The habitation of God is intersecting with the habitation of man, and God is being revealed here.

The heart of God is being exposed here.

That's what these parables are about.

These parables, these two parables about the sheep

and the coin are Jesus answered to the Pharisees. What are you doing? Receiving sinners and eating with

them. And he's giving an answer that boils down to the fact God is coming into the world to search for

sinners. I love how these parables really pull back the curtain on God's heart, and they show us a God

who delights to go after the lost until he brings them all the way home.

I'm Dan Kroover.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper shows us that Jesus' welcome

of sinners is actually the very joy of heaven breaking in. This message was originally delivered

at Bethlehem Baptist Church on August 20th, 1995.

We live in a world that is very different from the world of John Bunyan 300 years ago,

or George Whitfield 200 years ago, or D.L. Moody, 100 years ago.

Very, very different world in which to do the kind of work they used to do. And this week, Abraham and I went downtown together and were confronted with one of

those remarkable differences. We went to Barnes & Noble bookstore.

I don't know if you've been to a major retail bookstore recently of that magnitude.

It's really quite an overwhelming experience.

It takes up about half a block downtown, and it is a remarkable meeting with the overwhelming,

relentless, seemingly ever-expanding, aggressive pluralism and diversity of the world in which we live.

Every topic, every sport, every vocation, every worldview, every philosophy, every religion you can think of, not only has a book or two,

but sections of books or two on them.

...