Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

The Prodigal God: He Welcomes Sinners

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, February 28, 2010

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathered around to hear Him, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners.’” The Pharisees said that as an indictment against Jesus, not as a compliment or admiration about Him. They had noticed, during Jesus’ ministry, it seemed like the irreligious people seemed to gather around Him and not the religious folks like themselves. Much to their disdain, I might add.

A careful reading of Luke 15:1 implies that it was a continuous thing that the sinners and the tax collectors were always attracted to Jesus and always gathering around Him and wanting to listen to Him. The Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the religious people of the day simply couldn’t understand that. And so we here have them muttering to one another. One can almost hear the conversation. “Would you look at that guy again? He’s talking to them. He’s sitting down with them. What’s the deal? Doesn’t He know who He’s associating with over there? Doesn’t He know what they do for a living? You know, I’ll bet not one of them has ever stepped foot in a church in their life. It’s one thing to talk to them, but He must be telling them what they want to hear. Otherwise, they wouldn’t stick around.”

In answer to the mutterings of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, Jesus tells three stories, three parables to address the concerns the Pharisees and the teachers of law have. This morning, we’re going to focus in on the first two parables, hinting a little bit at the third one but we’ll leave that for the following weeks. Right now, we’re going to focus in on the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin.

There are three things that are going on in this chapter. First of all, we have an unwilling audience who’s listening to Jesus. Second of all, we have lost things. And finally, we have relentless searching that’s going on. First of all, we have an unwilling audience. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law really didn’t want to listen to Jesus because they didn’t like Him. But yet they felt compelled that they had to listen to Jesus. After all, He was gathering these crowds of people around Him. He was stirring things up. There’s a movement that is happening here. And so, as the religious leaders of the day, what was going on? They had to find out. And if nothing else, could they trap Him in something? Some way, could they trip Him up? So they’re unwilling, but they’re listening to Jesus.

Now oddly enough, on the other side of the coin, we have a group of people who, according to the religious society of the day, they were not welcome. They were sort of the outsiders. They were the outcast of the religious society and yet, those are the people who continuously, throughout the gospels, are always gathering around Jesus to listen to Him, the ones who have the label of sinners and tax collectors. They’re a willing audience. But the unwilling audience, the Pharisees, they’re confused by Jesus. They’re frustrated by Jesus. They’re even angry with Jesus because He’d associate with the scourge of society.

Now it’s important to note here that obviously they didn’t put Jesus in the same camp as the sinners. If they didn’t like Him so much, if they thought so poorly of Him, then why didn’t they put Him in that camp? There must have been a certain level of respect for Jesus as a teacher and they recognize Him as a teacher. They address Him as a teacher throughout the gospel, so they don’t put Him in the same camp as the sinners and tax collectors. But if you will, that only fuels the fire. Because He was in the same camp with them, they wouldn’t care what He was doing. But because they considered Him a teacher and now He’s associating with this group of people, that just really, really rubs them the wrong way. I suppose it would be okay if He was talking with them, that is, if He was saying the right things, point out the depravity of their lives, the error of their ways, how if they could just change and be more like, well, more like them. But obviously, that’s not the message Jesus is delivering to these people.

And then He does the unthinkable. He invites them over for dinner. “Doesn’t He know? Doesn’t He realize, by inviting them over to dinner, He’s putting them on equal footing? Doesn’t He realize as He invites these sinners over for dinner, He’s saying that He accepts them for who they are?” It’s to this concern then that Jesus addresses, but He doesn’t do it in a direct way. My guess is if He would have addressed the question and the mutterings of the Pharisees in a direct way, they wouldn’t have listened.

So instead, Jesus tells them stories, tells them parables. And in parables, it’s a disarming way for you to relate to one of the characters in the parable. The point here is that Jesus didn’t tell these three parables in a vacuum. He told them with purpose and intent, and the primary audience is the Pharisees and teachers of the law. You don’t want to miss that. The primary audience for these three parables in Luke 15 is the Pharisees and teachers of the law. Certainly, the sinners and the tax collectors could gain much from what Jesus is saying, but He’s directing it at the Pharisees.

Then that brings up another interesting point. If the Pharisees are to connect with someone in the stories, who is it they would connect with? Well, you take the first one. We have the parable of the lost sheep, so we have a shepherd who goes out searching for him. Well, Pharisees considered shepherding to be an unclean profession so they certainly wouldn’t want to associate themselves with the shepherd in the story. And, I hate to say this, but they had a pretty dim view of women and so they thought them untrustworthy. And so they certainly wouldn’t want to associate themselves in the story with the woman who searches for the lost coin. Positively, they wouldn’t be the younger brother because the younger brother goes off in wild living and squanders away his fortune. These are Pharisees. They pride themselves on being godly, on being righteous, of taking the law to the inth degree and following it in every respect. So the question you want to ask yourself, as you’re reading the parables and as you meet in your small groups this week, who is it in the stories that Jesus wanted the Pharisees to relate to? Because that’s the primary audience. They’re unwilling, but they’re listening anyway because they have to.

