Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 15, 2016 | Route 66 - Luke

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May 15, 2016 | Route 66 - Luke · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, College Avenue Building.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Can I hear you?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning online.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting, we're in a series called Route 66.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a road trip through the Bible, 66 books, 66 weeks.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have come this morning to the third in the Gospels.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the New Testament, and we've reached the third gospel, and that's called the Gospel of Luke.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the first gospel was Matthew.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Jewish gospel.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the King Messiah.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Second gospel, the Gospel of Mark, shortest gospel, perhaps written to persecuted Christians in Rome.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the suffering servant.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now we come to a very different.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are four different stories of Jesus, same person, same Jesus, same basic facts told from four different perspectives.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have uh your study sheet, grab uh your study sheet from the bulletin, you'll see that uh this is Jesus is the savior man.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: The summary goes like this.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Luke, a physician, writes with the warmth and personal care of a family doctor as he lays out in chronological order the story of Jesus from ancestry, he goes all the way back to Adam, to ascension.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: His is the most joyful of the four Gospels, starting and ending with praise, as well as the longest and most thorough account.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Luke is the longest book in the New Testament, and its literary artistry causes one critic to call this the most beautiful book in the world.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: This gospel alone contains the four beautiful hymns known as the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Nuc Dimatus.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: You go, whatever.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those are a bunch of Latin words.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 and 2.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Luke's interest in plain folks gives us Zacharias, the Good Samaritan, the prodigal son, Zacchaeus, and the two on the Emmaus road.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Luke cares about women, children, prayer, and God's spirit.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Luke's also the universal gospel, the only non-Jewish writer in the New Testament, though some of my friends and Jews for Jesus like to say, hey, he was a doctor, so maybe he was a Jew.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Luke writes to instruct and encourage Gentile Christians.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity, Luke says, is not a cult.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a weird new thing, but is the logical and legitimate outgrowth of ancient history and prophecies.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was no flake or criminal, but the perfect human.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, didn't even the Roman governor Pilate admit that he was innocent three times, chapter 23.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is worthy of our complete trust and allegiance, for he is the perfect man from heaven who came to seek and to save us.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're uh intent this morning on honoring your word.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: We love you, we worship you.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we um we come to learn what it is that you would say to us out of the third gospel.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Lord, I would ask, I'm really excited about this gospel and how relevant it is in the 21st century, and ask that you would speak to people this morning in a special, uh, unique way in Jesus' name.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: The theme verse in my view of the Gospel of Luke, it's on the screen in front of you.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was really anemic, so we're gonna do it again.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hear all of you.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Together, Luke 19, 10.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: For the Son of Man.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not on the screen.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's try this again.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Together, Luke, for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 19, 10.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is a savior man.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right, are we together now?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got a question for you.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good question you should ask yourself, perhaps every time you open the Bible, certainly every time you teach the Bible to others, and that is the question: why should I care about this passage?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why should you care?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why should I care about the Gospel of Luke?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: This question's not just for those of you who are brand new to the New Testament or the Gospels of the Bible.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's also for you who feel like you have trafficked in these matters so many decades.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a ho-hu.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer to the question, why should I care about the Gospel of Luke, is, I think, best answered by answering another question.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who is it that the beloved physician was writing for?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in my view, the answer to that question is that he was writing for three groups of people: seekers or doubters, that is, people who are looking for truth about religion, searching for the truth about Christianity, maybe doubting what they have heard about Christianity.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's writing for those.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Second, he's writing to people who feel lost, people who feel abandoned, people who are outcast.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Third, I think he's writing to people who like happy endings.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: I like happy endings.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: You like happy endings?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some, especially when it comes to our lives, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like happy endings.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let me take these three uh consecutively and talk about them.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I think he's writing to seekers and doubters.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's writing to people who are not sure about what they have heard about Christianity.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I gain that especially from the first four verses, Luke 1, 1 through 4.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike the other gospels, Luke has this really detailed, unique introduction, inasmuch, we read, as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of long words, but what he's saying is, since there have been other gospels written, okay, there have been many, I think that there were probably two at least, Matthew and Mark, that had circulated by the time that Luke writes.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, uh, since there have been others doing this, verse two, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, these came from eyewitnesses.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, so why are you writing Luke?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so you might know the exact truth about the things you've been taught.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was reading a book that last week that was just written by a scholar in England.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was about the four gospels, and he points out that there's a couple places in these first four verses that are seemingly addressed, you know, to doubters, to people who maybe had, maybe they read the Jewish Gospel of Matthew, but they were not Jews, and it didn't click with them.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they came to the Gospel of Mark and it's that speedy gospel that starts off with Jesus already at age 30, and they're going, you know what, there's just not enough detail here.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I buy this.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: So Luke is addressing them and saying, listen, uh those of you who have questions and who have doubts, this gospel is with you in mind.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I turn to you and I say, Do you ever have questions or doubts at 3 a.m.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: when it's really dark?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've been a Christian maybe for a year, five years, twenty years, but do you ever wonder, is this really true?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are two views about how you handle your doubts.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: One view is is that you should squelch them.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I was having doubts of my own about myself and about everything in the world, then as a freshman in college, somebody gave me a little booklet and it had this quote in it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was written by a guy named uh Dr.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Raymond Edmund, and he said in that something that really helped me as a freshman in college.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that has merit, as does the statement, doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your doubts come from the dark side, perhaps, your faith from the light side.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or my favorite theologian Richard Petty.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Never put a question mark where God puts a period.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this quote is credited to Richard Petty and Joel Osteen and others, but it predates them by a hundred years.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a good line, isn't it?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: If God puts a period, why should you put a question mark or doubt?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite Catholic conservative, William F.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Buckley, founder of National Review, used to say, if I ever felt that I was losing my faith, I would lie down until I got over it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's the one side, but you know, there's it's we need to recognize that some of the greatest Christian leaders down through the centuries have been plagued by doubts.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: John Calvin himself admitted that he struggled at times with doubt.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther certainly did, struggled with doubt and depression.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hugh C.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis said that when he left home and was on the road in hotels, that he was plagued with doubts.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher, uh, around the turn of the 20th century, 1900s, uh great preacher in London, stood one day and said, I think when a man says I never doubt, it's time for us to doubt him.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And some of us have read My Utmost for his highest.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend it as a devotional book.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oswald Chambers says there.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: It may be a sign that he's thinking.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke treats doubters that way.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't try to squelch them.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: He says, listen, this book is for you.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you, there have been other gospels written, many of them, at least two of them circulating right now.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of eyewitness reports, so that's kind of reliable.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I won't let you know, verse 3, that I have a, as the Greek actually says, sort of a perfect understanding, a complete, I've studied the whole thing, and I'm letting you know that I know what actually happened from the very first.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, that's where he starts.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mark starts with Jesus being 30 years old casting out demons.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's 27 verses in Luke chapter 1 before Luke even mentions Mary, Jesus' mother.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: He takes so long, he's setting the whole thing up.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: He wants you to know he's done all the research.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and so it's just incredibly thorough.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And his purpose, he says, my purpose is to write an orderly account, verse 3, so that you can know the certainty of the facts.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you verifiable information.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You'll sometimes go to a church these days where the Protestant pastor will say, listen, it's the spirit of the thing, not the actual fact of the thing that's important.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not Jesus ever walked on water, whether or not there was ever a feeding of the 5,000, whether or not he actually bodily rose from the grave, that's not the important thing.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing is that we love one another as he loved us, and there's a whole spirit, a positive spirit that we need to imbibe.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke would say, that's Baldurdash.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: He'd say, I'm ruling that out.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: History does matter.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it matters so much that, you know, for those of you who want to know the historicity of the thing, I'm going to give you the historicity of the thing.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you the details.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to trace the, you know, the genealogy, the ancestry of Jesus, not just back to Abraham like Matthew does.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to trace it all the way back to Adam.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And at every stage of my account, I'm going to give you details that you can check out.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to name names, you know.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what he does.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would say that this is the apologetic gospel.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are some, I don't necessarily agree with them, some scholars overseas who said they think that Luke was a legal brief written to be given to Nero to defend Christians who were taken to court.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see any evidence of that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was true, but you understand the point.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: That this is, this is a deliberately from the beginning addressed to people who are seeking or who are even doubting.