Restoration Through Repentance

Beloved, for our text this morning, we return to Luke chapter 15 to consider the second of three parables regarding the lost. In connection with that, I ask that you turn with me to Psalm 51 as we read Psalm 51 together. And when you've found Psalm 51, I will also ask you to turn back and we read the first five verses of Psalm 32. Psalm 32, the first five verses. And then moving on to Psalm 51. And then Luke 15, a few verses there. Psalm 32, 1-5, as we hear now the Word of God. Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered, Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him, and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And you forgave the guilt of my sin. Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways and sinners will turn back to You. Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare Your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, You will not despise. In your good pleasure, make Zion prosper. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you. Then bulls will be offered on your altar. In Luke chapter 15, we read together verses 1, 2, and 3, and then verses 8 through 10 as our text. Verse 1 begins, Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable. Of course, He goes on to tell the parable of the lost sheep. Then in verse 8, Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me, I have found my lost coin. In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Let's bow together in prayer. Father, we do thank You and praise You for Your most holy Word. We thank You for that which we have read in this morning hour. We pray, Lord, that You would work in our hearts and lives by Your Holy Spirit. Illumina us, remove the blinders from us, that we might understand Your Word that has been read, that is to be preached. We pray, Father, that You would indeed speak to us through Your servant. He is weak, but You are strong. And may we indeed rejoice in what You have to say to Your people, what You have to teach to us, the growth You have planned for us. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, once again as we give our attention to this trilogy of parables in Luke 15, we are reminded, as we began to say last week, we are reminded of the heart of God toward His people lost in sin. And this is in contrast, you remember, with the heartlessness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who grumbled and complained that Jesus would bother to waste His time with tax collectors and sinners who were beyond hope. There's nothing that can be done for them according to these religious leaders. After all, these unworthy citizens were not true Israel like the Pharisees and the scribes. And in the eyes of these religious leaders, it was nothing short of a crime to socialize with these sinners, with people like this. But Jesus Christ demonstrated the heart and the purpose of His Father. And that was to seek and to save the lost. In the parable of the lost sheep, we learn that the work of recovering and restoring the lost is the work of God through Jesus Christ. He seeks and He saves those who cannot find their way. Those who cannot save themselves. And whereas in the parable of the lost sheep, we are taught what Jesus does. Now, in this short parable of the lost coin, I believe we are taught how He does it. God reclaims and restores on the basis of Christ's sacrifice by way of repentance. Jesus Christ's finished work is indeed the foundation. And God makes that real to you and me in our hearts and lives by way of repentance. Now, we were introduced to repentance in the first parable when Jesus said in verse 7, I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. But now Jesus teaches, once again in parable form, how He brings about repentance. But of course, this would be a point of contention with the Pharisees and scribes because in their self-righteousness, they had no need of repentance. Because they had no sin from which to repent. They had a mistaken view. They had a very twisted view of their own depravity. Namely, that they weren't. They weren't depraved. They weren't the sinners. They weren't the ones with the problem. Everyone else was. These folks were. They had a mistaken view of their own depravity. But our Lord teaches here that the way of return for any one of us is always the way of repentance. And through this parable, we consider restoration through repentance, as we notice the preacher of repentance, the working of repentance, and then the joy for repentance. As we consider this short parable, beloved, we notice once again that Jesus is placing before His hearers a situation in which the answer to his question is obvious. Now, there are some different suggestions as to where this woman may have come by these silver coins and how she was able to keep them in her possession, but that's not the point of the parable. What we must know is that one silver coin was worth one day of wages. And when she lost one coin, that was obviously one-tenth of her savings. Boys and girls, think of your most precious, valuable possession and chop it up into ten pieces and imagine taking one piece away. That's what happened with this woman. She lost one-tenth of her savings. And therefore, that one-tenth, that one coin was of great value. It was of great importance to her. And beloved, the lost elect sinner is the same. He doesn't have much value in the eyes of the world. But he has value in the sight of God and His angels because of