Luke 15:1-10

content/bible_journal/luke_15:1-10.md

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+title = "Luke 15:1–10"
+date = "2022-12-31"
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+
+### [Read the passage.](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Lk15.1-10)
+
+The entirety of chapter 15 has a single theme: God seeks out and saves sinners.
+We are told that the reason it comes up is that the scribes and Pharisees are
+harrumphing about Jesus teaching and accepting the company of tax collectors
+and sinners. Remember that back in Luke 14:35, Jesus said, "He who has ears to
+hear, let him hear." Now Jesus has a bunch of people willing to hear Him that
+the Pharisees didn't want to teach. Before Jesus arrived, they were stuck in a
+vicious cycle where they knew they were ungodly but didn't know what to do
+about it, and the religious leaders wouldn't teach them anything because they
+were too ungodly.
+
+So Jesus tells three parables to explain how God operates. I'll only talk about
+the first two today, though. In the first, He asks the Pharisees whether they
+would go out and search for their one lost sheep out of a hundred. And once
+they have found it and brought it home if they would celebrate with their
+friends that they didn't lose the sheep. In the second, He talks of a
+hypothetical woman who has lost one coin out of ten. She searches through the
+whole house with a lamp until she finds it, and then tells her friends to
+rejoice with her because she found it.
+
+In both stories, the people had lost something valuable. Sheep were (and still
+are) worth a good deal of money for the wool, milk, and meat you can get from
+them. The _drachma_ coin the woman lost was the Greek version of the Roman
+_denarius_, worth about a day's wage for a laborer. In both stories, Jesus
+identifies the lost thing as a sinner who has gone far from God, but is then
+found by God and repents. And when they do, there is much joy in heaven because
+they did.
+
+Pay attention to sequence of events in these parables! God is the one who goes
+out and finds the lost sinners, and He is the one who brings them back. The
+Pharisees were wrong to expect people to clean up their lives before deciding
+to follow God's commands better, and we are wrong to expect people to know and
+apply the truth before they have heard it.
+
+* * *
+
+Give us the grace and humility to remember that we, too, are sinners who are
+saved by grace, and if it weren't for You, we would be as evil as anyone else.