The Pleasure of God in the Salvation of Men (Luke 15, Jeff Kliewer)

Father God, thank you that we can celebrate joyfully, even in the midst of sorrow. God, thank you that you are the God of all comfort and that our hope is in you because you are the resurrection and the life.

Jesus, you are the resurrection and the life. Thank you, God, that you are such a loving God that welcomes us back when we go prodigal. Thank you that you forgive sins. You are not a harsh and angry father, but you are a God who delights to save and you delight in saving your children.

Thank you, God, that by your spirit we can call out Abba, Father, that you are our God and our dad, our daddy. Thank you for who you are, and we ask that now you would just bless us with your word. Help us to understand you better and your heart better.

Through your word.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. What makes God happy? That's the question. Notice I did not ask what makes you happy. That's the question that this culture loves to ask. What makes you happy? In fact, that would be the central issue for the humanist.

Humanism puts humans or people at the center of the universe and therefore the happiness of a person becomes the most important thing. Humanism has praise choruses. Maybe you will recognize this one. Because I'm happy, clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.

Because I'm happy, clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Because I'm happy, clap along if you know what happiness is to you. Because I'm happy, clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do.

I'm gonna stop there because I don't wanna burn too many brain cells with the depth and the tremendous brilliance of these words. But what are these words saying? Let's take a minute to analyze. These words are teaching humanism.

No roof, there's no authority higher than you. Happiness is the truth. You get that statement? That truth is whatever makes you happy. Whatever makes you feel happy, that's good and if it makes you unhappy, well, bad.

Clap along, you are free is basically the message of this song. Your happiness is the central issue in this song and as long as something makes you happy, therefore it's good and it's true and it's right and look, you are at the center of the universe.

That is the underlying theme of Pharrell's song. Pharrell and the humanists believe in themselves as the highest authority. That truth is relative, there's no absolutes. That truth comes from within a person and that the person is autonomous to create whatever truth they want.

But could it be that they're asking the wrong question? The question is not what makes you happy but what makes God happy and I'm gonna surprise you with the answer. What makes God happy?

Nothing.

Nothing makes God happy because God is the one being in the universe that is independent and happy and joyful in who he is. You see, we are dependent beings. We're needy creatures. We depend on God for existence but God exists and is happy in and of himself.

He is the center of his universe and there's nothing outside of himself that has to happen to make him happy. We're different, aren't we? We need circumstances to go well for us to be happy. Something has to make us happy otherwise we lose our happiness but God is not like that.

Now is it right for God to delight in being God? Well, it's wrong for us to put ourselves at the center because we are created beings and so we don't belong in the center of the universe and our happiness is not the most important thing in the universe but catch this, God is right to center the world on himself because he is the center.

He is the source of everything and it's right for him to delight in being God and to take pleasure in who he is. God by nature is infinitely and eternally happy. So what does this God take pleasure in doing?

He's free to do whatever he wants to do so what pleases him to do? We learn that from Luke chapter 15. What does God like to do? What are the activities that please him? Not because he needs to do them but because he's pleased to do this.

The answer is God saves sinners. He saves sinners, it's what he does. That's what makes him happy. He's happy already but he expresses that happiness through the salvation of sinners. In Hebrews 7 .25, we learn that he saves to the uttermost.

That means thoroughly and completely with regard to the scope but with regard to time, he saves for all eternity. It pleases him to save to the uttermost. So let's turn to Luke 15. We're going to learn about the pleasures of God and also find our delight in what pleases him because here is the catch.

If you center your life and if you pursue happiness as if you are the center of the universe, that pursuit will fail. You can search for happiness all around the world and spend your life in pursuit of happiness and you'll never find it.

But if instead you pursue God, his happiness is a gift to you. It's transferable to you. He's happy to share his joy with you. You come into his joy. So we're familiar with Luke 15, right? It's a famous parable of the prodigal son but really Luke 15 is three parables that all fit together as one unit.

This is why sometimes it's good to take the broader picture of scripture. So often we just grab one little text here and we sometimes can contort that to mean what we want it to say. But when you study scripture by a broader sweep and you see the context of what the author is doing, in this case Luke, we get the meaning of the text as it unfolds to us.

It's so important for the 15th chapter to see all of these three parables as one, one teaching that have a context. It's about the pleasure of God. He takes pleasure, great joy in finding the lost. These parables call us to enter into his joy unlike the Pharisees.

It also sends us out to be like God, to seek and to save that which is lost, to go after prodigals that they would come home. So let's look at Luke 15 verses one and two is where we'll begin. And then we'll see the three parables that flow out of this context.

Luke 15 verse one and following, now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. Here is the context.

Jesus is teaching and tax collectors and sinners are drawing near and Jesus is welcoming them. He has open arms to them. But the Pharisees looking down on the sinners criticized Jesus for doing this. They begin to grumble.

Now recognize to understand Luke 15, we have to start here in verse one and two. This is the context that gives rise to the parables. They only make sense if we understand what's happening here. You have a savior who is delighting to spend time with sinners.

And you have another group. You have the Pharisees who are grumbling and bitter in their hearts because of what Jesus is doing. That's the context that sets the stage for what Jesus has to say to them.

You all know people who grumble a lot and complain a lot.

Maybe you are one.

Maybe you tend to grumble. Maybe you don't always have the joy of the Lord. These Pharisees are beginning to look that way to me. Remember the previous chapter? They had a criticism, didn't they? What was it in that case?

He heals on the Sabbath. He should be resting. And they apply their man-made traditions, their rules, which were false interpretations of the Torah to Jesus. And so they find reason to criticize him.

Here again, they have yet another complaint. They're grumbling. They're bitter and cold and hard-hearted in their spirit, whereas Jesus is demonstrating joy. Their noses are so far up, you could push them over with a finger.

These are what we like to call Eeyores. There's always something bad, always something wrong. It just saps the life out of you to be around these Pharisees, doesn't it? Here you have Jesus who's filled with joy and happily welcoming sinners, and they're cold and grumbling and mean.

For me, there's one thing that saps the life out of me, and that is children's clothing stores. And flower shops, flower shops too. When I go into those, it just feels like all the oxygen is out of the room.

I call it an oxygen depletion zone. It just feels like I have no energy and someone else might be very excited and say, oh, look at these cute onesies. And I say on the outside, yeah, what a little foot to fit into that.

But in my mind, I'm thinking, I have to get out of here. I have to be out of this place. There is no oxygen in this building. Well, some people are that way. When you're around them, they're just grumpy and complaining, and see that in the Pharisees.

The verse tells us that they grumble. They're grumbling. They're like Eeyore. And yet you have these sinners who are drawing near. There's some authenticity about that, this joy, this delight. They want to come close to Jesus.

They want to see Him. They want to touch Him. They want to hear from Him. We're told they're drawing near. Now, how is it that they draw near? Don't miss this. You would assume that the tax collectors and the sinners would be running away from Jesus.

Here's a holy man, and he's not preaching some easy message. He is saying, repent. Turn away from your sins. He's saying, in fact, you need to hate your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your wife and your children if you want to be my disciple.

You need to leave it all behind and come follow me. He's preaching a hard message to take, and yet they're interested to come. Now, when they're called sinners, it's because the people in their time are regarding these people as particularly bad.

They're noteworthy. They're worse than the rest. As they look one at another and compare themselves with themselves, the righteous Pharisees look down on the sinners because they're known to do things that are against the Torah.

These are sinners that are noteworthy and exceptional in their sin. And the tax collectors, of course, what do we know about them? They're sold out to Rome, the Roman Empire that's oppressing Israel. They've gotten in with them.

They're on the Roman side, and so they're just by definition against the God of Israel and against the Torah. So there's reason to look down on them, but notice their delight in coming. And my question is, how is it that they're drawing near?

You would think that they'd be repelled and they'd be running away. In John 6, 44, we're told that unless the Father draws them, they cannot come. But if they do come, he will raise them up on the last day.

We're also told in John chapter 10, verse 27, my sheep hear my voice. The voice is the voice of the good shepherd, and there's something that's captivating them that they want to draw near to hear them.

There is some force working on them that comes from outside of themselves. Call it grace. Something is drawing them that doesn't come from inside. Charles Spurgeon talks about the time when he fully understood grace for the first time.

He was sitting in a church service and he heard the preacher talking, but he says he didn't believe what the preacher was saying, so his mind was wandering. I hope that's not applying to any of you right now.

