In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The miracle of the great catch of fish recorded for us in Luke chapter 5 is all about the work of the Church and the Office of the Ministry. Jesus uses the illustration of fishing to explain to us what our mission is as the people of God and how He wants us to go about doing it. The overarching point of the text is that everything depends upon God’s Word. So, what I want to do in today’s sermon is threefold. First, I want to briefly reflect on some of the challenges that we are facing in the Church today. Next, I want to respond to some of the popular ways that other people have tried to address those challenges in the past. And finally, I want to walk through how this text teaches us to deal with our problems in the Church in a God-pleasing way.

The most obvious challenge that we face in the Church today is really the same kind of challenge that Saint Peter faced when he spent the whole night fishing and didn’t catch anything at all. It’s no secret that for the last several decades now, Church attendance has been in a sharp decline with no visible end in sight. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about the Lutherans, the Catholics, or the Baptists, everyone is losing members all across the board. Some statistics estimate that from 1970 to 2010, so in the span of just 40 years, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod had a membership drop of almost half a million people. To put that in perspective, there are only around two million members of the LCMS in total. And none of that, of course, accounts for the fact that often times people remain on the rolls at a given church even if they haven’t stepped foot inside the building for years. When we look back at pictures of old Confirmation classes and compare those to the ones from today, it’s hard not to notice the difference. 

Now, obviously it is not a bad thing to want your Church to be filled and to be sad when it isn’t. We Christians should always want as many people to be saved as possible. But we also need to be careful that in the midst of our good intentions, we don’t lose sight of way in which growth in the Church actually happens. Part of the reason why it is so important for us to be honest about the problems that we face in the Church today is because whenever we encounter problems of any kind, there will always be those around us who offer up solutions to them, and not all of those solutions are necessarily good. In fact, some of those solutions are not solutions at all, but part of the problem itself, and just end making things even worse than they were to begin with.

One such “solution” to the problem of declining Church attendance that was very popular in the recent past, the remnants of which are still around today, was the so-called “Church Growth Movement.” The Church Growth Movement was a philosophy that developed in the latter half of the twentieth century in response to shrinking churches. Proponents of this movement recognized that more and more people had stopped coming to Church. So, in an attempt to deal with this problem, they applied marketing strategies used in the business world in order to try and make the Church to grow. Often times, those strategies were veiled in religious sounding language and then pawned off as spiritual principles. For example, one of the main principles of the Church Growth Movement was something called the “felt-needs” principle. Basically, the “felt-needs” principle suggested that whatever non-church going people said that they were looking for in a church, whatever they felt that they needed, the Church was supposed to give it to them if they wanted to succeed and grow. 

Not only did the self-proclaimed experts of the Church Growth Movement say that Christianity would never survive and thrive if the felt-needs principle was not met, but they also said that things like doctrine and liturgy would only get in the way of that happening. Since many people often complain about how boring traditional church services are to them, the Church Growth advocates said that church services needed to fundamentally change. Instead of teaching the mysteries of the Faith and delivering solid Biblical teaching through time-tested hymns and centuries old orders of worship, these religious entrepreneurs emphasized things like entertaining messages about daily living and achieving your own personal goals. They advocated for music that resembled the culture’s music instead of that of the historic Church. And they stressed an overall informal and casual atmosphere in the service. The focus in many churches became more about what the worshiper felt, instead of what God had to say in the Bible. If a person felt good when they left Church, that service was said to be successful. And if they didn’t feel good, or if they didn’t feel anything at all, then it was said to be a failure.

