SS03-19-06
“CELEBRATE WHEN PEOPLE COME TO CHRIST.” LUKE 15: 1-32.
LUKE 15: 1-2, 3-4, 5-7, 11-13, 22-24. 28-30. 31-32.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO LUKE 15.
Most Christians know Jesus’ Great Commission in Matt. 28: 19-20 instructing His followers to make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to observe all He taught. A relatively small number of Christians actually attempt to reach out to sinners with a sincere desire to help them come to Christ.
They leave this for the pastor and for those with more zeal than they have. Too many believers do not warmly welcome new converts and rejoice with them and with one another. Some Christians, however, do obey Christ’s commission and warmly and joyfully welcome those who come to Christ.
The Bible teaches in Romans 3: 23 that all are sinners who have fallen short of God’s glory. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees lumped together as sinners all who failed to conform to their restrictive interpretations of the law. Jesus, however, befriended sinners in order to lead them to repentance and salvation.
Let’s be honest. Some conversions are easier to celebrate then others. Who doesn’t rejoice when a much-loved child, grandchild, or other family member accepts Christ? We are glad to hear when a popular athlete or actor gives his or her life to Christ. We are even glad to hear of the many incarcerated convicts who find Christ through a prison ministry. But what about when that convict is a pedophile who has hurt someone you know? A radical with opposing political views from you? Someone such as Osama bin Laden who has wrought so much hurt and destruction.
The more a person is like us, the easier it is to rejoice over that person’s salvation. This week’s lesson underscores for us the truths that God loves all people, and we are to be His partners in seeking to all people, and we are to rejoice when even those we have been opposed to find salvation in Christ.
The learning goals in today’s lesson to help us become a more committed follower of Jesus Christ by affirming that salvation of sinners was the main reason Jesus came to earth and deciding ways we may invite people to Christ and welcome all who come to Him.
There is no chapter of the N.T. so well known and so dearly love as the 15th chapter of Luke’s gospel. It is as if it contained the very essence of the good news which Jesus came to tell.
1, TEACHER PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 1-2.
I suppose if we were selecting the great chapters of the Bible, it is certain that we should choose, among others, this fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. I think that would be done by the most superficial student of the scriptures. It would be only such because of its matchless pictorial beauty. Among all the things that our Lord said, none is more wonderful in its light and its shade, its color and its glory, than this.
I think, also, that those who have given the longest time to the study of it, would still feel it is to be one of the greatest chapters, and that because in a very remarkable way in this chapter we have focused the great fact for which the Bible stands, and the great truths revealed through the process of the literature.
Now to consider it in its place in the record, Chapter 15 must be kept in close connection with chapter 14. In the first two verses of this chapter, fifteen, we are told the effect produced by what Jesus is reported to have said in chapter fourteen; and the effect produced upon other people by what they saw Him do.
The chapter begins, “Now all the publicans and sinners were drawing near unto Him to hear Him,” which follows immediately upon the last words that our Lord is reported as having spoken in Luke 14: 35 to the crowd of people that He found waiting for Him when He left the house of the ruler; “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
He had been saying perhaps the severest things He ever said as to the terms of discipleship, and He ended by challenging those who listened to Him, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Luke runs straight on, and says, :”Now all the publicans and sinners were drawing near unto Him to hear Him.” The severe thing attracted the people who knew their need.
But there was another company there, Pharisees and Scribes; and they murmured, saying, “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.”
Among those who flocked to hear Jesus were Publican or tax collectors, who were hated for two reasons. First, they collaborated with the foreigners who ruled over the Jews. Thus Jewish tax collectors were seen as traitors. Second, they had the well-deserved reputation of being dishonest.
They bid for the right to collect the taxes in a certain area. Then they were free to collect all the taxes they could squeeze out of the people. This was the sin John the Baptist said they needed to turn from in Repentance in John 3: 12-13.
When Zacchaeus, who was the chief publican, was converted, he pledged in Luke 19: 08 to make restitution for such sins. Tax collectors were lumped together by the religious leaders with a larger group called sinners. Jesus’ critics often spoke of these two groups with equal disdain.
The two groups of critics were the Pharisees and scribes. The Pharisees were a major religious party. They placed primary importance on keeping the law of God. For them the law included the oral traditions that were supposed to help someone obey the letter of the Saw. The scribes were experts in the law. Most of them were Pharisees, but not all Pharisees were scribes.
Especially important to both of these groups were the laws about unclean food. Anyone who ate food on the unclean list was considered unclean.
The tax collectors had contact with the Romans, and the sinners ignored the rules of the Pharisees. Thus these two groups were unclean. By befriending these unclean people and even eating with them, Jesus was paying no attention to the laws about clean and unclean food and people.
Their criticism is described as murmerring, complaining or grumbling. This was the sin of the Israelites as Moses tried to lead them from Egypt to the Promised Land.
Jesus is the only person who ever lived without sinning, yet the religious leaders considered Him a sinner for welcoming and eating with sinners. The Pharisees believed that sinners could be forgiven if they repented and adopted the Pharisees’ approach to the law. But they waited for sinners to take the initiative. Jesus believed that the way to lead sinners to repent was by befriending them.
2. PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 3-4.
Certainly one of the things that contributed to Jesus’ popularity was His willingness to associate with anyone who came to Him. The tax collectors and sinners were constantly coming to Jesus, and Jesus was continually meeting them right where they were.
Jesus did not become one of them in their practices, but He did accept them and identify with them so that He could love them, show truth to them, and offer them deliverance. These outcasts surely saw a difference between Christ’s loving attitude toward them and the Pharisee’s condemning attitude. Thus, they flocked to Jesus.
The Pharisees would have nothing to do with those who did not attempt to keep the law, or more specifically, their interpretation of the law. The Pharisees had a general classification for those who did not keep the law---the people of the land.
Over time, the barrier the Pharisees placed between themselves and these people became so great that they would even avoid business dealings with these people if at all possible.
Tax collectors, with their greedy and self-serving collection practices were lumped in with these sinners.
The Pharisees’ self-righteous attitude toward these outright sinners was directed toward Jesus also. Previously, the Pharisees had criticized Jesus in a roundabout way by criticizing His disciples for such association. (5: 32). Now Jesus responded by telling His critics why He was associated with these religious outcasts. He told three parables that speak of God’s love for sinners. God has shown s how much He loves us for in Romans 5: 8 “It was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us.”
These three parables share a common theme and center in the joy of finding something that was lost. There is a rising intensity y in the three parables.
First, one sheep in 100 is lost and found, then one coin in 10, and finally, one son out of two. There is a rebuke of the Pharisees in Jesus’ parables, for it we can easily show concern over a lost sheep or lost coin, then surely we can show concern for a lost person. Tied to His censure, though, is an appeal. We should rejoice and be glad when these sinners come to God.
Jesus told of a shepherd who had 99 sheep safely situated in the wilderness. Jesus didn’t explain how this made them safe, for that wasn’t the point of the story. The focus was on the one that was lost. Sheep without a shepherd are helpless and vulnerable. They need a shepherd to protect them and to lead them to grass and water. The shepherd was concerned about this one lost sheep. It was through the sheep’s own ignorance that it go lost, but the shepherd diligently searched out the wayward animal.
In many cases, he was responsible not just to an individual but to a village, for there were many communal flocks. If the shepherd could not bring the sheep back alive, he was to bring the fleece to show the owners how the sheep had died. This responsibility made the shepherds expert trackers in seeking out a lost sheep.
We need not concern ourselves with the safety of the other 99 (What if they wander off?) because this is a parable and that is a side issue irrelevant to the point Jesus was making. The remaining sheep were left in the open field. This reference to the usual pasture- land, was not a place necessarily of danger. With no restraining wall, though, it would be easy for a sheep to wander.
The search for the one lost sheep shows God’s concern for each sinner. It also reveals that He is a God who seeks sinners. The mission of Jesus was to seek and to save the lost. How far did the shepherd go to find the lost sheep? He sought it until he found it. Jesus’ search led to Calvary. Jesus is the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep.
3. PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 5-7.
When the shepherd found the lost sheep, he laid it on his shoulders, rejoicing. When he arrived at home, the shepherd called together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. This was good news and he wanted others to share in his joy.
In vs. 7 Jesus made clear the point of the parable. “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don’t need repentance.” The joy in heaven is God’s joy. When one sinner repents, God rejoices. This part of the verse is clear, but who are the 99 who are called righteous or just?
Some Bible students think these were truly righteous people in the Christian sense of having been declared righteous by faith and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Others, in light of vs. 1-2, see them as the Pharisees and scribes, who considered themselves righteous.
The same issue is involved in Luke 5: 30-32 where Jesus defended Himself against the same accusation as in 15: 1-2. Comparing Him self to a physician who tended the sick, He said in Lk. 5: 32, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Jesus did recognize that some people obviously were sinners, but He also considered the self-righteous Pharisees sinners. Thus it seems that in His pronouncements in 5: 32 and 15: 7 Jesus used the Pharisees’ perception of themselves as righteous and everyone else as sinners against them.
The key part of vs. 7 for this lesson is the note of joy over the repentance of one sinner. Just as the shepherd rejoiced and called others to rejoice with him, so God rejoices and calls others to rejoice with Him when one sinner repents. The note of joy is common to all three parables in Luke 15 and is the heart of this lesson.
4. PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 11-13.
The certain man in this parable had two sons. The father’s relationship with the younger son is featured in vs. 11-24 and the older son is featured in vs. 25-32. Leslie D. Weatherhead wrote: “The story, then, is the story of a loving father who had two boys, one of whom walled himself off from his father’s love by doing evil, while the other walled himself off from the same love by doing good.
In this parable the father represents God: the younger son represents the sinners of vs. 1-2: the older brother represents the Pharisees and scribes. The most familiar part of the parable is the first part.
The story begins with the request of the younger son for his portion of the inheritance. As a result, the father divided unto them his assets. What portion did each receive? Deut. 21: 17says that the older son was to receive twice as much. Normally heirs received their inheritance only when the father died, but sometimes a father would give it before then, although this was considered neither normal nor advisable.
Keep in mind that the parable often had surprises for the first people who heard them. The surprise here for first-century Jews was that the son asked for his money and that his father gave it to him. Jesus as not teaching lessons on parenthood, so the father’s giving his son what he asked for is not a model for fathers whose sons want to be on their own earlier than is advisable. The lesson is not about how sons and fathers ought to act.
Jesus obviously intended the father to represent God and the son to represent sinners. What does the father’s action reveal about God? It shows that God has given human beings the wonderful and terrible gift of freedom. He made us free to choose to go to the far country. God knew that this freedom was fraught with peril, but He also knew that only as people are free to choose can they choose to love Him. If we are free to love Him, we are also free not to love Him.
What does the story reveal about sin? The son’s actions are not hard to understand. As children mature, it is normal for them to want to move quickly from dependence to independence. This is normal and healthy, but many youth want independence before they are mature enough to make wise decisions. We can see how the younger son’s request represents the sin of turning from God to seek life on our own terms. Everything the son had, he had from his Father. That is a philosophy of life. Whatever we have, we obtain from God.
Not many days after means “soon.” Gathered all together probably means that he turned everything into money. Then he took his journey into the far country shows he was anxious to leave home and go where he was free to do as he pleased. His life in the far country was summed up in two actions: he wasted his substance or squandered his estate, and he fell into riotous or foolish living. Riotous refers to something or someone who is not saved. Here it refers to the kind of dissolute living practiced by the son in the far country. The related noun means debauchery, dissipation and reckless living. (Eph. 5: 18).
Luke 15: 14 tells of two disasters that befell him. One was that he ran out of money. The other was a famine. As a result he ended up feeding pigs, an unthinkable job for a Jew. He was so hungry that he ate the pigs’ food.
Like a man waking up from a dream he finally began to see reality and have some hope. He resolved in vs. 18-19 to return home, confessing his sins against God and his father, and hoping to be made into one of his father’s hired servants (the lowest servants).
In the first two parables in Luke 15 we have pictures of someone seeing something lost. They searched until they found what was lost. Then they picked it up and returned it to its proper place. Why didn’t the father go to the far country, find his son, and bring him home?
The son was not a sheep that could be carried home. He was a man who had to decide to come home. Thus God seeks sinners, but He awaits their repentance and faith.
The son headed home with his confession ready, but his father spotted him far down the road, ran, embraced and kissed him. In vs. 20-21 the son began his confession but never finished it because the father overwhelmed him with his welcome home.
5. PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 22-24.
We did not hear what the father said to his son, but we hear his orders to his servants. He ordered them to dress him in the best robe, to put a ring on his hand, and to bring hither the fatted calf and prepare it for a celebration. Seldom did people eat a fatted calf, but the father did all he could to show his joy over the return of his son. The father’s actions reveal several things: (1) His welcome of his son as son, not as a servant; (2) His forgiveness of his son; and (3) his joy in having the son back at home. In his welcome speech the father referred to his son as one who was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. These two images are used elsewhere to describe the difference between being away from God in sin and coming to God in salvation. Surely your remember the old hymn.
See the Father meets him out upon the way, Welcoming His weary, wand’ring child.
Glory! Glory! How the angels sing: Glory! Glory! How the loud harps ring!
“Tis the ransomed army, like a might sea, pealing out the anthem of the free.
One of the most moving pictures in Scripture is the picture from this parable of the father running to meet this son. No words of rebuke are spoken, but unconditional love. The father did not respond directly to the son’s confession, but his instructions to the servants reflect his response to his younger son.
