The Joy Of Repentance

September 5 2001 CCC

Repentance the Way Home

Text: Luke 15: 10-23

The last time I preached, I spoke about GRACE as the power of salvation, the love of God to raise sinners like Jonathan Edwards and Mel Stotter from DEATH VALLEY to Mount Whitney.We talked about faith as the believers first step after hearing the Word of God. Tonight we will look at another step in God’s plan of salvation and that is repentance. We will look at the power of God’s word to change a person’s heart. My prayer tonight is that we will continue to be convicted to share God’s word with sinner’s maybe join the visitation ministry on Monday nights and give away a Plan of Salvation bracelet at least one per week.

God’s plan for us shows us that Repentance is the way home, it is always the way home to God.

1. First, for the Sinner for salvation

2. Then, for the believer for sanctification

In Luke 15 the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were grumbling, because Jesus was welcoming and eating with tax collectors and sinners.

So Jesus tells them the parable of the lost sheep. You know the story of 100 sheep one is lost but found. The shepherd has a BIG party!

Jesus told this particular parable to the Pharisees, Essenes or other Jewish sects to make these points

1. The Kingdom of God is coming and your religious traditions are going away.

2.He is saying your style of religion cannot save you.

3.Jesus knew the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were substituting religious traditions and experiences for a real relationship with the one true God.

I think this story remained for us so that He could tell us:

Do not substitute what we do on Sunday and all week long with a living repentant obedient relationship with the Lord and Master of all Jesus Christ

Yet we know don’t we? That if we truly study the scriptures that without working on our sanctification there is no eternal life.

Here are just two passages to meditate on:

Rom 6:19 I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

Rom 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Rom 6:21 Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.

Rom 6:22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

Whoever wrote Hebrews recognizes this:

Heb 10:26 For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

Heb 10:27 but a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.

Heb 10:28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Heb 10:29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Jesus came and suffered and died for what?

That we might have a way home!

SEEK AND SAVE THE LOST!

I think JESUS just loved talking to the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the sinners who needed Him because they saw they had the need for righteousness that only He could give. Yet He never gave up on the teachers of the Law or the Pharisees who thought their righteousness and traditions made them OK. He loved them all and was willing to die for all men.

OUR TEXT tonight is Luke 15:10-23

But before we get to 10, look at v7.

I find verse 7 interesting as He talks to this group of highly religious men. First though do you remember what Jesus said to His disciples about these guys?

The same group about which Jesus warned his disciples in Mat 5:20 " that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

SO HE says to these religious leaders

Luke 15:7 "I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Why is that?

On the surface one would think that Jesus was not rewarding righteousness and in actuality the repentance of a wayward sinner brought more joy in heaven than living the life of a good Christian person.