Seeking and Saving the Lost

The Gospel of Luke as the Theme of Seeking and Saving the Lost

Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Ebendroth. Is this our 15th year? We're going into 15 years of radio? In the old days, if we were on for three or four years, some people can say, well, we listened to every show.

I don't know, after 15 years, if you have listened to every show, maybe there's a problem. Mike Ebendroth here, No Compromise Radio. Seriously, if you have listened to every one, you should probably email me.

Mike at nocompromiseradio .com, and I should send you something, some, I don't know what. I'm a slow mover at times because I have a lot of things on my agenda. And at least this year, we got the new podcast deal, a new music.

So now we just need to have cool things to sell like the Pactum with Pat Ebendroth. So sooner or later, maybe we'll get that right now. So we didn't get that done. And of course, I'm not to make any excuses because I just got done reading the Jocko Willink book on extreme ownership.

I should make no excuses, but since this is just kind of a fun thing for me to do, my little hobby of mine, I can make excuses with a hobby. And that hobby is essentially on the back burner because I've been so sick in the last few months.

Feeling better now though. Lungs feel a little bit better. On the bicycle, maybe three days a week or something. And so I think there's kind of, there's hope in there. Yes, I knew you'd be cheering me on.

Pedal, Mike, pedal. Pedal, Mike, pedal. One of the things I love about riding a bicycle besides exercise and clearing my mind and thinking about ideas, most of my good ideas come on the bicycle. I get to listen to a lot of podcasts, so.

Or as they say, the younger generation, I listen to pods. I still, every time I hear that, I think of, as I said before, invasion of the body snatchers. Well, what do we do here at No Compromise Radio?

Lots of times we talk about theology, about the Lord Jesus. I think I may be getting sucked back into Twitter world a little bit. I'm hardly doing any Twitter, just a few positive, encouraging, K-love kind of Twitters.

But the other day I posted a tweet and it essentially said, if you're a pastor and you keep going after your congregation like they're all unsaved, maybe you should go be an evangelist and let somebody else shepherd the frail flock of God.

And what I meant by that was simply, okay, if you go into United Methodist Church and you're a pastor and you think, I'm just going to start preaching the gospel because it seems like no one here is saved, or maybe a liberal American Baptist Church, or I don't know, another liberal church, a liberal Anglican church, or something.

All right, I get that. But just generally speaking, a pastor should say to himself, I need to be preaching to the flock to encourage them, to convict them, to give them a reminder of God's first use of the law and what he required and how thankful we are that the Lord Jesus is our representative and substitute.

The third use of the law, obviously, to guide us. But we call preaching in sacraments means of grace for a reason. They're not means of scolding. And yes, there are, hear me well, there are unbelievers in the church and in the worship service, in the Lord's day service.

And I know unbelievers don't worship. They blaspheme, et cetera, et cetera. I get all that. And they hear the word as well. And I regularly say, if you're not a Christian here today, then I preach the gospel.

And I call them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen savior, because they're sinners and they're in dire need of forgiveness. I regularly say that. And I think to myself, how does Jesus shepherd the flock?

And I think to myself, whose flock is it? They're not my flock. They're the Lord's flock. And I think we need to be very careful as pastors, instead of saying, you know what? I'm just gonna consider most of the people at the church not saved.

I think you should consider people at the church saved, at least a good majority of them, as you have been around for a while, you understand their profession of faith, even though they struggle with sin.

It's the Roman seven condition. And we have a savior at the end of Romans seven, and then no condemnation in chapter eight, verse one. I think you should probably be telling weak Christians things like this.

And here's what I say. So the unbelievers don't take this for them. I say, dear Christian, God couldn't love you anymore. Even when you sin, you don't lose your salvation. You don't lose union with Christ.

You don't lose, et cetera, et cetera, dear Christian. So I say often, dear Christian. Well, what I wanted to do, and maybe this was my fault, but I wanted to pull up something and put a little gif on there.

Jif, Jiffy, choosing mothers, choose Jif peanut butter. And I got the little caption with Paul Washer, and it said, don't laugh, I'm talking about you. And instead of really it being about Paul Washer, because he's not a pastor.

