Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 15:1-10, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 55
- Date: Sunday, May 3, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Things We Frequently Lose
Things We Frequently Lose As I’ve said before in this study of Luke, there’s a difference between following Jesus and following Jesus around. And a lot of these people were just following Jesus around, but he deals with the concept of lost things. And I would ask you, how many of you have ever lost something, but that’s so universal, there’s not even a need for a show of hands. I’ll ask it this way.
Has anybody in here not ever lost anything? No hands. This is something we all experience. Does anybody have something that’s lost right now, and it bugs you?
Okay. What are some of the things that we lose frequently besides our patience? Keys. Keys.
What else? Phone. Okay. Did I hear passport?
I thought I heard passport. We got some world travelers in here. Maybe it was password. We lose that a lot too.
Nail clippers. Okay. Yes. Nail We lose things all the time.
For me, keys are the worst. Yesterday, yesterday I needed to run to the store and could not find my keys. And I was doing, what do we do when we lose something? We look for it.
What if we can’t find it? We start tearing things apart. That’s what I was doing, looking for my keys. And Charla said, you can just take my keys.
I’m like, I know I can, but that doesn’t solve the problem. That just kicks it down the road until the next time, and I can’t find it. I eventually found the keys. That’s how I’m here today.
But that’s what we do when we lose something and it’s important to us we go and look for it we go and hunt for it we go and tear things apart if necessary to try to find it and that’s what Jesus talks to those who are following him around today in Luke chapter 15 as we come to this passage and talks about why you would search for something and what that shows us about its importance It says, Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near him to listen to him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. So he told them this parable, saying, What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his 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 which was lost.
Heaven Rejoices
I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who needed no repentance.
The Woman and the Lost Coin
Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying rejoice with me for I have found the coin which I had lost in the same way I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents and you may be seated now he does continue on with this theme past verse 10 in the story of the prodigal son which is what we will Lord willing, look at next week. They all three go together to form a continuous thought, but I’ve separated them out into two messages for a couple of reasons.
Number one, the story of the prodigal son is so long and so rich, it kind of deserves its own message. But there’s a separation here between how these things work in the parable of the lost sheep and in the parable of the lost coin, we see God seeking the lost. And then we go to the story of the prodigal son and we see a clearer picture of what it means to repent and come back to the Father. So there’s a reason to split the two, to split the three into two.
Why the Pharisees Objected
But I want to look at these two parables and what Jesus wants the people to understand. ### Why the Pharisees Objected He’s dealing with things that are lost in these stories, and that’s what he’s dealing with in his ministry, people that are lost. And the people who are following him around just can’t seem to understand that. They cannot seem to come to terms with what it is Jesus is doing. The Pharisees and scribes are always looking for a reason to oppose Jesus, always looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, always looking for a reason to get Jesus.
And they’re doing that because He doesn’t fit their idea, first of all, certainly of what a Messiah would be, but He doesn’t even fit their idea of what a rabbi should be. He’s amassing these followers and He’s teaching these people, and they think that in order to do that, He should act like them, and He should be respectable in the way that they define respectability. And so, we see in the first couple of verses of chapter 15 here, he’s sitting down and eating with tax collectors and sinners. And notice what it says, these people were coming near him to listen to him.
They are there because they want to hear what Jesus has to say and take it in. The Pharisees and scribes are frequently there and it says they are watching him. And these quote-unquote sinners are there to hear him. There’s a difference.
These people are watching Jesus to see what they can use against him. And these people want to know what Jesus has to say to their lives. But as they’re there, both the Pharisees and scribes began to grumble, this man receives sinners and eats with them. That’s an incredible statement.
Think about the audacity of saying, that man eats with sinners. What is it that you think you are? Right? Well, it tells us what they think they’re not.
And that’s sinners. And so there’s a clear contrast here between the mission of Jesus and the perspective of the Pharisees, the tax collectors and the sinners. That word here in context, it’s referring to the non-practicing Jews, people who were descendants of Abraham. They were part of the culture, part of the community, but they weren’t going to the temple.
They weren’t doing the sacrifices. They were cultural Jews, not keeping the law. They were coming to hear Jesus. And think back to the last couple of weeks, if you’ve been here, and the things that we’ve talked about.
Jesus is pointing out to these religious leaders that the nation of Israel is in grave danger because they as a whole have rejected the Messiah. But when you look at the exceptions, when you look at who was paying attention to the work of God, You would think that it would be the Pharisees. You would think it would be the religious leaders. You would think it would be the really smart people.
It wasn’t. When you think about the exceptions, about the people who really were attuned to the work of God, it was these tax collectors and sinners. It was these outcasts. Among those who were following Jesus as opposed to just following Him around, this group was well represented.
