The Road to Restoration
As we dive into our fourth week of our series “New” from the book of Zechariah, we come across and interesting story in Zechariah 6: 9-15.
The prophet is given instructions by God to go find three men, Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, who have recently returned from Babylon and request of them silver and gold with which to make a crown.
This crown is to be placed on the head of Joshua, the high priest, who will then speak to the people about “the Branch”.
The Branch is someone described in this passage as, bearing royal honor, sitting on a throne, being both priest and king and bringing peace. This person prophetically spoken of is Jesus, the Branch from the lineage of David.
Finally the crown will be placed in the temple as a reminder to these men of God’s promise to restore. Historically this was a moment in need of restoration. This book was written in the midst of a massive building project!
While some of God’s people were still in exile, and their homeland had been wrecked God is promising to rebuild. We see throughout scripture that God loves restoring the broken things in our lives! (Psalm 34:18, Psalm 51:17, Psalm 147:3, Matthew 5:3). It is God’s desire to make things right again in our lives.
Maybe as you read this you identify with brokenness, exile and destruction. Perhaps your desire is to experience restoration. I believe that God will work to restore the brokenness in our lives, if we will trust him and obey him!
So how do we find this restoration? First, we are called to trust God now. Trust God even in the midst of our brokenness. Zechariah could have easily been frustrated with God when given all these instructions. God wanted him to make a crown when he was trying to build the temple but God doesn’t call us to do the restoring, God calls us to do the trusting.
So often what goes wrong in our attempts to restore the brokenness in our lives and world is that we don’t begin the work from a place of reliance and trust in God. We try to fix our own problems.
We need to ask honestly of ourselves, “What areas of my life am I refusing to trust God with?” God was faithful to rebuild the temple. God provided man power and resources but trusting God’s plan was essential in seeing this come to pass.
Many times, I’m afraid, we want good things, but instead of trusting and relying on God to bring them to pass we try to engineer them ourselves. We desire to see revival, so we try to plan revival but God desires for us to trust in him to revive and restore us, instead of trying to manipulate his power and plan.
Zechariah 6:15 gives us some incredible instructions as well for seeing brokenness restored in our lives, “This will happen when you fully obey the Lord your God.”
Obedience is our part to play in the story of God redeeming the brokenness in us and around us. This is evident in the story of Naaman, who was healed from his leprosy only after being completely obedient to what God had instructed him to do through the prophet Elisha. Healing and restoration came as a result of his uncommon and inconvenient obedience.
We know we’re being obedient to God when we look to his word (Psalm 119: 105) and we listen to his Spirit in our lives (John 16:13). You can not be obedient to God while disobeying scripture! It is his will that we follow his word. We can also know we are being obedient in everything to God when we are surrendered to his Holy Spirit.
Questions for Further Discussion:
What’s something that stood out to you from the sermon or your small group tonight?
What are broken things in our lives or world that we want to see restored? How is God calling us to trust him and obey him in those areas?
How can believers participate in God’s desire to restore others?
I’d encourage you to share a story here about something that was broken in your life and has since been restored, share with your student how God worked through that.
