The Prodigal Son
Luke 15
Lost. Being lost is no fun. I remember when I was a small child, wandered away; ended up in a industrial field with lots of deep holes dug; walking on a 12” wide path between; lost track of time; when I headed home, met by a group of kids: my mom had whole neighborhood out looking for me. When she saw me, ran up and hugged me and then spanked me all the way home! Turn to Luke 15 in your Bibles.
Lost. It’s really no laughing matter. Recently in the news Josh McClatchy 6 days in Arkansas; Amanda Eller found after lost 2 weeks in Hawaii.
I wonder what it’s like to be really lost. Wandering in the forest…hour after hour/day after day…all the tree lines look the same; can’t distinguish which path is the right path; can’t pick out any markings that would give you a hint where you were or where you needed to go. Lost.
That word lost is a good Bible term. What does it mean to be lost? Isaiah 59:1-2
”Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God.”
That is the ultimate consequence of sin…isolation from the One who loves you the most. If you define sin as choosing your own way instead of God’s way, then sin places you on a path away from God. It separates you from Him.
Separated. That’s it. Separated. If you’re lost at sea or lost in the forest, then you are separated and isolated from about everything that is important: separated from sufficient food and clothing; separated from protection and shelter. And even if you can find food, clothing, and shelter, you are separated from the most important thing: your existence in the context of other people…you’re separated from your friends. You’re separated from your lifestyle. You’re separated from your loved ones.
You’ll remember in the movie “Castaway,” Tom Hanks’ plane goes down in the South Pacific. He survives somehow and lives for 4 years on this uncharted island. He devises ways to catch rain water. He devises ways to protect himself from the sun and elements. He devises ways to catch fish and have enough food to eat. But that’s not enough. Every day he surveys the horizon to see any trace of someone, a ship, a plan, anyone who can reconnect him with his former existence. But no one comes. And he is isolated; separated; lost. (Scene from Castaway where he turns flashlight on/off to see wife)
The Bible says that outside of Christ, you are separated and isolated from God. Yeah, you can devise ways to clothe yourself, feed yourself, protect yourself. You might get glimpses of Him periodically in creation or as He shows Himself at work in our world. But you’ll still be isolated and separated from your most meaningful purpose and existence.
Every day a person stays lost, they are isolated from the joy and peace and purpose they could experience.
Every day a person stays lost, they are isolated from the most meaningful and purposeful existence anyone can ever have.
Every day a person stays lost, they are isolated from the One who loves them the most.
And if a person stays lost, if they fail to connect to Jesus in this life, then they will stay isolated and separated from God in the next life; for all eternity.
Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” That’s why He came. That was the purpose of His mission. If you were an angel in heaven and saw Jesus packing His bags to leave heaven and go to planet earth, and asked him why are you going; what’s your mission, he would have said, “I’m going after those who are lost. That’s my mission.”
Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father; the love of the Father for those who were separated from Him, isolated from Him; lost.
One day Jesus is hanging with some questionable characters, you know, prostitutes, politicians, preachers—the worst, right? And the Pharisees and religious establishment questioned His righteousness because of it. They figured if He really was close to God, He certainly wouldn’t hang with such questionable characters. And so Jesus tells three stories to illustrate the Father’s heart for those who are far from Him.
This chapter has been called, “God’s Lost and Found.” I think maybe it is my favorite chapter in all of the Bible. One of my top 10 for sure.
v.1 Tax collectors: collaborated with the Romans; overcharged taxes; hated by the Jews…like IRS agent!
sinners: general term for the street people; common; uncultured; unschooled in the particulars of the Hebrew Scripture and the Law.
v.2 complaining: a contemptuous sneer
welcomes sinners and eats w/them : a picture of extending grace/mercy
v.4 leaves the 99. I’m thinking: “Hey, I still have 99—doin well. If I leave the 99 I have, I might lose some more. I’ll just be content with the 99.” But not this shepherd. He leaves the 99 and goes after the 1 that is lost.
v.8 searches carefully until she finds it. Again I’m thinking: “Hey, I lost one coin, but I still have 9. Maybe it will show up when I do my spring cleaning and have that garage sale.” But not this woman. She turns her house upside down looking for the coin.
v.13 squandered: wasted; This is where the parable finds its name. The word prodigality means simply to waste or squander. The prodigal is one who does the wasting; who does the squandering.
v.16 eat the pods For a Jewish boy to have anything to do with pigs was extraordinary; and to be so hungry that you want to eat pigs pods…well, that’s a severe cravin right there.
