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TEXT

Luke 15:1-12: "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.  2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.'  3 So he told them this parable:  4 ‘What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?  5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.  6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost."  7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.  8 Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?  9 And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost."  10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.'  11  And he said, ‘There was a man who had two sons.  12 And the younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me." And he divided his property between them.'"

What is a Parable?

The parables are vivid paintings with earthy images of every day life to draw out a profound spiritual point.  They are not simply theological exercises for the intellectual.  However, the mistake we can make is to oversimplify these parables by brushing them off as simple teachings for simple people.  It is true, they are intended to be simple, but they are far from simplistic.  They are deep enough for the morally upright, intellectual elite, and politically skilled to drown in.  Yet, they are simple enough for the farmer, fisherman, shepherd, landowner, vinedresser, and day laborer to wade in. 

Other portions of God's word give us profound theology.  Some move us to a thankful response to God's goodness.  But the parables pierce our hearts to ask whether any real change has taken place, or if Jesus' gospel has made any real difference in our daily lives.  And we would expect nothing less since these words are spoken to us from Jesus' own lips.  Jesus' words have a way of waking our hearts from the deadness of religious concepts into the pulsing life of His living reality.

Unlike most boring lessons in theology which feel more like a black and white picture of a sterile operating room, Jesus' teaching is like a painting with bold and bright colors that draw us to look closer.  Jesus was teaching deep theology, but did so in a way that was down-to-earth, using every day stories from our every day life. 

Parables are Revolutionary

But make no mistake, His teaching was and is dangerous.  Jesus' words are subversive because they are revolutionary.  Jesus went about preaching the "gospel of God" (Mk. 1:14) and that ‘good news' was that the "The time is fulfilled, and kingdom of God is at hand" and He called everyone in earshot to "repent and believe in the gospel" (Mk. 1:15). 

This message was a message that packed a punch.  In our day, the idea of kings or kingdoms seems outdated like a nice fairy tale.  You might think of a castle with knights in armor doing battle with dragons or of a Monty Python movie.  Either way, this can feel distant since we no longer have monarchies where the monarch (king) has absolute reign over his kingdom.  However, in Jesus' day, kings were men of great power who held the lives of their subjects in their hands and had absolute authority over their land, animals, and the people they protected. 

When Jesus announced that God's kingdom had broken in, Jesus was announcing something of incredible importance that would affect everyone.  Jesus was announcing that the promise of the Old Testament prophets, the promise of God coming to bring His healing rule to the world, was at hand, and that He was not just a messenger pointing to One who was coming, but was the One that all the messengers were pointing to.  The world was out of tune with its maker and in rebellion against God's rule.  So the prophets looked forward to a future when God Himself would intervene, make things right, and establish His kingly reign. 

Jesus dared to announce that the revolution against this world's order was now under way.  To announce the ‘kingdom of God' was the same as announcing the ‘revolution of God.'  In other words, if Jesus was King, Herod and Caesar were not.  If Jesus was King, the rightful rule of the throne belonged to Him.  If Jesus was King, every human ruler was to bow down and pledge their allegiance to Him alone.   

This explains why many wanted to quickly crown Him king and help Him lead a war against Rome so that Israel would be freed.  But Jesus was announcing something far more comprehensive, more profound, and more lasting than winning a military victory to push Rome out of the land. Jesus had in mind a much bigger revolution.  His revolution would be an overthrowing of Satan and the systems and darkness that had covered the land and had blackened the hearts of men.  His rule would be eternal and comprehensive.  It would not just be for those in this small strip of land, but would be cosmic, and all that was broken would be mended by His gracious and healing rule.  Yet it would be first by grace. 

This would have been confusing for those who wanted to get rid of the "bad guys" who occupied the land.  Jesus was bringing a message that everyone was a "bad guy" and if the land was to be purged of all evil and all sin, no one would be able to dwell there except God Himself.  This kingdom was going to be inaugurated by Jesus' coming.  Slowly it would grow like a mustard seed, not through military conquest, not through the sword, but by God's loving grace changing the hearts of His enemies, one by one, and sending them as a witness to tell of their King's offer of pardon and willingness to make them one of His own citizens and children. 

Jesus' miracles give us a preview of what is going to come one day and how the prophecies of healing and restoration taking place will one day come to a climax at our King's return.  His miracles are the evidence that Satan's evil empire has lost even though it still fights on.  The lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak-are all promises of the Old Testament of what would happen when God's King showed up. 

The announcement of the coming of God's revolution was intended to make people ask, "What does it mean to join His revolution?" and, "What must I do to get into this new kingdom and how should I live and think?"  This is where the parables of Jesus come in.  They are the stories that teach us what it looks like to be saved by, loved by, and protected by the King.  They also teach us how we're to treat each other as Kingdom citizens and how we're to treat those who are still lost without the true King. 

The parables are an answer to the question of what does it mean to live under the authority of Jesus as our new King. 

The last few weeks we've been looking at Jesus arguing with religious leaders and have been asking, "Why is He so harsh with them?"  As we've been saying, Jesus never argues just for argument sake.  When Jesus argues, it's because there is something important at stake, something monumental. 

Jesus would speak to people, and they would hear His words and filter them through their own grid.  They would look at His actions and statements through their own lens of reality.  This caused them to miss what Jesus was saying because they placed His teaching into their categories. 

This isn't just true for the religious of His day; it is true for everyone, even us.  When we come to Jesus, we come with our current glasses already on.  We don't come objectively to look at the facts.  We look at His statements through our already-held opinions and beliefs and when we do we look to support our underlying beliefs by hearing only what we are looking for, and we look for only what we want to hear.

A Revolution of Thinking (Copernican Revolution)

For hundreds of years, we looked at the stars and the sun and thought that the earth was the center of the universe.  Our assumption and belief was that everything moved around us.  Then, piece by piece, certain truths kept piling up that didn't fit the current grid.  It didn't fit current categories.  Then, in a revolutionary way, some began to question the current grid and started to say, "What if the earth isn't the center, but the sun is the center and everything revolves around it?"  All of a sudden, the questions that lingered about the universe began to make sense and could be answered.

That was called the Copernican Revolution because it was a huge leap in human knowledge in the 16^th century.  However, it didn't come without a cost.  Galileo adopted Copernican's view and wrote a paper called a Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems (1632), which lead to his trial and arrest by the religious leaders of his day during the inquisition. 

Revolutions in thought can be dangerous because they take us out of our comfortable assumptions and call us to reinterpret everything we think we know.  This can be fearful for the comfortable, and troublesome for those who've built their reputation and identity around knowing it all.  This is exactly what Jesus was doing with the religious leaders of His day.  This is the reason that Jesus had to argue with these leaders, and with us.  We try to take Jesus' teachings and pour them into our currently-held values and belief about reality and He simply won't let us get away with that. 

This is why some assume that Jesus is just one good teacher in a line of good teachers.  He is a great pacifist who calls us all to be good people.  Or we think Jesus is a moral teacher helping us to lead a good life of good works.  Jesus continually has to argue back and say, "No!  No one is claiming what I'm claiming.  No one has ever done what I'm doing."  He is arguing and demanding that we scrap what we thought we knew about God and listen to Him.  He didn't come to add to our current categories and beliefs, He came to explode our assumptions and call us to see everything through this new reality defined by him.

STUDY

What is happening with these three parables-the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost sons-is that Jesus is teaching against the current tide of religion in His day.

The problem with these stories (or rather our hearts) is that they've become too familiar with us, too comfortable to us as we read them through our own grid.  He is calling for no less than a total revolution in our hearts and minds just as He was upending what the Pharisees and Scribes believed.

The current grid that was held by these religious leaders in verse 2 was the old grid.  It had a particular belief about good and bad people, God and how He blessed us, why the world is in such a mess, what sin was, what made us human, etc.  They grumbled against Jesus and argued with Him because the way He did things didn't make sense to their old way of thinking. 

That was the point that Jesus was making.  It will never make sense unless you listen to what He's saying and adopt a new pair of glasses to see the world through. 

So what is the old way of seeing things and what is the new way that Jesus is calling us to see?

Who Wore the Old Glasses?

First, let's look at those who held on to this old grid. 

Verse 2- "And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.'"

The first thing we need to do is rethink how we've come to see the Pharisees.  It is easy to make them the bad guys without trying to understand where they were coming from and how they arrived there.

The Pharisees were the religious leaders for the average Joe.  They were neither villains nor extremists.  They didn't give up the Bible and its truth, and they didn't subscribe to tactics used by the zealots. 

During the time when Rome came to conquer the Middle East, the Jews tried to figure out a unified response and when they couldn't reach an agreement they split into different groups.

The Essenes were a group that felt the best way to stay holy was to leave Jerusalem and move out to the desert and establish their own community so that they could protect their way of life.  They essentially packed up and moved away.

The Zealots were a group of radicals that thought we should arm ourselves and fight the Romans to the death.  They called God's people to rebel and prepare to fight.  They wanted a revolution by force and desired to overthrow the occupation of the Romans. 

The Sadducees were the intellectual elite and were primarily a political party who wanted to work with the Romans and find a way to be cozy with them.  They got rid of the supernatural, the resurrection, and only held to certain truths in the Scriptures.  They were the pseudo-aristocrats of their day.

Then there were the Pharisees and Scribes.  This group represented the moral majority, the middle 85% of the population.  Sure, the other groups had some power, but they only represented about 15% of the people.  The Pharisees were the popular party of the people.  They believed in the supernatural, they believed in the resurrection, they believed there was only one God, and they believed that you should live a moral life pleasing to God.  God was holy to them and they took their faith seriously.  They tried to live consistently with their beliefs. 

This group should be familiar to us today.  This is moral majority, the religious right.  They represent the average American.  They believe in right and wrong, personal freedom, personal responsibility, and traditional values. 

Looking Through Old Glasses

In order to see through these old glasses, you have to begin to see people the way they did. 

Verse 1- "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him." 

This story shows us how they viewed Jesus' ministry.  Jesus gathered a lot of sinners around Him.  These were people with spotty pasts.  They had a tainted record before the religious right.

You can see who they were when you read the stories of Jesus interacting with them.  Jesus offended the Pharisees by welcoming in Zacheus, the tax collector.  These people bought into a franchise with either Herod or Rome, or possibly both, and their job was to collect money for their leader.  They were Jewish, but they would have been hated as traitors by everyone since they were collecting an illegal tax from illegal occupiers.  He was a political outcast. 

Jesus welcomed in a prostitute who washed His feet with her tears and hair at a party filled with the power brokers of the day.  He offended them because she was a sexual outcast. 

In John 4, Jesus offends His own disciples by mingling with a Samaritan, a half-breed that had intermarried with Pagans and twisted and distorted the Jewish religion.  She had been married five times and was living with a guy that wasn't her husband, yet Jesus let her into His life.  She was a racial and moral outcast.

He embraced a leper, a paralyzed man, and touched a dead body which would have made Him unclean in their eyes.  They were the physical and ceremonial outcasts.

In doing so He caused the religious leaders of His day to hate Him because He seemed as if He really didn't care about people's sin.  In their thinking, He was soft on sin.  He was always hanging out with people who would never come to any of their religious events.  Since they liked Him, He must certainly be a sinner like they were!

Jesus begins to challenge their grid.  He is, bit by bit, placing explosives on all of our bridges and detonating them to destroy our old way of going across to God.

These stories set a contrast between the way God does things and the way religious people do things.  Through these parables Jesus is showing us an upside-down way of looking at the world.  Those whom everyone considers closest to God are the furthest from Him, and those who are the farthest from God are the closest to Him. 

Now, what is the point of the three parables?  It's a response to the grumbling of the religious leaders.  The Pharisees are upset because Jesus is loving people they hate.  They start to murmur and grumble, and we're told that Jesus responds by telling them a story (v. 3).

The Pharisees thought God wanted good people, and these stories show us that God is looking for lost people.  That's the point of the story of two sons, the one who is the more responsible and more moral is actually farther from his Father's heart.  It isn't because of their bad deeds that someone is kept from God; the primary reason is because their good deeds make them think they don't need Him.  As John Gerstner would say, "What keeps us from God is our damnable good deeds."  It's the best way of avoiding Jesus.  If you think you've been good, upright, and moral, why would you need a Savior? 

