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Proud and lost or humble and found

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Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

Luke 15 is the “lost and found” chapter of the Bible. Here, Jesus tells three parables about lost and found. You heard two of them today. The parable of the lost son comes after the lost sheep and the lost coin. All three of them emphasize the lostness of sinners and the zeal of the Lord God to find all who are lost.

But there are two ways to be lost, and they both have to do with pride. Peter wrote in today’s Epistle, Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Where there is humility, there God can raise a person up. But where there is pride—pride in one’s sin, or pride in oneself—there God will tear the pride-filled person down. One day, that tearing down of the proud will be permanent; they’ll be lost forever. But for now, for a little while longer, God still tears down the proud with His Word, so that they may become humble, so that they may be found. Proud and lost, or humble and found. Those are the two possibilities we encounter in today’s Gospel.

We’re introduced to the first group of proud and lost people in the first verse of Luke 15, the tax collectors and sinners. As you know, the tax collectors in Israel at that time were thieves, extortioners, and traitors to their fellow Israelites. And the “sinners” were the well-known public sinners, prostitutes and drunks and people with a bad reputation. For a time, they had been proud of their sins. They had flaunted their sins. They had been too proud to repent, too proud to listen to the God in whom they had grown up believing, like so many today who refuse to admit that their sinful lifestyles are actually sinful and wicked. Our city, for example, like so many cities across the country, is proud of its support of the sin of homosexuality and the perversion of gender. It’s proud of what it calls tolerance and progress in the acceptance of these sexual perversions that God hates. It proudly displays the rainbow and trans flags that proclaim and advertise their defiance of God, their Creator and Redeemer. And they even acknowledge it as “pride.” Truly all who engage in or who support and promote such pride, such wickedness, are lost. And they will be judged and eternally condemned.

Unless they do as the tax collectors and sinners did in today’s Gospel. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to hear Jesus. Yes, He condemned their sins, but He also held out hope to them as He called them to repentance and offered the forgiveness of sins to all who would seek it from God through Him. He depicted them as the one sheep that had strayed from the other ninety-nine. And He presented Himself as the shepherd in His parable, who was determined to go out to search for them and find them and carry them home on His shoulders. These tax collectors and sinners, who had been lost, were in the process of being found by Jesus, and He was happy to have them with Him.

As He would be happy to have any sinner today become part of His holy Christian Church. He would be happy to receive the LGBTQ people in our city. He would be happy to receive a woman who has slaughtered her baby in her womb. He would be happy to have the porn stars, and the porn users, and the drug addicts, and the rapists, and the illegal immigrants, and the climate worshipers, and the lying politicians, and the corrupt media personalities, and the racists, and the promoters of race hate, and the bad dads of the world and the bad moms of the world, if only they would abandon their pride and humble themselves before God in repentance, if only they would listen to the Gospel and turn from their sins toward Jesus, the shepherd who came looking for them and who laid down His life on the cross for them, to bring them to God. He wouldn’t just be happy. He would rejoice with all of heaven that such people had gone from proud and lost to humble and found.

But here’s where the other group of proud and lost people shows up. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to hear him. But the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” The Pharisees and scribes were the “good,” religious people. They weren’t guilty of gross public sins. No, they rightly condemned sinful actions as sinful. And they led lives that looked upright and obedient. The problem was, they took pride in themselves for it. They were convinced that they had earned God’s favor for themselves, and they firmly believed that everybody else needed to earn it, too. So they did not rejoice when Jesus welcomed sinners who hadn’t behaved themselves, who hadn’t earned their place in God’s house with hard work and good behavior. No, they did not rejoice with Jesus’ finding of the lost. In fact, it made them angry.

It was their anger that prompted Jesus’ telling of the three lost and found parables. The second parable about the lost silver coin seems especially fitting for the Pharisees. One silver coin out of ten appears more valuable than one sheep out of a hundred, just as the Pharisees appeared to be more valuable than the tax collectors and sinners because of their upright behavior. But no matter how much a coin is worth, it’s worthless as long as it’s lost. And that’s what the Pharisees were: lost. Proud and lost, of no value to anyone. Except to God! Who had sent Jesus to find them, too. And so, like a woman desperately searching in her house for that lost coin, Jesus was desperately searching for the lost Pharisees, to bring them to acknowledge their own sinfulness and pride, even though their sinfulness was more hidden than that of the tax collectors.

