In the sermon 'The Father's Love' by Peter Allison, the speaker explores the parables in Luke 15 to illustrate the nature of God's love. The sermon begins by highlighting how Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees for associating with sinners, using this as an opportunity to teach about God's affections through parables. Allison emphasizes that God's love is both initiating and thorough, as seen in the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. The sermon discusses the significance of doctrinal statements and creeds in maintaining theological clarity against errors and heresies. It also addresses the complex nature of God's joy and anger, distinguishing between divine affections and human emotions. God's joy and wrath are portrayed as internal and unperturbed by external events, maintaining His immutability. The sermon concludes by affirming God's rejoicing love, which seeks the lost and delights in their repentance, urging believers to emulate this love in their relationships and actions.

Please turn in your copy of God's Word to Luke chapter 15. Beginning at the first verse. Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him, and the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. So he spoke this parable to them, saying, "'What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing.

And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. Or what woman having ten silver coins if she loses one coin does not light a lamp sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it. And when she has found it she calls her friends and neighbors together saying rejoice with me for I have found the peace which I lost Likewise I say to you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents Jehovah is near and all his commandments are truth. Heavenly Father we have heard your word.

We ask that it might be mixed with faith. We ask that you would open this word to our understanding today. And I pray that you would guard my lips from error, and that you would cleanse and sanctify to them. And Lord, may you be exalted in our midst this morning may your excellencies and perfections be shown to us and that we may rejoice in in the beauty of your holiness in Jesus name amen In Jesus' name, Amen. Well in the history of the church, it has often been the case that doctrinal statements and creeds and confessions are written in response to errors and heresies that have crept into the church and captured the imaginations and the hearts of people.

And these creeds are written to state clearly and distinctly the truths of Scripture on particular matters. We might think of the early church councils. Certainly beginning in Acts 15 with the council that met at Jerusalem, the very first ecumenical council that met together to discuss this understanding of the Gentiles being engrafted into the church and what was their position with respect to the ceremonial law. And after a great much discussion, this council drafted decrees that were sent to all the churches for them to keep. There was an authority that came from that council.

Or we might think of the Council of Nicaea that wrote the Nicene Creed in response to the Aryan heresy that Jesus was not God, not fully God. Or the Council of Chalcedon that dealt with the two natures of Christ. Well, this chapter is another example of that very same principle. Jesus is surrounded, in the beginning of this chapter, by tax collectors and sinners. The very people that the Jews avoided.

Tax collectors were not necessarily down and out people living on the streets and eating out of dumpsters. They were the up and out people, the up and out cast people, often very wealthy because they were the tax collectors. And when they told people how much tax they were to collect, people didn't have many options any more than we do today. And so they collected often more than was just. And they kept that.

So they were often wealthy, but they were despised by Jewish society, as the tax collectors of most wicked governments are, ever since and before. The Jewish leaders, namely the scribes and the Pharisees, complain that Jesus is willing to be seen around such people, sinners. Those are the down and out, or the people that society looks down upon as not being up to the standards of their righteous society. Jesus was with these people. Many of them, some of them may have been poor and destitute, not having anything.

Jesus is around such people. He's willing to be touched by sinful people. He's even willing to eat with them. Now We might think that we are like this, that we would be certainly willing to be around all these kinds of people, but just think for a minute, what would happen if Somebody you knew was suddenly arrested and charged with a felony, with a crime. If you've ever seen it happen, you know that People tend to want to have nothing to do with them.

They don't want to get implicated in whatever happened. Even if they're righteous, even if it's an unrighteous persecution. Our tendency is to not want to be associated with them, to not have any connection, to not look like we are part of them, close to them, and friends with them. We'll see this happens with Jesus when He is arrested. But Jesus is willing to be around these people.

And so the Jews complain about this. That somehow there's a fault with Jesus, that He's willing to cavort and eat with sinners and tax collectors. And so Jesus once again, as He has done in the past, takes this occasion of erroneous thinking in the part of the Pharisees and the scribes. He takes this occasion to teach about God and His affections, and His excellencies, and His attributes. This chapter has three parables.

