How many of you chronically lose or misplace things? You never notice it something is lost until you need it and it’s always in the last place you look. Believe or not, God knows what all of this—maybe some of it—feels like. God is searching for something—but not because he can’t remember where he left it. He knows where it is. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s found what he’s looking for.
Like many of you today, God has suffered a loss. Some of you have lost friends. Some of you have lost siblings. Some of you have lost parents. Some of you have lost a spouse. And God knows how that feels for you. Way back in the beginning, he created people to enjoyed the best of everything environmentally, socially, relationally, economically, and spiritually, but when God’s word was challenged, when his authority was questioned, and when his love and care was disbelieved, the relationship he enjoyed with his creation was fractured, resulting in their being separated from him. While God readily forgave them, he also didn’t shield them from the consequences of their choices. Everyone suffered, including God.
I believe that every person has a need for God, so early on in life, people begin searching for things to fill this God-shaped void in their life. At the same time God is searching for people who will let him fill that void. So, while we are searching for things to fill our God-shaped void, God is searching for the opportunity to show us how well he fits into that void. This morning, some of you are well aware that you are searching and that God is searching for you, it’s hard to believe and trust that this void in your life—of which you are well aware—can only be filled by the one who created you.
Some of you are searching for something, but you don’t know what it is you’re looking for. You know how you’d like it to make you feel, but you don’t quite know what you’re looking for or where to find it. Some try fill the void through money and things you can buy, and really just end up spending money they really don’t have on things they really don’t need or even want, in order to attract and impress people they really don’t even like.
Some attempt to fill the void with unhealthy, co-dependant, and ultimately destructive relationships. But you know it’s not working because you’re still not finding that peace or security you can only get from God. It’s not just the fault of that person because you place expectations on them only God could fulfill.
Some try to fill the void with positions of power, authority and influence over people, thinking that controlling people is what we’re looking for.
Or maybe its drugs or alcohol. You’re not an addict, but you’re convinced that you just need it to get through the day. And “a little more” and “just this once” and “just one more time” have all added up, and that which you claimed you could control now controls you—and maybe you really are addicted.
For others, they’re trying to fill that God-shaped void by trying to control other people. They on a quest to mold and shape and manipulate and control their spouse or children or friends into clones of themselves. You hold incredibly high standards for yourself to which you’ve never attained, but you’re still reaching for them and holding them over the people in your life as well.
Or maybe you’ve just given up on life and have resolved yourself to live a life of withdrawal and isolation. You’re just biding your time floating in an ocean of loneliness, wondering if someone will ever throw you a life-line.
When God took on the form of a man in Jesus Christ—that’s the Christmas story—and then died on the cross and rose from the dead for our sin, both mine and yours—that’s the Easter story—that lifeline was thrown and now the opportunity take hold and allow him to pull us toward him is completely available.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus told stories or parables, but he always told stories to make a vital, eternal point. The three stories we’re going to look at this morning have two things in common: One is that the character that represents God the Father is actively pursuing something that represents you and me.
The second is that the things being searched for have incredible value to the one doing the searching. There was a point where Jesus was becoming known for keeping company with some fairly undesirable types of people, at least in the eyes of those who felt qualified to determine such things. Look with me now at Luke 15:1-2.
1 Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. 2 This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such despicable people - even eating with them!
What you first see here is that Jesus accepted people and met them where they were at. He didn’t pre-qualify anyone before he would speak with them. It’s the same attitude we hope to project here in our church. So here is Jesus with tax gatherers and sinners. People hated tax-gatherers. They collected the taxes and their compensation was any amount of money they could extort from innocent people in the process. They had betrayed their Jewish heritage and exchanged it for the protection, and endorsement of the Roman Empire. The rest of the crowd are simply called “sinners.”
These were people who had rejected God or had made choices that resulted in being ostracized from the established church and organized religion in their world. The ones who are upset with Jesus are the Pharisees and the Scribes. This is the pious religious community who held people up to an impossible standard to which they themselves could not even attain.
The theology of the many of the Pharisees and the Scribes taught that God is infinitely righteous and holy, therefore, God likes those who are righteous and holy and doesn’t like or want to be with those who are not. Yet the attitude Jesus demonstrates is just the opposite. These tax-gatherers and sinners were of infinite value to God and he knew it. In fact, he said at one point that these were exactly the types of people whom he came to reach. Which is why Jesus said about himself,
“It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32)
What we’re going to see today is that these people that were called “sinners” are valuable to God. They’re valuable to him like one coin to a poor old woman who can’t afford to spend a single cent unwisely. They’re valuable to him like one sheep to a poor shepherd who only has a small flock with which to make his living. They’re valuable to him like a foolish son who rejects his loving father, breaking his heart. Yet that father still sees that one burning ember of hope that his son will one day return to him.
Are they sinners? Yes. We all are if you think about it. We’ve all done things we wish we wouldn’t have. We’ve all said things to people or about them that we wish we wouldn’t have. We’ve all said and done things just because we were being selfish at the moment. We’re all sinners. Some of us are better at it than others, but we’re all sitting on the same shelf. But does that mean our sin is okay with God? No. But their value and your value in God’s eyes is not determined by their actions—how many times you sin or what sins you commit.
They’re valuable to God because they are his creation and because he loves them like he loves you. If you came into my office, you would see several pictures of my children on the walls and on my desk—pictures worth only a few cents in terms of their physical value, but priceless to me because they preserve the expressions and the memories and the stages of life at which my children will never be again. There is a picture of my son at age two and a half kissing his one year-old sister on the cheek. The paper and frame are only worth a few cents, but the image is priceless.
If you were to go out into the city and mention my name, the vast majority of people will not know or care who I am. If there was an article tomorrow in the Arizona Republic describing my death, most of the readers would feel no emotion as they read it, if they read it at all. And that’s okay. It’s okay because God has communicated to me through his word that while my value in Phoenix may be slight, my worth to him is infinite. So is yours. Regardless of what you have done, or what has been done to you, you are of infinite value to God.
God says we’ve all sinned because we’re all sinners, whether in small ways or big ways, and he has paid the price for it. Everyone who is lost, even the worst of the lost, has value to God. That’s why God cares and that’s why God is searching them and for you. That’s why it makes perfect sense that Jesus is spending so much time with sinful people in this passage. That’s why he is meeting them where they’re at in order to issue to them the challenge of accepting and taking hold of the life-line. In Luke 15, the first thing we see in Jesus’ three stories is that…
God is searching for people who have been deceived
Turn in your Bibles to Luke 15:3-7.
3 Jesus used this illustration: 4 “If you had one hundred sheep, and one of them strayed away and was lost in the wilderness, wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine others to go and search for the lost one until you found it? 5 And then you would joyfully carry it home on your shoulders. 6 When you arrived, you would call together your friends and neighbors to rejoice with you because your lost sheep was found. 7 In the same way, heaven will be happier over one lost sinner who returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!
In the culture of first-century Palestine, livestock was wealth. The more livestock you owned, the richer you were. In this culture, a hundred sheep was not a lot. This shepherd wasn’t broke, but he also wasn’t rich. One sheep was an important asset. Jesus often compared people to sheep. Not because he thinks we’re stupid and smelly. But because people often act like sheep. The Bible says, “All of us like sheep have gone astray…”[1] People do many of the things that sheep do.
For instance, sheep are not good at knowing exactly where they need to go and what they need to do. If a sheep gets lost, for whatever reason, they can’t find their way home by themselves. In fact, if a herd of sheep are left in a field, they will stay in that field and graze there until it is bare and then they will died of starvation. They won’t go looking for a new field.
Sheep need a shepherd and this shepherd knows this so he goes looking for his lost sheep. And just so you know, I don’t think the sheep in this story is representing someone who doesn’t know God. Jesus called believers “sheep.” And this sheep is already part of the shepherd’s flock. This sheep is like a lot of us who have wandered away from God. The sheep didn’t get lost on purpose. He didn’t do it out of rebellion or maliciousness toward the shepherd. But the sheep has wandered away because he was distracted or lured away and the shepherd is searching.
Being deceived is not something to which we readily admit. Even though we all get deceived from time to time, no one wants to admit they were taken in and believed something which wasn’t true. Maybe at some point in your life, you suffered because you believed something that wasn’t true, or you believed someone who wasn’t telling the truth. You were hurt in a relationship by someone who wasn’t what they purported to be. You were hurt financially by someone who swindled or cheated you. A boss says one thing and does another. Someone you love and trust betrays their words with their actions.
It happens all the time, and God’s word says that every one of us has been taken and in lied to by the powers of darkness. In fact, the Bible says the enemy of our souls is “…a liar and the father of lies.”[2]
We have all, at one time or another, believed his lies. Because an earthly father abused you, you’ve believed that a heavenly father can’t be trusted. Because you’ve never felt valued by anyone, you believe you have no value to God. We’ve believed that temporary escapes into chemical or alcohol-induced states of oblivion are better than facing reality. We’ve believed that if we can look good, drive an expensive car, get a prestigious title, or have a respectable address, we’ll feel fulfilled. Some of us have believed a lie that we can’t believe in a God who doesn’t answer all our questions. We’ve all been deceived, some of us have even deceived ourselves. The God of truth, the good shepherd, is searching for people whose susceptibility and vulnerability to deception has led them away from the one who would protect them with a cloak of truth. Maybe he’s searching for you. Just like God is searching for people who have been deceived,
God is searching for people who don’t know they’re lost
Look at Luke 15:8-10 with me.
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten valuable silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and look in every corner of the house and sweep every nook and cranny until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her because she has found her lost coin. 10 In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”
Have you ever noticed the intensity with which you will search for an inanimate object when you need it. Your wallet, your purse, your keys, a document, an address, a phone number, a pair of socks or earrings. When you need it, you need it now and if time is running out, finding that thing is the highest priority in your life at that moment. But what you probably won’t do is to scold your keys or purse or your socks when you find them.
