Now, brothers and sisters, as we would turn our attention to God's Word this morning, I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Luke. Luke 15. I'll be looking at a very familiar parable this morning. I had the opportunity to preach this portion of God's Word a few weeks ago at Walker in connection with the Belgic Confession. I won't be looking at the Belgic Confession with you this morning, but I would like to look at this parable. The parable of the lost son, the parable of the prodigal son. It's in Luke 15, beginning at verse 11. We're only going to be reading this parable together, so we'll be starting at verse 11 of Luke 15, and we'll be reading to the end of the chapter, to verse 32. As we read these words, please also remember that this is the holy and infallible Word of the Lord our God. So Luke 15, starting at verse 11. Jesus continued, there was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, Father, give me my share of the estate. So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth and wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death? I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men. So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found." So they began to celebrate. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. "'Your brother has come,' he replied, "'and your father has killed the fattened calf "'because he has him back safe and sound.'" The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when the son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him. My son, the father said, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And thus ends our reading from God's word this morning, and may the Lord add his blessing to his word. Well, congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in my time as a pastor, one of the concerns that has often laid heavy upon my heart is the lack of assurance that so many Christians appear to struggle with time and time again in their lives. Of course, assurance does ebb and flow. There are times when we have stronger assurance of salvation, times we have weaker assurance of salvation. And even as we read from our preparatory form, we are reminded of, we are to examine our faith. Not to lead us to doubt, but we are to examine our faith. To question whether or not we have a genuine faith that truly embraces Christ and possesses His salvation. Those things are true. But it does seem as if many people struggle with finding that confidence, that confidence of knowing and possessing the fullness of God's grace and mercy to them. Does God really love me? Did Jesus really die for me? Do I really know God's grace and mercy? These kinds of questions often haunt the people of God. But you know, brothers and sisters, Jesus did what He did because God is the God who He is. In giving us this parable, Jesus wants us to see and to learn something about the God who is behind Him. The God, the Father behind Him who sent Him into the world to die on a cross, to be raised from the grave, to ascend into heaven. Jesus wants us to see behind Him the Father and to know and to learn something about the Father. This is a well-known parable, a well-loved parable, and for good reason. It's incredibly rich and powerful in its imagery. I think all of us have this parable resonate with us because we do have that great desire to find forgiveness and peace and reconciliation. We all yearn, don't we, in one way or another for that peace, that harmony, that reconciliation, that knowing and being known. And this parable pictures that for us quite powerfully. But instead of looking at this parable this morning in those terms or perhaps in a little more of a familiar way, I'd actually like to look at this parable with you and consider what it teaches us about God. What it says to us about God. What do we see here? What do we learn here about how God treats sinners? Well, I would submit to you that in this parable, we are shown how God has a heart of compassion, genuine compassion, towards lost sinners. We and we see that this morning or in this parable in three different ways. We see it, first of all, in the illumination of the young son, secondly, in the impatience of the father, and then third and finally in the invitation to the older son. And so I'd really like to look at this parable together with you to see this compassionate heart of God made known to us in the illumination of the young son, the impatience of the father and the invitation to the older son. Well, in article 17 of the Belgian Confession, which really was the impetus for looking at this passage to begin with, but in that article, the Belgian Confession, we confess that our good God, seeing that man had plunged himself into physical and spiritual death, set out to find him. though man, trembling all over, was fleeing from him." And it's referring to the book of Genesis, where Adam and Eve go and hide in the bushes, they hide from the presence of God, and the wonderful truth that God goes looking for them. And the Balanced Confessions, it brings it up, wants us to understand that this is the way God treats sinners. God doesn't just Leave them alone, leave them be, let them run away. But our God is a compassionate God who seeks out lost sinners. God pursues us. God chases after us. We run from Him, but He sets out to find us and bring us back. And I think that's what we find marvelously pictured here in this passage. In the first case, by means of the illumination of the younger