Let's pray. Our gracious God, we give you thanks for your love and your goodness to us. We thank you for your word and we thank you for the Spirit of God has been given to us to illuminate us and to give us, empower us to do your will. We thank you that it is by the Spirit that we actually fulfill the righteous commandments of our God. We can't do it on our own, but that you work in us through your Spirit. And we thank you and praise you that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us that it's not our righteousness that saves us, but it's His righteousness. And whatever righteousness that we acquire in this life is by Your grace alone. And we grow in our knowledge, and we grow in our wisdom, we grow in our sanctification, and it's all because You are working in us both to will and to do according to Your good pleasure. And so we thank You, our God, help us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because of that. We pray now for us, for each of us as we think about Luke 15. We pray that you would give us insight as to how this works out in our lives and in our church in particular here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. May we be the kind of people that you call us to be in light of what we learned from Luke 15 this morning. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Now I want you to imagine the worst possible person you could think of. Who's the worst person you have ever thought about? Think about it. The one that you would have to say, I hate that guy or I hate that girl. Who is it? What do they look like? Can you imagine them? Now imagine that they come to church one Sunday and they actually repent and come to Christ. Now, how are you going to receive them? Are you going to rejoice? Are you going to say, oh, I'm so glad that this person that I hate has come to Christ. Are you going to do that? Are you going to rejoice? I want you to think about that this morning as we think about Luke 15. I want you to notice, first of all, how Luke 15 begins and it ends. It begins with the grumbling of the Pharisees. This man eats with sinners. That's as bad as it gets. This man eats with sinners. That means that he receives them. So it might be that Jesus is actually the host of this dinner that they're at. That's what's being received. They're sitting down at table fellowship together, and he's sitting down with sinners. It's not just that he's sitting with sinners. It's probably that he's hosting them. That's what the idea of receives means. He's receiving them. He's hosting them. He's hosting the dregs of society. How can you do that? And how does the chapter end? Ah, it ends with the sun. who didn't leave. He's actually the second prodigal. The chapter's about two prodigal sons, but only one repents. But notice, look these many years I've served you. I never disobeyed you. This is verse 29. I never disobeyed your command. Boy, I'm a perfect guy. Yet you never gave me a goat, a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. I'm really ticked off, Dad. But when this son of yours This son of yours who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. What is this? Well, it's in that context that Jesus tells these parables. And you've got to understand that the parable is told as kind of a shock treatment for the Pharisees. Jesus wants their attention. And so he tells three parables, and they're all related. They all have the idea of something lost and something found and rejoicing over them finding them. The first insult comes in the first parable when Jesus said, which man of you, if he lost his sheep, wouldn't leave the 99 in the wilderness and go find the other one? Well, problem one. Pharisees weren't shepherds. In fact, they didn't like shepherds. They thought that shepherds, that's on the list of one of the low things, one of the lowest jobs you could have, and Pharisees wouldn't do that. They might hire somebody like a family member to take care of them if there weren't too many, but typically you didn't have, Pharisees were not shepherds. It's odd that they didn't like them because who's a shepherd in the Old Testament? Abraham? Moses? God? The Lord is my shepherd? And yet these guys looked down on shepherds. Why did he do that? Actually, nobody really knows. But by the first century, when Christ was there, they had a very low view of shepherds. And so Jesus almost slapped him in the face and says, which man of you, you Pharisees, which one of you, if you had 100 sheep and one was lost, what would you do? And it's like, how dare you? How dare you talk to me that way? You can just see these guys getting irate. In this next parable, guess what it's about? Well, it's about a woman. I mean, come on, a woman? You're going to tell me a story about a woman? This is not good. So we got two things that are really bothering these guys. But the third parable, it's like this is the knockout punch. Here comes this son. And he says to his father, divide out my inheritance for me. Now, that doesn't sound too offensive to any of us. But to them, it was a horrible insult. The rabbis taught that you never asked your father for your inheritance. That was not something you would do. And if you did do that, your father was to beat you. That was not tolerated. You know why? Because this young man is pretty much saying what we would put in modern terms, dad dropped dead. See, because that's the only time you got your inheritance is when your father died. Now, he could give some of it to him, but it wouldn't pass to him as a possession. He could give something to him, but it couldn't pass to him as a possession that he could dispose of. without the father's death. And this young man gets his father's property and he's able, he's given permission to by the father to dispose of the property. And he does. That's not acceptable. And the idea is that the other son should have said something. At least that's what commentators say. The other son should have said, wait a minute now. You shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be treating your father like that. You need to stop this. But he didn't. The other son was silent. He was silent, which showed that he was at least