Let’s get into the first two parables. We have two things that are going on. We have lost things and we have a relentless search that happens. The lost things in all three parables, we have the sheep, we have a coin and we have a son who is lost. Now they’re lost in different ways, but all of them represent those who are spiritually lost, those who are far from God. So the sheep is lost because of foolishness. The coin is lost because of thoughtlessness. And the son is lost because of willfulness.

The sheep is lost because of foolishness. The sheep is lost and doesn’t even know it. I don’t know if you’ve ever been around sheep. In high school, my best friend had sheep. They’re the dumbest animals on the planet. They have no idea. I’m convinced that the only reason God created them was for illustrative purposes in scripture. They’re just dumb. For the one out of the hundred that wanders off and gets lost, he doesn’t even know he’s lost more than likely. He’s just going along his merry way and life is good until, all of a sudden, he is attacked by the wolf and he’s shocked and surprised that he got himself into trouble. It’s just foolishness. It’s just because of the small brain of the sheep. There’s really nothing that he can do about it, that he is lost and separated from the shepherd.

Now the coin is thoughtlessness because the coin has nothing to do with it. It’s whoever takes care of the coin. So somebody must have mishandled it. Somebody must have been careless and not given the attention that it should have to the family bank account and so, therefore, the coin gets lost.

The son is willfulness. Because of selfishness, because of pride, he says to his father, “I don’t want to live according to your rules. I want to live according to my rules. So give me my share of the inheritance, and I’m going to live life on my own terms.” And so he willfully separates him from the father.

But the fact is all three of them are lost and all three of them represent being spiritually lost and far from God. What Jesus is doing, He’s exposing the many dimensions of sin, the different ways in which we can be separated from God because, after all, it is sin that separates us from God. And so, He illustrates that through these three stories showing the three dimensions.

Let me try to explain. I’m guessing all of you know somebody who has a bad temper, got a hot head. You’re probably thinking of him right now. Don’t look at the person next to you. Somebody who flies off the handle just for no reason at all. Well, let’s try to explain that. Well, maybe it’s genetic. We’re finding all kinds of things with genetics, and maybe the chemistry in the brain, there’s something that’s up with that and they just have a predisposition to flying off the handle and being angry. Okay? That’s the sheep, just foolishness. It’s just how sheep are. They’re just dumb. Some people are just angry.

Maybe it’s how they were raised. Maybe they were raised in an abusive situation. Maybe it’s the fact that the way conflict was handled in their home was through yelling and fighting and arguing and whoever had the largest voice and got the most red-faced, they won. And so now that’s just passed down to them, and so that behavior now is demonstrated in their life.

Maybe it’s just willfulness, though. Maybe early on, they found out that if they threw a temper tantrum, they got their way and so that just sort of progressed through life and now, out of selfishness, when they want to get what they want, they just get mad and they get angry and they find out that people usually will cower from that and they’ll back down and they get what they want.

You see, is it either because of foolishness, thoughtlessness or willfulness? And more than likely, it’s a combination of all. We’re all born sinful. It’s innate in us. And we enter into a sin-fallen world where things aren’t right. Each of us are surrounded by sinful people. Our parents are not perfect. Those of us who are parents know that we’re not perfect and we make mistakes in raising our kids. And the fact of the matter is, we all have a healthy dose of selfishness in us. And we have some pretty good pride going on. So it’s a combination of all three but what Jesus is doing is He’s demonstrating that His view of sin is far more complex than that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees have simply one category for sin. You want to know what sin is, just look at the folks who are hanging around Jesus. Those are the sinners of the day. But Jesus’ view of sin is much more complex and how we can be separated from God, how we can spiritually be lost has many, many dimensions to it.

The second thing we have going on in all the stories is we have a search that needs to take place. A search needs to take place because none of the objects in all three stories can find their way back home. The sheep can’t find his way back home. The coin certainly cannot find its way back to the owner. And the son cannot earn his way back into the family.

You see, sheep don’t even know they’re lost so why would they try to find their way back home. There are millions of people in our world today who don’t know they’re lost. They have no idea of a loving God who wants a relationship with them, and they’re just living life and maybe they’re doing okay and things are falling into place for them and they don’t even know they’re lost until it’s too late and they die. And big surprise.

Some people are lost, but they can’t do anything about it. They’re hurt. They have pain. They have this emptiness in their life and everything they try to do to fill that emptiness never quite makes it, maybe on a temporary basis but nothing on a permanent basis. And so they’re lost from God.

There is a good amount of people who have wandered far from God willfully, and they know the things they have done which were wrong and they don’t know how to make up for it. And they spend a lifetime trying to make up for it, a lifetime of trying to do the right thing, to somehow appease their conscience but they can’t. They can’t. At the most unlikely time, it always creeps back up again reminding them of their past and the dirty deeds they did and so they’re lost and separated from God.

