Advent Week 4: Restoration

So during the Advent season, we've been taking a look at uh these four themes that uh we would sort of suggest to you are the overarching narrative of Scripture if you were to use four words to describe what the storyline of Scripture is.

Certainly creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

Some have used the word glorification instead of restoration or consummation, and there's lots of different ways to describe it, certainly, uh not limited to our four chosen words, but uh it's been great as we've taken each of the four Sundays here leading up to Christmas to be talking about how the incarnation of Christ is fully integrated with the overall storyline of the Bible because really Jesus is the subject and and the of the entire Bible and his glory and his purposes are what we read about when we read the Bible.

The Advent tradition teaches us to both look backward in time to the first Advent or appearing of Jesus, the arrival.

The word Advent means arrival also.

Um so it teaches us to look back, reflect back on that first appearing, but also to look forward with anticipation to his promised second coming, where he would would have where he's promised to return and restore or make all things new, as we just heard read in the book of Revelation.

So throughout these four Sundays, we've been taking each one of those words, trying to make a connection or draw a connection for us, and as we think through what the grand narrative of Scripture is and how that all culminates in the person and work of Christ.

The first Advent being the inauguration or the opening, if you will, or the beginning to unfold of God's kingdom.

And we look forward to the second Advent where his kingdom will come in its fullness.

So this at least begs a few questions, and we'll throw as we as we talk about restoration, we'll throw some questions up on the screen for you.

Um at least begs some of these big questions people ask, are we there yet?

All right, how many of you as a kid ever asked this question?

Okay, and I don't know how many of you, you know, I I did that all the time.

I was very impatient as a child, and and uh made me, I wasn't looking online, I saw this episode of The Simpsons where they're like, they're they're they want to go to Mount uh Splashmore, and they just I'm gonna be going to Mount Splash, I'm gonna go to Mount Splash, when are we going to Mount?

They get in the car, finally they wear the parents down, they get in the car, and they pull out of the driveway immediately.

It's are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

Are we there?

And that's the way we all are.

We're impatient.

We're we're raised on sort of microwave mentality.

Everything is push a button 30 seconds later, we are having a burrito or something, you know.

And it's hot and and it's great.

Um, but I'm impatient.

Uh, we're living in what theologians call the already but not yet kingdom of God.

It's already inaugurated.

It was inaugurated with the coming of the King, Jesus, in his first advent.

It will be uh in its fullness when he returns again, as we just heard read from the scriptures.

Another question that some people will ask occasionally is does human history have an eternal destiny?

If so, um uh what what do we know about it?

And the Bible does talk about these kinds of things, not with a lot of detail.

We certainly don't get uh a lot of instruction on as much as I would like.

Like I'm curious, I want to know about the furniture of heaven, I want to know about the the sequence of the uh end times and all that sort of thing.

And and and of course, much literature, many TV shows, movies, all that have been written about the sequence of the eschaton or the the last times, if you will, leading up to that grand and glorious day of the Lord.

But uh you can go in pursuit of all of that and completely miss the joy of knowing that he's coming.

The joy of knowing that he's actually planned to return and actually plans to set things right, getting so caught up in the details of when he'll do it.

And does it figure into your numer, your, you know, your mathematical equation as you try to discern how many weeks there are and how many days and when is he actually going to come?

I'm standing with Jesus.

He said, no man knows the day or the hour.

That's pretty safe to stand next to Jesus on that.

That's really up to the Father to determine when the Lord will return.

When do I want him to come back?

Before I finish this sentence.

Why?

Because I'd love for things to be set right in this world.

There's a lot broken in this world, and there's a lot broken in me, and I'd love for that all to be set right.

I'm not, I don't have a death wish, death wish.

I have an eternal life and life in its fullness wish.

And that will only come, I think, when the Lord comes and wraps things up and sets things right.

After we've confessed our sins, if God has forgiven us, why so often do there remain these difficult consequences resulting from our sins?

Well, that's because we're still in the already, but not yet.

It's not yet.

And so again, I'm impatient.

I want things to be finished and wrapped up.

What does the Bible mean when it talks about God's plan for the restoration of the world?

