Luke 15:1-10 - Pastor David Deutsch

Summary
Pastor David Deutsch preaches in Luke 15:1-10, highlighting how Jesus disrupts traditional purity laws by associating with sinners, showing that His holiness is contagious and reverses the old belief that impurity corrupts purity. The parables of the lost sheep and lost coin emphasize that salvation is entirely God's work—repentance is not what saves, but a response to being found by Jesus, who joyfully carries the lost home and honors them at His table.

Transcript
Just one verse to chapter 14 in the very end. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." 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 99 in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it. And when he has found it, 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 99 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. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Let's pray. Our God in heaven as we come to this passage today, so dripping rich with the honey of grace, with the wonder of mercy, with the saving heart of God, I pray today that you would sweep us into it and that we would taste and see today that the Lord is good and that we are the lost who have been found. We are the ones who have been carried home on the shoulders of the shepherd. We are the ones who have been found and rejoiced over in the halls of heaven. And so I pray today that you would expunge and destroy all grumbling. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. As we come to a passage like this, when we read these words, tax collectors, sinners, Pharisees and scribes, it's Groundhog Day for Jesus. I mean, it's just again. I mean, how many times are we going to see these groups together and this type of event take place for Jesus? It's Nolan, little Puck's a Taney Phil here, right here, a new Groundhog Day. Over and over and over again, we see this type of thing taking place. And when we get to the end of the narrative that Pastor John had last week, Jesus ends with these words, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And then in the next verse, we find out who those hearers actually are and it's not the ones we would be expecting. And so in verse one of chapter 15, it says, "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him." And so here he gets his hearers, but it's not the people that we would expect those to draw near to him to be the hearers that Jesus is talking about at the end of verse 14. Here we are again with the tax collectors and here we are again with the sinners, that collective group of people that in the eyes of the Pharisees and the scribes, the Bible thumpers are morally unclean, they're religiously impure, the socially outcast, they're covenantally indifferent, they do not conform to the tradition of the Pharisees, they're not loyal to the aspirations of Israel, they are the riffraff, the traitors, the misfits, or they are, as Jesus will call them, five times in these two parables. They are the loss. What makes this whole thing scandalous to the Pharisees and the Bible scholars is that they don't see them as the lost, they see them as the unclean, the impure, the in the way of the kingdom, not the very purpose of the kingdom. And these are the ones that are fulfilling Jesus' call to draw near and to hear him. And what makes this even more scandalous as we look at verse one says now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him, not only are they fulfilling that calling to be the ones who have ears to hear, they are the ones drawing near to Jesus. And that word drawing near here is a technical term, is a technical term of the Old Testament used for priests who would draw near to God to make the sacrifices to God. And so what Jesus is doing right in front of the Pharisees and right in front of the Bible scholars is he is creating right before them a new priesthood out of this scandalous group of lost people. He is taking what they consider to be the impure, the riffraff and the outcast and he's creating a new priesthood gathered around him of true heroes. You see, he's taking the lost and he's making them into something into this priesthood. And that's why he came right in Luke 19. We're going to see Jesus said, I have come to seek and to save that which was lost, but he's not come just to save them. He's come to confer on them that which they do not have in themselves and restore to them that which Adam lost for them. And here we're beginning to see part of that is going to be a priesthood that they lost in Adam, that there's been beginning to be restored in Israel, but ultimately is going to be fulfilled in all people who gather around Jesus become this special priesthood. But then we get to verse two and it's the Groundhog group. The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled saying this man receives sinners and eats with them. Here we have the Pharisees and the Bible scholars and here's the boundary keepers, right? Here's the boundary keepers. Here's the inspector Jalvares from Les Mis, right? Chasing Jean Valjean, making sure he's going to