The Lost and Found Department
Luke 15: 1-10

One of the the several responsibilities of being pastor and having an office in this building is that my office becomes the unofficial despository for lost and found items in the church. I must confess it is not always a source of joy to me. In my experience with the lost and found department here I have made an observation. Lost and found items fall rather neatly into two categories: Lost things that people care about, and lost things that no one cares about.

If you were to go to a fairly typical lost and found, you would find a high concentration of wornout sneakers, dirty socks, solitary mittens, broken umbrellas, dirty tee shirts, boring text-books, ugly hats and broken toys. Going through the typical lost and found collection is a bit like rifling through the trash. It is filled with things that no one really wants -- things that are common, dirty and dispensable. Lost things stay in lost and found because they are not very valuable -- the owner doesn't care enough about them to search.

There is another category of lost things. For example, after one of our evening meetings here someone lost a contact lens. Now when someone announces that a contact lens is missing, it is really quite amazing to see the response. It has a galvanizing and motivating effect. Respectable looking men crawl around on their hands and knees examining every speck in the carpet. Or take a more serious example: It is not all that uncommon after church to hear the call: Has anyone seen Noah Gould. Noah is an escape artist. And suddenly, most of us would drop what we were doing and start looking for Noah.

When something valuable or precious is lost, it doesn't just sit in lost and found for months. No one will say to Bob and Aimee, I'm sure Noah will show up within a few weeks. And if he doesn't, Carol Anne is pretty cute too. Noah is precious an quite irreplaceable. When something is valuable or precious is lost, finding it consumes us. The search for what is lost becomes our one great priority.

So in our everyday lives we deal with lost things in quite different ways. This difference helps me to understand what Jesus is saying in Luke 15.

In Luke 15, Jesus is talking to religious people -- religious people who look at ordinary, non-religious people the way we might view a lost and found collection -- with disdain. Sinners are dispensable, dirty and not my responsibility. It is not my fault they are lost. It is my responsibility to restore them.

In response to this attitude, Jesus tells these parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. These have to be among the most beloved and familiar of any of the Jesus parables. They are favorites for children's stories. We have a children's story book at home which tells the story of a little lamb named Bleater. Bleater is a cute, but stubborn little lamb. He doesn't want to follow the shepherd -- he wants to explore the big wide world. So when the shepherd and the flock move on, Bleater hides and goes the other way. And of course, he gets into big trouble, and he is terribly frightened. So he cries and cries and finally the good shepherd rescues him and carries him back to the flock where he lives happily ever after as a wiser and more mature sheep.

And I think that this children's story captures very well the way we tend to look at these parables. That is, we immediately put ourselves into the parables in the character of the lost sheep or the lost coin. And we are amazed and awestruck at the effort that God went to to find us. And we get great comfort from the image of God seeking us out like a kind shepherd, and carrying us on his shoulders, and rejoicing over us. It is wonderful to think of God out there searching for us and finding us when we stray. Seen this way, the stories are a great comfort.

But if we read the parable this way, primarily for comfort, we miss its real point. The story was not meant to comfort, but to challenge. We can see this by simply asking two simple questions:

(1) Who is Jesus audience? His audience is the Pharisees -- religious people, like us, who have a disdainful attitude toward sinners

(2) Who are the main characters? People searching -- the shepherd nd the woman.

Jesus is saying to religious people (like us) -- you need to be like this shepherd and like this woman. The shepherd and the woman share two characteristics. (1) They are consumed with searching for what is lost -- it is the sole focus of their attention. (2) They respond with joy when they find what is lost.

If we just take these parables at face value, Jesus seems to be saying: Your all consuming passion -- your priority in life, should be to seek the lost. The shepherd leaves behind 99 sheep to seek out the one that was lost. The woman puts aside all of the other tasks of the household to search for the one lost coin. If we are supposed to be like the shepherd and the woman, then it would seem that God expects us to put aside other priorities for the sake of seeking lost people. In other words, God expects everyone of us to act like a full time missionary.

Now some of us feel twinges of guilt every time the word evangelism is mentioned -- including me. And so we will immediately think of a number of reasons why Jesus could not really mean what he seems to be saying here. Let me anticipate the major objections:

Objection #1: Finding the lost is really God's work not ours.

In other words, in this parable Jesus is just telling about himself. He is the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep. He is like the woman who searches for the lost coin. Jesus finds the lost. It's his job, not ours.

There is some truth to this. The work of saving people is something that God alone can do. I can't save anyone.

But here's the problem: When Jesus addresses the Pharisees he could have said, "I am like a shepherd who, when he discovered that a sheep was lost, left the other 99 . . ." But he doesn't. Instead he says, "Which of YOU, if you had 100 sheep." He puts the burden on his audience -- he is saying you are wrong to respond to sinners the way you do. You treat them like cast away trash. You would not even treat a lost sheep or a lost coin as casually as you treat lost people. You should be seeking them as diligently and celebrating over their salvation just as joyfully as if you were that shepherd or that woman.

In this parable, the Pharisees are meant to see themselves not as the lost sheep, but as the shepherd. The same goes for us. It IS our job to be out seeking lost sheep.

Here's another reason why we can't just slough it off on God: Whatever is God's work IS my work. If finding the lost is God's work, then finding the lost is my work. If I want to be like Jesus, I need to have the same priorities as Jesus.

One of the great barriers to seeking lost people is that we simply don't take ownership of the task. We treat lost people like we treat things in lost and found -- they are someone else's cast-offs. But think of the last time you lost something that was really valuable to you. Chances are you took the task of searching very seriously.

