Luke 15:1-10
Pray with me. Almighty God, we’re
grateful for the way you include us in the work of the gospel
ministry in this place and to the ends of the earth. We ask
now that you would take our lives. May we live in such a way and
serve you in such a way that our lives are fragrant offerings.
and the fragrance of those offerings rise to your throne, and you
are pleased with our service to you. Gift us with your Holy
Spirit, your graces, and the skills to serve this world. We also commit to you now your
tithes and our offerings, which we have brought into your house
this day. May the name of the Lord Jesus Christ be praised
by all men and women and boys and girls to the ends of the
earth. We make our prayer in the name of Jesus, our Savior.
Amen. You may be seated. Please turn
in your copy of God’s word to Luke chapter 15. Yes, believe
it or not, we’re entering another chapter. Luke is moving at a
little bit more of a rapid pace. We’re at really the midpoint
of Luke. Literarily, you’ll notice that
today we land on the first two of three very important parables
that Jesus gives. We are so familiar with the parable
of the lost sheep. Many of you as children read
wonderful stories of that great tale that comes from Matthew
and Luke, the shepherd who lost one of his hundred seats that
that one until he finds it. The parable of the lost coin,
I’m not so sure you’re as familiar with. And the next week we’ll
take a look at the prodigal son, one of the greatest stories of
the father’s love. that we find in the Bible. And
so we give our attention to God’s word now to the first 10 verses
of Luke chapter 15. Let’s hear God’s word. Now the tax collectors and sinners
were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the
scribes grumbled saying, this man receives sinners and eats
with them. So he told them this parable,
what man of you having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of
them, does not leave the 99 in the open country and go after
the one that is lost until he finds it. And when he has found
it, he lays it on its shoulders rejoicing. And when he comes
home, He calls together his friends and his neighbors saying to them,
rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. Just
so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner
who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Or what woman having 10 silver
coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep
the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when
she has found it, she calls together her friend and neighbor saying,
rejoice with me for I have found the coin that I had lost. Just
so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner
who repents. This is the word of the living
God. Let’s ask for God’s help and blessing. Lord, there is so much in our
minds and hearts that we need. We have our to-do list, our shopping
list, our needs and wants and desires. And very often we forget
how much we need your word. So in these moments now as your
word is read and preached before us, We pray that you would give
us a hunger and a thirst for the righteousness that is laid
up before us in these scriptures. Hear us and help us as we pray
in the name of Jesus. Amen. A couple of months ago,
I found myself the minister at a wedding and after the wedding
was over, made my way to the reception with the rest of the
crowd. And there were probably 20 tables in this reception area. No assigned seats. And so I stood
back, having a little bit of a feeling like I did my first
day of middle school, holding my tray with trembling hands,
wondering where I was going to sit and who I was going to sit
with. So I stood back and scanned the crowd and looked at different
families and people out saying, who would it be most interesting
to sit with? Well, I finally decided upon sitting with the
groomsmen. And as I made my way up to their
table, you could see the look on their face. Oh no, the preacher
is going to sit with us. And so I sat down, ordered a
beer and lit a cigarette. No, that’s not how it worked.
Put them at ease. No, but I sat down with them
and you could see over time their their apprehension of the preacher
sitting with them went down. I began to ask one about his
profession and another about his children. And so the conversation
went that finally, after a little while, they were at ease. And
we had a delightful conversation over time about where the state
of things are in America. And as they begin to articulate
their faith in front of each other and with me, we had a very
encouraging conversation, I thought. But that awkward moment turned
into a delightful dinner conversation. And I think we very often believe
that as Christians, and especially as preachers, we should not sit
with sinners but sinners also don’t want to sit with us. And
there must have been something about the Lord Jesus that made
these people want to interact with them. As we notice at the
beginning of our passage, we see that the Pharisees are grumbling. They’re murmuring. It’s a hearkening
back to the murmuring of the Israelites in the wilderness.
You know the word onomatopoeia, right? It’s a word that sounds,
the meaning comes out of the word. And so you can just hear
murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur, right? Your kids do it in the
backseat. They do it at the dinner table when green beans are on
the plate, that kind of thing. And we big people, we adults
murmur as well. Well, the Pharisees are murmuring.
They are grumbling. They are grumping that Jesus
eats or receives. He shows hospitality to tax collectors
and sinners. And dear friends, if we love
the Lord Jesus and love his gospel, and we rejoice in what it all
means to us, And we take seriously the command to go into all the
world and preach the gospel to every nation. Don’t you think
that we’ve got to be willing to receive sinners? Don’t you
believe that we’ve got to be willing to interact with those
who aren’t our kind? Don’t you believe that the practical
outworking of the call of the gospel on each and every one
of us means that we need to go into the places where God sends
us and be willing to share the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, our passage begins so wonderfully today. It says that all the tax
collectors and sinners were drawing near Jesus to hear him. And I
don’t want you to miss out on this passage being connected
to last week’s passage. How did last week’s passage end?
Just look back at 1434, I believe it is. He who has ears to hear,
let him hear. Well, who has the ears to hear?
It’s not the Pharisees and the scribes and the teachers of the
law. It’s the tax collectors and the sinners. They want to
sit with Jesus. They want to be at his table.
They want to be under his influence. and hear what it is he has to
say. Now, Jesus, seeing as he has
so often in his interaction with the Pharisees, he sees their
hearts. They don’t love the lost. They
don’t love sinners. They don’t believe that sick
people need a physician. And so Jesus wants to expose
their rotten hearts. He wants to expose their hypocritical
thinking. He wants to expose their lack
of love for those in need of God’s mercy and grace. And so this is a message to the
self-righteous. You don’t need repentance, but
others do. And so let them come to Jesus. And Jesus, in his interaction
with these Pharisees and scribes, gives them two parables. And
in these parables, we see four things, something lost, something
sought, something found, and something celebrated. And so
we want to take a peek at each of these four features of these
two parables. And also keep in mind that the
greatest of the three lost things will come next week as we look
at the parable of the lost son. First of all, something lost.
I don’t know if y’all caught it in the news this week, but
over in Scotland at an auction, a sheep, one sheep went for $490,000. Now that must have been some
sheep. Must have had Charlotte’s web right over it instead of
some pig, some sheep. He must have been a special sheep.
Well, actually he was. Apparently this sheep is from
good stock and can produce quickly. And the lambs that are produced
from this sheep’s sire apparently grow fast and make it to the
butcher. really quickly. And so what’s
in the back of these folks’ mind who paid nearly half a million
dollars for this one sheep? Money. And so this sheep was
worth it to them to pay half a million dollars. Now, the lost
sheep in our story is not worth half a million dollars. And it’s
not worth half a million dollars even in 2,000 years ago shekels
or whatever. It’s just a lost sheep, but you
can imagine that the shepherd wanted all 100 of his lambs.
He wanted all 100 of them if they were his especially, but
it could be that he was watching a neighbor’s sheep and mixed
in with his flock was a sheep, not his own. And so Jesus says,
what a shepherd among you does not go after that lost sheep. There’s something else lost in
this passage. It’s a lost coin. Last year at a football game,
as I was walking in the gate, I just had my ticket scanned
and was walking towards my seat. I noticed on the ground a $20
bill. Well, I picked it up. And thinking very quickly to
myself, how could this become mine? You don’t stand at a ball
game with 10,000 people and say, did anybody lose a 20, right?