I mean, I could talk about Paul Washer in law gospel and he's getting better, encouraging people. People send me emails and say, that's true. I take you at your word. But I mainly wanted to have, don't laugh, I'm talking about you to the pastors who do this.

So once again, as far as I know, Paul Washer's not a pastor. He goes around and speaks to pastors. He preaches at pastors conferences. He preaches at other conferences. He preaches at churches. Maybe he's an elder at the church he's at.

I'm not exactly sure of the details, but I wanted the part, don't laugh, I'm talking about you. If you're a law preacher, a scolding preacher, a preacher that assumes everybody's an unbeliever, or many are unbelievers, or the Twitter is hitting a bullseye, I'm talking about you.

And then there's like 30 ,000 views. And some of the comments were interesting. Some, somebody said, to be fair, that was a message that he preached to college students. And he said, he might do it differently.

I said, okay, fair, that's fair. But to be fair, I think he regularly confuses law and gospel. And then some people are like, everybody needs to be preached to, like they're an unbeliever, to convict them, to obey and all these other things.

And it's just, I thought, wow. I do think in evangelicalism, the law gospel paradigm is being recovered, thankfully, and still needs more recovery based on at least the Twitter comments. So that's probably what I get for being back involved with like sending little scuds out and trying to be provocative.

The old radio slogan used to be always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And now I want it to be always biblical, always about Jesus. It doesn't have to be in that order. Gospel assurance is online with audio, Kindle, and regular paperback.

That's $14 .99 for the guide and the smaller devotional. It's much easier to read. You can also get that in print. I don't have it on Kindle. I don't have an audio. It is what it is. Remember Aesop's fables, very interesting.

They'd have like a little moral at the end, right? Using animals to teach lessons, probably for adults as well, but probably specifically for children. There's one called Hercules and the Wagoneer. And of course the Wagoneer has got a really heavy load.

It's muddy and the wheels are sinking in the mire. And the more the horses pulled, Aesop writes, the deeper sank the wheels. So the Wagoneer threw down his whip, knelt down and prayed to Hercules the strong.

Oh, Hercules, help me in this hour of distress. But Hercules appeared and said, Tut man, don't sprawl there. Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel. All right, well, Aesop's fables have little morals.

What's the moral to that story? And the moral of the story is, what is the moral of the story? Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, is that the moral of the story? No, self-help is the best help. That's the moral of the story.

Or the gods help them that help themselves. Or heaven helps those who help themselves. Hercules and the Wagoneer. Now the moral of that story is certainly a fable. It's certainly a myth, but it pretty much sums up what people think today.

Maybe even universally. They think that God will help if they start it. Sometimes they just think they can help themselves all the way up to heaven itself. That's exactly right. We call self-salvation in the Greek auto, right?

Self and soterism, auto-soterism, self-salvation. And of course, if that was true, why did the Lord Jesus come to die, to suffer and to die? Was it just an example of love? Was it a demonstration of compassion?

Obviously it was a demonstration of love, but that's not the purpose of the atonement, the central purpose. It's ludicrous to die for just a demonstration of love if there's no salvific ramifications.

Galatians 2 .21, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. If you could get saved by yourself, if heaven helps those who help themselves, then why would Christ die?

He would have died for no purpose. And the Bible says, and specifically in the gospel of Luke, specifically for today, that Jesus comes to seek and save the lost. As you know, I've been preaching through Luke and thinking about it a lot.

Luke 19:10 and the Mission of Christ

And so today on No Compromise Radio, I'm talking about the theme of Luke. I'm talking about why auto-soterism is wrong. I'm talking about why morality is wrong. When you meet someone and they say, I am responding to the question, how are you gonna go to heaven?

How do you know you're gonna go to heaven? What basis should you go to heaven? What's the foundation of your hope of heaven? I've done more good than bad. I, I, I. Someone once said to me, can you give a personal testimony about your salvation without saying I?

Well, the good news is if Jesus is the active one who's sent by the Father, then you could use me. Jesus saved me, right? We don't say Jesus saved I. I mean, some people do, woe is I. I think I have that book about grammar.

