Evangelism 101 - Part 1 - Reaching The Lost Series

God loves sinners. This is what we will be talking about today and for the next several lessons. God loves sinners. The Bible says, “God demonstrated His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He didn’t wait for us to get better before He committed His Son Jesus to die on the cross to pay for our sins. He sent His only Son while we were still sinners.

The text we are about to look at graphically illustrates this truth. God not only loves sinners; He pursues the sinner. Even one lost soul has immeasurable value to God.

Luke 15:1 Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.

The grouping of the words “tax collectors” and “sinners” is significant. Tax collectors were hated men in those days. Not just because they demanded taxes from the people—that would be enough to dislike them. But because they were Jews hired by the Roman government to collect taxes from their own people.

They not only collected taxes due to Rome, they added a surcharge that they kept for themselves and this surcharge was not regulated by Rome—thus they were getting rich off their own countrymen.

The “sinners” noted in verse one were not only those, who like us, are sinners by nature, but they were sinners by practice. They were guilty of the more common weaknesses of the flesh, and were notorious sinners, covetous, prostitutes, extortionists, oppressors of the poor, and generally very wicked people who had bad reputations. These were not the kind of people that one would expect Jesus to receive.

Luke 15:1 Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.

What did the sinners and tax collectors come to hear? They came to hear Jesus preach and to teach. Perhaps some came out of curiosity and others came to hear because they heard Jesus in the past and came to hear more. Maybe some of the crowd arrived because they wanted to be able to tell others that they “heard the Man from Galilee preach”…they wanted to be where the action was.

This scene in Luke begs for the question we need to ask ourselves, “Why did we come to hear the words of Jesus?” “Why did we come to hear the Word of God preached and taught?”

More than likely, some of those who came to Christ were aware of their sinfulness and need for salvation.

In Luke chapter five we are introduced to Matthew, who left everything, including his tax-collecting business, to follow Christ (Luke 5:27-32). There was also another tax collector, in Luke 18:13, who was unwilling to lift his eyes to heaven, crying out, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner!"

I remember in the mid-80’s attending a church where a homosexual repented of his sin and turned to Jesus for salvation. He started attending this church and many in the congregation had trouble accepting him as a brother in Christ. In verse 2 of our text we find a similar thing happening:

Luke 15:2 And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, "This Man receives sinners and eats with them."

The Pharisees and Scribes had their own opinion about who God loves and doesn’t love. This is how the Pharisees were reasoning: “Why is Jesus spending time with sinners when He should be spending time with spiritually cultured people like ourselves.”

They also had a way of thinking among themselves that says. “God has no interest in the rift raft of society, the downtrodden, the sinner; God only cares people like ourselves who go to church and are dressed in religious attire, who sing His praises and pay their tithe.”

I wonder how many Christians have formed a similar theology when it comes to who God chooses to set His love upon? Do we at GraceWay gravitate toward those in the church who appear to have it all together while ignoring the oddball, strange and weird?

Have you formed your own theology when it comes to who God chooses to love?

In our Bible lesson, Jesus offers three parables in rapid-fire-order to refute the viewpoint of the Pharisees and the Scribes and to show the extent of God’s love for people.

Luke 15:3 So He spoke this parable to them, saying:

Luke 15:4 "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?

Verse four starts out with, “What man of you…” having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?