The felt needs principle of the Church Growth Movement has been around now for more fifty years. Clearly, as the numbers themselves even show, it has come up empty in its promises to grow the Church. But even if it had led to greater Church attendance, which isn’t the same thing as real Church growth, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It wouldn’t have mattered because the Church Growth Movement was wrong. We are not called to conform ourselves or the Church’s teaching and practice to our own felt needs. We are called to conform our entire lives to the Word of God. It doesn’t matter how many people are sitting in the pews on Sunday morning.  That is not necessary an indicator that what we are doing is right. Only eight people went into the Ark before God flooded the earth and destroyed it in the days of Noah. There were only a few thousand faithful people left in all of Israel during the time of Elijah who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Does that mean that those men were failures? Does that mean that they weren’t doing the right thing? Of course, not! Because true growth in the Church is not an achievement of our own making. It is gift that comes from God. It is a gift that the Holy Spirit gives when He works faith in the hearts of people through His Word. Remember what Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter three, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Being faithful is always more important than the numbers.

Just think about what we heard in our Gospel lesson for today from Luke chapter 5. No doubt, Simon Peter knew a lot about fishing. Peter had been a professional fisherman for his entire life. He had a very good idea where the fish were supposed to be and what you had to do to catch them. His experience and His reason told him that the best time for fishing with a net was not in the middle of the day, and it certainly wasn’t in deep water. But nevertheless, when Jesus told Peter to let down the nets once more, after a whole night of catching nothing, Peter replied by saying, “At your word, I will let down the net.” Instead of doing what he thought would work, Peter did what God said. Instead of listening to his heart, or submitting himself to his own ideas and opinions, Peter submitted himself to God’s Word. And we need to do the same thing today. We are called as God’s children always to believe and act according to the Words of Jesus.  It is at His Word, and His Word alone, that we take our orders. We submit ourselves to what our Lord tells us, even if it stands in contradiction to our experience, our reason, or our feelings. No matter what Jesus says, even if doesn’t appear to be working, we are called to listen to it, and to receive it in faith.

God speaks to us not through the felt needs of our own sinful hearts, but through the infallible and inerrant Words of the Bible. The Bible tells us that the way that you make disciples is by baptizing and teaching. It tells us to preach the Word in season and out of season, meaning whether people like it or not. It tells pastors to hold fast to the doctrine of the Scriptures for in doing so they will save both themselves and their hearers. The Bible tells us do those things and not worry about anything else, because it is only through those things that the net of salvation is let down into the water of this world and sinful fish are drawn up and saved. That is how God catches sinners and declares them saints. That is how the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. That is how God gives growth in His Kingdom. He doesn’t do it through gimmicks, tricks, and marketing strategies. He does it through the pure preaching and teaching of His Word.

The proponents of the Church Growth Movement promote the problem and call it the cure. The problem is not with things like doctrine and liturgy. The problem is that people are ignorant of Christian doctrine and they don’t realize what is happening in the liturgy. And because they don’t know the basics of the Christian faith and have never even tried to understand what is going on in the historic church service, they don’t know what they need, and they don’t seek it out. 

God’s Word teaches us that our felt needs are not necessarily the same thing as our real needs. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 15 that is it out of our heart that comes all kinds of sinful desires. We read in Jeremiah chapter 17 that the heart is deceitful above all things. And just look again at what happened to Saint Peter in our Gospel lesson. When Saint Peter realized that he was in the presence of the living God, he was terrified and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Peter knew that he was a sinner and that he deserved punishment for his sins. Peter could feel his sins in his conscience. And when Peter thought that he was going to die, Peter was afraid of what his sins might mean for him. So, in response, Peter did what he felt was best and told Jesus to go away from him.

But that, of course, is where Saint Peter’s felt needs did not match up with his real needs. Yes, part of what Peter felt was right. His sins were real and it is unsafe for sinners to be in the presence of a sinless God. But Peter’s response to his sins was not right. What Peter needed in that moment was not for Jesus to go away from him, but for Jesus to stay with Him. It was not for Jesus to forget about him, and leave him alone. It was for Jesus to stay with Him and save Him. And that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus did not abandon Peter to deal with his sins by himself. Jesus did not forsake Peter to sink in the boat and drown along with his guilt and shame. Instead, Jesus said to him, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” Jesus told Peter not to be afraid, because there wasn’t anything for him to be afraid of anymore at all. Since Jesus had come to die for Saint Peter’s sins, his sins could no longer condemn him.

