What Matters to God?
Created for Significance Series
CCCAG 3-14-21
Scripture- Luke 15:1-11
Have you ever asked yourself this question before you pray about something- “how can I get God to answer this prayer in a way that I think is the right way?”
It's OK if you have.
it is human nature to think that we have the right answer or the right solution to a problem.
Have we ever asked ourselves instead, “What is important to God in this situation?”
I believe much of the struggle that we have in our lives and in our relationship with God comes from asking the wrong questions and perhaps asking him with the wrong motive.
This morning we're going to continue are created for significant series and asking the question what matters to God?
We're going to start off by reading our primary scripture for the day which is Luke 15-
Luke 15:1-10
15 Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
8 "Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
NIV
Let’s pray. [Prayer]
What’s really important to God?
When it comes to a big decision, is that the first question you ask?
Probably not…most of us don’t ask that at all much less it being the first consideration we think of.
Perhaps we should
We pray the Lord’s prayer- thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
So let’s talk about what really matters to God.
When you study the Bible, you’ll discover that God is on an all-out search for two kinds of people.
God is not searching like some people go shopping, just meandering through the aisles and seeing if something catches his eye.
God is searching like a typical man shops in a grocery store.
When a man walks into the grocery store he thinks like he's a member of a special operations team.
We have a list of targets
We will find those targets
We will execute retrieving those targets with extreme prejudice
We exfil this location at the earliest convenience with our captives and bring them home for interrogation.
So God is diligently searching for two kinds of people, and my hope is that in the next half hour, you’re going to be able to diagnose the category you’re in right now and the category you want to be in.
The first category of people that God is searching for are what he calls, the fully committed.
Let me explain this to you.
In 2 Chron 14, a king of Israel named Asa came under attack from the neighbor to his north.
Historically, Asa is not a military genius by any stretch of the imagination.
Asa had one strategy for battle- Asa’s strategy was to do the best he could to array his troops tactically, and then pray that God would fight for them.
And God always did. As a result, Asa never lost a battle.
One time, Asa was attacked by a vastly superior force from Ethiopia. In customary fashion, he arrayed his troops and then prayed. Let me read you the actual account from the Bible.
Once an Ethiopian named Zerah attacked Judah with an army of a million men and three hundred chariots. They advanced to the city of Mareshah, so Asa deployed his armies for battle in the valley north of Mareshah. (2 Chron. 14:9–10)
Then Asa cried out to the Lord His God, “O Lord, no one but you can help the powerless against the mighty! Help us, O Lord our God, for we trust in you alone. It is in your name that we have come against this vast horde. O Lord, you are our God; do not let mere men prevail against you!” (2 Chron. 14:11)
That’s what Asa prayed. Here’s what happened: “So the Lord defeated the Ethiopians in the presence of Asa and the army of Judah, and the enemy fled” (2 Chron. 14:12).
That’s background for what I want to tell you now. Asa wins as long as he lets God do the fighting, and is fully committed in his relationship with the Almighty
Several years later, King Asa is older and more established. He is comfortable living in his palace, ruling in peacetime.
So when this king from the north attacks him, Asa’s reluctant to go into battle, because now he’s got more to lose than he used to when he was just a young king starting out.
Instead of going to battle, he takes money from the temple treasury and pays the king of Syria to attack his rival from his eastern flank. That way Asa risks nothing.
Instead of trusting God, he pays off the enemy with God’s money.
He lets somebody else do his fighting for him. He loses faith and trust in God,and his commitment goes out the window.
God is watching
God knows all about the hostile king of Asa’s northern border. And he is so disappointed when Asa takes the comfortable way out that he sends a prophet to Asa
Here’s what happened:
Han’-ani the seer came to King Asa and told him, “Because you have put your trust in the king of Syria instead of in the Lord your God, you missed your chance. (2 Chron. 16:7)
Don’t you remember what happened to the Ethiopians… and their vast army? At that time you relied on the Lord, and he handed them all over to you? (2 Chron. 16:8)
Now watch this in verse 9-
The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. What a fool you have been!” (2 Chron. 16:9)
Do you see what happened there?
God knew the predicament Asa was in.
It was a chance for Asa to do good and express faith. To be fully committed and prove it.
I can almost hear God saying, “O Asa! I have been searching for someone who I could use. Someone who would trust me and be committed to saving my people from their enemy.
God is on an all-out search for two kinds of people in this world.
The first kind is the kind he can use; fully committed people.
Is that you?
The second kind of people God is searching for is the kind of people we read about in Luke 15 a few minutes ago.
Luke 15 explains WHY God is searching for fully committed people.
Luke 15 is the record of Jesus telling three stories or parables. The stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the wayward son.
If you read Jesus’ parables, you discover that, normally, when he tells a parable, he tells the story and then he goes on to explain what it means before telling another parable. But in Luke 15, Jesus doesn’t pause to explain. He just launches right into the next parable and then the next.
Why?
Well, to understand that, you need to remember the introduction that we read just a few minutes ago. This is so important- back to Luke 15.
[Read verses 1–4.]
Luke 15:1-5
Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?
NIV
In our translation of the Bible, the story of the lost sheep begins this way: “Suppose one of you…?” Literally, this should be translated “which of you, being a shepherd…?”
Jesus knows that there are some men in his audience who think of shepherds as second-class citizens, so he chooses to tell a story about a shepherd to get their attention.
He asks them a question about doing something they would never do. When he says, “Which of you, being a shepherd…” immediately all of them know the answer, “None of us would do whatever you’re driving at, because none of us would ever become shepherds. If we had sheep, we’d hire someone to watch them for us.”
Jesus gets their attention quickly. While they’re all thinking about what a despicable trade sheep-herding is, he tells them about a shepherd who loves sheep.
