Lost Things

1 All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and scribes were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “What man among you, who has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open field and go after the lost one until he finds it? 5 When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, 6 and coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’ 7 I tell you, in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need repentance. 8 “Or what woman who has ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found the silver coin I lost!’ 10 I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents.” 11 He also said, “A man had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.’ So he distributed the assets to them. 13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country, where he squandered his estate in foolish living. 14 After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing. 15 Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to eat his fill from the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one would give him anything. 17 When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger! 18 I’ll get up, go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. 19 I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired workers.” ’ 20 So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. 21 The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 “But the father told his servants, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast, 24 because this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate. 25 “Now his older son was in the field; as he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he summoned one of the servants, questioning what these things meant. 27 ‘Your brother is here,’ he told him, ‘and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ 28 “Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. 29 But he replied to his father, ‘Look, I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ 31 “ ‘Son,’ he said to him, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ ”

Understand the Audience

There seem to be three groups of people present as Jesus speaks at the beginning of the chapter.

We can assume the disciples are present, though not explicitly mentioned.

There is a large group of tax collectors (immoral, dishonest, and very much unacceptable people) and sinners (a general unacceptable group, rejected by the Jewish elites).

And there were Pharisees and Scribes, the religious elite and powerful.

As Jesus welcomes the tax collectors and sinners into the group, the religious guys begin to complain and call Jesus out.

This isn’t the first time Luke has recorded Jesus’s interactions with these 2 groups of people.

In Luke 5 as he is calling his disciples, Jesus calls Levi (Matthew), a tax collector, to follow Him.

Levi hosts a grand banquet at his house for Jesus and those following him.

When the Pharisees and Scribes find out, they crash the party:

Luke 5:30 CSB

30 But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus’s response is a Kingdom response that is visualized in Luke 15.

Luke 5:31–32 CSB

31 Jesus replied to them, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Jesus is responding to this attitude as He tells these parables.

Both to confront the self-righteousness, pridefulness, and legalism of the religious elites.

And to show the sinners just how amazing the grace of God is for those who repent.

Jesus’s purpose is to show us what the Kingdom of God is REALLY like.

Because we have a really awful tendency to misunderstand it or misshape it into something that it very much is not.

So what does Jesus reveal about the Kingdom of God?

Kingdom of God is:

There were three things the parables shared, but there are 3 things that are unique to the third:

No one pursues the lost son.

The father’s response to the son coming home is radical.

And there is an older brother in the story.

three things they reveal about the Kingdom...

1) A EARNESTLY PURSUING Kingdom.

A shepherd loses a sheep, 1 of the 100 he owns.

The audience would have understood this example. They would understand the shepherd going after the sheep.

The sheep couldn’t save itself, it would have been eaten. It needed to be pursued.

A woman loses a coin, 1 of 10 she owned.

Of course, if someone loses a precious coin, they would look everywhere in their house for it.

The coin couldn’t find itself, it needed to be pursued.

But when the younger son goes to his father and asks for his inheritance, which means he was wishing his father was dead.

And when he runs off to a distant country to live the life HE wanted for himself. A life of worldly pleasure and self-indulgence.

No one pursued him.

Jesus tells these three parables together to highlight this very point.

The older brother should have been the one to go after the lost son.

“this is what a true elder brother would have done. He would have said, “Father, my younger brother has been a fool, and now his life is in ruins. But I will go look for him and bring him home. And if the inheritance is gone—as I expect—I’ll bring him back into the family at my expense.” ― Timothy J. Keller, The Prodigal God

Jesus is challenging an idea we all struggle with about the Kingdom of God, about God Himself.

We mistakenly believe that God will help those who help themselves.

We wrongly believe that God’s acceptance of us is based on how well, or how poorly we perform. If we are good then he is happy, if we are bad then he is mad.

In our religious efforts, we look at the younger brothers of the world with scorn and smugness, grateful that we aren’t as bad as they are.

But at the same time, we are weighed down by the guilt and the shame and the pressure of having to prove we are “good enough” to be accepted.

God is not like the older brother, He is like the shepherd and the woman.

In fact, God became our older brother in Jesus, and He did what this older brother didn’t do.

He pursued us.

God is a pursuing God. He earnestly pursues those He loves.

Regardless of how broken and sinful you are, God pursues.

2) A RADICALLY LOVING Kingdom.

The shepherd leaves the 99 to go after the one, and when he finds it he JOYFULLY put it on his shoulders and carried it home.

Everyone would have been tracking with Jesus when He said the man went after the sheep, but they probably would have been a bit put off by what the shepherd did next.

“Beat that sheep and make it walk back, that will teach it to run off! It is livestock for heaven’s sake.”

But that isn’t the shepherd, nor is it our shepherd King.

The woman turns her whole house over looking for the one lost coin.

When she finds it, she calls all her friends to rejoice that it was found.

Why go to such great links for one lost coin, especially when there were 9 others.

The rebellious younger son, after rejecting his father and taking his inheritance and squandering it all on booze and women, is smacked with a severe famine in the place he has gone to live.

He takes a job as a farm hand, feeding pigs, the lowest job anyone could have.

And as he is knee deep in mud, and everything else that makes up a common pig sty, he finally comes to his senses (vs 17).