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So don't, if you've come this morning and you're not where a lot of other people are and you didn't know the songs and not sure that you're a believer, then or you're listening online and somehow you hit this, listen, that's fine, but you need to know that Luke would be the gospel I would recommend that you read first.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: For people who really are ready to believe, read the Gospel of John, the gospel of faith.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: But for those who have some doubts or questions, pick up Luke.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I ask you this question, and Luke asks you this question.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are you doubting?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are you questioning?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you seeking?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, please.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't let that drive you away from God.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: God cares about you.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we have 24 chapters, the longest book of the New Testament, and it's for you.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a second group of people that I think Luke's writing for, and that is people who feel lost, people who feel abandoned, people who feel like outcasts.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most people book of all, the most social book.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Gospel of Luke is just full of stories of people.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew may have those five long sermons, but Luke has parable after parable, story after story, true stories, other stories.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's just incredible, all the stories.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Luke is the only one, for instance, who's has anything about Jesus' infancy and boyhood, really, in detail.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have Jesus as a 12-year-old boy in the temple.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because Luke cares about things like that.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: He cares about childhood and infancy.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Luke's the only one that has Jesus outside the town of Nain.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just walking in the country up in Galilee, and he sees this funeral procession winding by him, and he stops.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what is it?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a widow, and her little boy has died, her only child, and he heals him.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a such personal touch there.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the only one who, hanging on the cross, gets into a conversation with the thief on one side of him.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they talk back and forth.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's in the gospel of Luke.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Luke is the only gospel where Jesus sits on a hill overlooking Jerusalem and weeps over the city.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's so personal, so compassionate.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I say this is like the 21st century gospel.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is what people care about today, care about what's real and authentic.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so Luke writes for doubters and seekers.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: People care about what's compassionate, what's kind and personal and caring.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Luke is.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the personal, kind and compassionate gospel.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not just so it can be compassionate for no reason, but the real point is that what he wants you to know is there was a search and rescue operation for the lost and abandoned and outcasts of society.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what actually is going on in his story.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have in the Gospel of Luke, story after story, many of them unique, such as the Good Samaritan story of someone who's in trouble and who is absolutely needs rescue and all looks lost, but then there's a search and rescue operation, and there's a good Samaritan that comes, as you know, and binds up the wounds.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a story that Luke likes because that's what Luke's about.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or let me direct you to the one text I would ask you to turn to this morning, and that would be the story of Jesus and the tax collector named Zacchaeus in Luke chapter 19.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 19.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is the climactic story.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a travel narrative of Jesus heading toward Jerusalem, chapters 9 through 19.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of this climactic story that shows Jesus, you know, at his best, seeking and finding someone who is lost.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is a small man with big problems here, Zacchaeus.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the story goes in chapter 19, verses 1 through 10, that Jesus entered Jericho.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Jericho is a city in the south.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's the largest oasis in the world.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's right out down by the Dead Sea.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was a chief tax collector and he was wealthy and he wanted to see who Jesus was.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine why he wanted to see who Jesus was.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Two reasons.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: One, he'd heard that this famous guy, Jesus, who was from Galilee up north, that he liked to hang with sinners and prostitutes and even tax collectors.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And tax collectors, remember, were outcasts.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: The moment as a Jew you became a tax collector for the Romans, you were kicked out of the synagogue.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: You could never return.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: You were you were persona non grata, you were no longer a son or son of Abraham.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you were not really a true Jew anymore.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can imagine that that being as outcast as and hated as he was, that Zacchaeus wanted to see who this guy.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll bet what one other reason he wanted to see, he wanted to see Matthew.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing he had heard that Jesus had actually recruited a tax collector to be one of his twelve disciples.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm guessing that was another reason why Zacchaeus really wanted to see Jesus.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it says being a short man, he could not because of the crowd.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't have all the words on the screen.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he ran ahead and he climbed a sycamore fig tree, not a very tall tree, but with branches that are easy to sit on to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So here he is up in the tree, which is not behavior that's normal.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You don't usually find adult men in Israel running and climbing trees and all this stuff.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: But he's really pumped and he wants to see Jesus and he wants to see Matthew.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I think he also gets up a tree for another reason.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think he knows that this crowd, the crowd of Jews, is no way are they going to give him, let him get a prime place at the front of the line to see Jesus.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's probably been in these crowds before, you know, and people have gone, oh, I'm so sorry.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they hated him and they elbowed him and stepped on his foot and accidentally, accidentally knocked him over.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is probably his way of avoiding going home being black or blue, black and blue as well.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, Zacchaeus is is is up the tree.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus reaches the spot, he looks up because he seeks and saves the lost.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: He looks up and says to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I must stay at your house today.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, stay at your house.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Eating a meal at one of these guys' houses, we know is bad enough.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Staying at the house overnight?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's awful.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Zacchaeus came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I collect sermons by D.L.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Moody.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of his books and his sermons.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: D.L.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Moody founded Moody Bible Institute, great evangelist, late 1800s.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is my favorite sermon, the Luke 19 sermon, Christ the Seeker, that Moody preaches.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've read it many, many times.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a little paragraph in it I absolutely love right on this verse, where Moody said, Some people do not believe in sudden conversions.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I should like them to answer me.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: When was Zacchaeus converted?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was certainly in his sins when he went up into the tree, and he certainly was converted when he came down.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: He must have been converted somewhere between the branch and the ground.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love that line.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really cute.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, Jesus joins him, and uh we're in uh uh chapter 19 of Luke and verse 7.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And all the people saw this and began to mutter, he's gone to be the guest of a sinner.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, Lord, Lord, here and now I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I cheated anybody out of anything, uh, you think I will pay back four times the amount.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, Today, salvation has come to this house because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he looks around.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know everybody else in this room, everybody else in this town of Jericho, everybody else in Judah has kicked him out of uh the out of Jewishness.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's no longer a son of Abraham to you, but I'm telling you that to me and to my father in heaven, he is a son of Abraham.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true of you.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that by the way?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: No matter who you are, if you have trusted Christ as your Savior, if you have come to God in the way that He has designated, suddenly you are a natural born citizen of Jerusalem, Psalm 87 says, and you are also a son or a daughter of Abraham.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says, This man too is a son of Abraham.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: For, say it with me the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the message, I think, if you put it in a nutshell of the whole book.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is the perfect man who came to seek and to save the lost.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect man.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's a theme of this book.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's the Son of Man, very human, but he's a perfect human.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Climactic verse there would be Luke 23, 47, the centurion standing at the cross.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke records that he praised God and said, Surely this was a perfect, this was a righteous man.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the perfect man, says Luke, who came to seek and save the lost.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke then asks, as he asks, if you were a seeker, he now asks, Are you lost?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Are you abandoned?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are you an outcast?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: If so, then you need to know that that's why Jesus came, and you are the persons for whom Jesus came.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: For the Son of Man has come to seek and save none other than the lost.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now the third group of people that I think Luke is writing to, and these groups, of course, overlap, not just the seekers and doubters, not just the lost and abandoned, but people who like happy endings.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way I've chosen to put this because I am sort of staggered by how Luke, in contrast to the other gospels, takes every opportunity to have happy endings, to have people, you know, yelling whoopee and jumping up and down.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: It starts in the very beginning with the angels and Mary and so forth.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: The angels come, you will have great joy and gladness, chapter 1, verse 14.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Many will rejoice at his birth.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then Mary and Elizabeth get together for dozens of verses, and they're all full of hallelujahs and singing praises.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then the angels come down.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what do they cry out in Luke?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: They cry out, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, Christ the Lord.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew may end his account with babies being murdered in Bethlehem, but the nativity account in Luke ends with great joy.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the whole book, we turn to the end of the book, unlike the other three gospels, Luke makes sure you know that there's a happy ending here, that after the ascension, the disciples worshiped Jesus and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then they were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I like happy endings, but there's no place where happy endings are more central to this book than in the most single most noteworthy chapter in this book, chapter 15, where you find not one, not two, but three stories that Jesus tells that end in absolute, unbridled, electrifying ecstasy and jumping up and down.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because you know when you have the most ecstasy, is when things look absolutely bleak and lost, and then all of a sudden everything turns around.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: That happened last year to us, us meaning Royals fans in the postseason.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where not once, not twice, but eight times the Royals were behind in late innings, the worst in my view, was in the Houston series.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're down six to two in the eighth, and and we were about to be eliminated when we somehow scored six runs.