Ephesians 3, folks from Lantana Grace and
their love, and several mentioned how they used to come up here
to the conferences all the time and how what a blessing it was.
But she sang that song, he included me. There's a dear lady. Her
name was Ruby Elmore. And she sang that song. She sang
it to me on the way out sometimes. And the last time I remember
saying she is in a nursing home a little while before she died.
And her voice was very weak. But she started singing that
song. He included me. And Lord called her home. She's one of the sweetest ladies.
You know her name was Ruby and she really was a gem. A real
jewel. But I thought of her when she
sung that. Ruby just saying that all she'd just take out saying
it. And she had a beautiful voice. You know, the memory of the just
is blessed. The memory of the just is blessed.
And I'm very thankful for that. But I want to bring a message
hopefully by this morning on the matchless love. Of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the matchless love of Christ, our Lord. Let's start
reading here in Ephesians 3, 14, down through verse 19. For this cause, I bow my knees
under the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me say
something about that. It's not the posture that we're
in that we connect with God. It's not the posture that we
have A man can call on the Lord and bow, it's in the heart. Heart is where we worship from.
Heart is where we call on God from. Heart and soul is where
we talk to God with. It's not our posture. It's our
attitude and nature before God. It's not our posture. But Paul
said, I have a reason to bow my knees under the Father of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he said, in Christ, to whom
the whole family in heaven and earth is named. God's got a family. And you know what they're named?
You know who the leader of them is, the head of them is, and
the one who named them as the family? It's God the Father in
the name of His Lord Jesus Christ, His blessed Son. I'm in the family
of God. What a... You know, He said, You know, the love of God, how
matchless is the love of God that we're called the sons of
God. And then he goes on to here say
that he would grant, since you're his family, that he would grant
you according to the riches of his glory. And how rich is he? How rich is Christ? How rich
is God in his glory? To be strengthened with might
by his spirit in the inner man. That's where we need it. This
flesh contributes nothing to our salvation. This flesh is
a hindrance to us, a burden to us. And in this flesh dwells
no good thing. So it's why he says, in the inner
man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that you
being rooted and grounded in love. Oh, I love that. May be
able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, length,
depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes
knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness
of God." Now, you know, Paul said, I want you to know the
height, the depth, the length. Maybe it'll comprehend the height
of the love of Christ. And then he says, which passes
knowledge. He says, you know, I want you
to know it. I want you to know it, how high it is, how broad
it is, how deep it is, how high it is, and yet it passes anything
you can think. It passes knowledge. But I love
to think about the love of Christ. I love to think about the love
of God, and especially, you know, in the fact that He loves people
that's the most unlovable. He loves the people, that's the
most unlovable. I don't have no problem loving the Lord's
people. I don't. We know we pass from death unto
life because we love the brethren. But here's the thing about it.
When we talk about the love of Christ, when I say the matchless
love of Christ, I mean just that. There's nothing in this world,
nothing in this world that would match the love of Christ that
he has for his people. No love in the universe which
can match the love of Christ that he has for his elect people.
I remember a lady, a young woman, young woman, she was still in
her teens. She'd been married now for a
while, but she sat in my house and said that her dad never told
her, she had never been told that she was loved. Could you
imagine somebody never being told that they was loved? But
she could never been told she was loved. But when she found
out that God loved her from eternity, that God loved her, she said,
that's love enough. Don't need no more. I mean, that's
love. And all talking about the love
of a man for a woman, that don't even come close to matching the
love that Christ has for his people. Don't even match the
love. The love of a mother for a child,
and a lot of preachers, you know, let's all be in doctrine, teaches
that God, because he couldn't be everywhere, he created mothers.