What we feel or don’t feel at a given time does not change the Church’s Mission. No matter what is going on in our life, what we need the most is the exact same thing that Saint Peter needed. We need to hear God’s Word of Law and Gospel. We need to be shown our sins, and then be absolved of them for when we repent. We need to confess our wretchedness to the Lord and then receive from Him His cleansing forgiveness. We need to stay with Jesus in the boat of His Church so that He can save us from ourselves. We need the humble gifts of God’s Word and Sacraments over and over and over again. That is our greatest need. And so, that is what the Church is called to do. 

The Church does not adopt the standards of the world to market what she has. She preaches Christ crucified. She preaches a Law that condemns everyone and a Gospel that excludes no one. She names sins by name and tells people to turn away from them. And then, when they do, She assures them that there is forgiveness to be found in Jesus. Everything that we do in Church, from the sermons that our pastors preach, to the songs that we sing, to the way in which we move and act, all of those things need to point us to Christ and away from ourselves.

Sometimes it feels as if what we are doing in Church is not working. Sometimes it feels as if we have been laboring all night and the catch is small and insignificant. But when that happens, Christ our Lord speaks His Word to us again. He says to us what He once said to Saint Peter, “Let down your nets for a catch.” Do not stop preaching and teaching God’s Word. Do not stop insisting on pure doctrine and rightly applying the Law and Gospel. Do not stop doing devotions with your kids and making them memorize the Catechism. Do not stop singing good hymns that actually teach the Faith and don’t ever get bored with following the Liturgy. Keep on letting let down the nets of God’s Word and they will not come back empty. For that is something that God promises us in His Word too. Remember the picture of heaven that we get from Revelation chapter 7, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” Even if the catch doesn’t seem that big to us now, on the Last Day we won’t even be able to count it.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, at the end of our reading today our text tells us that when the disciples brought their boats back to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus. What this means is not that all of us must take a vow of poverty in order to be Christians as some other churches falsely claim. But rather, it is yet another reminder that our Lord Jesus Christ and His Word must always come first. God’s Word is more precious than all of stuff that we have. God’s Word forgives us of our sins and makes us spiritually wealthy, even if we are physically poor. Through faith in God’s Word, we possess all the treasures of heaven. And through His Word, Jesus will sustain His Church until the end of time. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Even if a person knows nothing else in the Bible, more than likely they can still rattle off those words from Jesus that we heard in our Gospel today from Luke chapter six. You know exactly the ones I’m talking about. There Jesus says very famously, “Judge not, and you will not be judged.” And yet, despite the fact that almost everyone seems to know this verse, given the way that it’s often used, it is painfully obvious that most people don’t understand what it means at all. How many of us have been in a conversation with another person before and had this verse used against us? You’re talking with someone about some moral issue that’s clearly defined as wrong in the Scriptures, something like homosexuality or abortion, and before you can even make it through the Biblical argument, everything gets derailed when the other person interjects and says, “Jesus says you aren’t supposed to judge.”

So, what I want to do in today’s sermon is simply take some time to explain the correct interpretation of this passage. By using the rest of Bible, and not cherry-picking only certain parts of it, I’m going to explain what Jesus means and what He doesn’t mean when He tells us that we shouldn’t judge other people. 

