There Are No 99

Third Sunday after Trinity

June 12, 2016

Luke 15:3-7

There Are No 99, But There Is a Shepherd

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

¹Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Him. ²But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:1-2 NIV 1984)

It is very likely that if you knew a Pharisee, you would like him. You would have admired their spirituality and devotion.

They devoted their time to the study of the Old Testament. They devoted their time to praying and going to synagogue, their local church. And they were devoted to the poor—they gave 10% of their wealth as alms to the poor, so that the poor would have food to eat. They practiced what they preached; “they were anything but hypocrites in the modern sense of the word” (Kleinig, Grace upon Grace, page 36). And the world admired them. And you would have, too.

To put it another way, we have just seen the outpouring of admiration for Cassius Clay. He was admired not just for his boxing, but also for his spirituality and devotion to charity. He used his fame to help people. Here's a transcript from a 60 Minutes profile from 1996.

Much of Ali's time is spent signing his name . . . He does do some autograph shows where he's paid a minimum of $100 for each signature. But for the most part he signs for free, responding to the endless requests from people he sees in his travels.

We watched him at one event signing—it must have been a couple hundred autographs . . . not at a card show, where he was being paid, but for free. . . .

And he—when asked about it afterwards, he said, “I'm just”—he whispered, “I'm just trying to get to heaven.”

[His wife, Lonnie Ali, explained]: That's right. Every deed he performs—he believes every signature he signs is a good deed and will be counted.*

Ali saw his performance of kind deeds as his way of earning paradise. He was a type of Pharisee, because Pharisees viewed the performance of good deeds as their way of punching their own ticket to heaven. And if anyone could earn a trip to heaven, it would be Ali and his fellow Pharisees. Even tax collectors and sinners would say that if anyone was going to heaven, it would have been these Pharisees, these “spiritual highfliers” (Kleinig, Grace upon Grace, page 38).

Yet Jesus was having none of it.

²⁷“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ²⁸In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:27-28 NIV 2011)

Here Jesus told these spiritual hot shots a story about shepherds looking after their flocks. Jesus didn't describe the shepherd in the story as good or heroic; this is a short story about an ordinay shepherd who goes after one straying sheep and leaves the ninety-nine “safe” sheep in the open country.

But are they safe? “Open country” here is really the Greek word for desert wilderness. And they're out there in it without a shepherd.

So who are these 99? Jesus ended the story by describing them as

righteous persons who do not need to repent.

(Luke 15:7)

All of us are sinners and need to repent. This is exactly why we come to church: to repent and receive Christ. In contrast, only someone who considers himself righteous on his own merit would refuse to repent. And since Jesus is telling this story to the Pharisees specifically because they considered themselves righteous in comparison to sinners, we know who the 99 are. By these 99 sheep Jesus meant the Pharisees.

In our day we see the mindset of the ninety-nine in ourselves. We see it in those who go to church as a matter of performance. But we see it just as much in the people whom we know and care about who don't go to church. We see it in our own grown children who are spiritual, but not religious.

So many claim to believe in Jesus, but don't take the words of Jesus seriously. They claim to part of the flock, but don't want a shepherd. They want God on their own terms, and become agitated when their father or their pastor calls them to repent, trust the Gospel, and go to church to receive Jesus. They become defensive because they are Pharisees.

The shepherd didn't after the 99 sheep in this story; he went after the one lost sheep. And when he found this foolish dumb sheep, he lifted it up and put it on His shoulders and went home. Now sheep aren't small—he was carrying a 50 lb. load all the way home. Jesus carrying us echoes the words of the prophet Isaiah:

He tends His flock like a shepherd:

He gathers the lambs in His arms

and carries them close to His heart;

He gently leads those that have young.

(Isaiah 40:11 NIV 2011)

And when he got the sheep home, he rejoiced with his friends and neighbors. This was the only sheep he cared about. It almost seemed like the shepherd had left the rest of the flock out in the wilderness to fend for themselves. It's almost like there aren't the 99 out there.

How true that is! There are no righteous sheep. Every soul is that one straying sheep, and Jesus pursues us all. He pursues us like a Good Shepherd with His baptism, and His absolution, and His preaching, and His supper. He sends shepherds out to find these straying sheep to call them to repent and to carry them home with the flesh and blood of their mutual Savior Jesus.

We admire Pharisees because we are them. And Jesus even went after us, and still today goes after us with His promise: “Take and eat, this is My body, given for you.”

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Alleluia! Amen!

2 Corinthians 5:21

*cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-muhammad-ali-ed-bradley