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Dec 15, 2019

Highly Favored - Advent Week 3 - Love

Passage: Isaiah 61:1-11

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Isaiah

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: love, freedom, favor, savior, enslaved, captives

God’s “FAVOR” has come in the Flesh as a child in a manger! God’s love is so overwhelming that he has come to all of us brokenhearted captives to sacrificially gives us a crown of glory. This passage became Jesus’ first sermon. He was just baptized and then tempted in the desert for 40 days, then comes into the synagogue, read this passage and said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21) Passage themes include: Freedom for the poor and captive. Help, Hope, Rescue // Poor, captive, needy //  God’s favor, love.

 Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Isaiah 61:1,10a,11

READING: Luke 1:26-33

MUSIC: 

CONFESSION / PRAYER / GRATITUDE 

MISSIONAL LIVING: Christmas Eve Services / Young Lives

ADVENT READING: Joy Candle (Third Candle)

  • Isaiah 2:2-5
  • Luke 1:68-79
  • Readers: Casey Family

MESSAGE: Highly Favored: Advent Week 3 - Love

CENTRAL TEXT:  Isaiah 61:1-11

MISSIONS: Leah Emory (London)

COMMUNION: 

BENEDICTION:  Revelation 1:5-6 

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Luke 4:17-21
  • Revelation 3:17-19
  • John 8:34-36
  • 2 Peter 2:19
  • 2 Corinthians 3:17
  • Romans 8:31-32a, 37-39 

MEDIA:

12.15.19 Album

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. What Love Is (i.e. WHO Love Is):
  2. How do we typically define “love”?
  3. This is what Jesus quoted in his very first sermon (Luke 4:17-21).
    1. And said that it was fulfilled IN HIM.
    2. Why do you think he chose this passage?
  4. What does it mean to be “FAVORED” by God?
  5. How does this describe “love”?

Who Love Is For:

  1. Look through the passage and pull out who love is for...
  2. (i.e. brokenhearted, mourners etc)
  3. Go through them and dig deep...what do they mean?
  4. Go beyond to the worldly ways and hit the spiritual.

What imprisons you? owns you? binds you?

  1. What keeps you from being free?

Can you see and own how you are in those categories.

What Love Does (in me):

Going through those categories from above,

    Describe the inverting of our darkness for his light.

    How have you seen these loves/blessings in your life?

How is it that these blessings were purchased on the Cross?

What Love Does (through me):

Verses 10 & 11 are US responding to Jesus’ gifts of love.

    What does it mean to love the way we’ve been loved?

    Think through:

- Loving Up (worship)

   - Loving Around (discipleship)

- Loving Out (missions) 

QUOTES:

  • "The lost enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded." - C.S. Lewis
  • "I’ve been such a bound man. I've been a pastor proclaiming freedom to the prisoners while I lay buried under the jail" - Scotty Smith (Objects of His Affection)
  • “You believe whatever you want, Floyd. But I’m telling you these walls are funny. First, you hate em. Then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.” - Red (The Shawshank Redemption)
  • “The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need great worship…You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved it...moved to tears and moved to laughter...moved by who God is and what he has done for you.” - Tim Keller
  • “The only way to break the hold of an object on the soul is to show it something more beautiful” - Thomas Chalmers
  • “What will change, the fundamental structures of the heart? Love. Radical love. Radical, unconditional, love is the only thing that will take our mistrustful, in denial, conniving little hearts and shock them into a whole new way of living and being. Love.” - Tim Keller
  • “True freedom is not choice or lack of constraint, but being what you are meant to be. Humans were created in the image of God. True freedom, then, is not found in moving away from that image but only in living it out.” -  Saint Augustine
  • “God wants us to live in the world the way He designed it to be enjoyed. His design has boundaries, yes, but living within these boundaries does not constrict our freedom; it expands it.” - Jessica Nicholas  

    BOOKS / DOCS

    SERMONS / TALKS: