Bunbury
Sun pm
18/04/10
“The lost & found department”
Intro: *** After moving to Wollongong back in 1992 after being there for a few weeks we thought we’d drive up to Sydney for the day to visit our close friends. We went OK until we came to the outskirts of Sydney. Having never been in the city of around 4 million people b/4 we had no idea how big it was & more imptly how easy it was to get lost.
I made the big mistake when I began guessing the direction I needed to head in. I figured my wife could give me directions from the phone book size street directory along the way. The problem was I didn’t know where I was going & she didn’t know which way to look at the map – even when we could find which street we were on. Despite resisting several suggestions to stop & ask directions (men don’t do that – anywhere in the world) we stumbled on. The longer we went the more intense the atmosphere b/ca in the car. Finally we were snapping at each other!
But then when it seemed as though the tension couldn’t b/co any more intense my wife starting saying ..... IT’S A MIRACLE! IT’S A MIRACLE! What’s a miracle I snapped at her – our friends house was one block away! We had stumbled through several suburbs & driven for about an hour through Sydney streets & had stumbled upon the thing we were looking for.
We may be lucky when we lose our way in a big city but we may not be so fortunate if we lose something more impt – like God!
Our text is about people who lost the most impt thing in life – God Himself!
Now lost / w/o God they desperately needed to know how they can regain that which they’d lost.
The wonderful truth that we’re going to see tonight is that when we lose God He’s willing to be found by anyone desperate enough to search for Him.
T/n I want to preach a sermon about ‘The lost & found department’.
Text: Jeremiah 29:13 (NKJV) And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
# 1. A lost God?
A. Things getting lost is a reality that we all have to deal w/ from time to time.
a. We all know the feeling of losing something.
i. Lot’s of things get lost ..... wallets / purses / watches / passports ...... who has never lost their car keys for a few minutes / hours / days?
ii. The truth of the matter is that if you own it you can basically lose it somehow.
*** One day Coral & I were out walking getting some exercise when we came across a lost bull. Now that’s an unusual thing to lose!!! We made our way through to the farmer’s house & asked him if he were missing a bull – & he was!
*** Another time we borrowed someone’s car to go shopping in Sydney for the day. We went a Westfield Parramatta, parked the car & went shopping for a couple of hours. When it was time to go home we came out into the car park to discover that we had lost our friend’s car! You can imagine the uneasy feeling that began to come over us as we realised that we could find it. Eventually we went up to the highest rooftop car park ........ we remember at least that we had parked on the rooftop ..... & looked over the entire car parking area. After a few minutes we spotted the lost car on another rooftop car parking area some distance away!
iii. Many of the things we lose are inconvenient but in reality don’t cause serious problems for us.
iv. Losing & finding things is so much a part of our lives that n/p dedicate sections to bring back lost things.
b. But the more serious issue is when people get lost.
*** We have a national missing persons register in Australia. 35,000 people are reported missing each year in Australia - one person every 15 minutes! 95% of those are found w/i a short period of time. But there are still currently 1,600 long term missing persons, people that have been missing for more than 6 months & have not been found!
i. It’s a sobering thought to think that people are just missing – lost to someone – family members / loved ones / friends.
ii. And if that happened to you – where someone you loved / knew suddenly went missing / was lost you would probably be distraught.
iii. But God has to deal w/ this feeling / trauma every day ..... lost people / missing from his presence / missing from his will / purposes.
B. But here we have the instance of people who have lost God!
a. That’s what our text is all about – people that have lost God.
Vs 13. And you will seek Me .....
i. Why are they seeking God? B/c they’ve lost Him & can’t find Him!
ii. But what’s even more frightening than people who have lost God is those who don’t know they’ve lost God!
iii. That happened to a man named Samson ...... he thought he had God but – God was lost.
Judges 16:20 (NKJV) .....But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.
iv. Saul was another man who lost God.
1 Samuel 28:15 (NKJV) ....And Saul answered, “I am deeply distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams. .....
b. Even though the idea of a lost God seems reasonable, let’s get one thing straight – God can’t get lost.
i. We on the other hand can & do get lost!
ii. And one of the reasons why God is lost to us is not b/c He’s lost His way but b/c we’ve lost ours!
iii. The simple truth is that God just isn’t willing to go to the places you want to go.
*** Me as a small boy at Noble Falls. I went there on the train for a day trip w/ mum & then she was gone! I was nearly hysterical b/c I didn’t think I’d ever find her again. But the simple fact was .... she wasn’t lost – I was!
I had wandered off & she didn’t come w/ me & that’s how I got lost.
c. We lose God b/c we try to take him into places where he doesn’t belong.