I don’t believe that this parable is intended to be a strict analogy of human character, but I do believe it illustrates a point. That point is that there are people who don’t realize they’re lost. They don’t understand that they were created by a loving God. They don’t realize that when this temporary life ends, an eternal life begins. I was one of these people. I was not raised in religious or Christian home. I believed my purpose in life was to be a good person, to be financially successful and take care of my family. Whether or not there was a God or a heaven or a hell or whether or not the Bible was true was never an issue. I was like this coin. I wasn’t trying to be lost, but I was lost. I didn’t know I was lost, but I was lost. And God found me.
But unlike the coin in this story, I had a choice. In my ignorance of my lost state, I chose to reject God. I didn’t reject him entirely, at least I didn’t reject everything there was about God. I liked the spiritual part. I liked the morality, to a degree. I admired the integrity. I enjoyed the idea that truth and life was bigger than my personal sphere of understanding and influence. But I was still lost. And when I finally understood and accepted the truth I was found and I was free. Free from deception. Free from living for the expectations and approval of people. Free from escaping reality by getting high. Free from exploiting others for my personal gain. Maybe you’ve never thought about this before. Maybe there really is a God who created you, who loves you and who is searching for you. Maybe you really are lost and maybe today’s the day you become found.
God is searching for people who need to come back to Him
Let’s keep reading, now in Luke 15:11-32.
Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. 12 The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting until you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. 13 “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living. 14 About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. 15 He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. 16 The boy became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. 17 “When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired men have food enough to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger! 18 I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, 19 and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired man.”’ 20 “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long distance away, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. 21 His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’ 22 “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger, and sandals for his feet. 23 And kill the calf we have been fattening in the pen. We must celebrate with a feast, 24 for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began. 25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, 26 and he asked one of the servants what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the calf we were fattening and has prepared a great feast. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ 28 “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, 29 but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve worked hard for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30 Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the finest calf we have’’ 31 “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you and I are very close, and everything I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”
If you remember, Jesus’ reasons for telling these stories was to explain to the religious leaders that God loves and searches for lost and sinful people. Jesus loved sinners, but he never loved or excused their sin. No Jewish boy, even in modern-day Israel, would ever ask their father for their inheritance in advance because it was the same as saying, “I wish you were dead” or “I love your money more than I love you.” He had become so self-centered, impatient and estranged from his father that he could not only make this request, but when his heartbroken father actually gave him the money, he took it and left.
This isn’t just the carelessness of youth. This is a hard heart that needs to be broken and crushed before it can be softened again. But it can be. When the son leaves, he wastes his father’s money on everything that confronts and defies his family. Everything his father has worked for, the family business, the family values, the family heritage is being who willfully and knowingly walked on by this young son.
The older son represents the Pharisees and the Scribes and today, believers who have allowed their spiritual experience and longevity to harden their hearts toward those who have allowed sin to consume them. The older son is bitter. When he sees the party starting up, he runs to the house and throws a fit. “He doesn’t deserve your love! He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness! I’ve been here! I stayed with you! I have served you faithfully and you never threw a party for me! You never celebrated my presence! This isn’t fair!”
But think about it. What if God was fair? What if God made everyone of us pay for every sin we’ve ever committed? But he doesn’t. Because God is not like people. He isn’t like you and me. We want revenge and God wants a relationship. We make excuses and God pays the price. We hold others to higher standards than those to which we hold ourselves, and our sinless God forgives our sin so that we can have fellowship with him.
God is searching for those who have been deceived. God is searching for those who don’t know they’re lost. God is searching for those who know they’re lost and need to admit it. These stories probably land on every one of us with a different spin. There are many different ways in which we could apply them to our lives, but there are two roads down which I want to go as we wrap up our time together today.
First, there are believers—followers of Christ—who need to repent of our prejudices against non-believers. Just as the Pharisees were pridefully prejudiced against the “sinners” with whom Christ spent time, there are people who believe in and follow Christ who live in a spiritual bubble, looking down at those who don’t believe like us.
How do you react when you see someone who looks like the walking dead coming toward you in the mall or on a sidewalk? What do you feel? Do you assume the best or do you assume the worst? How do you feel about those people at work or in your apartment complex whose morals fall well beneath yours on the scale? Do you dislike their actions only, or do your find yourself disliking them as well? Does God feel like you do? What if God tied our actions to our value as closely as we do for others? Some of us need to repent of our this prejudice.
We must also ask ourselves, “Am I an object of God’s search? Have I been floating in the ocean? Have I become an expert at throwing finite things into that infinite, God-shaped void in my soul?” Is there a constant flow of money, relationships, sex, alcohol, drugs, positions, titles, isolations and futile attempts at fulfillment disappearing before your eyes as you stand on the edge of that void watching these things vanish into the darkness?
A life-line is has been thrown your way. God became a man, he lived a sinless life, yet he paid the price for our sin so that we would not have to work our way to God, to earn his love and or win his approval because he offers these things as a gift. You can’t earn God’s love. You can’t win his acceptance. You cannot perform for his approval. Because they can be earned or won. They have been offered to you as a gift. The Bible says clearly that…
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
And because of God’s infinite love for you, he wants to change your life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 reveals that
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The life-line has been thrown your way because you matter to God, because you are valuable to him, and because he wants to change your life.