there’s going to be lots of volunteers. And so I just thank the Lord,
stuck it in my pocket and it helped with the day’s concessions. You know, the $6 Cokes and the
$12 popcorns, those kinds of things. But you can probably
imagine nobody really missed that 20. unless it was maybe
a 20 belonging to a kid. But they didn’t miss it. They
probably didn’t even know that it was gone. It may have never
been looked for. And besides, how do you look
for something that you lose in such a crowd? But to this lady
in our passage today, this woman who lost one of her 10 coins,
it was a good portion of a day’s wages. It was a good portion
of her personal wealth. And Jesus is pointing out to
the Pharisees and the scribes in our passage, he’s pointing
out to us, we will lose things of great value to us, but forget
that there are things of greater value that are lost. And it’s
a good reminder to us, isn’t it, brothers and sisters, that
all around us in the world, maybe even in our own homes and families
or our work circles, there are lost people. There are people
who are dead in their sins and trespasses. They remain shackled
under the bonds of slavery to Satan and to sin. And there are
people all around us who know not Christ. There are people
all around us who are living futile lives day by day, week
by week, month by month, year by year, living in complete futility
until their death, where they will live in everlasting punishment
and separation from Almighty God. And so while in our passage,
there are things that are lost that are of great value to those
who will go seek them. We must remember that there are
lost things, no lost people all around us. So never, ever let
your heart grow callous towards those who are lost, but be like
Jesus, receive them, welcome them and work with them until
they come to know the Lord Jesus. So in this passage, there’s something
lost. But there’s also something sought. Now, this man who lost
a sheep, he lost one out of a hundred. Now, do your percentage real
quick. That’s one percent. You know, we go to Walmart and
buy something and we return it 30 days later. It probably can’t
be sold again. And so what do you think they
figure in their profit and loss sheet? Well, you win some and
you lose some. And we don’t know how much they
have figured in at Walmart or Lowe’s or grocery stores. You
know, somebody’s going to drop a dozen eggs and splatter them
all over the floor. Of course they can’t resell those.
So we have loss built into our economy, built into our world.
But this man loses 1% of his sheep and he’s going to go look
for it. Now, this woman loses 10% of
her well-being. She loses one coin out of 10.
Do your quick percentage math there. She’s lost 10% of her
coinage. Now, she probably wore these
coins in a little sack around her neck, or maybe it was tucked
in her waist. It’s likely the coins came untied,
the pouch was lost. She went searching. She found
nine, but couldn’t find the tenth. Now you understand in the ancient
Near East, money was used very differently than we use it today.
If this woman had 10 coins, she likely carried them with her
everywhere she went, but she did not spend them. She probably
grew something or made something and bartered with others. Currency
was rarely ever exchanged among maybe simple folks or people
in the villages and towns of the ancient Near East. So what
she lost was valuable. Yes, she still had nine coins,
but the one lost one was important. And the same with the one lost
sheep. Now, why would Jesus point out
to the scribes and Pharisees that what was lost was also sought. Well, what he’s doing is he’s
exposing their heart. They don’t care about what’s
lost, but he’s reminding them of his heart. He’s reminding
them of what they ought to know as scribes of the ancient Old
Testament literature. The theme of shepherd runs through
the Old Testament books of the Bible. Oh, they knew Ezekiel
34. It’s a rather scathing passage, wasn’t it? And if that came to
their minds, they knew that Jesus knew who they were and what they
were up to. We all, as I’m sure the people
in the Old Covenant knew Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want. And so on and on through the
Old Testament scriptures, we could go and we could be quickly
reminded of the pervasive shepherd theme throughout the Old Testament
scriptures. But one cannot forget what Jesus
says so often in the book of Luke. I came to seek and to save
the lost. That’s Jesus’ reason for coming.
In a few moments, we’re gonna sing a hymn. Once in Royal David
City, I’m not crazy, I know it’s a Christmas hymn, but you know
that line in there, he came down to earth from heaven. Jesus went
to great lengths to seek and save the lost. He left the riches
of heaven. He could have stayed and said, let them die, Father.