Our first challenge from this parable: Take ownership of the task.

Objection #2: God alone should be our all-consuming passion.

This is how the argument might go: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. There's good scriptural support for that. And notice there is no mention of seeking the lost. Our primary priority must be to glorify and enjoy God. How do we glorify and enjoy God? Worship, of course. Evangelism should just be a byproduct of our worship. If we make evangelism our first priority, then we will become man centered -- we will be tempted to compromise in order to lure people into the church. That's the argument -- Seeking the lost cannot be our all-consuming priority, because God alone should have that place.

A marriage question for you men: Imagine your wife had lost something very beautiful and precious to her -- perhaps a beautiful necklace. Imagine that she desired more than anything else to find it. And imagine that seeking that necklace was the a consuming priority for her. Here's the test question: If you wanted to honor your wife in that situation, how would you do it? Would you sing her love songs? Would you recite her love poetry? Would you tell her how beautiful she is when she is looking for lost necklaces? Of course not. The way to honor her is to join her in the search. That way I show that I value what she values. If it is precious to her, it is precious to me.

This image of a necklace is helpful in another way. In the parable of the lost coin, the coin was very possibly part of a necklace -- coins would be fastened to jewelry. Without the lost coin, the necklace was incomplete. When the lost coin is found, the necklace is complete, and when the necklace is complete it brings honor to the woman who wears it by highlighting her beauty. Lost people are like missing the missing coins in that necklace. God's beauty will be more clearly displayed as they are found and the necklace is made complete.

The chief way that God has chosen to bring glory to himself in this world is by finding lost sinners. If it is God's priority to find the lost, the way to glorify him is by sharing his priority.

Our second challenge from this parable: Treat as precious what God treats as precious. Value what he values. If lost people are precious to God, they must become precious to us.

Objection #3: We all have different giftings and callings.

We might argue like this: Reaching lost people is certainly important for the church, but there are some people who are especially gifted and called to that task. Others have different giftings. You can't say that every believer's priority should be reaching the lost. Some people's priority is teaching, others are called to lead worship, others to serve or to encourage. We're diverse -- you can't put us all in the same mould. We have different priorities.

It's true that God's people are given different gifts and functions. God compares the church to a body -- not every part of the body is meant to perform the same function.

But different function doesn't mean different priorities. Right now the priority for all of the parts of my body is to be up here speaking to you. What if my feet said, well that's fine for your mouth, but that's not our gifting. Our priority is to run. (That is not an uncommon feeling for public speakers.) The different parts of the body have different functions, but they share a single purpose.

That purpose is described in Ephesians 4:11-12: "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service."

We are put into the world and given gifts not for our own sake, but to be a blessing.

The very purpose of Israel's existence as a people and nation was to be a blessing to the world. That is why they were given the law, the prophets, the temple. That is why God did miracles for them -- so that through them he could make his name known to the nations.


The very purpose of the church is similarly to be a blessing. That is why God gives us gifts, that is why he gives us fellowship, that is why he nourishes us through his word and through worship -- not to make us fat, but so that through us he can bring blessing to the world.

Not everyone has the gift of evangelism, but everyone has a gift which is meant to be used for seeking the lost.

In a search and rescue operation, not everyone does the same thing. When the terrible earthquake hit Turkey, there were many people who treated it as a priority to help the victims -- but they did it in many different ways.

This has important implications for the practical question of how we seek the lost -- it is a priority for everyone, but not not everyone will go about it in the same way. In fact, the best way to contribute to the task is to fully use whatever gift God has given you. If your gift is teaching, you should be using it to equip others to be better seekers, if your gift is giving, you should be using it to provide resources for the search and rescue operation. Not all of us has the same part in the task, but all of us has a part and the task itself is a priority for all of us together.

My third challenge to you: Whatever your gift, use it to seek the lost.

Objection #4: This is just an unbalanced way of looking at the Christian life.

It's not that evangelism should not be a priority for Christians, but it's extreme to say that it should be our main priority. The church has lots of different tasks. We can't just all drop everything else to go after the lost -- it would be irresponsible. For example, we have a responsibility to our children. What good will it do to spend our energy on seeking the lost if we end up neglecting our kids. They, after all, will be the next generation of Christian leaders -- or so we hope. If we run off to the mission field, or make evangelism our main priority, what will become of them?

(The quick answer -- they will become like us. If reaching the lost is our priority, there is a good chance that those values will be passed on.)

I don't have any answer for this objection. It is unbalanced and it is irrational. All I can say is that what God calls us to often seems unbalanced and irrational. It wasn't very rational for Abraham to leave everything to follow God's promise. It wasn't very rational for Jesus to go to the Cross for us. The shepherd leaves the 99 other sheep to find the lost one. The woman leaves all the other jobs of the household to look for her coin. It doesn't seem very rational. But We are not called to caution, but to service and obedience.


A final image . . .

You are sitting at a big extended family dinner. Thanksgiving, perhaps. And people are sitting around the table -- but one chair is empty. Your daughter is lost. No one has seen her since morning since she went off to take the dog for a walk. Then the dog came back without her. Would you go ahead with the meal, knowing that your daughter is lost? Would you worry about the food getting cold? Searching for her would be your number one priority. And when she is found, then you would have the celebration. What a celebration you would have!

We have in this room about 100 chairs. About 20 are empty. Think of each chair as representing one person -- someone who belongs in the family of God who is missing. Our family will not be complete until those people are found.

Just as we would send out search parties for one of our children who was lost, so we are called to make it our priority to find God's lost children.


You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel. Instead they put it on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven.