The Most Valuable Things in the World
Luke 15:1-10
When my son Luke was a toddler, my wife and I took him to the beach in Gulf Shores, AL. We had a wonderful time but finally check out day arrived. I was in the kitchen packing up all of the refrigerator items when I heard my wife cry out, “I can’t find my wedding ring?” Well, that started a search of the condo. We retraced her steps. We looked all over the bathroom where she said she had set it down. We checked the bedside table and on the floor all around it and still it was not in sight. We then systematically began to take the condo apart, first the bedroom with moving the dresser and dismantling the bed, then the living room with removing every cushion on the coach and chairs and then lifting them up and searching under and behind them. We unpacked all of our clothes only to find nothing. As we searched without any progress, we became more and more frantic. Half an hour passed, then an hour, an hour and a half and at the end of the second hour, we started to talk about making an insurance claim. Regret and sorrow began to fill us. But then my wife realized there was one place we had not looked. We had brought all of Luke’s toys in a cardboard box. We had told him to put all of his toys back in the box. Giovanna and I ran over to it, turned it upside down, dumping everything out and in the bottom of the box, we saw it. We screamed out in joy and breathed the largest sigh of relief of our lives. Apparently, Luke had grabbed the ring off the bathroom counter all in an effort to help pack as we got ready to leave and put it in his box of toys.
Have you been there, losing something of great value and worth? Our Scripture today is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ charge that He welcomes and eats with sinners and tax collectors. The Greek word for "welcomes" literally means to "receive as a friend." This was Jesus’ attitude toward those who were lost in sin, to befriend them and love them back to God, vastly different from the Pharisees’ view of such people. In Jesus’ day, to eat with someone was more than sharing a meal together. It was a convenantal experience, meaning that once you shared a meal with someone, you were bound to them. If they were ever in need of help, you had to come to their assistance. So the Pharisees were careful with whom they broke bread. They didn’t want to become unclean and they certainly didn’t want to be beholden to a sinner. But Jesus? He ate with anyone and everyone, including the worst of the worst in the Pharisees eyes. The Pharisees sought to live pure and holy lives by following the letter of the Law. By Jesus’ time, they had become more critical of others who didn’t live like them or believe like them. They assumed an “us vs. them” mentality, calling those who disagreed with them “outsiders.” But this is why Jesus came: to save those far from God. As a result, the Pharisees didn’t think Jesus was seeking to live a pure and holy life because of those with whom he associated.
Jesus responds to the charges of the Pharisees with three parables recorded for us in Luke 15, two of which we’re going to look at today. There are two questions I want you to wrestle with as we do: What’s the most important thing to you? And what’s the most important thing to God? It is that second question that Jesus seeks answers to these parables and as a result, he wants us to consider if the most important thing to Jesus is important to us. And if so, how much? When Jesus taught in parables, he drew from the world around him, using images and objects of every day life to teach people about God and His kingdom. In our parable today, he draws on one of the most frequently used images in Scripture: sheep and shepherd. Sheep could be seen everywhere roaming the hills of Israel with their shepherds and they could be seen in the streets of Jerusalem ready for sacrifice at the temple. Even today in Israel, you can still see sheep in the countryside with their shepherds tending them.
The first parable is that of the Lost Sheep. The pages of the Bible are littered with images of sheep and the shepherd. They appear at critical times in the story of God’s people, and there is hardly another motif as rich in content. In Genesis 48:24, Jacob on his deathbed summarized his life with God saying God has been the “shepherd all of his life to this day.” Psalm 23 speaks of God as the Good Shepherd. Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep" (John 10:14-15). Amidst all of the images of shepherds and sheep, there is one constant in Scripture: you and I are always the sheep. Now sheep are notoriously dumb and stubborn creatures. They easily get bored and are prone to wander, often times into danger and sometimes to their own demise. Sheep can easily lose their footing and fall. If a sheep falls on its back, it cannot get back up because blood quickly drains from their legs causing numbness. Sheep have weak eyesight and so they depend heavily on their hearing. Sheep are social creatures and need the flock. When they are lost, they lie down and refuse to move. This makes them all the more vulnerable to attack. And on top of all of that, sheep just smell bad.