the purchase price paid by Jesus Christ. But as far as our Lord's question is concerned, there's no doubt that when one loses one of ten coins, they will carefully search for it. Now, the homes in that day were built in such a way to withstand the heat of the day in that particular climate, and therefore the windows were very small, maybe there were no windows in the home at all, and therefore a light, the light of the fire, would be needed to carefully search every inch of the floor and to see clearly into all the nooks and the crannies, the corners, the crevices. A congregation, I believe that this woman represents the church. In Scripture, the church is pictured as a woman. For example, in the prophecy of Hosea, the Old Testament church is represented as a prostitute who forsook her husband, God, to commit adultery with other men, other gods, foreign gods, idols. In Ephesians 5, the church is pictured as the bride of Christ. In Revelation 12, the church is represented by a woman in contrast with Satan, the dragon. As well in Revelation 22, verse 17, we read, And the spirit and the bride say, Come. It is Jesus Christ through His Spirit and Word who searches for lost sinners and this parable shows that He does this through the agency of the church. The church of Jesus Christ is the preacher of repentance. Our Lord has given His Holy Spirit to dwell into the church and He has entrusted the church with His Gospel and just as God's elect, though lost in sin, are important to Him, they are also to be important to His church. They are to be important to you and me. Jesus was trying to teach these self-absorbed religious leaders that as those who claim to be God's people, therefore it was their job to be used of God to seek the lost. For the sake of Christ, beloved, the church is to go after the lost sinner. She is, as it were, to bring God's lost money back into the divine treasury. And her tool of recovery is the very Word of God. The church is to take the Gospel light into the world of darkness and sin. David says in Psalm 119, verse 105, Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. God's people, the church, is the light of the world. who are called to let the light of Jesus Christ shine before men that they might see the truth, as Matthew 5, verse 16 tells us. And Paul says in Philippians 2, verses 15 and 16, Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the church is to preach the light of the gospel to a lost world. That light is the truth of the Word of God which finds sinners, exposes sinners, and draws sinners. We really have a remarkable example of this, I believe, in the Old Testament. We read from Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. Psalm 51 especially, the psalm David wrote after Nathan had confronted him with his sin with Bathsheba. But in the very episode itself, if you remember that, Nathan, the prophet of God, representing the Word of God, comes to David. Nathan, representing the Old Testament church as well, comes to David, exposes his sin and says, you are the man. Beloved, Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, seeks His lost people through His church as He comes after them with His Word. That Word as it is preached in the church and applied by the Holy Spirit is the power of God unto salvation. That Gospel goes to the congregation on Sunday from the pulpit. It is brought to the suffering, the sick, and the dying as they are visited. That Word goes to the straying when they are visited. That light of the Gospel is given in the diligent instruction of the covenant seed of God's people. Boys and girls, that's why you attend Sunday school and catechism. There, too, the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is given. The light of the Word of God is brought into the homes of God's people in family visitation. And this Gospel is none other than the message of the hopelessness of man in the light of the sovereign love of God in Christ and the power of the Gospel and the salvation. This is the Gospel of Christ which He preaches through His bride, the church. And beloved, then, the same Holy Spirit who dwells in and fills the church with His presence as the Word is preached, that very same Holy Spirit directs the working of repentance. You see, just as the woman lights a lamp to illumine the darkness of the floor, The Gospel light that is preached, the light of the Word penetrates the darkest recesses of the heart, exposing sin and guilt. And just as with the broom the woman stirs up the dust and the dirt on the floor that may have covered up the lost coin, the Word of God stirs up the dust of sin in the consciousness of the sinner. God's Word is worked in the heart by the Holy Spirit as it raises, we might say, a cloud of the dust of sin in the heart of the sinner, causing His soul to lie naked and open so that we are convicted as the Holy Spirit says, You are the man. You are the woman. Beloved, we're talking about conversion here, which includes repentance and faith. Conversion is that which takes place in the regenerated heart. One who has already been born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Only that heart is the one that the Holy Spirit works in to bring that one to conversion. To show us our need, our grave need because of our sin and misery. To show us the light of Jesus Christ to draw us to that light. Only those who are born again by the Holy Spirit are those in whom He works conversion with repentance and faith. Well, what's