We’ll start with what Jesus doesn’t mean first. Clearly, when you read the rest of the Scriptures, and even the surrounding context of this particular verse, it becomes very obvious to anyone who’s being intellectually honest that the words “judge not” cannot possibly mean that we Christians are required to be silent on moral issues, and that we should never tell anyone else that what they are doing is wrong. Right after Jesus says, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” in our reading He talks about the process for how Christians should go about showing someone else their sin. Jesus says in verse forty-two of the same chapter in Luke’s gospel, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck that is in your brother’s eye.” Notice that Jesus does not say in these verses that we should ignore other people’s sinful behavior entirely, which is more or less the argument of those who use the words “judge not” against Christians. Rather, Jesus tells us that we should help our brother remove their sin, and that we should do this after a time of self-examination. The problem is not with pointing out another person’s sins altogether and telling them that what they are doing is wrong. The problem is with doing so before or without admitting your own sin first. That’s the kind of judging that Jesus is condemning. It isn’t about ignoring sin entirely, or God forbid approving it, it is about addressing sin everywhere that is exists, beginning with ourselves.

And if the context of this particular verse was not enough to convince someone that “judge not” cannot possibly mean approving or ignoring someone else’s sinful behavior, there is also the context of the rest of the Bible too. Consider, for example, what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter eighteen. There are Lord literally says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” Jesus even adds in that passage that if the individual won’t listen to you, or to two or three other witnesses either, then you should go tell it to the whole Church. And if he or she won’t listen to the Church then you should treat that person like a gentile or a tax collector.

Or think about what we learn in 1 Corinthians chapter five. In that instance, Saint Paul had to rebuke the Christians living in Corinth precisely because they were refusing to speak God’s Word or judgment against a man in their church who was living an openly sinful life. One of their members was engaging in gross, unrepentant sexual sin, and even though they knew about it, the rest of the congregation did nothing at all. Perhaps they even said, “Who am I to judge?” But what did the Apostle Paul say to them in response? He said, “For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and if present in Spirit, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.” Paul told the Christians living in Corinth that not only should they pronounce judgment on that man’s sin, they had to. It was their Christin duty to call him to repentance and excommunicate him from the Church so that he learned put his sin away. Otherwise, the man would never realize that what he was doing was dangerous and that, despite what he thought, he was actually outside a state of God’s grace. So, clearly, not judging someone cannot possibly mean that we never tell them that what they are doing is wrong or that we approve and accept their sinful behavior. It is impossible to get that impression from reading all of the Bible together.

While the Bible does forbid certain kinds of judging, which we will discuss later on in the sermon, there are many kinds of judging that it endorses and that it even commands. For example, we Christians must judge our teachers. We must evaluate what our preaches talk about in their sermons and in Bible class and compare it to God’s Word. And if we encounter false teaching, we are supposed to turn away from it and try to show our teachers a better way. Remember what the Bereans did when Saint Paul first came to them in the book of Acts? We read that they judged Paul every single day by comparing what he said to the Bible. And remember what Peter and John said to the Sanhedrin when the religious leaders told them to stop preaching that Jesus was the Christ? They said, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Besides judging things like doctrine on the basis of the Bible, every Christian also has to make judgments in their daily vocations. Parents need to discipline their children and teach them to obey those in authority over them. Police officers and other civil servants need to make judgments all of the time in order to protect those that they serve. In some instances, Christians are even called upon to act as literal judges, who sit behind a desk with a gavel, hear cases that are brought before them and then give sentences to criminals in accordance with their crimes. All of that is not only permissible according to the Bible, it is required. As God Word tells us in Romans chapter thirteen, “There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

Every day, as the people of God, we are required to judge all kinds of different things. We judge doctrine. We judge behavior. We judge situations. We judge sin wherever we see it, including and especially in our lives. It is not judging in general that our Lord condemns, but judging things in the wrong kind of way.