But that's not so. The love of a mother for a child,
I mean, it's incredible. I mean, if it's a natural love
that they have for their child, it cannot possibly match the
love of Christ for his elect. Isaiah asked this question. Will
a mother forsake her child? Yes, she may. And yes, lots of
people have done it. But He said, I'll never forsake
you because I've written you on the palm of My hand. I've
been craving you on the palm of My hand. And when you see
the scars in Christ's name, and the blood that came out of His
hands, that means that He encraved us in the palms of His hands. And I'll tell you what, my name
is written in Jesus Christ, and my name, God, is engraved in
His hands. And you know, Jonathan, the Scripture
says that he loved David as his own soul, but that's nothing
compared to the love of that the Lord Jesus Christ has for
his people. Now I've got several things to
say about it and I hope it'll be a blessing to you. But I'll
tell you why his love is matchless because first and foremost is
that it's eternal. It's eternal. God in his eternal
counsels chose a people to save by his blessed grace before the
world ever began. And in His eternal counsels,
He said, I'm going to have a people, and I'm going to love those people,
and I'm going to save those people, and I'm going to do a work in
those people. And that love that He chose, and since God is eternal,
let me tell you this, since God's eternal, everything He does is
eternal. Everything he does is based on
his eternity. He declared the end from the
beginning and it's in his eternal love. Jeremiah 31 3 says I've
loved thee. I have loved thee with an everlasting
love and with cords cords of a man. I have drawn thee And
you know it continues, and you know what the consequence is
going to be? It's going to be eternal. It started in eternity,
and it goes into eternity. And what an amazing thing when
you found out that God loved you, in spite of you, in spite
of everything that you are, that God loved you. His love has no
beginning. His love has no ending. Now your
and my love has a starting place. There's a place where our love
starts. But there's no starting place for His love. And our love
has an ending time. It has an ending. You know, and
there's lots of women and men and husbands and wives that forsook
one another because they said they loved them, and then they
didn't love them. But there's one thing about the
love of Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ will love
His own as long as He exists in this world. As long as Christ
is on His throne, that's how long He'll love us. And I tell
you, it's a perfect love. It's a blessed love. You know,
our Lord Jesus Christ, He says that, all that the Father giveth
me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will ever,
no never, ever cast them out. You say, well, I've said this.
He won't cast you out. I've acted this way. He won't
cast you out. I admit I was harsh and cruel. He won't cast you out. Nothing
you can say or do in your life because of his illernal electing
love for you, there's nothing that Christ will ever, ever you
do that will cause Christ to cast you out. If he could cast
somebody out, he would have cast me out long, long ago. My love don't depend on his love.
My faith doesn't depend on his faithfulness. My nature, my attitude
doesn't depend on his for me. And I'm so thankful for that.
And oh my, his love is matchless because it's eternal. And I'll
tell you something else about it. It's free. That's one of
the most pleasing things I've ever heard, that what God does
for us, He loves us freely. Hosea 14, 4 says this, I will
love them freely, freely. Oh, this is one of the reasons
men stumble over the Lord Jesus Christ. They feel they have to
do something to merit His love, to earn His love, or to keep
in His love. But His love is free, being justified
freely by His grace. Oh my, my father is rich. You know, he's so rich that everything
he gives us, it has to be free. And I love the, I love the, you
know, we talk about sovereign grace. I like free grace better
than sovereign grace. And the reason I do is because
a lot of people can mention grace, but when you say free grace,
that means there's nothing conditioned on it. All it's free to us. It was free and giving it'll
be free tomorrow It'll be free at the end of our lives. It'll
be free throughout eternity And you know and we have problems
ourselves we have problems with this I don't know if you do or
not, but sometimes when we feel like we've done something good.
We feel good We do something bad. We feel bad. I But that absolutely has nothing
to do with the free love of God in Christ. It's free. And I tell
you what, you know, in my hands no price I bring. Simply, you
know, we say to the cross, simply to Christ I cling. Not just the
cross, Christ I cling. And so His love is eternal. It's free. And you know, that's
that girl that I was telling you about that says she had never
been told she was loved when she found out it was free. Here
recently, I put an article in a bulletin about free freely. And she come up to me over that
bulletin and she had big tears in her eyes. She says, you know,
hey, that wonderful that everything God gives us is free. No attachments,
no, no, nothing to pay, nothing to give, nothing to contribute
that is free. And our justification is free.
