DO YOU KNOW THIS MISSING PERSON?
Luke 15:1-32
Have you ever lost your keys? Or your wallet? Or your wedding ring? Or your cell phone? Or maybe your child? (Maybe you’ve lost your mind!…I feel like I have some times!) How many have lost your cell phone and called the number to see if you could hear it ringing and find out where it is?
Have you ever lost the remote control to your TV? We did that a couple of years ago and looked everywhere we could think of before we bought a “one-remote-fits-all” replacement. I dug down into the couch, thinking it may have fallen down there, but we could never find it! It may have been as much as a year later that I noticed a strange bulge on the back of the couch and started doing some digging to find out what it was. Sure enough! It was the remote control!
Jesus talked about things getting lost. In fact, in the 15th chapter of Luke He describes three different things being lost. Listen as I read this passage—
[Read Luke 15:1-32, NIV]
You’ve probably already figured it out, but Jesus’ stories were really about people who were lost spiritually.
Jesus talked about how people who realize that something is lost go on a thorough, almost panicked search to find it—and how thrilled they are when the lost has been found! And that’s just how Jesus responds to people who are lost spiritually. He goes searching and searching—and when the lost person is finally found, there is great celebration! That’s what our Heavenly Father is all about: finding lost people. That’s what thrills Him. That’s what makes Him tick.
There are two basic ideas I want you to catch from this passage this morning. You might think of it as two sides of the same coin. The first thing I want you to catch is that the Lord loves YOU so much that if you were the only person lost, He would go searching for YOU! God loves YOU that much. And He throws a great party to celebrate when you accept Him into your life—when the lost has been found!
And the other side of the same coin is this: the Lord loves every lost person in that same way—and once we’ve accepted Jesus as our Savior, we are to be about the great search for others who also need Him. So one side of the coin reminds me to thank the Lord for loving me so much that He went searching for me; the other side reminds me to be part of His search for people who need to know Christ too. It may be one of our friends, it may be one of our family members, or the neighbor next door. Christ calls us to care about the lost, to love them, and to be part of His great search in reaching out to them.
Did you catch at the beginning of Luke 15 the reason why Jesus was telling these stories? Jesus was devoting attention to the “low-lifes” of His day. The tax collectors were consistently known to be manipulative, self-serving people who took money from others in a way that was both dishonest and unfair. Then there were with them others scripture simply clumped as “sinners”—which likely included prostitutes, thieves, pagans, outcasts from the Jewish faith and those who were generally immoral. They were intrigued with Jesus because He was kind to them and demonstrated that He really cared about them. But His association with these people had really stirred up the indignity of the Jewish religious leaders, who in their spiritual piety would not have had anything to do with such people! Jesus wanted both his little crowd of unlikely listeners as well as the pompous religious folk to understand how God felt about this group known to be sinners and why Jesus wasn’t afraid or ashamed to devote time and energy to them. And so He told these three little stories.
Jesus wanted it to be clear to us all: Regardless of what anyone else may think about you, God loves you! The religious leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t want to contaminate themselves by associating with ungodly people. But Jesus knew that they had it all wrong! God cares about people who need Him so desperately! He’s genuine about that! Jesus didn’t just give lip service to the idea of caring for ungodly people—He demonstrated it by the way He treated them whenever He was with them! And what Jesus was saying that day is still true today: regardless of what anyone else may think about you, God loves you!
Think with me for a moment about the common threads of all three of Jesus’ little stories. In each story something is lost—first a sheep, then a coin, then a son. In each case, the lost object is eventually found and the finding produces a lot of happy excitement! The sheep I suppose is innocently lost (it’s evidently just too ignorant to know the difference!), the coin is carelessly lost, and the son was willfully lost—but all lost nonetheless! The sheep is 1 of 100, the coin is 1 of 10, and the son 1 of 2. And yet, whether it was one of 100 or 10 or 2, the lost one was the one worthy of attention. The owner was grateful for that which wasn’t lost, but felt passionate about the one that was lost. That one needed his attention—and got it!
And even though there would have been those who might have concluded that the shepherd had 99 sheep and better stay with the 99 who were secure, or the woman should be grateful for her 9 coins that remained, or the father should be delighted that at least one of his sons was living right—that wasn’t how the story went! The shepherd, the woman and the father cared too much about that which was lost to be fully content with just that which was found. And that’s how God cares about those who are spiritually lost! The ending of each story tells us how God rejoices when a sinner finds forgiveness and is restored to the fellowship of His Heavenly Father.
So what does all of this have to do with us? There are people all around us every day who do not know the Savior. Sometimes their habits and their language and their lifestyles and their priorities disgust us—and we long to be in our comfort zone of people like ourselves who already have a relationship with the Lord. But that isn’t what Jesus felt was important! He cares too much about those who are spiritually lost to devote all of His attention to those who are found! According to these stories, God’s greatest concern at the moment are those who are lost! He’s grateful for those who are already at home, so to speak, with the family…but He can’t rest until all who will have been gathered in!
