23 Jan

9/23/18     LUKE 15:1-10      “CELEBRATING THE LOST”

I am one of those people who like to look on the bright side of things.  I mean this in a spiritual way.  I think that most if not all our problems in this world and in our lives stems from our lack of knowing Jesus Christ.  It’s that simple.  I have been told off many times when I have said something like this.  Everyone is so eager to solve their own problems and they don’t even realize that they don’t have to have the problems in the first place if they would just follow Jesus in all they do.   I always find it interesting to turn on the TV to some television evangelist who is telling us that we are all terrible sinners because we aren’t living out our lives in Christ in his or her way of Christianity.  They like to blame us because we aren’t out there finding the lost and presenting Jesus Christ to them.  Don’t get me wrong here.  This is exactly what we are supposed to be doing but then they really don’t tell us much about what to do with these people after we have found them.  And I think that maybe this is kind of important to those who have just committed their lives to Jesus.  They not only need Jesus but they need a support system to help them express their love for Him.  Today we will take a look at just who are the lost and what are we to do with them.

Have any of you ever lost something like the people did in the Scripture today?  Well, I have.  Usually I quote someone at this point and tell a story.  Today, however, I would like to tell a story that really happened to me.  This happened many years ago when our two youngest daughters were quite young.  They love it when I tell a story about them.

One morning, I was up early as usual.  The doors were closed to the girl’s rooms and I never gave it a thought to check on them.  After all, nothing had ever happened to them before.  Anyway, it wasn’t too long before I figured they should have been up so I checked on them.  I found that Brandy was just fine and sound asleep.  But I just didn’t see Monique anywhere.

So we went back to her room and looked again.  She wasn’t there.  I looked in the closet and under the bed.  She wasn’t there.  About now the adrenalin was starting to flow a bit.  I checked the basement where she might have gone to watch TV.   She wasn’t anywhere down there.  I was beginning to get real upset.

I raced back upstairs and checked Brandy’s room again because sometimes they would crawl in together and she might have been lost in the blankets.  Remember, she is only about three years old.  But she wasn’t there.

Finally, I go back into her room and I really look under the bed.  Even in her younger days she liked to have a lot of stuff under there.  I moved some of the stuff and there she was.  She had crawled under the bed and over to the far side, up against the wall.  She was sound asleep.  I hadn’t realized how upset I was until I found her and felt the tremendous relief.  I wouldn’t doubt that many of you have had similar experiences.

And this is the same kind of experience that we read about in the two parables in today’s Scripture.  Please remember that Jesus is far more upset about one lost person than I was about a lost daughter.  Think about that!  But before we get there I would like you to notice to whom Jesus is speaking.  He is speaking to the Pharisees and teachers and they are mad because He is eating with tax collectors and sinners.  Tax collectors were considered almost the lowest of the low by the Jews.  They were Jews who were betraying other Jews for money.

Then he begins the parable of the lost sheep.  We all know the story of having 100 sheep and one is lost.  The shepherd leaves the 99 to go and find the one that is lost.  This one that is lost is important to the shepherd like Monique is important to me.  But the difference is that a sheep really doesn’t have a lot of value in the herd of 99.  Many people and shepherds would not go look for the one lost sheep because it would be too dangerous to leave the rest unattended.  After all, they still had 99.  So this is decision time.

But this shepherd is special.  He knows and loves his flock and will try to save them no matter what the situation.  And just to show how important they are, when he finds the one lost sheep he calls for friends and neighbors to come and help him celebrate.

Now let’s contrast this story with the one of the lost coin.  Here we have a coin that was probably part of the woman’s dowry that is lost in her house which has a dirt floor and very little light.  It would be very easy to lose it in such an environment.  And unlike the sheep that wasn’t very valuable, the coin is worth quite a bit.  And when it is found she also calls in her friends and neighbors for a celebration.

There are a couple of other interesting things going on here.  Please note that in the first story, the main character is a shepherd.  Shepherds were considered to be very low on the social scale of the times.  Plus the shepherd was looking for a sheep that wasn’t that valuable.  This really couldn’t have been that impressive to the big shot Pharisees.  Then Jesus tops this off with a story where the central character is a woman.  We have talked before about how this culture considered women to be just above slaves in social status.  Jesus knew exactly what buttons to push on these Pharisees to show them that they just don’t get it.  He uses sinners, tax collectors, shepherds and women.

And how does Jesus show us how wrong we are today?  He uses the same methods He used 2000 years ago.  I was at a church in the Fargo area a while back and I asked them the question, “What are you doing to help the homeless and the hungry in the downtown area?”  I had looked hard in their programs and I had found nothing.  Many churches do a good job of ministering to each other and don’t have much of an outreach.  The people I asked never really gave me an answer.  Instead they looked at me like I was an outsider which I thankfully was.

How sad is it that we have all of these feel good mega churches that have no programs of outreach?  Their idea of mission is how many people came forward on Sunday morning and saved their souls.  Now don’t get me wrong, this is something that has to be done.  But it is not our sole purpose.  There are many other things that are just as important.

