August 20, 1995
Bethlehem Baptist Church
John Piper, Pastor

THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF HEAVEN
Second in a Series on Luke 15
(Luke 15:1-10)

Now all the tax-gatherers and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." And He told them this parable, saying, "What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture, and go after the one which 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 which was lost!' I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully 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 which I had lost!' In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Introduction: A Barnes and Noble World

We live in a world that is immensely different from the world of John Bunyan 300 years ago and George Whitefield 200 years ago and Dwight L. Moody 100 years ago. One of the differences hit me this week when I went with Abraham to the Barnes and Noble Bookstore downtown. Have you been to a major diversified book retailer recently? It’s mind-boggling. It captures in the space of a half a city block the overwhelming, uncontrollable, ever-expanding diversity of our culture. Every topic, every science, every hobby, every vocation, every sport, every philosophy, every religion you can think of is represented -- most of them not just with a book or two, but with whole sections of books. And what makes the diversity feel aggressive and assertive is that all the thousands of viewpoints and philosophies and worldviews and religions are packaged in slick, colorful, attractive, professional covers. This gives the feel that there is a powerful industry and movement behind almost every one of the 50,000 ideas competing for your attention and allegiance.

I thought to myself: this is the world where we stand up -- or not -- and proclaim the supremacy of Christ. Bunyan and Whitefield and Moody struggled to make Christ known in a much less complex, less pluralistic, less diverse atmosphere. Today the alternatives to Jesus as the Way the Truth and the Life are many not few, near not far, aggressive not passive, and handsome instead of homely. They are aggressively marketed. And if you don’t read, they’re on tape and you can use a headphone to try them out.

We need to be aware of this. And we need to test our faith in the face of it. Do we really believe in the uniqueness and supremacy of Jesus Christ? Or did we just fall into this religious option by tradition or family or social pressure? Our situation is more like the apostle Paul’s in Athens and Ephesus and Rome than it is like Bunyan’s and Whitefield’s and Moody’s. When he came to those cities they were filled with competing idols (Acts 17:6), and religions and magic arts and witchcraft and sorcery and philosophies were as diverse as the caravans that made their way from east to west.

We need to remember that into this situation of incredible diversity and pluralism Paul spoke a bold, uncompromising, strong, loving word: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). This is the heart of our Christian faith. Then and now: God -- singular, one and only, Creator of all, and Sustainer of all -- was in Christ. When you see Christ, you see God. When you hear Christ, you hear God, your Creator. Jesus said to his disciple Philip, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).

We need to see Jesus today in this way. He is speaking this morning into the world of Barnes and Noble bookstores -- the world we live in. He is eating with tax-gatherers and sinners and the religious leaders of his day are grumbling and accusing. Verse two: "This man receives sinners and eats with them." In effect they are challenging Jesus to give an account of himself. Why do you act this way? Who do you think you are? Tell us what this means.

An Incredible Claim and Two Responses

The answer they get is spectacular. If it’s true, he may as well have set off an atomic bomb. Don’t miss the astonishing force of this answer. Here is a Jewish village somewhere in Palestine. It’s lunch time, perhaps. Jesus is in a house eating and he has welcomed some tax-gatherers and other unsavory types. Pharisees are standing near the walls. They grumble among themselves. Jesus hears and answers with a couple parables.

So it’s no big deal, right? I mean it’s just a lunch. A few pious people who can’t agree with each other. A religious squabble. A few stories. While far away in China some great war is taking place perhaps that holds the fate of millions.

But then you listen more carefully to these two little stories. And suddenly, or gradually, it dawns on you. This man -- this Jesus -- is saying, that the God of heaven -- the God before whom all the angels bow down in worship -- is, right now in this very lunch around this very table in these very words, in this very man, reaching into the lives of individual tax-gatherers and sinners, bringing them to repentance, welcoming them into his own possession, and leading all of heaven to rejoice.

And your mind and heart awakens to that, you realize that a battle anywhere in China or South America or Britain is as nothing compared to what is being revealed here. Here is a man claiming that the habitation of God and the habitation of man are intersecting. That God is being revealed and God is actually acting in this world and showing himself. And this is the most important thing in the universe -- to know God and to know where he is accessible in the world is the most important thing in the world to know.

The Scribes and the Pharisees grumble that Jesus is eating with tax-gatherers and sinners. What are you doing? they say. What does this mean? And Jesus answers, quietly, and thunderously: What’s happening here is this; the love of God in heaven has entered the world through Jesus and is seeking and finding what belongs to God and is lost.

Jesus is saying: My receiving sinners and eating with them is like a shepherd leaving 99 sheep and going out to find one lost sheep so that the flock will be complete; and then inviting his friends and neighbors to come and rejoice with him because he found his sheep. My receiving sinners and eating with them is like a woman lighting a lamp and sweeping her house and searching diligently for one lost coin -- perhaps worth a day’s wages to her in her poverty -- until she finds it; and then inviting her friends and neighbors to come and rejoice with her because she found it.

And if some scribe or Pharisee or one of us says, I don’t get it. How is your receiving and eating with sinners like a shepherd seeking a lost sheep and woman seeking a lost coin? I don’t see any connection. And how is it like a neighborhood party?

The key verses to answer this are verses 7 and 10. Jesus says,

I tell you that in the same way (the same as in this parable) there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. . . . (10) In the same way (the same as in this parable) I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

And I can see Jesus looking around on the scribes and Pharisees and on the tax-gatherers and sinners. The moment is hushed. And from face to face he sees something glorious and something terrible -- perhaps he sees it happening even in this room right now. On some faces the question mark begins to harden and narrow into a tight, resistant exclamation point of NO. NO. Nobody can talk like that in a Barnes and Noble world. Nobody -- parable or no parable, we can tell what you are saying; we know this presumption and arrogance -- nobody can claim what you are claiming. That God Almighty, in you, is seeking and finding his lost sheep. That the Old Testament prophecy of Ezekiel 34 is being fulfilled in you ("Then I will set over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them; he will feed them himself and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and My servant David will be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken" vv. 23-24). That you are God’s promised Messiah. The Savior. That when you receive sinners and they repent, they are part of God’s flock -- because they’re in fellowship with you! That God is seeking them in you and rejoicing over them when they come to you, which is the same thing as coming to him. We know what you are getting at. And we think it’s blasphemy (in a Jewish setting), or preposterous and arrogant (in a modern, pluralistic setting).

That’s one thing Jesus probably saw on some faces. And it probably made tears come to his eyes as he began his next story -- longer, even more heart-felt, and ending with a word to the elder brothers with the hard exclamation points of NO on their faces.

But he saw another kind of face around the room. He’s just been condemned: This man receives sinners and eats with them. He has just answered: when I do this it is like a shepherd seeking and finding a lost sheep and a woman seeking and finding a lost coin. And they have just heard him say that the joyful celebration of the shepherd and the woman is a picture of the joyful celebration of heaven over one of these repentant sinners who is eating with me.

And on some of their faces now Jesus sees the light of worship rising. We hear you. You are the love of God seeking and finding what belongs to God. You are the heart of God. You are the arm of God reaching out. You are the crook of the Shepherd’s staff in the wilderness. You are the shoulders of God where the sheep gets carried home. You are the lamp in the woman’s house. You are the broom with its bristles in the dirt of our Barnes and Noble floor. And this meal right now, where you receive sinners and eat with us, this is the party, isn’t it? Or at least the beginning of the party. And in your receiving us, God is receiving us. And in your joy we see what God is like. He is happy that we have come home. We have seen him. We have seen the Father.

Two kinds of faces in a pluralistic world where Jesus says -- with parable and actions -- "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6). Which is your face?

Three Applications:

Let me close with three brief applications.

Repentance

Verse 7, "There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents . . ." Repentance is in the parable. But what we see at the table is Jesus receiving sinners and eating with them. Jesus is the seeking heart of God going out after sinners and winning our repentance. We must repent. But he has not left us alone in this. He has taken bold initiatives to reach us and change us. This message today and your being here is one of them. It is no accident. God is here in this word and is speaking. And his word is this: come to the table, repent. Open your eyes and see that the banquet of being with Jesus is worth the cost of following Jesus (Luke 14:16-24, 25-33).

God

There was one sheep -- out of a hundred -- and one coin -- out of ten. God has a universe to run and galaxies to uphold and atomic particles to manage and governments to rule in his providence. But there is not much in the Bible that says, all heaven rejoices over orbits of the stars or the rise of kings or a global women’s’ conference in China. It’s true that God takes pleasure in all that he does. But Jesus is clearly referring to something special in these parables. When one sinner repents there is a special joy in heaven. God cares for individuals one at a time.

The Ninety-nine

No. John 4:23 says that the very meaning of evangelism is that God is seeking worshippers. The lost sheep is lost because he worships something more than God. The reason God rejoices so much over the winning of the lost is not because God doesn’t have tremendous delight in worship, but because he delights most in the worship of the whole family. If we content ourselves with our limited worship experience, without wanting to include the lost sheep who don’t have this joy, then the God we are dealing with in worship is not the God of Luke 15.

Therefore, for the sake of worshipping the one true God for who he really is, we are being called as a church -- in a Barnes and Noble world of diversity and pluralism -- to leave the ninety-nine and receive sinners and eat with them.

Copyright 1995 John Piper
Piper's Notes