The Great Shepherd

Luke 15

Main Idea: Repentance (turning around) is how God finds sinners and brings us home with joy.

1. Six Reasons to Confess Our Sin and Repent
   1. Repent because we are of great worth in God’s sight (15:3-7).
   2. Repent because our repentance brings joy to God (15:8-10).
   3. Repent because sin destroys our lives (15:11-16).
   4. Repent because sin is a kind of insanity (15:17-20).
   5. Repent because God will still be a loving Father to us (15:22-23).
   6. Repent because repentance reflects the miracle of the new birth (15:24).
2. One Reason Not to Continue without Repentance

I am like most male drivers: I don’t stop for directions. Ever. It’s in The Real Man’s Handbook, chapter 3. “Never stop for directions” is part of what it means to be a man. The “ask for directions” gene is on that second X chromosome that men are missing.

Most men think getting from A to B is simply a matter of confidence. If we believe in ourselves hard enough, then we can get anywhere. It’s navigation by confidence. And the worst thing that can happen to a male driver like me is when I actually do “figure out” where I am or where I went wrong. Every time we “figure out” our way, it reinforces our confidence. It grows our sense of direction.

The only thing that can undermine a man’s confidence in driving is a woman in the car. You can fill a car with men who don’t know where they’re going. Do you know what they do? They “figure it out” together. They share their confidence with each other until everyone is sure that they know the way.

But put a woman in the car, and the first thing she says is, “Do you know where you’re going?” “I think we’re lost.” “I’ve seen that house before.” They say, “Pull over and ask him for directions,” and it can be some guy who’s clearly as lost and aimless as you! You think you can figure out any misdirection, and a woman thinks anybody but you can do it!

Let me set the record straight. I have never been lost. If I had, I wouldn’t be here now. All the previous episodes of misdirection were resolved by me “figuring it out.” That’s why I am here. I figured it out. I made a turn, or I turned around, and presto: I am here, and I know exactly where I am.

I don’t know why men think turning around or asking for direction is such a bad thing, but I do know this: If we try to live our spiritual lives by being confident, going our own way, figuring it out, never turning around, then we are truly lost. We will never find our way home to heaven like that. One essential thing about the spiritual life is that it requires turning around (“repentance”) to find God. In order to find God, we actually have to look behind ourselves. We have to forsake the path we’ve been on in order to find the path we’ve been missing.

Introduction

Verses 1-2 set the context for our chapter. We are told, “all the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him” (v. 1). What an amazing sentence! Since Adam and Eve in the garden, men in their sin have sewn fig leaves and hidden themselves from God. Isaiah tells us,

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.

He was like someone people turned away from;

he was despised, and we didn’t value him. (Isa 53:3)

But here the people approach him. “Tax collectors” were reviled much the way IRS agents are today. Ancient Jews despised them as traitors to the nation and supporters of their oppressors. “Sinners” refers to all types of immoral people living contrary to God’s word. These despised and immoral people want to hear Jesus. A revival breaks out.

Verse 2 alerts us to a problem: “The Pharisees and scribes were complaining, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” The meaning you get from a sentence depends, in part, on the tone you associate with the words. For example, the Pharisees’ and scribes’ words could be read with wonder: “This man (a holy God) welcomes and eats with sinners!” There should be a sense of awe in these words. God in the flesh has come into the world and receives outcasts and sinners! He eats with them! This is what Jesus is like—near to the broken and contrite. He draws near to people in his humility and kindness. A world of wonder should inhabit their words.

However, they uttered these words as a complaint. Awe is not their tone; grumbling is. What the Pharisees think they see disturbs them. All they see are sinners. All they can think of is how unclean these sinners are and how inappropriate it is that a rabbi, a holy man, should dirty himself with their presence. They say, “This man welcomes sinners,” and that’s bad news to them. They utter the most precious words imaginable—“Jesus welcomes sinners”—not to commend Jesus but to condemn him. This raises the question, What do we see when we look at Jesus? Do we regard him with grumbling or with wonder? Do we think the Lord hard or tender?

