PENTECOST
14
September
13-15, 2025
Pastor
Timothy J. Spaude
Text:
Luke 15:1-10 (EHV)
“JOY TO THE LORD!”
1.
This
happens when sinners repent.
2.
This
happens when I repent.
School years have started all over the
nation. One concern on the minds of both students and their parents is friends.
Students want to have friends. Parents want their children to have good
friends. A piece of advice to those who want to have good friends. Be one. Be a
good, loyal friend to others and you will attract good friends to yourself. The
same thing can be said for joy. Joy is something all people want to have. When
it is missing from your life, you know and probably everyone around you does as
well. How can I get more joy? Be a joy giver. And today in God’s Word the Lord
Jesus reveals to us an astounding truth. People can be a source of joy for the
Lord and the holy angels.
Let’s see how. “Joy to the World” is a
Christmas favorite for many Christians. Sometimes we can get so caught up in
our joyful singing of it that we forget the words. They tell us there are
reasons for all people to rejoice. Verse 1, the Lord is come. Verse 2, the
Savior reigns. What are the reasons that bring joy to the Lord? We don’t have
to guess. He tells us.
Gospel: Luke 15:1-10 (EHV)
“All the tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus to hear him. 2But
the Pharisees and the experts in the law were complaining, “This man welcomes
sinners and eats with them.” 3He told them this parable: 4“Which
one of you, if you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them, would not leave
the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that was lost until he
finds it? 5And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his
shoulders 6and goes home. Then he calls together his friends
and his neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost
sheep!’ 7I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who
do not need to repent. 8“Or what woman who has ten silver coins, if
she loses one coin, would not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search
carefully until she finds it? 9And when she finds it, she calls
together her friends and neighbors and says, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have
found the lost coin.’ 10In the same way, I tell you, there is
joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Five times joy or a form of it is
written in these words of God. But not everyone was joyful and happy. There
were some grumpy, angry people, joy stealers that Luke writes about. The
Pharisees and experts in the law. What was making them so grumpy? Jesus
welcomed repentant sinners. That needs some explanation. What they were really
saying is Jesus welcomed people the Pharisees and experts in the law had
decided were sinners who should never be forgiven. Likely the targets of their
anger were Jewish men who worked at collecting taxes for the Roman government
to support their families and perhaps used that position to extort money. No
matter how badly they felt about what they had done, the Pharisees said there
was no return. Likely this also included mothers who, in order to feed their
children, in weakness or desperation, had offered their bodies in prostitution
to earn some food money. But once that was found out, there was no coming back.
No return to respectability. Until Jesus came along. He turned the false
teaching of the Pharisees and teachers of the law on their head. He told God’s
truth that He was sent to be Savior for all people, to pay the sins for all
people, and that all people who believe in Him, no matter who they have been or
what they have done, receive forgiveness for sins in Him. Whoever believes is
not condemned. The Pharisees and experts in the law didn’t think God should be
happy about that.
Jesus set them straight with the two
parables that everyone could easily relate to. If you own 100 sheep and find
one is missing you leave the 99 who are safe where they are and look for the
lost one and if you find it, if you get it back, you rejoice. In the same way
if you have 10 coins and realize you have lost one you try to find it and if
you do, you rejoice! Now it’s not like you stop valuing the ones you have. I
still remember wise Dave Hackmann saying when he was still active as principal,
“You know a mother is only as happy as her saddest child.” Wise words to guide
teachers who need to talk with a Mama Bear and every mama is a mama bear. It’s
not that moms don’t care about all their children. Her heart hurts for the
hurting one. In the same way the Lord has ongoing joy for every believer who is
quietly living their life with faith in Jesus, going to bed every night sadly
aware of where they have let their Lord down and waking up every morning happy
that His mercy is new, it’s a brand new day with no past and no guilt.
At the same time when any soul that He
died for repents, recognizes their need for a Savior and looks to Him for mercy
there is great joy. It brings joy to the Lord when sinners repent. It brings
Him no joy when sinners defy Him, say His rights are wrong and His wrongs are
right. It brings Him no joy when people march for their right to sin or when
our country passes laws that allow sin like it has done with abortion and same
sex marriage. It gives him no joy when people think they don’t need Him as Savior.
It brings joy to the Lord when sinners repent. That is why Jesus became man, to
live perfectly in place of sinners who cannot and to pay the Hell all sinners
deserve so that sinners would see His kindness and be enabled to repent. It
brought joy to the Lord to do this. It brings joy to the Lord when people see
His kindness and repent.
Does it bring joy to you? Every part
of Scripture we turn our hearts toward with the humble prayer to the Holy
Spirit to teach us, demands that we see ourselves in the text. The Pharisees
were grumpy, angry that forgiveness was granted so freely to tax collectors and
prostitutes who were ashamed of their sin and wanted that better way only Jesus
could give them. It’s very easy to think that we are not that way. That we will
accept every repentant sinner. And we are probably pretty good at that until it
hits too close to home. When someone has hurt us or worse, hurt our child, Mama
bear? “And they are going to communion?” How easy it is, brothers and sisters,
to think that some of us are more deserving of the Lord’s forgiveness than
others. How easy we find it to be joyful that someone caught in drug addiction
or alcohol abuse or some sexual sin that can grab a hold of your life like tax
collecting and prostitution repents…as long as I don’t have to deal with them,
forgetting how we would want to be treated if it were us! This does not bring
joy to the Lord. Repentance does.
And not just other people’s
repentance. Our repentance. That’s thing about repentance. It’s personal, isn’t
it? I can’t repent for you, and you can’t repent for me and just so we are
clear what this means here are four signs that I am repentant the way God
proclaims repentance. 1. I own my sin without making excuses. “I have sinned
against you O Lord.” 2. I am ashamed of my sin. No laughing. No minimizing
offending our holy God. 3. Knowing God is merciful and gracious I trust the
forgiveness Jesus won for me. “Thank you, Jesus!” 4. And in thankfulness to
Jesus, I want to do better. I want to be done with whatever sin I got caught up
in. This is why Jesus lived for us. This is why Jesus died for us. This is why
Jesus lives for us. So we can live each day a life of repentance. And it does
not matter what you have done. In every age and every society there will be
sins that some people say make you irredeemable, tax collectors, prostitutes,
certain sexual sins, the drug addict or alcoholic. And it may be true that some
of those ongoing sins irretrievably ruin relationships with people. They don’t
with God. Jesus makes that so. No matter how far we have fallen or whatever we
have gotten caught up in we can always run back to God and find forgiveness. This
brings joy to the Lord! Amen.
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