The pimps and prostitutes get into the kingdom before the religious people.  This is a message of God's grace, not our works.  When this message is rightly proclaimed, it is the only message that the religious will hate.  If the religious don't hate it, if it's not at least annoying, then it isn't being rightly proclaimed.  These stories are responding to religious ideology that God only saves the good.

It's not primarily your badness but your goodness that keeps you from the Father's heart.  It's not your moral failures, but your moral successes that creates the distance.  You don't see that you're lost because you think you've already been found.  If you don't come to see that you are lost and could not find yourself, and all your life is just a response to His search for you, not your search for Him, you'll never see through new lenses.

That is the old way of seeing.

Looking Through New Glasses

Is this new to you?  If so, then you have to now see Jesus and yourself through new glasses, through a new grid.  You have to be willing to go back and rethink everything you've come to believe about who God is and how He accepts you. 

If you're annoyed by this or even a little irritated it's because you are still seeing through old glasses.  You're like the Pharisees who grumbled against Jesus because He was more inclusive than you are, more loving than you are, more willing to search out the lost than you are.  This makes you subtly come to believe that you're more holy than God. 

Now, some of you might be sitting here this morning and saying, "I don't have a problem like this, I'm not part of the religious right or wouldn't classify myself as conservative."  Okay, but let's take a person from Hillcrest and ask them what's wrong with the world.  They'd probably say, "It's the conservative, religious republicans that make this world so terrible.  They should be more inclusive."  And, if you head out to East County and ask the average person what's wrong with the world they might say, "It's the liberals, the immoral people that make this world so terrible." 

Do they have different views?  Sure, they both think that someone else is the problem.  But they have the exact same glasses on.  They think that what's wrong with the world is "those people."  They are still operating on a moral framework that says, "Unless you're like this, then you're not good enough."  We know conservatives do this, but we have to admit that so do the liberals.  They are just as judgmental (against conservatives), just as hateful and spiteful, and just as self-righteous because they think that they're good and loving and the "others" are the problem. 

This "good people vs. bad people" grid runs so deep that the most tolerant and conservative are alike.  This is why what Jesus says irritates both groups.

One group says, "You're okay, I'm okay."  Another group says, "You're not okay, but I'm okay."  And Jesus shows up on the scene and says, "Nobody is okay, but they can be through me." 

Look, whenever the gospel, the good news, the truth of God's searching and saving grace is recaptured, the people that realize they're no good start to come in.  If no one is coming into our lives that makes us uncomfortable, it's probably because the doors of our heart have yet to be flung open wide by grace.  When that happens, when we begin to see that God saves by grace and the only reason we're "okay" is because He sought us out and found us and now we're no longer lost, but found, and it is all because of what He does and not what I'm doing, we begin to see "others" differently.  We begin to treat "others" differently.  We no longer think of them as "others" but as "us" who need the Father's grace just as desperately as we do. 

A New Way of Seeing Sin

What Jesus is doing for us in these three stories is defining sin for us in a way that might seem new, or at least odd. 

He's teaching us that sin isn't primarily the bad things we've done (though it certainly isn't less than that) but rather it is running from God.  The point of the stories is to show that something is lost.  Something has moved away from the owner.

The sheep that's lost isn't out for a nice Sunday stroll, it moved away from God and His flock.  The sheep left the shepherd to care for itself, to feed itself, to protect itself.  A stray sheep thinks it can get food and shelter and doesn't need a shepherd to get it. 

The lost coin has rolled away from the owner's safe hands and is now in the dust and junk in the dark and is hidden and has to be sought out and picked up. 

The prodigal son wants his inheritance now.  He could have anything he wanted if he just asked his dad. His dad was obviously wealthy, but it wasn't that he just wanted money, he wanted it without his father. 

The old grid only gets half of the story right.  It says that sin is primarily breaking the rules.  Jesus is teaching that the essence of sin is running from God and wanting to break His heart.  This is why Romans 3 teaches us that "no one understands, no one seeks after God" (Rom. 3:11). This is why Isaiah teaches, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way..." (Isa. 53:6). 

Sin is wanting to be our own lord and our own savior.  Breaking the rules is one way to avoid God and keeping them is another.  If we actually think we can keep the rules and therefore please God, then Jesus' sacrifice and God's grace is unnecessary. 

