Well, before you, you have Luke
15. We're just looking maybe for
a few weeks at this parable. And the parable begins with a
beautiful description of our Lord. A great description of
us, but a wonderful description of our Lord. The tax collectors
and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes
complained, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with
them. He welcomes sinners and to eat
with them is to have fellowship with them. Isn't it wonderful
that the enemies of our Lord give us one of the most beautiful
descriptions of the Lord Jesus. He describes himself in Luke
7.34 as a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And so tonight,
this parable, the next little while that the Lord wills, we're
looking in this parable at the way the Lord gathers His own. And it's remarkable, the workings
of the Lord in the salvation of sinners is a work of sovereign
grace, and it always happens. It always happens in ways which
are the opposite to what humans would imagine God should operate. In fact, it's almost shocking
to see the way the Lord deals with the people who have been
the objects of His infinite and unchanging love forever in this
world. But it's a great word of comfort
for sinners like us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we pray as we study and read and meditate on the way you save
sinners, Heavenly Father, that you would cause us, like the
lost son, the prodigal son, you would cause us to be people who
are drawn back to you by your work of grace in our lives, in
a way, Heavenly Father, which just exhorts the glory of who
you are and causes your people to rest and abide in the love
of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Bless us this
evening, Heavenly Father, with your presence, and with your
words, and write them on our hearts, that we might know you,
and love you, and be aware of the depth of your love for us.
And we pray in Jesus' name, amen. That amazing Psalm 119, I've
been talking to Jamie about it, which is a great description
of our Lord Jesus and His works of righteousness under
the law of God. But the psalmist finishes by
saying, I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant. It's a great prayer, isn't it?
because the reality is that, like the prodigal, we have wandered
away. We wandered away in eternity. In our father, Adam, we wandered
from our God, not in eternity. We were with God in eternity,
all of his people. We wandered in that time in the
garden, and we continue in this world, in our lives, to be wandering
sheep. We are straying sheep. And we need a shepherd. We need
a shepherd to gather us to Himself. We need a shepherd like the shepherd
that we have in this story before us here. Of course, the purpose
of the story again is for the Lord Jesus, as always when He's
attacked by His enemies, He takes it as an opportunity to preach
the Gospel to them and at the same time to preach a warning
to His enemies. So they're words of comfort to
us. Let's just read from verse 4 down to verse 17 there. This
is how this man receives sinners and eats with them. What man
of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does
not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the
one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it,
he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes
home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them,
Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. And
I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over
one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. Or what woman, having ten silver
coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep
the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when
she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbours together,
saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the peace which
I lost. Likewise I say to you, There
is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner
who repents. Then he said, a certain man had
two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father,
give me the portion of goods that falls to me. So he divided
to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the
younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and
there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. And when
he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land,
and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself
to a citizen of that country. And he sent him into his fields
to feed swine, and he would gladly have filled his stomach with
the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.
But when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's
hired servants have bread enough to spare, and I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father
and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before
you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me
like one of your hired servants." And he arose and came to his
father. And when he was still a great way off, his father saw
him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed
him. And the son said, Father, I have sinned against heaven
and in your sight, and I'm no longer worthy to be called your
son. But the father said to his servants, bring out the best
robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals
on his feet, and bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let
us eat and be merry. For this my son was dead and
is alive again. He was lost and is found, and
they began to be merry. What a remarkable story. Of course
this is all one parable as you probably took note of as we read
through it. We often focus on the story of
the prodigal son and it's a famous and rightly famous story. But
in fact all three stories are about the lost and the dead being
found. And the word that is recurring
throughout this, and as we've been going through Mark's Gospel
we've seen it again and again, that the Lord's people are rejoicing
people. And in this parable the shepherd
rejoices and he calls on others to rejoice with him. The woman
rejoices and there's joy in the presence of the angels in heaven.