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you, when that happens, my body moved.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: I jumped up and down with joy, and I yelled, you know, hoopy.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: But even in the very last game, as you know, you know, we're we're down to Toronto, and it's true that we could come back to Kansas City and win, and we were all sure that we would, but but then Eric Hosmer steals home.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what did your body do at that point?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Did you yell out something embarrassing?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like whoopee, yippee, you-ha, yahoo, anyway.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and you jumped up and down for joy, because that's what you do.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you do when all looks lost, and all of a sudden that you're saved.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 15, that happens not once, not twice, but three times.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Unbridled joy.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of joy that a shepherd has, Jesus says, who's who's lost a sheep.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Comes home at night and you count the sheep, and you realize you count them once, you count them twice, you go, wow, I'm actually missing one.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then you think, what do I do?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's getting dark.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and then you realize, wow, that sheep, that sheep could be killed by the smallest of wild dogs.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then the weather may change tonight, and that sheep may freeze.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and so the shepherd reluctantly closes the door and then he starts retracing where to go to find that sheep.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: He retraces those miles that he's gone that day.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And nearly, nearly giving up as he seeks the lost, he he hears a slight noise and he looks over the edge of a cliff and he sees that sheep, and his heart just swells.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: He yells, yippee! And he puts the sheep on his shoulders and he comes back home.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as Jesus tells the story, he he runs around to the other shepherds.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Come on over to my place.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Coffee's on me.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I gotta tell you the story.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: He tells them the story that they all understand about how awful it would be to lose a sheep and then go find that sheep torn apart by wild dogs in the morning.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: But but he went here and he went there, and then he, you know, it's amazing.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: The sheep was over the edge of the cliff, and he tells them the story, and they all go, yeah, whoop, and they jump up and down for with joy.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of joy that that a man feels when he's lost, like me, when he's lost his wallet, or he's lost his keys and looks everywhere, and they're just gone, and he's ready to do anything, run out in traffic, and and then all of a sudden you find him and you're so excited.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the feeling a woman has, a wife has, when she loses an earring.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a set, and it's a set her husband gave her for their tenth anniversary, and it's really expensive.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And she knows that only one earring, unless you live in San Francisco, is too weird.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so the set of earrings is just completely lost, and it won't work anymore unless she finds that other earring and she looks everywhere.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: She's under the bureau, she cleans the whole house, she lifts up the air vents, she goes out into the car, she does everything, and she can't find the earring.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And just when she's about to give up and she's done all the crying she can do, she sees a little glint under the edge of the carpet, and there it is, and she finds it, and she's so excited, she calls all of her girlfriends and she says, Coffee's on me at World Cup.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go, I gotta tell you the story.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she tells them the story of how it was gone, and she doesn't know how in the world she lost it there, and she'd given up on it.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't know what she was gonna tell her husband, and it was gonna be just awful.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Unbridled joy, and they all, every one of them, coffee spills all over the floor as they jump up and down.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I go, Yippee, you know, jump for joy.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of joy a father feels.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: The story happens every week in our country.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of joy a father feels when his son comes to him and he says, I've had enough.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hate you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to stay here anymore.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he leaves, and the son just, the rebel leaves, and he goes to New York City, or he goes to Dallas, or he goes to San Francisco, and he's just gone, all of a sudden, just gone out of her life, out of their lives, and they wake up every morning and they go to bed every night crying and praying, and it lasts not just for days or weeks, but months, and even after years, it still hurts that much.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: They just can't live a normal life anymore.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, after four years, the phone rings.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Dad answers the phone, and it's the voice of his son.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dad, I thought I was gonna conquer the world, but it hasn't turned out good at all.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Any chance, any chance I could come back home?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, of course, the dad could say, Do you realize the pain and agony you cause?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and especially your mother, do you realize we have gray hairs we'd never have had others?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: But Father doesn't say that, does he?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he immediately drives to the airport and he gets on a plane and he flies to San Francisco and he helps his son pack and he brings him back home.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, That's what it's like.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when he brings it back home, they throw a huge party and they invite all their friends, and they not only serve coffee, they serve tea.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: They serve everything and invite everybody and they tell the story, and everybody goes, Yippee! This is so great.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: They jump up and down for joy, and in that chapter, every single one of these people cry out, rejoice with me.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's been such a happy ending.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the theme verse of chapter 15, Jesus says, There's joy.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know there's joy in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know that God gets happier over that than anything else that happens in the universe?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is that your view of God?