He realizes how lost he has become and longs to go back to his father.

But he also knows he doesn’t deserve to go back. He has rejected his father and rebelled against him.

Maybe he could work his way back into the family some way.

He has a whole speech.

We all have those speeches written somewhere don’t we.

“God, I am so sorry I have messed up again. I know you are probably tired of me by now. This was the last straw I am sure. But I will work extra hard and do everything in my power to not do it again. Will you forgive me?”

And like the younger brother, we envision God standing over us, arms crossed, lips pressed together judgingly, saying “I am just not real sure Jeremy. You are just a big disappointment. Let’s see how you do the next few weeks then I will decide if I am willing to forgive you.”

That isn’t the father the younger son encounters when he finally gets home. And it is not Our Father either.

He is waiting, watching, and working to bring us home.

Imagine the faces of the Pharisees when Jesus said this. They would have been disgusted and outraged.

But also imagine the faces of the tax collectors and sinners, who had come to understand how broken and lost they were. I can imagine their eyes, like ours, filling up with tears of joy as they understood the radical grace and love of God for those who come to Him in repentant faith.

God’s love is radical.

It doesn’t make worldly sense.

It seems too good to be true.

And yet, it is absolutely breathtaking when we experience it.

3) A EXTRAVAGANTLY GRACIOUS Kingdom.

There is something significant about parties in these parables.

The shepherd throws a party for the sheep who was found.

The woman throws a party for the coin that was found.

The father throws a party for the son who has returned.

The first 2 parties are kind of absurd really. A lost sheep and a lost coin don’t seem like things worthy of a party.

Jesus’s point is that what might seem simple and unremarkable here warrants the most elaborate and extravagant celebration in the Kingdom of God.

But the lost son, that one seems to make more sense, until you dig a little deeper.

See the robe the father puts on the younger son was not his robe, he probably sold or lost his when he left.

The ring, that wasn’t his either. Nor were the sandals.

And that fattened calf, that was meant for something else, someone else perhaps.

We can roll our eyes at the older brother here, but he does have a point (if the kingdom of God was limited like we often think it is).

The younger brother had received his inheritance and he squandered it all.

Everything the father was giving him now was seemingly being pulled from the older brother’s portion.

If we are honest, we would all be really mad too.

Not only had he not done enough to earn those gifts, he had squander his.

It just wasn’t fair.

After the older brother finishes his rant to the father, we hear the father’s response.

Luke 15:31 The Message

31 “His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—

The older brother was focused on what he felt his father owed him not on what he had in knowing his father.

It seems what Jesus is saying is, if he could see clearly he would see that what he had in the father was more valuable than what he could gain FROM the father as a means to an end.

He didn’t love his dad, he used his dad. He really wasn’t any different than his pre-converted younger brother.

What he was missing though was the joy of knowing and being loved by his father. He had everything he could ever want.

God’s doesn’t hold any good thing back from his children.

Psalm 84:11 CSB

11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord grants favor and honor; he does not withhold the good from those who live with integrity.

Who are you?

1) The REBELLIOUS son?

We all are or have been this son.

Everyday I think and act like a younger son, turning my back on my father in Heaven.

Come Thou Fount sings “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” That is us, we are younger sons.

2) The REPENTANT son?

We all need to be, continually, this son.

“When he came to his sense.” vs 17 is the very definition of repentance.

Luke 15:17 ESV

17 “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!

The Greek word really points more to a journey than just a moment. It was a process of realization that led him to see that he was lost and hopeless away from his father.

Repentance is a change of heart, a change of mind, and a change of direction.

It isn’t something we do once, but something we do often.

Though it something we must do once in order to come to faith in Jesus.

A rejection of our lives outside of Jesus in order than we can receive life in Him.

Is this you? It can be.

3) The SELF-RIGHTEOUS son?

We are are prone to be this son if we forget where we have come from.

“What must we do, then, to be saved? To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but if that is all you do, you may remain just an elder brother. To truly become Christians we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right.” — Tim Keller, The Prodigal God

We mustn’t grow cold to the beauty of the Gospel.

When we lose our AWE in the grace and mercy of God in Christ, we are prone to believe God accepts us because we are good enough.

Older brothers struggle to see their brokenness and so they struggle to see the glory of the cross.

Don’t grow cold brothers and sisters.

We are invited to JOIN the CELEBRATION.

The parable ends rather oddly.

Does the older brother go to the party?

Does he finally, like his younger brother in the pig sty, “come to his senses”?

We aren’t told, and intentionally so I believe.

Jesus’s open ending is an open invitation.

To the younger, rebellious brothers (and sisters) He invites you to come to the party, along with all the hosts in heaven, who rejoice when someone who has been far from God comes home to their father.

He is inviting you to turn from the broken, sinful, and hopeless life and to come to Him.

And like the father in welcomed his lost son, your Father in Heaven will run with open arms and a huge smile to welcome you home.

To the older, self-righteous brothers (and sisters), he invites you to come to the party as well.

To understand your invitation is not based on how good you perform or how much better you have done than those around you.

You aren’t good enough and will never be good enough.

He invites you to come and enjoy Him and all that comes with Him.

Will you come?

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