WHAT MAKES GOD SMILE
Luke 15:1-32
INTRODUCTION
ILLUSTRATION
There is a story of an old bag lady that was saved while attending a Billy Graham crusade. At the end of the service as he always does, Billy instructed the new believers to find a Bible believing church to attend.
The woman, not knowing one church from another decided to attend a church down the street from where she lived in her one room flat.
It was a large, imposing stone building. It attracted the who’s who of the city.
When the woman entered the church, she was overwhelmed by the beautiful art that decorated the naïve, the choir were all dressed in their finest. The music was like heaven itself she thought.
When the pastor entered the pulpit to preach, he spoke with such eloquence even the apostles would have gotten saved.
So overcome with excitement and emotion, the old woman broke out in a PRAISE JESUS!.
A tall, burly deacon approached her and guided her to the foyer. The woman, embarrassed, explained, she had only just found the Lord and was so excited to be in church.
The Old crusty board member replied, ‘well madam you didn’t find him here.
I don’t think there is a feeling in the world like the terror of a parent losing a child. Whether it is a few moments in a mall or in a playground, when a child becomes lost, the world and time stops.
There is nothing that you or I as a parent will do to find a lost child. No expense is spared. There is no stone unturned.
Think of what the Father went through when HE sent His Son to this planet to seek and save a humanity who for the most part, did not realize it was lost and did not even care.
And yet, the Bible says so great was the Saviors love for us that even while we were yet sinners, He still died for us.
This was Jesus’ sole mission, to seek and to save the lost.
To illustrate the Fathers love for you and I, Jesus told three familiar and powerful parables. The first parable is about a lost sheep and the shepherd who goes out to rescue it. The second parable is about a lost coin and the woman who searched frantically for it. The third story is called the Prodigal Son and is the most familiar of the three. It’s about a son who becomes lost to his father.
The traditional way to preach this passage is to interpret the parables individually. Each parable is one part of a singular story. It is the story of God the Fathers intense love for each of us.
These three parables reveal the Fathers heart and how he rejoices when the lost are found and the wayward return home.
Chapter 15 begins with this: “Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
This is what prompts Jesus to tell three parables that highlight God’s extreme grace--the Pharisees’ extreme ungrace.
In essence, Jesus is saying, “You think you know God, but you do not. God doesn’t play by your rules. Here is what God is all about.”
Jesus was doing what he did best ¬ eating lunch and explaining the things of God. He was teaching the people He loved best ¬ the outcasts. Jesus hung out with dishonest businessmen, crooked politicians, and brazen prostitutes who could have cared less about the religious rules of the day. This verse specifically identifies the “tax collectors.” These were Jews that had turned against their own country and collected taxes for the Roman government that occupied Palestine. They extorted money from their fellow countrymen and got rich doing so. For this they paid a heavy price. Tax collectors were excluded from the religious community and shunned by most respectable Jews.
Tax collecting was treasonous and deserving of death. But in Jesus they found a friend. In fact, Jesus had chosen a tax collector who He renamed Matthew to be part of His mentoring group of disciples. These men, along with the dregs of Jewish society, were drawn to hear Jesus speak. Jesus went further than just teaching them, He ate with them. To associate with these people was bad enough, but to eat with them was outrageous! The original meaning of our word companion means “with bread.” To eat with someone was a sign to all of your friendship with that person. Jesus drove the religious leaders crazy!
But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
Now before we are too hard on these guys, remember that they were the “good” guys. They championed the Word of God. They were interested in holiness and many had a sincere desire for pleasing God. There was just one problem.
They had forgotten that lost people matter to God. They were looking for a Messiah to conquer Rome not One who could conquer lost hearts. Can you hear them, “ You know he calls himself a rabbi and some say he is the Messiah. Doesn’t he know who he is sharing bread with? Doesn’t he know that God hates sinners?” They were grumbling and muttering and they were wrong. Or at least, part wrong. God hates sin because it separates us from Him but he loves sinners enough to give His Son for them. The teachers needed teaching and Jesus tells three parables to drive home His point.
Each story reveals more of the Fathers heart for you and me.
The first story Jesus tells is about A Lost Sheep and reveals that EVERY INDIVIDUAL MATTERS TO GOD
So Jesus told them this story: “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!
In all three of these parables, there was something lost that was found. In the first parable, a little lamb is lost and the Shepherd leaves the others to go out and find the individual lamb. It’s obvious we are like the lost lamb and Jesus is the Shepherd.