We'll only look at the first two this morning, Lord, willingly. But each of these three parables that Jesus goes on to recount teach us something about God. They give to us a very simple, very clear, very easily grasped picture of the love that the Father has toward the lost. These are very simple stories. I suspect that any child here, even young children, could understand these stories.

Could understand these stories. But no one of these stories, nor any one story, any such parable, by itself is a complete picture of God. No one of these parables by itself represents the complete Gospel. Rather, each one of them gives us an aspect, one aspect of the character of God, nature of God. And sometimes these may even seem contradictory.

For example, in the first two parables that we'll be looking at today, or in the first of the two parables, God seeks the lost. In the second parable, God doesn't seek the lost, God waits, sorry, in the first two parables that we're looking at, God goes and seeks the lost. In the third parable, the parable of the prodigal son that Lord willing we will consider next week, God doesn't seek the lost, he waits. Now which of these is true? Well, they're both true.

They're both aspects of God's character. And so we can't, we couldn't latch on to one like the parable of the prodigal son and simply talk about God waiting and longing for prodigal children to return without also seeing these other parables where God is seeking the lost. See, we need both of these aspects of God's character to have a right understanding of God and of his gospel. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life. Secondly, the second observation I would make about these parables is that though they are simple parables, in that they represent God as a Father who rejoices, they pose a very deep and difficult question about God.

Scripture speaks of God loving the righteous, hating the wicked, rejoicing at things that happen, grieving at sins, growing angry at rebels and having compassion and pity on cities like Nineveh. And so we might ask as some people have asked, well how can God have these affections and still be immutable or unchangeable? How can God be what appears to have these be acted upon by things that are happening and still be the immutable, unchangeable God. Well if we make an unqualified statement that God has affections, we can easily and mistakenly communicate that people have the power to disturb God and to make Him happier or sadder than He was before, or to provoke Him to anger and induce Him to do something that he might later regret that he did. And if we say something like that, then God is no longer immutable and unchangeable.

He becomes sort of like the ocean. He becomes like us, changing. Our passions come and go, up and down. And we know that is not a right picture of God, the Father. But on the other hand, if we say that God does not have affections, then we can also mistakenly and easily communicate that He's cold, that He's remote, and that He's uncaring.

And then we would undermine His love and His personality. Because God is represented to us as three persons. So there are some aspects of the personal life of the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God that have some similarity to our emotions because we've been made in His image. But these aspects of God far transcend our emotions. And then of course there are very significant ways in which God is very different from us.

He's unchangeable, He's immutable, He's not perturbed by things that happen outside of Him. And so I would just say at the outset as we begin to look at these that When we speak about God's affections, it requires much wisdom, much humility in recognizing there are many things that we don't understand and we cannot explain about God. He's far above us. His ways are far beyond our ways. His thoughts are far above our thoughts.

So there's much that we're not going to be able to fully understand. So we need much humility and wisdom. We also need a willingness to do a lot of hard work. We simply can't give simplistic yes or no answers to some of these questions. So these parables then.

The first parable is of a man who has a hundred sheep and one of them runs away and gets lost. So the man leaves the 99 that are not lost and goes looking for that sheep that's lost. This parable shows us that God doesn't wait for the sheep to come back on His own. See, the Father's love that Jesus is portraying in this parable is that of an initiating love. The Father's love is an initiating love.

This man gives up his rest, his convenience, gives up the entertainment that he might have enjoyed that evening to go out and search for this lost sheep. He didn't just sit back and say, well, that stubborn sheep, that sheep didn't listen to me. That sheep got lost on his own because he's a rebel. He doesn't listen. I've told him many times not to do what he did.

He deserves to get lost. I'll just leave him there. I'll just let him face the consequences that are justly coming to him. If he's stuck somewhere, has to spend the night stuck, oh well. That'll teach him.

That'll teach him. If he's scared, well maybe he'll think twice before He doesn't listen to what I've said. If he gets eaten by a wolf, oh well. No, the Father's love is an initiating love. He goes out and searches for the lost.

He doesn't sit and wait for the lost to find him. If he did, we never would find him. God the Father goes looking. He takes the initiative. He moves first.

See, we love Him only because He first loved us. He was willing to go look for us when we were lost. God called Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldees. God called him and said, Abraham, come, go out from your city of your fathers to a land that I will show you. Joshua told the Israelites that your fathers, including Tira the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in the old times and they served other gods.

And then I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river and led him through the land of Canaan and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac God called Abraham God sought after Abraham God came after Adam Adam in the garden didn't Adam ran God pursued him Adam, where are you? And God confronted Adam in his sin, but he also gave to him that promise that from the seed of the woman would come the one who would crush the head of the serpent. He gave what we see and understand as the proto-evangelic, the Gospel. God sends His prophets to wicked cities like Nineveh so that they can repent. And Jonah knew that, and that's why he didn't want to go.

He didn't want Nineveh to have an opportunity to repent. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, And Assyria was an incredibly cruel, incredibly cruel, that era tends to be a lot crueler than today. I think you can generally say that, that people were much more cruel, but especially in Assyria. They were known for their cruelty and barbarity. And Israel had experienced that kind of cruelty.

Maybe Jonah had witnessed some of their barbarous acts of torture. A number of years ago, well you remember when David killed Goliath, he took that sword and cut off his own head. And when he went to see Saul, he had that head under his arm. That was a very common Assyrian practice. If you look at some of the old stones that adorned the city of Nineveh, their images are filled with these pictures are filled with these pictures of soldiers standing on decapitated people.

That was their practice. And worse, They committed unspeakable atrocities to the people that they captured. And Jonah quite frankly doesn't want these people. He's bitter about these people. He doesn't want them to have an opportunity to repent.

He doesn't want to go to them and proclaim God's Word to them. They might repent. He runs the other way. And then God goes after him, doesn't He? God didn't just leave Jonah to drown in the ocean and say, well, Jonah is my messenger that's run away.

God pursued him, sent a fish to rescue him. God brought him back to life, spit him out on the sand and gave him another chance. You see, God's love is an initiating love. He goes after those who run away. He pursues us.

He loves us. Even when God's messengers are abused and mistreated and killed, God continues to send them. God's initiating love sends messenger after messenger, rising up early, bringing God's Word. Because God is not willing that any should perish. And Even when His messengers are killed, Jesus says God sent His Son, His only begotten Son, to seek and to save those that were lost.

The Father's love is an initiating love. Jesus told Zacchaeus, today salvation has come to this house because He also is the Son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He's pictured here going out seeking the lost. God continues to send out his messengers to gather his people.

I remember being very young, maybe about four years of age, and we were at a family camp, sort of a vacation and there was a lake and I wasn't very big, I didn't know how to swim, but there was some kind of slide or something I remember vaguely that I could, The water wasn't deep enough that I could still use this slide and slide off and come back. I just remember, I don't know exactly what happened, but I remember at one point something wasn't where I thought it was and I slipped or fell or came off the end and went the wrong way. I don't know what happened. All I remember, the clear vivid memory I have is I was tumbling around completely disoriented having no idea what was up, down, where anything was And then somebody just picked me up and set me right. I was lost, I would have drowned unless somebody had come searching for me.

Somebody was standing there, some mother was standing there and saw it. See, that's what we are. We're lost, we're confused, we're disoriented. And if God doesn't come seeking us, we would never be found. People often get stuck in their own predicaments, stuck in predicaments that are the result of their own folly.

And if we're going to have this love of God toward them, then we need to be willing to help those people that are in predicaments that are the result of their own folly. And not to say, well, that's what they deserve. They got there because of their own sins and their own foolishness and their own stubbornness. There is a place for that certainly. The Bible does say those that shouldn't work or won't work shouldn't eat.

But that is something that comes at a later stage. We have to be willing to seek those and to help those that are in trouble as a result of their own folly. And especially as husband, because the love of a husband is to be like the love of Christ. And the love that's presented here is an initiating love. And so it's the husband that needs to go when there is a difficulty, when there is a breach, when there is a break, to initiate the process of reconciliation and restoration.