And so, that is what I’d like to discuss in the last part of today’s sermon. Since Jesus’ words, “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” cannot possibly mean that God forbids all kinds of judging that there is, the question becomes, “what kinds of judging does it forbid?” The simple answer is that Jesus forbids the kind of personal judging which is not informed by God’s Word. On the one hand, this means judging things according to our own sinful thoughts and opinions instead of in accordance with what we read in the Bible. It is wrong to give a judgement against something that God is silent on. It is wrong to tell someone that they are sinning for doing something that the Bible never calls a sin. For example, during the time of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church said that anyone who did not fast from meat on Friday’s during Lent was sinning against God and needed to repent. But where in the Bible does it say that a person has to fast from meat on Friday’s? It doesn’t say that anywhere. In fact, in Colossians chapter 2, Saint Paul explicitly says, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” So, that kind of judging is wrong.

However, when we Christians tell someone, for example, that is sinful for two men or two women, or anyone who is not married for that matter, to be engaged in a sexual relationship with each other, we are not making a personal judgment on their actions. We are simply communicating to them the judgment that God has already revealed in His Word. When we tell someone that abortion is murder because life because at conception and even Jesus was a little baby in the womb, or that fornicates and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God unless they repent, and that those who refuse to come to Church and despise the means of grace will not experience God’s grace in eternity, all of those things, and many more are judgments that have already been given to us in the Bible. They are not our judgments. They are the judgments of God. As Jesus tells us elsewhere in John chapter twelve, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.”

And yes, of course, we should never presume to speak God’s judgment against someone else’s sin, unless we are examining ourselves according to those same judgments too. Obviously, before we call others to repentance, we need to be living a life of repentance ourselves. Otherwise, as Jesus says, we are hypocrites and the truth is not in us. If we are going to condemn homosexuality at the same that time that we are living with someone outside of marriage, obtaining a divorce without Biblical grounds, or watching pornography with no intention of trying to stop, then, as Christ tells us in our reading, “the measure that we use will be measured back to us.” But it’s not that we should ignore these sins and not judge any of them; rather it’s that we should speak God’s Word of judgement against all of them. We should listen to the Bible and turn away from everything that it tells us is wrong. Because again, the point here is that God’s Word is what gives us God’s judgment. And judging things by another standard, such as our own personal standard, is exactly the kind of judging that Jesus forbids in our text.  

Now, while every kind of judgment that a person makes which is not informed by God’s Word is wrong, there is one kind of judgment in particular that is the worst kind of all. And that is the judgment of trying to make God’s final judgment on person’s soul before the Lord Himself has given it. The Bible tells us very clearly that “after death comes judgment.” And it tells us that Jesus will come judge the living and the dead on the Last Day. What that means is that before the Last Day comes, or before a person dies, we should never presume that they are past even the possibility of repentance. It’s true that there is such thing in the Bible as the hardening of the heart, also known as the sin against the Holy Spirit. Jesus talks about this sin in Matthew chapter twenty-three, where He laments about how He would have gathered the people of Jerusalem as a hen gather’s her brood, but they would not come. And yet, even though it is possible for a person to plunge himself into this spiritual state where nothing will convert him, it is not up to us a Christians to determine when that has actually happened. We should never act as if no matter what takes place, we know for certain, that someone could not possibly repent and believe the Gospel. We should never withhold the Word of God from them thinking that not even God’s Word can help them. That is a terrible kind of judgment.

And once again, the context of our Lord’s Words helps us see that this is the exact application that Jesus is trying to make in Luke chapter six. Right before our reading today Jesus tells us that we should, “Love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.” The reason why we should do all of those things is because as long as they are living it is still possible for our enemies to become our friends. It is still possible for those who despise us because we love Jesus and His Word, to be encouraged by our witness into loving Christ and His Word too. And if we withhold the love of Jesus from them, if we refuse to speak God’s Word of Law and Gospel to them, thinking that nothing could ever convert them, then we are withholding from them the only thing that possibly could.