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly wasn't the view of God that many of Jesus' listeners had, scribes, Pharisees, and so forth.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, heaven's pretty much always ticked off at us, you know, and God's kind of angry because we're not keeping the commandments, we're disobeying him, we've wandered away, and God's up there, and he's pretty steamed, and he's really looking forward to blasting us all with fire one day.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Hold, you don't understand.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven's really a continuous party.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because somewhere around the world, all the time, there's someone who's coming out of the wilderness who's coming back home, and that makes all of heaven rejoice.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's joy among the angels, there's joy among the Trinity, there's joy among all of us up there.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven is just a party, the serious business of heaven, quoting C.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Serious business of heaven is joy.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all along, up there, they're always dancing to the happy song by Pharaoh Williams, right?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is the perfect man who came to seek and to save the lost.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wahoo! I mean, it's so cool.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's all positive.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: You see, Luke has this flavor about it that says, you know what?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think all of us want happy endings, especially when they come to us.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: We'd all like it to end well because it doesn't always end well in our lives.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke says, I'm here to write you that you may doubt there's happy endings, you may doubt this happy ending.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: You may feel so lost and abandoned, you can't imagine a happy ending.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, the whole point of my coming is to seek and save lost people so that heaven rejoices and throws a party, and we want you to be a part of it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I read that story, the story of Luke, and I'm so touched by how different it is from the other gospels, and just amazed by it.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it strikes me that there is a story, a bedtime story, which we don't tell our kids anymore, but I know they told their kids constantly, maybe the most told bedtime story in Jesus' day.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you that story because of what it, how it reflects on this, all right?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: I my guess is that when a seven or eight-year-old boy asked his daddy and said, like, I just love it when my grandsons, as they always do when I'm there at bedtime, Papa, tell us a story, tell us a bedtime story.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think that during the in that day, when they did that, as often as not, the father would tell them this story.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: He would say, Listen, listen, sons, I'm gonna tell you a great story.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his name was Theseus, T-H-E-S-E-U-S.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Theseus.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Theseus was the son of the great king of the city of Athens, but he did not grow up in Athens.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up with his mother in her home far away from the city of Athens.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when he asked his mother why they grew up there, she said, Because we want you to learn discipline.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to learn hard work.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want you to grow up in wealth, we want you to grow up here.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he grew up and he rose above all the other boys' age in hard work and discipline and sports and athletics and fighting and everything else.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he was unknown.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was not famous.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he had a cousin who was far more famous than him.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: His cousin's name was Hercules.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knew Hercules, but nobody knew Theseus as a boy as he grew up.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when Theseus came of age, his mother said to him, Theseus, you have a destiny, you have a future, you have a mission.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sending you to go to Athens, the capital city, to where your father lives.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's time for you to start your mission in life.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so Theseus set his face toward Athens.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he set out on what was to be a long and arduous journey.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And along the way there were many thieves, many robbers, and many murderers waiting alongside the road, wanting to kill him, wanting to claim everything that he had, but he defeated them all, and along the way he set captives free, so that when the young prince approached and came into the gate of Athens, the whole city in an uproar praised him, this young man that they had heard of, who had set so many captives free, and that's when his father, Aegeus, the great king, stepped forward and said, This here is my beloved son and my true heir.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, a great dark cloud hung over the city of Athens at this time.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: For years before, uh the only son of King Minos of Crete, that great island to the south of Greece, the only son of this great and powerful king had come up to Athens to study, and carelessly, carelessly, the people of Athens had allowed a rampaging wild bull to run over Gore and to kill the only son of King Minas, who in an absolute rage had come up and defeated and subjugated the city of Athens, and said, in his anger, he said, I am going to get vengeance from you for as long as I live.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Every seven years you must pick out seven young maidens and seven youth, and you must send them to me in the island of Crete, or I will keep them in my prison called the Labyrinth.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was the most infamous prison in the world.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was a maze.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: A maze that was so great that once they took you into the maze, once you were a few steps in, you were absolutely and totally and utterably lost, and you could never find your way out.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: The walls were high, and you would wander this way and that way.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the maze was ruled over by this terrible monster, this monster called the Minotaur, this huge uh huge deformed bull, you know, great horns, but had the face and the hands and the arms of an evil human being, and the monster prowled the maze, the labyrinth, the way a lion is shut up in the den, famished and hungry, and every seven years, these fourteen children, these four seven girls and seven boys came in there to be lost and then devoured by the Motar.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was time now.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: When Theseus had entered Athens, it was time for them to select the 14 children, like the hunger game, 14 children who would go and be given to Crete.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Theseus stepped forward and he says, I volunteer to be one of the sacrifices.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: They said, Well, we honor your courage.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's really noble of you, but you're the son of the king.