The average person in Hillcrest is the younger brother.  The average person in El Cajon is the older brother.  Both are far from the Father's heart because they are both trying to be their own lord and savior.  The prodigal does it by breaking the rules, the older brother does it by keeping the rules. 

Jesus redefines sin and shows the Pharisees that they have run from God, though they didn't understand because they saw themselves as the 99 sheep, the nine coins, and the older brother who stayed close. 

Once you begin to take off the old grid and put on this new grid you begin to see that everything that you were doing was ultimately to avoid the Father.  You begin to make sense of why you're so critical of others, why you're so judgmental, why you get so frustrated when people don't do what they're supposed to.  All of a sudden everything comes into color.

A New Way of Seeing Ourselves

Just as this new grid gives us a new definition of sin to show us that it's far worse than just breaking His law, but actually trying to escape Him and be your own lord, this new grid also shows us that we're a treasure to Him.

Why would you go searching for something unless it was valuable to you?  We don't waste our time when we lose a penny, but lose your wedding ring, lose an object that has great sentimental or great monetary value and you'll tear the house apart to find it.  It's only when you value something that you start to become grieved or anxious that you start to search and search for something.

What is Jesus telling us in the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal?  He is telling us that the Father is looking for us.  He is the Shepherd, Jesus, who leaves the flock and goes after the lost sheep and will turn over every rock until he finds it.  He is the Spirit that has to illuminate the room and sweep and sweep until the coin is found.  He is the Father that looks at the horizon for us and when He sees us, comes running to embrace us and pardon us.  Our Triune God is a searching God.    

Only the Bible teaches us that He created us, not because He needed us, but because He wanted to share Himself with us.  He didn't need us, but wanted us.  He loves and values us so much that He's tied himself to us in such a way that He's willing to send Himself into this world to come and rescue us.  He's bound to our hearts and seeks after us.

Think of God's emotional response in Genesis.  Think of God's loss of relationships with Adam and Eve in the Garden as He asks Adam, "Where are you?" (Gen. 3:9)  "What have you done?" (Gen. 4:10).  The wickedness of man was so great in the days of Noah that we're told that God was grieved at heart (Gen. 6:7).  God is not some distant, far-off God; He has chosen to make us in His image and to tie Himself to us. 

What makes us more valuable than a rock?  It is only because God values us. If we're just evolved sea slime, our value is inconsequential.  Our value is derived from the truth that God made us and we have value and dignity, even though that image is marred, He still places value on us.

You can either get your value from your own opinion, which changes, or from others, which is dependent upon your track record, or you can get your value from the One who was willing to search us out and give us His own Spirit to seal us as His own.

A New Way of Seeing Jesus

Jesus isn't just a shepherd; He's the lamb that was slain for us so that we could come back to the fold of God. 

Jesus is not just the woman looking for a coin in a dark room; He was the light of the world that came into our darkness, muck and filth and was willing to have His light extinguished for us on the cross so that we could be found.

He's not just the Father searching out the horizon; He's the older brother who was willing to let what was most valuable to Him be sacrificed.  It cost the older brother for the younger brother to come in.  It cost Jesus to bring us to the Father.  He's the true older brother that didn't just stay close to the Father in obedience, but was then willing to give up everything He had so that the prodigal could be welcomed in. 

The party is at his expense.  But it is a party!!!!  He was the one rejoicing when the sheep was brought home, when the lost coin was found, and when the younger brother, you and I, were welcomed in with a great roar and celebration in Heaven.

No other god is like this.  Every other god says, "Here's the rules, I'll wait for you on the porch."  Our God searches and when He sees us, comes running to us and embraces us.  If you think that trying hard will get you into the family, you're not a Christian, you're a Pharisee. 

Why is it so important that we see ourselves as sheep?  Because it's the only animal that can't protect, provide, and defend itself.  It needs everything from the shepherd.  We have to be willing to give Him our whole life and trust Him unconditionally. 

When a shepherd finds a sheep who has run from him, the sheep is freaked out and typically runs away from him.  You have to seize it, cast him down, and tie up its legs and carry it home.  And some of you are having difficulty in your life and it's because you're freaked out, running from God and looking through old glasses.  He's cornering you and is having to throw you down and tie up your legs so that he can carry you home.  Stop fighting Him.  Stop running from Him.  Trust Him.  He's that good.