Luke 15:1-32 - Lost and Found

It is interesting, church, how cruel people can be.

How mean people can be.

I'm not a history buff.

I'm not someone who knows all kinds of stuff about history, but I do enjoy history.

I enjoy learning, and it's interesting because as you study history, you quickly realize that people are consistently harsh and cruel and mean.

And it's somewhat surprising.

You think you'd kind of get used to it, this pattern we see in human history.

But there it is again and again.

I mean, the Holocaust being the most obvious example, but even examples of racism.

You know, it's barely been 50 years since the South desegregated.

And even now we have this modern genocide of the unborn.

And then the atrocities, these atrocities that are happening at a corporate scale.

There's individual cruelty and people who seek to do harm on an individual level, but then corporately, society's doing these things.

You know, and sometimes when I'm reading the Bible and I'm particularly reading the gospels, it's interesting and I'm struck at just how hard-hearted these people can be.

Here, Jesus has come on the scene, healing people.

And even if you don't believe he's the Messiah, what's he doing?

That's undeniable.

He's healing people, he's raising them from the dead, he's giving them forgiveness, right?

He's freeing them from their bondage.

He's just like everywhere he goes, he's doing this.

And you think that would create in people such a heart of gratitude and such a heart of rejoicing at what's going on.

But it does the opposite.

The hearts get harder.

There's anger, there's frustration.

And what is that?

What makes people that way?

In one word, it's it's pride.

Our pride.

And this isn't the feeling you get when you've just kind of finished a long day's work or a project, and you just kind of step back and you put your hands on your hip and you just take it in.

It's not the kind of feeling when you look at your children and you just you delight in them.

It's not that kind of feeling.

This pride is the sense that in some way you are better than others.

In some way you're more righteous, you are more deserving.

You're just you deserve better, you're doing better than the next guy.

This pride is so subtle at times.

It seems so small.

You can almost, it's hard to not find it.

It can be difficult to see.

Pride is subtle, but it's so very, very, very deadly.

His pride deceives.

So the Son of God took on flesh, he became incarnate, right?

Took on the flesh of man to become the good shepherd.

He came to rescue mankind from their pride.

He came to bring the good news to those who were lost, to those who wanted to be their own God, wanted to be the king of their own life.

Jesus came to rescue sinners.

And this is amazing, right?

If you understand what a sinner is.

But those whose hearts are filled with pride, who are built up in their own um eye, their own eyes, their own estimation, they don't think they need rescued.

They don't think they need a savior.

And if they do need some help, they don't need Jesus to do that.

They're doing just fine.

See, the posture of a prideful person is that they're blind.

They do not see what they think they see.

What they think they see is themselves doing well.

Because, well, compared to someone else, I'm doing better.

There's always someone who's doing worse than you.

You know, when you you do ministry with people, and you find some people who are just so down on their, on their luck, if you will.

Like they've just made a lot of bad choices, and now they're either homeless or their life's a mess.

But sometimes it's those people who feel like they want to give the most advice on how to live.

And they got opinions about how you should live.

And you're just kind of scratching your head, like, man, I don't know.

Like, you know, your whole family's abandoned you, you don't have a home, you can't keep a job.

Like, why are you giving me advice?

Right?

Which is true.

But that's us all the time, right?

Where where we think I know something, I have an idea of how things should be.

And let me share with you my wonderful wisdom.

Well, what is that?

It's it's pride.

It's the very thing that Jesus has come into the earth, come to earth to remove from us.

It's blinding reality to us.

And so here in Luke 15, Jesus is again with the crowds.

He's teaching, he's telling them, and the scene is set for us.

Verse 1.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to him.

Jesus.

The Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them.

If you think about for a moment, this uh the despair that the Pharisees and the scribes have toward Jesus, the disdain, the disregard they have for him, why is that?

Well, because tax collectors and sinners are repulsive to them.

Why is that?

Because they think they're somebody.

They think that they are the righteous ones, the purified ones, the worthy ones.

They think they're worthy of God's presence, and these other people are unworthy.

They're forsaken.

They should be forsaken.

So, what does Jesus do?

Because the accusation they give is 100% right.

He is eating with sinners and with tax collectors.

He's spending time with them.

It's as if he's opened up his social circle to them.

And there's a lot of rebuke that can be given to the church in this.

Like Jesus is with hanging out with sinners and tax collectors, and we should be doing the same.

Well, we should.

If Jesus is doing that, man, our life shouldn't look like that.

Jesus wasn't trying to insulate and isolate himself from sinful people.

Because Jesus knew something that they did not know.

This is why he came.

This is the very people he came for.

Those who understand themselves to be sinners and in need of saving.

So Jesus gives some stories, some parables to teach this, right?

So he begins and he lays out this pattern of seeking and rejoicing.

Seeking and rejoicing.

And we see this with the sheep illustration in the coin.

He says in verse 4, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he 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 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.

Verse 8.

And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I lost.

Or the so just so, excuse me, verse 10, just so I tell you, there is joy before God, or joy before the angels of God, over one sinner who repents.

Verse 7.

There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Verse 7 just might be a little confusing because we know like every person needs to repent.

Right?

There is no righteous person who doesn't need to repent.

What's Jesus saying?

Well, he's speaking to an audience who thought that they did not need to repent.

He's speaking to a crowd who understood themselves to be righteous.

And this idea that there's all these righteous ones, and yet the shepherd's gonna go and find the lost one and then rejoice more after founding the one, finding the one, than over the 99 who are here and who are just righteous the whole time.

You know where Jesus is going, right?

He's going right after the heart of the Pharisees and the scribes, those hard-hearted, prideful people.

That there is this pattern of seeking and then rejoicing.

And it tells kind of the same illustration twice over.

He's doubling down.

And he's saying, Who of you wouldn't do this for a lamb?

You have a hundred of them.

One goes missing.

You wouldn't leave those and go find the other one.

Or you have these coins, you have ten silver coins of great price, you lose one.

What are you gonna do?

You're gonna light a lamp and you're gonna spend as much time as it takes sweeping every corner of the house, looking everywhere for this thing.

For a lamb, for a coin.

Those are temporary things.

Those are things that pass away.

Are you of not more value than those things?

And has Jesus not come looking for you?

Did the creator of the universe not condescend down and take on flesh, saying, I'm coming after the lost sheep.

I'm coming after those who are lost, that they might be found.

Those who are not righteous, who cannot produce a righteousness of their own.

I'm gonna come for them.

I'm gonna search for them.

I'm gonna find them.

I'm gonna give them my righteousness.

I'm gonna give them myself.

So Jesus starting to stir up the pride of the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious people who understood themselves to be righteous.

Again, they were blind to their own righteousness or to their own sinfulness because of their pride.

It's fascinating how much we do take these verses, this first part of chapter 15.

And this isn't wrong.

So hear me clearly.

I'm not, it's not wrong that we use this as a picture of Jesus coming after the lost, the one.

But what is he what's he really getting after in verse 13 through verse 10?

What's that really about?

It's about the rejoicing that's going on when the lost has been found, right?

It's about the attitude and the posture of the heavenly beings when what was lost has now been found.

What was dead has been brought to life.

See, we think, man, it's a good thing if someone gets saved.

It's a good thing if someone, you know, gets their life figured out and they get Jesus and they kind of get all the straight and narrow and they're gonna go to heaven, and that's a great thing.

If you're a Christian, you would agree to that.

But there's a question, does it create this rejoicing in us?

I mean, if it creates rejoicing and joy before the angels, before God, it should create something in us that these people were genuinely, literally lost in their sin.

And there was no way for them to find their way back to the shepherd.

There's no way that they're just gonna meander back into the fold.

They were lost, and there was only one way for them to be found.

One way.

It was that their shepherd go out and find them and bring them home.

They, the sheep, had no ability, they had no wherewithal or knowledge, but the good shepherd came for them and saved them.

And that should produce in us this joy, this rejoicing that there was a sheep who was lost.

There was a person who was dead in their sin, blind, could not see, and God has given them life.

God has given them grace and mercy.

But it wasn't just that God gave it to them.

It's that God went out and found them.

That God went to them in their lostness and picked them up and carried them home.

And now is that the angels are rejoicing over this.

There's great joy because the shepherd has found his sheep.

And to lay this home, he shares this story of the prodigal son.

Very, very famous, well known.

I think most of us know this.

Even if you did not grow up in the church, if you're in kind of a Western Christian culture you grew up in, you you know this story, most likely.

And it begins, as we all know, with his son.

And this man had two sons, and the one, the younger one, what's he want to do?

He wants to go.

He wants to live his life.

He wants what's coming to him, his inheritance, and he wants to go spend it.

He wants to live how he wants to live.

And if you want just a little case study of human nature, this is it.

This is all of us at some point in our life.

We are the younger son.

We even if we're like the well-behaved, follow the rule kind of people, we want what we want.

And so he asks his father, and his father gives this his inheritance to him, and what's he do?

It says in verse 13, he had after he had gathered all that 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 what happens?

He's hired out as a pig farmer, so to speak.

As a slave almost.

And it's easy to look at verse 13 and say, Man, what a foolish person.

He should have been saving that money.

He should have been investing that in the stock market.

He should have been doing this or that or the other.

What was he doing though?

He was living for himself.

So be careful if you think, well, it's a good thing I don't squander my money and do reckless living.

But you're building your life upon your retirement account?

