Anybody here ever lose something? Maybe it was your wallet, or a set of keys. Some of you lose your glasses only to find out that they are actually on top of your head. Am I preaching to anyone today?
I remember I was in the 7th grade at Brazil Jr High School and I lost my nylon Velcro wallet. Anybody remember those things?
And I was really upset about. First of all, it had like 11 dollars in it and that was my lunch money for the rest of the week.
Much like here in Columbus, we had an open campus and we could go pretty much wherever we wanted for lunch as time allowed. And that 11 dollars would allow me to eat at Eddie’s Hamburgers every day.
So, not only was I upset about losing my wallet. I was upset about not being able to eat at Eddie’s for lunch that week. I had to get the school lunches the rest of the week… And pizza day was already over.
Remember pizza day??? Yeah… I know, it was so good and I missed it. I missed Eddie’s hamburgers. Had to settle for some type of mystery meet.
They would throw in some tater-tots just to throw you off a little and make you think it was a good lunch. But it was a rough week.
Then my sophomore year, 1985, three high school consolidated into one school and many of the classes were held in the Jr High building.
The junior high went to another location. Anyway, my sophomore year, one of the office girls came into Geometry class and said that Mr. Schopmeyer wanted to see me in his office.
I was pretty sure I had done anything really dumb but I wasn’t 100% sure. I was a 16 year old kid in Brazil… so I was nervous.
I walked into the office and there stood Mr. Schopmeyer with my nylon/Velcro wallet and he said, “I think this belongs to you.”
I opened it up and there was my little ID card that came with the wallet with my name on it. But more importantly, there was my $11 too. It was still there.
My wallet, my money, once was lost… but was found. From that moment on it was affectionately called “My Amazing Grace Wallet”.
There’s something exciting about finding something that was lost. There’s something powerful about finding something that was lost.
Have you ever lost your car keys? You don’t sit down and say, “Well, I still have the car!” No… you tear the house apart until you find them. Because something that’s lost matters.
And that’s exactly how Jesus feels about people who are lost… spiritually lost, wandering far from God.
When Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep, He was teaching us something deep about the heart of God… and what the heart of His Church must be.
And if we are His body, like we’ve talked about the past couple of weeks, then our heartbeat should match His. And His heart beats for the lost.
And that leads us to our first point.
1. God’s heart has always been for the lost.
When you open the Bible and read it… you will see from the book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, God is always seeking, always pursuing, always loving those who have wandered away.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God didn’t wait for them to come find Him … He came walking in the garden saying, “Where are you?”
When Israel ran from Him time and again, God sent prophets to call them back.
And when humanity couldn’t find its way home, He sent His own Son to seek and to save the lost.
That’s the heart of our God… a pursuing, rescuing, redeeming heart. If the church is the body of Christ, then that same heartbeat should echo in our lives.
We can’t call ourselves followers of Jesus and not care about the people Jesus came to die for.
I love how Chuck Swindoll put it one time, “You can’t walk closely with the Shepherd and ignore His sheep.”
Chuck Swindoll
The answer to finding the lost is not in a slicker presentation of the gospel through song or preaching, it’s in each individual Christian, taking seriously their command to share the good news.
Look at Luke 15:4 with me.
“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?
In this parable, the Shepherd represents Jesus and the lost sheep represents every single of one of us who at one time or another were not in the fold.
It can also refer to someone who was in the fold, but for some reason, wandered away from the fold.
In this parable of the lost sheep, the Shepherd, left the 99 and went looking for the lost one. The lost sheep, at that moment, was the most important thing to the shepherd.
Notice the shepherd didn’t say… You know what… I’ve already got plenty, I’ll just write that one off. Notice, that after he found the lost sheep, he didn’t chastise the sheep or discipline the sheep for running off.
In our story today… the shepherd lifted the sheep, placed it on his shoulders, and lovingly carried it back to the 99.
Look at Verse 5…
5 And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.
One of the songs that I’ve written recently called I forgive talks about someone who wanders away from Jesus for a long time.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after… just walks away from anything to do with church… but more importantly, walks away from Jesus.
And part of the song goes like this.
For years I walked with burdens in my soul
I tried to fill the void, but I was never whole
I chased the world, and drifted away
But I took a step toward Jesus
And heard my Savior say
I forgive, everything you’ve done
I forgive, the battle has been won
I paid what was due, and poured my grace on you
So forget about your past
and start to live
I forgive
From the song, “I Forgive”
You can walk and walk and walk away from the Lord… and it only takes one step back to Him and He will come running to meet you and welcome you back.
Later on in Luke 15 we read the story of the prodigal son who had wandered away from his father. He didn’t just wander… he actually chose to run headlong into a life of rebellion.
But he came to his senses one day and said, “I think I will go back. I hope I have a place there. I hope my dad will accept me back as a ranch hand if nothing else.”
And look at what it says in verse 20. “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.
When you turn away from your life of sin… in other words… when you repent and take that first step toward Jesus… He will come running to meet you.
That has always been His heart, and it always will be.
Second…
2. The church exists to reach not gather.
Somewhere along the way, the Church (in general) can drift into becoming a club for the found instead of a mission for the lost.
We start to focus on our comfort, our preferences, our traditions… and we forget that we are on a rescue mission going after the lost.
Think about it this way. Imagine if the United States Coast Guard all of a sudden said, “We’re going to stop doing rescues. It’s just too messy out there on the water. We’ll stay on shore where it’s safe.”