You'd never know, would you? Woe is I, woe is me, which one? Luke and me, Luke and I, I, me. I mean, the list goes on. Anyway, back to the point. God is the Savior and he's the one. He, the Father with great love sent the Son.

Remember, it's wrong to think that the Father only loves because of the work of the Son. That would be wrong. We need to think in a Trinitarian way. And the Father, because of his love, his great love with which he loved us, he sends the Son for God so loved the world.

He sent his only begotten Son. So the Father loves, the Son loves, and of course the Holy Spirit loves. And there's one God, three persons. And of course, before the incarnation, there's one nature, therefore one will.

And so that one will, Father, Son, and Spirit can't have the Father not loving and simply angry and not loving. Luke 19, 10, for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost. If you'd like to work through books of the Bible and think of theme verses, if you think about Mark chapter 10, verse 45, he comes, what?

Not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. That would be a theme verse of Mark. What about John? You think, well, what's a theme verse for John? Maybe it's John 1, 14. Maybe it's John 1, 18.

Maybe it's John 3, 16. You can pick a theme if you'd like. Maybe it's John 6, 44 or 45. Whatever you'd like to do. If you're just picking theme verses, here's a theme verse for Luke. Luke 19, 10, for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.

That's a summary of what Jesus did. That's a summary of his mission, the sovereign initiative of the triune God. Jesus said, I've not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. That's Luke 5.

Luke 15, verse 10, I tell you, there's joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. This is God coming to seek and to save the lost. Remember with the hundred sheep and the lost one. Remember with the coin, et cetera.

The theme of Luke is Jesus comes to save the lost. He comes to seek the lost. This is in fact what one person called the golden text of Luke's gospel. The golden text. Isn't that good? The golden text.

What did Jesus come to do? Why did the father send the son? The answer is to seek and to save the lost. And when you think about that sheep metaphor and sheep that are wandering and are astray. Ezekiel 34, we see God's attitude and what he'll do.

My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill, my flock was scattered over all the surface of the earth and there was no one to search or to seek for them. For thus says the Lord God, behold, I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out.

Yes, Jesus then comes after Ezekiel and he takes on human flesh and we have the God man. We have the son of God and the son of man. And it is El Moudi who said to me, Luke 19 10 is one of the sweetest verses in the whole Bible.

In this one short sentence, we are told what Christ came into this world for. He came for a purpose. He came to do a work. He came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

That's language from John chapter three, is it not? Another writer said, there's not even a word in this verse that has even two syllables. It's just so simple, but so profound and so wonderful that the son of man came to seek and to save those that were lost.

And Christian, he came to seek you and he sought you and bought you with his redeeming love. He came to save you. What was lost? We were lost because of the fall and he comes from heaven to seek us. And of course, Luke 19 has a context and Luke 19's context was Jesus is going to Jericho and was passing through.

And he finds that tax collector who was very rich named Zacchaeus. And of course, Zacchaeus, that name means pure or innocent or clean. And it wasn't quite true, was it? And of course, Luke 18 talks about a rich man.

And Jesus said, how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

And we see now here's an illustration of Jesus, how great his saving is. And with men, this would be impossible, but Jesus is the eternal son. And of course, Jesus said, I'm gonna go to your house today.

Zacchaeus replies and they all grumbled saying in Luke 19, seven, he has gone into be the guest of a man who is a sinner, somebody that's scandalous, somebody that's disgraceful, someone who is awful.

I know Luke was a physician and here we see the ultimate spiritual physician who takes care of sinners. Later in Luke 15, they began to grumble these Pharisees and scribes. This man receives inner sinners and eats with them.

Salvation has come to your house for the son of man came to seek and save the lost. That is the theme of Luke. That's the theme, really, it could be of the entire Bible, this kindness of God. John Calvin calls the astonishing kindness of God.

And it is because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, that is righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That's 1 Corinthians 1. It's by his doing. If you're a Christian, it's because God made you a Christian.

It's because God did all the work and therefore he receives all the praise. And we were not born into the kingdom, we're not a blood, not a will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but we're in the kingdom because of God, even to those who believe on his name.