So no matter whether you’re a sheep, a coin or a son, you’re separated and you can’t find your way back home. It’s impossible. That means someone has to come to find you. So it is in all three of the stories. We have a shepherd who searches for the sheep to bring the sheep home. You have the woman who cleans the house searching for the coin so she can reclaim it. And even in the third parable, there is one who was supposed to search for the younger brother but didn’t. But you’re going to have to wait a couple of weeks for me to explain that one. All three of them needed someone to search for them because they were lost.

My friends, this is the radical nature of Jesus’ message. This is the radical nature of the gospel that maybe we have missed or we have become numb to. You see, according to humanity, religion’s spirituality is our quest for God. It’s our search for God. There is a spiritual revival that is happening in our country. Young people are more open to talking about deities, gods, spirituality, supernatural, miraculous events than any other time that I know of in my lifetime. Spiritual revival. But it’s a quest to find God. It’s our job, it’s religion’s job to help us find God. But I guarantee you, the moment you think you have found God, most certainly you have not.

And the problem is those who think they have found God will look at the sinners, those who haven’t, and say, “I found God. Why can’t you? If you just try my technique, if you just look at my religion, if you just do the things that I do, you can find God too.” The Pharisees thought they found God. They thought they found God in their study of the scriptures. They thought they had found God in their rituals, found God in their trips to the synagogue, found God through keeping the letter of the law to the inth degree. So they look over at the sinners who are hanging out with Jesus and they say, “We found God. Why can’t you? If you would just be more like us, if you would just do the things that we do, you could find God too. If you made just a small effort, then you could find God as well.” And the tragedy of Luke 15 is those who think they’re the closest to God are just as far away from God as the sinners and the tax collectors, just for different reasons.

That’s why the story has a relentless searcher, one who will not give up. Remember, Jesus is addressing the parables to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. That’s His primary audience. That means Jesus is reaching out to them. They’re His enemies, but Jesus is reaching out to them. He’s seeking them. He wants them to be found as well because, in each one of the stories, there is a relentless searcher. Remind you again of what it says, the shepherd, first of all, “Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until it gets dark and then he comes home?” No, it doesn’t say that. It says, “Does he not leave the 99, go into the open country and go after the lost sheep until he gets hungry and then he has dinner?” No. It says, “Doesn’t he leave the 99 and go after the lost sheep,” until when? “Until he finds it.”

How about the woman? Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house, search carefully, when? Until she finds it. We have a relentless searcher who will not give up until he finds that which is lost. You see, God has to find us. That’s why God came into our world. That’s why He took on flesh and blood. We cannot find God. God has to find us. Jesus Himself said, why did He come into the world? He said, “I have come to seek and to save that which was lost.” That’s why He’s here. We can’t find our way back to God. God has to come get us. God has to find us.

The shepherd goes out and searches until he finds the sheep. Jesus says that He is the Good Shepherd, and He will even lay down His life for his sheep. Jesus is willing to sacrifice His life if that will reunite us with our Father in heaven. Salvation is by grace, not by achievement. It doesn’t matter what we do or what we say because none of it, none of it can bring us closer to God. God has to come to us.]

This was challenging news to the Pharisees. They couldn’t wrap their mind around this. In their mind, they were not sinners who needed to be saved by grace. The sinners were those people over there. It’s not that the Pharisees thought themselves to be perfect. It’s not that they thought themselves to be without sin. Sure, they’d say they sinned and then they’d quickly point out, “But we repent of our sin and we confess our sin and we pray about it and we study about it and we go to the synagogue on a daily basis. They don’t do any of that.” So the ones who think they’re the closest to God, because of their activity, because of their own righteousness, says that they’re just as far from God as the sinners and tax collectors.

And that’s why Jesus is on a quest searching for them and He comes after them through stories, through parables to try to reach them and to change their heart. Because the fact of the matter is both the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and the sinners and the tax collectors are both lost, but Jesus came to seek and to save all who are lost. He’s the Good Shepherd who will even lay down His life for His sheep.

This next week, I want you to ask yourself, whether it’s in your study or just going about daily life, are you more like the Pharisees or are you more like the sinners? I had to ask myself that question this week as I was contemplating the message, and on Thursday, I had the privilege of delivering the prayer for the opening of the House and the Senate at our State Capitol but, before that happened, I’m downstairs having coffee. And I’m looking around, just doing some people watching, and I see all these guys dressed in nice suits and these gals in their skirts and their dresses and all the clerks and everybody’s dressed very nice. And then, all of a sudden, in contrast to that, I see this group of people who come through and they have leather on and they have torn jeans and they have boots. There was a motorcycle group there who was lobbying that day and, I don’t know, there had to be 75, 100 of them wandering around. And the contrast between the suits and the polished shoes and the leather and the dirty boots, and so I asked myself, “If Jesus showed up, who would He have coffee with?” And then, more penetrating than that, if Jesus showed up, who would He attract? Who would gather around Him to listen to what He had to say? And then the most penetrating question I had to ask myself, dressed in my nice suit, am I a Pharisee or am I a sinner?

The good news is, no matter how you answer that, remember Jesus came to seek and to save all who were lost. He’s the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for you, His sheep. Amen.