In this parable, Jesus shocks and even offends the Pharisees with the statement, “Suppose one of you has a 100 sheep and loses one...” In Middle Eastern cultures, saving face is very important. If you were describing a sheep that had strayed, you would never say, “I lost one of them…” To save face, you’d say, “one of them wandered off or the sheep got lost.” Now the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of the everyday people, are challenged by Jesus who says they were the shepherds who lost the sheep. Obviously, this would have angered them by implying that they haven’t been living up to their responsibility to care for all their sheep.
In this parable, we learn two things. First, the shepherd doesn’t blame the sheep but instead has compassion for it. Growing up I always thought the shepherd left the 99 all alone to search for the one. Kenneth Bailey says that in Palestine the average peasant family might have 5-15 sheep. Thus, someone responsible for 100 sheep would not be the sole owner of the sheep, nor the sole shepherd looking after the sheep. Therefore, having one of the shepherds leave to find the lost sheep does not mean the other 99 are left to their own devices. But it does suggest that the shepherd has enough compassion for the sheep to leave the other shepherds, to go find the one. Second, by searching for the one, the shepherd places himself in great danger. The shepherd didn’t wait for the lost sheep to wander home. Rather active in pursuing the lost sheep. He searches everywhere and goes to the greatest length to find the lost sheep and doesn’t return home until he is found. The Shepherd put himself in danger to leave the 99. Because he has compassion and concern for the sheep and the danger, harm and death it might face, he puts himself in harm’s way. For us, Jesus is the perfect Good Shepherd who puts himself in harms way taking the punishment we so richly deserved and goes to the cross to save us.
In our second parable, Jesus speaks of a woman who loses a coin in her house and the great lengths she goes to find it. Now the house of a common person in Jesus’ day would have been the equivalent of a small efficiency apartment. In the northern part of Israel, the main building material was basalt or volcanic rock for floors, walls and ceilings. It is dark gray or black in color. Most homes had no windows, or very small ones at best, and so a lamp was needed to find the coin in that dark of a room. Even though the house is small, the coin wasn’t initially found. That would have incited even greater panic because the woman knew it had to be there. And it was critical for her to find it because it was a day’s worth of wages. In a country where 90% are the poor and struggling to survive, Jesus’ audience would have understood how important it was to find that coin, and her increasing desperation to find it.
What do we learn from this parable of Jesus? First, it takes great effort to find that which is lost. Much of her determination and perseverance to find it is rooted in this knowledge. If she will just keep on sweeping, she’s confident the coin will eventually be found. For many of us, the greatest effort is to begin the search the lost. We’ve grown comfortable with ourselves, where we are spiritually and with our faith community. We fall prey to our culture’s value of independence, that each person is responsible for their own spiritual journey and the value of privacy, that my faith and relationship to God are a private matter and nobody else’s business and so we don’t want to pry into others as well. If we’re honest, we have to confess to our own lack of desire to start the search. Sometimes it’s a lack of confidence in our speaking ability or even knowing what to say. Sometimes it’s a fear of embarrassment. But rarely is it a lack of opportunity because those who are far from God are all around us. We have chosen not to act and failed to place our trust in God. Like the disciples, we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit to overcome that which holds back our witness and ask for that burning passion and desire to save the lost. There are souls in this world who don’t know that they’re lost. They haven’t found Christ in the world and do not know the love of God. Worse yet, they do not know the love of others either. They search for meaningful and happiness in life through possessions, position and power failing to heed the advice of King Solomon who at the end of his life look back at the pursuit of these thing and found them to be meaningless. They’re lost and aren’t even aware of it.