The father called for four things to be done and they were all to be with haste: Quick! First, the servants were to bring out the best robe. The word for robe is an old Greek word referring to a stately garment that went all the way to the feet. This would be the kind of robe worn by a king. This is also reflected in the way the robe is described: the best robe. They were to bring the robe reserved for honored guests.
Second, the servants were to put a ring on his finger. A ring represented authority. When Pharaoh raised Joseph to the second highest position in Egypt, he took the signet ring off his finger and placed it on Joseph’s hand, a sign of the great authority Joseph now had. The younger son would be identified with the father, who bestowed his own authority on the son.
Third, the servants were to put sandals on his feet. Servants and slaves did not wear sandals. The son was to be recognized as a freeman in the family and not to be treated as a servant.
Fourth, the servants were to bring the fattened calf and slaughter it. Meat was not regularly eaten. On this occasion the family was going to celebrate, not just by eating meat---but by eating the fattened calf. This calf with its rich marbled meat, was reserved for a special occasion. For this father, there was no greater occasion than the return of his son.
The reason for the celebration? In the father’s mind, this son was assumed dead and missing from the family. But now he was both alive and found. To the father, this son was assuredly alive and with him again.
6. PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 28-30.
If Jesus had stopped his parable with vs. 27, He would have still made a wonderful point about the love and forgiveness of our Heavenly Father. Unlike the first two parables in this chapter that stopped with the rejoicing of the lost item Jesus continued on to show that not everyone celebrates when what was lost is found. Keep in mind that the whole reason Jesus was speaking these parables was to challenge the self-righteous attitude of the religious leaders who disdained the sinners with whom Jesus was associating.
Enter the firstborn son. Upon hearing of the celebration and the reason for the celebration, the older brother became angry and didn’t want to go in.
This was not simply a moment of temporary anger but it grew out of a deep-seated wrath. There was a long-burning resentment in his heart. Perhaps the older brother was resentful of the way his brother had so blatantly asked for his inheritance and then abandoned him with the work of the estate to go live as he pleased.
Perhaps he was resentful because he stayed at his father’s side, obediently tackling the affairs of the estate, all the while listening to his father speak lovingly of the younger son.
Surely the attitude of the father who was watching the horizon for his son to come home was evident, and now the fruit of that compassion was seen in the celebration for such a blatant sinner.
As the father took the initiative in greeting the younger son when he came home, he again took the initiative in going to the older son. He accepted the younger son who humbly came home, forgave him, and changed him by restoring him to the family; so too the father accepted the older brother and sought to change his heart. The father pleaded with him, meaning that the father continued to plead with him.
The older brother’s response to his father says much about his own relationship and attitude toward his father. “I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders. Just like the Pharisees, the older brother didn’t serve the father out of love or gratitude: instead, he served out a sense of grim duty. The younger brother had come home willing to be a slave, yet it was the older brother who, although free and with so many privileges, lived as though he were a slave.
The overall story is often acted out in life. One child stays home to take care of the parents while the other leaves home. Often this leads to some resentment by the one who stayed home.
There is an air of self-righteousness in the older brother, saying, “Look how good I’ve been.” He felt that if anyone deserved a party it was he. He felt sorry for himself because his father never gave him a young goat so he could celebrate with his friends. No doubt the older brother could have celebrated in any way he wanted, but instead he saw his life as a life of slavery with no joyful recognition. The sin of self-righteousness probably keeps people from God more than any other sin. Self-righteous people feel no need for God’s mercy and grace.
The older brother focused on the sins of the prodigal. There was no love in his heart. He was sorry his brother had come home. When he referred to the prodigal, the elder brother would not even acknowledge him as his brother. Instead, he called him “this son of yours.”
Imagine what would have happened if the older brother had met his returning brother before the father met him. What would he have said? Would his words have sent his brother back to the far country?
7. PLEASE READ LUKE 15: 31-32.
The father listened to the tirade of his older son. The father did not rebuke him. His words were as gentle as the son’s were harsh. He called him son and spoke words designed to encourage him to join the celebration. In spite of the hard words of his son, the father said, “Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”
The father then spoke about his reason for such a joyous and lavish welcome for his younger son. He said, “We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of your was dead and is alive again: he was lost and is found.”
This may have been the first time the elder brother heard about his brother’s repentance and changed attitude. The story ends at this point. Each one writes his own ending and makes his own response.
Do you think the impact of these three stories changed the minds and lives of the people who were criticizing Jesus? The Lord told the parables in such a way as to not condemn anyone but to invite all to repent and then join the celebration when someone else repents.
NEXT WEEK FROM LUKE 19 WE ARE CHALLENGED TO HONOR CHRIST IN EVERY SITUATION WE FACE. A.V. DAUGHERTY altav@swbell.net http://.theweeks.org/av/