Unshaken: Chapter a Day

Luke 15 Discussion

• Pastor Plek

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Grace throws a feast, and the door is wide open. We dive into Luke 15 and trace the arc from a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine, to a woman sweeping every corner for a single coin, to a father sprinting toward a wrecked son. These aren’t cute stories about lost things; they’re a blueprint for how God pursues people and why heaven erupts when one heart turns home. Along the way, we name the tension many of us feel: the pull between moral pride and messy mercy, between keeping score and joining the celebration.

We look closely at each parable. The lost sheep reframes value through the lens of love, not efficiency. The lost coin reveals the intensity and cost of a diligent search, including the likely cultural weight of a drachma in a bridal headdress. The prodigal son brings it home with raw honesty: sin squanders, shame rehearses, and the Father runs anyway. Then the camera shifts to the elder brother, whose obedience masks resentment. That second lostness challenges religious hearts that resist grace for others while quietly demanding it for themselves.

We also explore a leadership thread: the older brother was meant to bear responsibility for the wandering sibling. Where the Pharisees withheld pursuit, Jesus steps in as the true older brother, seeking, eating with sinners, and calling them to repent. From there we land on practical application. Confess grumbling and comparison. Build friendships across moral distance. Share meals and real life. Celebrate redemption stories even when they offend your sense of fairness. If you’ve wandered, come home. If you’re near, go out and find someone who isn’t. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so others can find the show.

Text us at 737-231-0605 with any questions.

Pastor Plek:

And welcome back to a chapter a day. Keeps the devil away. I'm Pastor Pleck along with Pastor Holland, and we are talking Luke chapter 15. We're gonna outline it. We are gonna make some observations. We're gonna interpret it. Uh figure out some stuff about the nature of man, the character of God, and finally land the plan with some application that you can take today with you as you walk along with the Lord along the way. All right, so here we go. Luke 15 starts out verses one through seven is a parable of the lost sheep. This is the classic. He leaves the 99 to go and grab the one. Then we get to the parable, the lost coin. A woman like can't had 10 coins, loses one, loses her mind, she cleans up and down, and then she has a party when she finds that lost coin. And then finally we have the parable, the prodigal son. Uh, a younger son demands his inheritance, travels to a far country, squanders all that his father gave him in reckless living, hits rock bottom feeding pigs. Then he repents, he returns to his dad. He's prepared to be a hired servant, but his father runs to embrace him, kiss him, restore him with robe, rings, sandals, and a fatted calf. Man, what a story. Then the elder brother resents the mercy, refuses to join. The father pleads, he goes out to him, pleads with him, and affirms his constant provision and joy over the lost brother's return. Okay, that's Luke 15 in uh an outline form. Where did where are some observations that you made? I love Jesus.

Pastor Holland:

That's I just, man, I love this chapter so much. It's one of my favorite. And yeah, you read the last few chapters and you're like, you know, okay, Jesus is like owning people in debates, you know, he's silencing them. He he's talking about the exclusivity of Christianity, you know, yeah, and here's the standard, you gotta be all in, you gotta renounce everything. And you start to wonder, like, man, where is what about the grace? What about the and then you get this chapter? Yeah, it's all right there. And it's like Jesus isn't one or the other, he's both. He he speaks um the truth and he speaks with grace. And he is clear about the boundaries and the standard and the law, and he is also so clear about grace and the gospel and the compassion of God for sinners. And I just I love this chapter.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah, and I I think what you know, it's the tax collectors and sinners who are wanting to hear him, the scribes and Pharisees who are grumbling at him. Um, but it's not like he is just being like handing out candy to tax collectors, right? He's calling them lost. Right. He calls them a lost sheep, he calls them uh a lost coin that nobody can find. He's calling them to repent. And then he's talking about their repentance. Yeah, and he's and then he calls them a lost son that wrecked their own lives, which at this point they're kind of like, Yeah, it's like whenever I've done prison ministry and you go, like, are you a sinner? He goes, Well, I'm here, ain't I? You know, like that's the classic response. Get it. And and so then um, I appreciate all of that, that that's the point of this. Like, he is reaching out to call them to repent. And then the reason why it's so mind-boggling, the elder brother story, which was kind of directly at the Pharisees, who lacks mercy, who's completely judgmental, who's angry all the time, yeah, is kind of just more worried about those people getting getting over or that they've been sandbagging their whole life, and he wants Jesus to rip them. He's he wants he doesn't want he doesn't want Jesus to, he doesn't want the father to say you know to bring the son back. He wants that that father make sure that son knows how bad he is. Yeah. And but the reality is repentance comes along within the the box of repentance is like an unworthiness that you understand, yeah, and a joy that Jesus might receive you. Yeah. Okay, what else you got from this chapter?

Pastor Holland:

It's the you know, the idea of one sinner who repents over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance, it says. It's like the people that that loved Jesus the most were the ones who understood, I'm screwed up. Yeah, I'm a sinner. I, you know, they get it. Like I it's the people who came to him trying to trap him, the people who came thinking they had something and I earned it and I deserve it. All those people had big problems with Jesus. But everyone who's like, no, I get it, I'm I'm totally screwed up. Like, they love Jesus.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah. Okay, and what about this lost coin? Why was it that big of a deal? I mean, we can understand the lost sheep, that's inventory, that's money, you know. Uh, but you're like, okay, it's still extreme to go leave 99 unprotected or whatever, and then go after that one, it's in the in the woods. But the one lost coin, why is that such a big deal? Do you do you know? I mean, the um 10 silver coins.