Do you remember what Jesus says of people like this in 11:52? “You have taken away the key to knowledge. You didn’t go in yourselves, and you hindered those who were trying to go in.” Here they are wishing to hinder sinners from coming to Jesus. The single biggest reason the Gospel writers depict the Pharisees as the bad guys in the Gospels is that they don’t see with true spiritual sight. They’re willfully and spiritually blind to the realities of heaven. As someone said on Twitter recently, “Satan’s true masterpiece is the Pharisee, not the prostitute.” Their grumbling provides the context for the three parables in Luke 15.

Six Reasons to Confess Our Sin and Repent

Luke 15:3-24

These six reasons are motivations to repent—either for the first time unto salvation or as a lifetime of turning to God in fellowship.

Repentance isn’t merely a duty that people perform. Repentance isn’t merely the “hard part.” Repentance is not just the leaving behind of things we once enjoyed. Repentance is not just the unpleasant conversation that saints must have with sinners in evangelism. No! Repentance is a fountain of joy in heaven! Nothing prompts a party in heaven like the turning of a soul from sin to the Savior!

Repent Because We Are of Great Worth in God’s Sight (15:3-7)

Do you think the Pharisees really valued the people who were coming to Jesus? No. As far as the Pharisees were concerned, there were already enough people in their religious club—the right kind of people.

Churches have to be careful never to assume that they’re big enough or that enough people are already Christians. We have to ask ourselves, Why doesn’t God relax and settle for the great numbers he already has in his possession? Why doesn’t he look at the ninety-nine and feel satisfied? Why doesn’t he clutch the nine coins and shrug off the one? Why carry out such a diligent search? Why go to such lengths and take such risks to secure just one more sheep or coin?

Is it not because God places such high value on the soul that belongs to him? These are sheep and coins with owners. This one wandering lamb belongs to a shepherd. This one missing coin belongs to a woman. They are owned, so they are valued.

There is a poverty that comes to their owner when they are missing. There is a wanting in the owner’s heart. The owner feels their absence. That’s why he can’t remain with the ninety-nine but must go after that solitary sheep. That’s why she can’t sit comfortably in the house but must ransack it until she has the coin. They feel the loss.

Verse 7 teaches that ninety-nine righteous people cannot produce more happiness in heaven than just one sinner who turns from their sin toward God! Keep our Lord’s audience in mind: the self-righteous Pharisees are the ninety-nine, and the sinners and tax collectors are the one sheep. The Lord tells the audience that the one sinner’s repentance pleases God more than the self-deceiving self-righteousness of ninety-nine Pharisees.

When the unrepentant are found and recovered by the Owner of their souls, their worth and value are once again felt and affirmed by God. Heaven rejoices over every repentant sinner because the sinner is of great worth to God. The worst thing in the world is not to be a sinner but to be a sinner who thinks God does not value you. The value God attaches to the sinner’s soul is seen in the cross and the blood of the Son of God. If we turn to God we discover that God was not out to crush us but to save us and make us his own.

Repent Because Our Repentance Brings Joy to God (15:8-10)

Joy is all over this chapter, isn’t it?

• Verses 5-6: “When he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, and coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep!’” (emphasis added).
• Verse 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!’” (emphasis added).
• Verse 10: Angels sing and celebrate over a single soul who repents.
• Verse 23: The father says to his servants, “Let’s celebrate with a feast” (emphasis added).

The celebration grows as each individual sinner is brought safely home in repentance. Friends, neighbors (vv. 6,9), and angels (v. 10) are called together to share the joy. Heaven rejoices at finding even one lost soul.

Who are these friends and neighbors? It must be the Christian, the evangelist. Christians are not only the means of bringing heaven joy through evangelism but also the invited guests who share in that joy! Our God will one day call us into the halls of his banquet and bid us delight in the miracle of those once-lost, now-found repentant sinners brought home on the shoulders of Christ Jesus. If heaven is happy at the repentance of sinners, Christians will share in that happiness too. We will experience this rejoicing for all the unending days of glory!