son. Now, we're not going to focus so much on what the young son did, but we need to understand that or be reminded of it in order to appreciate the glory of what the father comes to do. And so we meet here with a young son. A young son who goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance. Now, this was not done in those days, and I think it typically still is not done in our own days either. The reality is that inheritances are what you receive when someone dies. And so what a young son does here is really absolutely disrespectful, absolutely hateful, a terribly wicked thing to do to his father, right? His father's still alive. And the son goes to his father and says, you know what? I can't wait for you to die. I can't wait for you to finally leave this earth. You're taking too long to die. I want your stuff, which is my stuff, now. And so just give it to me now. I'm not going to wait until you're dead. I want it here and now." I mean, could you imagine one of your own children coming to you and saying those things? you would get the impression and you would rightly conclude that this child cares nothing for you. They care nothing for you as a father or a mother. They care nothing for your love and your kindness and your compassion. They care nothing for how you have treated them and raised them and taken care of them. But their minds and their hearts are only filled with love for the stuff you have and which they want for themselves. absolutely atrocious a thing to do. And yet we see here the father concedes to the son's request. The father gives the son his share of the inheritance. And then we watch how this young son goes off and he frivolously spends this entire inheritance. We're told that he squanders it in wild living. It's much like you can still see today with many people who win the lottery. It's remarkable. They've done studies where they follow people up who win the lottery and they discover that the majority of them end up declaring bankruptcy within a number of years. You think, how could it be? I mean, they win millions of dollars. How is it that a few years later they're bankrupt? Well, the reality is that they have so much that they don't even think about how they're spending it, how they're using it. And so eventually all the money runs out, debts have to be repaid. They can't afford to pay the taxes on it anymore, et cetera. And they're really left with nothing. They're declaring bankruptcy. And that's pretty well what happens here with this young son. He has no thought to what he has. There's no responsibility whatsoever. He just throws it all away, throws it into the wind. But to make matters worse, there is now a famine that enters into the land and so he goes from bad to worse. He's now needing to find a job. And he ends up in the worst of circumstances. He hires himself out to a man and he has to feed pigs. Now, just remember that Jesus is giving this parable to Jews and pigs, of course, are unclean, according to the law. And so what is described here is a young man who has rejected his family, who has spurned his heritage, who now has gone and joined himself to Gentiles, pagans, unbelievers, and is working then with unclean animals. Even a Jew with the tiniest amount of respect for God's Word would never think of ever doing something like this. See, Jesus is picturing someone who really has not a thought, not a care at all for the things of the Word of God, much less his family or his heritage. He has spurned and spit upon everything, his entire identity, his entire faith, gone out the window. So here's this young man living in pagan lands, serving unclean animals, but it only goes from bad to worse because apparently the job he has cannot provide him with enough to survive. And so in the end, he's left envying the pigs. He wishes he could eat the slop, the mess that the pigs themselves get to eat. It's a picture of really falling as far as you can go. of falling so far away that you are truly at the very bottom. And I trust you can see then why the father in the parable in verse 24 says that his young son was dead. That's the reality. This young son is dead. He is at the bottom. He has nothing. He is totally empty. He is totally far gone. From a Jewish point of view, you could not imagine, you could not conceive of a person any farther gone than this, any more messed up than this. This is the epitome of forsaking your entire faith, religion, heritage, etc. But then Jesus says this young son came to himself, he came to his senses. It suddenly dawned on him that his father's lowliest servants were treated far better than he was being treated in this land of uncleanness. He wondrously enough seems to have come to some understanding about his father's character. He comes to some understanding that though he has spurned his father and spit in his face and rejected him and hated him and treated him wickedly, he comes to understand that yet his father is such that he may be compassionate and merciful and that he might even be willing to welcome this son back into one of the lowliest of places within the house. He's convinced that life would be better with his father, even if it means never regaining the status he once had, even if it means forever enduring the consequences of his actions by living as a servant in his father's house. He becomes convinced that that would be better. and that His Father may be such that is willing to do this for Him." Now in this story, the young son appears to