The father rejoices and he runs and falls on his neck and kisses
him. And he calls on his servants, let us eat and be merry. And
they began to be merry. And of course the Lord Jesus
is speaking to his sins, sinners who are his friends, who are
being attacked for their unrighteousness by righteous scribes and Pharisees. And the one thing that we never
see the scribes and the Pharisees doing in all the Gospels is rejoicing,
except when Judas comes to betray the Lord Jesus. The only time
they rejoice is when malicious evil is being done. But God the
Father is a rejoicing God. God the Son is a rejoicing Son. God the Holy Spirit is a rejoicing
Holy Spirit. And God's people, despite the
things that happen to them in this world, are rejoicing people. And I don't mean the happy, clappy
joy. I mean real rejoicing. One of the great things that
we hear from John Newell again and again is that, I am so thankful. I am so thankful. Jamie says
it again and again, I am so thankful. God's people are thankful people. He calls us sheep, and it's a
good description of God's people in this world. Sheep are helpless
critters and they are naughty critters and one of my great
claims to fame as a husband is the suffering I put up with with
Lisa's sheep. I don't know how many jolly fences
I fixed and repaired because of her sheep. And after we'd
had these jolly sheep, did I realise that there are lots of different
sorts of sheep in this world. And there are some sheep, believe
it or not, who actually are respectful of fences. And then there's another
lot of sheep, probably lots and lots and lots of sheep, who have
absolutely no respect for fences whatsoever. And we had the latter
ones. We call sheep because the Lord
doesn't expect much from us. A lot of wandering. And so the
shepherd has a hundred sheep in verse 4. And he loses one of them. Does
he not leave the 99 and go after it until he finds it? See the
sheep? were His. The wandering sheep
in this world were always His sheep. They were His in eternity. They belonged to the Lord Jesus
because they were the Father's gift to Him as His bride and
as the means by which He gets glory in this world. The sheep
is lost in Adam and the sheep is lost in its own personal sin
when it comes into this world. We want to think that little
people are good. We have our grandson with us
at the moment and it's delightful to see him and you couldn't,
when he's sleeping, think of anything more cute and adorable. The reality is that he is just
a little sinner because his father's a little sinner, and his mother's
a little sinner, and his grandparents are sinners as well. We are lost
people. The sheep was here. The sheep
was lost. But just read what it says in
verse 4. This shepherd, this good shepherd,
this great shepherd, this chief shepherd, When one of his little
flock, his beautiful flock as he calls us in Jeremiah 13.20,
when he calls them my flock in Ezekiel, when one of them is
lost, he goes after it. Does he stop? He goes until he
finds it. The Lord's sheep are wandering
all over this world. And the shepherd knows exactly
where they are, and the shepherd is seeking them, and the shepherd
will find them. And then look what he does. When
he's found it, he carries it home on his shoulder. As Isaiah 40 verse 11 says, that
he carries his little one in his arms. He'll feed his flock like a shepherd.
He gathers the lambs with his arms and carries them in his
bosom. That's how he gathers them. He goes out. He seeks them. And there's joy in heaven. See, his joy and the joy of the
sheep that is found and the joy of the other sheep that have
been found are all blended together in the scriptures. God's people
are rejoicing people here because they will be rejoicing people
forever and ever. There's joy in heaven. And that's
why he says to all of us, he says, rejoice with me. Rejoice with me." In the second
part of the parable, oh, for what woman, having ten silver
coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep
the house, and search carefully until she has found it? The first
part of this parable is a story, a picture of the shepherd seeking
his lost sheep. The second part I don't believe
is wrong to say that it's a picture of the Holy Spirit as He lights
a lamp. He lights the lamp of the gospel, enlightening grace, as we know
from 2 Corinthians 4, 2, 4, 4 verse 6, sorry. People are in
darkness. They're in darkness and they
are held captive until the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That illumination has to come. And it's regenerating grace,
isn't it? It's a grace that lights a lamp of what we
are as we see ourselves and see who the Lord Jesus is. And it
sweeps the house. It sweeps all of the house that
we have established in this world, in our sin and in our constant
rebellion against God. And it searches, the Holy Spirit
searches carefully, searches carefully. Have you been illuminated? Have you been searched? Have you been swept? David was. Read what David says. Search
me, O God, Psalm 139, verse 23. Search me, O God, and know my
heart. Try me and know my anxieties,
and see if there's any wicked way in me, and lead me in the
way everlasting. There are just the sweeping judgments
of God, aren't there? As we are brought to see what
God must do with sin. We have been searched. And then God finds the peace
which I lost. See, it was always His peace. See, the sheep are wandering
and straying and get themselves lost. The coin is a picture of
the deadness of us in our flesh. We have no hope. We have as much
hope, sorry, of finding God as a dead coin had of finding its
way back into the woman's purse. It is dead. And again when it's
found, after the sweeping and the searching, there is rejoicing."