Or you're building your life upon the future spouse you're gonna find and all the children you're gonna have and how great your life's gonna be.

Don't think just because you're not squandering your life the way this guy is in verse 13, that you're not squandering and wasting away your life.

So this is how he's living, and the famine comes, and he's destitute, and then he realizes, verse 17, but when he came to himself, something happened.

Right?

He he woke up in some sense.

Reality kind of penetrated his mind.

He says, How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread?

But I perish here for hunger.

I will arise, I'll go to my father, and I'll say, I've sinned against heaven and before you, and I'm not worthy to be your son.

Treat me as one of your hired servants.

Psalm 82, 5 says, They know not, neither will they understand.

They walk in darkness.

This is what this son is doing before he wakes up, before he comes to himself.

He doesn't know why he's living recklessly.

He's just doing it.

He's not thinking about these things, he's walking in darkness.

So it's easy for us to maybe look down and say, Man, this guy's foolish.

He should have known better.

He's walking in darkness, he's sinning.

It's not that he's innocent, it's not that his hands are tied and he just couldn't do anything but live recklessly.

JC Ryle says the worst ignorance in the world is not knowing ourselves.

When you don't understand your own nature, that you're prone to being selfish, you're prone to want to take glory from God and make your life about you.

That you're prone to do what you need to do to kind of save face with people, but that when people aren't around, you just live as you want to live.

You need to know yourself, know your tendencies, know what it means to be a sinner.

And what keeps you from knowing that?

What's your pride?

What keeps you in darkness?

What's your pride?

But there's great hope.

Because even as this parable goes on, this son realizes he's gonna repent for his wrongdoing and seek some kind of salvation.

Right?

He's gonna repent of what he's doing.

He's at least gonna have bread.

He's not gonna starve to death.

He's right in saying this.

Verse 19, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

It's true.

This is a true statement.

He has figured it out.

He's come to himself and he's realized I've done a wicked thing.

I don't deserve to be called a son by my father, not worthy of him anymore.

But at least I won't starve to death if I can be his servant, because he's a good father, he's a good master.

1 John 1.19 says, if we confess our sins, he, as in God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What this son is wanting is to be forgiven and to be allowed to be a servant, a slave, and have some bread.

Which is a good thing, right?

He doesn't want to die.

But what Jesus is saying.

Saying.

What God has promised is that if you actually confess your sins and you return and you come to the Father, He is faithful.

He's not unfaithful to you.

He is just.

He's not unjust to you.

And He will forgive your sins.

Not because you deserve it, not because you're worthy, but because His Son, Jesus Christ, has been faithful, and His Son is worthy.

And His Son is just in righteousness.

So God will take the righteousness of Jesus Christ and place it on you.

A thing you do not deserve, a thing I do not deserve, but a thing the Father is ready to do.

Verse 20, 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 servant, 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 my son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and he is found.

Let us celebrate.

So the angels rejoice before God when one sinner is saved.

You think about how we view things.

And you came and you acknowledged your unworthiness.

And God the Father didn't say, Well, my son Christ has, you know, Jesus is, he's been faithful and he's been doing the right thing.

No.

He says, You're you're in my family.

You are my child.

You are forgiven.

And he displays that by all the lavishness of the father.

Here, he says, the robe, a ring, shoes, kill the fattened calf.

I don't know that there was more that this father could have done.

Literally, I don't think there was more he could have done to display his love and his forgiveness to his son.

And to say, you are my son.

Regardless of whether you're worthy of that or not, regardless of what you have done, you are my son.

And they celebrate.

His son was lost.

And he's alive again.

He's found.

As a father, in a sense, is this not the most natural reaction?

If your son had left, and your son had gone and was dead, essentially.

You didn't know where he was, you didn't know what he was doing.

And he returns and comes back to lavish the mercy and grace on him that you could.

Not because he earned all the money back.

Not because he went back through and all the places he lived and made everything right and repaired the family name and brought honor back to the family again.

No.

No.

It's because the father showed him mercy and lavished his grace upon him.

This is a parable.

This is a story.

But how many times in in life do parents wish they had a second chance?

If I could just go back to this conversation or to this time or these things, I just wish I could do it so differently.

No doubt for years the father would have felt this.

No doubt for years he would have been thinking, and if my son returns, this is what I'm going to do.

This is how I'm going to treat him.

This is how I'm going to love him.

And so we have a picture of the grace and the mercy that God the Father has lavished on us because of Christ.

Jesus is getting after the pride, remember of the Pharisees and the scribes.

I do think it's hard for us to understand just how thick and how unmovable the religious leaders in Jesus' day were.

Now his older brother was in the field, right?

You know this.

And he comes home, there's music, and there's dancing, and he calls on the servants, he's like, What's going on here?

He says, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he received him back safe and sound.

Verse 28.