Great question.

And I think one that when we look into some of the prophetic literature, and especially some of the apocalyptic literature, like we have with the book of Revelation, um, a lot of people will speculate.

And eschatological speculation is not something I'm given to.

Doesn't mean I'm timid, doesn't mean I'm cowardly or anything.

I'm not saying that.

I just think that there are some beautiful mysteries there that are meant to put me in awe of who God is and that God is in charge.

And I recognize how great this God is, this infinite God who is sovereign over all of human history.

And I I'm drawn to trust him because of what he's already done.

I'm drawn to trust him when I can't explain him.

See, the Bible is not filled with explanations, it is filled with declarations.

And we see that in the creation.

We see the the uh uh unfolding of the first couple chapters of Genesis.

It's not an explanation of how God created the world, the method that he used, other than to say he spoke, and it was so.

And so it's a declaration that God created everything, not an explanation of how God created everything.

So if you're curious about those things, is it seven days or seven epochs or eras or whatever, have at it, man.

You can check, you can you can go check all that out.

There's lots of, like I say, lots of stuff that's been written about all of that.

Um, but that isn't really the subject of that we're interested in as we come to uh the Advent season and as we're talking about creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

With restoration, what we see is that we have in redemption a process, and in restoration, we have a goal in mind.

There's something that's going to happen that hasn't happened yet.

And we're looking forward to that day.

So we have said along the way, you might look into the past and say, we've been redeemed, we're being renewed, and one day we'll be restored.

And so there are different senses of the word and different ways that we might talk about it.

Um, restoration is an interesting word.

I don't know how many of you have ever restored.

Anybody here restored an old car before?

Anybody at all?

One of you?

Okay, two of you?

Okay, good.

I did that once.

I owned a 1968 Firebird 400 twice.

And I'm kind of proud of this part, I'll tell you.

I bought it, I bought it when I was 16.

I had been working at McDonald's for about a year and a half, and uh I was the uh guy that toasted the uh hamburger rolls, okay?

And I saved some money, and I bought this car for$900, okay?

Got this 68 Firebird 400.

It was way too big a car for at the time, skinny little guy like me.

Um I sold that car for$1,200.

Thank you so much.

Yes, that's good.

I did.

Yeah.

And I felt good about it until a couple years later I found out the guy that bought it from me dogged it.

And it was like, this is my favorite car, man.

I can't believe you dogged it.

So I bought it back from him for$750.

You guys are you starting to get a sense of why I'm proud about this, right?

And then I had to put a bunch of work and money into it to restore it because he dogged it.

Maybe you've restored an old piece of furniture.

Maybe, maybe you've uh, you know, uh uh noticed around here as we as we we purchased this building five or six years ago and and God was gracious and you were faithful and we were able to do that.

Now we got a place to sort of hang our hat and live and uh a little bit more security in terms of where we can meet.

But it's an old building.

Three months in after we made the purchase, the elevator goes out.

It's like$91,000 worth of the elevator going out.

We had to restore the elevator.

We had to buy some new computerized stuff to bring it up to codes and all this sort of.

But it's an old building, but I love the character of it.

It's worth restoring.

It's it's kind of cool.

And so our our we we love this place.

We we we love uh to be able to meet here in a place like this that has some level of uh of beauty and and and history uh and all that.

Uh but restoring for us is a little bit of a little bit of a process, and I think a lot of times we'll think of restoration as a process.

But when it comes to the biblical understanding of what God intends to do on that great day, we know that this redemption or renewing process is actually heading to a restoration that has a sort of a finality.

We've now now that we this has happened.

And a new heavens and a new earth, as it as we heard it from in Revelation, is described as coming down from the heavens and from God, and God is now dwelling with his people.

So it's not an eschatological escape where we go off to the great black hole in the sky somewhere and and sort of escape everything.

No, it's God coming to dwell among his people again, and it's this renewed relationship with God that is full and beautiful.

It's described in that passage from Revelation, as a we're a bride that are being prepared for for our husband.

You know, and it's really awesome.