pay his life in prison for stealing that bread to feed his family. Right? How dare you? All right. And so this is this is how they're rolling in their life and they're just completely vexed over this and hostile to Jesus over this. And it's in part because they just have disdain for these people, such disdain for these unclean, impure people that are the lost. Okay. And the reason why they have such disdain for them and the reason why Jesus is drawn to the lost and the reason why these have such disdain and hatred for these lost people is because as far as the Pharisees were concerned and as far as these Bible scholars were concerned, they believed that the presence of these impure, the presence of these unclean sinners and task collectors were their very reason why the Messiah was not coming. Okay. It kept the Messiah from coming. In other words, the Pharisees believed in order for Messiah to come, Israel had to be holy. The preparation for Messiah to come was a holy Israel. And so the Bible describes the Bible scholars and the Pharisees believed that the preparation needed so the Messiah could come so the kingdom could come and the overthrow of the Roman Empire could come was a holy Israel. Well, if that's the case, you got to deal with all this unholy and unclean people and having this guy show up and all of a sudden he's gathering these people around him that are the very thing that's keeping this all from happening. Jesus would seem to be the very one that's keeping these prophecies from coming to fulfillment. You see, in their very narrow world, this all makes sense. Jesus is gathering the very people around him that are keeping them enslaved to the Roman Empire, keeping the Messiah at bay, keeping the kingdom from coming. And so in their little world, Jesus is a problem. Jesus is a big problem and these lost, impure, unclean ones are a big problem as well. And so what happens? Well, they grumble. They grumble and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." And so they have a problem with this, a problem that leads to murmuring and a problem that leads to grumbling which situates them, which situates these Pharisees and situates these Bible scholars with the wilderness generation in Israel who grumbled against Moses and Aaron. And Pastor Jeremy and I were talking about this the other day on the phone, Jerry Bridges before he died. If you don't know who he is, a wonderful Bible teacher, Jerry Bridges was, wrote some wonderful books. But he wrote one of the books he wrote before he died was called Respectable Sins. Because we categorize sins and we have all these big sins, we have these respectable sins, these sins that we tolerate in our lives. We tolerate in our own lives, we tolerate in one another. And one of those would be grumbling, murmuring against God, against circumstances, against others and things like that. But if you read the Bible, God hates grumbling. God actually laid an entire generation low in the wilderness for the sin of grumbling. And so these Pharisees are situating themselves with them. I won't go back there, but if you let me read a couple of verses from 1 Corinthians 10 where Paul is talking about that wilderness generation, listen, we must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. Okay, that's what God did. He sent the destroyer in and destroyed them for grumbling against Moses and Aaron and the provision that God made for them in the wilderness. And so the Pharisees are situating themselves with these grumblers. Okay, so they're already putting themselves in a bad place. But what makes their situation worse than that is that they're situating themselves against heaven, not against Moses and Aaron. They're situating themselves in their grumbling against heaven itself, against God himself, against Jesus himself. Their grumbling is an absolute contradiction to and in opposition to heaven on these matters, it clashes with heaven's attitude and response to the lost. Look at verse seven and 10, the culmination of these parables. Okay, how is it that heaven responds to seeking, pursuing and bringing home these lost impure ones, these ones who are the riffraff. It's not grumbling. Look at verse seven. Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one center who repents than over the 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Just right there, there's just a massive chasm in heaven if just one of these lost, one of these task collectors, one of these centers, if just one of them turns to God, heaven explodes with joy and these brothers are down here grumbling. And so the problem with their grumbling is that it's in opposition to the heaven's response to the repentance of a sinner. And I want to muse over this for a moment because I want us, I want us to consider this. Jesus is not speaking in verse seven hyperbole. He's actually telling us what happens in heaven when a sinner crosses over. This is what happens. So the first thing I want you to see is when a sinner crosses over a sinner who repents, there is joy in heaven. Okay, heaven actually responds to conversions on