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• “What is God’s heart towards us?”
• Many people are convinced that God is angry with them and He is standing up there with a lightning bolt in His clinched fist ready to strike in His anger and might upon the first mistake! Even those of us who have received Jesus can still yet find ourselves having this perspective of God.
• One of the greatest pictures we see in Scripture which tells of the Father’s heart towards us is in the story of a prodigal son where we see how the father responds when he sees his son return.

I. The Father Pursues Us with His Love!
A. At the beginning of Luke chapter 15, Luke tells us that there were a lot of sinners that were coming near to listen to Jesus. But the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble about what they saw and said, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
B. What Luke is pointing out to us is that Jesus ate with sinners who were well known for their sin. They did not even pretend to be righteous like the Pharisees, they were just straight up sinners and Jesus ate with them!
C. It is important to note that this accusation they made towards Jesus was huge because eating together, for the Hebrews, was very significant! It was a picture of commonality, or communion, or oneness of relationship.

ILLUS: This begs to question, “Why would Jesus eat with sinners?” This is such an important point that Jesus gives three parables that people could relate to, one after the other, to give an answer to this question. These parables have everything to do with the Father’s heart and love towards us in that He came to seek and save that which was lost!

1. The first parable is about a shepherd who has 100 sheep and one of them is lost. “Does he not leave the 99 and go after the one which is lost?” Jesus asked.
2. The second is a parable about a woman who has 10 silver coins and one is lost. “Does she not search carefully until she finds it?”
3. Notice that there are two parts to these parables and both parts reveal God’s heart. The first is the SEEKING; the second part is the FINDING!
4. We see this also play out in the next parable in Verses 20-24 of Luke chapter 15.

D. Luke 15:20-24
1. Jesus here gives one of the most famous parables, the parable of a prodigal son.
a. This parable is so powerful and important to understand because it’s all about the Father’s heart!
b. Yes, it is about a prodigal son who sins, but it is all about the Father. If we could all be convinced of the Father’s heart for each of us!
c. It’s in this passage we see that:
i. The son came to his senses when he finally came to the end of himself.
 He realized that even the servants in his father’s house are blessed.
ii. He had squandered everything and then a severe famine hit the land and he began to be in need.
iii. God will allow difficulties in our lives so that we will come to our senses and that’s the point where we wake up and realize what we had been blind to.

2. Verse-By-Verse of Luke 15:
a. God the Initiator
i. Vs. 20 – ”20 So he got up and came to [a]his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and [b]embraced him and kissed him.”
 We see the father looking and longing for his son, waiting for him, waiting for his son to return and the Father does the same for us.
 We see here that GOD IS THE INITIATOR in that He is the One who is looking for us, longing for us, and waiting for us to return to be restored to Him when we drift off!
ii. In Genesis 3 we also see that God initiated as he was seeking to engage with Adam and Eve after they fell into sin, to draw them to Himself, so they might return to Him!

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