So there's lots of ways, poetic language, apocalyptic language and literature that the Bible uses to help us get inside of this idea that the God of the Bible, not only is he redeeming God, not only creating God, and he responds to the fall by coming himself to fix what's wrong, to pay the price for our sin, but he offers us redemption, but it's actually going somewhere.

All of this is leading, somewhere you're thinking right now, I wish this sermon felt like it was going somewhere.

And that probably happens often here at the village chapel.

But it is.

And what I'm trying to persuade all of us to see is that we're not just kind of careening through the universe, an accidental co-location of atoms and chemicals, with no real purpose in mind, but that God, who's in charge of human history, the one who created it all, the one to whom everything belongs by right, also wants to have uh the opportunity to dwell with his people.

And he wants to make that possible through the person and work of Jesus.

Essentially, in a sentence, as Yancy says, message of the Bible is this God wants his family back.

Okay?

Family has we've rebelled, is the way sin would be a dis a description of the way we've responded to God.

We've rebelled, we've gone our own way.

Jesus came to redeem us, but his intention is to do even more than that, and that's to restore his entire creation and to restore us and those who would put their hope, faith, and confidence in him.

So we have really amazing questions that uh that I think the Bible addresses when it when when you when you talk about these four words creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

I mean, if you if there's no creator, if this is all just accidental, that has an impact on what you think about your life and the import of other lives as well.

Whether other lives even matter.

If we're just an accidental co-location of Adams, really, it's just random.

Nothing matters.

But if there's a God who created us in his image and has planted his image, placed it inside of each and every human person, then all of a sudden every single human life has intrinsic value.

And it's not just a political statement, that's not just a social statement, it's actually a biblical concept.

The Imago Dei, God has placed his image within us.

Sin has marred or distorted that image.

Christ has come to renew that, to redeem us, if you will.

And one day is going to restore everything as we read from uh Revelation.

Along the way, and by the way, scripture is just replete, it overflows with these images of God being a restoring God.

Here's a story you're familiar with that Jesus told.

He told it to some tax collectors and sinners, in other words, kind of the folks who were sort of on the dark side of life.

People who were struggling, if you will, with their understanding of what it would be to be one of God's people.

And so he told this story in the hearing of some Pharisees who didn't draw near to hear him, but to grumble and complain about what he was saying.

Some self-righteous religious folk.

And there are plenty of those on the planet as well.

Matter of fact, I would say self-righteousness is eclipsed now.

It's taken the place of hypocrisy.

Um, it's because there's self-righteousness out there everywhere on every front.

You know, it doesn't matter if you're religious or not, everybody's self-righteous right now.

That's why everybody's mad.

That's why everybody's yelling and screaming.

They're all self-righteous.

They think they got it right, you got it wrong, therefore I'm gonna, you know, in some way uh out vent my rage at you.

But here's Jesus comes along, and he does this thing.

He tells a story that I think really conveys how much God loves restoration.

He says, A certain man had two sons.

The younger of them said to his father, Give me the share of this estate that falls to me, and he divided his wealth between them.

Not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.

When he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in the country, and he began to be in need, and he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

He was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating.

That's a lo he had gotten.

No one was giving anything to him.

Everybody was a taker, nobody was a giver.

He thought that was the place where I was going to find everything.

That's where I want to go, that's where I want to go, spend my entire find my identity and spend my entire inheritance.

And it doesn't turn out so good.

Everybody's a taker, nobody's a giver.

When he came to his senses, and that's interesting because he had actually lost his senses.

But when he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread?

In other words, they're not eating pigs' pods.

They're not face down in the dirt like this guy was.

How many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread, but I'm dying here with hunger?

I'll get up and go to my father, and I'll say to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven, and in your sight I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me as one of your hired men.

So he's willing to be a servant in the house of his father if he can just have bread again.

He doesn't think he deserves to be a son again.

He got up and came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

In other words, his father had been watching from the windows.

And our father has been watching from the windows for a long, long time.

Hoping that in the distance he'll see you turn around or me turn around.

Just one step in his direction, and he'll take the other 999 if you're a thousand steps away from God.