We’d call that crazy… because rescuing people is so much a part of what they do. It’s part of their purpose.
The same is true for us.
We are the rescue team for the Kingdom of God.
The church doesn’t exist just to meet inside walls… it exists to reach beyond them. If our faith never takes us beyond the building, we’re missing the mission.
Theologian, Christopher JH Wright said this…
“The church doesn’t have a mission; the mission has a church.” Christopher J.H. Wright
In other words… this isn’t an idea that we have come up with. It’s something that God instituted way back in the New Testament.
The mission of the church always has been and always will be to…
go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 28:19
As we have talked about some this past year… we as the church must do a better job of going after the “one”. “Go” into all the world, Jesus told us.
He never said, “stay” and hope they show up for a church service.
It’s great when they do, but imagine the impact this church could have if we came a lot closer to the heartbeat of Jesus and started caring for the lost like he does.
The great evangelist Dwight L. Moody was once criticized by a woman in his church because of the way he evangelized the lost.
In response to her criticism, he asked the woman, “well, how do you do it?”
She said, “well… I don’t do it all”.
Moody said, “then I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.” You know how many times I’ve used that line.
I know that I was criticized once for our church supporting the Love Chapel. The argument that the person used was that the Love Chapel was not a “Christian Church” ministry…
And that there were a lot of churches involved in the Love Chapel that we didn’t agree with on major doctrinal issues. My reply… “I like the Love Chapel’s way of doing it, better than our way of not doing it.”
It is my understanding that right now with the government shutdown, and SNAP benefits not coming in… the line are very long. There are a lot of hungry people in our community.
In Matthew 25:35 Jesus said, For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.
In this time of food insecurities, this is an opportunity for the church to focus on reaching more than gathering.
Gathering is important, don’t get me wrong! But our main job is to “go, reach, minister, love, heal, pray for, feed…and whatever else you can think of to get people to see the love of Jesus.
And if the heartbeat of Jesus is reaching the lost then we need to love all the lost, like Jesus does. And that is point number 3…
3. Reaching the lost takes love, not just programs.
We can have the best services, the best music, the best technology — but none of it replaces love.
Jesus didn’t say, “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have perfect programs.”
He said, “if you love one another.” (John 13:35)
The lost aren’t looking for perfection; they’re looking for love.
They’re not necessarily impressed by our buildings… they’re moved by our compassion.
So here’s a question:
Do we love people enough to go after them? To invite them?
To listen to them? To walk with them even when their lives are messy?
Because real ministry is messy. Lost sheep don’t smell good.
But that’s the work of the Shepherd… and it’s our calling, too.
The church that reaches people is the church that loves people. Do we love people enough to go after them?
4. Heaven rejoices when the lost are found.
In Luke 15, every time something lost is found — the sheep, the coin, the son… heaven throws a party.
Look at how the story of the lost sheep goes in verses 6 and 7… 6 When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!
All of heaven rejoices when one sinner comes home.
Every salvation is a victory.
Every baptism is a celebration.
Every time someone steps from darkness into light, all of heaven erupts in joy.
And if heaven rejoices over the lost being found, shouldn’t the church do the same? Our joy shouldn’t be measured by how many we keep but by how many we reach.
Now… don’t get me wrong, I want to keep every single one of you in the fold here at ECC, but the more important thing is to go out and reach those who… if they died today… would not go to heaven.
This has to be a personal mission of each person who claims to be a follower of Jesus. This is the mission of every person who says… “I want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.”
I’m not sure if we can even say that we are a totally committed Christian, if we are not trying to reach the lost. I think there are far too many who claim to Christian who are only about half-way in.
It reminds me of the day my brother, Jeff got his senior yearbook picture taken. I remember it very well. He and mom were discussing what he should wear… and Jeff really needed mom’s help because he was colored-blind.
So mom picks out his dress shirt, his tie, his suit-jacket… remember when that was thing for senior pictures… guys had to have a picture with a suit jacket on.
Anyway, Jeff goes in and gets dressed and comes out with his dress shirt, tie, suit jacket… and a pair of Boston Celtics looking green basketball shorts.
The top half looked great. The bottom half… not so much.
Mom said, “Jeff what in the world is this all about?” He said, “they only take a picture of the top half for the yearbook. Bottom half doesn’t matter what I’m wearing.”
Fair point, I guess. But far too many of us who claim to be followers of Jesus do that same thing. We are only half-way in… if that. Some maybe a little more.
Jesus wants it all. He doesn’t want us to compartmentalize our Christianity. He wants us 24/7 365… and when the world sees an authentic Christian, living their life like that… It’s pretty impressive.
And it’s how we are going to win more people to Jesus.
If we’re completely honest with ourselves, I think it’s easy to forget what it’s like to be lost once we’ve been found for a while.
But we can never lose that urgency — that heartbeat — for the people Jesus came to save. One of our core values on our sign just outside these doors says…
“We must care about the lost and reach them.”
Let’s be a church that:
• Goes after the one.
• Loves the unloved.
• Welcomes the wanderer home.
• Celebrates every new believer as heaven does.
Because at the end of the day, the measure of a church isn’t its size… it’s its heart. And the church that has God’s heart will always care about and reach the lost.
“For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Luke 19:10
That’s His mission. And that must be ours.
And if you’re here today and you’ve never made the decision to follow Jesus, we invite you to come during this song of decision.