There is perhaps something Jewish about Verse 10’s reference to the angels. Rather than use the name of God and risk taking it in vain, faithful Jewish persons would often use the throne of God or the angels as a reference to God himself and all those in his presence. Angels reflect the heart of God himself.

False humility claims not to be worthy of God seeking and saving us. False humility keeps us from repentance. But Verse 10’s emphasis on only one repenting shatters such false humility. God takes time to pursue every individual. When that individual repents, God takes time to celebrate, and he invites all heaven to celebrate with him. This speaks volumes about the value of every individual in God’s sight.

Heaven rejoices over every repentant sinner. Christians do too. Pharisees don’t.

Repent Because Sin Destroys Our Lives (15:11-16)

Sin is a destroyer. Satan is a devourer. Consider the younger son’s steady decline into sin and squalor in verses 11-16.

In this third story the Lord slows down the film. The first two parables by comparison are short and focus on God’s action in granting us repentance. In this third parable the Lord slows down to show us what takes place in our lives when we descend into sin and later repent.

As a member of his father’s home, the young man starts with everything. But he’s ungrateful and impatient, so he makes himself fatherless (v. 12). Because he wants to gratify his sinful desires, he also makes himself homeless by going to “a distant country” (v. 13). Without self-control or delayed gratification, he ends up penniless (v. 14). In the end he is friendless and foodless (vv. 15-16). He wallows in the pigpen with what Jewish persons considered disgustingly unclean animals.

A sinful life is a riches-to-rags story. His life slides deep into squalor and loneliness. If you live for yourself you’ll soon live by yourself. He doesn’t have a friend in the world to help him (v. 16).

This is what living apart from Christ looks like from the vantage point of heaven. God the Father watches his rich but rebellious children squander his love and his riches as they run from him to the far country of sin. Sinners want all the goodness of God’s creation and all the enjoyment of God’s blessings, but they do not want God himself. They do not understand his fatherhood. They refuse to return his love. Unless God restrains the sinner, they squander their lives and waste away as they chase every desire of the flesh.

“Life” apart from God is really a slow death. Apart from God we are living to die. But repentance is dying to live. It is dying to self that allows us to find life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Repent Because Sin Is a Kind of Insanity (15:17-20)

Three adjustments come to the son’s life. First comes a recognition. “When he came to his senses” (v. 17) suggests he had been out of his mind in rebellion and sin. He lived a nightmare but called it a dream for a season. But something snapped back into place. All of a sudden he came to his senses and began to recognize something.

He recognized the goodness of God. He’s a servant in fields begging for the pods that swine eat, but in his father’s house the hired servants have more than enough bread! Unlike the master in the far country, the younger son’s father is generous toward those who serve him. A man cannot repent until he sees the insanity of sin in light of God’s goodness. Living apart from God and God’s gracious rule amounts to craziness, depravity.

Second comes a resolution. The son decides his place is with his father. More than that, he decides to make one of the greatest confessions in the Bible. He confesses his sin against heaven (God) as well as his father. “He was aware of a holy God and a broken Law” (Chantry, Today’s Gospel, 48). As Terry Johnson puts it,

He confesses without conditions and without qualifications. He makes no excuses. He offers no explanations. He had sinned. Period. The problem with most confessions is that they primarily express regret for the consequences of sin rather than regret for sin itself. (Parables, 286)

That’s the difference between worldly sorrow and godly repentance (2 Cor 7:10).

Third comes a resignation. He sees himself and his sins in light of God’s goodness and greatness. He knows his depravity, so he resigns any thoughts of sonship. He would settle to be a servant in his father’s house. Given his sin, he can’t claim to be a son; he can only hope to serve.