It’s in that third parable, the parable of the lost (or prodigal) son, where the lost Pharisees are depicted most clearly, toward the end of the parable. If you recall, after the first son in that parable had openly gone lost and then returned to his father in humility and repentance, after his father had welcomed him back with open arms, the father then went out to the field to his other son, who hadn’t come in to welcome his brother back or to celebrate his return. That son was sulking out in the field by himself. He wasn’t happy that his brother had returned, and he especially wasn’t happy that his father was rejoicing and throwing a party in the “bad” son’s honor. The “good son” thought he deserved all his father’s attention. He had worked hard for his father’s love, and he was proud of it.

Except that it doesn’t work that way. You can’t work for your Father’s love. And you certainly can’t work for His forgiveness, which the “good” people need just as much as the “bad” people do. The pride of the good people is just as damning as the pride of the bad, which is why “No one is good” in the eyes of God, because all are infected with a disgusting pride in themselves. But He loves the proud and sends out His word to find everyone, to call all men to repentance, to urge all men to humble themselves, to admit that they are not what they are supposed to be, so that they may receive God’s gift of forgiveness through Christ, so that they may be found by Jesus and carried back home to God, so that He and all the angels of heaven may rejoice that a sinner has been brought to repentance.

Consider today where you’re at at the moment. Are you among those who are proud of their sins, proud and lost? Are you among those who are proud of themselves, proud and lost? If you’re in either of those groups, the Lord Jesus has gone looking for you and calls you right now to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time. Are you among those who have already humbled themselves and are, even now, riding back on the shoulders of Jesus, trusting in Him for mercy and grace? Then know that all Christians and the angels in heaven rejoice over you. But also, take care. Because to be found by Jesus also means that, as long as you still live in this world, you have an adversary, the devil, who, like a roaring lion, prowls around, looking for someone to devour. The more righteous you become in how you live—and you must grow in righteousness and in obedience to God’s commandments!—the more opportunities the devil will find to coax you back to pride in yourself and in your own goodness. We know that this is a favorite tactic of his. So beware of it! As Peter says, Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being brought upon your brothers in the world. But the God of all grace, who has called us to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

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The sinner from God’s perspective

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Sermon for Trinity 3

1 Peter 5:6-11  +  Luke 15:1-10

How do you see yourself in relation to God? Worthy? Unworthy? Loved? Unloved? In favor? Out of favor? Somewhere in between? How you see yourself will also have an effect on how you see other people in their relation to God. But I would suggest to you that the more important question is, how does God see you? And, how does God see the people around you? What is God’s perspective?

That’s what Jesus reveals to us in today’s Gospel. The Pharisees saw themselves as high up there on God’s list of favorites, and they saw the tax collectors and sinners who were coming to Jesus to hear Him as being permanently erased from God’s list of favorites. So Jesus reveals to us the sinner from God’s perspective.

It says that all the tax collectors (at that time, notorious liars, thieves and cheaters of their fellow Jews) and the sinners (well-known prostitutes, adulterers, and otherwise immoral people) drew near to Jesus. Why? To hear Him. To hear Him say what? What was His message to them? That’s an important question. Was He telling them, “It’s all right to cheat and steal and have sex outside of marriage”? “It doesn’t matter”? “God accepts you just as you are”? No. Jesus acknowledged their sinfulness and their lostness. But He likely didn’t dwell on it for all that long, because they knew that part well enough already. These were Israelites, after all. They knew the Ten Commandments. What’s more, John the Baptist recently had done his job of pointing out the sinfulness of everyone in Israel, including the tax collectors and the sinners. Not only that, but Jewish society at that time was very clear about these things. Open, public sins like prostitution, adultery and fornication were recognized as evil things, and cheating and stealing from your neighbor were understood to be inexcusable wrongs. These tax collectors and sinners weren’t pretending to be righteous or justified in their lifestyles. They knew they had ruined things with God.

But then along comes Jesus, claiming to have been sent from God, announcing a message from God, showing the sinner from God’s perspective: God isn’t done with you. God still loves you. In fact, God loves all men. He wants all men to be saved. He wants all to be brought to repentance. He doesn’t expect you to earn His favor. In fact, He forbids you to try. No, God is willing to forgive you, to forgive everyone, freely, by grace, and I, Jesus, the Son of God, am the one for whose sake God the Father is willing to do it. That’s the message the tax collectors and the sinners were hearing from Jesus.

And after all that, all the Pharisees and scribes could do was to sneer at Jesus in disgust, This man receives sinners and eats with them! From their perspective, the sinners didn’t deserve to be forgiven. From their perspective, God should rejoice to be rid of them, and Jesus should spend His time with the worthy, praising them for how worthy they were, telling them how they, above other men, had indeed earned God’s favor.

So Jesus tells three parables (two of which we heard in our Gospel today) explaining lost things from God’s perspective. How does God see the sinner?

He knows and cares about each and every one. God sees the sinner as one of His sheep that has gone astray, that has left the flock and the pastures and the protection of its shepherd. It doesn’t matter how big or little, how public or private the sin is. As Isaiah says, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.