And so when the Pharisees and scribes, they came and complained about this, they criticized Jesus for spending time with them. Why would you spend time with sinful people? Let’s think this through. Why would Jesus, when He came to earth, spend time with sinful people?
We can talk about His mission, and we should. We can talk about a lot of things, but the bottom line is what else is there? When Jesus became God in human flesh, when Jesus as God became flesh and dwelt among us, He knew, He was not surprised when He got here and said, oh my goodness, they’re sinful. That was the whole purpose of Him coming.
He knew that there were sinners on earth and that’s why He came. He knew there were only sinners on earth. And yet He came to be God with us. This just shows that these people, for all of their intelligence and for all of their expertise in the Old Testament law, they had missed it because they didn’t want Jesus to be who He claimed to be.
These Pharisees, they were sinners just like the others. They were just too blind to see it. At least the people who were more openly sinful recognized their need for Jesus. And the irony is, here are these hardened sinners calling on Jesus to reject people for being sinners.
Fortunately for them, fortunately for us God looks at things differently than we do God welcomes sinners that the self-righteous reject God didn’t come to keep these tax collectors And these prostitutes And these shady dealers And these thieves You name it, he didn’t come to keep them at arm’s length. He came to welcome them in and change them. But what this, just these couple verses of introduction, what they do is they remind us that we can be outwardly religious. We can be outwardly righteous.
We can be outwardly moral, good, upstanding members of the community and still not be open to God or what he’s doing. And all of the religious activity, all of the good works, all of the serving and doing that we can muster don’t change that fact. Fortunately for us, God doesn’t look at us and write us off. When Jesus tells these stories, he’s illustrating something very important to the Pharisees, that they don’t see things the same way God does. And where the Pharisees are willing to cast these people aside, just as they cast God aside and God’s will aside, God embraces these people.
The Shepherd and the Lost Sheep
And we see from these stories that God pursues the lost. ### The Shepherd and the Lost Sheep Now, these are probably familiar stories to a lot of you, and we’re going to look at them not one at a time, but they actually parallel each other. I think there’s a reason why Jesus taught the same truth telling two different stories. I think there’s a couple of reasons here. I think he had people in his midst who connected with the story of the shepherd because they came from out in the country.
I think there were people within hearing of him who connected with the story of the coin because they lived in town and had a little bit of money. I also will tell you that numerous times, this is just what I suspect, it may not be the case, but there are numerous times throughout Scripture that the wandering people of Israel are referred to as lost sheep. And there’s a school of thought around this coin that talks about the inscription of whatever Greek or Roman leader would have been on it that would have been offensive to the Jewish people. And so there’s some thought that maybe here he’s talking about God going after both the Jews and the Gentiles who are separated from God.
You study that for yourself, it may or may not be the case, but it’s worth considering. But there’s a reason why he gives multiple stories to illustrate the same point, because different people would connect with different stories. But we see in both of these stories that God pursues the lost. If you look at verse 4, it says who among you if he had a hundred sheep and has lost one of them does not leave the 99 in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it now that was something they all knew to be true hey if we’ve lost a sheep we’re going to go find it hey if i’ve there’s been a time or two and it always seems to happen on wednesday night Wednesday nights, right at about six o’clock, that we look on the camera and see our chickens have gotten out and are having a wonderful adventure all over the neighborhood.
More than once, Charla has said, does one of us need to go home? Yes. Well, which one? Well, unless you’re prepared to teach, and then we’re prepared to have that conversation at the next SBC meeting, I think it probably has to be you to go home.
But it always happens and there will be a few of them left in the coop we’re not worried about those we got to go find the ones that are lost you know we all know this instinctively you’re going to leave the 99 to go find that one it’s something they anybody there that had any animals or anything like that at all would have understood would be able to identify with and he wants them to understand from that how God is. As I struggled with this passage to prepare to preach it, one thing I struggled with is I’ve heard this taught and you’ve probably heard this taught and we’ve read into this that what this is telling us is we’re supposed to leave the 99 and pursue the 1. Jesus is not talking about us you and I are not the hero of the story we are the one we’re not the shepherd leaving the 99 you and I are the one who wandered away that he has to go and get and so we want to be very careful to understand that this story is about Jesus not about us, at least not about us being the hero. It’s about Him being the hero of our story, that He came and pursued the lost.
That was the point of Him coming to earth. As I said, He wasn’t surprised by our sinfulness. That’s why He came here, was because we like sheep had wandered astray, and somebody had to come and find us. The shepherd valued the lost sheep enough to notice that it was gone, and He took the initiative to go and find the lost sheep.
He did all the work. That’ll preach right there about the role of God, that He’s done all the work for our salvation. We don’t have to clean ourselves up. We don’t have to earn it.
