The Lost Get Found

January 17, 2021
Pastor Clint Ziemer

Audio of the sermon preached on January 17, 2021, at Cable Community Church, Sherrard, IL

Episode Notes

The Lost Get Found

Text :  Luke 15:1-10



Is your name in the Bible?   Years ago, there was a bag lady in New York City who attended a preaching service at a Manhattan Rescue Mission. Afterwards in the line to receive soup, she mentioned to the preacher she was now ready to give her life to Jesus. She said, "I never knew until today that my name is in the Bible."

The preacher smiled and said, "What's your name?"

She said, "Edith. My name is Edith. And my name is in the Bible."

The preacher said, "I'm sorry ma'am but you must be mistaken. The name Edith never appears in the Bible."

She said, "Oh yes it does, you read it a few minutes ago!" He opened his Bible and she pointed her dirty finger to Luke 15:2. The preacher had been using the King James Version, and it says, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." She said, "There it is! Jesus receiveth sinners and Edith with them!"


    Our text this morning is from Luke 15.  This chapter is sometimes called "The Lost Chapter," because it contains three parables dealing with people and objects that are lost and then found.  Today we are going to examine the first two of those parables, from verses 1 - 10, about the lost sheep and coin.  Next week we will examine the third parable about the father and his lost sons.  Each of today's parables have a common outline.  That is ...


Complaint,

Care   and

Celebration

  1. Body
    1. Complaint
      1. Isn't it true that most of us would have agreed with the Pharisees and Scribes.  As parents we are concerned about who our children may associate with. We have all heard the mottoes: "Birds of a feather flock together" and "One bad apple spoils the whole bunch" and "Guilt by association." As Christians, don't we have to be careful about who we may be seen with and where?   I imagine most of us have listened to sermons or read materials on boundary crossings and misconduct.  The concern about Jesus' eating partners may have some legitimacy.  It could be detrimental to his image as a "holy man".  After all, the Pharisees reasoned, this man has many people claiming that He is God's promised Messiah.  What sort of Messiah hangs out with people such as that?
      2. These Pharisees, and all who are like them, are missing the point
        1. In the way that they define tax collectors and "sinners"
        2. to the Pharisees, everyone who wasn't a Pharisee - set apart to holiness for God - was a sinner.
        3. the tax collectors were particularly sinful due to their association with the Romans. (gentiles)
      3. Jesus brings up two examples of someone with responsibility experiencing a loss
        1. one sheep / the shepherd / watching over the community flock
        2. one coin / the woman / responsible for her household budgetCare
      4. The heart of the these parables, however, is the costly love of God. In the course of ch. 15, Jesus tells three parables, each with a rising proportion of things lost to total things in the parable. The parable of the sheep tells of a 1/100 ratio between lost and "non-lost" sheep; the parable of the coins gives us a 1/10 ratio, while in the story of the prodigal, as we will see next week, both of the sons are lost, but in totally different ways.
      5. Costly loss of a sheep
        1. Psalm 100:3 - Know that the LORD, He is God;
                   It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
                   We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
        2. Isaiah 40:11 -- He will feed His flock like a shepherd;
                He will gather the lambs with His arm,
                And carry them in His bosom,
                And gently lead those who are with young
        3. searching up and down the hill side
        4. carrying the animal back home
      6. Costly loss of a coin 
        1. the Hebrew word for coin "zuzim" can also mean those who have moved away, or the dearly departed.
        2. light a lamp
        3. sweep the whole house
        4. searching -- setting aside all other plans for that day
      7. These two parables are each one sentence in the Greek.  This means that they are, as it were, rushing along until they reach the climax in the calling together of friends and the rejoicing at the end. Though action includes the searching and finding, the direction of the parable is the joy at finding.Celebration
      8. Or, another way of putting the previous sentence is to say that the direction of the whole is towards a celebration. A party is what is called for.  Notice there is a celebration not because something new is attained or acquired.  This isn't a party where one person says to friends, "Come on over and see my new boat; my newly remodeled kitchen; my new car, etc."  Instead, these parables celebrate something that the person had once possessed and was now restored. We usually confine our celebratory parties to things that are new or just accomplished; these Biblical parables focus on something that is "rediscovered."  That something is is Hebrew word "shalom" which we translate as "peace."
      9. The lost sheep and the lost coin are more than the prized possessions of their owners; they are also parts of a whole. The sheep belongs to the flock and the coin to the purse; without them the whole is not complete.  One Bible commentator said that the numbers 100 and 10, in the Middle Eastern minds, are complete.  99 and 9 are incomplete numbers.  They are missing something, not whole.  The search, as we have noted, is a quest for restoration and wholeness.
      10. The application to repentance
        1. The Pharisees and scribe's understanding of repentance
          1. compensation offered
          2. confession made
          3. resolve/endeavor not to sin again
        2. Jesus redefines repentance
        3. Although both of our parables end with a statement about repentance, that can't be the main point of these parables. The idea of a sheep repenting is only slightly less absurd than the idea of a coin repenting! In addition, there is nothing to indicate that the sheep was "bad" or that the coin was "sinful" and that they needed repentance.

