples of faith in His power to restore were people other than the Jews. Another time, a Syrophoenician woman came to Jesus for healing against all odds. Matthew 15:22, “A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, 'Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.'” She boldly asks for Jesus’ power even when it didn’t sound like she was going to get it at first. Like the Persistent Widow (Luke 18), she kept her faith strong. 

Although many Jews believed, there were still many who rejected Him. However, all of them would have acknowledged that Israel needed restoration or deliverance from the Romans. They wanted their kingdom back, but they lacked the vision to see Jesus as the one who could do it (at least at first). 

In Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, He tells her, “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Although “salvation is from the Jews,” the Jews weren’t the ones eager to have a restored life. What does this tell us? That sometimes those who have had the good news of a restored life right in front of them all their life, fail to recognize what that looks like or how to find it. Thankfully, Jesus brings it all out in the open where we can all make the decision to have a renewed life. He brings life, He brings hope for the future, and He brings peace to our lives. Let’s have “eyes to see, and ears to hear.”