Probably some of you picked up
on that, but that's an excellent, excellent song. If you would,
go to the book of Luke again this morning, chapter 15. We did have a good trip to Michigan,
a quick trip. We left Monday and got back Friday. and had time to relax and visit
a few folks in the congregation, spend a little time with people
that I pastored for the better part of 20 years. It was good
to see them. We went up there thinking usually
it's cool in Michigan, but I think it was actually quite warmer
up there than it was here. It was in the 90s, 94 there one
day. So it wasn't the cool Michigan
that we had anticipated, but we're thankful for air conditioning.
And so it was a very good trip. But it is good to be back, and
I thank Ron for speaking for me. this past Wednesday. Let's ask God's blessing upon
the Word this morning. It is good, O our Father, to
be in the place of worship today. We're thankful that you have
put within us a desire to honor Christ to love him, to believe
him, to rest in him for all of our salvation. Now we especially
beseech you, O Spirit of Grace, that you would be with us. Bless
this word to our hearts. The folks who are here, the folks
who are watching by way of the internet, even those who shall
yet listen or watch this message. Father, may all the glory be
yours. We're so thankful for this great
salvation and enable your servant this morning to set forth these
few verses that we shall be considering. And may we rejoice and the goodness
and the grace of God to us. Lord, we need your presence and
we need your power. And we ask that you would so
deal with us individually that we would be made to rejoice in
our great Savior and in this salvation that he himself accomplished
for his people. We seek to glorify you today. Enable us to do that, we ask
for Jesus' sake. Amen. As we get to Luke chapter
15, this is a chapter full of the grace of God. Here is a wonderful
story, a wonderful parable. about things which are lost and
which are therefore found. One of the sheep out of a hundred
was lost and was found. One of the coins out of the kingdom
was lost and it was found. And one of the two boys that
the father had, one was lost and he was found. It's a parable
about obviously lost things. And our Lord is illustrating
his ministry and his mission into this world. the mission
of saving lost souls. I would say to any this morning
who are here or who are watching and you're without Christ Jesus,
you have no mediator, you have no great high priest, you have
no savior. This is a message that I hope
you will listen to. Because listen, our God, His
specialty is saving the lost, saving those who need help. May God bless us with an understanding,
at least somewhat of an understanding of our neediness. This is the
reason people don't turn to Christ Jesus. They don't think they
need Him. They think they're sufficient
in and of themselves. But listen, you're unfit for
God. You're unworthy of God. You're
miserable, the scripture says, and wretched, and you're blind,
like all of us are by nature. And the only hope that you've
got is the only hope that I've got. It's Christ Jesus and his
work of redemption upon the cross of Calvary. Our Lord has been
He's been speaking, or he is speaking here, with the Pharisees
and the scribes. These are the religious people
of his day, and they didn't think they needed him. They saw no
beauty in him. They saw no saving mercies in
Jesus of Nazareth, but rather, to them, he was a man who blasphemed
God because he himself, he said he was the son of God. and those
with whom he associated were sinful people, and this greatly
irritated the Pharisees and the scribes. The Pharisees were the
moralists of the day, and they kept all of these religious traditions,
and they were really trying to earn their way into the presence
of God, into the favor of God. They simply believed in salvation
by works. And yet they were themselves
defiled, and they didn't see that. And as they beheld Jesus
of Nazareth, and they saw him welcoming into his presence those
who were sinful. Those who in the estimation of
the Pharisees and the scribes were ungodly people and not worth
dealing with or being around when these religious folks, when
they beheld the Savior mixing with these people whom they considered
to be the off-scouring of the earth, then they had something
really in mockery to say. And they said in verse number
two, the Pharisees and the scribes, they murmured, say, This man, this man receiveth
sinners and eateth with them. He receives them into his fellowship. He sets down and he communes
with them. He speaks with them. He spends
much time with them. And after they had that to say,
then our Lord Jesus immediately launched into this wonderful,
wonderful story. And in it, he is basically, he's
saying this, it was for such people that I came into the world.