earth. Okay, and the response in heaven is a joyful response, a joyful explosion and a joyful explosion in heaven. That's actually what does happen in heaven when a sinner converts on the earth. That's what happens. It's incredible for us to consider that every single time God brings a sinner to Christ, every single time that the Holy Spirit brings a sinner to Christ, every single time in which that happens, there's this explosive joy that takes place on the throne and around the throne in heaven. Heaven's response to that every single time that takes place anywhere in the world is that kind of joy. And then it's not only that, it's a more joy. It's a more joy. It's a look at what he says. He says, "I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven." Over one sinner who repents the 99 righteous who need no repentance. Now, what does that mean? 99 righteous who need no repentance. Well, guess what? If you read 99 things on what this means, you will get 99 different answers. So I'll give you the one that's true. So here's what I'm thinking. It's more joy, more joy, right? So 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. I'm going to take that at face value and say justify people that are righteous. It's true. And there's joy over justify people because they talk about more joy. So there's joy in heaven over all the justified people all the time. But when someone moves from condemnation to justification, there's an explosion of joy in heaven, right? That's why I'm going with that. So there's always joy over all the justified, but there's an explosion of joy when someone becomes justified on the earth, right? A more joy, which means what? Listen, which means every single one of us had our day there. And it doesn't mean you have to know when it was. I mean, you might, John, others might, but like, even like, if you grew up in a Christian home, you might not know when that was, but heaven does. You had your day. You had your day in heaven when you were the more joy moments in heaven when you went from condemnation to justification. You were the, you were it on that day. That's incredible to think about. You had your day and other people will continue to have their more joy day and then the justify you are continue to have that. So it's all good, right? And then if you drop down to verse 10, it's Jesus rams at home, right? Just so verse 10, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents, right? A sinner repents and then heaven ignites. You see, heaven explodes over this. I want you guys to see something in here. It's not the joy of the angels, right? You read that closely. It's joy before the angels, right? The angels themselves, they'll get saved. It's joy that they're the audience of. They're witnessing the joy of God saving a sinner because you know who's bringing home the sheep, right? And the parable is the shepherd, right? Right? And so, and so it's the woman who's representing the church in the other parable. And so, and so you see what's happening here, right? It's God himself who is joyful over the sinners that cross over. And it's his joy that he has before the angels in heaven. It's absolutely amazing to consider. It's incredible. And we know this, the Bible tells us that Jesus went to the cross. Why? For the what? For the joy set before him. And earlier in Luke 10, the one time that Jesus jumps for joy, right? He literally jumps for joy as when, right? You have revealed these things to babes and kept him from the lies, right? The thing that brings Jesus joy, that brings our triune God joy is saving people. That's his heart, is to go get the lost and bring them home and to save them. And I guess the question for, and that's why, this is why it is then that the self-righteous vexation and grumbling of these fellows of Pharisees and these Bible thumpers is so bad. Why it's so wrong is because it's, it's contrary to heaven as you can get. They grumble with what Jesus is doing while heaven rejoices with what Jesus is doing. So their whole manner is contrary to heaven. And so, we have to ask ourselves, are we calibrated to heaven? Are we calibrated to the joy of heaven? Are we those who want to see and rejoice over with heaven when the lost of the lost come home? You see. And what makes them so upset is this man. Look at the way they say that in the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled saying, "This man, this man receives sinners and eats with them." I mean, they are torqued. They're torqued at this man who receives sinners and eats with them. You should have to remind you that they're under the, they're thinking of the book of Leviticus here. And this is important because in their world, the impure makes the pure impure, right? That's the way it works, right? The impure makes the pure impure. And the clean makes the, the unclean makes the clean unclean. That's the way it works. It's a one-way street, right? If you come in contact with something dead, you're unclean. If you, so it only works one way under the Old Covenant and that is the impure and the unclean render that which is clean and