It's especially incumbent on the husband to have initiating love. And where there is a difficulty, where there's been a breach in the unity of the marriage. It's husband, It's our responsibility to imitate this initiating love of Jesus Christ and to seek out our wives. Secondly, the second parable is of a woman who loses a piece of silver. It's a Greek coin, a drachma.

It's probably worth about as much as a denarius, a Roman coin that's worth about one day's wages. So this woman has lost this coin. This may have been part of a 10 piece piece of jewelry that married women might have worn much like married women wear a Wedding ring or engagement ring today And she has lost this coin Now the interesting thing on about this picture is that it is of a woman and not a man. God created men and women in his own image. Both are created in the image of God.

But men and women are ontologically different. Men and women have different natures. I'm sure anybody that's married knows that. Very different natures. One is male and one is female.

Different strengths, different weaknesses, different callings. But both are in the image of God. And so, even though God is always referred to in the masculine, in the Bible, he's never a she, that would be blasphemy to refer to God that way. Nevertheless, the feminine nature of woman is also in some way a part of the image of God because God created man in his own image male and female and so in this parable it is a woman that is represented as doing the looking And I think this parable emphasizes the thoroughness, the thoroughness of God's seeking. His is an exhaustive and thorough love.

This woman lights a lamp to look in the dark corners and crevices. She sweeps the house with a broom to gather up every little bit of stuff so that she can sort through it and possibly find this lost coin. Now I don't know about your house, but in my house, I'm always losing things Some things there are certain things I that always go in the same place But I'm losing things and when I can't find it, then I turn to my wife and she finds it. So she usually finds it. She searches for it.

And she knows every little nook and cranny in the house. She knows just where those things might be based on based on my habits, which she knows. And so she's usually able to find whatever it is. It's usually a book that's gone missing. And that's the picture that's being presented here of a woman who is thoroughly searching, exhaustively searching, sweeping the whole house, top to bottom, cleaning, looking in every nook and crannery, lighting a light to take into the dark corners.

There is nothing that is left untouched, there is nothing that is left undone in her search for this coin. This is again a picture of God's love for us. That His love is exhaustive, His love is thorough. There is nothing that He leaves undone in seeking for us, in saving us. Just think of all that God did in the plan of salvation from appearing to Adam and Eve and giving to them that promise that 4, 000 years later would be preserved and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Think of all the things that He did throughout those 4, 000 years to send promises, to send types and shadows for our instruction that would point toward Christ, to take His children and His people through many situations, to teach and to train them, all for our benefit. These things, the Bible says, were all written for our benefit, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. Think of God sending His Son, Christ, coming to earth and living for 30 years growing up, first under the being in subjection to His parents, and then beginning a ministry for three years, the whole time completely living under imperfect obedience to the law of God, enduring all of the pains and afflictions of life as a human. Living under imperfect parents who didn't always get it right, and yet living in perfect submission to them, enduring the cross and despising the shame. All of this, God did, that we might be found to seek us, to bring salvation to us.

And lastly though, in both of these parables, we see that the Father's love is a rejoicing love. It is a rejoicing love. And what people rejoice over tells a lot about that person. Now I began this message asking the question, how do we understand God's joy and seem to have affections and His being at the same time immutable and unchangeable. How do we preserve this immutability of God with respect to His affections while not losing His affections?

That these parables are telling us God has. I think we can begin first if we define very carefully two words. And if we use them in this sense, it will help us in our discussion. And first is that if we define passions as the inner reactions of a person originating from outside sources, the inner reactions of a person originating from outside sources, and in that sense God does not have passions. He is not perturbed by things that happen outside of Him.

And we can say that affections originate inside in the person's will to influence others. Affections originate from within. They don't come from anything that's happening outside. They come solely from within us. And so then we can say that The exclusion of passions from the divine being, from God, never implied the absence of affections.