d) Kenneth Bailey, in Finding the Lost: Cultural Keys to Luke 15, offers a new definition of repentance.   "The only possible action in this story which could constitute repentance is the finding of the lost.  Repentance, therefore, may be defined as our acceptance of being found." Later Jensen briefly expounds on this: "Repentance is our acceptance of the reality that God has found us in Jesus Christ. This means, of course, that we acknowledge our own 'lostness.'" [p. 169]

  • In other words, "The sheep does nothing except to be found.  The burden of restoration is not on the sheep but on the shepherd who went looking for the lamb." 
  • Tannehill (Luke) seems to share this thought when he writes: "Repentance is more an experience of being found by a concerned seeker than the product of human effort. And its public sign is joy at the gift of new life rather than doleful remorse."
  • Rejoice with me
  • What was lost is found
  • Illustration -- The Church Is No Place for Joy, by Erma Bombeck
    1. In church the other Sunday I was intent on a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn’t gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother’s handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theater off Broadway said, “Stop grinning! You’re in a church!” With that, she gave him a belt on his hind side and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, “that’s better,” and returned to her prayers. I wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God, the God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us.
  • No conclusion -- 
    1. will the guests join in the celebration?
    2. this is the question that is left hanging in these two parables
    3. and the question is even more pointed at the end of the third parable, next time.
  • Conclusion 
    1. One Christian author shares this Jewish story to illustrate a truth of our text:  A Jewish story tells of the good fortune of a hardworking farmer. The Lord appeared to this farmer and granted him three wishes, but with the condition that whatever the Lord did for the farmer would be given double to his neighbor. The farmer, scarcely believing his good fortune, wished for a hundred cattle. Immediately he received a hundred cattle, and he was overjoyed until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred. So he wished for a hundred acres of land, and again he was filled with joy until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred acres of land. Rather than celebrating God's goodness, the farmer could not escape feeling jealous and slighted because his neighbor had received more than he. Finally, he stated his third wish: that God would strike him blind in one eye. And God wept. [p. 298]
    2. He concludes: "Only those who can celebrate God's grace to others can experience that mercy themselves."
    3. So, how about you?  Can you find joy in the same things that God and heaven rejoice over?  Or do you still struggle with bitterness and unforgiveness, like the Pharisees?
    4. "Not far from New York there is a cemetery which has inscribed upon a headstone just one word - "Forgiven." There is no name, no date of birth, or death. The stone is unblemished by the sculptor’s art. There is no epitaph, no fulsome eulogy - just that one word, "Forgiven", but that is the greatest thing that can be said of any person, or written upon one’s grave, "Forgiven."

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