Our salvation is free. You know, we've never, ever earned
a blessing from God Almighty. We've never done anything in
our lives to ever earn a blessing from God. People talk about,
I'd like to get close to God. Listen, you can't be closer to
God than being in Christ. And I tell you what, here's the
thing, that beloved, everything God gives us is free. We can
never have earned a blessing. Everything God has for us is
in his son. This free grace, this free love
is in his blessed son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And oh my, I remember, something good and feel good
about it. And then I thought, oh my goodness, that's awful.
That's awful to think that way. To ever think that, boy, I've,
I thought a good thought. The minute you said, I thought
a good thought, you run it just like that. And let me tell you another thing
about our Lord's love. You know, not only is it eternal,
thank God it's eternal. And it's free. It's free. Oh,
I love Him freely. If I love Him, it's got to be
freely. There's nothing in Him that make me love Him. Nothing
whatsoever could make me love Him. I just love Him because
I will to love Him. And in His love is faultless.
Faultless. What do I mean by that? You know,
our Lord chastens whom He loves and rebukes whom He loves. And
our Lord Jesus Christ, even in His chastening, is faultless. I want you to keep Ephesians.
Look over with me in Revelations 319. Look in Revelations 319. You know, Paul says that as many
as he loves, he rebukes and chastens. He rebukes and he chastens. Now,
I've chastened my children. And I learned as I got older,
you know, if you get real, real angry and get on to them, you'll
end up doing something you regret. So I learned to wait a while
and calm down a while before I tear into them, if I can say
it that way. You know, because my goodness
alive, back when I was growing up, They'd make you go get your
own switch. And if it wasn't big enough or
good enough, they'd make you go get another one. And I'll
tell you what, I've seen people fly into their kids angry. No,
don't do that. Because I'll tell you what, what
if God chastened us when He got angry? We couldn't stand it. We couldn't bear it. But look
what He said here in Revelations 319. As many as I love, As many as I love, I rebuke and
I chasten. You know, and here's the thing.
I don't know when the Lord rebukes somebody. I know when He rebukes
me. And I don't know when He chastised
somebody. You know, that's why it's so
faultless. Our Lord Jesus Christ, what He does for us, He does
it in private. If He rebukes somebody, I don't
know it and you don't know it. You're the only one who knows
if He's ever rebuked you. You're the only one who knows
if He's ever chastised you. What He does, He does it privately. He'll do it right in the service
and nobody around you will know that God's rebuking you or chastening
you. And one of the easiest ways for
Him to chasten us, and I think the most common way that He chastens
us, is to take his presence from us. When he takes his presence
from us. leaves us without ability to
pray or read the Bible or or You know just shuts us up and
leaves us in darkness for three or four days And lets us where
we can't feel a spiritual thought have a spiritual thought pray
a spiritual prayer Have not you know that he takes his prison
from us and that you know what that'll make us do That'll make
us cry out that much harder. Oh lord. Oh lord because we don't
want to be left to ourselves and And I know this, that his
love is faultless. And I tell you what, it's like
me and Bruce Crabtree were talking. He said, you know, somebody asked
him one time, did he counsel people? He wanted somebody to
come and be counseled. He said, no, no, I don't do that.
And I don't do it either. I have to pay insurance for it.
They make us pay insurance for it. But I don't counsel people. You know where our counsel is
from? Right here, and when we're in the pulpit. That's when our
counsel is at. If the Word of God won't counsel
you, and the Word of God won't rebuke you, and the Word of God
won't chasten you, and the Word of God won't find fault with
you, then I certainly can't. You know, here's the thing about
it. I love it that what God does,
He does in private. He doesn't let anybody else know
it. And the only way anybody's going
to know what He's doing for you or to you is if you tell it.