It's a blessed day when the Spirit of God shows us we're sinful
people. I tell you, one who is a self-confessed
sinner is a blessed thing. That's a wonderful thing. It's
wonderful when the Spirit of God, He shows us our neediness
and our helplessness that we are indeed lost and undone and
none can help us but the Lord Jesus Christ and He only by His
substitutionary death upon the cross of Calvary. It's a wonderful
day and may the Lord the Spirit today make you to see you're
lost. You need help. You are helpless. There's nothing you can do to
make yourself fit for God. God demands righteousness, you
can't produce it. God demands holiness, you can't
produce that either. God demands perfection, and that's
something else you can't produce. And all that we need is to be
found in Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord of glory. That's why we
read in 1 Corinthians 1 that of our Savior, the Father says,
for of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto
us everything we need, wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption, everything you need. Oh, hear me, dear sinner
friend. Oh, hear me, all of you who are
within the sound of my voice. All you need is Christ Jesus. He is God's darling son. And there's no salvation to be
found anywhere else except in him. And so our Lord, his response
to the murmuring of the Pharisees and the scribes was to tell this
story, which consisted basically of three parts. And what he's
setting forth is this, salvation is of the Lord. It's of the Lord. And this goes absolutely contrary
to what the Pharisees and the scribes believed. I said the
Pharisees are the moralists of the day. The scribes were the
students of the scripture. They were the teachers of the
scriptures. They were those who expounded the scriptures to people. And to these people, our Lord
says, basically, from the third verse all the way through the
end of the chapter, he's teaching this, that salvation is not of
you. It's not of works, lest any man
should boast. Salvation is of the Lord. It's a glorious truth. Salvation
is not by merit. Did you hear that? This salvation
is not by merit, it is by mercy. Mercy, sovereign mercy reaches
out her hands to the miserable. Effectual grace receives sinful
people as sinful people. Our Savior said when he went
home with Zacchaeus, you remember in Luke chapter 19, just a few
chapters over, he went home with Zacchaeus and of course the religious
folks had something smart to say about that. He said, the
son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. This
was his mission in coming to the world. He came to seek and
to save the lost. He came to rescue the unworthy
and the worthless. He came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. He said on one occasion, the
whole have no need of a physician. but those that are sick. And
we read in 1 Timothy, the apostle said, this is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. And this is what
I want you to see in this parable, and it's one parable of three
parts. I want you to see that our Lord
is setting forth the salvation and that it is by grace. He's
illustrating salvation by grace from three different sides, if
I may put it that way, because All three persons of the Trinit
are involved in the salvation of sinners. Each has, according
to the scripture, his own special work. He begins by setting forth himself. And this is the first part of
the parable. It's like a tripod. And just like a tripod won't
stand up on two legs, this parable won't stand up except you have
all three legs. This is like a pyramid. And there's
writing on all three sides. And if you leave out any one
of the sides, or if the legs of a tripod, if you leave out
any one of the three legs, the whole thing falls. Our Lord is
teaching, he's teaching, of course, in the background, he's teaching
publicans and sinners, but he's also setting before these Pharisees
the fact that their method of salvation was altogether wrong. Because their method was based
upon man's doings. And he, therefore, sets forth
salvation as being the work of God. He begins with the shepherd. Well, who is the shepherd? He
is. The scriptures are full of that.
He's the good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep.
He's the seeking shepherd who goes after that one which is
lost. And of course, he does that here
in this part of the parable. A man has a hundred sheep, one
of them is lost. He leaves the 99 in the wilderness.
In the wilderness, all 100 of the sheep, picture all of mankind,
the 99 that he leaves in the wilderness, oh, the scribes and
the Pharisees, he's talking about them. and he leaves them just
exactly where he found them in the wilderness. He leaves them
eating briars. He leaves them in the goat patch. He leaves them there where they
eat anything, and he goes after one lost sheep. He's the good
shepherd. He's the seeking shepherd. He's
the nourishing shepherd. He's the great shepherd. He's
the chief shepherd. He's the shepherd who goes after
the sheep. The sheep doesn't come to Him.
