Summer Stories - Week 5: The Lost Sheep & The Lost Coin (Luke 15)

0:01 Well, good morning, everyone. In our time together this morning, I want to begin by, first of all, doing a little bit of work on parables and their role in general, and then see how that links in with the parable that we are looking at this morning, or the two of them in Luke chapter 15. And to begin that, to frame it all together, I want to ask a bit of a strange question. One that some of you are going to think is just weird and others, I think you'll resonate with it even if you haven't quite expressed it like this. Is it possible to truly know someone that you've never met face to face? Or to say it again in a slightly different way, could we ever say, I know someone, God included, without having ever met that person, spoken to them across a table? As I've said, some of you will be wondering what on earth is this question about? But for others, I think this kind of question is very important when we come to think about whether we can come to know God or not.

1:21 You see, we're all creatures of presence. We've been made that way. We build our relationships around time together through shared silence, inside jokes, and the simple, solid fact of being in the same space. Real connection, we might assume then, demands proximity. It must be brewed over coffee and chats and not ever just pieced together from a set of facts or what somebody else has told you or about stories about another person. But I want to ask you to pause there for a moment and ask, is that quite true? Is it really impossible to genuinely know someone that you've never met in person. And I want to argue at the launch of this talk this morning that actually it is possible to know someone in this way, and that we do it in our normal lives even if we've maybe never noticed that we've done it before.

2:24 We should expect to do it with people, and we should expect then to be able to do it with God as well. And I think the very tools that we use to know people like historical figures or people out there in the world that we haven't come across before, through these things that we come to know them, facts, community testimony, lots of stories, these are the tools that God has already provided for knowing him. So let's ask the question again, how could we come about to know someone that we've never met before? Well, as I ask the question, I want to invite you to think about someone in your mind right now. Think of somebody that you feel like you know. Maybe for some of you, I've been told you've been spending lots of time with authors from the 1600s recently. Maybe you feel like you know some of them pretty well. For others, maybe it's a person from ancient history, someone that you've studied so well that you just feel like you know them.

3:28 or for others, maybe more commonly, it's a footballer, a celebrity, someone that you've spent so much time with in music, listening to their interviews, reading their biographies, that you know exactly what they're going to say every time someone throws that new curveball question that they're trying to catch that person out. And you just like, okay, I already know what that person's going to say. When I put it like this, I think it's likely that you come to see that there is someone that you've spent so much time with that if someone were to ask you, do you know this person, it would be actually legitimate for you to say yes. And yet you've never had a chat with them. You've never met them face to face in person. I want to underline it all again with an illustration of who this person would be for me. When I think of someone that I know, despite never really meeting them, I think of my granda, Sandy. He passed away when I was just two years old, and I have no living memory of him.

4:34 No memory of his voice, his laugh, his presence. And yet I feel like I know him so well this morning that I can genuinely say to you, when I walk up to him in the resurrection, I expect to spend a few minutes with him and then say, you know, you're exactly how I always knew you would be. But how? How do I know him like that? How do you know those people that you're thinking of like that? Of course, it's partly through facts and evidence. Details, the fact that my granda existed, of when he was born, of when he was married, when he died, through a handful of old black and white photos which show him always on smiling, and yet you can see in his eyes a hint of mischief framing his life in time and space. So yes, facts, but I mean, nobody ever really feels like they know someone through facts alone, do they?

5:38 More than that then, there is a lasting impact of people that knew him. I didn't know him, but other people really did. And I suppose especially my mom here would be who I'm thinking of. I see him living on in her faith, in her values, her way of being, her patterns of speech, the things that she cares about. Although he's not here now, he continues to live on in her. I see his impact played out. But then, more than these two things, there is a category that I think is relevant for these parables that we're thinking about this morning that are the real means through which I've come to know him. I think it's much more powerful than these other two, although they are extremely important.

6:27 Around tables, on car trips, at Christmas, in many family gatherings, I have heard stories told about my granda. Stories of his humor, stories of quiet generosity, stories of him sitting with multiple layers of socks on and his feet still in the oven to ward off the winter cold. And it's through these stories, the layers of them, the different angles, the ones that built up on top of each other over time, that has turned him into someone real for me. Someone who, without meeting face to face, I genuinely can say to you, I know him. And I've been talking you through all of this because I think it can be helpful for some of you. This idea has been very helpful for me as I've thought about my relationship with God. You see, I've come to realize, as I've said, that these are the ingredients that are precisely the doorway through which we are invited to know our God as well. None of us here has had the privilege, as far as I know, of sitting and sharing a meal with the Lord Jesus.