complicit in some sense. There was a problem in this family. There was a problem between the father and his sons. And it shows up right away. The father is not treated with love, but the father treats in a loving way. We wouldn't want to say, because we don't want to be allegorical, so we want to say that the father represents God. That's not true. But what the father's love is, it's an expression of a divine kind of love. And he's very gracious to this son. So that's the first insult, right? Boy, this son, he's a rotten guy. Well, then he goes off into, you know, he leaves, sells all the property, goes off and he squanders all of his, spends everything on prostitutes and riotous living. And he ends up broke, right? Famine in the land, he's got nothing to eat. And so who does he go to work for? A pig farmer. Uh-oh. Two problems. Number one, you're working for a Gentile. Gentiles raise pigs. Jews didn't. So, you're working for a Gentile? You've lowered yourself that much that you're working for a Gentile? And you've lowered yourself that much that you're actually taking care of pigs? And what's even worse, you've lowered yourself so much that you're even willing to eat the food that they give to the pigs? What has happened to you? This is terrible. What kind of son is this? So these guys are being insulted. But the biggest insult, I think, comes at the end. You see, the son comes to his senses. And he thinks to himself, you know, I'm going to go back home. Because even the servants, the servants in my father's house are better off than me. I'm going to go back home. I'm going to say to my father, father, I've sinned against you and against heaven. I don't deserve to be called your son. Just make me a servant. See, as a servant, he might be able to earn enough to pay his father back. He might be able to do something that would restore somewhat of what he had before. But mostly, he wants to go back home. And so that's what he does. He goes back home. And before he even gets there, the father, he's watching for him. He's looking for him. You know, like the shepherd was looking for the sheep. The woman was looking for the coin. The father is looking for his son. He's looking for him. And he sees him. And what does he do? Does he wait until he comes there and grovels before his feet? No. He runs to him and he embraces him. And the son barely gets anything out of his mouth. Father, I've sinned against you and against heaven. And he says, oh, bring him a robe, you know. Bring him a ring. Put it on his finger. And let's have a party. Let's rejoice. This son of mine who was lost has been found. This son of mine who was dead is now alive. Let's rejoice over this. But the big brother or the other brother doesn't like it at all and so he complains. and that's how the parable ends. But you see, parables are really extended metaphors. If we treat them just like narratives and we have like a story form, you can do that. You have a conflict and you have a climax and then you have a resolution. You could treat it that way, but that's not what a parable's meant to do. A parable is meant to get our attention. It's given to us as like a window to look into several different ideas, but all have one kind of response. See, the one response that Jesus is looking for in these Pharisees is that they rejoice over a person being saved. I mean, look, that's what you see right between the first and the second parable. When he finds it, he puts it on his shoulders and he's rejoicing. And then you read, just so, verse 7, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons. Oh wow, who's righteous in this whole setting? Well, the Pharisees, they believe themselves to be righteous. And then you read after the second parable, verse 10, Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. So what's the point? Jesus wants people to rejoice over those who repent, even if they are sinners, who isn't, but even if they're the lowest level of society. Would I put it this way, even if they were homeless, would we rejoice? And so the parable wants us to look. So I'm going to just focus just for a few minutes on the parable of the prodigal son, as he's called. The way that it's set out, the very focus or the crux of the parable is on the change of mind and initial repentance. Now I want you to think about this for a moment. Oftentimes people are judged. because what brought them to repentance was some circumstance. For example, let's say Dan Skaggs, his father was a prison chaplain for 25 years, something like that. And Dan grew up around prisoners. He grew up around some murderers as a matter of fact, and he got to know some of them and some of them actually repented. And they were great Christian people. They would never get out of prison, but they were great Christian people. But what brought them to that point of repentance? Well, it could be that while they're in prison, they thought, wow, this is it for my life. And the instrument to bring them to repentance was their jail sentence. For other people, the instrument of repentance was they were gonna lose their wife and children because they were drunkards. And that idea that they would lose their wife and their children just drove them to the feet of Christ. But that's what the instrument was that God used to bring them to repentance was that horrible time in their lives. Oftentimes we judge people because when they do repent, we think, oh yeah, you repented because things got bad. Well, don't do that. Who cares how they got to repentance? That's the instrument that God used. Rejoice in their repentance, you see. That's the point. And what is repentance when you think about it? It's a change of mind. How does a change of mind come about? It's not just a change of mind, we'll see that in a second, but it is a change of mind. How does that change of mind come about? Through the circumstances of our lives. You know, we don't just sit there and all of a sudden, oh, wow, yeah, I think I'll repent. A lot of times, I mean, we don't think that way. I think sometimes we do have to find out how bad we are. Not everybody has to do that, but we have to learn about sin. We have to learn about how it affects not