In the parable, God is the Shepherd, and the lost lamb represents us. In Isaiah 53:6, the Bible says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all.”
There are three words that can be used to describe sheep.: They are dumb, defenseless, and directionless. You won’t see any trained sheep acts at the circus–they are too dumb. Almost all animals have either claws, sharp teeth, quills, a hard shell, or speed to escape predators–but not a lamb–they have no defenses. Sheep get lost easily, too.
There are homing pigeons, and cats and dogs can often find their way back home, but sheep are clueless about how to find their own way back home. In many respects, we are the same way in our ability to rescue ourselves from our lost condition. We are dumb, defenseless, and directionless. Like sheep, we all have a tendency to stray away from God. The hymn says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.”
The shepherd had 100 sheep. Just before he was ready to bed them down, he began to count them, “...95, 96, 97, 98, 99...Whoa, I’m missing one! Hey, where’s Snowflake? I haven’t seen her all afternoon.” Then the Shepherd does something surprising, he leaves the other 99 sheep and sets off to find the single lost lamb. Remember, that’s what God is like. Have you ever heard the statement, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one?” I think Mr. Spock said that in one of the Star Trek movies, but for sure, Jesus never said anything like that. God is more concerned with the individual than with the group. God deals with us as individuals–not as groups. He cannot save this crowd, but He will save every individual in this crowd who will accept His love and forgiveness. You don’t get saved by hanging around other saved people–that’s called salvation by association–it doesn’t work that way. You have to have a personal encounter with the Shepherd yourself.
Now, many folks think the shepherd is foolish to leave the 99 sheep in order to search for one lamb. After all, you have to factor in some attrition, or depreciation, what’s the big deal if one is lost? You still have the 99–it’s only a 1% loss! But with God, every individual matters.
If the shepherd had 10,000 sheep and one was lost, I believe he would have left the 9,999 and gone after the one. Why? Because it is the character of our God to love the individual and to seek the lost. If you were the only person on earth who was lost and needed a Savior, I think Jesus would have still come to earth and died on a cross for your sins. That’s why Jesus came to earth.
The bad news is without God you are LOST, LOST, LOST. But the good news is Jesus loves you so much He died on the CROSS, the CROSS, the CROSS! In Luke 19:10 Jesus said, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” It is the nature of God to seek the lost. In the other religions of the world, man is seeking and searching for God, but in the Christian faith it is the God of the Universe who comes seeking and searching for you!
Notice what happened when the shepherd found the lost lamb. He didn’t scold the lamb or take a whip and drive the lamb back to the flock. Instead, the shepherd picked up the lamb and carried him on his shoulder all the way back home. To me, that communicates salvation is something Jesus does for us–not something we do for Him. He does it all. He carries us home. Won’t you let the shepherd pick you up today and carry you home? Now, let’s look at the second parable:
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”
In this second parable, it’s not a lamb that has wandered off on its own; it’s a coin that has been accidentally lost. The woman had ten coins and one of them was lost. The word Jesus used was for a coin that didn’t have much monetary value at the time. However, most scholars believe this coin was part of a headdress brides wore. Jewish brides often wore a headdress of ten coins strung across their foreheads. So the coin had great sentimental value because it was part of her wedding vows. That’s why she literally turned her house upside down to find it.
What may have seemed worthless to everyone else, was of exreme value to the woman.
It is the same way with God. The world looks at you and I and when compared to a rich industrialist, famous acto, a brillioant surgeon or hilarious commedien, we do not hold much value.
But to God, our value is if inestimable value.
The Lost Silver coin remind us GOD WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO FIND THOSE HE VALUES.
In this parable, the woman is so intent on finding the lost coin she does two important things: First, she lights a lamp and second she sweeps up the dirt on her floor. In our lost condition, we are represented by the lost coin and Jesus is the one searching to find us. There is an important application we can make from these two details of light and sweeping.
Jesus lives to give you light
The first thing the woman did was light a lamp to help here see clearly. Before Jesus finds us we are lost in the darkness of sin. Jesus came into this world to provide the light of truth. In John 8:12 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
In addition to being light,
Jesus died to sweep out your dirt
The lost coin was somewhere on the floor, and the best way to find it was to take a broom and sweep up all the dirt. In the process of cleaning every square inch of the floor, the woman found the coin. There’s a great lesson here as well. In addition to giving you light, Jesus desires to cleanse your life of all the dirt and filth accumulated there. He died on the cross so your sins could be forgiven. We read in I John 1:7, “And the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
In all three of these parables, the single theme that emerges is THE FATHER RESPONDS WITH REJOICING WHEN A CHILD RETURNS HOME.