7:39 None of us has had the opportunity to see him calming a storm with a word or just sitting quietly with him around a campfire on a beach. And honestly, for me that has felt like a serious disadvantage for my whole life. I want to know this person. It's been a stumbling block for me and many others, a source of longing for maybe some of you who are believers. We crave this tangible presence and of course someday we are promised it, but instead for now we're handed a book that contains some facts. A bunch of people called the church, here, home groups, friends, people that are Christians around us. They testify to us about what God has done in their lives. We've seen this in the Storybar series before this.

8:39 And of course, all of these facts and evidence, they come together, and yet at the end of it, we still sometimes think to ourselves, but how do I actually know him? How do I know him? What's he like? And this then is when we realize that through story, parable, the other ways that stories are told in the Bible, and through our communities and those stories of what he's done in other people's lives, and them telling us stories about what he's done, we can genuinely meet God. As we encounter these stories about how God acted in the past, we discover that this is how God acts still. God is not bound to facts or history, locked away in the past. Rather, he gives us stories knowing that, as Chris quoted from Gilbert last week, these are little insights behind the veil. We are entering stories about what God does today, what he is really like.

9:50 And as we layer them on top of each other, read more and more week after week of parable after parable, storybearer series after storybearer series, Old Testament story after Old Testament story, we can genuinely come to a picture, as I did with my granda, of someone that we really know. And so as we turn to Luke 15, we see that this is the exact method of story, using stories that Jesus himself employs as he speaks to the scribes and Pharisees. All of these parables which we're considering in this series are invitations to see God through story. Other characters are in the play, but God is behind them all. He is the main character that we're being pointed towards. It is interesting, I suppose, to think that the scribes and the Pharisees are kind of in the position that all of us would long for. They are standing before God, seeing him face to face. He's standing right there.

10:58 Jesus, God in the flesh. And yet, to reveal the deepest truths about God's heart to them, Jesus doesn't issue some other doctrinal statement or something cold or factual. Rather, he sees that they've looked at his life and they've been confused by it. And so he tells them stories, three stories. Jesus knows that these stories can together bypass the false beliefs of these men. And we know from history that actually it was successful for some of them. As they encounter the truth of God's character and action played out before them. And so in these stories, we're invited to see God as the one acting.

11:46 The shepherd, the homemaker, the father. These characters, as they act, act as we should expect God to act. both then, as he was doing through Jesus, and now in our communities, around us, in our lives. And so as we turn to this text, let's not let it be ancient history. Let's not read it as something that's just, you know, a story Jesus told one time. Let's read it as an invitation to meet the God who is at this very moment seeking you, So that when you meet him in the resurrection and you walk towards him and he greets you and you spend some time with him, you turn and say to him eventually, you know, you're exactly how I expected you would be through these stories that I read about you. Let's read the text together. First few verses.

12:46 Now all the tax collectors and sinners kept coming to listen to Jesus. But the Pharisees and the scribes kept complaining. This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. So he told them this parable. Okay, so let's pause there for a second and set the scene a little bit more clearly. We've already kind of had it from Al, but let's go through and see. As Luke 15 begins, we're surrounded by an interesting mix of people. Luke tells us explicitly who's there.

13:21 On one hand, we have the tax collectors and sinners, people who are considered outsiders. The religious leaders see them as beyond the reach of God. The rest of the people see them as the riffraff, those that they don't really want to be around. And then on the other hand, you have the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious elite, the ones who confidently believed that they could say, I know God better than anyone else. And these religious leaders, they watch as Jesus shares these meals, conversations, presence, time, love with people that they have rejected. And they're deeply troubled by it. So much more so that they begin murmuring out loud, openly questioning Jesus, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. You see, in their minds, they already think they know what God is like.

14:23 They believe they have him all figured out in the box. They've got his character. They've got his heart. They've got his priorities. To them, he is most of all holy and righteous. And of course, they're somewhat right. Those are things that are true about God. But they also think of him as distant, judgmental, and primarily measuring people based on their performance, rewarding them if they do good, outcasting them if they do bad.

14:54 And so when they see Jesus acting, who claims in their presence to reveal God's heart, to be God with them, and they see him acting in a way that's contradicting their understanding of God, well, they dismiss him. This flesh and blood person in their presence couldn't hope to be God or even a representative of him. God would never act like that. But here is the crucial point. Jesus was indeed genuinely both God himself and revealing God's heart through his actions. He wasn't just challenging their idea of God to be controversial or to cause these conflicts. No, he's confronting their misconceptions precisely because he wants to invite them in and us in to see God as he truly is. And so as the religious leaders grumble, Jesus responds with three powerful parables.

16:01 We're only going to look at number one and two today. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. And as I've said, these aren't just nice stories to entertain. Rather, they're carefully designed by Jesus, who knows God's heart inside out, to explicitly reveal what God's heart is like. He sees people misunderstanding, and so he tells these stories. And right through as we tell these, I want you to notice something else. These parables have not been randomly chosen. They aren't teaching something brand new.