And I think that there are those who do not have a vibrant relationship with the Lord and who look at people who come to church all the time and are maybe highly involved in the ministries of the church and think: “God surely cares more about them than He does about me! I’m not religious. I know I’d have to change for God to accept me, and I’m still struggling with issues that are keeping me from being a good Christian. No, God surely loves religious people more than He loves me!”
Now, if that’s how you think God thinks, listen again to the truth of these stories! Regardless of what anyone else thinks about the matter, God loves you. It doesn’t matter what you think about yourself: God has determined that you are valuable enough to Him that He’s out searching for you—and He’ll keep seeking you because He loves you!
I believe it doesn’t matter if you even realize that you’re lost—God deeply cares about you and wants to find you!
Sheep, which the first vignette speaks of, are known to be fairly dumb animals. That’s why they need a shepherd, for they wander off and get themselves into trouble without even realizing it! The sheep that was lost probably didn’t even know that it was lost! And certainly the coin, inanimate object, didn’t know it had been misplaced! And if the lost animal or the lost coin were valuable enough to stop everything and go searching, surely a lost person is significant enough for God to go searching—and even to get others in on the search!
Joseph Stowell, former president of Moody Bible Institute, tells of the frightening day when something valuable to him got lost. His family was on their annual Christmas trek to Chicago. Each year they brought their family to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma and visit the museums. This time they decided to finish their Christmas shopping at the suburban Woodfield Mall. In the midst of all the fun and excitement, one of them noticed that little 3½-year-old Matthew was gone. Terror immediately struck them. They had heard all the horror stories: little children kidnapped in malls, rushed to a restroom, dressed in different clothes and altered hairstyles and then swiftly smuggled out, never to be seen again! The family split up, each taking an assigned location. Stowell’s was the parking lot. He describes himself frantically kicking through the newly fallen snow, calling out his son’s name at the top of his lungs, feeling like a fool, yet more concerned with his child’s safety than anything else.
Unsuccessful, Stowell trudged back to the agreed-upon meeting place. His wife Martie had not found Matthew, nor had Stowell’s mother. But then Stowell’s dad appeared, holding little Matthew by the hand. They were ecstatic! They became oblivious to everything else taking place in the mall, for they were caught up in rejoicing that their child had been found! He was safe! And he was with them!
Interesting enough, Matthew was not traumatized. He hadn’t been crying. To him, there had been no problem. When Stowell asked his father where he found Matthew, his father simply responded, “The candy store. You should have seen him. His eyes came just about as high as the candy counter. He held his little hands behind his back and moved his head back and forth, surveying all the luscious options.” Matthew didn’t look lost. He didn’t know he was lost. He was oblivious to the phenomenal danger he was in. And I suppose that we live in a candy-counter culture, where people who don’t look lost and don’t know they’re lost live for what they can have today—not comprehending how terribly lost they truly are!
I am often sadly amazed at the lack of spiritual realities known by people today. Some are so lost…and don’t even know it. There’s been such a distortion of truth that people are terribly confused—and don’t know it. They’ve been duped by humanistic teachings, by false doctrines, by the watering down of Biblical truth and a culture that is increasingly anti-Christian. People are so confused about what is right and what is wrong and how we can come to know God. Some interpretations of Christianity have scared them—and others have disgusted them. They have failed to see that Christianity is relevant to our lives today—and that indeed our response to Christ has eternal consequences. They’re rushing through their lives with no thought of eternity and no time for God. But then, they aren’t really sure Who God is or if He even exists and they certainly don’t know if God cares a hoot about them anyway!
And while I cannot prove to you today the existence of God—any more than I can prove to you that the stars in the sky truly exist—I can tell you that God personally cares about you and He cares about your need for salvation! You may not fully understand that you’re lost without Him, but if you are without Christ in your life, you are lost! You may not fully grasp what it means to be a Christian, but it does not change your need for salvation through Jesus Christ and through Him alone. He does care so very much about you. He created you—and He created you for fellowship with Him for all eternity…if you are willing. And if you do not know Him today, be assured that He’s on the search for you!
Another marvelous thing that leaps out to me from these three stories is that it doesn’t matter how far we’ve wandered away from Him—God mercifully cares and welcome us back into His fellowship with great joy! I’m reminded of the words sung by a Christian artist known simply as Carman—
It doesn’t matter who you are
It doesn’t matter where you’ve been
It doesn’t matter what the scar
It doesn’t matter what the sin
It doesn’t matter how you fell somewhere along the way
There is healing for your life today.
There’s a river that flows from the fountain of God
And it heals everything along the way
I have tasted and know that for every broken heart
There is healing in Jesus’ name.
It really doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone from God—in your actions or if only in your heart and mind! God mercifully loves you and is thrilled to welcome you back into His fellowship!