pure, unclean and impure. And so they're looking at what Jesus is doing here and they're thinking, all that Jesus is doing is he's perpetuating the uncleanness that will keep them in bondage to the Romans, right? And now they have a temple and a priesthood that has, that deals with the effects of this, but only on a limited basis and it has to be done repeatedly, right? And so they have that. They have all the levitical stuff and the temple stuff, but right under their nose, Jesus is creating a priesthood out of these people. And so the irony is dripping, Romans what's going on here. Jesus is, he's doing something here that's beginning to, that's sneaky a little bit because he's, he's building a priesthood out of these people and he's starting to let them know that maybe something is reversing here in terms of the flow, in terms of what's actually contagious now, as we're going to see in a minute. But he's doing, we'll talk about that in a minute, but he's doing more than that. He says, he's not only does this man receive sinners, which is that technical term there, he eats with them. He's eating with them as well. Here's Jesus and he's eating with all of these people that would have completely, again, had uncleanness go the wrong way. And what's happening, Jesus is enacting these little mini messianic banquets with these sinners. And for these people, this would have been spectacle and high drama, right? I mean, this is big time high drama stuff, because these are people who would have been in every way shunned, barred and shamed from all table fellowship, right? They would have never been welcome at the Pharisees table, never been welcome at the Bible scribes table. They would have never been welcome at these tables. They are simply unwelcome at these tables. And now they're at the host table. Jesus has elevated these guys to the host table. He's taken the dirty and he's given them the chief seats from John Summon a couple of weeks ago. He's actually given them the chief seats. And so in the Pharisees minds, Jesus is spoiling the entire thing. And this word receive here, Jesus receives sinners. It's a technical word that is a social word that means to honor. It's a word in their social world, it means to give the highest honor to Jesus is taking these people and is giving the highest honor to them. And he's given them the chief seats at the host's table. What is he doing exactly? I mean, he's absolutely these guys are losing their noodle. They are absolutely losing their mind, because Jesus for them is ruining all their chances of messianic hope with his actions in every way. And he's extending the contamination. Right? Jesus is not hanging out in 95 masks. Sorry, a little political there. He's dashing all our prophetic hopes are not staying six feet away from one another. This is not happening. It's contamination station. Right? And all this would be right. The Pharisees would be right if Jesus wasn't who he was. Because because of who Jesus is, he is the Holy one of God. So for the first time, we're actually meeting someone in which holiness is now contagious. And he's reversing things. And now the pure makes the impure pure because of Jesus. Right? Remember that woman that chased him down and just grabbed the hymn. Right? Before that would have made Jesus unclean. But now the clean of Jesus made her impurity clean and went the other way because of Jesus, there is this contagious holiness. Because he's the new temple. He's the new priest. He's the new sacrifice. Holiness now is going to flow in the new covenant. And it's only going to go one way. You see, and that's why Jesus can hang out with all these people. And that's why he can create a priest to that of these people. And that's why he can eat with these people because he's fulfilling all of the book of Leviticus. And his holiness now is going to be contagious in the new covenant. But this is not something that they can see. You see, they can't see Jesus and who he is and what he's bringing to the table. And so they can't see that he's actually doing what they want done. He's bringing the holiness they want. The kingdom they want. He is the Messiah. But they can't see it because of the people he's bringing it to. Because they don't want to brought to those people. You see. And then so Jesus says, I'll tell you the stories and the parables. And let's just gloss these real quick. Okay. And by the way, if you want to just read a glorious explanation of the parable of Lash, you read Robert Cape on who wrote the supper of the lamb, his book, his chapter on this and his parables is so good. That's all I did. I'm just aping Cape on for the rest of the sermon. So Jesus tells these parables, right, to explain to them these two verses. All right. So if you guys want to know what's happening here, I have two parables for you, a parable of a lost sheep and parable of a lost coin. All right. And so Jesus tells this story of having a hundred sheep, loses one, goes after it, finds it, brings it home, and there's rejoicing. Okay. And so notice, first of all, that we're dealing with the