Where do we begin? First is through prayer. A significant part of our prayers should be for the lost. And we need to ask for Holy boldness and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Second, make a connection. Find similarities like a job, a hobby, a common interest, a cause or any number of things. The point is to find a touchpoint of commonality and connection with that person and begin to develop a relationship with them. If you open yourself to it, God will place people in your life, so that we can get to know them and share life with them. We have to shower people with our kindness and love before we can present Christ to them. People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care! Third, develop a friendship. Take time for others. Develop a friendship. Fourth through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, begin spiritual conversations and extending invitations. Invite them to church with you, whether it be an outreach event, a Bible study or a worship service.
Second, it takes persistence. In this parable, Jesus notes specifically that the woman continued seeking after the lost item until she found it. Persistence is needed because finding lost sheep among spacious fields and hills, and lost coins in the dirt floor of dark home would not have been easy. If people don’t respond immediately, don’t give up and walk away. Keep praying. Keep talking with them. Keep developing a deeper relationship with them. It takes time. Our first efforts usually don’t meet with success. Sometimes it takes years of persistence, but we should not be discouraged or give up. If a sheep or coin was valuable enough to persistently search for, then people who are spiritually lost are too valuable to give up on.
Third, there is great joy when one is found. The religious leaders of the day had been indifferent toward the lost and even antagonistic toward them coming to Jesus. Jesus uses these two parables to illustrate how wrong their response was, especially when compared to how they would have responded toward recovering something of far less value. If they were joyful at the recovery of a lost sheep or lost coin, certainly then they should have been joyous instead of angered at the lost coming to Jesus. The one thing that matters most to God is the lost, so much so that when the lost are found, even one of them, all heaven rejoices and throws a party! There is more joy over one sinner coming to Jesus than over 99 people being right where they’re supposed to be with God. If lost people matter this much to God, shouldn’t they matter this much to us? Shouldn’t we be willing to give everything needed in order to reach them?
So what about you? Is finding the lost the most important thing in your life as it is for God? Do you have a compassion and burden so great for the lost that you are willing to go to any length and to great risk to find them? Matt Chandler tells the story of Dave Karnes. When the World Trade Center tumbled to the ground on that dreadfully dark day, more than 3000 people lost their lives. But a few who were buried beneath the rubble miraculously survived. Two of these were Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, a pair of Port Authority employees who responded to the attack and were on the bottom floor as the south tower fell. Trapped without water and breathing smoke filled air, both men had little hope for survival. Yet as they lay there under a mountain of debris, something was stirring inside an accountant in Connecticut. Dave Karnes who spent 23 years in active duty in the Marines, was watching the scene play out on TV like the rest of us. But more than just allowing it to trouble him, he decided to do something about it. He went to his boss and told him he wouldn't be back for awhile. He went home and put on his fatigues and then drove 120 MPH to ground zero, arriving by late afternoon. While rescue workers were being called off the site, Dave was able to stay because of the clout and credential of his uniform. Finding another Marine, the two joined forces and walked the pile of debris together, seeking to save a life. After an hour of searching, they heard the faint tapping on metal pipes. It was Will and John who had been trapped for nine hours. This Marine who had been working a spreadsheet just hours before found them, began to dig and then freed these two men. Of the 20 people pulled out of the rubble to safety, Will and John were numbers 18 and 19. And all because Dave Karnes took off his suit, put on his rescue fatigues, (rolled up his sleeves) and stepped into the despair and darkness of Ground Zero.
And then Matt Chandler writes, “In the same way but to an infinitely greater degree, God took off his royal robes, stepped into our dark and depraved culture, and served us. We were buried in the depths and rubble of our own foolishness with zero chance of pulling ourselves out of our own sin. We were without hope until the Holy One clothed himself in humanity to rescue us, to become sin for us on the cross. Our service (to others) must be grounded in the truth of the Gospel…Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection for us. It begins and ends with Jesus – begins there because he is our original motivation and ends there because in Him we are empowered to serve (and save) others.” Amen and Amen