Charles Spurgeon comments:

The prodigal, when he said, “I will arise and go to my father,” became in a measure reformed from that very moment. How, say you? Why, he left the swine-trough: more, he left the wine cup, and he left the harlots. He did not go with the harlot on his arm, and the wine cup in his hand, and say, “I will take these with me, and go to my father.” It could not be. These were all left, and though he had no goodness to bring, yet he did not try to keep his sins and come to Christ. (“Number One Thousand,” 340)

So it is with true repentance. The man or woman who turns to God begins to see God as they never have before. They begin to recognize the greatness of God’s love. They begin to see his generous character. They understand the holiness of God and the wretchedness of sin. They’re brought low. They’re humbled. They know God is generous, so they come to him. But they know their sins are great, so they make no demands on God. The humility of repentance does not set its gaze on much, just the hope of inclusion. Repentant people plead only for a servant’s place, and they would leave all their sins for the lowest place in the kingdom of heaven (see Ps 84:10).

Repentance is beautiful because it finds God beautiful, just as this young son now sees his own father as wonderful. Heaven rejoices when God is valued.

Repent Because God Will Still Be a Loving Father to Us (15:22-23)

Sure enough, the son returns to the father and makes his confession in verse 21. He’s no doubt filthy and ragged. He was once finely manicured, a prince at the party, but now he returns a pauper, thinking himself orphaned by his sin. He has no claim to the family. He prematurely requested and then subsequently wasted his inheritance, his share in the family. He does not expect to be treated as a son.

But his repentance creates a theater for the display of God’s rich grace. See how the father responds to the lost son.

“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. . . .

“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. Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast.’” (vv. 20,22-23)

See the excellent qualities that shine forth from the father. The father recognized the son’s sin and destruction long before the young man did. He saw the folly coming. He also saw his son coming home from a distance (v. 20). There is compassion. There is tenderness in his embrace and his kisses. There is adoption and generosity. The father receives his son as a son. He places a robe and ring on him, signs of his sonship (v. 22). And there is that joy again—kill the fatted calf and let’s celebrate!

Here’s where the gospel defies every human expectation. We think the son might be chastised. We think the father would have been generous simply to allow the son back as a servant. We think the son could and perhaps should have been cut off. He has spent his inheritance; how can he come back asking for anything?

But the father in the story, a reflection (although faint) of God the Father, pours out the storehouses of his grace and mercy at the faraway sign of his son’s repentance! The distant sighting of a sinner’s return elicits the fountain of God’s love! The sinner who turns finds that he turns right into the waiting arms of his God. God receives the penitent with the riches of heaven: the robes of Christ, the signet of sonship, the banquet of salvation! A kingdom for a beggar—that’s what heaven is! It makes the riches of God’s grace all the more glorious.

My friend, if you’ve wasted your life in sin, turn to the merciful arms of God the Father. The Father will be tender and compassionate. You may come to him without fear. He will receive you.

Repent Because Repentance Reflects the Miracle of the New Birth (15:24)

“This son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (v. 24). When we see a repentant man, we know a resurrection has happened. The one who was dead in trespasses and sins in which he once walked has been made alive again through Christ!

The lostness wasn’t just a misplacement; it was death. The son had been dead to the father. But in the miracle of repentance he has been raised to newness of life. He has been brought back—not as a corpse for a funeral but as a living soul for a banquet.

Heaven finds repentance beautiful because it brings back to life those whom sin had killed. There is never any downside to repentance. We may sometimes feel our confessions and repentance will result in our loss, more pain, or something worse. These parables challenge us not to think that way. Though we find ourselves in the pig trough, the reward of coming back to God will be far and away greater than anything we risk losing from that trough! If we repent, God will be our Father. And unlike our human fathers, who have sometimes failed us, God will be the perfect Father who will never fail us, never forsake us, never punish us for his own convenience, but clothe us, love us, and rejoice over us. There’s no father like this Father. So come to God ready to be loved!

One Reason Not to Continue without Repentance

Luke 15:25-30

There’s one final reason heaven finds repentance beautiful: the repentance of one sinner exposes the lack of repentance and the self-­righteousness of others.

