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!! God Looks for Those Who Leave
Luke 15:3-10
{{{"
Then Jesus told them this parable: "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?
And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.
Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.'
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.
"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?
And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.'
In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
}}}
Luke 15:3-10
On a warm afternoon in September 1982 Patsy Wheat left her two-year-old son Jay playing in the carport with his eight-year-old sister and five-year-old brother.
Her husband Harold, a long-distance trucker, wasn't due home until later that night.
She set her oven timer for ten minutes, a trick to remind her to check the children.
When the timer sounded ten minutes later, she went to check where the children were playing.
Jay was gone.
The two older children hadn't noticed that he had somehow disappeared.
Six and a half acres of lawn and woods surrounded their Bedford, Virginia home.
But Patsy's first concern was the four-lane highway near the home, so she raced there.
She did not see little Jay.
Trying to stifle fears of kidnapping, she first called the state police.
Then she called the Bedford County sheriff's office.
Within thirty minutes, patrol cars, rescue trucks, and a hundred people had gathered on her lawn to help with the search.
By nine o'clock that night, a helicopter and a pair of bloodhounds had both proved ineffective.
When her husband arrived at 11 p.m., hundreds of volunteers were involved in the fruitless search, walking hand in hand through the woods.
Some had been cut by briars; some had fallen down in exhaustion.
The temperature was down to 65 degrees.
But the volunteers continued their search in the bramble- and briar-laden area, thinking of the barefooted little boy wearing only shorts and a T-shirt.
Only one possibility remained.
A slight, gray-headed woman was summoned with an air-scenting German shepherd.
At 4:30 a.m. the dog picked up a scent, ran up a mountainside, and barked wildly.
When rescuers reached the dog, it was licking little Jay, whose bleeding feet were caught in briars.
At the bottom of the mountain, a sea of people cheered with joy.
A little boy lost was found.
But greatest of all was the joy of Patsy Wheat.
There is joy in finding one who is lost.
(Patsy Wheat, "Please Find My Son," /Redbook, /May 1985, pp.
24, 260)
Jesus explained that such joy in finding the lost is the most distinctive characteristic of God Himself.
In Luke 15 Jesus gave to all the ages this description of His Father: More than anything else, God wants to find whose who are lost.
If you have gone away from God, He wants you to come back.
What else is God like?
Jesus gave these pictures: He is like a shepherd who will leave the flock of a hundred sheep to find the one that is lost.
He is like a woman who will turn over her house to find one lost coin, and like a father who will wait hopefully for the return of the son who has left.
God seeks those who are lost, and His greatest joy is their recovery.
When you have gone away from God, He gets no pleasure out of the emptiness, alienation, and lostness you experience.
In the three stories in Luke 15, Jesus revealed the depths of God's heart.
God simply wants you to come back.
Whatever the reason you have gone away, God wants you to come home.
These word pictures show how much He longs for your return.
!!! Jesus and the Lost
Jesus said, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10).
With invisible chains, He drew the lost toward Him.
Those labeled irreligious were drawn to Him as if to a magnet.
The greatest chapter of Jesus' parables begins with the statement, "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him."
The mark of Jesus' ministry was His attractiveness to the abhorrent, repulsive, despised, and branded of His age.
These are presented as two different groups: tax collectors and sinners.
"Tax collectors" referred to the most despised Jews of them all.
The Roman Empire did not collect its own taxes.
It sold franchises for tax collection, and the Jews who bought the franchises were considered by their fellow Jews as traitors to God and country—both blasphemous and unpatriotic.
"Sinners" referred not just to those who committed sins, but also to certain occupations of people—shepherds, tanners, and people who could not keep the Pharisees' legalistic interpretations of the Ten Commandments.
(And remember, the Pharisees had subdivided the Ten Commandments into 613 manmade rules.
Most of the people could not even remember them, no less keep them!)
You may have grown up learning who the tax collectors, or publicans, were in the New Testament.
What you may not understand, though, is the shock value those characters carried during Jesus' day.
To explain, suppose your church began to attract only those people who were on parole from the state penitentiary, or those out on bond from the county jail.
Along with them, suppose your church attracted some of the more affluent con men, extortionists, and ripoff artists in your area, plus slum landlords and massage parlor hostesses.
Now suppose at the same time the religious establishment of the city openly rejected your church and condemned its direction.
The scribes and Pharisees were repelled by Jesus.
The scribes were the interpreters of the law—professional religionists.
The Pharisees were a layman's league of never more than six thousand men.
They were the guardians of personal piety and purity.
When they saw the kind of crowd attracted to Jesus, the Bible says they "murmured."
The word suggests a quiet complaint continually and habitually whispered to one another.
One can almost hear the disdain in their words: "This man actually welcomes these people."
They could not imagine Him even tolerating such a crowd.
But their ultimate sneer was saved for another habit of Jesus: He actually sat down and ate with them.
If you could imagine all this, you would understand the situation in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
Lost people continually came to Him.
And they came more and more as His ministry progressed.
They were not groupies seeking to be close to a great man.
They really knew that He cared for them.
In this regard, Jesus stands unique among all biblical figures.
The Jewish scholar Claude Montefiore states that no one whose life was recorded in the Old Testament or other Jewish writings had this effect on lost people.
They simply wanted to be near Him.
Do you feel far away from God? Have your circumstances created a sense of alienation from your spiritual home?
This is not a secondary question on the periphery of spiritual life.
The central aspect of Jesus' ministry was to appeal to those who were lost.
Even today, Jesus wants you to come back.
Tennessee Williams's family moved to a city during the famous playwright's childhood where he and his younger sister and wanted to join a church's choir.
Because of their less-than-perfect social situation, they were made to feel like untouchables.
He never went back to church.
One wonders what the outcome would have been if his talents had been captured for the church rather than the world.
What if the man with the vivid dramatic imagination to write /Streetcar Named Desire, /and /Cat on a Hot Tin Roof /had used his creative genius for the kingdom of God?
Jesus wants us to understand that He represents God in His search for the lost.
Jesus is like this.
Those who follow Him should be like this, too.
!!!
The Reality of Lostness
Jesus did not denounce His detractors with anger.
He reasoned with them from common experience, reminding them they would leave the flock to find one lost sheep.
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