They did it. They’re guilty. Just let them
be. But no, he left the riches and
glories of heaven in order that we might have the riches and
glory of heaven with him in eternity. Jesus’ mission is to seek and
to save the lost. And so what does he tell us in
this passage about something sought? Well, the shepherd leaves
the other 99 in the open field. There were probably other shepherds.
So don’t get too worried in the details of the story that he
forsook 99 to get the other and don’t don’t start thinking about
church and getting seen somebody in two weeks. So we leave the
99 don’t don’t don’t get into that too much. But the point
is this, something was lost and something needed to be sought. Something needed to be gone after. And so he leaves the 99 and he
goes until it’s found. What does it say about the woman
who lost her coin? She lights a lamp. She sweeps
the dirt floor of her house. She gets on her hands and knees
and she looks and looks and looks until she finds it. And again,
dear brothers and sisters of Christ, Jesus is saying something
is lost and therefore something ought to be sought. Do we seek
what is lost in this world? Do we know in our minds and in
our hearts that that person next door who’s a real pain in the
you know what neighbor, right? They always fuss about the lawn.
They always fuss about the kids. They always fuss about where
your tire is over on their side of the yard. You know how it
is. Do we worry more about how they treat us, or do we worry
more about their lost condition? That’s a good question, isn’t
it? And you could put that in the
terms of the workplace. You’ve got a workmate two desks
over, and they’re a real pain in the you know where. And you
just avoid them. Friends, they’re lost. And it
might be that God might have you be kind to them. It might
be that God might have you reach out to them and take them to
lunch, and you’ll find out who they are, that they’re a real
person. Oh, yes, they’re a pain, but they’re a real person whose
greater pain is that they’re lost and without hope and in
need of a savior, even Jesus Christ. And so we need to be
people who drop it all to seek the lost. who need to be found. That’s the third thing this passage
teaches us. Something lost, something sought, and now something found. This past week, we lost one of
the, you know, the little earbuds, the Apple earbuds you stick in
your ear. You know, those things are kind of pricey. They come
in pairs, right? So you’ve got to buy two new
ones if you lose one. Well, we searched. We looked
everywhere, under the beds, in the covers, everywhere. Couldn’t
find it. Then we finally found it. It’s
always some mysterious place. I’m getting to the point where
I lose car keys. Any of y’all there? And you know how it is
when we lose something. We don’t say to your wife or
children, whoever’s in the house, real humbly, I’ve lost my keys. What do we say? Did you take
my keys? Right? That puts the weight on
somebody else. But isn’t it a great joy when
we find something? It’s a great joy when we find
car keys now. Car keys aren’t cheap. Have you
gone to the dealership to get a new one? I mean, you can’t
just go to Lowe’s now and get a $0.99 copy made, or an earbud,
or you lose your purse, or you lose a little bit of cash that
you had, or you lose, oh, heaven forbid, the TV remote. Pain and
suffering right there. But we rejoice when something
is found. But do we rejoice when a lost
soul comes to Jesus? Do we do we rejoice? When a child
comes to faith, why does Jesus tell these parables? Well, he
tells these parables because our value system is much like
the scribes and the Pharisees. We’re more worried about lost
car keys. We’re more worried about lost
earbuds and lost coins and lost dollars or a lost TV remote. We’re so worried about these
things. And when we find them, we think, okay, the world is
better. But does our value system rejoice? Does it rejoice when
the word of God is preached or when the slow and year by year
ministry of the church produces fruit that we can barely sometimes
see with our eyes, but it culminates in the baptism of a young person
who returns to the church or a little one who professes faith
in Jesus or even someone in their old age who comes around to realizing
they’re sinners in need of God’s grace. Something found is something
we often miss out on. Did you catch what’s going on
in this passage, though? When this shepherd who probably
goes all night out looking for the sheep finds that sheep, He
throws this hundred pound beast on his shoulders and he walks
all the way home after a tired night of searching. He walks
all the way home with this beast burdening his shoulders. This
woman who loses her coin runs out of the house, look neighbors,
and tells everyone. But what about the name of the
person we know is lost? Do we anticipate that day when
that person by whose name we would call them would be lost,
sought, but found by the gospel of Jesus. That’s what Jesus is
trying to open our eyes to see this day. Well, the last thing
this passage tells us is something celebrated. Remember the Pharisees
and the scribes, they’re grumbling. They’re grumbling and they’re
murmuring. Jesus receives tax collectors
and sinners. Now, I don’t know about y’all,
but if you’re in business, what is the number one thing you need?