He has come and found us in our sin. He’s done everything that’s necessary for us to be saved. And He sacrificed, the shepherd sacrifice by walking away from the 99 to go and find it. And at the same time, this woman noticed in verse 8, noticed that the coin was gone and she obviously valued it.
And we’re not talking about a penny here. I don’t know, pennies are a little more valuable now that there’s a shortage and I think that makes people hoard pennies. We’re not talking about a low value coin here. We’re talking about a coin that represented one day’s wages for a soldier.
And soldiers were better paid than a lot of people at that time. This is not an insubstantial amount of money. And so she notices quickly that it’s gone. She still has the other nine coins, but it’s gone.
And she valued it. And so she took the initiative to find it, and she lit a lamp. And that seems like such a little thing to us. In their day, they didn’t necessarily have windows on the first floor of their dwellings.
And so it would be very dark in there. To do anything like this, you’d have to light a lamp, but oil was expensive. And so you didn’t just recklessly decide, I’m going to light a lamp. But she made the sacrifice because that coin was so valuable to her.
She lit the lamp and she tore her house apart. It’s hard work. She swept out her whole house.
Who wants to go home and do that this afternoon anybody want to drag out all your stuff out on the lawn and sweep from room to room if you if you do want to do that you can start at my house and we i’d love it charla said no do not show up at our house to do that What I want you to understand is this was for her a significant investment of her resources with that lamp and her time and effort with sweeping that house clean. It’s because she valued the coin and she was willing to pursue it. Both of these stories are intended by Jesus to show the Pharisees and to show us that God is the one who pursues the lost. ### God Seeks Those Who Wander God didn’t come to pursue the found. He didn’t come to pursue the perfect.
Restoration and Repentance
He also didn’t wait on us to pursue him God came to us and we’re grateful that God is a God who seeks the lost who pursues the lost because that lost coin and that lost sheep it’s you and me then we come to verses 5 and 9 and we see the next part of the story we see that God restores the repentant it says when the shepherd found the sheep he put it on his shoulders rejoicing and I’ve heard all kinds of accounts that I’ve not been able to substantiate and verify about them breaking the legs so they’d have to stay close to the shepherd I don’t know about all of that I just know typically we don’t pick up strange animal and put it over our shoulders, right? I don’t recommend going out to the refuge and finding something you can carry around on your shoulders. This was a relational act. By him picking up this sheep in this way, he’s saying, this is my sheep.
And for that sheep to sit there, he’s saying, this is my shepherd. And coming to that conclusion, I thought, am I reading too much into the text here? But in the very next verse, in verse 6, Jesus compares the sheep to one sinner who repents. That sheep was ready to come home.
Sheep are not the smartest animals. Sheep are pretty vulnerable. They can’t fend for themselves very well. And I’m sure the realization that you’re far from your pasture and you’re far from your protection and you’re vulnerable to the wolves and the elements was probably terrifying to the sheep if it was smart enough to recognize the danger it was in, but it was ready to come home.
And this willingness to come home is repentance. The shepherd is eager to bring the sheep home. That’s restoration. And it’s a little different with the story of the coin.
A coin can’t repent, but we still see the restoration that takes place as the woman gathers the coin with the other coins and she rejoices in the same way. But there’s this idea throughout both stories of repentance and restoration. See, this is what Jesus was doing with those he came to minister to, was calling them to repent so that they could be restored. And we need to understand, I don’t think we can go, I don’t think we can look at this too often or often enough to understand repentance because somewhere along the line we got the idea that repentance was I’m going to clean up my life and I’m never going to sin again and that’s how I know I’m a follower of Jesus because I’ve repented from my sin.
It’s turning away from my sin. That is not what repentance means. In the Greek, the word for repentance means a change of mind. Now I think it’s not just a change of mind like oh that’s an interesting idea I’m going to change my mind about that it’s a change of mind that leads to a change in our posture toward God we will see this very clearly and probably go over this again next week with the story of the prodigal son but repentance is not saying I’ll never sin again on Wednesday nights we’ve been studying through first John and understand that’s not reality we’re supposed to sin less, but we don’t become sinless on this side of eternity.
Repentance doesn’t say, I’ll never sin again. Repentance says, I’m on the same page with God about my sin and about Him. In our natural state as sinners, we love our sin. Oh, we love it so much.
We want to hold on to it. We want to keep it. We want to protect it from everybody, including God. And that makes us hate God.
Now, you may say, I never hated God. I mean hate even in the sense of we chose other things over Him. The natural, the unrepentant sinner says, I love my sin and I hate God. The repentant sinner says, I love God and hate my sin.