God is like the father who had two sons. The younger asked for the share of the property that would someday fall to him. The father conceded and the young man took his money and moved far away. There he squandered his newfound wealth in loose living. And when he hit rock bottom one day, trying just to survive by eating the slop with which the pigs were fed, he came to himself and thought how much better his father’s servants had it than this. He remembered what it was like back home.
So he decided to go back to his father. When they met, he quickly confessed, “Father, I have sinned against God and against you and I am not worthy to be called your son. So just make me one of your hired hands.” But the father hugged him, had new clothes brought to him, put new shoes on his feet, and announced to all that they were going to have a tremendous feast to celebrate that his son had come home! That’s how God responds when someone who’s lost is found!
I’m afraid that sometimes we too have to come to the end of our rope before we are willing to acknowledge how much we need the Lord. But when we do, God sees us coming toward him in the distance, and rushes out to welcome us with open arms. He’s been waiting all along for us to come back to Him, so anxious to see us leave our dreadful existence without Him and so anxious to have us back with Him.
And God is so anxious to forgive all of the sins of our past! He does not wish us to remember what He is willing to forget! One person said that God has a big eraser (Billy Zeoli). He is so anxious to put our sins behind us and help us move forward with Him into the future.
I remember reading a newspaper article a few years ago in the Kansas City Star about a prisoner who was up for parole after serving 13 years in the Kansas State prison system. Kenny Friburg shot a police officer in the face 13 years earlier. That police officer, Dave Moore, had become a police captain—and the article said that Dave Moore went to bat to try to secure Kenny Friburg’s release from prison.
Three years before that, Moore didn’t feel that way about Friburg. He didn’t want to see him released. But then Friburg wrote Moore a long letter describing his feelings, and the years of bitterness and loneliness. Friburg was just 23 years old when, already in some legal troubles, he was trying to flee the state in a stolen car. When Officer Moore pulled him over for failure to use a turn signal, Friburg panicked and used the gun in the seat beside him. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. In the letter he wrote Moore, Friburg said that in the 10 years he’d been in prison, not one person had ever come to visit him.
Officer Moore is a Christian. Actually, Moore is a part of a Nazarene church. He began to sense that God was telling him that he was to reach out to Friburg himself, and so he began to visit him in prison. Officer Dave Moore had the privilege of sharing his faith with Friburg, who eventually accepted Christ and became involved in a Bible study group. Moore’s church got involved in reaching out to Friburg too, and they committed themselves to helping Kenny Friburg make the adjustments to life outside prison whenever he is released. Moore is committed to sticking by the guy who shot him in the face! You see, Officer Moore learned that under all the tough-guy image and beyond all the sins of the past, Kenny Friburg is a person—and God cares about Kenny Friburg just as God cares about you and me.
That’s how God responds to all of us! Underneath all the sins and the rubbish and the stains and the scars of our lives, there is a real person that our Heavenly Father cares deeply about. And God loves each of us—no matter how far we’ve gone from Him. He is merciful in His response to us—and is so anxious to receive us back into His fellowship. He rejoices when those who need Him turn back to Him!
I was probably about two or three years old when our family went a few miles to Fostoria, Ohio to visit friends. My older brothers and I had gone outside to play, and wandered down the sidewalk a little. They decided to race their way back to our friends’ home and took off in a flash. But my little legs couldn’t keep up. I fell way behind and evidently was concentrating so much on my little jog that I didn’t see them end their race and go dashing into the house. I suddenly realized that I didn’t know which house to go into! This neighborhood was strange to me. The whole town was strange to me. I kept walking, hoping to see a house that looked familiar, but never did.
A kind mailman saw me wandering down the sidewalk crying and was immediately concerned for me. After asking me more questions than I could answer, he took me to his home nearby, called the police department, and he and his wife gave me something to eat while I waited. My family and our friends had already realized that I was missing and in their panic had called the police department. A kind police officer came to the mailman’s house where I was, gave me a ride in the police cruiser (which I thought was pretty cool!), and delivered me to grateful parents at the home of our friends.
I can only imagine now how I must have felt then—frightened, alone, confused. And yet I remember the excitement of seeing my parents again and how the desperate feelings of being lost were washed away by the relief of being found.
I remember realizing as a young child that I was spiritually lost and needed Jesus as my friend. And though I felt like I found Him, the truth is that He had been seeking me all along!
You may feel lost today—all alone as you face some hefty pressures in your little world: struggling relationships, work demands, financial obligations, and the whole matter of trying to live a life that has real purpose and meaning. The truth is that you need a Savior! And the Good News today is that God cares about you! It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you—God loves you. It doesn’t matter if you’ve realized before today that you’re lost or not—God’s known it all along and He loves you and has already provided for your salvation. And it doesn’t matter how far away from Him you’ve gone—God is merciful and joyfully welcomes you back into His fellowship.
