We Must Care About The Lost And Reach Them

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.