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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Did you hear in today’s Old Testament reading how much God talks about himself?
I am the Lord. Behold, I, I myself, and I myself, and I myself am going to do all these things.
I’ll do it. It’s all a little much, isn’t it?
It’s as if there’s no one else who’s able to do what this guy can do.
No other gods, no other powers in this universe close to him.
Is that really the case?
Of course it is.
That’s exactly what the prophet Micah mused on also.
Who is a god like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant
of its inheritance?
repentance, He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion on us.
He will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
No other God is like this.
What distinguishes Him is His mercy, His steadfast love, His compassion.
What separates the Christian religion from every other religion and philosophy of men is
grace
for Christ’s sake
This God that we have chases after sheep that go astray and make themselves filthy
He seeks after and saves what is lost. He does not value his inheritance or his dignity or his
immortality and invisibility and creative power and wondrous majesty as
if these things were something to be held on to at all cost. But he freely and he
gladly will give them all up to have his children back. To find two more little
sheep, two more little coins today and have him back for himself. Now what man
among you would do this?
Who else is a God like that?
Our God is gracious, grace.
Grace is the undeserved favor of God toward us in Christ.
It’s the kindness of God which Pastor Wolf Mueller is constantly thanking Him for.
It’s not a reward for good behavior that outweighs the bad behavior.
It is not God seeing past our flaws to the good that really is somewhere there within
us.
And it is not a power that He gives to us to do good in order to earn His favor.
It is a free, gratis, entirely undeserved reality that doesn’t live in us at all,
but lives in God.
Grace is His disposition toward us.
We have a gracious God.
Not one of our own invention or our own discovery or our own efforts, but we have a gracious
God because of His steadfast love, His mercy, His grace which He openly and repeatedly and
all over the place wants to tell us all about how He Himself has done it for us.
We have a God who gives Himself for us.
Who does not stand far away and send some slave to take care of this stuff.
It’s not beneath Him.
He loves us.
He’s after us.
He embeds all of Himself and all of His graciousness into a promise to us.
That’s why this saying is so trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance by everyone here.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Jesus said, I have not come for the righteous but for sinners.
I have come to seek and to save the lost.
I myself, you heard him say it, I have not come to be served, but to serve and to give
my life as a ransom for many.”
Our God forgives sins.
He pardons iniquity.
He does not retain His anger forever because His delight is in His own steadfast love for
us.
His mercy and His grace always for us.
That means, by the way, that none of us are allowed to be uncertain as Christians that
our God loves us.
The thing that is uncertain is where else in the whole world and from whom else you
might possibly find such a certain and gracious favor like this.
This is the dividing line.
This is the demarcation of all faiths, all religions, all philosophies.
Grace.
Christ’s grace is what divided him and his disciples from the scribes and Pharisees who grumbled.
It separates true Christianity from every other way of life too.
It wouldn’t be an oversimplification for us to say that there are only two religions,
there are only two philosophies, two ways of being and living.
There’s one of works and of self-righteousness, usually at the expense of others, achievement
and reward.
And there’s one of grace in Christ Jesus.
Are we right with God because of what we do?
by living up to His standards, by climbing some mythical, mystical, or mental ladder to Him through our achievements?
Or are we right with God because of what He, He Himself, does for us?
By His efforts, by His disposition toward us?
By grace.
Only the way of grace saves.
To those scribes and Pharisees who had turned the law and the prophets into a system of
merit and self-made righteousness, Jesus speaks these parables today about the lost sheep
and the lost coin, and also the one we didn’t hear about, the lost sons.
We usually call it the prodigal son.
And the moral of these stories was no moral at all.
You see that?
It’s the message of grace.
The moral is not, dumb sheep get what they deserve, or lost coins buy no bread.
No, instead at the end there’s a promise.
The promise is, there is joy in heaven.
There’s angels rejoicing over even one sinner who repents.
Jesus said, which man of you would leave the 99, would not leave the 99 and go and rescue
one?
what man of you would rejoice more over a lost coin found than nine that had
been kept well none of us would there’s no one like this actually no one who
throws their good money after the bad nobody who will not cut their losses at
some point except for this one this one who alone has compassion except for this
There’s one who sits before the very eyes of those Pharisees, sitting there at the table
with the tax collectors and the sinners, eating with them, feasting with them in joy.
Because though they are great sinners indeed, they repent and they seek mercy and grace
from Him.
They have much to be ashamed of in themselves, but they are not ashamed of Christ.
They are not ashamed of this God who pardons iniquity, who passes over transgression.
There is no God, dear Christians, there is no God at all, except for the man Jesus Christ.
For in Him we know the one true God who puts every other human delusion to shame because
this is the only one.
This is the only Lord who forgives sins.
It’s the only place in the world you will find the forgiveness of sins.
And the difference is nothing for us ever to be ashamed of.
It’s our hope, it’s our confidence, it’s our joy.
We have a gracious God because Christ has shed His innocent blood for us guilty ones to forgive us.
To be our substitute of perfection in our place.
That God may be both just and the justifier of the ones who trust in Him.
Now when Jesus sat with these tax collectors and sinners, He certainly was not condoning
their sin or ours.
Like we said, listen to the preaching that Jesus has.
They knew what kind of guy they were coming to and what he’d say about what they had done.
And still they sought him out because they knew they needed this correction.
And because they knew that he does not delight in this sin, but he delights in steadfast
love, mercy, grace, that he delights in seeking out his sheep and bringing them out of this
mess safely under his own care and at his expense.
Thus our Lord Jesus went on from those tables.
He did not stay there forever rejoicing and feasting.
He went on from the tables so that he could do away with their sin, to suffer the very
real and the very serious wrath of God against all sin, but to do it in their
place and in mine and in yours. We have only a hint in Jesus’ parables today, but
grace is free to us because God bears the cost Himself. This way of undeserved
grace, it’s offensive to the world’s many and various ways of thinking about God
and about man, just as it was back then with the Pharisees.
One, how can God be man?
Two, how can He number Himself among sinners and even bear their sins in His own body?
How can God die?
And how can He die in this way, cursed under wrath?
How can He give then His salvation as a gift for free to those who have not earned it and
those who do not deserve it?
What other creature or effort or God could purchase such a gift and settle the score
for our sins and do it in this undeserved and free way?
only Jesus Christ true God and true man could do that. In his way there is more
rejoicing over a sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons that need no
repentance. That’s saying I mean the reality is there’s only one there’s only
one who is righteous and needs no repentance that one is the Lord’s Son
Jesus Christ. Those other 99 are the ones who don’t recognize their need. They’re
only self-righteous and that righteousness won’t do. If we say that we
have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess
our sins we have a God who is faithful and just who will forgive our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We have an advocate Himself with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, whose blood is the propitiation for our sins
and not our sins only, but the sins of the whole world. So when this God says I, I
myself.” It’s no false boast as it certainly would be for you or for me. Our
God is the free King and Judge of all. And notice what He wishes to do, to let
His grace overflow for us with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus.
There’s no other God like this one. That’s why of Him and Him alone we will
sing, will join in this great rejoicing around his table. We rejoice together
with St. Paul, chief of sinners, God’s greatest example of grace for our sake,
for whom our church is named. We rejoice together with tax collectors and all the
other forgiven sinners, that is the whole communion of saints throughout the ages.
And yes, we will rejoice together even with angels and archangels who their delight and
their will is always perfectly lined up exactly as God the Father’s is.
But that’s why they’re seen rejoicing just as He does.
Rejoicing to see each one of us returned to Him in repentance.
and clinging to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the peace of God which passes all
understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
