222. Restoration
Jeremiah 27:22 They shall be carried to Babylon, and there shall they be until the day that I visit them, saith the Lord; then will I bring them up, and restore them to this place.
The immediate prophecy is that the people of Israel will be exiled to Babylon, there the Lord will visit them, and then He will bring them up and restore them in their land. This prophecy came about as predicted.
By Scriptural extension, this becomes a promise for us and all believers in Christ, who are the people of God. We are in exile in the World, away from our home with God where we belong; Sin separated us from God and we exist in a far country. The Lord will visit us; the Lord did visit us when the Son of God became a human being and lived and died and rose on the earth in this Exile. God visited us exiles in a strange land, called the World. The Lord Jesus brought us up from bondage to Sin and living in a condemned world. He brought us into the kingdom of God. “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Through Baptism and faith we have entered the kingdom where we belong, where we are at home.
Then last of all, and most important, the Lord will restore us to our place. Our proper place is “with the Lord.” Jesus has gone to the Father’s house to prepare a place for us, and we shall be with the Lord forever in His house. This is complete restoration. To be restored to something implies that there was a something that we lost or was broken, and to be restored is to return to the place or condition we were in once before. What was that original situation or location? It was the perfect and holy paradise of God, the Eden from which Sin expelled us. We did not actually experience that place in our lifetime, but nevertheless we were there in Adam. Just as we were in Adam when he sinned, so also we were there when he enjoyed a perfect life in the Garden.
We turn ahead to the end of the Book and we see that the restoration is actually greater than the original. The restored Paradise, the new heaven and the new earth, will be much grander than the first Paradise. [Revelation 21-22]. In Adam we remember what we lost; in Christ we anticipate what He found for us again, Paradise Restored. For now, Jesus gives us “times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.” Heaven received Jesus until the “time for restoring all things.”