The sheep is wandering further and further away. This is a job
for the shepherd. And to be the shepherd, he must
therefore go where the sheep are. Our Lord came into this
world, and in order to seek and find the sheep, He must lay down
His life for the sheep. He must die for the sheep because
the sheep, they are transgressors of God's law just like all men
are. But the shepherd came to save
the sheep. He came to seek the sheep, the
ones who are lost, the ones whom the Father gave him before the
world began. And in order to save the sheep,
he must himself die under the judgment of God, under the wrath
of God, having all the sins of all of these people of all of
the ages put to his account. charged to Him, and He therefore
dies under the wrath of God. That's involved in seeking and
saving the sheep. If there's no death for Him,
there'll be no life for us. If there's no laying down of
His life for Him, there will be no raising up of us. This is what is necessary. He
must go where the sheep are. His sheep, where are they? They're wandering in this world of sin. And so
this is where he came. He came where we are. And he
came to seek and to save that which was lost. And finding the
lost sheep, he brings the lost sheep home. rejoicing. And then as soon as he finishes
that segment of the story, he immediately goes into the second
segment of the story, which is the woman who had 10 coins. The 10 coins would represent
all of mankind. The nine coins would represent
the Pharisees and the scribes. The one lost coin, and I'll address
this more fully in a few minutes, that's fallen into the dust,
it's in the filth. That represents his people, just
like that one lost sheep represented his people, so that one lost
coin represents his people. And the woman, well, she pictures
the spirit of God. And she uses the word of God,
the word of illumination. The word of God is a light. What
does the Spirit of God use in finding us? Indeed, He finds
us in the dust. He finds us in the darkness.
He finds us in a state of death. What does the Spirit of God use
in searching us out and finding us and bringing us unto the blessed
Savior? He uses the gospel. He doesn't
use gimmicks. He doesn't use entertainment.
That's why gospel preachers don't... We don't entertain people like
Brother Mann used to say. We're not trying to entertain
sinners on the way to hell. We're not playing games. This
is serious business. We set forth the gospel of the
Lord Jesus. That's what we're all about.
We read the Word of God, we preach the Word of God, because this
is the only message Jesus Christ and Him crucified that the Spirit
of God will use to draw sinners unto the Savior. This is sheep
food, and this is the message that God uses to honor Himself. And so the first leg of the tripod
is about Himself being the shepherd. And the second leg is about the
woman who is the pictures, the spirit of God, who uses the word
of God, uses the word of the gospel. After all, it's the word
of life. That's what our savior said to
the people in John chapter six. He said, my words are spirit. My words are life, life. There's no life in my words.
I can't make you live, but he can. He can stop by your tomb
and he can say to you, Lazarus, come forth. And when he does,
you will, you will. This is pictured by the woman
searching for the lost coin and she finds it and she rejoices.
And then he immediately continues with the story and it goes into
a story about a father who had two sons. One of the sons represents, the
elder son represents the scribes and the Pharisees. The other son who insisted on
receiving his inheritance early, we call him the prodigal son.
He's the prodigal son. That's us. That's us. That's all of God's lost people.
And in this segment of the parable, it's the father, really the emphasis,
it isn't on the prodigal son. The emphasis should be, we should
keep our minds upon the father. The father by whose seed this
man lives. The father who blessed him with
his inheritance. The father who didn't stop loving
him when he left. And you know the story of the
prodigal son, and we'll get, like I say, we'll get into that
more fully tonight. But he loved him when he gave
him all of his inheritance, and the father kept on loving him
when he had wasted it all. That's our depravity. When we lost everything in Adam,
God didn't quit loving his people. The father didn't quit caring
for his people. Now, in the third segment of
the parable, you don't have the shepherd seeking and finding. Well, that's already been set
forth. And you don't have the Holy Spirit drawing. That's already
been set forth in the second segment. See, there are many
preachers. who will preach on the prodigal
son, Armenian preachers, and they'll say, now, you've got
to come to the end of yourself. It's all of you. They're making
the thing stand on one leg. And so therefore they've left
out the work of the shepherd that's necessary. and the work
of the Spirit that is necessary. And they're focusing upon this
and they say, you see, it's all up to you now. You've got to
come back to the Lord. And He's done all they can do.