come to this realization on his own. But the rest of the Scriptures you see go on to reveal that this kind of realization, this kind of coming to our senses, is only given by the work of the Holy Spirit. Only God can wake us up to the death we are living in to wake us up to the enormity of this sin that is destroying us, to wake us up to the reality of the misery we live in apart from Jesus Christ, and only God can convince us as we look to Christ that there is any possibility of forgiveness or mercy from the hand of God for us. And the reason I bring that up to you when we look at the illumination of the sun is to realize and to stress that when we speak of this illumination, when we speak of this sort of understanding and this awareness, it is nothing other than an expression of God searching for us. That God in compassion and grace comes seeking us. You know, we don't always appreciate being convicted of our sin, do we? Someone comes to us and says, brother, why are you doing this? Why are you living this way? This is wrong. Let me show you from God's word how this is not the way to live, brother. Or someone comes to you and says, sister, what are you doing with your life here? Why are you rejecting God's word and his will for your life? Why are you living this way and doing these kinds of things? And our instinctive reaction at times is to get very defensive and to excuse ourself and so forth. But praise God, there does come times, doesn't there, where we're struck, we're hit to the heart, and where we feel that pain, and we're impressed with the overwhelming sense of our guilt, and this is wrong, why am I doing this? And you see, that is the work of God, and to realize that conviction of sin you feel, that opening of your eyes to your sin, That is an expression, once again, of the compassion of God towards you. That is an expression of God chasing you, God searching for you, God, as it were, running after you. That you might come to receive his mercy and his grace. You know, do you see how much God loves you, that you feel that pain of heart, that guilt, that grief in your soul? That is God chasing you by his Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit being brought in to prick your heart, to break down the hardness and the rebellion. See, we often question, don't we, the compassion and the mercy of God, but as we think here of the illumination of the sun, his coming to his senses, we're to realize that is the work of God in our life. And that is a true sign that God's compassion is towards us, that His mercy is for us, that His grace is being held out to us. It's a sign of how God chases after us in His mercy and compassion. So we see here in this illumination again something of the compassionate heart of God towards lost sinners. And this expression or this picture only continues in the parable as Jesus goes on to tell us how this young son then gets up and he heads on his way to again find his father. And what we find next in this parable is so beautiful, so absolutely amazing. because we're told the father sees his son from far off, from a long way off. He's moved to compassion. He runs to him, embraces him. In the Greek, he falls on his neck and he kisses him. This is just beautiful. It really is very beautiful. Think with me for a moment about this. The father sees him coming from a long way off, and the impression is the father's on the lookout for his son. You know, the father hasn't simply written off his son, oh, this son of mine, he spit in my face, he hates me, he rejects me, he treated me so shamefully and wickedly. The father hasn't written his son off, right? You think how we might instinctively react to a child that does this to us. This child is dead to me. This child is dead to me. I don't want this child anymore. I will not recognize them as my son or daughter anymore. They have treated me like this. I don't care what they do. My heart is hardened to them. I will not turn to them. They better come begging and groveling if they even dare to see my face again. But the father's not like that, is he? The father hasn't written his son off. The father is not here standing with his arms crossed, glowering at his son just as he dares to enter into his presence. No, the father is pictured here as anticipating, as hoping. Hoping that as he looks off the horizon, he'll one day see the form, the silhouette of a young boy coming back home. Eagerly hoping that the son will realize his terrible mistake and find his way back home. The father's on the lookout for his boy. And when the father sees him, he runs. This was something no grown Jewish man ever did. Grown men did not run. That's still something of the case even today, perhaps not for the general population. But could you imagine the President of the United States running? Could you imagine the Queen running through the halls of the palace? And of course not, because we know that there's a certain amount of decorum, right? We know that for them to run would be to fail to reflect the dignity and the weight of their office and the responsibility. The president doesn't run. People run to the president. And you see, it was the same kind of thing for all Jewish men back in those days. You were older, you were wise, you were this respectable man of society. You did not run. You can remember how even David's wife rebuked him, right? Because David was leaping and dancing in front of the ark of God, and she says, oh, look at how the king, you know, exposes