Full Transcript

Well, how fitting that this podcast is being released on Christmas Day, the day that our Lord was born in order for our sins to be forgiven and for us to be reconciled back to our Lord. Let’s listen in. Lost and Found, Luke chapter 15. One summer when my kids were young, we took them to an amusement park in western Pennsylvania that I actually had enjoyed going to as a child called Idlewild Park. We were there all day and all evening, did every aspect of that amusement park: the rides, the jumping jungle, the classic storybook forest, the water park and pool, and believe me, by 8:30 or 9 p.m., my little kids were more than ready to get home and get into bed. Our family had had all the fun we could stand for one day.

The parking lots were crowded when we’d arrived that morning, and so we were parked quite a distance from the entrance. It wasn’t hard to find our van, though, in the evening because most everybody was gone by the time we left. The park was closing in about 10 minutes. When we reached the van, I said to my wife, You got the keys, right? She looked at me with one eyebrow slightly raised, and from the look, I already knew the answer. No, I don’t have the keys.

I never had the keys. You had the keys. Oh, man. My mind started spinning. We were 300 miles from home. The park was closing in a few minutes, and this is a big park.

We quickly put our heads together and tried to think through the day. The last time I remembered having those keys was when I changed clothes to swim. I put the keys, I thought, in my jeans pocket and then rolled my jeans up and stuffed them into our stroller. We checked the stroller. No jeans, no keys. My wife then remembered taking that stroller into the girls’ dressing room when she got our little girls ready to swim.

She vaguely recalled seeing a pair of jeans, but it, I guess, didn’t register to her that they were mine, since she didn’t put them in the stroller. Using my keen analytical mind at that point, I quickly deduced that the jeans were probably in that dressing room. That was a half mile away. I had one hope. I sprinted off before security locked the gates, leaving the youngest to sleep in the stroller and the three older ones moaning and whining about how tired they were, and my wife in a, shall we say, less than pleasant mood. I ran straight to a little building I had seen in the center of the park.

The sign said, Park Office, and under that, Lost and Found. The door was still open, so I hurried in out of breath and told the girl behind the desk what I thought had happened. Realized I had to explain why my jeans might be found in the girls’ locker room. She disappeared for a moment, and to my great relief, when she emerged from the back room, she had my jeans and my keys. I didn’t jump up and down with joy because, well, I’m a pretty laid-back person. But inside, I was jumping up and down with joy.

I was so relieved because something important, something very valuable to us, which had been lost, was now found. Jesus told some great lost and found stories in Luke chapter 15. They were set up by our author like this. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him, but the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable. You know by now that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were the seriously religious crowd in Jesus’ day.

They were moralists who outwardly at least lived meticulously by strict codes of conduct based on the Old Testament laws, even adding many rules that went well beyond the Old Testament laws. Those described as tax collectors and sinners were their societal opposites. Tax collectors in Israel were despised because they were Jews who’d become agents of the oppressive Roman government. Sinners was a general slur used by the religious people for those whose lives were marked by obvious sin, you know, the drunks, the prostitutes, the thieves. The religious class had no interest in people like that, despised them actually. One of their sayings was, There is joy before God when those who provoke Him perish from the earth.

So the setting is this. Jesus was somewhere mixing with a group of outcasts, maybe in Matthew’s home, one of his disciples who had actually been a tax collector. He was freely eating and conversing with these people when some Pharisees and teachers of the law arrived hoping to engage him. And they were shocked when they saw him intermingling so casually with the riffraff, the tax collectors and the sinners. They commented to each other in their disbelief and disgust, This fellow welcomes tax collectors and sinners, and he even eats with them. It was that, Jesus hearing that, which prompted him to tell these thought-provoking stories in Luke chapter 15.

Raising his voice, I think, so the Pharisees and teachers of the law at the door could hear him, Suppose one of you has one hundred sheep, he began, and loses one of them. Would you not leave the ninety-nine and go search for that sheep? Wouldn’t you call out for it, hunt for it until you found it? Sure, a good shepherd would do that. Maybe a callous businessman might say, Hey, what’s one sheep? I have 99 others.