lost. Okay. Cape on said this, and this is so good. He said, and this really hit me. It hit me really hard. Cape on said, lostness is the only world we have. It's the only real world we have. And it will do just fine because lostness is Jesus's company. That's what he goes to. He goes to the lost. That just really hammered me. Do I look at the lostess of this world and get all torqued? Do I look at the lostess of this world as an opportunity? Cape on sees opportunity. We got a lost world. What are we going to do about this? Like Jesus did, right? We're going to go, we're going to go. It's lost. Let's go get it. Let's bring it home. Right? Do we, or do we just lament the lostess of the world? Jesus saw it as go get it, go get the sheep and bring them home. So that's really, and so Jesus sees this lostess opportunity. And secondly, you'll notice that the shepherd here pursues. The shepherd is the one chasing. He doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't wait for the lost sheep to find its way home. The sheep are dumb. They get lost and they get stuck. And they, and they, and they can't, they, they, they can't find their way home. So the shepherd does the pursuing. If he has a lost one, he will leave the 99 in the open country and he will go after the one that is lost until he finds it. You see, the shepherd goes, the shepherd pursues, the shepherd is the chaser. Cape on said this, the entire recovery operation is the shepherd. The woman, Cape on said this, the only thing the sheep and the coin bring to the table is lostess, the need to be found. Is that the way we're thinking? The only thing we bring to the table is the need to be found. What the shepherd brings is, is to chase and pursue until he finds. And he doesn't stop until he finds. It's incredible what a shepherd we have. He has to stop until he finds, right? They will be found. The lost will be found. He is the hound of heaven. Look at it. And verse five, he, the end of verse four says until he finds it and when he has found it, he does not stop until he finds it. And when he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices and brings it home in the same thing with, with eight. Verse eight, she seeks diligently for the coin until she finds it. And when she has found it, you see. So there's lost. There's the shepherd, woman, pursuer and they don't stop until it's found. Then they bring it home. They bring it home. And I want you guys to notice something that's really important. I want you to notice and this is really, really important. In the parables, it's all the shepherd and all the woman, right? All the shepherd and all the woman. The shepherd goes out. The shepherd seeks the lost sheep. The shepherd finds the lost sheep. The shepherd picks up the lost sheep, puts on his shoulders, brings them home. The only thing that the lost sheep contributes is the need to be found. The woman sweeps her house for the coin because she's going to have a dusty floor, probably no windows in the house. It would be dark. She searches, she does. She searches, she sweeps, she searches, she sweeps and she does so diligently because one tenth of what she's got, right? One tenth of her wealth is a lot for this woman until she finds it. And when she finds it, she finds it, she has to stop until she finds it. The only thing that the coin contributes is its lostness. But then when Jesus goes to explain the joy in heaven over them being found, he says over one center who repents, over one center who repents, "Pro, we chisik." The parables say nothing about repentance. The parables only talk about being found. But Jesus in the joy talks about repentance. Listen, this is really important. This is really important teaching for us. Repentance is enfolded in being found. Right? Repentance is enfolded in being found. Repentance is enfolded in being carried. Repentance is enfolded in being brought home. Because listen, repentance is about who you are turning to. That's all, right? And so I need, this is, this needs to be said in our day. Okay? God does not look at your repentance. Do you understand that? God does not look, your repentance is not redemptive. God does not look at your repentance. Next, you do not look at your repentance. Okay? You do not look at your repentance. God does not look at your repentance. God does not look at your repentance because your repentance is not redemptive. You don't look at your repentance because your repentance doesn't save you. Hey, listen, your repentance positions you to look away from that which is killing you so that you can look in faith to the only one who will save you. And that is Jesus. Right? And so you'll notice that repentance in our, in our story, in our narrative here is enfolded into being found by Jesus, you see. Repentance is turning to Jesus. Okay? And so God doesn't look at your repentance on its own and say, oh, we're going to save that brother because of his repentance. No, no. God looks to you to, so you'll be found in Christ. Okay? And your repentance is enfolded in what God is doing to turn you from the sin that kills you to