She's rejoicing. Likewise, I say to you, there
is joy in the presence of angels, the angels of God, over one sinner
who repents. Then we come to the third story,
the story of the man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father,
he said the words that we said in the garden, didn't he? The
words that we keep saying from the time we are little babies. Give me. Isn't that the cry of
everyone in this world? From little tiny babies to old,
old men. I was at a nursing home in Derry
a few weeks ago and there was a really sad situation of a very
old man who seemed to be a very well known and successful businessman
and there he was at the end of his days. He died just last week
I believe. There he was in his nursing home
bed with all of these things around him. And he was saying,
give me, give me what I want. And when the nurse said to him,
you can't have it, you can't have any more at the moment,
he, like a little child who has something special taken away
from him, was just as wicked and just as rebellious and just
as rude to the poor nurse who was actually trying to help him.
Give me, give me. She took an eight, and forever
we've been saying, give me. And then the next thing he does,
he gathered them all together. It's good to be reminded, isn't
it, as we go through this parable, to think of the fathers rejoicing
at the end of this parable and think again of the pain of what
it meant. The son was saying to his father,
I wish you were dead. I can't wait for you to die. I want my inheritance now. Please die. Be dead to me so
that I can have what I want. So that's what give me says to
God, isn't it? as we assume that throne of our
own little world. Give me and God get out of my
life. And we gather, don't we? We gather
things together. We gather and we cling to things. We cling to things and we cling
to self-righteousness. We gather and we cling. And then
we go, as Adam did, and all of us do in Adam, we go on a journey
to a far country. We leave the place of God and the place
of plenty and we go to a far country. This world is a far
country for God's people. We go to that far country and
in that far country all of what we think we have is just wasted. He wasted his possessions with
prodigal living. Prodigal living means to someone
who spends money and especially spends money that parents have
earned for him in just wastefulness. So he wasted all his possessions. He spent all and he was in a
place in that land where there was a severe famine. See, there
is in this world, for God's wandering sheep, for God's prodigal sons,
there is in this world just a famine for our souls. It never satisfied. And he began to be in want. And then he went and he joined
himself to a citizen of that country, which is what we do,
don't we? Outside of God's state, we will
join ourselves to anything and anyone. in our desperate need
to find some sense of belonging. He joined himself to a citizen
in that country, and remarkably he joined himself to someone
who cared more about his pigs than he did about his servant. And of course for the Jews, for
the self-righteous Pharisees looking on, This son is now in
a completely lost state, pigs being an unclean animal. That's just a picture of us,
isn't it? It's a picture of lost people. It's a picture of where
God, in his sovereignty, leads his sheep. and seemingly allows
his sheep to wander. What a description God gives
of us. He once walked according to the
course of this world, according to the prince of the power of
the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,
Ephesians 2. Verse 12, at that time you were
without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel
and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and
without God in the world. Strangers and foreigners. 3 verse 14 says, I got the wrong
verse there, sorry. But it goes on in Ephesians to
describe us as children tossed to and fro and carried about
by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and in the
crunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. We had And we have, until God
comes and illuminates us, we have our understanding darkened,
being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance
that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. In a word, we're in darkness
and captive in our darkness. And unless God comes and shows
us what we are, unless God comes sweeping and searching and seeking, we will never, as this young
man did, come to himself. Verse 17, he came to himself. Grace entered his soul. And for the first time, this
young man thinks right. He is caused by God to think
about the goodness of his father again. See, when we fell in our
Father Adam, we lost sight of the goodness of God and we lost
the privilege of being those who shared that amazing honour
of being able to reflect the glory of God in this world. and
we have the son's return. In his right mind, how many of
my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and
I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father
and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven
and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called
your son. Make me like one of your hired
servants. So this is the work of the grace
of the spiritual God in someone that he regenerates. He went
out, a proud young man, gathering everything to himself. He now in his right mind says,
I have sinned against heaven and before you. He who thought
himself worthy now says, he's no longer worthy to be called
your son. He who had the honor of being
a son is now happy to be a hired servant. And he arose and came to his
father. So he had rehearsed his speech
before his father because God, the Holy Spirit, had made him
see what he is. And see, the father doesn't even
hear the little speech the son has been rehearsing. On that
long journey home In verse 20 we have the only picture of God
in all of the scriptures being in a hurry. He has no need to
hurry, but it's just one of those beautiful pictures of our Father. The Father of mercies and the
God of all comfort. He saw him and had compassion
and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." In a sense,
the moral of the story at this stage is that God our Father
is far more willing to receive prodigals like us. than we are
to believe His willingness to have us back. The reality is
that we are still wandering sheep and in our Adam flesh we are
still prodigals. Faith says God is amazing and
He will have us back and He runs and He falls on our necks and
He kisses us But how seldom, how hard it is so often to believe
the goodness of God in this world. Is that true for you? Is it true
for you when you sin badly? Is it true for you when you're
cold and dead? Is it true for you when prayer
seems like a pain and the Bible is far less interesting than
the newspaper? God is a Father of mercies, and
let me say it again, He is far more willing to receive prodigals
than we are to believe His willingness. See, God knew all of this. God
chose His people in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the
world. Did He know that we were going to be wandering sinners
before the foundation of the world? Did He know that we were
sinners when the Lord Jesus came as the Great Shepherd of our
souls 2,000 years ago? Did He know that we were sinners
and the Lord Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the tree.
Why then should our sins keep us from our Father? They do in our experience. They don't in God's sovereignty
and they won't in eternity, but they do in our experience. And before the Lord Jesus was
a bunch of sinners, weren't they? Tax collectors who were traitors
and sinners. Sinners and harlots. All sorts
of sinners the Lord Jesus collects. So he runs, he falls on his neck,
and he kisses him. and he rehearses his little speech
in the presence of the Father, and the Father doesn't need to
hear his little speech, because having him back and having him
in his arms is more than all the little speeches. See, when
God saves His people, He saves people who are poor in their
first sermon of the Lord Jesus back in Nazareth. He quotes Isaiah
61. See, the qualifications for being
saved are remarkably opposite to what
the world and our flesh would think, isn't it? See, the Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, says the Lord Jesus, because the Lord has anointed
me to preach good tidings, The sinners had to be poor. This
man was poor. He sent me to heal the broken-hearted. Are there broken-hearted people
here? To proclaim liberty for the captives. To open the prison
of those who are bound to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. to comfort all who mourn, to
console those who mourn in Zion. See, what God has done in Providence
by allowing this young man to go off and seemingly go far off
in his own way and to fulfil his heart's desire is for them,
for them, for him to find that it's all famine and dry husks. See, he had to be made poor. Have you been made poor? Broken hearted? Bound? Have you been caused to mourn
your sin? and the circumstances of your
sin. See what he does in Isaiah is
to give them beauty for ashes. Not beauty because of our beauty,
but beauty for ashes. A garment of praise for the spirit
of heaviness and the result of it is that they may be called
trees of righteousness." What a great description of this young
man returning home. The planting of the Lord, not
the planting of a man who says, give me, give me, let me gather. The planting of the Lord that
who may be glorified in all of this? Who gets the glory? The son doesn't get the glory. The son gets to rejoice. He's a planting of the Lord that
he may be glorified. See, in this world of ours today,
the great shepherd is out seeking the sheep. The Blessed Holy Spirit
is out searching and sweeping and lighting. And the Father
has sent them into this world and He will gather them. And
there's going to be eating and rejoicing and there's going to
be much to be merry over. John Gill, and I'll close with
this, says, the preaching of the Gospel by the servants, setting
forth the love of God, the righteousness of Christ, is like music. It's delightful and charming.
It is the sound of love in all three persons, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. It's the music of free grace,
the rich mercy of liberty, reconciliation, righteousness, forgiveness, and
eternal life. God's people are rejoicing people. Always. Rejoice always. And I don't mean the sort of
happy-clappy rejoicing. We have a great God who's gone
to extraordinary lengths to save his people. We have a great God
who's saving his people right now. We have a great God who's
gathering prodigals from our wanderings over and over and
over again. And we have every reason to be
thankful for a great shepherd who's promised that none of his
sheep will ever be lost to him. And he says, rejoice with me. He sits on the throne of omnipotent
glory and he says, rejoice. Brothers and sisters, rejoice
with me. Let's pray.