But a good shepherd who cares about his sheep and knows each one by name, he would search for that lost sheep until he found it out on the hillside, or caught in some thorn bush someplace. And he would pick it up, and he would carry it home, happy and relieved. Then he’d tell all of his friends, Rejoice with me, I have found my sheep. Jesus told them, Believe me, this is the response in heaven when even one sinner repents. Or imagine a woman, he went on, who has ten coins and loses one of them. I understand that Jewish women of that time often took ten of the coins from their dowry and strung them to make a necklace or a decorative headband.

It was the closest thing they had in their culture to our wedding rings. What if she loses one of those? Houses were dark, often windowless, and the dirt floor was commonly covered with straw or similar. You can imagine how difficult it would be to find a lost coin in that situation. Jesus asks, Wouldn’t she light a lamp and make a thorough search of her home until she found that precious coin? Of course she would.

And when she does, she’d call her friends and neighbors and say, I found the coin! I found the coin! I assure you, Jesus told them, there’s rejoicing like that in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. How utterly different from the attitude of the Pharisees and teachers of the law who were listening in. I think these short stories from Jesus are very insightful. What do they show us, maybe you’re thinking?

They show us just how valuable people are in God’s eyes. By the way, every biblically functioning church should have as its goal to grow by reaching more and more people with the gospel message. We can’t simply focus our energy inward on those who are safely in the fold. No, Jesus told us, Go out into the highways, in the back lanes, compel those to come in, that my house may be full. Lost people matter to God, and they should matter just as much to us. Jesus came, in his own words, to seek and to save those who are lost.

That’s Luke 19, verse 10. Many regard that actually as a theme verse for the Gospel of Luke. What a perfectly concise statement of Jesus’ mission: I’ve come to seek and to save those who are lost. God created us in his image, and although we’ve wandered far away and sin has disconnected us from him, he still loves us. He does not need to have a relationship with us. He just wants to, badly.

He loves people, all kinds of people, even people that feel worthless and hopeless because of the mess they’ve made of our lives. God still loves us and places a very high value on us. He knows he can redeem us. He knows that by his grace, what we have the potential to become, which brings us to the third story in this chapter, undoubtedly one of the greatest in the Bible. Jesus went on. There was a certain man who had two sons.

The younger son was apparently the rebellious sort who chafed at the restrictions on his life. He wanted to self-actualize, to do his own thing, to go his own way. He wanted to get out from under the shadow of his older brother too, and out from under the rules and expectations of his father. This may not sound unusual to us, but what Jesus says he did next was outrageous in their culture. He came to his father and said, I want you to give me the share of your estate that is coming to me. Now that would be a kind of nervy thing for a 21st century American young man to say, but in that traditional patriarchal society, this was unthinkable.

To make such a request was like saying, Dad, I don’t want to wait until you’re dead to get my hands on your money. I want you to give me it now. Although that would deeply hurt any father, Jesus says this father gave the young man who was determined to experience the other side of life what he asked for. He turned over to his son the share of his estate that would have gone to him on his death, which would have been one third of everything he owned as the younger son. It’s safe to assume the son liquidated that, turned it into cash. Can you see him the day he left home, heading down the road from his father’s estate, leaving behind his heartbroken father and mother?

He’s finally dressed. He’s feeling very good about himself. He has quite a sum of money in his bag, and he’s his own man now. That day he set off, Jesus says, for a distant country. Things went pretty well for a while, as you might imagine. A young man with a big sack of money, by a pretty good time for a while.

Jesus didn’t say how long that while lasted. He simply said, But he squandered his wealth in wild living and spent everything he had. Then, to make matters worse, something he never factored into his plan occurred. A famine gripped the country where he was. Not only was the party over then, but very quickly things got desperate for him. You might think, Why didn’t he just go home?