turn you to bring you to faith in Christ. It's about Jesus. Repentance is important because it turns you to Jesus, not because repentance is something that God looks at as that by which he saves you. Do you guys, does that make sense? This is really important. Okay? It's really, so is repentance absolutely necessary? Yes. But it's part, it's part of what God does in saving you to get you to Jesus as he is coming to chase you and put you on his shoulders, you see. And so what ends up happening with us is we end up turning our attention from Christ to our faith. Looking at our faith, do I have enough faith? Do I have enough faith? Do I have enough faith? Do I have enough faith? You're supposed to look by faith to Jesus. Or we try to look at our repentance. Do I have enough repentance? Have I turned enough? Have I turned enough? Have I turned enough? Have I turned enough? Well, they're not supposed to look at your repentance. You're supposed to turn from what you were looking at and doing and turn and look to Jesus. That's what your repentance is, is so that you can look to Jesus. And then God himself does that when he comes to get you. He gives you the gift of repentance and he gives you the gift of faith so that the whole of you is what? Carried by Jesus, carried home by Jesus. It's all unfolded in the event of saving you. So your repentance is not redemptive, but it turns you to the redemptive one. Your faith is not redemptive in itself because you can have faith in a lot of things that don't save you. You can have faith in ice cream. It's not going to save you. It's going to make you plump. It's not going to save you. It's faith. It's Christ who saves through faith. It's Christ, you see. And so this is why these are so important here. Yes, the sinner who repents, there's joy in heaven, but why does the sinner repent? Because he's been carried. That's why? Because he's been found. That's why? Because the woman wouldn't stop until she found the coin? Because the shepherd wouldn't stop until he found the sheep. That's why. C.S. Lewis in September of 1963 said this, so good. He said it's not, he was, this was, he was months from dying, died in November of 1963. He says it's not enough to want to get rid of one's sins. We also need to believe in the one who saves us from our sins. Because we know that we are sinners, it does not follow that we are saved. Just to want to turn from your sins and to know you're a sinner doesn't save you. You need to have Christ to save you, you see. That will always be the issue. And repentance is only as good as Christ is to you. And so that's why it's really important that we understand that it is Christ who saves through faith and repentance is a part of it because it turns us to him. That's why. That's why. All of that to say, the most beautiful event of all of this is found in verse five. And I'm going to close with this. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. Notice what he didn't do. You idiot sheep, how dare you wander off and get lost? He rejoiced. He's doing a jig with a sheep on his shoulders and the sheep knows exactly what's happened. He's being carried by joy himself. But then there's he lays it on his shoulders. And you see on the day of atonement, when the priest would go into the Holy of Holies, he would wear a get up that he would put on an e-fod that he would put on, it would strap over his shoulders. And on his shoulders, the high priest on the day of atonement would carry gyms that had the names of the tribes of Israel and scribed on it. So that when he went into the Holy of Holies to do the business of atonement, he was carrying on his shoulders the 12 tribes of Israel. He was carrying them into the Holy of Holies, which is into heaven, the replica of heaven. He was carrying them home. But he was carrying them home at the cost of himself because he first had to make sacrifice for his own sins and then make sacrifice for the sins of the people. And so what Jesus is saying here is the reason why it is that this all is going to work here is because I'm going to take these lost sheep and I'm going to put them on my shoulder and I'm going to carry them up on that tree. And when I'm up on that tree and the sun goes out and the wrath of my Father is unleashed on me for all the sins of all of those who will believe in me. Your name was written on his shoulders. So you could be brought home and so heaven could rejoice over you. Your name. You see, ultimately this parable is about us. We are the lost who have been found. We are the ones who have been carried home. We are the ones who are on his shoulders. We are the ones who heaven has rejoiced over. And that is why when we come to this table on Sunday mornings, that's why we don't come dragging our knuckles, looking at our navels because Jesus has given us, he's elevated us to the host's table because he found us and he's not ashamed of us. And he's not ashamed before us. Let the grumblers grumble. Let us come to the table and celebrate because we have been found by the Lord. Amen. Amen. Lord Jesus, seal the word unto us. Amen.