The second son, the older brother, comes into the picture. He hears the party (v. 25) and seeks an explanation (v. 26). When he hears the brother has returned and the fattened calf killed because his brother is “safe and sound,” he loses it. “Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him” (v. 28). In this refusal the older brother dishonors his father every bit as much as the younger brother. He refuses to share in his father’s happiness. Further, in requiring his father to come out to him, he causes the father a second indignity; he fails to honor his dad as he should have.

Though his father entreats him gently, all the older son can see is his own righteousness. Leon Morris writes, “The proud and self-righteous always feel that they are not treated as well as they deserve” (Luke, 267). So the elder brother makes his case with his father (vv. 29-30). The older son feels self-righteous: “I have never disobeyed your orders” (v. 29). He feels a scandalous amount of disdain about the entire situation. See how he refers to “this son of yours” (v. 30) rather than to his brother. He recounts the younger brother’s sins. Pharisees are expert at confessing the sins of others. He is exasperated to the point of dishonoring everyone.

Pride, entitlement, and self-righteousness keep him from repenting. If we think we have something to boast about before God, then we won’t see our need for turning to God in repentance. This man thinks his obedience justifies him before his father just as the Pharisees through their self-righteousness made them right before God.

How many of us have a difficult time detecting the fault in the older son’s thinking? How many of us sympathize with him? The Pharisees certainly did. In fact, Leon Morris writes, “We can easily imagine the elder brother saying of his father, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (Luke, 267).

The father’s response reveals the son’s blindness. The elder son did not know what he had: “He said to him, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours’” (v. 31). Again, to quote Leon Morris: “He did not really understand what being a son means. That is perhaps why he didn’t understand what being a father means. He could not see why his father should be so full of joy at the return of the prodigal” (Luke, 267). He could not see that celebration is necessary. The father says, “But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (v. 32).

The sinner’s repentance exposes the hardness of the self-righteous. A sinner’s repentance should be good for a saint’s heart. Though we like to imagine ourselves to be the younger brother, many of us are actually the older brother. In our self-righteousness we tend to think that self-help is how we made it. We tend to think those broken by sin ought to go on and mend themselves and mend their ways in order to become the “deserving spiritual poor.” Then maybe—just maybe—we will celebrate at their repentance.

But in God’s sight, the first sign of repentance requires a celebration by the godly. Repentance is for the joy of the church. It’s for our revival and celebration.

Conclusion

There are five things I am fighting to remember as an evangelist as a consequence of studying and now preaching Luke 15.

Repentance is for the joy of heaven, the joy of the church, and the joy of the sinner. When we call a man to repent, we call him to his joy. We need never be embarrassed about calling people to an eternal joy that satisfies every party concerned.

Calling a person to repent of sin is calling the person to recognize their worth in God’s sight. Sin has been destroying their dignity and value as beings made in the image of God. It is repentance that restores that value.

What we are calling people to in repentance isn’t merely to give up this life’s pleasures; it is to gain heaven’s greater pleasures. In the presence of the Lord is pleasure forevermore. Repentance returns a lost man to the presence and pleasures of the Lord.

Our emphasis on repentance isn’t so much an emphasis on dos and don’ts in the Christian life. It is more fundamentally an emphasis on seeing life as it really is—including God. Christianity and moralism are two different religions. While the Christian subscribes to high morality, his morality is not what makes him a Christian. It’s his unique covenant relationship with God wherein he comes to enjoy God forever that makes him a Christian. Repentance opens his eyes to see and savor God.

When we call a person to repent, we’re calling them into what God finds beautiful.

Reflect and Discuss

1. When did you first repent of sin?
2. When did you last repent of sin? Is repentance common practice for you, or do you resent, avoid, or fear repenting?
3. Of the six reasons to repent, which one most encourages you and why?
4. What do you learn about the character and actions of God in the parables of Luke 15? Can you think of other places in the Bible where those traditions are taught?
5. Would you say you celebrate and rejoice when you hear of or see others repenting? Do you think your heart most resembles the father, the prodigal son, or the older brother?