The son said to him as the father embraces him and kisses him and has compassion on him, Father, I've sinned against heaven in your sight.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to us, he doesn't even reply to this thing.

You see, here's the son saying, I'm not worthy to be your son.

And the father doesn't even reply to that.

But he does something, he takes action.

The father says to his slaves, Quickly bring out the best robe, put it on him.

Put a ring on his hand, sandals on his feet, bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let's eat and be merry.

Oh, wow.

A ring, a robe, sandals.

Sounds like restoration to me.

Let's celebrate.

They began to be merry.

The older son was in the field when he came and approached the house.

He heard music and dancing.

He summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things might be.

And he said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has received him back safe and sound.

Well, this older brother became angry and was not willing to go in.

And his father came out and began entreating him.

And he answered and said to his father, Look, for so many years I've been serving you, and I've never neglected a command of yours.

And yet you've never given me a goat.

I might that I might be merry with my friends.

And when this son of yours, no, he doesn't say, but when my brother, he says, When this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.

And he said to him, My child, you've always been with me.

And all that is mine is yours.

But we had to be merry.

We had to rejoice.

For this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live.

He was lost.

And he's been found.

See, becoming one of God's children means I also become a member of God's community.

And I belong now not only to the Father, but to everyone else who belongs to the Father.

And I don't know about you, but sometimes that's weird.

Sometimes I don't like traveling in the car with those kids.

They yell, are we there yet?

A lot more frequently than I do, sometimes, and sometimes they never yell at all.

But the Lord wants his family back, and that's what you see in the prodigal son's story.

It's not just one, it's both.

The younger son certainly represents the irreligious person, self-centered, worshiping at the altar of autonomy.

Something we do all the time in our day and age.

Cultures, this room may be filled with people that think this way.

I don't know.

People who become reckless, don't think about their fool how their foolishness affects anybody else, disregard the loving warnings of others, even those who are genuinely trying to help them, not just control them.

And some of us have been younger sons at times.

I have.

Many of us have been older sons.

Many of us, if we're honest about it, we follow the rules.

But secretly we've got expectations of earning love and privilege or position or power.

And we become prideful, self-righteous, and really don't like it when others do wrong.

Our first thought is I hope they get what they deserve.

I want grace for myself, but I really want justice for everybody else.

And if you're honest, maybe that's you too.

The older son is a very difficult situation.

And what's really hard is a lot of Bible teachers talk about, it's really hard to resist becoming the younger son, just in and of itself.

That's true.

But it's harder still to resist becoming the younger son without becoming the older son.

And that's because self-righteousness is more at more epidemic proportions and levels than even hypocrisy, although you could probably argue they're both uh everywhere and in every heart.

Um the father in the story, though, I love this, represents this God that we're talking about, that is the creator of all things, that responded to the fall in the personal work of Jesus who didn't fall.

He stood.

And he went to the cross and laid down his life, that we might be redeemed, start being renewed, and one day be restored, as we heard from the book of Revelation.

This is a God that loves restoration.

This is a God that does want his family back and is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to get his family back.

Jesus Christ, there are at least three things I would like to just uh offer for you to consider this morning.

Jesus Christ will have the last word, and he promises and intends to make all things new.

We heard that from the passage from Revelation.

We hear it actually many times in the New Testament.

Jesus Himself talking about how the Son of Man will come in glory with all of his angels.

The Son of Man is the one that will uh will judge between the goats and the sheep.

And and I know some people don't like that.

They react against that kind of thing.

Who are you to judge me?

Is sort of a big mantra in our world.

And the easy thing for me to say is look, be a sheep.

Don't be a goat.

And how do you do that?

You trust and you hope in Christ.

Jesus is the one who will have the last word.

He's the one that promises and intends to make all things new.

I actually look forward to that.

The longer I've been on the planet, the more I'm looking forward to this.

And the idea of things being set right is attractive to me.

If you have any love for justice whatsoever, and there are probably a bunch of you that would say that you do, and you might even march for justice, or you might protest against injustices of some sort.

But to do the work of, to accomplish, to bring about justice is something ultimately God will do.

