{"id":1002,"date":"2022-09-22T14:29:30","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T21:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2022-09-22T14:29:30","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T21:29:30","slug":"the-found-are-left-the-lost-are-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=1002","title":{"rendered":"The Found are Left; the Lost are Found"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Luke 15:1-10)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They gathered around Jesus for two very different reasons. One group came to Jesus to hear him; the other came to hate on him. And when you consider which groups it is, it should be rather surprising. We would expect the \u201ctax collectors and sinners\u201d to be the ones hating and the \u201cPharisees and the teachers of the law\u201d to be hearing. If Jesus\u2019 message was all fire and brimstone and a call to shape up our lives, the first crowd would rightly resent Jesus and his message. After all, they weren\u2019t naive to the fact that they were the black sheep of society.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the Pharisees, the ones who delight in doing right – and getting noticed for it – should have clamored to hear Jesus\u2019 message if it was all fire and brimstone and a call to shape up our lives. That would have been right up their alley! It would have reinforced their self-righteousness and puffed up their pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s exactly the opposite. Luke describes it for us. \u201cNow the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, \u201cThis man welcomes sinners and eats with them\u201d (v.1-2).<\/em><\/strong> The black sheep want to hear Jesus and the self-righteous religious want to hate on him! You know what that says about Jesus? His message stood out. There was something different about it. His message must have been radical if it appealed to those it should have turned off while turning off those to whom it should have appealed. And that is exactly what his message does today. Today\u2019s teaching is a hard truth because it forces us to face that The Found are Left while The Lost are Found<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the typical Christian congregation did an assessment of which category of folks received more attention – the found or the lost – which group do you suppose would come out ahead? It\u2019s no contest. It isn\u2019t even close. But I don\u2019t raise that point to shame or indicate that it\u2019s wrong to give attention to each other or to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ. It isn\u2019t! Not at all. In fact, it\u2019s one of the “selling points” of trying to bring others into the family of Christianity – we care for and about each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a need for balance in the mission Jesus has given us. Because he hasn\u2019t only <\/em>called us to care for each other, the found. He has also called us to seek the lost. If, rather than trying to pit one against the other, we instead strive to see the importance of and need for each, then we are ready and willing for Jesus to draw our attention to finding the lost. What does Jesus wish to teach us about his feelings toward the lost? His mission is personal and persistent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The personal concern of Jesus in going after the lost is clear in each parable. After losing one sheep, the owner of the hundred sheep doesn\u2019t conclude, \u201cOne sheep is no big deal – I\u2019ve still got 99, after all.\u201d The woman doesn\u2019t blow off her one lost coin just because she still has the nine others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

God does not write off countless lost souls just because there are many who are saved. Neither does he attach different values to different people like we so often do, based on different criteria, deeming some more worthy of saving than others. Every soul matters to Jesus. Every soul.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like the little boy walking along the sandy beach after a storm. The beach was blanketed by starfish as far as the eye could see that had washed up after the storm. He knew that if they had any chance of surviving, they would somehow have to get back into the water, so the boy started picking the starfish up. One by one, he slung them back into the safety of the ocean. An onlooker commented that the boy’s efforts would hardly make a difference, as there were far too many starfish on the beach. After bending over to pick up one more and flinging it into the ocean, the boy responded, \u201cIt just made a difference for that one.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So personally does Jesus care about every lost soul that he will go after each and every last one!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he\u2019ll do it with persistence. Jesus presumes the woman will look tirelessly for the lost coin. \u201cDoesn\u2019t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?\u201d (v.8)<\/em><\/strong>. Neither did the owners just take a quick peek here or there and then call it a day! The same phrase is used of both the lost sheep and the coin: the owner searches \u201cuntil s\/he finds it.\u201d (v.4,8).<\/em><\/strong> There was no room for half-hearted effort in either case; the search would persist until the sheep and the coin was found.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we can talk about Jesus\u2019 mission being personal and persistent, but you know what that must mean, don\u2019t you? Consider how<\/em> Jesus carries out his mission of seeking the lost. He does it through you and me. He does it through believers – his church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Jesus doesn\u2019t have one approach he takes on his mission while his church takes some different approach. If his mission is personal and persistent, then so is the church\u2019s mission. So is ours. So is yours. And if your mission isn\u2019t personal or persistent\u2026 whose mission in life are you really more interested in carrying out – Jesus\u2019, or your own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jesus\u2019 mission is our mission, we also want to ask who are those represented by the lost sheep and the lost coin. Often this chapter of Luke 15 is limited to the areas of outreach and evangelism. While that is natural, we don\u2019t want to limit it to that. The lost sheep and the lost coin, after all, were at one time numbered among the found. So there is also a call here to seek out those who once belonged to the found, but are either wandering toward lostness or lost already. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a call to repentance. It\u2019s a call to care about those who used to be actively among us. It\u2019s a call to care about our friends, our spouses, our sons, and daughters, who at one time fed in the pasture of God\u2019s Word and sacrament right alongside us, but who now are nowhere to be found. While those who have only known unbelief their whole lives are always on our radar, also on our radar should be those who previously were won to faith, but have since wandered. How do we do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first step: identify them. Stop pretending they aren\u2019t lost. Stop lying to yourself that, even though they haven\u2019t been hearing the Good Shepherd\u2019s voice, perhaps in years, they are still interested in following him. Stop pretending that having no involvement or engagement with their congregation and no spiritual shepherding from their elder or pastor is permissible. Also… stop pretending that they should know better and it is 100% their responsibility for being rescued again.\u00a0 Instead, let\u2019s acknowledge they\u2019re lost and put together a search party. And let\u2019s do it with the kind of personal and persistent passion Jesus emphasized in these parables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suppose a large building in your community became engulfed in flame. How would you feel about a group of firefighters who decided to ignore the alarm sounding and instead hung around the fire station snacking and glued to their screens rather than throwing on their gear and high-tailing it out of the station? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would their actions make more sense though, if they explained to you that the building on fire was one that just earlier that week they had made a presentation on fire safety and prevention, so they weren\u2019t worried about it? Of course not! You\u2019d expect them to go rescue anyone in the burning building no matter how much fire safety and prevention training the occupants had had! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same way, who are we to sit back and leave the lost on their own because they went to our school, finished the membership class, or were previously active in the congregation? Absurd! Let\u2019s get out there and rescue them, whether they\u2019re merely backsliding into the darkness or were always lost in it – Jesus wants both kinds. Jesus wants them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so do we. Because we rejoice daily that he has rescued us, too. We gather regularly to sing and speak words of rejoicing over knowing that he has found us and rescued us. We rejoice in the confidence of knowing that every confessed sin has already been canceled. We rejoice in knowing that every Christian soul who has departed the pasture of this world for the pasture of heaven is with Jesus, the Good Shepherd. We rejoice with the angels in heaven each and every time even just one soul is turned around in repentance and rescued for eternity. We celebrate\u2026 and then we round up the search party again and get back out to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Luke 15:1-10) They gathered around Jesus for two very different reasons. One group came to Jesus to hear him; the other came to hate on him. And when you consider which groups it is, it should be rather surprising. We would expect the \u201ctax collectors and sinners\u201d to be the ones hating and the \u201cPharisees… Continue reading The Found are Left; the Lost are Found<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[248,65],"tags":[42,251,5,252,109,36,108],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hard-truth-series","category-sermons","tag-evangelism","tag-hardtruth","tag-jesus","tag-lost","tag-preaching","tag-sermon","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p842FN-ga","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}