This is the brother, but he was angry and refused to go in.

And his father came to him and entreated him.

But he answered his father, Look, these many years I've served you.

I never disobeyed your command.

Yet you never gave me a young goat, let alone a fattened calf, 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.

Those who assume themselves to be righteous.

Those very people who have done everything that the law required.

They've kept the letter of the law.

They did what they were supposed to do.

But here the Messiah has come and he's eating with tax collectors and sinners.

Here the Messiah has come and he's rebuking them.

They kept the law.

They did what they were supposed to do.

This righteous, self-righteousness, this pride in the Pharisees, the religious leaders.

This pride in people who think that they've earned God's favor.

Ezekiel 34.

The word of the Lord came to me.

Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.

Prophesy and say to them.

Should not shepherds take care of the flock?

Verse 4, you have not strengthened the weak, or healed the sick, or bound up the injured.

You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost.

This is verse 10.

This is what the sovereign Lord says.

I am against the shepherds, and will hold them accountable for my flock.

I will remove them from tending the flock, so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves.

I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.

For this is what the sovereign Lord says.

I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.

As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after my sheep.

I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on the day of clouds and darkness.

Jesus is coming.

The Pharisees, their hearts are angry about this.

They're not rejoicing that there are sheep that have been found and brought home.

They're not rejoicing because a brother who'd left and squandered all these things has been brought back safe and sound.

That is not their heart, that is not their desire.

And this hurts.

Think about in Luke 13, what Jesus says about Jerusalem.

Luke 13, 34.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to it.

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings?

And you were not willing.

Pharisees are hard-hearted people.

And we must be careful that we don't just look down on them and say, Yeah, those wicked Pharisees.

How dare they?

And we just go on living our life.

Content and safe in our own little pride.

That we're doing the right thing.

It's a real shame that there's a people in the world who are sinners.

It's a real shame that they're gonna go to hell unless someone tells them about Jesus.

But you know what?

They should have lived better.

They shouldn't have gotten into drugs.

They shouldn't have stayed in school.

They should have been respectable to their parents.

Whatever.

Our own little self-righteousness builds.

So my question to you, church, is your heart hard toward God and what he is doing?

Would you rather God conform to your ways?

Is that what you desire is that God would kind of join you in your mission?

Your standard?

Or are you submitting yourself to Him?

Does God's word have supreme authority in your life?

In one sense, this is a really easy question to answer.

But it's really hard to be honest with yourself.

Does God's word have supreme authority in your life?

Or do you?

Because I'm here to tell you that your pride is so insidious and so deceptive.

That if you're not regularly evaluating, am I living the way God's called me to live?

Am I submitting to the book?

And you're on a path of self-righteousness.

You cannot serve two masters.

You can't say, I'm gonna take some of the Bible and leave the rest.

Brother or sister, it's all or nothing.

And so when this in this prodigal son story, when he comes to himself, that's when it happens.

It can't be my way and then fit in God's way around it.

Have you come to yourself?

Have you come to the realization that you were not created and put here by God so you can just live your life and do what you want to do and maybe fit in some good Christian things and maybe be a part of a good, healthy church, but still it's about you.

It's about you doing what you want.

Because that leads to pride and self-righteousness.

It leads to a heart that when sinners are brought from death to life, you scrutinize it.

Well, I don't know.

We'll see if they really mean it.

Well, I don't know if they really confessed.

Did they say it the way I think they should say it?

Are they at a church that I think they should be at?

How insidious our righteousness, our self-righteousness can be.

This is what Jesus is hammering after in this passage.

Do not have hard hearts, do not be prideful.

Because you are the younger son, you are the rebellious son, and God is the gracious father.

And he's ready and he's willing to lavish on you everything you don't deserve.

He's ready to give you everything that you don't deserve.

And everything you do deserve, he has placed on his son.

The righteous son, the one who kept the law perfectly, took your place.

Do you understand that?

Do you believe that?

Then let that create in you a joy that you've been forgiven.

A spirit of rejoicing that you, not worthy to be counted as a son, are now a son, that you are in God's family.

So rejoice and take that good news and share it with others.

Don't keep it to yourself.

Share that.

Teach.

Go, spread the good news of the gospel.

Don't keep it for yourselves because you have been forgiven.

You've been forgiven.

The Father has lavished his love on you.

Brother, sister, there is nothing left for you to do.

There's no amount of righteousness that you have left to complete for your salvation.

There's no amount of obedience that you have to complete for your salvation.

There's no amount of money to give or good works to perform that you might now be in God's favor.

You're there.

If you are in Christ, you are there.

Know the love of the Father for you.

Know the mercy and the grace that He has lavished upon you and live out of that.

For you were dead.

You were lost.

And now you've been brought to life.

Now you've been found.

Let's pray.