16:42 They're not teaching something that the scribes and the Pharisees would never have heard of before. Instead, from each of them, Jesus has carefully woven in echoes of what God himself has consistently shown himself to be like right through his interactions with people as recorded in the Old Testament. The stories of God that the Pharisees and scribes themselves claimed to read so carefully are the exact stories which testify to the heart of God as these parables present them. Together then, the Old Testament and the parables show a God who is not passive, not distant, not indifferent to people, but one who is actively seeking out those who are lost, those who are broken, those who he sees are far away. So let's read the parables together and carefully see the God who seeks. Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. he leaves the 99 in the wilderness and looks for the one that is lost until he finds it doesn't he when he finds it he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices then he goes home calls his friends and neighbors together and says to them rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep in the same way I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don't need to repent.

18:21 Or suppose a woman has 10 coins and loses one of them. She lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches carefully until she finds it, doesn't she? When she finds it, she calls her friends and her neighbors together and says, rejoice with me, because I have found the coin that I lost. In the same way, I tell you that there is joy in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents. So as we turn now to consider these familiar parables, I want us to listen carefully to how Jesus displays the heart of God. I want you to collect these insights about God into three statements about him. First, God is a God who seeks. God is a God who actively seeks the lost.

19:19 In these stories, it's pretty obvious. Jesus describes two seekers. First, we have a shepherd who has a hundred sheep, but discovers that one of them has wandered off. And what does the shepherd do? Does he just shrug it off, dismiss the lost sheep as unimportant? No. Jesus says clearly that he leaves the 99 behind and he goes out into the wilderness to actively pursue the one that is lost. And listen to the language that's found here.

19:56 It's vivid, it's active, it's relentless. The shepherd goes after this lost sheep until he finds it. He's determined. He's urgent. It's not some kind of passive search. The shepherd is committed to bringing this sheep home whatever it costs him. And then second, Jesus introduces us to a woman who has lost one of her 10 silver coins. And again, notice the type of response that she has.

20:33 Jesus describes her lighting a lamp, sweeping the house, searching carefully until she finds it. And again, we note this same deliberate urgency. She's not going to rest until she discovers what is lost. And so through these two images, Jesus is explicitly revealing God's heart to us. When we ask what is our God like, we have the answer. God is a God who actively seeks the lost. He doesn't sit back passively. He doesn't hope that somehow people will stumble their way back to him.

21:13 No. He pursues. He searches. He finds. And as I've already said here, Jesus isn't describing something new about God, something that the Pharisees and the scribes should have been confused about and just discovering here through this parable. Instead, he's reminding them of what God has been like right through Scripture. Think back to the very beginning, Genesis 3, 9. Right after Adam and Eve disobey and hide themselves in shame, they find themselves lost, what does God do?

21:55 Does he abandon them, hoping that they might eventually return to him humility? No. The Bible says clearly, the Lord God called to the man, where are you? And I read a commentary a few years ago, which said that the language here is close to the idea of my little children, what is it that you've gotten up to now? From the very beginning, God has been pursuing those who are lost. And it's not just in Genesis we see it, we see it in Ezekiel as well. The prophet Ezekiel said, for thus says the Lord God, behold, I will search out my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so I will seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered.

22:54 Here through Genesis, through Ezekiel, God openly, explicitly declares himself to be the one who seeks, searches, and ultimately is committed to be the rescuer. This brings us then naturally into the second powerful truth that Jesus explicitly reveals about God through these parables. God seeks because he sees each one of us as precious. Think again about these parables. The shepherd willingly leaves 99 sheep behind to search for one lost sheep. And at first glance, this might seem a bit unreasonable. After all, what's one sheep compared to the safety of the other 99? And yet, in the eyes of this shepherd, who Jesus has designed to be like God, this lost sheep is not merely a number.

23:58 It's not some minor economic loss. He's not just going to buy another sheep at the next market. Rather, it is deeply precious, uniquely valuable, irreplaceable to him. And the woman searching for her lost coin underscores the same point. It doesn't even seem like the coins that are being used here are particularly special. Some people have tried to see them as somewhat special, maybe some type of diary or something like that, but the language of the coin is actually just kind of a coin. So why does she care so much about it? We don't know, except for the fact that the story has been designed to be like God.

24:40 Why is there such urgency? Why such meticulous care? Because this single coin matters deeply to the woman. It's precious to her. Its absence is felt personally. And this is how God views every single one of us. No matter who we are, where we've been, or what we've done, every person without question is uniquely precious in God's eyes. He does not seek merely because it's his duty.