included? What's involved in repentance? One good theological definition says that repentance is that conscious turning of the regenerate sinner, governed by the Holy Spirit, turning from sin and toward God in a complete change of living. Boys and girls, maybe you remember us talking about this before. We're talking about a U-turn. Conversion is a U-turn. By nature, we're headed in one direction. We're headed towards Satan, sin, death, and hell. and by the power of the Holy Spirit worked again in that born-again heart. The Holy Spirit caused us to see that direction, the horribleness of that direction, and turns us completely around. So we're headed in the other direction, toward God. And this change, beloved, involves our whole being. It includes a new way of thinking, a new way of feeling, and a new way of willing. And this new way of thinking, first of all, means that one has a knowledge of his sin. But this is not just a head knowledge, but especially a heart knowledge. It means that one is overwhelmingly conscious of the fact that his sin is a transgression of the law of the holy God and His will. That was David's concern, wasn't it? Against you, you only have I sinned. This is knowledge of my unworthiness to stand in the presence of God and instead, because sin angers him, it must be punished with his justice, both with death to this life, but also eternal death. And this is a new way of thinking, beloved, because before regeneration, before being born again, sin is a way of life. It simply doesn't bother us. But repentance is also a new way of feeling. There is grief and heartfelt sorrow for sin. Again, the grief and heartfelt sorrow that David demonstrated. Paul in Romans 7 says, The good that I want to do, that I don't do. The evil that I don't want to do, that I do. And only one who has been brought to know the holiness of God and recognize his own unholiness before the face of God will truly be sorry for his sin. But the sorrow also has a certain character. You see, it's not just being sorry because we got caught. Boys and girls, sometimes when you get in trouble, you're probably not as sorry for what you did as you are sorry that you got caught for doing it. You're probably not as sorry that you hurt someone else physically, maybe by hitting them or hurting them emotionally by saying bad things about them or calling them bad names, as you are sorry that you got caught for doing those things. You see, beloved, true godly sorrow of repentance is not, first of all, sorrow for the trouble that sin brings because, well, now I have to deal with this mess. It's not, first of all, sorrow that one must now deal with the consequences of his or her sin. You see, all of this is true, that sin brings about a mess. It brings about consequences which I must deal with. But true repentant sorrow is that sin has been committed against God, the Lord of heaven and earth. That He has been provoked. That His majesty and glory has been violated. Again, David, against you. You only have I sinned. Think of Joseph. What did Joseph say to Potiphar's wife? How can I do this wicked thing and sin against who? Her? No. Against God. With his sorrow, one hates himself. And one humbles himself before the mercy of God. As David says in Psalm 51, verse 17, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. And beloved, the repentant sinner longs for his sin to be taken away. He desires the forgiveness of God and that the wrath of God be removed from him. And he no longer then wills to live in sin, but turning away from sin, he desires to sin no longer. A new way of willing. A new way of thinking. a new way of feeling, a new way of willing. By the grace of God, it is the repentant sinner's delight and joy to live in the way of obedience. Beloved God restores His chosen people by way of repentance. It's not, though, that God's restoration depends upon our repentance. Not at all. But there will be no restoration without repentance. Again, sin has caused that great separation between God and man. And that sin must be acknowledged. It must be confessed. It must be removed for that separation to be bridged. David says that remarkable phrase in Psalm 51, I think, Return unto me the joy of salvation. Teaching us that when one has fallen in sin, even for a season, the joy of that salvation is gone. But how does God return the joy of salvation? Again, in Psalm 32, David talks about the fact that when he kept his mouth shut, when he failed to confess his sin, his bones wasted away. He was groaning all day long. It felt like God's hand was heavy pressing down upon him. His strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. But he says, when I acknowledge my sin before you, when I confess my sin, that God forgave the guilt of His sin. Beloved, today repentance and sorrow for sin is not emphasized very much. And I think sadly that's because sin itself is not emphasized. People simply don't believe they're that bad. The emphasis is more on accepting Christ as one's personal Savior. Surrendering to Him. Allowing Him to come into your heart. Making room for Him in your life. Do you see the emphasis there? It's on me, me, me. As if we make things right by doing Him the favor of giving Him a place in our life. After all, isn't it better to have Him than to not have Him just in case all this stuff is true? But Jesus makes it clear in these parables, beloved, that repentance is what counts. Over all the great things that one is able to do in this world, it is repentance