But here's what Spurgeon says. One weeknight, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me. How did you come to be a Christian?

I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment. I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him.

I prayed, I thought. But then I asked myself, how came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the scriptures. How came I to read the scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all and that he was the author of my faith.

And so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me. And from that doctrine, I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession. I ascribe my change wholly to God. Spurgeon came to understand grace when in his thinking, he traced back to the root of his faith and saw that his change was entirely the work of God.

Here you have sinners and tax collectors, the worst of the worst, but something outside of themselves, God has drawn them near to listen to Jesus and they're hearing and they're believing. If there's one thing that could insulate me from Babies R Us, it's the doctrines of grace.

Give me a book by Charles Spurgeon or John Bunyan or George Mueller, the great missionary and worker who helped the orphans and started the orphanages. Give me their writings and let me read about grace.

It's like oxygen to me. It would be like, I would be underwater in Babies R Us. But if I had that book, if I had the word of God and the doctrines of grace explained to me, it would be oxygen to me. And my question to you is, where do you find joy?

Where do you find delight? What stirs your soul? What captures you? What makes you come alive? For Spurgeon, it was grace, grace. Grace alone is the hope of a sinner like me. Because there was nothing in me that would have turned to God.

I was dead in my trespasses and sins, but he turned me. This is the context of Luke 15. The sinners are being drawn in by the grace of God. And yet the Pharisees grumble. Now let's read the parable. Verses three to seven is the first one.

And we'll move quickly through them because one piles on another and we need to see the cohesion of the three. Verses three to seven. So he told them this parable. What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing. 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.

Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. The meaning of the parable is the pleasure, the delight of God in saving sinners.

That's the thrust of it. It's his joy, his rejoicing. Now notice there's a hypothetical category in verse seven. 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. If you're one of the 99, raise your hand.

I wanna meet you.

I call it hypothetical because all of us need repentance. All of us are sinners. But here is the pleasure of God, to save sinful people like all of us are. To save sinners. That's his joy. And notice how he diligently seeks for that lost sheep who would hear his voice.

Verse four, he leaves the 99 in the open country. That's not a picture of abandonment. That's a picture of passion. Maybe he leaves those sheep with some caretakers. The idea is he's leaving everything to find the one.

This is what he's fixated on. This is what he's devoted to do. He's diligent in seeking. The Holy Spirit has been called the hound of heaven. He'll come after you. He'll seek you to find your heart. But the thrust of the parable is the joy of the finder.

The delight.

He rejoices when one repents. Now verse eight through 10, you see a second parable. And it has that same thrust. It has that same meaning. Or what woman having 10 silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?

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 lost. Just so. When you see that just so, that's gonna give you the meaning now of the parable.

Just so. So I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. So we have two parables. In each case, you have a representative of God. God is figured there in the woman who finds her coin or in the man who finds his sheep.

Now this third parable is the one we're most familiar with. But it's barely a parable. Because whereas in the first two cases, you have a lost sheep that pictures a lost man and you have a lost coin that pictures a lost man, a sinner who's going his own way.

Now in the third parable, the lost son is a lost son. You see, this is in that part of the parable, it's not a parable. It's the actual case in point. We are sinners. All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned each one to his own way. We're wandering sheep, we're lost sheep. We are people who have lost our way. Verse 11 and following. And he said, there was a man who had two sons. 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. Now let the force of that hit you for a second. A son comes to his father and says, give me my inheritance now. It's basically saying, I wish you were dead. I want the inheritance now.

And the father says, take it. Verse 13, not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country. And there he squandered his property in reckless living. Reckless or wasteful.

The word prodigal actually means wasteful. He's wasting the resources that were entrusted to him. He's off on his own being wasteful with what he was entrusted to steward. So in verse 14, when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country and he began to be in need.

So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread? But I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father. And I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. So notice here, something is drawing him back. But God in the parable is invisible. In the parable of the sheep and the coin, you see this active looker.

You see a shepherd who's out looking everywhere to find the sheep. You see the woman scouring the house to find, but here God is invisible. And that's how it is with us. We don't see God looking. To us, he is invisible, but his spirit is active in the world.

Not visibly, but like the wind. And so when the tree moves, you know there's wind. And in the same way, when these circumstances are piling up on this man, he recognizes this is not working and it draws him back to his father.