25:14 He doesn't do it because he must do it. He seeks us because of how he views us, how much he loves us. And once again, you'll note that this is not new theology that's invented by Jesus. Not new ideas for the scribes and the Pharisees. This has always been God's heart, expressed clearly throughout Scripture. Listen carefully to how beautifully God expresses it in Isaiah. Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name.

25:47 You are mine because you are precious in my eyes and honored and I love you. Hear those words again. God himself calls us precious, honored, loved. The same sentiment appears clearly in Deuteronomy 2, right at the beginning of when he calls the nation. It was not because you were more in number than other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you. No, but it says this, but it is because the Lord loves you. God's motivation to seek is always and everywhere grounded in his own love from within him. And so as we listen carefully to Jesus' words in Luke 15, we're meant to see clearly not just a God who seeks, but one whose seeking reveals how deeply he sees and loves us.

26:40 Third then, Jesus reveals to us that God's joy is found ultimately in finding what was lost. Think again about each of these parables and notice carefully, it's pretty obvious how each one ends. The shepherd having found his sheep does not just quietly go home and put it in with the rest. Instead, he gets his friends, his neighbors together, and he says, rejoice with me. I have found the lost sheep. Likewise, upon finding her coin, Immediately, the woman goes, gets her friends and says, rejoice with me. I have found my lost coin. Jesus explicitly underlines what this is about in both parables.

27:30 He says at the end of the first one, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Notice here then that Jesus is saying that God's rejoicing is not reluctant or mild. It is genuine, profound, extravagant. It's not solitary joy, it's communal celebration. And it involves all of heaven and all those who are in the community. And again, this is not a new idea. Zephaniah says something in his prophecy, which is mind-blowing if you look at it. The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves.

28:19 He will take great delight in you. In his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. The God of the universe rejoicing over you, singing over you with delight because he has found you. God joyfully, passionately celebrates the restoration of those who he deeply loves. This then is our God that we get to know. A God who actively seeks us out. A God who sees us as deeply precious. And a God who rejoices extravagantly over us as he finds us.

29:03 So what should we do to respond to a God like this? Well, I have three quick applications for us to three different groups of people. First, to those who are outside and still lost. To the ones who feel distant from God, who maybe feel like you have not been able to get to know him in the past. I want you to hear what this parable is saying clearly. Jesus has designed it to let you know God's heart. God is seeking you. He sees you.

29:40 He knows you completely. He values you deeply. And if you're in this category, why don't you just be a sheep and bleat? Call out to him that you're lost. Acknowledge clearly and humbly that you need to be found and allow yourself to be known by the God who is already seeking you. When you do, you can be assured that he will find you, embrace you, and joyfully welcome you home. Second then, to the cynical Christian. You're going to be more in the spotlight next week.

30:19 But maybe there's someone here who has lost sight of grace. All of us do this from time to time. but maybe as you sit here this morning you've been looking around and you've just been seeing everyone around you as kind of like why on earth did God choose these people because they're just so annoying like I just ah these ones this home group seriously what is the response then well look round at them and see them through the eyes of your God the way that he sees them celebrating over them. Ask God to soften your heart once more to restore the capacity for joy, delight, and wonder at the miracle of his grace. Refuse to stay at a distance from those people, because by doing so, you will be staying far from the heart of the God who loves them. And finally then, just to every believer here this morning, a response that we can have then when we see the heart of God and find it so beautiful is to reflect it. Just as he seeks treasures and celebrates those who are lost, so too should we. Actively seek, lovingly pursue those who remain on the outside.

31:40 Again, some of us might see those, maybe not that have already been found, but those on the outside as distasteful, as kind of there by their own fault, as not particularly people that we would like to bring and have sitting beside us on a Sunday morning. But let the heart of our God that we have seen fill us with compassion and urgency to love those who are around us this morning. The God that we have been invited to see this morning is a God who seeks, a God who values us deeply, a God who rejoices over us as we are found. And just to bring this all to conclusion as the band come back up, I have a few call and response things that I want us to do here. There's five of them. I'm going to read the start, the bit that says leader, and then I want you to respond with me the piece that says people. These are all drawn from what we've already been thinking about here. And I just want us, as we say them together, to enter into these stories again, to see God, and to realize that through this, we are coming to really know our God.

33:09 So the first one. Who called out, where are you, when we hid ourselves away? Our God, who comes near and never stops seeking. Who said, I will search for my sheep and bring them back. Our shepherd, who carries the loss close to his heart. Who rejoiced, I have found what was lost. come and celebrate. Our Lord, who dances over the repentant as he welcomes them in.

33:48 Who sang, I will rejoice over you with singing. Our King, in whom joy becomes a melody that never fades. Who said, you are precious to me and I love you. Our Messiah, Jesus, in whom God's seeking heart is made visible. What a wonderful God we have.