only us, but everybody around us. There's no such thing as a private sin. There isn't. It affects everyone around you. People who take drugs, they think, well, I'm not hurting many. Yes, you are. You're hurting the people around you. People who have their lives taken because they don't want to suffer anymore. They get euthanized or people commit suicide. They think, well, that's just something they did for themselves. No, it's not. People that do that rob everyone around them of the opportunity to know them and to work with them. They rob everybody around them. They hurt everybody around them. You don't commit sins in some kind of a vacuum. And so it requires a change of mind, and it comes through those times when things are just maybe so bad for some people, that that's the only point in their lives that they can, that they turn around and they say, wow, you know, something's got to change here. Because my life is, not only my life, but my family's life, my friends' lives are all being ruined because of the way I sin. So there's then a change of mind. But that's not all repentance is. Repentance, the word means to turn around. So let's imagine it this way. You're walking this way and you repent. That means you turn around and you go back this way. Get the picture? That's the idea of changing the mind, changing the direction. But that's not all there is to repentance. It's coming to this, it's changing of mind, yes, but it's also coming to God and acknowledging that there's, that you've sinned. In this case, the young man comes to his senses, that's when he's starving, and then he has this initial response. He says, I'm going to go to my father and I'm going to ask him to treat me as one of his hired servants. But the true Great repentance comes when he says to his father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. That's the clincher. He comes to his father with that statement. So then he gains everything back. The father is very gracious. His other brother is not so gracious. And so as you think about the parable, you've got to look at it as you're looking through a window. And you can imagine just little different, what do you want to call them, vignettes? I don't know if that's the right word. But you can see these little details. And the parable is meant to do that. The parable isn't meant just to say, OK, Be joyful when people repent. It's giving you a picture of what that looks like in every parable. And this extended one in Luke 15, verse 11 through 32. It's an extended parable. It's very long. And it wants us to think through the different elements of that parable, and to think through the theological concepts. Because there's a cluster of theological concepts in the parable, and it wants us to think about them and then have the response that Christ wants, which is to express joy at the repentance of even one sinner. That's the main response that the Lord wants you to have today, to rejoice over the repentance of even one sinner. But when you think about the parable and you look at its details, you ask yourself, okay, what kind of a person am I? Do I identify with the Pharisees? This is easy. Because we all have a little Pharisee living inside of us. I got a big Pharisee in me. That's because I'm bigger than all of you guys. You have a little Pharisee inside of your heart. You really do. Where you think that you're better than other people. And you do. We all do. We all look at other people and go, I don't do that. Even if we acknowledge that, yeah, I do wrong, but I don't do that. Have you ever thought that way? I have. Yeah, I'm guilty of this sin, but man, I have never done what that person did. You're being a Pharisee. Or can you think like the prodigal son, as he's called. Would you be that way? What is it that would take you to change your mind about some particular sin that you deal with on a regular basis? What is it that's going to grip your mind and your heart to get you to turn around and say to your father, I've sinned against you and against heaven. I don't deserve to be called your son. So do we take that approach? Do we see ourselves in that light? Do we see ourselves in the light of the Father? Now, some people say, well, wait, the Father represents God. Not really. I said it before. His love represents a divine type of love. But he's not really representing God. We don't want to allegorize the parable. So we can actually identify with the Father and say, well, would I be like a father, like this father, who was terribly wounded and insulted? What if one of your children went to your parents and he said, you know, Sam, I really don't love you. I'm out of here. Because that's what the prodigal did. I really don't love you. I'm going to leave. Give me my inheritance. Drop dead. I don't want to be around you. We would be crushed. I would be crushed if it were one of mine. And we think, well, our children wouldn't do that. Well, sometimes children do do that. Would we receive them back with open arms when they repented? Because that's the love that the Father here represents to us. Are we that way with other people? You know, one thing about this parable that we need to understand is that both sons are guilty. We could say, well, the one son is self-righteous. Yeah, that's true, he is. And he's parallel with the Pharisees. But what is it that Jesus is really saying to these guys? The parable is pretty clear that neither son really loves their father. They just wanted what their father could give to them. The prodigal son just took everything that he could get and he left. And that's all he wanted from his father. That's really, he didn't want his father. So when he returned home, when he repented, his father received him with open arms because finally the son comes to him as he comes to a father. It's like his son is saying, father, I just want to come home. It's like, I want to be with you. It's almost like he's saying, Dad, I love you. And maybe he never said that before. The other son who stayed home, what does he want? Well, I've done everything for you, Dad. I've never, I've never, I've never, I've never disobeyed anything you said. But did you ever even offer me a goat so that