The Good News According to Luke: Part 13
Pastor Rollan Fisher
“Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Focus: We serve a God who goes looking for those who are valuable to him to redeem their lost time and lives.
Lost Valuables
Lost Time
Lost and Found
Lost Valuables
We see the kindness of God as he goes looking for the lost until they are found.
Luke 15:1-10 ESV
“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. "Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."”
Ten silver coins (drachmas) would have been about ten days wages for a laborer and thus of great value to him.
God spends his life and mobilizes the church to diligently seek for and save those who are lost - those who do not yet know or walk with Jesus.
This is the starting point of making disciples of the nations - the rescue and healing of broken, damaged lives.
Every person that you have or ever will meet is valuable to and dearly loved by God.
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Aren’t we glad that God goes looking for people until they are found!
God meets us in our weakness to bring us back to himself just as the man in the parable lays the sheep on his shoulders who is too weak to return on its own.
Hear the good shepherd’s call today.
God places such a priority on seeking and saving the lost that he says there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who do not need to do so.
The irony is that, as is the emphasis in all the gospel of Luke and book of Acts, there is a universal need for repentance and the “righteous persons” are only people who think that they do not need to repent.
We must realize that we have wandered from God, his life and his ways before we can be found.
“Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It’s more like the smelling salts.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Lost Time
God came to redeem the time that we lost wandering in sin.
Luke 15:11-16 ESV
“And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.”
“When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
The story of the prodigal son is of one who started off in the house but took what he had for granted.
He should have known better, but thought he could have a better time in wild and rebellious living.
The young man was unmarried, and thus in the culture was probably a teenager.
The father allowed the son choice and divided the inheritance when asked.
God will allow us to go our own way, in opposition to him, and learn from the mistakes that we make.
The younger son enjoyed the wayward living for a time, but the bill of sin always catches up with you and has to be paid.
When all of the younger son’s money disappeared, so did his fair weather friends who were simply around for a good time.
Proverbs 25:26 ESV
“Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.”
The wayward son had to hire himself out to a Gentile to feed pigs, which would have been repugnant to him.
How has the sin in your life, though at first pleasurable, come back to bite you?
“We must admit that we’ve put our ultimate hope and trust in things other than God, and that in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
When these substitutes fail us, we find ourselves wanting like the prodigal son.
What has that been for you - a failed relationship? Career pursuit? Search for happiness or attempt at identity outside of God?
We can begin our way back to God for redemption when we realize, like the prodigal, that our sin isn’t just against earthly relationships, but against heaven, that is, against God himself.
We wake up when we realize that:
It is the wrath of God that allows us to be turned over to the consequences of our own sin (Romans 1).
It is the mercy of God that allows us to wake up from our sin without being completely consumed by its deserved consequences (Lamentations 3:16-33).
Because of the mercy of God, Christ would go to the cross to pay for our sins.
It is the kindness of God that draws us to repentance (Romans 2:4).
And finally, it is the grace of God that gives us better than we deserve allowing us to be forgiven and live in the resurrection life of Jesus!
“God’s love and forgiveness can pardon and restore any and every kind of sin or wrongdoing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if you’ve deliberately oppressed or even murdered people, or how much you’ve abused yourself. The younger brother knew that in his father’s house there was abundant “food to spare,” but he also discovered that there was grace to spare. There is no evil that the father’s love cannot pardon and cover, there is no sin that is a match for his grace.”
-Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Lost and Found
God came to restore dignity and worth to those who’ve strayed, while reminding the faithful of their great eternal reward.
Luke 15:17-32 ESV
“"But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate. "Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.' But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, 'Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!' And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'"”
While the prodigal was still a long way off, the father, who was undoubtedly watching and longing for the son’s return, saw him and made his way towards his returning son.
When the prodigal woke up to his mistakes, the father came running to meet him on his return.
This was culturally unusual for dignified, well-established men of means of Jesus’ day, but it demonstrates the heart of our Heavenly Father longing to meet the repentant sinner where they are.
When he returned, the father had a feast celebrating the return of his lost son.
With forgiveness, the father restored the younger son to a place of dignity and worth, welcoming him back as an heir in his home.
Jesus Christ, God incarnate, made this possible for us by living the sinless life we should have lived, dying on the cross the sacrificial death that we should have died, in our place, and rising from the dead to provide new life for those who would entrust themselves to him.
When we return to God, we are given the robe of Christ’s righteousness and bestowed the ring of sonship established in covenant by Jesus’ blood.
This is what we celebrate along with others in the sacrament of baptism, as people leave their old life of sin and turn to a new life in Christ!
Yet the truth is, both brothers in the story of the prodigal son had heart issues and something to learn.
“The targets of this story are not "wayward sinners" but religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading not so much with immoral outsiders as with moral insiders. He wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls and the lives of the people around them.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Both brothers were in need of the gospel.
The younger brother needed the gospel because of the sin found in his wild living.
The elder brother needed the gospel because of his self-righteous pride that distanced him from the father and had the elder son refuse to participate in the father’s feast.
While sinners like the prodigal were listening to Jesus’ words, so were the Pharisees and scribes to whom this parable was also directed.
“Your computer operates automatically in a default mode unless you deliberately tell it to do something else. So Luther says that even after you are converted by the gospel your heart will go back to operating on other principles unless you deliberately, repeatedly set it to gospel-mode. We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security. We believe the gospel at one level, but at deeper levels we do not. Human approval, professional success, power and influence, family and clan identity—all of these things serve as our heart’s “functional trust” rather than what Christ has done, and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self-control. You cannot change such things through mere willpower, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.”
-Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
If you find yourself like the older brother, you must not be bitter in soul towards the younger brother who received the warm welcome after wasting his father’s possessions while the older brother remained faithful.
“Another sign of those with an “elder brother” spirit is joyless, fear-based compliance. The older son boasts of his obedience to his father, but lets his underlying motivation and attitude slip out when he says, “All these years I’ve been slaving for you.” To be sure, being faithful to any commitment involves a certain amount of dutifulness. Often we don’t feel like doing what we ought to do, but we do it anyway, for the sake of integrity. But the elder brother shows that his obedience to his father is nothing but duty all the way down. There is no joy or love, no reward in just seeing his father pleased. In the same way, elder brothers are fastidious in their compliance to ethical norms, and in fulfillment of all traditional family, community, and civic responsibilities. But it is a slavish, joyless drudgery. The word “slave” has strong overtones of being forced or pushed rather than drawn or attracted. A slave works out of fear—fear of consequences imposed by force. This gets to the root of what drives an elder brother. Ultimately, elder brothers live good lives out of fear, not out of joy and love.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
The older brother says the treatment of the younger is not fair because he likens his own faithfulness to years of servitude without any celebration.
This produced in the older son a self-righteous resentment.
Has that been how you have felt?
The father responds with an affectionate appeal to his elder son, and thus, to those like the Pharisees, an invitation to enter into the same mercy and grace.
As a faithful child, you should receive the encouragement that all that the father has is yours.
Remember, you have not wasted your inheritance in wild living and should rejoice that your brother has been brought home.
At the same time, pride should not blind us to the fact that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are saved solely, like the younger brother, by God’s grace through faith alone.
“Here, then, is Jesus’s radical redefinition of what is wrong with us. Nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most profligate, immoral person. Why? Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.”
-Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Let’s all as elder and prodigal sons return to the cross today that we might allow Jesus to truly save us - restoring our lost time and lives by his redeeming love.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher