Sermon notes - What God Loves to Do
God’s Favourite Work
- If God were to tell us his favourite work, what would it be?
- I know this would be “bring glory to his name”, but how?
- Saving the lost?
- Love?
- How about: “Undoing all the evil Satan has done”
- Turning the worst brokenness into the highest value
- The most hopeless defeat ==> the greatest victory
Legion
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1. God Loves Unlovely People
- Jesus seemed to specialize in loving unlovely people:
- Examples ?? lepers, blind, corrupt tax-collectors
- Jesus came to show us what God is like
- The complete revelation. Not just one aspect.
- God loves the unlovely:
- This is at the centre of his identity
2. Saving someone like this reveals his power
- “He/she’s a nice person—would make a good Christian”
- Jesus has greater power than all the other powers in the universe put together
- one man against 1000 demons and it is no contest—all they can do is plead to go into pigs
- it is so pathetic it is almost funny if you think about it
- There is no situation so bad that Jesus cannot turn it around
3. What God loves to do more than anything else
- To undo all the damage that Satan has done!
- Two kingdoms: Kingdom of God & Kingdom of darkness no contest
- The character of the two kingdoms
- Satan likes to twist & destroy people—Turn them into garbage
- To take a person created in God’s image (as we all are) into trash
- Stephen Donaldson series Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
- Jesus loves to turn garbage into jewels
- Trash into gold, silver and precious stones
- He has a special joy in undoing all the human misery and wrecked lives
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4. How should we respond?
- Maybe your life is in a mess
- Jesus specializes in turning them around and replacing the bad stuff with good stuff
- He loves to do it! Just come to him and ask him!
- We are either members of the Kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light
- If Jesus is not your king, then don’t waste any time
- All you have to do is to ask and he will take you into his kingdom
- You have nothing to lose and everything to gain
- don’t be like these people in v.17 who just wanted Jesus to leave
Our Response
- God Loves Unlovely People
- We respond by having the heart of God in us
- but first we must be secure in his love for us!!!
- Saving someone like this reveals his power
- We believe in God’s awesome power for today
- What God loves to do more than anything else
- We join him in doing this
- Trusting his power in you, join him in undoing all the damage that Satan has done in this world