God is at work in the parable invisibly. The father sees him coming. I am no longer worthy to be called your son, but look at verse 22. I'm sorry, I'm skipping ahead. We're at verse 20. And he arose and came to his father.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate.

For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate.

Picture that.

The son has a speech prepared that he wants to say to his father and he's coming over the horizon. You picture this old man looking out over the horizon because he's looking that maybe my son will come back.

And he sees him coming. And rather than waiting for him to approach and make it to home, he takes off running. Now in this culture, for the dignified man of the house to run is culturally unacceptable.

It's undignified. And yet, he doesn't care about dignity at this point. He wants to get to his son. In the South, they have an expression, I remember one of my preachers saying it, if that don't light your fire, your wood's wet.

That picture of the father running for his son should just light your fire. The undignified father. He's been offended by his son, he's just willing to forgive. Not only so, he's been humiliated by his son.

And he's willing to delight. He just runs. The picture of this running father, when he gets there, he just embraces full hug, love, surely crying, tears of joy. This is the picture of the love of God for us.

As we come home in repentance, this is what delights.

Our God.

He loves to see sinners come home. And you think, well, wait a minute, if he only knew what I'd done, he would never welcome me back. But look what the prodigal son did. He offended in probably the worst possible way.

And yet, God is the kind of God that delights to forgive sinners like me. That's the meaning of the parable.

The joy.

And notice that he doesn't even let the son get the whole sentence out.

Did you catch that?

Verse 21, he's trying to say his spiel so he could be a servant and work and feed the pigs of his father. Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Verse 22, but there's an interruption in the middle of the sentence. He doesn't even get it all out. The father said to his servant, bring quickly the best robe. He's not even hearing him anymore because everything that he's done is in the past and he is completely welcomed home already.

He doesn't need to earn anything from the father. The father accepts the son coming home. Now, there's one last part of the parable that sometimes gets overlooked and it brings us back to 15, one and two.

Because while God, Jesus in the flesh, is delighting to see grace functioning, to see sinners coming home, here you have the Pharisees, the Eeyores, grumbling, complaining, cold-hearted. And that's who the older son represents.

This parable was largely a rebuke to them because their hearts were not like God's. Verse 25 and following. Now, his older son was in the field and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.

And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.

But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and treated him, but he answered his father, look, these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours came and who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. And he said to him, son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours.

It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. So you have the joy of the father now contrasted with the grumbling, complaining, hardheartedness of the Pharisee.

Notice what the older brother really wanted. It wasn't a delight in the father. There wasn't a love for God. This was a humanist. This is a guy who wanted to be happy in his own pleasures. Because notice in verse 29, that I might celebrate with my friends.

I'm not sure the father would even been invited to that party. He had a different desire in life, a different goal, different things that made him happy. And he was pursuing those pleasures, even while feeling righteous.

I never did anything wrong, he says, is that true? Is he one of the 99 that need no repentance? No, but he thinks he is. And many religious people, because they obey the laws prescribed to them in their books or in their traditions, believe themselves righteous and good with God, even while they pursue themselves and they remain on the center.

Of their universe, on the throne, as it were. So that's the contracts in Luke 15. A prodigal that comes home and the delight of the father. Grace functioning invisibly to draw home sinners and the delight of God to do this.

That's where we're left today. To delight where God delights, to let this be our joy. But some of you say, yeah, but I have a prodigal. So I wanna take just a couple of minutes, literally, to give you a few points if you have a prodigal.

Because a prodigal is one who's wasting resources. One who's gone away. And let's just quickly go back over the points that we learned from the parable. Because it will help you in dealing with someone that you love who is not walking with God right now.

Someone that you care about who has gone astray.

All right.

Number one, the greatest need of any prodigal is to hear Jesus. Verse one, the sinners, the tax collectors were coming near to hear him. Number two, Jesus receives prodigals when they draw near. He is willing to receive sinners.

So no matter what sin the person that you love has fallen into, Jesus is willing to receive them when they come. More than that, verses four and eight, we see that God actively seeks prodigals. His spirit going forth in the circumstances, in their lives, God seeks for the sheep.