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: You do not need to do this.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he absolutely insisted.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so reluctantly they assented to this.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he was one of the fourteen who got on a ship and went down to Crete.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourteen of them went off the ship, and the crowd that gathered marveled at these beautiful fourteen maidens and young men who were going up to their death, and they marveled most of all at the young and handsome men who walked with his head erect, marching toward his death with the others.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: They blindfolded them.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: The soldiers took them into the midst of the labyrinth, and then they left them.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when the children had taken their blindfolds off, they began to wail and cry, knowing that their doom was sure, for they were lost, and now they were stuck.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: For if they decided that they would look for a way out, at any turn they might find that they had walked right into the savage beast.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if they stayed right where they were, that savage beast would eventually find them.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: And as they wept and as they as they cried, Theseus hushed them.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Listen, we are lost, but we are not lost.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I promise I will lead you out of here.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: For and he showed them a ball of thread that he had, for he said, As I came in the door, I tied some thread to the inside of the door, and I have let that thread out all the way.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I will lead us out of this place.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: But first, he said, I must find and kill the Minotaur.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: And taking the thread with him and unraveling it as he went, he went in search of the great beast.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when he came around a corner and he saw the great beast, they both charged at each other.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a terrible battle, and it lasted for more than a day, and he was terribly torn and bloodied, for all that Theseus had were his bare hands, and the Minotaur was this huge beast.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually he began to choke the life out of it, and he choked it and choked it until finally its horns touched the ground, and the Motar was dead.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: And retracing his steps with a thread, he found the other 13 and he led them out of the labyrinth and back on a ship to Athens, where you can imagine everyone screamed and shouted and jumped up and down for these 14 who were certainly lost and dead, had been saved.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I can imagine a father telling his sons that story.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next day, perhaps, telling them a story of another hero.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Very similar to that, but even a greater hero.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: A hero named Yeshua, a boy who came to earth, living far, far away from the great king, not growing up in wealth, not famous.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: His cousin John the Baptist, far more famous.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: But this little boy grew up in Luke 2.52 in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man and rising above all those around him.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he began to set free everyone who was captive.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: He delivered them, you know, from the enemies, from from their sicknesses and from demons.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then his father spoke and said, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 9 of Luke, he said, I have a mission, and he set his face to go to the capital city.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: And for the rest of the book, Jesus was on his mission, and as he goes hither and yon, on his way toward the capital city, he faces so many enemies and so many foes who would defeat him.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: But again and again, Jesus defeats the enemy and he makes it to the capital city, having set so many people free that the whole city of Jerusalem mounts up and they cry out, You are our prince, you're our king, and they cheer him as he comes in on Palm Sunday.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus has a mission that includes death, for a dark and deadly gloom has fallen over not just Jerusalem, but the whole world.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: For carelessly in the past, Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and go the other way.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so everyone on earth is lost and in a labyrinth and has absolutely no hope and is lost forever.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: With a demon that seeks to devour us, prowling here and prowling there.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus volunteered for the cross.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: He offered himself as a sacrifice with the crowds watching.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus went and mounted the cross and hung there on the hill.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the thieves beside him turned and said, Won't you let me live with you in paradise?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You will, I'll get you out of here.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: I promise, but first of all, I must defeat the enemy.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he bowed his head and then began that great battle in the absolute dark that took one day, took two days.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: But on the third day, somehow Jesus defeated death and Satan and sin.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Easter morning dawned, and today the entire world jumps up and down, says whoopee and cheers.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jumping up and down with joy, because that's how the story ends, and we know that's how the story ends, because Luke tells us the story ends that way for everyone who sees that Jesus was the perfect man who came to seek and save the lost.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if only sometime in your life, struggling with doubts, though you may, you come and see the story and see that it's really true, really historical, and see yourself as lost and abandoned, other than the Savior Jesus, and you say, I'll take him as my hero.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take him as my savior.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then your story ends well too.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke says to us, Will you do that?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you understand that Jesus came to seek and save lost people, will you take him as your hero?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Will you take him as your savior?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh will you?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for uh in thanksgiving for such a for such a gripping story as Luke tells here.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: I pray in thanksgiving for us having such a wonderful hero as the Lord Jesus Christ, who came as a boy, as a child, and grew up and then saved us when we are absolutely and unutterably and forever lost, and now offers a happy ending to all who will trust in him.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for those here who are not quite there yet, who are still seeking that as they look at this story, as they look at it more closely, that they would see that Jesus came for them and fling themselves with a reckless abandon upon the Savior for salvation.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.