The second shock comes to them when this shepherd is saddled with the responsibility of actually losing a sheep. Look at verse 4. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them?”
Note Jesus specifically says, “the shepherd loses one of them.”
In that culture, normally it would be a write off- we are not leaving the entire flock to find one sheep that wandered off.
But this shepherd Jesus is talking about loves his sheep.
Now, I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I need you to follow me, so keep your text open and concentrate for the next few minutes.
In Jesus’ story, how many sheep does the shepherd have? One hundred.
And what happens to them? One wanders off. One gets lost. He leaves the other ninety-nine in the open country.
He doesn’t even bring them back to the city and corral them for the night. He doesn’t call another shepherd to watch over them. He leaves them in potential danger to go and find the one that’s lost.
When he finds the sheep, what does he do? Puts it on his shoulders and brings it home.
And what does he say to his friends? “Rejoice with me.” Why? Because he’s happy. So happy, he throws a party to celebrate.
Luke 15 has three stories like this one-
The first one was that of the shepherd and the wayward sheep. He finds the sheep and calls his friends to come to a party to celebrate.
The second was a woman who lost a coin, finds a coin and has so much joy in finding the coin that she throws a party to celebrate finding the coin.
The third parable- one we will explore more in depth next week. It’s the story of the prodigal son.
It speaks of a son leaving home after taking his part of the inheritance, blows the money on wild living, and then comes home in rags only to find the father he had embarrassed in front of the entire community running toward him, embracing him, and throwing a party to celebrate him coming home.
As a reminder, none of the people in these storires would be a person the deeply religious people Jesus is talking to would EVER want to identify with.
Look at the similarities in each story-
(1) In each of the stories, the plot line involves something lost. A sheep is lost, a coin is lost, a son has wandered away from home.
In your personal bible time this week, you might find it helpful at some point to go through this chapter and underline the words loss, loses, and lost to see how many times each word is repeated in its various forms.
(2) In each of the stories, what is lost really matters to the hero of the story. Isn’t that true? The shepherd is so concerned about the loss of one sheep, that he risks the other ninety-nine to find him.
The woman is so distraught over the loss of one coin that she cancels all her plans and scours the entire house.
The father is so brokenhearted that his son has wandered that he endures the scorn of the entire village by running to him when he finally heads for home. In each case, what is lost matters so much to the one who lost it that it warrants and all-out search.
(3) In each of the stories, when what was lost is found, the hero is so happy, he or she throws a party to express their joy.
(4) In each of the stories, the hero is someone who wouldn’t really be admired by most religious leaders. The first hero is a shepherd, a second-class citizen. The second is a woman, a third-class citizen. The third is a father. A potentially admirable figure, until he does the unthinkable and lifts his robes in order to run and save his son from humiliation and shame. No deeply religious Pharisee could admire a man like that.
Put those four things together, and what do you have?
You have Jesus standing in front of a group of long-standing religious types who think they have figured out what really matters to God.
They’ve read 2 Chronicles 16:9- about how God is looking all over the earth for those who are deeply committed to HIM>
They would have memorized it by the time they were 10 years old. They see themselves as the fully committed. So their honest and best thinking is that they (and only they) matter to God.
When they see Jesus talking with the outcasts of society, they’re angered because they believe he, being a rabbi, is diminishing God’s name and dignity by associating with such lowlife people.
Jesus is so disappointed with them that He gives them three parables in an attempt to show them their arrogance and pride.
By giving these parables, Jesus was saying, “Your perception of who matters to God and who doesn’t is so far off that I am going to clear this concept up once and for all.
I am going to rapid-fire truth into your souls so that you will never again wonder what matters to God.”
What he’s saying to them is, there are two kinds of people that God longs for and searches for:
1. The fully committed.
2. Those who are lost.
To clarify- the fully committed are not proud, religious types who think that the most important thing is their religious life.
The committed are the ones who understand that apart from faith in Jesus Christ they are doomed the same as the lost.
Jesus is really saying two things in this parable. First, lost people matter to God so much that he’s on an all-out search to find them.
Every time a lost person is found, all of heaven rejoices with the hero of heaven, which is Jesus.
And, secondly, the fully committed are those who understand this and rejoice with God when he finds what is lost, so much so that they join the all-out search as well.
Can you see why God says in 2 Chronicles, “My eyes are searching the earth to find every person who is fully committed to me”? It’s because God so loves those who have wandered from his Fatherhood that he is enlisting all of his other children who are willing to join the search.
? Only the fully committed reach out to the lost.
? Only the fully committed serve long hours at the church so that it’s a place where the lost can get found.
? Only the fully committed pray diligently for their friends who will otherwise spend a Christ-less eternity in an awful place called hell.
? Only the fully committed alter their spending habits so they can give and fund ministries that reach lost people.
? Only the fully committed stay up late, praying, thinking, and dreaming of ways to reach out to their lost friends and neighbors.
? Only the fully committed look out of eyes that see as God does, thinking first about others and second about themselves.
Finally, I’ll end with this-
Believers, there are two categories of Christians in the world today. The casual and the committed.
Which category are you in, and which category do you want to be in?
A very dear woman from my previous church, who was instrumental in it’s founding used to pray this every Sunday morning before church at the pre-service prayer meeting during the church’s formative years- “God, I don’t ask you for much today. I just ask that you give me your heart for lost people.”
What a prayer!
If you want to put a tear in God’s eye, to get his full attention-
Pray that prayer.
I’d ask all of you who are believers to pray that prayer every day between now and the end of this series. Will you do that?
And, seekers whether you are hear or on the internet.
There are really only two categories of the lost in the world today. The lost who are looking, and the lost who aren’t interesting in looking.
I hope you’ll decide today that y ready to you are ready to come into relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ,
Because he is on a search for you
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