Pastor Holland:

The the note at the bottom here says it's a Greek drachma, a drachma um equal in value to a Roman denarius, worth about a day's wage. So it's an expensive coin.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah, it's it's it's expensive. And then also usually the um the 10 coins would be part of a headdress. And so that was what you would wear in that culture to sort of sort of sort of show your inheritance. So um, so when you married a woman, you would look at her head to kind of see what you're getting. So, like, you know, like today for women, like here's what you're getting. They're they're they're showing like their bodies, then they're showing their inheritance on their head uh so that you would see how much they were worth uh if you married them. I've never heard that before in my life. So that's that's a fun little DTS education right there. Okay, secondary teaching that redeemer. All right, all right. So, what about um have you heard this one? Uh that Jesus is the better older brother, that uh where the Pharisees and the religious leaders failed because their ministry was fruitless, Jesus steps in as the older brother, who is supposed to be the one that went and chased down the younger brother. So in in this culture, like the oldest brother gets a doubled inheritance, right? Yep. And the purpose was to care for, take care of, to, you know, go and round up, discipline love, and make sure your your pharaohs. They had a leadership role. There's a leadership role that the Pharisees had abandoned by sort of saying dismissing the tax collectors and sinners. They didn't want to be a part of their life because they felt like they were too far gone and they were just gonna, they were the ones that were so the younger brother runs away, the older brother should have gone after him, but instead he's like, Good, get him out of here.

Pastor Holland:

I don't care, you know, yeah.

Pastor Plek:

We're better off without him. More. So kind of like whenever uh one of my kids give me his share of the inhabitants, yeah, gets gets candy that I uh that's kind of I get candy that I like, and then they don't want any. I'm like, well, more for me. Yeah, like I think they wanted more blessing. Okay, so see, I'm much better than them, so therefore I received twice the blessing as you know I would get normally. And that's just not that's the wrong heart, rather. You know, as a as a leader who's been given the law and understanding and wisdom, run after those who are broken and hurting and need Jesus. Okay, let's get into uh something about the nature of men.

Pastor Holland:

Verse 2 the Pharisees and scribes grumbled, saying this man received sinners. I think that just shows that same kind of arrogant, hypocritical attitude toward um people that we feel like don't deserve to be loved.

Pastor Plek:

Right. Um yeah, I love that. I think that that sort of was like, I don't want to celebrate. I will not go in. I will not be even the presence of one of those bad people because I'm not that bad. Or I am so much better. Do not let me in. Or don't I don't want to be around that. How about just from the prodigal son side? Humans are prone to wander from God, squandering blessings and self-indulgent pursuits.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah.

Pastor Plek:

Um that ultimately bring out the brokenness of the heart.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah. Um it teaches something in here too about like when he's rehearsing in his head, like, here's what I'm gonna say to my dad. You know, we we prepare for the worst and we think, you know, we expect like um judge harshness and judgment from others. Um and yeah, I I think sometimes that keeps us from really, you know, going back.

Pastor Plek:

Um it might be like if uh how many times have you heard someone say, like, if I were to walk in that church, the place would burn to the ground. Yeah, right. And I'm like, no, that's actually the whole point is that you would come to church. Run to Jesus in your sin, not away.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah, and this goes, you can shift to what this teaches about the character of God here. Is like, yeah, Jesus, he ate with sinners. He did. You know, they were criticizing him for it, but he was like, Yeah, it's kind of the whole point. I came is to save sinners. I love it.

Pastor Plek:

All right, yeah. Uh yeah, he pursues, maybe he pursues sinners. Yeah. Uh with a diligent, like he's gonna make a diligent search, clean up everything. He's gonna uh with a sacrificial effort, like I will, at the risk of losing others, I will go and find that one, valuing each individual beyond measure, which is just really cool.

Pastor Holland:

And this is not like um different than the heart of the father. That's what you get in the prodigal son story, right? The heart of the father is yeah, I welcome sinners. Um, he is for give he is merciful, gracious, and forgiving.

Pastor Plek:

Okay. Um yeah, how about do we get into we already got into our nature of men? Yep. Yeah. And character of God. Let's get into some application then. Okay. What is what are, you know, sin to confess, promise to claim, example to follow, uh, command to obey, or knowledge to believe. What do you got?

Pastor Holland:

I think of the prodigal son, you know, an example to follow of like may you might be in a place where you're like, Yeah, you've squandered it all. And you're like, there's no way I could go back to church or back to God, he would never accept me. But like, follow the example of the prodigal son. It says it came to his senses, you know. Um, and so knowing especially what this says, like, God will receive you. Jesus longs to dine with you and welcome you. Go, go back to God, return.

Pastor Plek:

Yeah, how about this? Confess attitudes of grumbling or resentment, like the Pharisees or the eldest brother. I think there's that part of me that when you deal with difficult people, you can be just sort of like done. And just realizing that Jesus died for them, that our role as those who have the truth and living by the word is our role is to pursue them uh with Christ-likeness. That's that's convicting.

Pastor Holland:

Yeah. Um, eat with sinners. There's an example or uh yeah, example to follow of Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Example to follow. Eat with sinners. Um, build friendships with people who are far from God and um, you know, share meals and share life with people uh and like Jesus, call them to repent.

Pastor Plek:

And in fact, that's the very thing they've been waiting for and are designed for. Hey, thanks so much for uh watching and listening. We'll see you next time on a chapter a day.

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