Well, beyond the pride issue, remember that this young man had done something unthinkable in his society. In the time of Jesus, any Jewish son who lost his family’s inheritance to Gentiles would not only be disowned by his family. He’d be cut off by his community. They actually had a ceremony in which the whole community would come together to publicly shame and officially declare such a person a dishonor to his family and cut off from his people. That person would be shunned. This young man knew that.

He knew that if he headed home at this point, what to expect. And Jesus’ listeners knew that as well. So he looks for employment, perhaps naively imagining that he can regain what he lost. But times are very hard. There isn’t much available. In fact, the only thing he can find for a job is tending pigs for a farmer.

What an ultimate indignity for a Jew. Jews didn’t keep pigs. Jews didn’t eat pigs. They considered pigs unclean animals. But this young fellow was destitute. He was desperate at this point.

He was literally starving, and this is the only work he could find. As Jesus tells it, he was so hungry the seed pods the pigs were eating started looking good to him. At some point, sitting in the stench of that pig pen, far away from home, he reached the bottom. He was a long way from where he ever imagined himself being, and he was very, very sick of being there. It was then, Jesus says, when he began to think, What if I return to my father and begged him to let me be like one of his hired men? You know, at least on my father’s farm, the hired men are well fed.

I could go back to my father and admit I’ve sinned against heaven and against you, and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. But please, just let me be like one of your hired men. He doesn’t know how his father would react to that, but it’s a possibility. Perhaps over time he could regain his dignity. He could work hard, eventually repay his father. Then down the road sometime, perhaps, perhaps, they could discuss reconciliation.

If he earned his trust back, of course, if he proved he was a different person. It wasn’t a great plan, but it’s the only plan he could come up with. He knew odds were his father would reject him, and he would face being ostracized from his people. But he had grown desperate enough that he had to take that chance. And so the prodigal heads back, back the miles from the distant country, back the same way he had so confidently gone only a few years before. When he reaches his home district and begins to see familiar sights, he steels his nerves for the humiliation that he expects is ahead.

He’s returning a total failure who has insulted his family, shamed his father, squandered his inheritance. I wonder if any of the local residents even recognized him. If they whispered, Isn’t that so-and-so? My word, how awful he looks. Or had he changed so much no one recognized him? When he reached the lane to his father’s estate, he is nervously repeating over and over again to himself, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, hoping his father will at least hear his confession so he can beg for a chance to try and make restitution.

Can you see him heading up that long lane? How different a person he is from the one who left. He is torn and tattered. He is dirty and shoeless and empty-handed. He smells bad. He is a thoroughly broken man because he knows he’s been a complete fool.

He looks up from his thoughts, and finally his home is in full view. Wait, what? He sees someone running down the road toward him. He squints to see who it is. Then he realizes, it’s my father. His father was holding up the bottom hem of his long robe.

His father is running toward him for all he is worth. At that very hour, he’d in fact been out on his porch, as he was several times each day, looking down that road, longing, hoping against hope to see the son he loves returning home. And on this day, in fact, he had. Realize this is something no father in that culture would ever, ever have done. A mother maybe, but no father in that traditional patriarchal society, way too undignified. But this father, in Jesus’ story, ran.

Ran down the road to greet his estranged son. And Jesus said when he reached him, he threw his arms around him and kissed him. The prodigal hardly knew how to respond. He began his prepared speech, Father, I have sinned against you and against heaven, and I am not worthy to be called your son anymore. But before he could go any further, his father was already shouting back to the servants, Quick, bring the best robe in our house and put it on him. Find the ring.

Put a ring on his finger. Get his sandals for his feet. Bring a fattened calf out. Let’s kill it. Let’s have a feast. Let’s celebrate.

This son of mine who was dead is alive again. He was lost and is found. And so Jesus said, began a great celebration. Wow, that’s a beautiful story. But what did Jesus intend those in that crowd who first heard it, and really us as well, to take away from that? Clearly, the father in the story must represent God, just as in the story is preceding it.