You say well I maybe I didn’t really repent because I still struggle with that sin the fact that you struggle with it instead of embracing it is a mark of repentance see we start out saying I love this sin I don’t care what God says and as believers I think we experience the same thing that when I sin when when my words are out of line with God’s will, when my actions, when even my attitudes are out of line with God’s will, I feel this overwhelming sense of sorrow that I’ve disappointed God. Now, does He say He’s disappointed in me? That’s not what He says, but I feel that. That is a disgust at my own sin.
So while you and I don’t become perfect in this life as Christians, there is a change that takes place in us where the desire is to be with Him. The desire is to be at home with Him. The desire is to be in fellowship with Him. The desire is to be in obedience to His ways.
That’s repentance. And when we do that, when we repent, He restores us. Because we’re good enough? No.
Because He’s gracious. Because he’s merciful, because he’s paid the price. God is eager to restore the repentant. God could look at that sheep and punish it for wandering off.
What we see here is God with open arms picking up that sheep, putting it on his shoulders, going on. ### Heaven Rejoices Over the Redeemed And then verses 6 through 7 and 9 and 10 talk about how heaven rejoices over the redeemed. Verse 6, the shepherd calls his neighbors and says, hey, I want you to come and celebrate with me because what was lost has now been found. This sheep has come back. I want you to celebrate with me.
Likewise, the woman’s friends and neighbors, they join her to celebrate the fact that she’s found the coin. And Jesus, in talking about that sheep in verse 7, says, I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. He says, the ones that are good are good. But heaven rejoices over those who were lost and are now found.
Now the reality I think the Pharisees needed to come to terms with was that they weren’t righteous. They weren’t the 99 either. They thought they were the 99. But they failed to understand the joy that God experiences and that those who serve God experience over the lost being found once again.
And verse 10 tells us in the same way, comparing it to the coin, in the same way I tell you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Probably everyone in here knows someone who has been engaged with the gospel, but has thought or said something along the lines of, I could never come because of what I’ve done. I’d be too embarrassed. God would never love me, or maybe even this, the church would never accept me because of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, where I came from.
But we are all that one sheep. And heaven rejoices when what is lost is found. Heaven rejoices when that sinner comes to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, comes to trust Him as their Savior, and is changed, is transformed from the inside out. Heaven rejoices over that.
Heaven is not sitting there saying, you should have done better to begin with. Well, better late than never, I guess. That is not how God responds. That is not how the angels respond.
That is not how we are to respond. Heaven rejoices over what Christ has done for us. And heaven rejoices over what He’s done for the world out there. We should too.
If we want to see ourselves in any place other than the one in this story, because we all start out as the one, if we’re present anywhere else in this story, it should be as those who are cheering, as the master brings the lost home. Jesus’ point in telling these two stories was that he came to receive the outcast and the outsider. I’ve already talked to you about one of the possible meanings of the coin and the sheep. It doesn’t explicitly say that in the text, but it fits with what we know about Luke and the things that he recorded.
Luke really liked to drive home the idea that Jesus came for the outcasts and for the Gentiles. He came for those that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes looked at and said, they’re not good enough, they’ll never be part of us. Luke’s whole purpose in writing his gospel was to make sure we understood that the gospel is for everyone. ### Christ Came to Rescue Sinners These stories, though very clearly, show the lost that they’re not beyond finding. If anyone sitting here today or within the sound of my voice on streaming thinks that you’ve sinned so much or you’re so far gone that God could never love you that God could never receive you God has gone to great lengths to restore you he has made the ultimate sacrifice to restore you knowing who you would be knowing what you would do knowing how you would go astray before you were ever born he already loved you enough that Jesus Christ came to earth and lived a perfect sinless life and was nailed to the cross to receive your punishment and shed his blood to die in your place so that you could be forgiven.
And he rose again three days later to prove it. God has gone to extraordinary lengths for your salvation. God has gone to extraordinary lengths to restore you to himself, and he’s eager to do it. What’s left is for you to repent.
Jesus has done the work. Jesus has paid the price for your sin repentance isn’t something you do it’s a change of heart and a change of mind that makes you recognize your sin and recognize that he’s holy and makes you recognize that you’re in the wrong so that you will accept that forgiveness that he paid for and that’s where it stands for us he’s paid the price he came to find us we just have to accept the rescue. We have to trust that Jesus died for us to pay for the sin we couldn’t pay for ourselves, and that He’s the only way we can be right with the Father. And then we ask Him for that forgiveness.
And for those in this room or within the sound of my voice who know Him already, these stories are reminders of what He’s done for us. We need that reminder periodically, right? Because otherwise we start to think we’re just a little bit better than we actually are.
We need this reminder that you and I are the one. And it’s a reminder then of what he’s doing for others. That there are others of that one that he’s pursuing. And we should be there to cheer it on and encourage it.
