Jesus pleads with the pharisees to see the value of the sinner

Context

What is a parable?

A story told along side a truth

2 reasons

1: help people relate to spiritual truths

2: hide spiritual truths from those under judgement

Audience, audience, audience: you cannot rightly understand a parable until you have a handle on to whom the parable was speaking

Jesus eating with the tax collectors and outcasts; pharisees interrupt

Warning: Jesus tells this parable again in Matthew 18 along side a different spiritual truth. Either God is leading Matthew and Luke to use the parable differently because of their audience or Jesus told the same parable several times and used it to explain different truths. Either way, we are going to focus on what God meant through Luke. Mixing parables is always bad.

Thought of the day: Jesus pleads with the Pharisees to see the value of the sinner

Read Luke 15:1-32

Read Luke 15:1-2

Tax collectors: traders, sold out their nation for a comfortable life

Sinners: more than just people who sin, but people who were unclean. People who tainted the rooms they walked in and the company they kept.

This man WELCOMES: Jesus, as the host, invites sinners to sit at His feet

and EATS: Jews only eat within their own community, they don’t eat with gentiles, they don’t eat with outcasts, they don’t eat with tax collectors. Eating is fellowship. Eating is intimacy.

We know this: have you ever served at a standard “soup kitchen” or been to a “soup kitchen”? The homeless eat in the dining area and the volunteers eat in the kitchen, if they eat at all. We eat with the people we love and accept into our lives.

Read Luke 15:3-7

The easiest way to understand parables is to work them backwards, what symbols do Jesus explain?

Rejoicing in heaven: The rejoicing of the shepherd and his friends

one sinner who repents: the lost sheep

ninety-nine righteous who do not need repentance: the 99 sheep who don’t leave the pasture

The sheep who leaves the fold does not lose it’s value, the sinner who leaves the family of God does not lose it’s value

There are a couple things here hidden beneath the surface

Jesus is meeting the pharisees where they are at, we don’t see this much, but here for sure. Jesus is basically saying, hypothetically if you were as great as you think you are.

The second is that Jesus is fulfilling a prophesy from Ezekiel 34:11-24.

Not only is Jesus showing his heart for the sinners but he’s revealing himself to the pharisees and arguing from scripture the value of these, so called “sinners”

These people are precious to me, says God!

Read Luke 15:8-10

* rejoicing of the angels: the woman, her friends, and neighbors rejoicing together

* one sinner who repents: the coin that was lost

Just because the coin is lost doesn’t mean it’s lost it’s value, in fact the opposite. The woman searches more carefully for the coin that is lost than for the 9 she hasn’t

Read Luke 15:11-13

Lost, found, rejoicing

Jesus does not explain this parable, at least it isn’t recorded for us

SO WHAT DO WE DO? Use the ideas of the other 2 parables as a guide, whatever we think this parable means should agree with the other 2. This parable should be about what is lost being found and a rejoicing because of the value of the lost thing. That’s exactly what we see.

What does this parable add?

Disdain: This is not just a sheep that wonders off or a coin that falls out of a hole in your pocket. This is a son who dishonors and abandons his family.

Read Luke 15:14-16

After he had spent everything, wasted it, squandered all that his father gave him he began to starve. Can you see the pharisees face? Good! Let him starve, and let him die! It’s a consequence of his own actions. He was born with every privilege and he threw it away on prostitutes. This is more real than a coin or a sheep.

He worked feeding pigs, unclean. Wanted to eat their food, unclean.

This man was everything it meant to be a sinner. Jesus seems to turn to the pharisees and say, you think these people I’m eating with now are bad, let me tell you of a man who is lost in every way.

Read Luke 15:17

came to his senses; literally came to himself

that epiphany moment, when your mind is clear, you see the mess your in, you recognize this is wrong. Repentance means to change your mind, a loose translation of the text could be that he repented

Why did he change his mind? What was the primary reason for this repentance? Hunger… not spiritual enlightenment, not conscience, not conviction… hunger.

He needed something the world wasn’t giving him, but luckily he knew where to get it.

Read Luke 15:18-20

The son remembers the days in his fathers house where even the servants are cared for and longs to be home. There is a paradigm shift here. “I thought home was holding me back from satisfaction and that joy was out here but I was wrong and I want to go home” even if it means just being a servant

But the lost son didn’t lose his value; the father was FILLED (not just had) with compassion. To the point where he would look foolish and run down the road to meet him.

Read Luke 15:21-22

He’s right, he isn’t worthy of the fathers compassion but he receives it because of grace and mercy

GRACE AND MERCY PHARISEES, DO YOU SEE? HE’S STILL VALUABLE, DO YOU GET IT? v22 is the meaning of all 3 parables “He was lost and now he’s found” it’s the value of redemption to the heart of God.

* The best robe: As an honored guest

the ring: right standing

The sandals: Not as a servant

Read Luke 15:23-24

He was lost but now found, dead but now alive

Read Luke 15:25-32

Jesus also adds a new character; the older brother

there was no one angry when the shepherd found his sheep and the woman her coin. But now that a father has found his son, not everyone is happy

The older brother had already cast a judgement against this sinner that could not be appeased. His brother was dead to him and could not come home, could not be found, could not… come back to life.

This is one of the kindest interactions Jesus has with the Pharisees

The father pleads with him; as Jesus pleads with the Pharisees

The father could have said, you think you’ve been perfect? What about when you… Jesus could have said, and did other places, Pharisees you think you’re perfect, you think you’re righteous? Let me tell you everything you’ve ever done

That’s not what we see: the father had grace and mercy for this petulant older brother. Everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate because your brother was dead and now he’s alive

A parable about the priorities of God; do the angels celebrate in heaven when you figure out some abstract theological principle? Does God rejoice when the church coffer hits above 100,000 dollars? Does Christ weep in joy when you finish your MDiv or when you win an argument on Facebook? NO

Conclusion

There are two types of people in the audience; the sinner and the pharisee

They are also present in the parables; this parable has a double meaning

To the sinner; come home, be found, stop hiding, realize that void inside you, that hunger is never going to be filled by this world. You are still welcome in your father’s house. No matter what you’ve done. No matter if you squandered all the good things God has given you and abandoned your family. You are still valuable. God and the angels will rejoice if you come home. You will find that void will be filled in your father’s house.

To the self-righteous; you might not love them but God does. You might think they aren’t worthy of the angel’s rejoicing, but God does. You might think that they’ve forfeited God’s love by abandoning everything good and right in the world, but YOU… ARE… WRONG. God wants you to eat with those people. He wants you to see their value. There are 3 1/2 billion people on this earth that have never heard the gospel, who have no access to a local church.

p31 “When Revival Tarries”