Who has lost something of great value, something he badly wants to recover? Rebellious son. That has to represent all of us who have turned away from God to do our own thing. The fact that the prodigal wanders far and lives foolishly and eventually finds himself in such desperate circumstances, that underscores the fact that God loves us and will welcome us back no matter where we’ve been, no matter how far from home we have been, no matter how long it’s been. But this third lost and found story in Luke chapter 15 has one critical component the earlier ones did not. We are a lot more like that rebellious young man than a senseless sheep or an inanimate coin.

The young man got where he did by his deliberate choices. He took deliberate steps away from his father. For us, as for him, it goes back to rebellion in our hearts, a desire for independence and autonomy. Then we turn away to pursue our own things, ignoring what we view as the constraints of God’s rules. A close relationship with our heavenly Father, we decide, is not nearly as important as what we long for, the freedom to do what we want. By and by, though, the prodigal found that what he thought was freedom was not all he imagined it would be.

In fact, the things that he was chasing and thought he had attained in time turned dull and unsatisfying, and then ugly, and finally bitter. Life apart from God, in any of its forms, is never ultimately satisfying. All people find this out, sooner or later. But just as there were steps away from God, so there are steps back. What were they in Jesus’ story? First, the prodigal son had an awakening.

As Jesus put it in verse 17, he came to his senses. He took an honest look at his life. He was disturbed at the distance between where he was and where he should be. He finally quit lying to himself, and he faced up to reality. Second, he truly repented. He had a heart change.

He was ready to confess his sin to his father. You can sense his humility. He had wronged his family, and he is ready to own up to that. He knows he doesn’t deserve anything, but he wants to seek his father’s forgiveness because it’s the right thing to do. He was not making excuses for his behavior. His words were, I have sinned against heaven and against you, father.

This was a heart attitude when he headed back to his father’s house of repentance and humility. And finally, he did in fact return. He didn’t just think about returning or just feel badly about what he had done. He actually came back to his father. Undoubtedly, reasons came into his head, roadblocks that could have stopped him from taking that final step. But he finally got up out of the pigsty, and he went back to his father.

It was only after he returned that he was reconciled to his father. That tells me that we must take the initiative to return to God. The way back is the road of repentance and faith. Maybe you see yourself in the story. Maybe you feel far away from God where you are right now. Maybe you feel very unworthy because of stuff you’ve done in your life and how long it’s been going on.

But listen, Jesus told this story, and it’s been preserved for us in God’s Word precisely so that we understand that God is anxiously awaiting not to condemn us, or even waiting with some long list of penance for us to do to atone for our sins. No. He’s just like that loving father in Jesus’ story. He’s waiting on the porch. He’s straining his eyes down the road for some sign of us coming back. And when he sees us coming, he will run to meet us, to embrace us, and to welcome us home.

Man, isn’t that amazing to contemplate? According to the Bible, whether we have strayed a long way or not on our scale of measurement, we are all disconnected from God. We are all lost. But God values us so much that he sent Jesus to seek and to save those who are lost. Jesus came to reconcile us to our Father, to bring us back to a right relationship with him. We can’t earn it or in any way merit it, but that’s exactly what grace is all about.

Jesus has already done all that’s necessary to make it possible for us to come back to God when he paid for our sins on the cross. Forgiveness and reconciliation are now offered to us freely as a gift if we will return to God, admit we are miserable sinners, and receive Jesus as the Savior that we need. If you are ready to come home to God today, as we close this particular lesson, I would invite you to just turn in your heart toward him in faith. Pray something just like the prodigal son was saying, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I’m not worthy to be your son or daughter, but I ask you to forgive me and to receive me back for Jesus’ sake. Today I’m receiving Christ as my Savior and my leader.

Today I am coming home to you. If you just prayed something like that from a sincere heart, know that something very valuable to God has just been found, and it’s you. And the celebration Jesus told about that happens every time a sinner repents, every time a lost son or daughter of God is found, has broken out in heaven in your honor. Welcome home, child of God. Thanks, Paul, and thank you for listening. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.