Hang on now. You only used a third of the
story. And that's ungodly. You shouldn't
do that. That's taking Scripture out of
context. Leave it as it is, present it
as it is. The shepherd has laid down his
life for the sheep. The Spirit of God has found that
which was lost, found it in the dust, found it in the darkness
and rescued it. This segment of the parable is
about the father receiving the one who's lost, whose love and
grace never changed. And he receives the erring one. I wanna focus on the second part
of the parable. And so, if you would, look at
verse eight. He says, either what woman, Luke
15, verse eight, either what woman having 10 pieces of silver,
if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle and sweep the
house and seek diligently till she find it. There is, if I could
put it this way, there is an effort that's being put forth,
but it isn't the effort of the coin in the dust. That which
is pictured in the work of the Spirit of God. So here's a woman having 10 pieces
of silver. If she lose one piece, does not
light a candle and sweep the house. and seek diligently till
she find it. And when she hath found it, she
calleth her friends and her neighbors together saying, rejoice with
me, for I have found the peace which I had lost. Likewise, I
say unto you." And it's the Lord himself who gives the true interpretation
of this segment of the parable. Likewise, I say unto you, there
is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner
that repented. Now, this section of the parable
is needed, and it rightfully follows the work of the shepherd. Because you see, and I hear,
there are a lot of people that talk about the ministry of the
Holy Spirit, the ministry of the Holy Ghost, The Spirit of
God does his work based on, and you need to understand this,
based on the finished work of our Lord Jesus. You see, as you
get to, you get to the book of Acts chapter two, the giving
of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the giving of the Spirit
of God. You know what that was? It was
undeniable evidence that our Lord Jesus did the work of redemption
that God the Father sent him to do. He came to save the lost. He came to redeem. He came to
reconcile. He came to establish righteousness. He came to put away all the sins
of all of the people that God had given Him, people of all
ages, throughout the ages. Well, what is the evidence that
Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, the Son of God, What is
the undeniable evidence that he did the work that God gave
him to do? Well, first of all, his resurrection,
and then his ascension, and then the giving of the Holy Spirit.
What does the gift of the Holy Spirit declare? It declares the
blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. And the presence of the Spirit
of God is the undeniable evidence of that, that he did what God
sent him to do. You see the Spirit of God, let
me just make a few statements on this, because I think there's,
There's error here. The Spirit of God does not come
to instill or put within you a righteousness. Rather, the
Spirit of God, he comes to teach you and reveal to you and manifest
to you that righteousness has already been established by that
one who died upon the cross of Calvary. And the Spirit of God
doesn't come to put your sins away. That is not His job, that
within the Trinity, there are three that bear record in heaven,
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit,
and these three are one. The Spirit of God, His ministry
is not the putting away of sin. No, that was done by the blood
of Christ. That was done by the sacrifice
of the Son of God. The ministry of the Spirit of
God is to convince you in your heart that all that needed to
be done to satisfy the requirements of a holy God, the Lord Jesus
Christ has finished. That's the ministry of the Spirit
of God. He teaches you it's done. It's finished as God himself
would have it to be done. So in this part of the story,
that which we're to grasp from this is that the Spirit of God
is seeking and finding sinners. Now I have three words to give
you. These are very obvious from the context, and the first word
is lost. This part of the story shows
the Lord's people in their natural condition as lost sinners, who
are the objects of God's mercy in Christ Jesus. Lost. When I think of lost, that's
a sad word, lost. Lost, a child, you go to a mall
or something, you have a little child and somehow they get separated
from you. You're frantic, aren't you? It's
a terrible word, lost. I can't find my way. But ours
is a much more desperate condition because we're lost and don't
know it. So we're like the coin. We're
like the coin. You see, the sheep that was lost,
well, it had a consciousness. It was going further and further
away, but it was alive. So that's not a picture. It's
a picture of the sinner's condition in that we wandered away from
the Lord. But if you wanna see the sinner's
spiritual condition as being without any spiritual life, you
look at the coin, the coin. It's lost in the dust. It's lifeless. A coin, it has no pulse, obviously. It can't breathe. It's just there. It exists. That's us in our natural
condition. Just existing. Just existing. and were lost in the dust. Now back then they didn't have
carpet like we have today and nice hardwood floors like you
have in your house and the walls, wind could kind of blow through
the cracks and get dust and such in there and some say there weren't
any windows in the homes at all. They kept It was just solid four
walls. They cooked and everything, slept
all in the same room. It's dark in there, even during
the daytime it's dark. And it's dusty. It's dirty. Where does God the Spirit find
us in our lost condition? In the dirt of sin, in filth.
That's what He finds us in, in filth. And not only was it lost
in the dirt, but it's lost in a dark place. This is obvious
from the fact that a candle had to be lit. It may have been in
the daytime, but it would still have been essentially dark there
because there's no windows in the house. The house was dark
and in order for the woman to search for it, she had to light
a candle. What does darkness speak of in
the Bible? Wickedness, error, ignorance,
death, death. And the inner inward darkness
of the natural man is absolutely horrible. Psalm 107 verse 10
says, sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, being
bound in affliction and iron, they grope at noonday as the
blind gropeth in darkness. Darkness. There is no darkness
like the darkness of a sinner. without the Lord Jesus Christ. So great is this darkness that
the woman lights a candle. Now, notice this in the third
place is that the coin was lost in the dust, the coin is in the
dark. But here in the third place,
I want you to notice something precious lest we just kind of
either take it for granted or we don't even think about it.