Hmm. “All we like sheep have gone astray.” “Each one.” That’s what God’s Word says. So in reality, there aren’t 99 “righteous” sheep who haven’t gone astray, who don’t need to repent. Everyone’s a sinner. Everyone needs to repent. The 99 in Jesus parable simply represent those who think they’re righteous, who think they’ve earned God’s favor, who think they don’t need to repent. Such were the Pharisees and scribes in our Gospel.

So what does the shepherd do? He leaves the 99 and goes after the one sinner, the sheep that has gone astray. And he doesn’t just go after him. Always keep Isaiah’s prophecy in view. It continues, we have turned, every one, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him—on the Christ! —the iniquity of us all. Not included in this parable but always in view in the Scriptures is the fact that Jesus didn’t just go looking for us all. He gave His life for us all. He bore the sins of us all and suffered for them all. The journey this Shepherd took to find His sheep wasn’t just difficult. It was deadly, as He knew it would be. But it was the only way to buy the sheep back from its wanderings, and it’s the only message that will bring the sheep to repentance. Your God cared about you, His sinful, rebellious sheep, enough to lay down His life for you. And now He sends out His Gospel to find you, to preach repentance and the remission of sins through faith in Christ Jesus.

And when He finds His sheep with the Gospel, when His sheep repents and believes the good news, He is like the shepherd who hefted the sheep onto his shoulders and rejoiced as he returned home and celebrated with all his friends and neighbors the success of his mission, the return of the one sheep to his fold. That’s how God sees the sinner. That’s God’s perspective.

The parable of the lost coin is similar to that of the lost sheep. It emphasizes the fact that there is value to the sinner in God’s eyes, and just as much value in the one who has gone lost as in those who haven’t (although all have, as we’ve already seen). The one silver coin that was lost is worth no more and no less than each of the other nine coins, whereas the Pharisees thought of themselves as far more valuable in God’s sight than the tax collectors and sinners. No, says Jesus. No one can earn a place of value in God’s sight. Everyone has already been assigned an equal value by God Himself. So when God finds a lost sinner and brings him or her to repentance, He sees all the effort He spent in searching as being worth it. He rejoices to get His coin back.

We should say a word here about what repentance is, if God is so joyful over the one sinner who repents. It’s neatly summarized for you on the back of your service folder today from our Augsburg Confession: Now, strictly speaking, repentance consists of two parts. One part is contrition, that is, terrors striking the conscience through the knowledge of sin. The other part is faith, which is born of the Gospel or the Absolution and believes that for Christ’s sake, sins are forgiven. It comforts the conscience and delivers it from terror. Then good works are bound to follow, which are the fruit of repentance.

This is what God seeks in each and every human being. He sends out His terror-striking Word to all those who deny their sinfulness, like the Pharisees in our Gospel, and to all those who are indifferent or unconcerned about their sinfulness, so that both kinds of sinner are brought to shudder before God’s judgment seat. He also sends out His comforting Gospel of His willingness to forgive sins freely for Christ’s sake through faith to all those who are shuddering in terror. And when His Word has accomplished this goal, He forgives and justifies the believer and welcomes him and her into His home, where there is rejoicing every day over the one sinner who repents, even me, even you.

It’s not that we all stray from God’s house or go lost every time we sin; there are many sins that we commit in ignorance or in weakness that do not extinguish faith or drive out the Holy Spirit. But can you imagine a day going by in which you can honestly say, “I’m more worthy of God’s favor than those sinners over there. Today I need no repentance”? God forbid that you ever fall into such blindness and into such pride! See yourself from God’s perspective. Always sinful and undeserving of His favor and eternal life. And yet always desired by Him, always precious to Him, and daily urged by Him to live in contrition and repentance, recognizing and mourning your sins, and at the same time trusting in His gracious promise to forgive you freely for Christ’s sake, into whom you have been baptized. And then struggling against sin and striving, with God’s help, to sin no more.

This is what God wants for you. This is what God wants for everyone. And this is why God calls people not only to be baptized, but to join themselves to a Christian congregation where they can keep coming to Jesus, as the tax collectors and sinners did, to hear His Word and His instruction, to receive His absolution, and also to receive regularly the seal and pledge of His mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Christ’s very body and blood.

From God’s perspective, all of you here were worth seeking and finding and bringing to repentance, and all of you, as you repent and as you live daily in repentance, are a cause of great joy and celebration in heaven. Now live your lives from God’s perspective, not your own, and see both yourselves and your neighbor as God sees you: as sinners with whom our God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—yearns to spend eternity, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

 

Source: Sermons