And I'll tell you why. And there are so many people.
But you search, search anywhere. Examine God's love. Examine it
and you can't doubt it. And I'll tell you something else,
he never, ever chastens in anger. I said, oh, I don't, you know,
I used to do that, I'd get so angry and I'd have to wait a
while, wait a while. But he'll never, he has never,
ever chastened us in anger. And oh, I'll tell you what he
does, and when his chastening comes, he wants, I heard a story
one time about a fella sitting, went into an old country store,
and a guy was, whittling, he's a whittler. And you look around
that store on the shelf there's a bunch of different dogs up
there. And he had them painted different colors, you know. And
the fellow asked him, said, how do you get them things look like
dogs? And he said, well, you cut away everything don't look
like a dog. And that's what God does for us. He cuts everything
away that don't look like Christ. And that's what he's going to
do. He's going to keep whittling. He's going to wean us from this
world. And he has to chasten us and rebuke us. And he never
does it in anger. He's doing it just to keep on
chipping and chipping and chipping and chipping away till one of
these days. Only one more thing we'll be
interested in. Lord, when are you going to take me out of this
mess? When are you going to take me out of this mess? Oh, my. He's going to make us like his
son. And I love this one. His love is discriminating. That's
one thing people hate about nowadays. Discrimination, discrimination,
racial discrimination, gender discrimination. You know, you
can't get a job because you're discriminated against. But oh
my, God is not a discriminator. His love is not discriminating.
Do you know why it's not discriminating? When men think of discriminating,
they think of race, they think of gender, they think of jobs,
and they think of being bigots or being prejudiced. But oh God,
that's not the way God discriminates. You know who he discriminates?
He discriminates against the world. He discriminates against
pride. He discriminates against self-righteousness. He discriminates against self-confidence. The only people he doesn't discriminate
against is sinners. Oh, my. Oh, I'll tell you what.
The Laodicean says, we're rich. God discriminates them people.
We're increased with goods. He discriminates against them
people. We don't have need of nothing. He discriminates against
them. But here comes a leper. Here
comes some lepers. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. Oh, he discriminates toward sinners. His discrimination
is toward lepers. It's who he loves, his sinners.
He don't love self-righteous people. He, in fact, he discriminated
between Jacob and Esau. He said, Jacob have I loved.
I don't love, I hate Esau. Then God, God can love who He wants. And
I tell you one thing I know is that He'll make you a sinner
to prove that He loves you. And He will not let you go until
He puts you in a situation where you ain't got no place to go
but to Him. That's what He'll do. And I tell
you what, God commendeth His love toward us in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Paul said, Christ loved
me and gave himself for me, for me. You know, I tell you, you
take Hosea's wife. Everybody's heard about Hosea.
You know, Hosea married, he said, go marry a harlot. How would
you like God to say, go marry a harlot? God said, do that. And then she
went and took her a bunch of other lovers. But God went, you
know, they went and gave her corn, they gave her wine, let
her right out there at her door. And then she got old, and they
put her on the slave market. What do you want for her? What
do you want for her? Hosea said, I'll take her. I'll take her. Oh, my goodness,
she said. Listen, and that's exactly when
it comes to Hosea 14.4, said, I'm going to love her freely.
And everything, even while she was in her whoredoms, she was
fed, she was taken care of, she was taking everything that she
needed, somebody else took care. And when we were yet in our sins,
when we were yet in our pollution, when we were yet in our corruption,
when we was in that condition, God loved us. What do you take
for Him? My blood. God, what do you want
for me? My blood, my life, my obedience,
everything about me. God, what do you require for
me to save Hosea? My blood, my death, everything. Oh, my. And then that Samaritan
woman. You think, you know, we get so
self-righteous. But you think about this. When
our Lord Jesus Christ Went over to Samaria and set on that well
for that Samarian woman to come. She had been married five times.
You think people are bad? She had been married five times.
People get upset and saw somebody being married two or three times.
As churches, it won't let folks that get divorced even come into
their services. But oh, listen to what he said.
That woman had been married five times. So next time you feelin' bad
about somebody and fuckin' down on somebody, you remember what
our Lord did. And He said, go call your husband. She said,
I ain't got one. I don't have one. All I got's
somebody I'm livin' with now. So she's in pretty bad shape.
But that's exactly the one Christ went to. That's exactly the one
Christ put great effort to go get. And that one woman became
a great witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. What I'm saying
is, his love is so discriminating that he comes to beggars. Bartimaeus
sat by this wayside beggar. He heard a noise. Who's that
coming? Jesus and asked, Jesus! Have mercy on me! Christ stopped. Get him. Bring him over here.
What do you want? I want to see he's a blind beggar. Lepers, the vilest, and having
loved his own. How long did he love him? Right
to the very end. Right to the very end. Oh, my. His love, his love singles out
his people and brings them to the place that they need him
more than anything else in this world. And they want him more
than anything else in this world. And let me tell you something
else about his love. His unchanging love, his matchless love is faithful. His love is so faithful. You
know, he said, you sons of Jacob, you're not consumed because I
changed not. I changed not. You know, God is faithful. In fact, we live by the faith,
the faith of the Son of God. We don't live by our faith, we
live by His faith. My faith, my faith ain't got
a thing in the world to brag about. My faith, we're this way,
we're faithful to those that are faithful to us, we love them
that love us, we're good to them that's good to us, but God's
not that way. God's not that way. I think the
greatest betrayal of any human being, two great betrayals that
I think, I think a mother or father that forsakes their children,
forsakes their children, that's the greatest betrayal. They didn't
ask to be brought into the world, but there's been a multitude
of mothers and fathers that's forsaken their children, just
forsaken them. And then, You know, and then
a husband or a wife forsake their vows and go with somebody else.
That's the second greatest betrayal. But one thing about Christ and
one thing about God, He'll never, ever betray us. He is so faithful. He is unchanging. He cannot change. It's impossible for God to change.
He cannot change in any way. He cannot change in any character,
any nature, any attribute, He cannot change. But oh my, our
Lord Jesus Christ, oh how faithful He is. You remember, well look
over in Mark. Look with me in Mark chapter
16. I ain't got nowhere to go but home. But let's look at this,
Mark 16. I was looking at this this morning. You all know the course about
Simon Peter. denied the Lord three times. He kept telling the Lord, I'll
go to jail with you. I'll die with you. He said, oh,
Simon, Satan sought to sift you as wheat, but I prayed for you.
I prayed for you that your faith fail not. That's how faithful Christ was,
going to deny him three times. And he said, I prayed for you.
The only reason you're not going to fail is because I prayed for
you. my, look what happens. Look what He said here. You know
this, they come to the sepulcher, they come to the grave, and in
verse 5 it says here, Matthew 16, 5, Mark 16, 5. And He said
unto them, Be not affrighted, ye seek Jesus of Nazareth which
was crucified, he is risen. He's not here. Behold the place
where they laid him. Now listen to this. But go your
way, and tell his disciples," and listen to this, and Peter. You got to especially tell Simon
Peter, he will not come. He'll still be over there weeping
and crying. Oh my, but you go your ways and
tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into
Galilee. There you shall see him as he
said unto you. Oh my, how many times, I wonder,
I wonder how many times I've denied the Lord Jesus Christ.