I could kill him and have a big party with my friends? No, you didn't do any of that. So what's that son want? He too, he wants what his father can give him, but he doesn't want his father. He doesn't love his father. And what Jesus is saying, at least by implication to these Pharisees, is that you're like this son who stayed at home. You think that you're so good. You are so righteous. You have not disobeyed anyone of God's commands. And the fact is, you don't love him at all. Wow. Quite an insult to the Pharisees. You've got to remember these parables, that's what they're for. They're to slap these guys right across the face and get their attention. and to get our attention because we too are like them. We too are little Pharisees in our hearts. We too judge other people. We too are very reluctant to receive people who repent and come to faith in Christ. We have a man who comes here once in a while. His name is Steve. And Steve doesn't seem to be all there. He's a homeless guy and he has some strange ideas. But last week it was really interesting. Joffrey asked him point blank, he said, have you been baptized? And that got Steve's attention. He's like, wow. You know that got his attention and he goes, well no. And Joffrey just tells him, well do you want to be baptized? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you trust in him? And Steve is starting to respond to that. But then he gets off on this weird stuff and you keep trying to get him back to the scripture. But what if one day What if one day Steve came and he genuinely said, you know, I repent and I want to be a part of this church. Would we rejoice and receive him? I think a lot of people would be reluctant. I know we would sit back and say, well, is he competent to even answer the questions for membership? Because baptizing means that he would become a member. So we would have all these questions. But the point I want to make this morning is, would we rejoice? Would we be glad? that he repented and wanted to be baptized and wanted to be a member. Would we be like the father with open arms and say, come on, we love you. Think about that. One year, a long time ago, Dan Feinmark. Dan Feinmark is on Central Street with his business, and so he has a lot of friends who are prostitutes. In fact, they were having a discussion about Genesis yesterday, and he called me with a question. One of the prostitutes, Dana, was asking him. So they like to talk about the Bible, but there's really not much going on in their lives. They're still prostitutes. One year, Daniel brought this. Most of the prostitutes on Central are kind of frightening. I mean, no offense, but they are. I would not want to run into them in a dark alley, because they look mean. They're not, but they look that way. But he brought this one, one Sunday. And I didn't know she was a prostitute. And she came into Sunday school and stayed for worship. And she came in with his really short skirt on, and she was beautiful, a beautiful young lady. And we're all kind of taken back that Daniel brought this prostitute. But we had the greatest time with her. She had all kinds of questions about the gospel and we got to talk to her about the gospel and some of the people who were here in our church before. They all kind of just gathered, the ladies just all kind of gathered around and she would ask questions and I would respond. It was a really, I don't even think that was the Sunday school lesson, but she came and her questions became the focal point. And we had a great time and she stayed for worship. And I often wondered if she would have become a member of our church, how well she would have been received. You know, because she probably would have struggled with being a prostitute. I doubt seriously that everything in her life would just change overnight. Would the ladies be comfortable with a woman like that in our membership? Would we rejoice and receive? Or would we stand back and say, well, wait a minute. You've got to prove yourself to us. Well, some of that's true, that we need to be cautious. I don't want to throw caution to the wind. But my question is the question of the parable. Will we rejoice with the angels of heaven when one sinner comes to Christ? will we rejoice with the angels in heaven over one sinner who repents? Will we be like the father who says to his self-righteous son, It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this person was dead and is alive, was lost and was found. Is that, would that be our attitude toward them? Would we receive them in that way? That's the challenge of Luke 15 to each of us. Let's pray. Our God in heaven, we do give you thanks for these words of our Lord Jesus. Each one of these parables, even the short ones, could take a long time to just explain. But today we just wanted to kind of get an overview and focus on the so-called parable of the prodigal son. Father, what we learned there is that we need to rejoice. That's the response that you call us to, to rejoice over repentance. And even if in our eyes, like in the Pharisees' eyes, the sinner was so bad that they repulse us, even then, You want us to rejoice and be glad, not only that, but to celebrate, to celebrate their repentance. When Jesus ate with sinners, that was the insult of insults to the Pharisees. But that's what we're called to do. eat with sinners, and we are all sinners. We all need to repent. We all need our Lord Jesus Christ. We all need to trust in Him, and we all need to repent as a way of life. If we've learned anything from our Reformed forefathers, it's that the Christian life is a life of repentance. So Father, help us to rejoice in those who repent, who come to our church. Help us to rejoice with one another when we acknowledge, yes, I had this sin, but I repent of that sin. Please pray for me. Help us to rejoice and to celebrate when we too repent and see our lives change by your grace. Father, we thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that because of him we now live and that we can say with Paul, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Father, that needs to be our confession. May it be true for each of us. We ask in Christ's name. Amen.