That's a statement by Richard Muller. The exclusion of passions from the divine being never implied the absence of affections. See, God reveals Himself in the Scriptures to be a God of boundless joy and pleasure. Psalm 16 tells us that in His presence is fullness of joy and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore. Jeremiah tells us that God delights in exercising loving kindness and judgment and righteousness in the earth.

God delights in these things. This joy doesn't come from things that are outside of Him, perturbing something within Him. Rather, they come solely from what is within Him in His decree to do justly and to do righteously and to love His people. Since God's joy is entirely originating from within Himself, His delight is infinite, eternal and unchangeable. God needs nothing outside of Himself to have this joy.

He needs nothing outside of Himself to be delighted and to be happy. He doesn't need us praising Him and glorifying Him to be happy, to have joy. God's compassionate heart then delights to save sinners. That delight comes entirely from within Him. Augustine said that God is the fullness and unfailing abundance of unfading joy.

God is the fullness and abundance, God is the fullness and unfailing abundance of unfading joy. God's joy though is not confined simply to himself, but also to all that he has made. And so we can say then that God's joy should not be interpreted in such a way as to add to God's happiness or to give Him some benefit. This joy, this pleasure, this rejoicing that Christ speaks of that God has, this shouldn't be interpreted as adding to God's happiness or giving Him some benefit that He did not already have. But at the same time, God does rejoice.

God does joy in His people. See, and the same thing could be said about His anger. His anger does not arise from any threat to Him. Men get angry when they lose control. And they get frustrated.

Rage can well up in them. Unrighteous anger, that's why the Bible says not to be quick to anger. And that's the result of us losing what we want to happen. That never happens to God. His anger is not because he doesn't like something that happened and he's losing control.

No. John Murray said, and pardon the lengthy quote, but I thought it's worth reading, John Murray said, it is unnecessary and it weakens the biblical concept of the wrath of God to deprive it of its emotional and affective character. Wrath in God must not be conceived of in terms of fitful passions with which anger is frequently associated in us, but to construe God's wrath as consisting simply in his purpose to punish sin or to secure the connection between sin and misery, is to equate wrath with its effect and virtually eliminate wrath as a movement within the mind of God. Wrath is the holy revulsion of God's being against that which is the contradiction of His holiness. Wrath is the holy revulsion of God's being against that which is the contradiction of His holiness.

But He says also that we should not deprive it of its emotional and affective character. We just need to understand both of these things together. They are both true. The scriptures speak extensively of God's joy at the lost. His joy at those who return to Him.

For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you, Isaiah. And now because you have done all these works, says the Lord, and I spoke to you rising up early and speaking to you, but you did not hear, and I called you, but you did not answer. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul, " Jeremiah said. Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, says the Lord God, and not that he should turn from his ways and repent?

For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, says the Lord God. Therefore turn and live. Say to them as I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil way. For why should you die, O house of Israel?

Those are all from Ezekiel. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Adama? How can I set you like Zeboiim?

My heart churns within me. My sympathy is stirred." God says of His people, Israel through Hosea the prophet. Or this one I'm sure you all know. The Lord your God is in your midst. The mighty one will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing. That's our God. His is a rejoicing love.

And He is not willing that any should perish, Peter says, but that all should come to repentance. And He now indeed does call all men everywhere to repentance. That is His desire and it is His delight. And He rejoices when one sinner comes to Him. Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that your love is a rejoicing love, that it is an initiating love that seeks after us and looks for us, and that it is such a thorough and exhaustive love that it leaves nothing done, that all of your people should be gathered to you. Lord we praise your grace and your loving kindness. We praise you whom we cannot, who our minds cannot understand and we whom our thoughts cannot contain. We praise, Lord, Your great and infinite wisdom and justice and goodness and mercy. And we ask, Lord, that you would grant to us perseverance that we may rejoice in these things all the days of our lives.

That we may be led by your counsel and afterward received into glory. Lord, this is our hope and this is your promise that you are able to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless before the presence of your glory with great joy. And Lord, we do delight in you and do love you because of your initiating love to us. In Jesus name we offer this praise. Amen.