himself to his servants. You know, and she despised him for daring to act this way. But the father didn't care, did he? He runs to his son. He doesn't wait for his son to come crawling back on hands and knees, you know, kissing the dirt and pouring out all his tears and sorry, sorry, sorry. No, he runs to his son. He goes to his son. And look at the warmth of the father's embrace then. He goes and he grabs his son, this huge bear hug, and like I said, he falls upon his neck, tears streaming down his face, showering kisses upon his son. His son hasn't done anything other than to show up. His Son hasn't said a word yet. His Son hasn't given any indication yet of why He's come home, but the Father sees and the Father believes and the Father trusts and the Father runs and He's so ready and willing to pour out all kinds of grace and love and compassion on this Son who has come home. You know, this picture as well was absolutely radical to those whom Jesus was giving it to. When Jews heard this, they would have They would have felt this is wrong. A Jewish father didn't even do this for a good son. If you were an obedient son, if you were a loving, kind, faithful son, even your father would never do this for you. And that you went and did this for such a wicked son, that's unthinkable. But it only continues because as soon as the son does speak, and the son begins to say, you know, I'm unworthy and I've sinned against you, and you know, make me one of your servants, the father, you know, we get the impression the father cuts him off. He doesn't get through his whole spiel, he doesn't get through his whole speech. The father cuts him off and he addresses his servants and he says, be quick about this. Go get the best robe and put it on my son and get a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and kill the fattened calf that we can celebrate. You know, what's remarkable about this, when the father dresses his son and puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, these are all signs that the father restores him as a son. The young son comes saying, or intending to say, you know, make me one of your least servants. But the father will have none of that. The father says, no, you are my son and I will restore you to fellowship with me as a son. I am not happy to put you in the place of a servant. I am not satisfied with demeaning you and leaving you there lowly in my house. No, you are my son and I will restore to you your place as a son. The father has every right, every right to kick his son to the curb. To say, you're no son of mine, how dare you even make your way back here expecting anything other than to be thrown aside. Father has every right. And yet he embraces his son. And he's eager to receive and restore his son. And that's, as I said, the impatience of the father. The father is very impatient to restore his son. I can't wait for a single moment. I cannot put this aside for any amount of time. My servants, go put these marks of his sonship upon him right now, as fast and as soon as you can. And let's celebrate. There is a real eagerness and impatience, you might say, for the father to fully restore his son. And, you know, the cost of the father has been enormous, right? The son in taking his inheritance likely took a third. He has two sons. The eldest would get two thirds of the estate. His son has likely taken a third of his estate. And the father in restoring his son now gives the impression that his son also is given a new inheritance. He squandered a third already. He's already squandered the inheritance he had, but the father restores his son and restores the inheritance to him. So the son also becomes now an heir of his father's house. And it's absolutely breathtaking, isn't it? And I wish we could take, you know, just five minutes and meditate on this marvelous moment to picture, you know, in our in our minds, the amazing scene as the father embraces his son with tears, as I said, falling down his face and kisses being poured out upon him and and commanding his servants, go, go, you know, restore my son again and give him all these things and and make him great in my house again. I wish we could meditate upon that because, again, Jesus is seeking to show us something of God's own heart. Do you see how God looks at you? Do you see how God treats you as a lost sinner who comes confessing their sins and acknowledging his own unworthiness? Do you see how God, how eager he is to embrace you with his love and his kindness? Do you see how there's no hesitation? There's no, well, let me give you a lecture here for five minutes on how terrible of a person you were. There's no glowering and glaring at this Son and saying, how dare you even think to come to me expecting to receive any kindness. But the Father just lavishes, lavishes His compassion, kindness, and love on His Son. And you see, this is a picture of how eager God is to apply the work of Jesus Christ to you. This is how eager God is to take you lost sinners and to clothe you with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. How eager God is to take you, even though you've spit in his face, even though you've turned your back to him, even though that you have rejected his word and gone your own way in open rebellion. How God is yet so willing and eager to call you a son. and to give you the inheritance of life everlasting in his house through the precious work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you understand, brothers and