I wonder how many times I have. When I should have spoke up,
I didn't. When I should have talked to somebody, and I didn't. But our Lord's not like that. He is faithful, faithful, faithful. Who, Paul asks this question,
who shall be able to separate us from the love of God which
is in Christ Jesus? And the first thing he says,
will tribulation do it? And will tribulation, yes, I've
seen tribulation cause people to forsake Christ. But oh my,
not those that know Christ, not those that Christ is faithful
to. Oh my, I'm telling you. That's what he talked about this
morning. He sang about it, and then everybody
talked about troubles that people have in this congregation. Troubles that people's having.
Old Scott Richardson used to make this statement all the time.
He said, a believer's in one of three places all the time.
He's either going in trouble, he's in trouble, or he's coming
out of trouble. And who's faithful when you're
in trouble? Who's faithful when you're unfaithful? Who's faithful when you're not?
Who is faithful when you're unfaithful? Who's faithful when, and I, God
help us. Have you ever got to the end
of a day and realized that you didn't pray all day long? That
you got out, you went out of the house, you had your coffee,
and you started your day, and then you get to the end of the
day and said, oh my goodness, I ain't even thought of Christ
today. Ain't you grateful he's faithful? Oh my. We're a mess. If it wasn't
for his love, his matchless love, what would happen to us? What
would happen to us? And let me tell you this. I hope
I'm not taking too long. His love is fruitful. It's fruitful. What do I mean by fruitful? That
it's effectual. It gets the job done. It gets
the job done. You know, there's lots and lots
of people that love those who do not return their love. Lots
of people that love those who do not return their love. You
know, that's an awful thing, but you love somebody and they
don't return their love. And then there's lots of times
that people we do love, that we want to do something to help
them in their situation, and we can't. We can't. You know, there's been lots of
times, there's lots of times, oh my, we see a loved one get
sick, get sick. When my babies was infants, when
they'd get sick, you talking about helpless. What are you going to do? How
can you help them? What are you going to do? When
your husband gets sick, or your wife gets sick, and they get
diagnosed with some awful disease, and you say, oh Lord, I'd rather
it be me. And all you can do is say, Lord,
have mercy, have mercy, please have mercy. And we would do everything
in our power to change the situation, but we can't. But only God can do that. Oh,
my. Like a mother for a child. A mother for a child. There have been many a mother
that sit up all night with their children. There have been many
a mother that swept, I never will forget one time. The first
funeral I had in the state of Tennessee, after I got down there,
was a six-year-old girl. Six-year-old girl. She had the
prettiest blonde hair and she had brilliant blue eyes. She
got them from her daddy. And her mother and daddy, she
got leukemia, this little girl did, Six years old. You didn't want a mother and
daddy would have done to save that child. But here's the thing that no
matter what situation we get in this world. What situation, no matter who
we love, no matter how much trouble we go through, how much heartache
we have with our children, how much we have heartaches with
husbands and wives, how much heartaches we have with our children.
My children right now, neither one of them are converted. I've
got a daughter I haven't seen in over four years. So the only hope I have for anybody
that I know and love is the love of Christ that it'll bring forth
fruit in its time. My mother-in-law died, and she
has gone three or four years, and my father-in-law was 75 years
old before the love of Christ was made known in his heart and
life. Oh, his love is fruitful. He
loves us so that he refused to let his love be in vain. He just
refused to let his love be in vain. You know, I'm going to
love them, and I know they're cold-hearted. I know that they're
fleshly. I know that they're weak. I know
that they're unfaithful. I know everything about them,
but I'm going to love them anyway. And I was like that shepherd
seeking his sheep. He said, 99, but I got one out
yonder, I gotta go get him. And he gonna go get him. He gonna
go get him. And oh my, he loved Lazarus.
