The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

If you've never contacted Grace to You, we want to send you a free booklet by John that

unpacks fifteen Greek words in Scripture that explain a stunning paradox, how a God

of perfect justice can show mercy to sinners who deserve only punishment.

Request your free booklet titled 15 Words of Hope by writing to Hope at gty.org.

This offer is good in North America and Europe through June 2023.

And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

Let's turn back to Luke chapter 15.

And as you know, as I said last week, we usually cover a few verses, but these days we're

endeavoring to cover larger portions of Scripture, and I want to take you back into the 15th chapter

of Luke, one of the most powerful chapters in all of Holy Scripture.

There's a rare theme in preaching.

I said this 15 years ago when we went through the gospel of Luke and came to this chapter.

I don't remember how many messages I preached on this chapter, but I think it was at least ten or more.

And I, at the time said, I may be introducing something to you that you've never heard of before, namely the joy of God.

We think about God in a lot of ways, but normally people don't think of God as joyful,

but God does everything He does for His own joy.

There was Jonathan Edwards who said God's single end in redemption is His own joy.

God has a compelling interest in the recovery of sinners for His own joy.

On the other hand, Scripture says God has no joy in the death of the wicked, Ezekiel 18.

...