Do you like good news? We all do, don’t we? I think we would all like to hear that we just became the sole heir to someone’s multi-million dollar estate. What other kinds of really good news would you like to hear?
Would you like to hear that Uncle Sam has made a mistake and is paying you back for the many years he has overcharged you on your income tax? How about hearing that the doctors just found a cure for anything that is wrong with you? That would be great, right?
Well, today we are going to hear some really good news. It will be rather new to some, and a refresher course to others. Today, we are going to be talking about the best news ever – God loves you!
I want to read a passage about a man who met Jesus in the worst of ways, but left in the very best of ways.
LUKE 8:26-35
‘They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. When Jesus stepped ashore, He was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time, this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tomb. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, don’t torture me!”
For Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot, and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And they begged Him repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into them, and He gave them permission. When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus’ feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid”.
To me, this is one of the most exciting stories in the New Testament. It shows clearly what Satan will do with a life when he has the chance; it also shows what Jesus can do with that same life when He meets it. That story paints a vivid picture of what a life without Jesus is like, and what a life with Jesus is like. The man was crazy and destructive before he came to Jesus. Afterwards, he was humbled enough to sit at Jesus’ feet, and focused enough to want to travel with Jesus as Jesus continued on his journey.
John Newton was the captain of a merchant ship. He didn’t deal in spices or fabrics, though. Mr. Newton dealt in slave trading. He was among the most despicable of men and must have had among the ugliest of hearts. But Mr. Newton met Jesus, and he began to change from the inside out. He eventually wrote one of the most beautiful songs ever written. That song is entitled, “Amazing Grace.”
The words to that song make up a very appropriate backdrop for this message today. Those words are:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me –
I once was lost, but now I’m found
T’was blind, but now I see.
First of all, let me say that without Jesus, we are all the worst of the worst. But there is a power to be found in Jesus; that is the power of the Spirit of God. Let me ask you a question right now. Do you realize just how great and powerful God is? God is so powerful that He spoke the world into existence. He didn’t take a bunch of pre-existing material and then start forming it together and shaping it the way He wanted. He spoke the word, and the world appeared. Now, that’s powerful!
And if God is powerful enough to do that, He is powerful enough to forgive all of our sins.
1. SIN WILL BRING YOU DOWN
This passage says that the man had not lived in a house for some time. Whenever we see where he lived, the tombs in a cemetery, we see how far Satan had degraded this man’s life. He didn’t enjoy any of the comforts of home, including a change of clothes from time to time. This man had nothing. He had dropped as far down on the ladder as a human can go and still be alive. I guess you could say that the man went from the front yard to the graveyard. That is where the devil wanted him. And that is exactly where the devil wants you, too; as low as he can make you go, and he will try his best to never let you up, either.
Sin will take the innocent heart and make it a guilty heart. It will take a pure mind and make it impure with the sin of the world. It will take the clean spirit and make it dirty and unclean. Sin will take you, and it will try its best to kill you.
Have you been paying attention to what’s out there in the world? Sin, by its very nature is abhorrent behavior, against the will of God. And as we said last week, the devil will tempt you with sin and make it look very good.
Last week, we also reminded you that you can walk either one of two paths in life; the path that leads up to God, or the worldly path that leads down to the devil. It is your choice, but you cannot walk on both at the same time – not even a little bit.
The world will tempt you with sins that look so acceptable. Look at that movie about two homosexual cowboys; ‘Broke back Mountain.’ Here is another example of how Hollywood has taken something sinful and glorified it and tried to make it look so acceptable.
Joan Lunden, co-anchor of a morning news show was on the cover of a magazine recently. On the front was the picture of this incredibly beautiful TV personality. The caption on the front said something like, “Joan Lunden finds a new life as her own woman!”
Inside, the story went on about how after she left her 13-year long marriage, she went out and bought an 8,000 square foot mansion, and how she bought all the furniture for it. She said she bought furniture that was bright and fun, not like the stuff they had in their old home.
The media has, once again, taken sin (the divorce) and glorified it to make it look really cool and fun! Now, I have talked to many people, both men and women, who have gone through a divorce, and not one of them said anything about how neat it was to go on a shopping trip. And I noticed that this magazine didn’t say anything about the hurt that was caused to both spouses and to their children. That is the enticement the world gives us; it’s all fun and everything is just dandy.
I think that truth in advertisement would make the world say something like, “Hide from the truth and have a lot of temporary fun on your way to burn in hell!” Contrary to the picture the world paints, sin always lowers a person to their lowest possible level and then will try to keep them there.
That being said, let me also say that divorce is something God does not want. I personally feel that there are so many divorces because we rush into our marriages. We do not take the time to seek God’s advice in marriage, and we don’t seem to be able to seek God’s advice about divorce. If you will only let Him, God can take any sitaution we are in and make it better. God can also take anybody and make their lives holy and righteous through Jesus.