that brings joy in heaven because only the repentant heart truly knows God. And beloved, it is also through repentance that the believer is given the hope of heaven. We cannot leave this part out. God does not leave the repentant sinner in His knowledge of sin, in His sorrow for sin, and in His desire for the removal of sin. He doesn't leave him there without giving Him the hope that there is restoration. If that hope wasn't there, how downcast we would be. We would be driven to despair. But God indeed gives that hope. You see, the Holy Spirit uses the very same light of the Word of God which stirs up our hearts and uncovers our sin. He uses the very same light of the Word of God to introduce one to the very light of the world, Jesus Christ Himself. Only in Him is there hope of forgiveness for any one of us. It is the Word of God, beloved, that calls men sinners and describes the horror of their sin. It is the very same Word of God applied by the Holy Spirit which brings tears of grief and sorrow to the eyes and confession to the lips of the sinner. But the very same Word of God also speaks of the wonder of the cross of Jesus Christ. The very same Word of God tells us, as the psalmist says, that there is forgiveness with God that He might be feared. Through the darkest night of sin shines the wonderful light of Calvary. Apart from the restoration of the cross, beloved, even if it were possible to repent, which it's not, there would be no restoration with God apart from the cross of Jesus. The cross of Jesus is a demonstration of the love of God, of the power of His grace, and of the wonder of salvation. And the elect sinner is irresistibly drawn by the grace of God to the cross where He hides beneath its shadow knowing His life depends upon it. And beloved, as someone said to me just this past week, we all stand on level ground as it were at the cross. Meaning not one of us is higher in position or lower in status than anyone else when it comes to the cross. We all stand on level ground. And as the child of God grows in grace, He also grows in the conviction of His need for grace. The child of God knows that sin fills His life and His activities so that even His best works are stained with sin. And as He grows in the faith and knowledge of sin, He realizes more and more that sin clings to all that He does and that as the Catechism says, He only has a small beginning of this new obedience in this life. He is brought to see that nothing else in life, even the best works done for the kingdom, none of it has meaning apart from repentance. Because for the sake of Christ's satisfaction for sin, God restores His children through repentance of sin. That gives meaning for life. Repentance is the only way back from the paths of sin for those who are born again. And this is true initially when one is brought to faith for the very first time, but it's also true continually as we repent of and confess our sins daily. Indeed, even as we might fall into sin for a season as God's redeemed people, it is He alone who restores us to the joy of that salvation. Repentance is the only way to Jesus Christ. All other proposed ways of salvation, beloved, ignore and deny the Savior. But repentance, arising from the consciousness of sin, confesses that the sinner is hopelessly lost in himself. He's unable to save himself and therefore looks outside of himself only for the righteousness of another. The Holy Spirit, through the Word of God, points Him to Jesus Christ and the cross where He died for sin. And through repentance of sin and faith in Christ's sacrifice for sin, God's people receive a most precious gift. And that's the gift of assurance. The assurance of forgiveness. The assurance of salvation. When the elect child of God has been brought to repentance and faith, turning from the broad path of sin that leads to destruction onto the narrow path that leads to eternal life, then, beloved, what a reason to celebrate. Just as with the lost sheep parable, Jesus once again expresses the joy for repentance in verses 9 and 10. And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me. I have found my lost coin. In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Beloved, again, as we began to say last week, the church is to be in harmony with heaven when it comes to the attitude of repentance, the attitude toward repentance. Again, here there is a contrast with and there is a great difference between the grumbling of the Pharisees on earth and the rejoicing of the angels in the very presence of God in heaven. And the very words of Jesus should have caused these Pharisees, these religious leaders, to examine their lives and to see that in their lack of love demonstrated against these tax collectors and sinners, they were not in harmony with heaven. They were not on the same page with God whom they thought they were in harmony with. They should have seen that they too were being called to repent. Because apart from their repentance, They gave heaven no reason to rejoice. In fact, their lack of joy over sinners who were drawn to Jesus hung together with a lack of joy over them in heaven. You see, Scripture is clear that God has a deep interest and joy over the conversion and salvation of His people. Isaiah 62, verse 5 says, For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you. And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. And Ezekiel 18, verse 32 says, For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies, says the Lord