sisters? Just how much God desires to forgive you. Just how eager God is to forgive you of all your sins. and to restore you to His love, His favor, His grace, His kindness, His mercy, His compassion. See, in the greatness of the compassionate heart of God, He is searching for us. He is looking for His children that He may, just in the moment as they come to Him and turn to Him, enfold them in His arms and shower them with His loving kindness and tender mercy. Listen to Isaiah 55. Let the wicked forsake his way, the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. God will abundantly pardon. God is not stingy. God is not miserly. He lavishes His mercy and His grace upon us in the wonder of His compassionate heart. Glorious, glorious truths again to consider in the illumination of the Son and in the impatience of the Father here in this parable. We want to end together by looking at the invitation to the older son. So we're told the celebration has started, they're singing, they're making music, they're dancing together, and the older son begins to come in from the field, and he hears these things, and he's kind of curious, what's going on here, what's happening? I wasn't aware that any feast or celebration was planned, and so he calls one of the servants and says, well, what's happening here? And the servant tells him, well, your brother came home. Your brother came home and the fathers decided to kill the fattened calf and to hold a great feast celebrating his return. And at this, we're told that the older brother becomes angry. He's upset. He's upset at how his father is treating his younger brother. He's displeased with the kindness, the mercy, and the compassion that his father has shown. And the older son then complains to his father. He says, look, I've been slaving away for you for many years. And you've never treated me this way. I have slaved for you. I have obeyed you. I've lived for you. And you've never even given me a young goat, much less the fattened calf, to celebrate with. He says, look, here's your young son, and look, he took a third of your possessions and he squandered it in reckless living. He spent it with prostitutes and everything, and now you kill this most choice of animals for him. When you stop and you consider as well the older brother's words, you really get a sense of resentment and growing distance. You'll notice that the older brother doesn't refer to his father as father. He doesn't call his father. He just speaks to him. He won't address him as father. And when it comes to his brother, he doesn't recognize him as his brother. He says, your son, your son. This older brother is resentful. This older brother, this one's dead to me. He's not my brother. He's got no place here. And so it isn't just that the older brother won't enter the feast, but there's this this growing distance. He thinks of himself as a slave to his father. He he thinks to himself as if he's he's all good and holy and righteous. He he is even growing in distance from his father. But the father, what do we see here? The father, on his part, still invites his son in. And the implication in the original language is the father continues to invite him in. It says the father pleads with him and treats him to come in. And the word is continual. He keeps pleading. He keeps entreating him to come in. He doesn't just say it once, but he says it over and over and over again. Please come. Please come. Please come. Enter in. Enter into the celebration. And be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. Now to help us understand, we perhaps need to think a little bit more about what's going on with this older brother. And I would argue that the older brother represents the Pharisees. And they're disgust for the fact that Jesus is bringing tax collectors and sinners into the kingdom of God. Now, in a certain respect, the Pharisees are like you and me. What I mean by that is the Pharisees were the people born and raised in, you might say, good Jewish homes. They never really sowed their wild oats. They generally lived a decent, moral, upstanding life. They were obedient. They cared for God's law. They were concerned about a holy life. But you see, they've now come to this point where they resent and they hate the idea that God would welcome these terrible sinners in His kingdom. They're thinking to themselves, look, we belong in God's kingdom. We haven't lived this terrible life. We haven't spent ourselves pursuing all kinds of terrible sins and wickedness. We haven't squandered the Father's gifts. We have strayed. We have worked hard for our Father, and we've done all that we can to stay faithful to Him, and we've cared for His Word, and we've read His Word all our lives, and we've sought to put that Word into practice. These people, they don't deserve to be in God's kingdom. They don't deserve to be part of God's family. They're not worthy of being counted with us. You might say that they're kind of like Jonah. Right? They hate the idea that God would have mercy on the wicked and the unbelieving. And the seriousness of this issue, of course, as the parable goes on to show, is that this very attitude jeopardizes their own place in God's kingdom. Right? The parable ends, the father invites his son to the feast, but there's no answer on the part of the older son whether he goes in or not. The father entreats with him, the father invites him, but the son is still outside the celebration. The question is, will he go in? Is he