And if you if you trust in Christ, the one who died and got back up from the grave, the one who died for my sins and your sins in the greatest injustice the world has ever seen, and then got back up from the grave, defeating our last and greatest enemy, you know he's got the power and authority to actually bring about justice.

He's the one who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

And he's the one who will one day have the final word.

N.T.

Wright puts it this way, in surprise by hope.

For God to judge the world meant that he would, in the end, put it all to right, straighten it out, producing not just a sigh of relief all around, but shouting for joy from the trees and fields, the seas and the floods.

And I love the biblical language that becomes so animate, the creation becomes so animated in its praise and glory of the God who created it.

And yes, uh, that's wonderful to hear those kinds of images.

But why are we so quiet, I would ask?

We were created to worship, whether or not you know that, you are a worshiper.

You worship something, what are you worshiping?

If it's not God, it's something finite.

Something that will ultimately not satisfy.

But you come in the room like I do, and we all do, and a very cultural move on our part.

But nobody makes you, nobody can make you worship.

You can sing the songs, I can sing the songs, I can vibrate my vocal cords and never actually worship the Lord.

I can horumph or or curmudgeon my way through a worship service, and you can do that as well.

And you could kind of, you know, sort of tolerate it because it's a part of the cultural move you make or whatever something.

But without engaging with God, it's not actually worshiping God.

It might actually be worshiping yourself or worshiping this church or worshiping the culture in some way.

Um, God is calling us uh to become what he designed us to be: worshipers of him, not worshipers of anything else.

And our souls flourish best when we're actually worshiping him.

And even the trees, even the fields, even the seas and the floods, Wright says, will give glory to God.

We have the choice.

I guess that's a good question for us to ask ourselves.

What are we worshiping?

To speak of such things using apocalyptic literature, like we heard read from the book of Revelation, is understandable.

It's awe-inspiring.

I love the book of Revelation.

It might be uh in the sh on the short list of books we do next here on Sundays at the village chapel because I love, as I got into it and was reading through it uh again this season, I thought to myself, this is beautiful, the way this speaks with such great symbols.

Um, everything from the the the heavenly realm itself, the earthly cities, the beasts, the serpents, the dragons, the angels, the horses, throne rooms, exuberant worship of God.

It's clear we're getting a peek into a bit of reality that we don't really look at much.

And I think that would be an awesome study for us.

Secondly, if the restored are in the new uh new heavens and the new earth, we'll find that Jesus will be the righteous king and judge of all the nations.

And again, this is good news.

Think about who he is.

Um, he's the king we've always wanted.

He's the king we always needed, but he's also the king we've always wanted.

Why?

Because he's righteous.

Um, if he's going to be the final and last word, he's the judge we'd always hope for, who will judge with truth and with righteousness.

Jesus is the one who has taken our sins so seriously that he paid the price for it himself so that we could be set free to know God's love.

I love the way Stott summarizes it.

He says it's a great comfort to know that our judge will be none other than our Savior.

So on that great day, when God does wrap up human history, and all of this gets to the point where we're no longer in the process that's unfolding of redemption, but we actually get to the day of restoration of all things, where there's this new heavens and new earth.

Whenever that is, and I don't know when it is, it'll be two o'clock somewhere on the planet, though, because we have two o'clock in a couple different places on the planet at all the time, all the time, right?

It'll be either 2 a.m.

or 2 p.m.

somewhere.

But whenever he does that, um, he is going to set things right.

And the one who would be our judge, the one who will be our judge, wants to be our savior.

That is of great comfort to me, and I hope it is to you as well.

Thirdly, the ultimate glory of restoration belongs to Jesus.

He's the one who made redemption and restoration possible.

He's the one to whom we should turn, the one to whom we can give our thanks.

I mean, think of all the people, we just came from Thanksgiving.

Think of all the people that didn't have anybody to thank.

I mean, is Thanksgiving just a warm, fuzzy feeling, or is there actually somebody to thank, to turn and thank?

You know?

Do we thank God?

Or are we just thankful in just a warm, fuzzy sort of way?

The giving of thanks is more complete when there's someone to thank.

Someone who receives our thanksgiving.