As you read these 3 stories, do you get the feeling that God is complacent about those who are lost? Do you get the feeling that God doesn’t care about those who are lost? Or do you get the feeling that God is more than just welcoming sinners, as the Pharisees accused Jesus of doing, but that He is actively looking for sinners?
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is v.20 “But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him.” What you may not know was that there was a Jewish custom called qetsatsah so that if a son squandered his inheritance, it would be so disgraceful to the family that the men of the town would fix a large pot of nuts and corn, burn the nuts and corn, then the earthenware pot would be shattered in front of the prodigal. The villagers would shout, “Reubin is cut off from his people.” Or “Billy Bob is cut off from his people.” And that would be a signal for the prodigal to get out of town for good. If he didn’t, he could be stoned and possibly killed.
Another thing you need to know is that it was definitely a no-no for an older Jewish man to run. It would be totally undignified for this father to run. He’d have to pick his robe up, bare his legs which was considered incredibly undignified—and then run.
And yet, what does the father do? Does he turn his back on his son? Does he turn the son over to the townspeople? Does make the son grovel in the dirt? That’s how the Pharisees would have expected Jesus to finish this story. I guarantee you that they were shocked and appalled when Jesus said, “But while he was still a long way off…filled with compassion…ran…threw his arms…kissed him.”
Are you lost this morning? Oh, I know you’re smart. You’ve figured out ways to clothe yourself, feed yourself, protect yourself, provide for yourself. But you still could be lost. Look at v.1-2 again. “All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and scribes were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 2 kinds of people here in this scene: those who know their lost and those who don’t. The Pharisees were lost, they just wouldn’t admit it.
One more insight: did you notice the ratios? : one in a hundred; one in ten; one in two. Each story progressively illustrates the extent of God’s love and desperation to re-attach to the lost. Jesus’ own story is a ratio of one to one: His life for mine. His life for yours.
Author, pastor, and onetime atheist Lee Strobel says in one sermon:
“How can I tell you the difference God has made in my life? My daughter Allison was 5 years old when I became a follower of Jesus, and all she had known in those five years was a dad who was profane and angry. I remember I came home one night and kicked a hole in the living room wall just out of anger with life. I am ashamed to think of the times Allison hid in her room to get away from me. Five months after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, that little girl went to my wife and said, "Mommy, I want God to do for me what he's done for Daddy." At age 5! What was she saying? She'd never studied the archeological evidence [regarding the truth of the Bible]. All she knew was her dad used to be this way: hard to live with. But more and more her dad is becoming this way. And if that is what God does to people, then sign her up. At age 5 she gave her life to Jesus.
--God changed my family. He changed my world. He changed my eternity.
Invitation to surrender to Jesus. He’s been pursuing you…
For the rest of us: do we have the heart of a Pharisee or the heart of the Father? How would you know? One with the heart of the Father is desperate to find those who are lost.
Prayer for the found to go looking for the lost.
Are you lost this morning? Wouldn’t you like to be found? Wouldn’t you like to be reunited with the Father? Wouldn’t you like for the separation and isolation be replaced with the joy and peace you’re supposed to have? Wouldn’t you like for the separation and isolation to be replaced with the most meaningful and purposeful existence anyone can ever have? Wouldn’t you like for the separation and isolation be replaced with the sweetness and compassion of the One who loves you the most?
Prayer of salvation. Admit I’ve chosen my own way. My way is a dead-end. I don’t want to be separated/isolated from you any longer. Want to know that you accept me in this life and the life to come. Surrender my life to you. I come as the prodigal—freely admitting I’m not worthy of your compassion. But I need it. I need you.
Rush Creek: Notice the ratios: one in a hundred; one in ten; one in two. Each story progressively illustrates the extent of God’s love and desperation to re-attach to the lost. Jesus’ own story is a ratio of one to one: His life for mine. His life for yours. His life for your neighbor’s. His life for your co-worker’s. His life for your classmate.
As I’ve thought about the condition of being lost, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one thing worse than being lost…and that’s being lost and no one is searching for you.
God has placed individuals in your life who are lost. Will you cooperate with God in reconnecting them to the Father?
People who are lost are:
Dead Romans 3:23 “All have sinned” Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death” Dead people are….dead. They can’t respond to you if you ask them a question. They can’t relate to you as a person. They’re dead. Our sinfulness, renders us dead spiritually.