He looks for the coin. And invisibly, he is at work to draw prodigals to himself. Number four, prodigal living can give way to joyful redemption. You say, this is terrible. I have a prodigal. But how much more joy when he comes home, when she comes home?

The story isn't over. There is a time where people go off into a prodigal walk. But God has a design for this. In many cases, it will be to his glory, to his joy, and our joy will be found thereto. God has a plan.

So don't cut the story short. Number five, God allows prodigals to suffer. This is important, and sometimes so should we. Your prodigal who's gone off, away from God, in the story of the prodigal son, the invisible father lets him suffer for a time.

Sometimes we can't come to the rescue of someone. We have to let them suffer consequences for the choices that they make. It's all part of how God might draw them back. Number six, prodigals squander God's resources, not ours.

That's important because it's really not us that's the issue. They're a child of God, made in the image of God. If they're wandering away from their father, the issue they have is with him. And so number seven, reconciliation with us will often follow reconciliation with God.

We have to recognize sometimes that it's really not about us. Maybe your relationship with somebody is broken, but the root issue is that they're off away from God. Number eight, God is quick to forgive, and so should we be, quick to forgive.

Learn that from the parable, because it's not easy to forgive, especially when somebody has squandered resources that God entrusted to you, and you through them entrusted those resources, and they were squandered, and you think all this time, all this pain.

Sometimes it's hard to let go of those things, but if we're gonna learn to be like God, we have to be willing to forgive. We must not allow self-righteous bitterness to overtake our hearts. The older brother did that.

He was overtaken in his own self-righteousness, in his own bitterness, and was swallowed up by his own pride. And finally, make it our joy and passion to see prodigals come home. You may not be the one to bring your prodigal home, but God may use another Christian to speak into their lives.

See, God delights to save sinners. Make that the passion of your life. Maybe he will use you to bring someone else's prodigal home that you encounter in the grocery store, or at the gym, or at school, or on the job.

There's prodigals all around. Maybe you are the one that God will use to draw someone else's prodigal home. Make that your delight, even as it delights God. So in closing, we have this incredible parable, the prodigal son.

The main thing that it reveals to us is the joy of God to save sinners. His pleasure, his delight is in the salvation of sinners. And brothers and sisters, you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be joyful people?

It's not gonna come by pursuing happiness as the end of itself. That pursuit is a vain pursuit, but when you set your mind on the things above, on Christ and his kingdom, and you begin to delight in the things that delight him, when you begin to witness to others to draw them back to the Father, he shares his joy with you.

Your delight is his delight. He fills you with that spirit, one of the fruits of which is joy. Pursuit of happiness does not result in happiness. The pursuit of God does. Let's close the prayer. And worship team, you can come on up.

God, thank you so much for this parable. It's so important for our lives because our greatest need is to be like you. And this parable reveals what you are like. You are a happy God, a God that delights in sinners coming home.

It's your joy, it's your pleasure. Share that joy with us, God. I pray that you would root out of us that self-righteousness, that bitterness that results in our own unhappiness. I pray, Lord, that none of us would be like that older brother, like that Pharisee who grumbles and complains and sucks the oxygen right out of the room.

God, I pray that we would be joyful people, that delight in you, that have open arms and that run to sinners and embrace those who are repenting. We thank you, God, for all that you've done in us. We delight in our salvation because we are only saved by grace.

We recognize that grace, you, are at the bottom of it all. And we owe our salvation completely to you. Thank you, God, for saving us. But our hearts are heavy today, too, God, because this parable reminds us of the prodigal walk.

And we have people that we love that are far from you and are eating with the pigs. Our hearts break, God, and so right now, we want together to call on you to bring the prodigals home. And Lord, I know there is heavy hearts right now in this room.

God, hear their hearts right now. Hear their prayers. Calling on you, on your grace alone, invisibly working to draw home the prodigals. I ask, God, that we would see this happen in short order. You are able to do it.

You are able, God, to draw the prodigals back home. We think of their names right now in our heads, Lord. We call out for them. We intercede for them, Lord.

Save them.

Bring home the prodigals in Jesus' name. And so finally, Lord, we thank you for who you are, the eternally happy God. Complete in yourself in the love of the Trinity, having need of nothing. Share your joy with us, Lord.

Fill us with your joy before we go, in Jesus' name, amen.