Who are we to judge that someone is incapable of coming to faith? Who are we to say that even the most hardened of sinners could not become one of God’s most beloved saints? Were we free from sin when the Lord gave us the gift of eternal life? Were we godly people before Jesus came to us and made us God’s own dear children in our Baptism? No! We were God’s enemies too. As the Bible tells us, we were dead in our sins and trespasses, hostile to God, and living in league with the Devil. It was only by the Lord’s mercy that we were given God’s grace to begin with, and that is why we should never withhold His grace from others. As Jesus Himself says in our reading, “be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”

We are merciful even as our Father is merciful both when we seek to gently show others their sins and when we give them God’s forgiveness as soon as they repent of them. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful, when we speak out against immorality even if it means that others get mad at us for it and want to hurt us because of it. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful when we endure hatred, and persecution, and are even called bigots and haters ourselves, simply because we try and get others to listen to what God’s Word has to say. And we are merciful even as our Father is merciful when we tell people that their sins have truly been atoned for by Jesus, no matter how bad their sins have been. We are merciful even as our Father is merciful, when we do onto others as we would have them do unto us. God saved us even though we didn’t deserve it, and that is what we should want for others too. We should not judge them by assuming that, no matter what, they could never possibly repent and believe the Gospel. We should preach the Word to them, and we should let God’s Word do the judging for us.

As I’m sure you know, many people do not come to Church nowadays because they think that Church is a judgmental place. In one sense, those people are right. You do encounter God’s judgment when you go to Church. When you listen to God’s Word it judges your entire life. It exposes all of your thoughts, words, and deeds, and shows you just how sinful they are. But that is not the only judgment that God gives us when we come to Church. Besides showing us our sins, and calling us to repent of them, God’s Word also tells us how Jesus died for them. It tells us how God’s very own Son came to from heaven to endure the full judgment that we deserve so that through faith in His sacrifice we would not have to experience any of that judgment at all. The Bible tells us that Jesus was judged in our place. He did that so that everyone who repents and believes in Him would have a place waiting for them in heaven. He was judged on our behalf, so that on Judgment Day we could stand before His throne in confidence.

So, may the Lord supply us with His mercy so that we would judge things only according to His Word, and in doing so, help others be spared from God’s judgment along with us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In Luke chapter fifteen, Jesus tells three different parables all of which have the same main point. First, there’s the parable of the lost sheep. Then there’s the parable of the lost coin. And finally, there’s the parable of the prodigal son. Even though each one of these parables have different things to teach us on their own, the overarching thing that all of them teach us about is the nature of repentance. As Jesus says at the end of the parable of the lost sheep, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over nighty-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” And, again, as He says in reference to the lost coin, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

So, given the fact that these parables from Jesus are supposed to be about repentance, what I’d like to do in today’s sermon is review this important topic from the Bible and go over some of the things that we learn about it from this text.

We’ll start by simply defining what repentance actually is. As we see very clearly from the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and especially the prodigal son, the essence of repentance has to do with turning away from your sin in order to be forgiven. In fact, that’s what the word “repent” literally means. It means “to turn.” This is exactly what we see happening with the tax collectors and sinners at the beginning of our reading. These men and women were drawing near to Jesus in order to get His forgiveness. They were turning away from their sinful lives in order to receive a new life from Christ. They were repenting.

Now sometimes when people hear about Jesus welcoming sinners and eating with them, like He did in this passage, they get the wrong impression about repentance. Just like the Pharisees and the scribes from our text, they assume that this means that Jesus must have been accepting or approving of these people’s sinful behavior. But that’s not what our Lord was doing when He ate and drank with the tax collectors and sinners. Jesus wasn’t giving a “thumbs up” to their sin. He wasn’t turning a blind eye to their past transgressions, or God-forbid, encouraging them to keep on doing it. Rather, Jesus was forgiving them for it. When the people came to Him with genuine sorrow in their hearts over the things that they had done and a desire to amend their ways, that is, when they were repentant, Jesus opened His heart to them and offered them cleansing. 

All throughout the Scriptures our Lord preached both repentance and forgiveness. He didn’t just tell people that God wasn’t mad at them anymore, so go have a party and do whatever you want, He told them to stop what they were doing and receive from Him the gift of everlasting life instead. In Mark chapter one, it says that after John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.” Or think about what Jesus did that one time with the woman who was caught in adultery. Our Lord did not just defend her from her accusers and spare her life. After that, He also told her to “go and sin no more.” When Jesus came into the house of Zacchaeus, a notorious sinner, and a chief tax collector, He praised the man specifically when he confessed his sins and offered to give back all that he had stolen. Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house… For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Clearly, Jesus never encouraged people to keep on living sinful lives on purpose or to use His forgiveness as an excuse to do things that the Bible calls wrong. Those churches in our day who use passages like this one from Luke chapter fifteen to argue that we Christians should be accepting of sinful things like homosexuality or other perverted lifestyles that God’s Word condemns, because Jesus ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners, are completely abusing the text. They are twisting the Scriptures and leaving out the fact that this entire account from the Bible is all about repentance. It is literally about people turning away from their sinful lives, not about people embracing them.

Jesus describes the sheep and the coin as being lost. He says at the end of the parable of the prodigal son that the boy that ran away from home was dead. That’s the nature of sin. That’s what the Bible says about living contrary to God’s Word. Sin is actually bad. Sin really does separate us from God and deserve His temporal and eternal punishment. Sin truly does kills us. 

So, again, when the Bible says that Jesus was eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, it doesn’t mean that He was accepting or approving of their sins. He wasn’t telling them that they were fine the way that they were and that they should keep on stealing, committing adultery, or fornicating because none of that actually matters. On the contrary, after showing people just how bad these things really are, and bringing them to their knees in fearful, but godly repentance, our Lord was lifting them up again and assuring them that He came for the precise reason of saving people just like them. Jesus was preaching repentance. He was teaching people to turn away from their sin in order to be forgiven because that’s what repentance is all about. That’s what repentance means.

Now, besides showing us what repentance means, and how it has to do with turning away from your sin in order to be forgiven, these parables of Jesus also teach us several others things about repentance that are equally important to know.

In the first place, they remind us that repentance is not just something for some people, but that it is something for all people. In fact, this was main reason why Jesus taught these three parables to begin with. His primary audience was not the tax collectors and sinners who were already listening to Him and repenting of their sin, but rather it was the Pharisees and the scribes who were watching all of it happen and complaining about it. Instead of being happy that other people were repenting and going into the kingdom of God, they were mad about it because they did not think that they needed repentance themselves. Like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son, who did not realize that in refusing to go into his father’s house at the end of the story, he was doing the exact same thing that his younger brother did at the beginning, the Pharisees and scribes were doing the same. They were refusing God’s grace. They were rejecting His Word. Even though God offered them forgiveness and salvation too, just like He did for the others, since they did not believe that they were sinners in need of it, they refused to have it. They would not accept it.

But what does the Bible teach us about sin? Does it just teach us that other people are sinners, or does it teach us that we are sinners too? Does it only teach us to look at the spec in our neighbor’s eye, or does it tell us to consider the plank in our own eye as well? Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah from Isaiah chapter fifty-three. He writes, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” And then there are the words of Saint Peter from 1 Peter chapter one. He says, “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

When we hear about the lost sheep being found, the lost coin being recovered, and the prodigal son coming back, we aren’t just supposed to think about other people. We are supposed to think about ourselves. God wants us to realize that we too are sinners in desperate need of His grace, and that if we will not repent of our own sin, and trust in Christ for forgiveness, then we will be lost forever as well. Remember what Jesus says about repentance in Luke chapter thirteen. When some of the people came to him asking about that horrible incident where Pontus Pilate brutally murdered a group of Galileans, Jesus said, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” After that Jesus said the same thing about the people of Siloam who had the tower fall on them and crush them. He said, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Even though all sins have the power to dam us, and there is no sin that does not need forgiveness, that does not mean that all sins are the same. The worst sin of all is the sin of not believing that you are a sinner to begin with. Which is worse, to know that you are lost in the woods and not be able to find your way out, or to be lost in the woods without realizing it, and keep on walking around in circles forever and ever? At least a person who knows that they are lost on their own will be open to another person’s help. And the same thing is true when it comes to our relationship with God. In order for us to receive His grace, we first need to come to the realization that we need it.

Again, the point here is that repentance is not just for other people. Repentance is not even just a one-time thing that happens only once in the past and after that never happens again in the future. On the contrary, we Christians are called to ongoing repentance. From the moment of our Baptism, where Jesus washes away our sin, and gives us a new identity as God’s forgiven children, we are encouraged to live a life of continuous reflection where we repeatedly examine ourselves, turn away from our failures, try and suppress our sin, and look to Christ for mercy and help. Just as the Small Catechism tells us, “What does Baptizing with such water indicate? It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” 

What should you do with the lust that is in your flesh, the hatred that you feel in your bones, and the greed and the covetousness that keeps rising up in your sinful heart? You don’t give in to it and say that its good. You turn away from it and admit that its bad. You run to Christ for His forgiveness, and you use that forgiveness to keep on fighting your sin and quitting it whenever it rears its ugly head. You repent and believe the Gospel. You do that for as many days as God gives you to live.

And that leads me to the last and the most important thing that these parables teach us about repentance. They teach us that ultimately repentance is the work of God Himself. Who gets the credit when a person turns away from their sin and looks to Jesus for forgiveness? Who should we thank when someone comes back to church after being gone for a long time? Who do we praise when someone living in open sin quits it and admits that what they were doing was wrong? Do we praise ourselves? Do we pat each other on the back? No, we give thanks to God. We give all the credit to Jesus.

It was the shepherd that went out and found the lost sheep. It was the woman who turned over the whole house looking for the lost coin. It was the father who ran out to meet the son, and wouldn’t even let him finish his pre-planned speech. Whenever a person comes to repentance, that is, whenever they turn away from their sin and look to Jesus for forgiveness, whether or not they realize it in the moment, that was the work of Jesus too. As we read in Acts chapter eleven, “When they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”’ Just like faith, repentance is a gift from God. It is not something that we bring about ourselves, it is something that God brings about in us. God works repentance in our hearts when through the preaching of His law and gospel He shows us our sins, makes us sorry for them, and then leads us to Christ who promises to forgiven them.

The reason why it is so important for us to realize that repentance is ultimately the work of God is two-fold. First, because it keeps us from boasting in ourselves and trusting in our own works for salvation. And secondly, because it keeps us trusting in God alone for the salvation others too. We all have people in our lives that have turned their backs on the Faith, who we desperately want to be saved. But we don’t want them to be saved as much as God does. And only God can actually do it. Only His Word has the power break their sinful hearts of stone, and give them a new heart in its place. Our loved ones will not be any better off if we withhold the Scriptures from them, and they will not be any better off if we support and approve of their sin. All that we can do is bear witness to the hope that is within us. All that we can do is pray, speak the truth in love, and entrust our cause to Jesus, knowing that Jesus never stops seeking the lost. If He could find us, then surely, He can find them too. So, we leave everything to Jesus, and we rely completely on His mercy.

The parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son are supposed to teach us about repentance. Repentance means turning away from your sin and trusting in Christ for forgiveness.  God’s Word not only teaches us that everyone needs repentance, including Christians, but that God will not withhold His forgiveness from anyone who is sorry for his or her sin regardless of what it was. He will receive them back safe and sound no matter how far they have wandered from His fold. Nothing makes God happier when someone comes to repentance. Nothing gives Him more joy than giving out what Jesus laid down His life to purchase. As Jesus tells us in our text, “There is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” May God fill us with the same joy of the angels. May He make us glad to see others forgiven, knowing that all of our sins have been forgiven too. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.