Though the coin was lost, it was not forgotten. I like that. This coin meant
something to this woman. And the Spirit of God who searches
for us using the light of the gospel word He searches for us
because our God cares for us. He has loved us with an everlasting
love. He hasn't forgotten us. The woman
of the house knew she had 10 pieces of silver originally.
She counted them carefully. And when she found she only had
nine in her purse, she knew there was one missing. There is hope for the Lord's
lost ones because He cares for His lost ones. If you're beginning
to be troubled about your sinfulness, and you're beginning to see,
you're beginning to be convinced you can do nothing to appease
God. Oh, how shall I come to God?
I can't come as I am. If that is your understanding,
if you're beginning to get that understanding, it's good for
you. That's good for you to see that. It's necessary for you. Because you will never know the
saving mercies of Christ Jesus till you know something about
your neediness for Him. You see, this woman, she never
forgot about this lost coin. And the Lord has never forgotten
about us. The Lord knoweth them that are
His. He's always known us. He knew
us before time ever began. He's always known us back in
the vastness of old eternity. He's always loved us. He loved
us when we fell in Adam. His attitude toward us has never
changed. Because He's always viewed His
people in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Son of God. And therefore
he sent his son into this world. And then after the son had done
the work assigned to him by the father of reconciling us, of
redeeming us, of bringing in everlasting righteousness and
removing all of our iniquities, then the spirit of God comes
upon the heels of the death of Christ Jesus. And the spirit
of God wakes us up. He finds us in the dust. He finds
us in the darkness. and he finds the Lord really
does care. Let me tell you something, if
you're a believer this morning, and all your hope's in the Lord
Jesus Christ, the reason you believe is solely to be attributed
to the grace and love of God to you through Christ Jesus. Ah, the Lord knows his people.
He knows where they are. And I'll say this, the coin was
lost, but it was still claimed by the one who lost it. The woman
says, this is the piece that I have lost. She lost possession of it, but
she did not lose ownership of it. It didn't become somebody else's. You see, though the Father did
choose us in grace and though we fell in Adam, we didn't become
the property of Satan. We weren't the children of Satan.
We were the children of wrath, deserving of wrath even as others,
but we didn't cease to be the Lord's children. We just became
his lost children. but we were still his. We didn't
become goats, we were still sheep, we were just lost sheep. Lost
sheep. And then I'll say this, this
coin was lost. This may be stretching it a little,
but it was lost in the house. And I say this to you, to all
of you, and especially to those of you who are being made aware
of how desperately you need the Lord Jesus Christ. You're lost,
but you're in the right house. Could have stretched it that
far. You're in the right house. Because this is where the light
is shining. The light of the grace of God.
If you're saved, you'll be saved by sovereign mercy. That's okay
with you, isn't it? If you're saved, you'll be saved
by effectual grace. That's okay with you, isn't it?
You don't have an argument with that, do you? If you're saved,
you'll be saved by the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the sovereign savior. You don't have a problem with
that, do you? He said, no, I don't have a problem with any of those things.
You're in the right house. You're in the right house. You're
indeed lost, but hey, you're not in a free will goat pasture,
huh? You're not out here where folks
is going forth. Everything you're hearing this
morning and everything that's ever been preached from this
pulpit has always been the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace.
Right back there is one pastor who came before me. It's the
same message he preached. And he preached the same message
as the one before him. We're all declaring the same
God sovereign. Saving. Powerful. Governing. We preach the same
Savior. Redeemer. Conqueror. Triumphant. One who cannot fail. We preach the same Holy Spirit.
He does His work. He doesn't leave it to you. If
He left it to you, you'd be lost. You'd perish forever. He does
the work in the hearts of sinners. Lost. Second word, seek. Seek. She first lit a candle
specifically for the purpose of finding the lost coin. The reason we preach the gospel,
gospel light. The first reason we preach the
gospel is for the glory of God. And the second reason we preach
the gospel is because this is what the Spirit of God uses to
find the lost. You might be one of the lost
coins. Wouldn't that be something if
you was one of the Lord's lost coins? He'll find every lost
coin. But I'm down in the dirt, preacher. Well, we all are by nature. You're
no different than anybody else. You don't understand the things
I've done. Listen, we're all rebels against
God. We're all enemies against God.
