Christ Welcomes All Who Come To Him
Luke 15:1-10
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 15:7 “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Last week you heard from Pastor Bernet about Jesus eating with the Pharisees at a Pharisee’s house. They, you recall, were known as the good people in town, the law-abiding citizens, the religious know-it-alls. And Jesus frequently accepted their invitations to associate with them, to dine with them, to talk with them, to teach them, even though their invitations were often traps. And at the end of the day, most of them didn’t believe Jesus’ words or want Him for a Savior. No matter: He came into the world to call sinners to repentance so that they might recognize that they were sinners, too, so that they might be saved by faith in Him. That is always the point of faithful Law/Gospel preaching and teaching.
Jesus welcomed the well-known, open sinners into His company, including thieving tax collectors and notorious prostitutes. He didn’t shy away from associating with them, dining with them, talking with them, and teaching them. His message to the open sinners was essentially the same as His message to the righteous-looking Pharisees.
And that message was basically this: “None of you are righteous before God on your own merits; none of your works can make you acceptable to Him. You haven’t been good enough to earn His favor, and you cannot be good enough to earn His favor, because you are all sinners.
“And because you are all sinners, you stand condemned before God’s holy Law. Therefore, repent and believe the good news, that I, Jesus, have come to save you from your sins – both the public ones and the private ones, both the ones that the whole country knows about, and the ones that only you and God know about, and even the ones that you don’t know about, but God does. I, Jesus, have come to help you, to offer you a daily clean slate before God, the sure hope of eternal life in heaven, and the beginning of a holy life here on earth Believe in Me”
And to be sure, many of them did believe in Jesus. At the very least many of them were drawn to Jesus’ word and kept coming to Him, wanting to hear more. And never once did He send away anyone who came to Him.
When the Pharisees saw Jesus surrounded by these tax collectors and well-known sinners, they grumbled and complained: “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.” This was simply too much for their self-righteous brains to grasp. Now, understand why this bothered them so much. The Pharisees had nothing to offer thieving tax collectors and prostitutes and wretched sinners. They believed that the path to salvation was paved with good works and a good life. To them it was too late for people who had messed up so badly, and, in fact, they didn’t even want such people to be saved. They had a lot of trouble with the idea of a God who would allow such sinners into His house.
So, Jesus told the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. A shepherd had a hundred sheep but one went missing; so he left the 99 in the pasture to go and search for the one that was lost. Any shepherd would do this, as they all knew. No shepherd would be content to let a sheep wander off without searching for it.
So also, God says through the Prophet Ezekiel, that He has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from his way and live” (Ez 33:11). Unlike the Pharisees, God does not easily give up on those who wander away from His sheepfold; He does not easily give up on those who turn away from Him to their idols, who indulge their sinful desires, who act wickedly toward their neighbor, and who wallow in the mud and slime and stench of their sins. On the contrary, He sent His Word to the holy prophets precisely to call the wicked in Israel to “turn from their ways and live.” He sent His Son into the world to search for sinners and to preach the same word of repentance to them. More than that, He sent His Son to suffer and die for their sins so that they should be forgiven and saved by faith in Him.
And now He still searches for His lost sheep through the preaching of the Gospel in all the world. And this is the message: Turn from your sins and take refuge in Christ Jesus who suffered for you. Believe in Him and so be clothed with His perfect righteousness before God. Learn from Him that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. In Him you will find full and free forgiveness, as He promised long ago through the Prophet Isaiah: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Is 1:18). For Christ’s sake, you will find a loving Father in heaven who knows all the evil you have done and still will take you back and make you holy in His sight through faith in Christ.
When the shepherd finds his sheep, he puts it up on his shoulders, carries it home rejoicing, and holds a celebration. So also, God’s chief purpose in sending His Son into the world was not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. And when a sinner repents and believes in Christ, God doesn’t take him or her into His house grudgingly. No, He rejoices! He celebrates! He is thrilled to have the sinner back! And all the holy angels, and all the saints and true members of the Church rejoice together with Him, to the praise of God’s glorious grace.
But the Pharisees weren’t rejoicing with Jesus when the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Him. They wanted to believe that heaven was only for righteous people, like them, who “had no need of repentance.” But Jesus told them the hard truth: “I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.” You who think you are just and righteous, you who pretend that you need no repentance, you who believe that God should be happy to have people like you in heaven – you’re the ones who are fooling yourselves. You’re the ones who bring no joy to heaven at all.
And the second parable is like the first one: a woman had ten silver coins but lost one. Then she scoured the house until she found it. Here Jesus makes it clear that no one is worth more or less than another. Every soul is valuable to God. Everyone is worth dying for. Christ shed His blood for everyone, and He has His Gospel preached to everyone, so that whoever believes in Him by God-given faith should not perish but have everlasting life.
What Christ has done for sinners is much more than the shepherd or the woman in the parables did. The shepherd took time and effort to find the lost sheep, and the woman took time and effort to sweep the house in search of the lost coin. But Christ Jesus took on human flesh, became Man, spent His entirely earthly life serving lost sinners, sacrificed His own life on the cross for lost sinners, and now spends the rest of this earthly age ruling at God’s right hand and sending the light of His Gospel out into the world, searching, sweeping the earth, until He finds another lost soul whom the Holy Spirit will enlighten with His gifts, another lost soul who will turn in faith to Christ and be found.
Dear fellow redeemed; you see in both parables how serious God is about the sinner’s salvation. He doesn’t cast anyone away who comes to Him and wants to hear Him. At the same time, He isn’t looking for mere onlookers or curiosity seekers. It won’t do anyone any good in the end to remain on the fringes of Christ’s kingdom. Christ is searching for participants in His Church, for people who will value Him highly enough to follow Him into His kingdom and to cling to Him above all things. He’s looking for those who will, as we confess in the Rite of Confirmation, “faithfully conform all their life to the rule of the divine Word, to be diligent in the use of the means of grace, to walk in a way that is worthy of the Gospel of Christ, and in faith, word, and deed to remain true to the Triune God, even to death.”
Certainly, it is only by God’s grace and His gift of faith that any of us can even believe or trust in Him for forgiveness and salvation. But it is true nonetheless. The blessings and privileges of being called into His kingdom are here for you each and every week in the confines and context of this Divine Service. Here is where Christ calls us back to Himself. Here is where we are searched for and found by Him through Confession and Absolution, through remembrance of our Baptism, through right preaching, and through the Sacrament of the Altar. The Searcher of all men, Christ Jesus, gives His very body and blood for sinners to eat and to drink here at this altar – a sign and seal of the forgiveness of sins that He purchased with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.
And as we again have been gathered here and receive Him and His gifts, know that He rejoices over you today. May God’s Holy Spirit preserve us all in daily contrition and repentance, clinging to Christ in faith, until He carries us on His shoulders safely into life everlasting.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