willing to recognize himself the grace and mercy of God, which abounds and overflows even to the most wretched of sinners? Is he willing to acknowledge God's grace and the enormity of God's grace and mercy? Is he willing to acknowledge that he himself lives by the grace and the mercy of God, even for as righteous and holy as he may think himself to be? It ends with God, right? The parable ends with the father in his compassion and mercy, continuing to plead, continue to plead with this one lost in self-righteousness, continue to plead with him. to know His grace, to know His compassion, and to join in the celebration of lost sinners. And although there is much to think about there with regard to the self-righteousness of this older son and his resentfulness to great sinners, I think we do need to see here, again at the end, the compassionate heart of God. Because I think it's marvelous to see, again, how God continues to plead, to plead with lost sinners. And God pleads with all of us. He brings His Word. He calls all of us to repentance and faith. It doesn't matter if we're someone who's lived our entire life in the church and sought to serve God faithfully and cherished His Word. God calls us as well to recognize our need for His grace and compassion, and to realize we live by that grace and compassion. God continues to plead with us, and God continues as well to look out to the world, and He looks to those people that are in the gutters, in the alleyways, who are trapped in the greatness of their sin, and God is concerned with pleading with them too to come and enter in. God brings this invitation to us all. And again, that's an expression of the compassionate heart of God. That God is a seeker. God is one who searches to find lost sinners. God pursues us and He brings His Word time and time and time and time to us saying, repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be forgiven of all your sins. Please enter into the joy of salvation. Please embrace this with faith and you will know my love and my kindness and my mercy forever. And you cherish that, brothers and sisters, you know, we we gather every Lord's Day. We gather in morning and evening twice on this Lord's Day. The Lord pleads with us. He begs with us. He brings his word to us, calling us to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That word, that call of God going out to us time and time again and how we need that, don't we? And how gracious God is to continue to bring that word to us. You know, how blessed are you and I that we even have that freedom to hear the voice of God coming to us time and time again through his word to hear that call to life and salvation in Jesus Christ? That word goes forth continually. And you see, it's not we can't blame God if that message isn't heard or isn't received. God seriously brings that word, that invitation to us to repent and believe and know His grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. We all receive that time and time again. And God in His compassion continues to speak to us, leave your sins behind, leave your sins behind, come to Christ, come to Christ, and you will have life and mercy and grace. Again, brothers and sisters, I'm often troubled And I'm also often touched by the trouble so many people have in finding that assurance of salvation. I think we always have to come back to this compassionate heart of God. God is much more eager to forgive us of our sins than we can even possibly begin to imagine. He is so much more ready to embrace us in his love than we could possibly fathom. The Lord's compassionate heart is towards us in the Lord Jesus Christ. So again, listen to those words of Isaiah. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. See the compassionate heart of our God, brothers and sisters. Come to him and know that he will embrace you in grace as his own son through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, our heavenly fathers, we gather before you in worship this day. We thank you. Thank you that we could look to your word and hear your word and be reminded of the greatness of your compassionate heart. Father, we often have sin far larger in our minds and our hearts than Your own heart. And at times, Father, that keeps us. It keeps us. It holds us back. But Lord, may we, hearing Your Word, hearing of Your gracious, compassionate heart, may we all come before You in true, genuine faith, looking to Christ. That we might be embraced by You, even as the Father in this parable embraced His Son with tears and with great joy and thanksgiving. Father, may we as well enter into that joy of celebration as you reconcile lost sinners unto yourself. And may we rejoice that you would as well use us, use us, to bring lost sinners unto you, that they may know your love and your grace and compassion as well. Oh, Heavenly Father, you are a good, gracious, and loving God. And would you continue to fill our minds and hearts with the glory of who you are, that we would not be given to doubt, that we would not be given to fear or uncertainty, but that, Father, we may know that confidence and conviction of your salvation, even as we look to Jesus and behind your own son see you, our Father, who sent them in the fullness of your love, that those who might believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. So thank you, Father, for being our gracious God. Would you bless us then in your mercy? Uphold us in your grace. We ask all these things in Jesus name. Amen.