There's hostility in the heart of the natural man against the
living Lord. We're all the same. It's the Lord who lights the
candle. Hey, you getting any light this
morning? Anybody get a little light this
morning? I ain't tell you what. It's not natural light. That's
spiritual light. Like a woman came up to me one
time, she said, you know, for a long time I didn't get what
you said, but I get it now. I like to hear people say, I
get it now. You know what that tells me?
The light's turned on. And the only one who can turn
on the lights, the Lord of glory, the one who is the light of the
world. And he can leave you in darkness and he'll still be God. He can leave you in darkness,
his justice will still be glorified. But oh, if he lights, if he sends
forth the light of his word, that'll do you everlasting good
there. The woman lit a candle specifically for the purpose
of finding the lost coin. And once the candle was lit,
the woman took her broom in her hand. She began to sweep the
house. I think it's spirit conviction. Spirit of God convincing men
of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. And then I'll go quickly. The
third word is found. She found it. Do you reckon that
God the Spirit would ever go after one who was lost and not
find the lost one? That's an impossibility. Amazing
grace, Brother Newton wrote, how sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me. I once was lost. but now I'm
found, was blind, but now I see." Well, who found you? Did you
find yourself? Well, you know better off. Did
you give yourself sight? Well, you're just as blind as
you was before. Oh, he gave us sight and he found
us. She found the coin. It didn't
turn up by accident. It didn't just jump up and say,
hey, I'm over here in the dust. No, no. The woman found it, wiped it off. You're mine. You've always been mine. That's
what the Lord says to us. He washes us in the blood of
the Lord Jesus and robes us in his righteousness. He's cleaned
us up and made us presentable to God. I did this for you. Remember where you were when
he found you? You was in the dust, you was in the darkness.
But look at you now, worshiping the Lord. glorifying God, magnifying
Christ Jesus, she found the coin. And she's just ecstatic. And she just rejoices. She says
in verse nine, it says in verse nine, when she found it, she
called her friends and her neighbors together, she says, rejoice with
me. It's a time of rejoicing. For I found the peace which I
had lost." Who found it? He said, well, I found the Lord. I beg your pardon? He wasn't
lost. He was lost. No man seeketh after
God. Ah, the Lord seeks the lost.
He finds it. He says, rejoice with me. In verse number 10, likewise
I say unto you, there's joy in the presence of the angel. Over one sinner that repenteth. One sinner. It's of one sinner that the Savior
speaks. I heard a message years ago,
Brother Mahan brought on the trail of the Lord's lost sheep.
I bet you remember. I bet several of y'all remember
that. I'm on your trail if you lost
me. More than that, the Lord is through
his gospel. And when he finds you, he rejoices. As rejoicing in
the presence of the angels. That's what you said. I'll joy
over these, what the Lord says. He rejoices. He rejoices. It's the joy of heaven, it's
the joy of God himself. It's the joy of the shepherd
who finds the sheep. It's the joy of the Holy Spirit,
pictured by the woman who finds the coin. It's the joy of the
father who finds his lost son. Ah, this is a gospel glorifying
the God in it. And all of this story you see
is about salvation is of the Lord. He gets all glory, doesn't
he? Yes, he does. Well, this evening
we'll go the last part of the parable and deal with that. Let's close in prayer and wait
till the first stanza is played of the next song and give me
time to get to the vestibule, get masked up and get to the
vestibule, and then you're dismissed. We'll see you tonight at 6.30.
Let's bow our heads. We thank you, Father, for the
gift of grace. for the gift of Christ Jesus,
our Savior, who is our all in all, and the scripture says we're
complete in him. Thank you, Lord, for your seeking
and finding grace. Thank you for fetching us, fetching
us like David fetched Mephibosheth. Fetching us like Samuel said
to Jesse, go fetch your other son, go fetch David. Lord, thank
you for fetching grace. You came after us and you found
us and you picked us up and you washed us in the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ. You robed us in the garments
of salvation. Oh, and we're decked out as a
bride for the bridegroom. Oh, praise your name, Father,
for this great salvation that we enjoy. Bring sinners to the
feet of the Savior and make us all to know our neediness. And may we in Him be blessed
with salvation forever. to the glory of God, the Father
and the Son and the Spirit, we pray in the name of Christ. Amen.