That's what they said to him. You know that Mary and Martha
sent word to him, said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. And when our Lord walked up to
that tomb, And he stood there with tears falling down his holy
cheeks, tears coming down his holy cheeks. And he said, Lazarus! Before he said that, they said,
boy, how he must have loved him, because they saw those tears
streaming down his face. And then he said, Lazarus, come
forth. You think he's going to let his
love is not fruitful, his love not effectual? It gives life
to the dead. Oh my. Oh boy. Behold how he loved him. Behold
how he loved him. And we love God. You know why
we love God? Because he first loved us. First loved us. Zacchaeus! Come
down. You know what he said? Today,
today I must abide at your house. Salvation's come to your house
today. He, when he, when he sets all his love on somebody, believe
me, he's gonna get them. And I tell you who Christ loved
and died for, just as sure as God's on his throne, he will
manifest himself to them one of these days. And oh my, his
faithful, fruitful, redeeming love will bring us all away to
glory one of these days. And last, oh my, here's the kicker. His love was sacrificial. His love was sacrificial. He
gave. He gave. What did he give? Himself. He made his soul an
offering for sin. His body was bruised and wounded
for our transgressions. Our iniquities was laid upon
him. And all my, you know, the gospels
not in John three 16, the gospel is in God. So love the world
that he gave his only begotten son. How do we know? that as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of Man be lifted up. And that's the reason God loved
the world, that He gave His Son, lifted Him up, put Him on a tree,
forsook Him, and put the nails in His hands, the crown of thorns. Oh, did ever such love and sorrow
meet, and thorns compose so rich a crown. Oh my. And I tell you, his love was
so sacrificial. He gave everything that he is,
everything that he was, and everything about him, he gave himself. Though he was rich, he became
poor. And oh, he emptied himself. emptied
himself of all of his glory, emptied himself of his power,
emptied himself of everything, and became identified with us
so that God would put our sins on him, and his love was sacrificial. You know, a husband's wife for
a love is sacrificial, and a love for a wife is sacrificial for
a husband. They do things for them that
they would never do for themselves. But our Lord sacrificed himself
because we could never, ever, ever pay for one debt that we
ever owe, one sin that we ever committed. Oh, my love is measured
by sacrifice. I read a story one time about
a princess. She was out in her father's orchard,
and this little poor kid stuck his head in the gate there and
hollered, you know, I would love one of those apples. What do
you take for one of those apples there? I just got a few pennies.
And she said, that poor old boy, she said, listen, my father's
way too rich, and you're way too poor. So what we have to
do, we have to give it to you. And he's way too rich, and we're
way too poor. So he has to give it to us. He
had to sacrifice it. Oh, my. Do you know of any love
or anyone else's love will match the love of Christ for his people? Oh, he loved the sick, the diseased,
the corrupt, dead sinners. Oh, my. You know, his love was
so precious and is so endured that he had a son. The father
had a son. Son Father gave him everything
that he needed gave him his inheritance and God gave us Everything that
we needed all the days of our life. Nobody will ever face God
and say God wasn't good to me But he had a son And he went
into a far country and that's what we did. We've all been into
that far country Wasted everything. Wasted our
energy. Wasted our time. Wasted our bodies. Wasted our money. Wasted everything. And he said, oh my. I'm sitting over here eating
with the hogs. Eating what the hogs eat. He said, in my father's
house, the servants have more to eat than anybody. So he started
going back. He started heading his way. But
you know what the Father was doing? He was out looking for
him. I see him. I see him. Oh, my. And when he got there,
he said, Father, and this is the first thing, Father, I've
sinned against heaven, and I've also sinned against you. He said, make me as one of your
hearts. That ain't going to happen. Yeah, it'll happen. Bring the
best robe, put it on him. Bring a ring, put it on his feet.
Bring shoes and put them on his feet. My son, which was lost,
has come home. And I tell you, that's the way
all of us were always sons. And when he comes home, he's
watching for us. He expects us. He expects us. He expects us. And oh, my. May God have mercy. And I tell
you what, and save his people in this place. Save his people
in this place. May God send more people in here
to hear the gospel. May God send young people in.
May God send your grandchildren in. May God send your sons and
daughters in. May God do something for this
congregation that only he can, because he's faithful. May he be faithful.