One night a man was brought into New York’s busy Bellevue Hospital. He appeared to be just another bum with a slashed throat. He had been brought in from the Bowery, which in many cases was the last stop before the morgue. The Bowery was an area of filth, loneliness, cheap booze, drugs, disease, and the dead end of many a life.
This man looked like all the rest. It was obvious that he had lived to drink. His health was gone. He was cold and starving. On that icy January morning, this man who looked twice his age, was found lying in a heap, nearly naked and bleeding from a deep gash in this throat. His forehead was badly bruised and he was semi-conscious.
A doctor was called, but time had already run out. The man died and was sent to the morgue. There he lay with a tag on his toe, and the workers were trying to identify him. In the pocket of his old, ragged coat was 38 cents and a note with these words on it:
“My dear friends and gentle hearts…….”
Before this 38-year-old man died, he had once written songs that you and I have sang all our lives. They include,
“Oh! Suzanna”
“Camp Town Races”
“Beautiful Dreamer”
“Old Folks at Home”
“My Old Kentucky Home”
and over 200 more songs that most of us are familiar with.
This ‘bum’ who was found drunken, half naked, and looking twice his age was the great songwriter, Stephen Foster. Nobody knows what all lead Mr. Foster down that road to his lowly death, but we can tell you that the enticement of sin from the world played a major role in it. It took him right to the bottom, and it kept him there until it killed him.
Remember - if sin and Satan can bring you down …
2. JESUS CAN LIFT YOU UP
‘When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, don’t torture me!”
For Jesus had commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot, and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
Something happened to that man when Jesus came by. He was set free from the minions of hell and was set free from the power that sin held over him. He no longer had to live like an animal in the cemetery.
Satan is powerful, but Jesus is more powerful. Satan hates God and everything God has created; including us. He doesn’t want us to live with him forever, but he would rather us be with him in hell than to be with God in Heaven. The biggest difference is that Satan hates us while Jesus Christ loves us.
A preacher was out walking in the country one day and stopped by a water pump alongside the road. While he was there, the old farmer who lived there came out to talk to him. While they chatted, the preacher noticed the farmer had a weather vane on the barn, and on it were the words, “God is love.”
The preacher asked the farmer if that meant that God was as unreliable as the wind, and the farmer said it meant that no matter which way the wind blows, God is still love.
Someone asked Billy Graham once what the difference was between the gods of other religions and the God of Christianity. Rev. Graham said that our God was the only God who strived to have a personal relationship with each one of us. Our God was the only God who would listen to everything we told Him. Our God was the only God who let a Son die because He loved us so much.
And our Savior is the only leader of any religion who has come out of the grave to live eternally. All the rest are just a bunch of dusty bones in some hole in the ground, and that’s all they will ever be.
There is a story of a little 2-year old girl named Erika who wandered away from the house in the middle of the night. The biggest problem was that this was in northern Canada and it was in the middle of winter.
When they found little Erika, her legs were frozen stiff along with her body, and all signs of life were gone. She was rushed to the emergency room of the local hospital, and the doctors were amazed to find that she was not dead after all. To everyone’s astonishment, there was no brain damage and no signs of frostbite.
Some of us have wandered away from our Father’s house and have been brought near to the point of death. Our hearts have hardened; our spiritual bodies look lifeless; and we have started hating our brothers and sisters. We are almost at the point of spiritual death and yet we don’t even recognize it.
But our Heavenly Father has noticed that we are missing and He has been looking for us. He can take our lifeless spirits and restore them back to health. He can take our hardened hearts and make them once again loving and caring.
Before He can do that, however, we must be responsible enough to see the situation we are in and go to Him with a heart that seeks His wonderful forgiveness. More than anything else, we need to tell Him how much we love Him and how sorry we are for walking away from Him. We need to become a humbled person, bowing before Him in prayer, begging His forgiveness.
A friend of mine once told me that I was wrong about that. He said we need to pray, but we never need to beg God for anything. I disagree. I think that when we have decided to choose sin, and have walked away from God, we need to feel absolute remorse in our hearts, and that remorse will make us want to beg Him for reconciliation.
That friend of mine, well, his wife left him a couple of years after that because he stepped out on her. I saw him drop to his knees, with tears in his eyes, and literally beg her to forgive him and take him back. That is what a humble heart does, and that is how the Christian begs God for forgiveness, not because we have to, but because we want to.
And once we choose to follow Jesus, we find that …
3. JESUS HAS A JOB FOR US
If we read ahead in our text to verses 38 and 39, we see where the man who was healed by Jesus begged to go with Him when He left, but Jesus told him to go back to his home and tell others what God had done for him.