We call this story “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” (the word prodigal means “wasteful”), but it could also be called “The Parable of the Loving Father,” for it emphasizes the graciousness of the father more than the sinfulness of the son. Unlike the shepherd and the woman in the previous parables, the father did not go out to seek the son, but it was the memory of his father’s goodness and grace that brought the boy to repentance and forgiveness.
We all know how the story unfolds. The younger son of a wealthy land owner, approaches his father and demands his share of the inheritance. Essentially telling the father, I want nothing to do with you, give me whats mine, I’m outta here.
The son takes his money and travels to a far off country where he waistes his wealth on the good life. When the money disappears, son do his friends and lifestyle.
The son who had the best of everything at his disposal, now finds himself a nobody, slaving in the pigs trough.
Then a turning point happens when Jesus says, the boy CAME TO HIMSELF, realized how good and gracious his father was and proceeds to come home.
Along the way he had rehersed what he would say to his dad.
“ I am no longer worthy to be called your some, make me as one of your hired servants.’
As the son approaches his home, there at the end of the road is a familiar figure. It is his dad, running, not to scold but to receve his son back.
The boy is cleaned up, restored and a party is thrown in his honor.
Max Lucado had written a heart rending modern take on this universally loved story.
A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away. She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.
Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun. The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car--she calls him "Boss"--teaches her a few things that men like.
Since she’s underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there. She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, "Have you seen this child?" But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.
After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can’t mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word--a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball. God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.
Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada." It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? Even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock. Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years.
The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the road, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard, a sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God. When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here."
Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smooths her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice - if they’re there. She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, and not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They are all wearing ridiculous-looking party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!" Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She looks through tears and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I’m sorry. I know . . . " He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home."
Listen to me closely as we close today: God says to every person in this room who has been deformed by sin, "I wish you were my son" or "I wish you were my daughter." How do we know this to be true? Because over and over and over in the Bible God tells us as much. He loves you, no matter what you’ve done, no matter who you are.
The story is really more about the Father’s heart than it is the prodigal son
The father is GOOD and he is full of GRACE to offer every person who would humbly turn to Him for forgiveness and salvation.
There are only two groups of people in the world.
• Some of you need to come home. You have been off in the far country. Sin felt good for a season but now you look at your life and wonder “how did I get here.”
Sin is a slippery slope and you are in the pigpen. Let me tell you this morning that the Father is longing for you. He is peering over the horizon for you. He desires no one to be lost but everyone come to salvation. Come home. He will welcome you back. He will fill you purpose and passion. He will satisfy the thirst and hunger you have for security and significance. Stop looking for it in friends, family, careers or fleeting pleasure. Come home.
Many people will say that they will get right with God when they “clean up their act.” Forget all that. Come home and let God clean you up from the inside out. Instead of New Years resolutions to do better and to be better, just come home.
Jesus said, “ I have come to seek and save that which was lost.” [John 19:10] The ultimate expression of His love you was demonstrated on the cross:
“But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8]
So where are we at parable's end? Are we inside the party celebrating? Or are we standing outside with our arms folded, refusing to come in? Jesus will not tell us how this story will end. The father passionately invites the older son inside, "pleads with him" to join in the welcome. Curiously, however, we are never told what the older brother decides to do. The story ends but it doesn't end. Will we RSVP to a party thrown by an unfair God? Or will we stubbornly remain outside? In a world where God does not play fair, this parable forces us to make a choice. Who is the real "prodigal" here? Who is the real "waster"? From the beginning Jesus says that this is a story about two brothers. Which one is the authentic prodigal? Which one has yet to come home to the Father's extravagant love?
Prayer
Coming to your senses involves repentance:
(1) Admitting you are a sinner and that no amount of rule keeping or good deeds will ever get you in good with a Holy God. Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
(2)Believing that Jesus died on the cross in your place so you would not be held hostage by your sins. Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
(3)Confessing that you are a sinner and that you are hungry for a relationship with God. I John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us all our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Surrender your heart to Him today. Today is the only day you have. “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.” [Hebrews 3:15]
RESOURCES
Sermoncentral
You?re Welcome At This Table by Kevin Higgins
The God of Unmatched Shoes by Tim Zingale
Time to Come Home by Jefferson Williams
Commentaries:
New testament Expository by Warren Weirsbe
