Lost and Found

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I know I can’t be the only person in here who loses things. I’ve heard some of your stories about things you’ve lost, and you do exactly what I do when you lose something. You tear everything apart until you find it.

And then a lot of times we find it in the place that makes the least sense. Where you put it? Well, there’s one of those instances that happened in my house recently that I won’t say it’s where I put it.

I won’t say it’s where my wife put it. I don’t know who put it where it was. Back right before deer season started, I was getting everything ready to take the kids with me hunting.

And we had spent, y’all know kids’ clothes are expensive, right? So we had spent months preparing ahead of time and looking and having my mother look and having Charla’s mother look to try to find kids’ camo clothes on consignment or at the thrift shops. There’s no point in paying hundreds of dollars for something they’re not going to wear, but a few days, a couple weeks out of the year.

So we’d prepared ahead of time. We bought all these camo clothes. I thought they were with this enormous stack of stuff that was growing in our bedroom where I was collecting all the hunting stuff in one spot to go through it.

And we get ready, I think, the night before opening day, and we’re getting everything together. We cannot find those camo clothes. Charles says, well, they were in such and such spot.

I said, well, that does nothing to help me now because they’re not there. And so we went to looking. She said, well, I know I didn’t move them.

And I believe her because my wife does not make mistakes. All right. That was not sarcasm.

I really do believe her. My wife does not misplace things. I do, but my wife does not.

She said, would you have gone and put them up somewhere? And I said, what about our marriage up to this point makes you think I just randomly clean things up around the house? I do sometimes, but they were camo clothes.

I mean, I’m not going to notice them sitting there. They blend in. And that was part of the problem.

We’re looking for things that were designed to blend in. And so we spent hours the night before opening day of deer season tearing the house apart looking for these camo clothes. We had other things the kids could wear, but it just bugged us that these particular shirts and pants were missing.

it bugged us we didn’t care about all these over here that we had we wanted to find these that were missing and so we tore everything apart and I spent way more time than I should have trying to find those particular clothes when I when I had all this other stuff over here to get ready and by the way to to round the story out we did find it around we did find them around christmas time after Christmas in the top of the girls’ closet. Madeline and definitely Carly Jo are too short to put them where we found them. Benjamin, I think, is too.

. . Charlie, maybe, you know, swung upside down, I don’t know.

But again, my wife does not misplace things, and that’s not one of my. . .

When I do go pick things up and put them away, that’s not one of my spots where I would have put them away. So we don’t know how they got there. But we, in that moment, we were doing everything we could to find those, because those mattered.

They were the ones that were missing. Forget all this other stuff we’ve got over here. We need to go find the stuff that’s missing.

And Jesus told a story that was a lot like that, where God looked at what was missing and said, that’s what matters right now. I’ve got to go find what’s lost right now. So if you would, turn with me to Luke chapter 15.

Luke chapter 15 this morning. and we’re going to look at this story that Jesus told where he illustrated how God never forgets about what’s lost and how God has gone to great lengths to find what is lost. Luke chapter 15, starting in verse 1, we’re going to look at verses 1 through 7. Starting in verse 1, it says, All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him.

And the Pharisees and scribes were complaining, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. How dare he? He sits down with sinners.

Verse 3, so he told them this parable. Jesus heard their objections and decided to answer with a story. Verse 4, what man among you, who has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open field and go after the lost one until he finds it?

when he has found it he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and coming home he calls his friends and neighbors together saying to them rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep I tell you in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don’t need repentance so what was taking place in this story was that the the wrong people had come to learn at jesus at jesus feet it was all the wrong people were flocking to jesus in their religious gathering they didn’t have the church at that point they didn’t have a building to go to they didn’t they didn’t do exactly what we do now but they gathered to learn from jesus and all the wrong people were there and for some of the religious people they were disgusted by that they were disgusted Jesus don’t you know who you’re with don’t you know who this is who’ve come to hear from you don’t you know what they’re like you know we obviously we want to to reach people but not those kind of people because these were the tax collectors and the sinners it’s interesting to me that they’re called tax collectors and sinners, as though there are people out there who aren’t sinners.

But the Pharisees were pretty ignorant to this. For all their religious learning, they were ignorant to the fact that they were sinners because they got so wrapped up in their own goodness that they really thought they were better than they were. My father-in-law told me a story a few months ago about a preacher he knows who’s a fairly big-name preacher.

I’m not going to him because y’all would know who it is. And I’m getting this story secondhand. But he said, you know, I knew this guy way back when.

And so we went to something he was going to be at and we were visiting with him. He just did not have time for the people that were there to see him. He was interested in talking to the media and dealing with them.

And other than that, it was keeping everybody at arm’s length. And he said, you know, I don’t know what happened other than he just started to believe his own press. There’s a danger in that.

When you start to believe your own press and people talk about how great you are and how good you are and you start to believe it, we can get to the point where we think we’re not like those sinners down there in the gutter. The Pharisees had started to believe their own press. They had all their rules and their traditions.

Forget the fact that their hearts were distant from God. On the outside, they looked good. They had their and their traditions, and nobody was as good at keeping those things as the Pharisees were.

The irony here is they’re pointing out with this horror and disgust that these sinners were gathered at the feet of Jesus and didn’t realize that they were no better off than these sinners. They were sinners just like them, and in some cases maybe even worse, because at least these sinners over here acknowledge their need for Jesus. but all the wrong people showed up and I hope we don’t ever fall into that mindset when we get together to learn from Jesus when we follow Jesus together and come together for these things I hope we don’t ever get to the point where we look out and think oh no who invited those people you know those sinners we want to reach people and I’ve seen this in a number of churches we want to reach people we want to reach people with the gospel we want to reach the right kind of people.

We want to reach people who are just like us. Let’s not fall in that religious trap, okay? These were the wrong kind of people.

And when they pointed that out, they criticized Jesus for ministering to those people. And so Jesus told them this story. And just to go back over the details of this story so we’re clear on them.

Jesus tells them a story to illustrate this, And it seems to be a story that Jesus used on multiple occasions. Because there’s another place in the book of Matthew where he tells this story. And the events surrounding the story, like what was going on when Jesus decided to tell the story, don’t match up with Luke.

Now, that’s not a contradiction. That tells me he told this story on two different occasions. And we all kind of have those go-to stories that we like to tell.

maybe about our own lives or to illustrate different things. This is a story Jesus told when people needed to understand what was important to God. So he tells this story of a shepherd who has a hundred sheep, and they’re supposed to be out here in the pasture, safe and secure, being watched over by the shepherd, but he takes his head count, you know how you do, he takes his head count and he realizes there are only 99 there.

He’s supposed to have 100, and 99 is less than 100, right? It’s been a few years since I was in school, but I still remember that. 99 is less than 100, so he realized one of them had to be missing.

Now, the shepherd, obviously, is going to leave the 99 safe there in the pasture, and he’s going to go looking for the one lost one. Because there’s a sheep out there, and I’ve told you over recent weeks that what I’ve learned about sheep, not by experience, but just from research, is that sheep are stupid. And sheep, more than any other animal, they need a caretaker.

Because if not, they’re just kind of like the Whataburger of the pasture. You know, everything wants to eat them. The wolves, the bears, the lions, they’re going to be after them.

On top of that, sheep will wander into dangerous situations. We watched a show on National Geographic with the kids yesterday while I was trying to mend up from allergy sickness. This vet was trying to deal with sheep, and the sheep would get themselves into these precarious spots on the sides of hills, and they had to be very careful because if they spooked the sheep, the sheep might roll down the side of this mountain, and they said it could be fatal. So sheep are so dumb, they’re going to put themselves deliberately in these positions where they could die just because their own skittishness and their own nerves causes them to plunge themselves to their deaths.

Sheep are not smart creatures. And so you get a sheep out on its own, you get a sheep out on its own, it’s going to get into trouble. That sheep is not going to last long unless the shepherd goes and gets it and takes it back to where it’s supposed to be.

So he said that naturally the shepherd is going to leave the 99 there in the field and he’s going to go look for the lost one. And he’s not going to just give a cursory inspection of the hills. He’s going to go out and he’s going to search.

He’s going to leave no stone unturned until he finds that sheep. He’s going to be out there all night if that’s what it takes to find that sheep and bring it home. Because that sheep does not stand a chance without the shepherd.

So he said he’s going to go find it. Not just look for it, he’s going to find it. And when he has found it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders.

I talked about how we’ve all lost things. Have you been in those circumstances where you’ve lost things and you didn’t find it for months? I mean, you’re looking, you’re digging, you’re trying to find it, and you’re probably not searching continually for months because we still have to live.

But when you think about it, you go and you keep searching. You have not forgotten. and then months later you find it aren’t you excited charlotte or I will normally call usually it’s me having lost something but I’ll or she’ll call me and say hey I found what you lost it’s right in the general area where I told you it would be well I looked there but I’m not as good I’m not as good looking or as good at looking as she is all And so she’ll find these things.

She’ll call me, and I’ll be excited it’s been found. Or I’ll call her, hey, I’ve been looking for this, and I finally found it. And, you know, I’m excited.

Especially if it’s something important. I’ve been known to lose two things, my keys and my checkbook. And, you know, when my checkbook shows up two months later, I keep an eye on the account and make sure, if I’m not seeing money go out that’s not supposed to, I figure it’s still lost in the house somewhere.

There was one time recently, after Brother Greg and I went to disaster relief training, I could not find my checkbook for three or four weeks. Finally, Charla found it in my truck, wedged down between the console and the seat, fallen out of my pocket. I was so excited.

My checkbook, which was dead, is now alive again. I found it. You know what I’m talking about, though?

You get excited when something that was lost, that mattered to you, is found. And he said the sheep is like that only more so. That sheep is important to the shepherd.

He’s been out combing the hills and the valleys looking for this sheep. And when he finally finds it, he rejoices because that sheep that was lost, that was vulnerable, is now reunited with the shepherd. And he’s excited.

And he puts the sheep up here on his shoulders and carries it home. He doesn’t just prod the sheep along with a stick and say, get home. No, he lovingly puts it, because a sheep that’s been out there wandering on its own, it may be weak, it may be hurt.

He lovingly puts it on his shoulders and he carries it home. And coming home, he calls his friends and neighbors together, saying to them, rejoice with me because I’ve found my lost sheep. See, if you laugh at me for getting excited about finding stuff and calling Charlie, it’s right here in the Bible.

It says that we’re supposed to rejoice over these things. He says rejoice with me. I found it.

This is cause for a celebration. This is something we ought to celebrate. Don’t focus on and harp on how stupid the sheep was to get lost in the first place.

Don’t lament all the lost time with the sheep. Don’t mourn over the amount of time and energy that you’ve spent looking for it. Rejoice that the sheep that was lost is now found.

And he said in verse 7, I tell you in the same way there’s going to be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous who don’t need repentance. So a good shepherd is going to leave the ninety-nine and he’s going to go out and look for the one. now it might be tempting to stay home and pet the 99 sheep it’d be a whole lot easier to sit home and pet the 99 found ones but the shepherd realizes that one is just as valuable as any of the found ones and right now is in more need and so he goes and looks and he goes and finds the one that needs to be saved and the shepherd cares enough about the sheep that he’s willing to pursue every last one.

And aren’t we glad that he is? Because any one of the 99 may have been the one at any other given time. Does that make sense?

Just because a sheep is found now doesn’t mean it stays found. Doesn’t mean it was always found. And when I say it doesn’t stay found, I’m not suggesting we lose our salvation.

I’m just saying, in terms of sheep, that sheep may wander off tomorrow. Those of us who are believers today, those of us who are found, we weren’t always found, were we? There was a time when we were that lost sheep and the shepherd came after us.

Sometimes, even as believers, we get out of line with where we’re supposed to be. It doesn’t mean we lose our salvation. But thank goodness God doesn’t forget about us or leave us behind.

The shepherd cares enough to pursue every last lost sheep. So what we need to understand from this passage is that Jesus was pointing out to them. But what he wanted these Pharisees and scribes to understand is that he came, Jesus came to pursue lost sheep.

Jesus did not come to stand around and pet the found sheep. He came to earth to pursue the lost ones. His purpose was to go after the sheep who had gone astray, the sheep that had gotten lost, the sheep that didn’t matter to anybody else.

the sheep that the found sheep would look at and say, oh, what are they doing here? Jesus came to pursue those sheep and bring them back to the Father. He even said that four chapters after this in the story of Zacchaeus.

He outlined what his mission was here on earth when he said in Luke 19. 10, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came to find those sheep that had wandered astray. And the Bible says we all like sheep have gone astray.

But He came to find those sheep who had gone astray, who had wandered off, who were now vulnerable. And He came to pursue those sheep until they’re found. and there’s not one of those sheep that don’t matter to the Father.

And so, as I said already, Jesus didn’t come to pet the found sheep. He came to save the lost ones. And what the Pharisees didn’t realize, what the religious people didn’t realize, is that they were part of the lost sheep too.

As a matter of fact, they may have been the most lost of all. Because they thought they were righteous. And Jesus talks about 99 righteous people who don’t need repentance.

The irony there is there’s no such thing. Now, if there were 99 righteous people who didn’t need repentance, I’m sure there’d be some rejoicing in heaven about how godly those people were. But Jesus said there’s far more rejoicing in heaven over one lost one who repents than over 99 who didn’t need to repent in the first place.

and I think that’s because it shows the heart of the shepherd when that lost one is found there’s more cause for celebration over one lost sheep who’s found than over the 99 in the fold and there’s more celebration in heaven over one sinner who repents and returns to the father through faith in Jesus Christ than there is over 99 people sitting in church gloating over how good they are what we need to remember is that all of us are lost sheep. All of us are lost sheep in need of a shepherd. That’s how we start out.

That’s where we’ve come from. No matter how long you’ve been a believer, no matter how long you’ve belonged to Jesus, and we can get to a point where we’ve been Christians so long that this is what we know. This is our world.

We forget where we’ve come from. I came to Christ at five years old. I’ve now been a Christian for 29 years.

That’s far more than, I mean, that’s a vast majority of my life. And even at that, I was raised in church. I was raised in church by Christian parents who had me there all the time, who taught me the right things.

On top of that, I was scared of my parents. Not like they were mean, but my parents just made sure we did the right things. I had a healthy fear of my parents and didn’t want to step out of line.

What I’m telling you is I didn’t get in a whole lot of trouble growing up, even before I came to Christ. And it’s very easy for me to fall into that mindset of a Pharisee if I’m not careful. Because I’ve just been a Christian the vast majority of my life. And even before I came to Christ, I didn’t get in that much trouble.

And so you start thinking, well, I’m a pretty good person. Right? Those of you who’ve been Christians for decades, you probably know what I’m talking about.

You might want to admit it, you might not. But we can easily start to think, I’m a pretty good person. I may not always have been, but I’m a pretty good person.

What we need to be reminded of is we’re all just those lost sheep, but for the grace of the shepherd. you see at five years old I had to realize that even with all my good behavior I was still a sinner even with all my good behavior there was still sin in my heart and in my life that separated me from God you say how much sin can a five-year-old commit? Enough.

All right, now that I’ve raised some five-year-olds and some two-year-olds, I can tell you enough. Enough sin, because the reality is God is absolutely sinlessly perfect and holy. There is no unrighteousness with God.

There’s no wrong in God’s character. And if we sin even one time, I mean, we’d say that’s a really good person if they just sin one time in their lives. By the way, completely impossible.

But if we just sin one time in our lives, we’d think that’s a pretty good person. But compared to God, they’ve fallen completely short. You take the law of God as a whole.

I heard this illustration from a preacher not too long ago. We’re talking about just the Ten Commandments. We like to take the Ten Commandments like they’re each a plate.

And, you know, I might have chipped this plate over here. You know, I might have taken something that didn’t belong to me, so I’ve chipped the plate for the Eighth Commandment, thou shalt not steal. But you know, there’s no chips in the adultery plate. There’s no chips in this plate and that plate.

So the other nine are looking good. Even if I’ve smashed plate number eight, the rest of them are pretty good. What we don’t realize, though, is the Bible teaches that if we violated God’s law in part, we’ve violated the whole thing.

It’s one big plate. And if you smash that plate by stealing or by lying even one time. You’ve smashed the whole plate.

It’s one big plate. I wish I’d had that illustration years ago because it’s brilliant. I wish I could remember the name of the man who said it.

See, we all start out as sinners. That’s who we are. We are those sheep that wander astray, that wander away from the shepherd who loves us.

And we don’t care because a greener pasture, a seemingly greener pasture of sin out there that beckons to us. And when we look at people out in the world and say, well, they’re sinners, why mess with them? We need to remember that they’re sinners no different than we are.

They may sin differently, but they’re sinners just like we are. And fortunately, even though we’re all lost sheep in need of a shepherd, our Savior is a shepherd who cares about all the sheep. And the one matters to the shepherd.

And we could take this in a lot of different directions today. We could apply that. What I mean by that is not, oh, let’s interpret it however we feel like.

That’s not what we do here. But I mean, we can apply that to a whole bunch of situations. we can apply that in our evangelism you know as a church it’s natural it’s part of our human nature that when we want to reach people we want to reach people who are just like us we don’t want to reach necessarily those people whoever those people may be but we want people who look like us who think like us who talk like us who smell like us who dress like us the whole nine yards and that’s part of human nature.

But we don’t get to pick and choose who we reach out to with the gospel, with the love of Jesus Christ because the shepherd cares about all the sheep. We could apply it to the situation with Sanctity of Life Sunday today. The other time that Jesus told this story in the book of Matthew, he was dealing with the disciples about how they were ready to cast the children aside.

We’re too busy to have these children come bother Jesus. And Jesus talked about the one sheep and how the one sheep is valuable and how the shepherd leaves the 99. And that story was to illustrate in that case how God cared about the little children where the disciples were saying these people, these children are not important.

Because for whatever reason, they’re not old enough, they’re not smart enough, they can’t do anything to benefit us. Jesus said they matter. As Christians, we could look at it and say God cares about even the most vulnerable in our midst. God cares about our unborn neighbors.

God cares about the unwed mother. God cares about refugees. God cares about the homeless.

As human beings, we oftentimes have in our minds, like I said, a list of people that we may not want to mess with. We’d rather minister to this list of people than this list of people. Jesus said they all matter to the shepherd as Christians we need to realize that there’s no one there’s no one too insignificant for God to care about there’s nobody that’s too insignificant for God to care about and there’s nobody too lost for the shepherd to be able to find him and as Christians we need to remember that.

We need to care about the lost sheep around us the same way that the shepherd does. The lost sheep should matter to us because they matter to God. And finally this morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, you’re sitting there saying, I don’t have a relationship with God like this, like you’re talking about, if you feel like that sheep who’s wandered away from God, if you recognize that your sin has led you to wander away from Him, you need to understand this morning that Jesus came to seek and to save lost sheep.

And there’s no one too insignificant for God to care about, and there’s no one too lost for Jesus to save. And if you’ll recognize that you’ve sinned against God, that you’ve violated His law, that you’ve fallen short of this standard of absolute, sinless, perfect holiness that He sets, that you’ve fallen short of it, and you’ve wandered away like one of these sheep, and you can’t get your own self back to the shepherd. None of us can.

There’s no amount of good that we can do. There’s no amount of religious stuff that we can involve ourselves in that’s going to fix anything between us and God. What we need is for the shepherd to come and pick us up and put us on his shoulders and carry us back to the pasture.

Jesus Christ bore the entire burden for you to bring you back to the Father. Jesus Christ went to the cross where he was nailed there and he took full responsibility for my sins and for yours. He was nailed to that cross and he shed his blood as the ultimate payment for our sins.

So you and I don’t have to make our way back to the pasture. We don’t have to figure it out. We don’t have to fix it because we can’t.

Through that act of sacrifice on the cross, through what He did on our behalf, shedding His blood and laying down His life and rising again to prove it, Jesus came and sought us out. And He offers to put us on His shoulders and carry us to the Father. all that’s necessary for you to do today is to acknowledge that you’ve sinned against God and that you can’t save yourself.

Believe in Jesus Christ as your one and only Savior who died to pay for your sins in full and rose again to prove it and then ask God’s forgiveness. I don’t care what you’ve done. You might say this morning, preacher, you don’t know what I’ve done.

I don’t, but He does. And he made the point that there’s nobody so lost the shepherd can’t save him. And there’s nobody insignificant that he doesn’t care to.

This morning, if you’ll trust Christ and ask God’s forgiveness, you can be saved.