It’s used to describe people who are far from God.
What does it mean to be lost? It means to be:
Dead Romans 5:12; Romans 6:23 John 3
Dead people are unresponsive, aren’t they? Spiritual deadness means we can’t respond to God in a way that is acceptable to Him. Spiritual deadness means that we must experience a spiritual birth that breathes life into us. John 3
Blind
Deceived
Enslaved
In each of these cases, hundreds of people and thousands of dollars were spent in the search to discover them.
As I’ve thought about the condition of being lost, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one thing worse than being lost…and that’s being lost and no one is searching for you.
Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” That’s why He came. That was the purpose of His mission. Story of 6 special ops guys that were lost/captive and the effort to get them out. That was their mission. If you were an angel in heaven and saw Jesus packing His bags to leave heaven and go to planet earth, and asked him why are you going; what’s your mission, he would have said, “I’m going after those who are lost. That’s my mission.”
Separated
At least 2 kinds of people relate to Jesus: those who know they are lost and those who don’t know they are lost. (v.1)
Luke 15
3 stories that illustrate the Father’s heart for those who are lost. The story about the lost sheep and the shepherd’s willingness to risk everything for the one that was lost. Then there’s the story about the lost coin and how a woman turned her home upside down to find what was lost. Finally there’s the story about the lost son and how the father longed—even ached—to have his son back. Notice the rations: one in a hundred; one in ten; one in two. Each story progressively illustrates the extent of God’s love and desperation to re-acquire? the lost. Jesus’ own story is a ratio of one to one: His life for mine. His life for yours. His life for your neighbor’s. His life for your co-worker’s. His life for your classmate.
Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
Only one thing worst than being lost…being lost and no one searching for you.
Boyscout in Idaho. Girl in Aruba.
Tom Hanks in Castaway..no one looking for him. Gave up.
Who do you know is lost? Are you looking or have you given up?
Are you lost?
?p????µ? [apollumi /ap·ol·loo·mee/] v. From 575 and the base of 3639; TDNT 1:394; TDNTA 67; GK 660; 92 occurrences; AV translates as “perish” 33 times, “destroy” 26 times, “lose” 22 times, “be lost” five times, “lost” four times, and translated miscellaneously twice. 1 to destroy. 1A to put out of the way entirely, abolish, put an end to ruin. 1B render useless. 1C to kill. 1D to declare that one must be put to death. 1E metaph. to devote or give over to eternal misery in hell. 1F to perish, to be lost, ruined, destroyed. 2 to destroy. 2A to lose.
The force of d?a [dia] here is probably between or among themselves. It spread (imperfect tense) whenever these two classes came in contact with Jesus. As the publicans and the sinners were drawing near to Jesus just in that proportion the Pharisees and the scribes increased their murmurings. The social breach is here an open yawning chasm. This man (??t?? [houtos]). A contemptuous sneer in the use of the pronoun. They spoke out openly and probably pointed at Jesus. Receiveth (p??sde?eta? [prosdechetai]). Present middle indicative of the common verb p??sde??µa? [prosdechomai]. In 12:36 we had it for expecting, here it is to give access to oneself, to welcome like ?pede?at? [hupedexato] of Martha’s welcome to Jesus (Luke 10:38). The charge here is that this is the habit of Jesus. He shows no sense of social superiority to these outcasts (like the Hindu “untouchables” in India). And eateth with them (?a? s??es??e? a?t??? [kai sunesthiei autois]). Associative instrumental case (a?t??? [autois]) after s??- [sun-] in composition. This is an old charge (Luke 5:30) and a much more serious breach from the standpoint of the Pharisees. The implication is that Jesus prefers these outcasts to the respectable classes (the Pharisees and the scribes) because he is like them in character and tastes, even with the harlots. There was a sting in the charge that he was the “friend” (f???? [philos]) of publicans and sinners (Luke 7:34)
lost \'l?st\ adjective
[past participle of lose]
(15th century)
1 : not made use of, won, or claimed
2 a : no longer possessed
b : no longer known
3 : ruined or destroyed physically or morally : DESPERATE
4 a : taken away or beyond reach or attainment : DENIED
b : INSENSIBLE, HARDENED
5 a : unable to find the way
b : no longer visible
c : lacking assurance or self-confidence : HELPLESS
6 : RAPT, ABSORBED
7 : not appreciated or understood : WASTED
— lost•ness \'l?s(t)-n?s\ noun
LOOKING FOR LOST
The film Finding Nemo is an animated story of a father's resolute search for his son. The father, a fish named Marlin, teams up with another fish named Dory to find Nemo. A dentist captured Nemo while diving off the coast of Sydney, Australia and placed him in a fish tank in his office.
Nemo thinks his father has forgotten about him and that he'll never see him again. But one day a pelican named Nigel lands in the window of the dentist office and begins to tell Nemo an amazing story.
"Nemo! Your father's been fighting the entire ocean looking for you!" reports Nigel.
"My father?" Nemo incredulously asks.
"Oh, yeah! He's been battling sharks and jellyfish," Nigel recounts.
"It's my dad! He took on a shark!" proudly exclaims Nemo.
Nigel says, "I heard he took on three."
Nemo is dumbfounded. He repeats, "Three?"
Nigel explains, "You see, kid. After you were taken, your dad started swimming like a maniac. He took on three sharks. He battled an entire jellyfish forest. Now he's riding a bunch of sea turtles on the east Australian current, and the word is he's headed this way right now to Sydney."
"What a great daddy!" Nemo says.
Bill and Amy Stearns, in their book 20/20 Vision, relate how the gospel came to Mongolia:
In the 1870s Swedish missionaries arrived in Mongolia—what was called "Outer Mongolia." After four decades of several teams' blood, sweat, and tears, not a single indigenous church had been established. Then in 1921 Mongolia earned the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world to voluntarily invite the Soviets to bring communism to their country. In the ensuing purge, every vestige of Christianity—as well as any other religion—was erased, and more than one million Lamaisric Buddhist priests were slaughtered. Religion was dead in Mongolia.
In 1980 a young Mongolian whom we'll call Yi (Mongolians traditionally have only one name) went to study at a university in Moscow. Yi received an English-language Bible from a fellow student from Tanzania. "You can study English with it," the Tanzanian student explained. Yi then studied the Word for seven years, returning to Mongolia and rising to a top English interpreter position with the government. In 1987 Yi was assigned to an American big-game tourist group, which had come to Mongolia to hunt bear. Doug Coe, a Christian, was one of the tourists.
During the hunting trip Yi found the opportunity to secretly ask Doug, "Do you know God?" Doug nodded.
Three hours later, Yi was able to whisper, "What is his name?"
"Jesus Christ."
In bits and pieces of stolen conversations throughout the rest of the big-game hunt, Doug was able to introduce Yi to Jesus.
"Don't worry," he told Yi. "I know it's illegal to be a Christian, and it will be hard for you. But friends will come." Then the foreign hunters left Mongolia.
Three years later Yi was assigned to another foreign tour group—a cowboy team of Navajo, Winnebago, Cocapaw, and other Native Americans who came to Mongolia to perform in the national nadim, a competition in horsemanship. Of course, the group was a Christian Native American cowboy team. So Yi translated their testimonies on national TV and interpreted their explanation of the Gospel to press groups and officials. Several Mongolians responded to the team's challenge to receive Christ, and Yi spent hours and hours drinking in everything the team knew about the Word. Then they too had to leave Mongolia.
Yi began discipling those who'd come to Christ through the cowboys' ministry. Then another tour group came, a few members of which happened to be pastors. The ministers, after days of intense discipling, realized the depth of Yi's Bible knowledge and the unusual bursts of his spiritual insights. So they all gathered in a hotel room in Ulaan Bataar one very cold day in November 1990 and ordained Yi as an elder of the first Mongolian church in the history of the world!
CONDITION OF LOST
Freelance writer Greta Christina, published often in feminist and adult magazines, is brutally honest regarding her dilemma about dying. As an atheist, she realizes she has a problem with facing death and disbelieving in an afterlife. Writing in a magazine popular with skeptics called the Skeptical Inquirer, she admits:
Death can be an appalling thing to think about. Not just frightening, not just painful. It can be paralyzing. The fact that your life span is an infinitesimally tiny fragment in the life of the universe, that there is, at the very least, a strong possibility that when you die, you disappear completely and forever, and that in 500 years nobody will remember you and in five billion years Earth will fall into the Sun—this can be a profound and defining truth about your existence that you reflexively repulse, that you flinch away from and refuse to accept or even think about, consistently pushing it to the back of your mind whenever it sneaks up for fear that if you allow it to sit in your mind even for a minute, it will swallow everything else. It can make everything you do, and anything anyone else does, seem meaningless, trivial to the point of absurdity. It can make you feel erased, wipe out joy, make your life seem like ashes in your hands.
She does find some hope, however. "What matters is that we get to be alive. We get to be conscious. We get to be connected with each other and with the world, and we get to be aware of that connection and to spend a few years mucking around in its possibilities. We get to have a slice of time and space that's ours."
REFUSING TO ADMIT YOU’RE LOST…
On September 3, 1989, Varig Airlines Flight 254 was at Brazil's Maraba Airport preparing for takeoff. Under normal circumstances the hop to nearby Belém would only take 48 minutes. Captain Cézar Garcez consulted a computer-generated flight plan and read the number 0270 which corresponded to the magnetic heading from Maraba to Belém. But Garcez inadvertently dialed 270 into the Horizontal Situation Indicator. Minutes later, flight 254 took off and climbed to an altitude of 29,000 feet. Instead of heading northeast toward the Brazilian coastline and the city of Belém, the plane turned west and headed straight toward the Amazon forest.
Captain Garcez sensed something was wrong. At this point in the flight plan he expected to be able to have visual contact with the Belém airport. Frustrated, the captain executed a 180-degree turn, not recognizing the absurdity of his due west/due east course. Having been notified by the flight attendants that the passengers were wondering what was happening, Garcez lied. He announced there was a power failure at the Belém airport, and that he would circle the area waiting for the power to be restored.
Despite not knowing where he was, Captain Garcez informed the Varig flight coordinator on the ground he estimated the plane would be landing in Belém in five minutes. He then ordered the flight attendants to serve a fresh round of drinks to the bewildered passengers.
At 7:39 p.m., when the flight was 68 minutes overdue, the first officer identified the problem and started to explain to the captain his mistake. But the captain dismissed his explanation. Refusing to ask for help, he began counting the minutes until the plane would run out of fuel. All the while he searched the ground hoping to find an airport where he could land the plane.
About an hour later, out of fuel, Garcez made a remarkable crash-landing in total darkness in a dense tropical forest. The plane was 700 miles from the intended destination. Although all six of the crew survived, 13 of the 48 passengers were killed. Both Captain Garcez and the first officer had their commercial licenses revoked. They never flew again.
KNOWING YOU’RE NOT LOST
When our son Jered was a little boy, we were careful to teach him our phone number and address in case he was ever lost.
One night, he and his dad went for a before-bedtime walk. After a few minutes of silence, Dan decided to test Jered's knowledge of where he lived.
"How far are we from home?" Dan asked.
Jered answered, "Dad, I don't know."
Dan tried again, "Well, where are you?"
Again Jered answered, "I don't know." Then his dad said good-naturedly, "Sounds to me like you're lost, son."
With a confident grin, Jered looked up at Dan and responded, "Nope. I can't be lost. I'm with you."
FEEL LOST?
Arlene Sulkes-Spieler lost her purse in an unusual way. In August 2004, Arlene was on vacation, enjoying a whale-watching tour off the coast of Cape Cod. Suddenly, the wind whipped her big red purse off her arm and into the sea. "I looked down," Arlene remembers, "and there was my bag in the middle of the ocean."
The purse floated momentarily and then sunk out of sight into the North Atlantic.
Three months later, the Miss Trish II was fishing 20 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. When the crew pulled a net up from 600-feet of water, they were surprised to see a big red bag included in their haul of haddock. A gaff ripped the purse open, and money came spilling out.
The crew salvaged credit cards, keys, pictures, makeup, and $500 cash, and mailed them to Sulkes-Spieler. Arlene was reunited with her purse at Christmastime.
"I was flabbergasted," Sulkes-Spieler said. She sent them her thanks along with a $200 reward.
They didn't keep the money. Russo and crew donated it to victims of the South Asia tsunami.
"They need it more than us," the captain said.
LOOKING FOR THOSE LOST?
While walking his dog on a river-side path in Bedfordshire, England, a man found an ancient gold penny. After examining it, coin expert Richard Bishop said, "It is quite simply the most important single coin find for a century. We fell off our chairs when we realized what it was."
The 1,200-year-old penny bears the image of Coenwulf, an Anglo-Saxon king who ruled Mercia between 796 and 821AD. There are seven other similar coins in existence, but this is the only one ever found from this time period.
The coin was actually discovered back in 2001, and the exact location is still undisclosed. Why the secrecy? Officials fear the knowledge would trigger a gold rush, starting a stampede of amateur treasure hunters.
Prior to auction, the coin was expected to sell for approximately a quarter of a million dollars. "There is no way of putting a price on it because one hasn't ever been found before. It is unique," Bishop said.
That uniqueness paid off. On October 6, 2004, the coin brought $409,000 at auction. The price made it the most expensive British coin in history. The proceeds will be divided between landowner Fen Reavers and the metal-detector-wielding dog walker who found it.
It really wasn't an accident that this man found the coin. He is an amateur metal detector enthusiast. He has an eye for metal and coins on the ground. He is always looking even while walking his dog.
On July 4, 1854, Charlie Peace, a well-known criminal in London, was hung. The Anglican Church, which had a ceremony for everything, even had a ceremony for hanging people. So when Charlie Peace was marched to the gallows, a priest read these words from the Prayer Book: "Those who die without Christ experience hell, which is the pain of forever dying without the release which death itself can bring."
When these chilling words were read, Charlie Peace stopped in his tracks, turned to the priest, and shouted in his face, "Do you believe that? Do you believe that?"
The priest, taken aback by this verbal assault, stammered for a moment then said, "Well…I…suppose I do."
"Well, I don't," said Charlie. "But if I did, I'd get down on my hands and knees and crawl all over Great Britain, even if it were paved with pieces of broken glass, if I could rescue one person from what you just told me."
THE LOST WANT TO BE FOUND
In the summer of 2004, Warren Beamer, a missionary from San Antonio, Texas, visited an orphanage in Nigeria. Beamer was startled when one of the children at the orphanage spoke to him with a southern accent. The girl quickly shared that she was from Houston, Texas. To convince the missionary that this was true, she recited her social security number. Then the girl led Beamer to six other children in the orphanage, whom she described as her brothers and sisters.
The children, who ranged from eight to sixteen years-of-age, had been sent to a Nigerian boarding school by their adoptive American mother. When the woman stopped making tuition payments, the children were sent to the orphanage, living in squalid conditions. Gradually the children gave up hope of ever returning home.
When the children saw Beamer, they began singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" in an effort to convince him of the truth of their claim. With the assistance of Beamer's pastor and a U.S. congressman, the children were back in America within eight days.
On a warm Southern California day in June 2002, Richard Van Pham set out in his 26-foot sailboat from Long Beach harbor for a three-hour adventure to Catalina Island. The 62-year-old Vietnamese immigrant was not prepared for a harrowing adventure that would last three months.
As evening approached, a storm blew up. The winds were so strong they broke the mast and rudder of his boat. When Van Pham attempted to call for help, he discovered his radio was inoperative and his outboard motor wouldn't start. Unable to steer or control his boat, he was carried by the waves and wind. The 25-mile voyage turned into a 2,500 mile journey of desolation and survival. Because Van Pham had no other family members, no one filed a missing person's report or initiated a search.
Each day he drifted at sea, Van Pham looked in vain for any sign of land. "I didn't know where I was or where to go," he admitted. "For months I saw nothing…only water, sky, and seagulls." Unaware of where he was, he drifted aimlessly and survived by eating sea turtles, fish, and seagulls and by drinking rainwater.
On September 17, 2002, help finally arrived. A Navy P-3 patrol plane on a drug interdiction mission spotted the broken-down vessel almost 300 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. A nearby frigate, the USS McClusky, proceeded to pluck Van Pham from his disabled craft and deposit him in Guatemala, from whence he flew back to Southern California.
Like Van Pham, many people are lost, unable to save themselves, with life taking them where they do not want to go. Without help from God, they are goners.
NOT LOST BUT FOUND
Author, pastor, and onetime atheist Lee Strobel says in one sermon:
How can I tell you the difference God has made in my life? My daughter Allison was 5 years old when I became a follower of Jesus, and all she had known in those five years was a dad who was profane and angry. I remember I came home one night and kicked a hole in the living room wall just out of anger with life. I am ashamed to think of the times Allison hid in her room to get away from me.
Five months after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, that little girl went to my wife and said, "Mommy, I want God to do for me what he's done for Daddy." At age 5! What was she saying? She'd never studied the archeological evidence [regarding the truth of the Bible]. All she knew was her dad used to be this way: hard to live with. But more and more her dad is becoming this way. And if that is what God does to people, then sign her up. At age 5 she gave her life to Jesus.
God changed my family. He changed my world. He changed my eternity.