God. Therefore, turn and live. God rejoices in the salvation of His people. And therefore, brothers and sisters, this same joy must belong to the church. To you and me. Just as there must be sorrow in the church, for those who have turned away. Now, are those things evident here among us? Joy over repentance? And sorrow for those who have maybe left the church, turned away in the sense that they give evidence that they never did truly believe? Do we truly have that godly sorrow for those who have not yet heard the message of Jesus Christ? Those who continue to reject the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we truly sorrow for them? In the same way, do we truly have joy for those who repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? You see, beloved, the church which carries the burden of the gospel rejoices when that gospel bears its fruit in the conversion and repentance of saints. Did you ever think about it that way? That when one comes to repentance and faith by the grace of God, The Gospel is bearing its fruit right before our very eyes. And when one sinner is brought to repentance and faith, then in that one, that one is a representative, you see, in that one, the church sees the coming salvation of all of the saints because Christ saves His whole body. Congregation, if one of the elect should perish, then all will perish. because his body isn't complete without even one. But we may be assured, beloved, that not one elect will perish. Again, we looked at the Old Testament. We see examples of this by the very fact that, oh, we believe, yes, that when our believing loved ones die to this life, their soul goes to be with the presence of God. But God gave to us great examples in the Old Testament. Enoch walked with God and he was no more. We know that God is the one who buried Moses up on the mountain. They never found him. Elijah was taken to heaven in the fiery chariot. In those three examples alone, beloved, we might have the assurance that not one elect will perish. Then, of course, the supreme example is Jesus Christ, our ascended Savior Himself. by His ascension into heaven, we have our very flesh. A down payment, if you will, that we too shall be there with Him. In the repentance of the sinner, the church sees the victory of the Gospel, the very power of the Word of God. And the church sees a foretaste of the final victory of heaven. This victory, beloved, the angels know very well. They sang of this victory on the hillsides of Bethlehem when Christ was born. They spoke of this victory at the open door of the empty tomb. And they spoke of the final victory as the disciples looked into the sky after the ascended Christ. And the angels see that victory when the sinner, with tears in his eyes and humility in his heart, flees to the Lord Jesus Christ. Dear people of God, our Lord restores His lost children to Himself for Jesus' sake through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He brings us consciously to Himself. He seeks. He changes. He restores. And He keeps us in daily repentance through a steady diet of His Word. You see, it's not just initial repentance. We know that full well. But repentance is a daily task of turning more and more away from sin and more and more toward God in faith and obedience. Yet it is only through a sure conviction and sorrow for sin with repentance that the Holy Spirit will give the assurance of forgiveness and the assurance of salvation in Jesus Christ. It's only when you and I understand the blackness of our sin and transgression that the light of salvation will shine gloriously bright. You see, beloved, the wonder of grace is experienced only in comparison and with the horror of sin. We are to be a convicted people. We are to be a repentant people. Because only then can we be a rejoicing people by God's grace in the restoration and salvation of God. Only then will we be a people who live and work in the joy of salvation through Jesus Christ who gives us strength. In these parables, our Lord, emphasizes the restoration of the lost sinner by God through repentance as well as the joy that repentance brings. Apart from repentance for sin in this life, one will suffer from the consequences from sin in the next. But congregation, for you and me, whom God has graciously brought to repentance and faith in Him, we anxiously look forward to the day that the Holy Spirit's work in us will be complete. Because on that day, we will rejoice side by side with those rejoicing angels around the throne of God in celebration of salvation. Amen. Shall we pray? Father, again in Jesus' name, as we come before You, we thank You and praise You for that great work that You accomplish and You alone of seeking and saving Your lost people and doing that through repentance. Bringing us, O Lord, to see our sin and misery and our need for salvation and that there is a Savior, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. Father, we thank You that You do restore Your people. We pray that You would draw each one of us day by day closer to your heart and that more and more day by day as individuals and as a congregation we would indeed be in harmony with heaven. And may it be Father that we too would rejoice over one that we have the privilege to see you bring to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father we thank you for your work in our hearts and lives that unfailing work and may it be that soon very soon it would be completed in Jesus name we pray these things Amen