When you are reading your Bible in the coming weeks I would like you to pay special attention to how Jesus ministers to people.  Jesus will almost always deal with the physical needs of people before the spiritual needs.  He will feed them, or heal them, or give them a drink.  People cannot hear us if they are starving to death which has been caused by dictators or oppressive religions.  People cannot hear us if they are wounded from a war that they are helpless to stop.  People cannot hear us when they have nothing to drink.  It has never worked and never will that we can go into a country or area and tell people that Jesus is real and expect them to come flocking to our missionaries.  The only way it works is if we tend to their physical needs first.  So anytime you are ministering to a hungry or hurting people, give them what they need but do it in the name of Jesus Christ.

This is what John Wesley did in England and this country.  That is why the Methodists were the fastest growing denomination for so many years.  This is why they are the fastest growing and largest denomination in Africa today.  And this is why all denominations do such a lousy job in this country.  We need to go out to minister to people before they will come to our doors.  And we need to do this in the name of Jesus.

As we move on in the passage we find that both the shepherd and woman celebrate the finding of the lost.  They don’t just celebrate; they call in friends and neighbors to celebrate.  Keep in mind now that the sheep probably isn’t worth that much in our eyes.  He still had 99 left.  But he celebrates anyway.  Then Jesus goes on to tell the Pharisees that there will be more celebrating in heaven over one person who repents than 99 righteous people who don’t need to repent or have already repented.  And He repeats this in the story of the woman and the coin.

We have to be careful when we read this.  This does not mean that Jesus doesn’t love those of us who have already repented.  He loves us just as much as He loves the others.  We, however, are in a different point in our journey.  We have already had our celebration.  Every person is born into sin and has to find their way back to God.  For some of us it was a gradual process and Jesus finally came to control our lives.  For others, like me, it was an earth shattering moment where He suddenly entered my heart and changed me completely.  And there may be others here this morning that don’t know Jesus yet.  Confess your sins to Him and ask Him into your heart today.  You will not be disappointed.  You will never regret it.

And when you do finally come to know Jesus, then there will be a celebration for you in heaven.  Just think of that.  The spiritual universe will stop doing whatever its doing and have a special celebration just for you.  You may not realize just how important you are in all this but you are very important to Jesus and I don’t think that it gets much better than that.

Jesus is telling them and us that the lost are important no matter whom they are.  Our friends, our neighbors, those down on their luck and the poor are all important to Jesus.  And let us not forget about those who we don’t like so much.  Let us not forget about the homosexuals, the Muslims and those different from us.  They are just as important as anyone else.  Jesus wants all to come to Him and not just a few.

And that is one of the things that we have to be careful of when we minister.  There is not a person in our community or country that doesn’t deserve a chance to get to know Jesus Christ.  I think that it is important that we go and welcome new neighbors and just new people into our community.  We could ask them how they are doing and what do they need to help them settle into their new surroundings.  Then we can ask them to church and offer to bring them.  Let’s minister to people first and then ask them to church.

As you can see, this is not very complicated.  Or as the saying goes, “This isn’t rocket science or computer science in today’s world.”  Jesus kept this very simple and it is something that you can do also.  Every person you meet needs Jesus.  Simply show them the love of Jesus in some way.

Larry Sarver gives us a perfect example of how this works.  He is a former policeman and has seen many accidents.  He has noted that there are three kinds of people at the scene of an accident.  The first group is the bystanders.  They are there to see what happened.  They are the curious and want very little or no involvement.  The next group is the police officers.  They are there to investigate the accident, assign blame and hand out the appropriate warnings or punishments.  The last group is the paramedics.  These are the people most welcomed by those involved in the accident.  They could care less about who is at fault, and they don’t engage in any lecturing about bad driving habits.  They are there to help the hurt.  They bandage wounds, free trapped people and give words of encouragement.

We have three groups of people in our world.  One is uninvolved, one is assigning blame or pointing their fingers at everyone else and assessing punishment and the last one is helping the hurting.  Which group are you in?  I am sure that there are times when you have been in all of these groups.  I am never very proud of myself when I’m not involved.  I feel self-important when I can assign the blame.  But I feel good when I am helping the hurting.  I feel like I am actually being a part of God.

There is something that you can start to do today to help put you in that last group.  You can start your own mission project or start one in your church.  In our area in North Dakota we have many people who are hurting.  One of my favorite missions is the children on our reservations.  Winter is coming soon and many of these children have no winter clothes.  It gets brutally cold up here.  Why not start a winter clothing drive to help some of these children?  It’s not their fault that they are so poor but you can help them with your donations.  Or maybe you know of another project in your church or in your area.  Then help them out.  You can count this as part of your tithe.  There are many different mission projects out there.  Contact me if you want need some help.  I will gladly help you in any way I can.  And the best part of helping others who are less fortunate than us is that God will feel very good about you also.

And when God is feeling very good about you, then you will feel even better.  I have said this before.  God wants only what is the very best for us.  And the best for us is to be helping our neighbors and inviting them to become a part of God’s family.  This isn’t very hard if we do it God’s way and not our own way.  When we become God’s paramedics, people will be glad to see us.  I praise the Lord when I can help in some little way.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.