And since we are designed to worship, I would say the same thing is true here.

God is the only one worthy of our worship.

He the ultimate glory for restoration, for redemption, uh, for finding a solution to the fall, and the ultimate glory for the creation event itself.

All of this belongs to the Lord Himself.

Not to, not to, we're not just thanking chance.

We're not giving glory just to dodge the bullet, you know, there's some kind of random, again, chance thing that I was able to escape somehow.

No, this was all planned by a God who before the foundations of the world even existed, had the plan of redemption in his mind and in his heart so that he could save us.

We modern people think of miracles as a suspension of the natural order, Tim Keller says.

But Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order.

The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it.

Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal where the world, the world where it is broken.

His miracles are not just proofs that he has power, but also wonderful foretastes of what he's going to do with that power.

Jesus' miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but they're a promise to our hearts that the world we all want is coming.

Elsewhere, Tim has borrowed from Tolkien's Samwise Gamgee to remind us quite simply that when Jesus comes back, everything sad will become untrue.

The day of restoration, the day of his choosing.

I don't know when it's going to happen.

It'll be two o'clock somewhere.

I don't know what time it'll be where you are or where I am, but the day of his coming is set in God the Father's mind.

We won't know it, and until then we are encouraged to occupy, to trust, to encourage one another, to be a part of the family of God's people.

And the fact that God became one of us is just that beautiful sort of foreshadowing again of what he intends to do.

That is, that he's not separated from his creation, that he actually can become one of us.

Even to a peasant family, a peasant couple in a pass-through nation, insignificant as it was, run over by multiple other empires over and over and over again.

And that's where he came when he became one of us.

So that we would all know that no matter who we are, no matter where we're from, no matter how little we have in life, he cares about us.

He came for us.

It is global and historic as we read about it in Psalms, Revelation, and even all the way back to Genesis 3, 15, where the plan was set in motion that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent, the seed of the serpent on its head.

That is, that he would do away with evil.

And in that grand global sense, that we hear all of that story, also we hear this very personal story of the prodigal son, knowing that the God of the Bible is a God who restores and he wants his family back.

I don't know where you're at in your relationship with the Lord today, but I hope and pray that you will hear his voice as he calls to you if he's calling you today, that you'll respond to him in repentance and in faith believing.

As Alistair McGrath says in a book called Studies in Doctrine, which I know that's a snoozer of a title, isn't it?

Well, the Lord can even redeem titles of books, okay?

So one of the most important things he says in this book, God wants and intends the restoration of a lost world to himself and to its true nature and destiny by breaking down whatever barriers are placed between it and him.

And in Jesus, God has actually made this possible.

This is one of the reasons we celebrate that he came.

He didn't have to.

He didn't owe it to us.

But he came, and that's why Christmas is amazing.

That's why the incarnation, God becoming one of us, is the grand miracle, as C.S.

Lewis called it.

Brothers and sisters, as we celebrate Christmas this year, let's give thanks to the King who has come and for all that he has already done.

But let's also give thanks to him because he is coming again soon.

And that day of great restoration is coming.

Look and marvel at all that Christ has done.

Look and be filled with wonder and hope as you consider his promises when the king returns and what he intends to do.

O come, all ye faithful.

Give glory to God in the highest.

He alone is worthy of all praise and honor.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for coming.

Thank you for the promise of your future return, the complete restoration of all that is wrong in this world.

We lean forward.

We we're already saying, are we there yet?

We're anxious, we're excited with great anticipation, looking forward to your return, Lord.

Again, not a death wish, but an eternal life wish.

A wish that things would be set right.

We pray, Lord, that until that day you'll be drawing us to see you in all your beauty and majesty, to be filled with faith that leads to repentance ourselves, that others would be seeing the gospel at work in our lives and our relationships, that they would hear the gospel as it flows freely from our lips, as we talk about things like creation, fall, redemption, and restoration and all that that means, as we begin to understand this grand narrative of Scripture and begin to live, uh live it out under the light of your grace and your great love for us.

Lord, set us free uh to be agents of your grace and Lord help us to walk in the light of it.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen and amen.