Page 1242 in the Pugh Bible or Luke 1525 in your Bible, I invite you to turn to this morning's text. This is the end of a four-part series on Luke 15. Let me bring you up to speed.

Until now, until this last message in this last part of the chapter, Jesus has been answering the accusation of the scribes and the Pharisees when they said in

verse 2 this man received sinners and eats with them as though just to make the observation were a manifest indictment

that would bring him crashing down. And he answers it, number one, when I receive sinners and eat with them, it is like a shepherd

finding, after long search, a sheep and bringing him home and celebrating.

Answer number two, when I receive tax collectors and sinners and eat with them, it is like a woman who finds one of her lost coins and invites her friends and celebrates her friends and invites.

And, celebrates.

Answer number three, when I eat with tax collectors and sinners,

it is like a father running down a road with his arms wide and hugging a

penitent broken returning son and kissing him and putting a robe on his back and a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet and gathering the whole family and

slaughtering the fatted cab and throwing a party.

That's what it means when I eat with tax collectors and sinners.

So the whole point so far has been to say to these scribes and Pharisees who are standing around the edges of this room,

judgingly, condemningly, looking on this eating with tax collectors and sinners, he looks at them and he looks at these

sinners, prostitutes, drug dealers, whatever.

And he says, the whole point of this is, I am the love of God come down in search of lost people.

I'm a doctor, a physician coming for the sick. It is not the well who have need of a physician.

Now, at this point, in the parable of the lost son, a shift happens.

And it's a shift in verse 25 that we need to be awake to, very, very awake to because now he looks out on this crowd here of about 800 people or so, and he says, this part of the parable is for long time church attenders.

This part of the parable is for people who don't struggle much with running away to the far country and squandering their money on prostitutes.

This is for people who struggle with condemning the people that do.

This part of the sermon, this part of the parable is for people who come to church and almost

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