*** Going into a bar w/ Steve. I was a new convert & I didn’t want to go into the bar w/ him but I did. The whole time I was in there I kept thinking, I shouldn’t be in here. But more than anything I felt like God didn’t come into the bar w/ me, He was till outside waiting for me!
i. Sometimes we want to take Him into bars / r/s / situations where He doesn’t belong & He won’t go!
ii. Maybe you lose Him sometimes b/c you want to take Him into internet sites that he doesn’t want to go into or flirtatious encounters where he’s not comfortable???
iii. I think sometimes you lose God by one click of a mouse button or one page of a magazine!
iv. In our text ......Israel lost God when they thought they could take Him up onto hills where they kept their idols ...... but they left Him behind.
# 2. The lost & found department.
A. God loves to bring lost things together w/ those who are looking for them.
a. In a very real sense heaven is God’s lost & found department.
i. All His work & all his angels are somehow involved in bringing together the lost & found of this life.
ii. This is the very heart of God ...... to cause lost things to be found!
iii. In fact God is always talking about finding those things that are lost.
b. Think about some of the things that have appeared on heaven’s lost & found register.
i. Luke 15 is almost like the register of the lost & found in heaven where Jesus lists several lost things that are eventually found.
ii. First of all a lost sheep .......
Luke 15:4 (NKJV) “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?
iii. Also appearing on this register is a lost coin .....
Luke 15:8 (NKJV) “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?
iv. Lost coins can bring more pleasure than you’d imagine!
*** A woman in one of our churches received an inheritance but one of the troubling things about it was that her father had @ some time had some very valuable coins that had not been seen for many years & were now apparently lost forever.
Amongst the things that she inherited though was some old furniture. One day she was showing an old piece of furniture to one of the brothers in the church & he mentioned to her that this kind of furniture often had concealed / secret panels. He looked at the old dressing table she had & said ...... maybe there is one here. He fiddled around for a few minutes & BINGO! Out slides a secret draw & carefully laid out on this draw were the missing coins! Coins worth tens of thousands of dollars!!!
v. What a great discovery when something so valuable that has been lost is suddenly found!
c. But the most valuable thing to appear on heaven’s lost & found register is – lost people!
i. Here we read about a lost son!
Luke 15:13 (NKJV) And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.
ii. And this is what the heart of God really yearns for ...... lost people!
Luke 19:10 (NKJV) .... for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
# 3. It’s going to cost to regain what’s lost.
A. First of all we need to u/s the nature of lost-ness.
a. Lost-ness doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you are drawing drain water into a syringe so you can have your next fix.
i. The question is one of relevance – Where are you now & where should you be?
ii. Paul challenged the Corinthian believers w/ this very same thought.
1 Corinthians 3:2-3 (NKJV) I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. ....
iii. What Paul was speaking about here is the issue of where these Christians should have been spiritually ...... they were not where they should have been!
iv. When we begin to look @ our lives .... maybe what we see is not a debauched lifestyle – but a simple matter of not being where we ought to be!
b. Secondly we need to u/s that lost-ness is not a matter of the eyes – it’s a matter of the heart.
i. Listen to what God says to his people in our text ....
Vs 13. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
ii. People get lost not b/c of a problem w/ their eyes but b/c of a problem w/ their heart.
*** When I was lost that day in Sydney .... the problem wasn’t b/c I couldn’t see right but b/c I didn’t do right!!! I didn’t want to take time to stop & study the road map, I didn’t want to ask for directions ....... it was b/c of my heart not my eyes.
iii. And that’s true when people lose God ..... they don’t want to take a look at god’s road map of life – the Bible .... & they don’t want to ask directions.
iv. I’ve never seen anyone who is lost who didn’t get lost b/c of their heart.
B. Finding God (& He’s not lost) happens when we make a total commitment of heart.
Vs 13. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
a. God is not willing to be found of you w/o a total commitment of all your heart to the search.
i. God is found by those who make a total commitment of the heart to seek Him.
ii. In the story of a lost son – the prodigal son – we see that he made a total commitment of heart to find his father again.
iii. He saw where losing r/s w/ his father had taken him in life & he humbled h/s & came back to his father & poured his heart out to him.
*** You may have read the story of Tom Smitheringale & how he revealed how close he came to perishing in an icy grave in the last few days. The explorer survived falling through ice into freezing water during his solo expedition to the North Pole, sustaining only mild hypothermia and frostbite on some fingers. The Perth man activated an emergency beacon after the fall and rescue crews dashed to retrieve him.
Smitheringale set out from Canada on February 26 in an attempt to be the first Australian, and third person in history, to ski unaided to the geographic North Pole.
It took about nine hours for rescuers to reach Smitheringale after the EPIRB beacon was activated.
I thought about that ...... Smitheringale was a personal trainer & it must have been a humbling experience to have to set off the rescue alarm???
iv. Likewise you & I are going to have to humble our/s if we God to come down & rescue us.
v. But the good news t/n is that heaven is God’s lost & found department – committed to rescuing people who lose their way.
Jeremiah 29:14 (NKJV) I will be found by you, says the Lord, ......