You need customers, right? And if tax collectors and centers
are the customers of the gospel, don’t you think that these scribes
and Pharisees would be standing at the door saying, come on in,
you know, seeing dollar signs like we would if we were a shopkeeper
or seeing gospel hope if we love the Lord Jesus and his appearing. Well, they’re grumbling and murmuring
that the tax collectors and centers are being received by Jesus. But what happens in our story
today? Don’t miss this. When the shepherd comes home,
you can imagine him walking all night. He comes home and what
do you think he does? Does he put the sheep in the
fold and just go plop in the bed and say, boy, what a night?
That’s what he should have done. But he wakes up the rest of his
buddies. Look, fellas. It literally says
in the passage, he went and found all his male friends and said,
look, What I sought that was lost is found. And he rejoices
over this little gnarly sheep. And remember, it’s not the $500,000
one that just went up for auction. This is just a little old mangy
sheep, probably lost in the crevice of some rocks. And what does
it say the woman does in our passage? Literally says she called
all her girlfriends, all her women friends and said, I found
my coin. She goes tearing out of the house.
I found it. I found it. I found it. I found it. They
knew in such a little village, what was troubling her. And now they rejoice with her.
What is Jesus trying to say here? He’s saying, look, when something
is lost on earth, there is rejoicing in heaven. when it is found. Over the years in my ministry,
it’s been particularly joyful. It’s been very rare, but it’s
been particularly a great joy. When, when a child of a family
who has wandered away from the faith comes back home and they
profess faith in Jesus, they repent of their sins. They wish
they had not made the choices they made, but they come before
the church and say, I now follow Jesus. That’s a big day. That is a big celebration when
a sinner who was lost and is now found comes home to be with
God’s people and to be with his or her family. This man receives
sinners. You bet he does. And he throws
a party as we’re going to see in the weeks to come. When we
look at the parable of the prodigal son, I want you to remember this
about God. God is the one who seeks. We
live in a world where we’re trying to make church palatable to those
who are in the world who are lost and dead in their sins.
And so we’ve created what we call the seeker sensitive movement.
We seek, we try to make church palatable for those who are seeking.
What does the Bible say though? There is one seeker. And who
is that one seeker? It is God himself. He seeks the
lost and he pursues until found. Remember when Adam and Eve, broke
God’s law. He had told them one thing, don’t
eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day
you eat of it, you will surely die. Satan came and lied to them
and tempted them. Eve ate from the fruit. Adam
was with her, took some, ate too. They all of a sudden had
their eyes opened. They saw their sin. They saw
their shame. And what did they do? They hid
from God. They sowed fig leaves to try
to cover their shame. And as God sit up in the corner
of the garden with his arms crossed and say, well, that’s the end
of that. No, it says God came looking. Friends, that’s the
God we have. And if we are to be God-like,
shouldn’t we go looking to seek and save the lost as well? Let’s
pause and pray together. Lord, give us hearts like your
own that see people in their lost estate and have mercy and
tender hearts toward them. Lord, let us not be cold and
callous and indifferent I like the scribes and the Pharisees,
but Lord, may we even go home this day and think through our
friends, our neighbors, our family, our loved ones who may not know
you. And some of us are timid, some of us are bold, but may
we at least begin in prayer, praying that you might give us
opportunity to share with them the glorious gospel of the Lord
Jesus. We make this our prayer and pray
it in Jesus name, amen.