That's in John 1, it's in James 1, in the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of first fruits among his creatures. The theme of Luke is the triune God seeks and saves the lost and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ sent by the father, the unbegotten father, sending the begotten son and the father and the son sending the spirit.

And what's your response to that? What's the response knowing that you don't have to pay for your sins? I hope your response is things like this, praise, thankfulness, a desire to evangelize, wanting to honor the Lord with obedience and godly living.

But is there anything else that maybe would be important? Well, how about this? This great redemption that was accomplished for you, would you like to learn more about it? Or you think, you know what, I've learned enough, I don't need to know anymore.

It makes me, and I'm sure it makes you as well, want to learn more about this great salvation and to learn all the little details about it found in the gospel of Jesus according to Luke, Matthew, Mark, John, Old Testament, Genesis 3 .15, Genesis 12 .1, Genesis 15, Genesis 17.

You wanna learn more about it, right? And you wanna learn about it from the beginning. What's the origin of this? Oh, we could go into eternity past origin type, but just even in time, what's the beginning?

How did this all start? Give me all the details, fill me in. I wanna hear about it over and over and over about the marvelous grace and the love of the Father and the love of the Son and the love of the Spirit with that hymn, grace is a charming sound, harmonious to the ear, heaven with the echo shall resound and all the earth shall hear.

I wanna know more about it. That's one of the responses to your great salvation. And therefore that's why Luke is so great because it goes back to the very beginning. It goes back and ties into things like it's been 400 years since God has said anything.

We remember the book of Malachi and how it ends with a curse. And just before that curse, it talks about the Messiah, we're gonna have the forerunner first, one like Elijah. And we know that forerunner's going to be John the Baptist.

And when the forerunner comes, the runner's going to come after, the forerunner and the after runner, after the forerunner. So you have the forerunner and after the forerunner. I think that maybe sounds better.

Woe is I. My name's Mike Avendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. You know, people say on the podcasts that you should give a rating. If you're on the iTunes or the iPhone and you've got that podcast, the iPodcast, whatever it is, iPod, would you give us a rating?

I don't think we get many ratings these days. Everybody else talks about ratings. And if you've bought the book, Gospel Assurance, would you go to Amazon and give a rating? That's what everybody asks.

So would you give us a five-star rating? And would you tell me it's great? So other people can learn that very fact. Salvation is accomplished by God. It's His doing. And then wouldn't you like to know more about that?

I think the illustration doesn't perfectly apply, but regularly my children who are now grown want to hear about how Kim and I, my wife, Kim, and I met, and who introduced us, and what happened, and what did we do, and how long were we engaged?

30 days. And why was that? Oh, funny. But one of the things that happens is you say, well, I just want to learn more. It's just fun to hear the story. And, you know, don't start the story in the middle.

Don't start the story someplace else. Start the story from the beginning. And that's exactly what happens in Luke chapter one. As much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, me, Luke, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been.

Just as those, verse two, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses. Let's start at the beginning. Let's start with 400 years of silence. Now, Gabriel speaks on behalf of God. The messenger of God speaks on behalf of God.

And then you hear about Zechariah and John the Baptist. You hear about Mary and the Lord Jesus. And you think, oh, now I'm understanding. Now I know why it's good to go back from the very beginning so I can just see God's hand, God's faithful hand, God's good hand, God's rescuing hand, God's seeking hand, God's searching hand.

Isn't that good? Doesn't that make you wanna just read all the details about your great savior? Even if you've got a Harmony of the Gospels, that might even be the best thing. Harmony of the Gospels takes all the gospels and combines them.

And there's a little trick to it because sometimes things aren't in chronological order in the gospels themselves, the individual gospels. So there are kind of liberal versions, other versions of Harmony of Gospels.

So you just can't get any version, but you wanna get one written by a conservative author and they just work through with columns so you can learn more about the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that'd probably be a good thing to do and you would be helped.

My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can always write Spencer. We're trying to get a new website and our current website doesn't help you search very well, but Spencer can find an old episode if you need them.

His email is info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you have questions, you can always write us. There are me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. Or if you wanna just say, I'm learning about Law Gospel, thank you.

Or could you do this, that, or the other? That also works too. Thanks for listening.