I look at the sum of humanity and feel such sorrow. They are unaware of what is available to them. They just float through life, kind of like those dandelion seeds that float through the air – being taken wherever the wind blows, just to land wherever it puts them down. They have no control at all over their lives, and they aren’t aware of it.
Let me ask you a question. If you were leaving the church today and you saw a small child wandering onto the freeway, what would you do? Would you think, “I am afraid to get involved because that little child might get mad at me, so I will ignore it.” Or would you think, “I HAVE TO GET TO THAT CHILD NO MATTER WHAT THE COST!” All of us would like to say the latter, wouldn’t we? The truth is, most of us would quickly think of the first thought. You don’t agree with me? Let me prove it to you.
When you see somebody who doesn’t know Jesus, you know they are going to die. Knowing that, why don’t you talk to them about Him? See, people are so afraid of others saying something critical to them, they are more willing to just turn their backs on God.
Jesus has a job for each of us, and that job is to reach other people. Whatever reason you have for not doing so is not good enough. Whatever reason you have for not doing so is actually nothing but an excuse to keep you comfortable. But when Jesus said, “Go!” He was talking about our going out of our comfort zones.
This man was saved by Jesus and then sent by Jesus. There was something Jesus needed for him to do. Once our lives have been transformed; once we have professed Jesus as Savior; we receive a mission. That mission is to “return home and tell others how much God has done for us.”
We stand and sing, “I Love to Tell The Story”, and then leave church and refuse to tell the story. You hired me to preach sermons. What would you do if I refused to preach? Would you still consider me your pastor? I think not. Likewise, how do you think God feels when we don’t do what He has told us to do?
In 1985, the city of New Orleans was throwing a party at one of the city swimming pools. They were celebrating that there had never been a drowning at any city pool in New Orleans. At this party were over 200 guests, and 100 lifeguards. Everybody was celebrating this great achievement. But as the party was breaking up and the last bunch of guests were leaving, someone saw the body of thirty-one year old Jerome Moody floating face down in the pool.
How many people are around us every day who are also drowning in loneliness, or hurt, or have doubt about why they are here or where they are going. I wander why we don’t reach out to help them. I think we are too much like the guests at the pool, in as much as we enjoy celebrating the Lord in church activities, but we aren’t very good at rescuing the perishing around us.
My most favorite illustration of all time is about some ducks going to church. You may have heard me tell it, but I am going to repeat it now, because it is so appropriate for this message today.
One Sunday morning, all the ducks gathered on the sidewalk and when they had all assembled, they waddled down the sidewalk to church. They do as ducks do and formed a single line, one behind the other.
They filed into church the same way, one behind the other, mindlessly following the one in front of them. During church, however, the preacher duck got excited and started banging his beak against the pulpit and proclaiming the need to stand up for Jesus! The ducks all yelled their “AMENS”, and then the duck preacher started flapping his wings and yelling that all of them needed to become more involved and more mature in the Word of our Lord. All the ducks stood and started flapping their wings in agreement.
This went on for a good hour, and all the ducks felt so fulfilled and happy. Then when they left, they all formed a single line and waddled out the door, one behind the other, just like they came in – unchanged, unmoved, and unable to carry on the work of Jesus. Too many Christians are just like those ducks. We love church. We love to love God, but we aren’t very good at getting involved with our fellow man.
Would the CrossRoads Singers please come back on up?
In closing, let me say that the reason it is so important to reach others is because they are where we once were. Sin has a grip on their life and they are being kept down by Satan. There is only one way out of this bondage and that is through Jesus as our Savior. And most of them don’t even know that. If you don’t reach them, who will? Nobody will.
God is all powerful, but He cannot possible love you more than He does right now, and He promises to never love you any less, either. And you must be aware of something – no matter what you have ever done in your life, it is not so big that God can’t instantly forgive you of it.
And as much as we like to carry our sins around with us like a bunch of rocks in a gunnysack, once God forgives, He casts them away from us. Once we receive Jesus Christ, fully and humbly, God makes those sins of ours as far from us as east is from west.
Where are you today in relation to Christ Jesus? How far have you walked away from Him? If your life isn’t in Christ, I can guarantee you it isn’t happy either. Why not take that chance and ask Jesus to help you today. Ask Jesus to lift you out of that miry clay and put you on solid rock. Ask Him to take you out of that pit and put you in His wonderful, loving sunshine. He will - if you ask Him to.
If you have been kept unhappy under the burden of sin in your life, if you have been kept from climbing up, do something about it this morning. By coming forward and receiving Jesus into your heart, you are throwing off the lid Satan has kept you under, and you will begin to feel the freedom of being God’s loved child.
INVITATION
