Three Lost Things

Gospel of Luke, chapter 15. We're going to read two very well-known parables, perhaps not quite so well-known as the third parable in this chapter, the parable of the lost son. Luke, chapter 15, verse one.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable.

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does he not leave the 99 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've found my lost sheep. I tell you that in the same way, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Or suppose a woman has 10 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.

Amen. Father, in your goodness and your grace, as we think of your love, we just commit our minds to you right now and we pray that you'll think through them and place thoughts within them that will enhance our understanding of you and your character and your loving purposes towards this world. We thank you again for the dimensions of the agape love of our God.

In the name of our Lord Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit, amen. Please be seated and let's open our Bibles to Luke in chapter 15. I've been looking at this chapter for some while, shared some of the thoughts that I'm going to be bringing to you this morning with my fever friends a little while ago.

I've been looking at it for two reasons in particular. One, I have to bring the Bible readings at the Baptist Union Assembly in Northern Ireland in the not-too-distant future and I'm thinking of directing the attention of the ministers to these well-known and yet remarkable parables and yet from an even different perspective, I've been looking at them because you see, one of the things that I've been encountering during these last few days and one of the things that challenges me and I hope you as thinking people in Great Britain is the advancement of Islam. The spread of the Muslim faith in the West, it really is quite remarkable.

The number of people who are admitting that Allah is God or the number of people who don't go as far as that but are prepared in some Anglican and other denominational circles, I don't say that critically but objectively and factually, to have interfaith services because they believe, well, you know, all the religions lead you to the same God. The God of the Hindus, heaven help us, the God of the Buddhists and the God of the Mohammedans is the God and the father of our Lord Jesus. I do not believe that and I want to try to show you as we look into these three parables and we'll take them quite gently, just an introductory talk this morning, I want to try to show you how the fatherhood of God in his distinctive character stands out in the very teaching of our Lord Jesus.

You see, in one sense, our Lord and Savior does not only teach about the father, he illustrates the father, doesn't he? In one sense, and this is a very poor example, you can say I illustrate my own father. There are certain feature characteristics about me which, had you known him, would remind you. There's a mark, a common denominator.

At the physical level, that often occurs between sons and fathers, sons and mothers for that matter. But in the absolute sense, when you saw Jesus, you saw the father, he revealed the father. Have I been so long time with you, he says to his disciples on one occasion, and you never knew me.

He made that response because they put up the question, Lord, show us the father and we will be satisfied. Well, I argue this. The supreme purpose behind our Lord Jesus coming into the world is to reveal the father.

And I was saying, at least in my prayers with my brother elders before our service, our main service started this morning, Lord, just saying father in a meaningful way encapsules all the gospel. Because if you understand what you mean when you address God as father, then locked up within that word is the whole purposes of God and his benevolent character and what he was prepared to suffer to reestablish a relationship with you so that you, son or daughter of God can address him as father. Well then, let's go to this particular passage of scripture.

Here our Lord Jesus is in the company of two groups of people, religious people and irreligious people. The religious, well, they are referred to in the second verse as Pharisees and teachers of the law, scribes, if you please. These were folk who didn't really feel that Jesus had much input to make into their lives.

They were the confessedly religious people in his day. And so you've got these folk in one category who are in the audience when Jesus sets up this triplet of stories which all really merge into one, for here is just three facets of one parable. There are the irreligious people as well, the tax collectors and those called sinners.

That's in inverted commas in the NIV version, the tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors, well, they're never popular, are they? We always really need to pray for our civil servants and for the fact that sometimes there's a bit of a stigma to working in the tax office. Now we know that people who are in that department of Her Majesty's service here in our country are honorable, professional people who are collecting taxes so that they can be used, allegedly, in the best interest of the economy.

But in those days, it wasn't this case. Tax collectors were, if you like, people who had been allowed by the Romans a particular area where they were to farm the taxes of the people. They were known as tax farmers.

So they'd have a whole area. For example, here in Worthing, there could be five tax farmers working in Goring where they would reap great rewards, working in the center of town near Shakespeare Road where there's not really much in terms of a harvest, and going on to East Worthing and so on and so forth. You would be allocated your area and you'd work in it.

Now you weren't very popular because you were working for the Romans. You would be like, for example, one man who I was with this last week from Afghanistan who was having great difficulties on the borders of Pakistan for this reason, you see. He had been trained as a doctor in Moscow for six years and the possibility was, amongst the Afghans, that he might be a collaborator with the Russians.

Actually, he wasn't, but that was the difficulty. Those of you who remember the Second World War will recall the Vichy French and the way that they collaborated with Hitler. Well, you see, these tax collectors, they were collaborators with the Roman occupying force and as a result, well, they were at zero level in the column of popularity.

Now to these people, Jesus directed remarks, not only to tax collectors, but also to a group of people who lumped together, often in Luke's gospel, with tax collectors, namely sinners, inverted commas, because, well, this was an expression which brought together a number of people, adulterers, those who were living profligate lives, Gentile people, they were also classed as sinners. The ordinary working class of Jewish person, they were looked upon by the religious leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees as being sinners. So here is our Lord Jesus and he's in the company of two categories of people, he representing the third.

There are the religious, there are the irreligious and there is Christ. Now the religious have an argument with Jesus. It is namely this.

How can he, being who he claims to be, have company with them, with the irreligious? You see, they're murmuring, that's what it says, does it not, in the second verse. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, murmured, I think, the authorized version represents that verse. This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

It's a great problem, you see. The scribes and the Pharisees, they would have nothing to do with that category of people, but Jesus did. And they were so incensed that they murmured.

They murmured against Jesus in the same way as the religious, as the Jews years ago murmured against Moses and Aaron. And the murmuring of the scribes and Pharisees, if it continues, will come to absolute form when before the cross they will cry, crucify him, crucify him. So it's to these people that the Lord Jesus is directing his remarks.

The religious people who have against Jesus that he welcomes the irreligious. Not only does he welcome them, but he will eat with them. Now, you'll never understand this triplet of parables unless you have some grasp of an Oriental or specifically an Asian setting.

You see, if you eat with a person in Asia, you do more than accept their food. You accept them as individuals. And if you reject an invitation of hospitality, in effect, you are rejecting them.

12 years ago when I first went to India on one occasion, in the city of Ahmedabad, I had 10 preaching engagements on one Sunday. I tell you, that night if you'd whispered in my ear, preach, I'd have shot up in my pajamas. Actually, I wasn't wearing pajamas, in my tracksuit, and I would have preached.

I was getting so mechanical in this particular activity. But that, by the way, five of the churches threw a banquet. And now, it's very difficult when you get to your third meal, let alone your fourth.

But not to have eaten would have indicated that I was refusing to accept them as people. And when a religious leader in Asia acknowledges an invitation and eats with people, he in some way is looked upon as being able of releasing a blessing towards those who he has received. So this, you see, is the indictment against Jesus.

This man welcomes sinners and he receives them to the extent that he eats with them. The same verb is used as when Jesus said, whoever receives a child in my name receives me. You remember that verse in Mark's gospel.

So then, this is the particular problem that our Lord has to deal with. This is the church. This is what they have against him.

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. Now, I told you that it is the function of our Lord Jesus to reveal the Father. You see, you're going to grasp a great deal about the fatherly nature of God through these incidents.

Why was Jesus sent into the world? Well, he didn't come of his own volition, although he wasn't not opposed to the mission. It was God the Father who sent him, for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. What is Father like? Now, I put that question to you.

Do you understand what God the Father is like? You see, I'm not exaggerating when I say that if you address God as Father and fully understand what that word means, you have grasped the whole of the gospel. Father is like this. He wants to welcome people like you and me.

He wants to relate to us. He wants, if you please, to throw a meal and for you to come into his presence and accept his hospitality on the basis of being a son or a daughter. And the reason why you can accept the hospitality of Father is because of the character of Father himself.

Now, the Muslims will tell you that in this triplet of stories, and the third in particular, there is no atonement, there is no payment for sins. Allah is merciful and he's merciful on the grounds of his mercy, not on the grounds of anyone paying a price in the shedding of blood, in the offering of a substitute sacrifice like Christians indicate in their gospel. Well, I want to show you that the Muslims completely misunderstand these parables and particularly the third one.

The main thrust of my argument will be found in the third one, so you'll have to come along for the third week to get basically my reasoning. But here is our Lord, you see, and he's going to tell these religious and these irreligious people about Father. Verse three, then Jesus told them this parable.

When? Well, when they were criticizing him. When they were putting up their indictment, then Jesus told them this parable. Suppose, he says, suppose one of you has 100 sheep and loses one of them.

You ever notice that there is a touch of irony sometimes and humor in the language of our Lord Jesus. Suppose one of you, Pharisees he's referring to, suppose one of you has 100 sheep. Now, there is right humor there, I say, on this ground that no Pharisee would have 100 sheep and look after them.

Why not? Well, you see, they're Pharisees. You don't address a Pharisee like you address a working man. You address a Pharisee as though he is the elite, the cream of the establishment.

And if a Pharisee has sheep, what does he do? Well, he hires a shepherd. He won't look after sheep. That would be demeaning himself.

Sheep are dirty animals. And the shepherd's task is a low task. But our Lord Jesus steps on one side of that argument.

And he makes this supposition. Suppose one of you had 100 sheep and one of them went astray. What would you do? Well, you would go off and you would find that one straying sheep, wouldn't you? Not on your life.

They would not have gone into the wilderness and found that one straying sheep. They might have sent somebody else, but the Pharisees themselves would not go off into the wilderness. It's a very dangerous place in which to go off into incidentally.

As witnessed one Episcopalian bishop about 10 years ago who went off into the wilderness around Jerusalem and never returned. That howling wilderness has many, many hazards for the tourist armed with a camera. It requires someone of skill, someone who understands the terrain and the difficulties to go off on any form of expedition, particularly to look for a wandering sheep.

But here our Lord Jesus makes the supposition. Suppose one of you has 100 sheep and loses them. Does he not leave the 90 and nine in the open country and go after the last sheep until he finds it? Now, statistically, the equation is a bit absurd, isn't it? You say, what do you mean? Well, simply this.

You see, if you've got 99, isn't that sufficient? I mean, if it is the truth that that howling wilderness, as it is described in the Authorized Version's language, which sometimes in a very eloquent way will tell us about the geography of Palestine, if it's a waste howling wilderness and one sheep is risking its life, foolish, dumb creature that it be, and 99 are safe, then doesn't it make sense for the shepherd to stay with the 99? You see, this is communism, isn't it, basically? You see, it's the good of the whole. And on the basis of the whole, one can be sacrificed. But, and this is Jesus' teaching, because remember, he's speaking about Father.

He's going to reveal this more particularly to us in the third parable. Our Lord Jesus is not speaking about an ordinary shepherd. He's speaking about Father.

And as far as Father is concerned, if one goes astray and Father has no interest, then the livelihoods of the 90 and nine are also in jeopardy inasmuch as the occasion could come when one of them might be astray and Father could think, shepherd could think, well, the bulk of the flock are safe. Why bother to go off for them? You see, the value of the individual sheep in the flock is indicated by the shepherd going after the one that he's lost. If he's prepared to do that, and ultimately I find myself in a lost condition, I can anticipate that this shepherd will come after me.

This is what the Lord Jesus is teaching about the father shepherd who has concerns for the irreligious. Which one of you, suppose you have 100 sheep and one goes astray. Which one of you would refuse to do anything else but leave the 90 and nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? Now, the moment you find the sheep, you have not completed your task, have you? I mean, here is this dumb animal and he's got himself into great difficulties and the shepherd has hazarded his life in endeavoring to recover him.

Now, having come to the point of contact, what does the shepherd find? Well, his problems are now compounded immeasurably in as much as he as shepherd plus dumb sheep have to go back across that difficult terrain to the 90 and nine which are secure, grazing in the green open ground. So what does the shepherd do? Well, the book of Deuteronomy will tell you. For the book of Deuteronomy speaks of God as shepherd, God finding the sheep, human sheep in the wilderness of Sinai and the shepherd takes the sheep and he puts the sheep across his shoulders so that both the hooves of the sheep dangle around either side of his neck.

And then with the warmth of the sheep's stomach around his neck, he places one hand on the sheep's feet so he's got the four legs together. He's completely in control of the sheep, is the shepherd and he's completely in control of the destination to which he wishes to take both himself and the sheep. That's how the shepherds returned their sheep, their lost sheep to the fold.

And this is what Jesus is indicating in regards to the shepherd father. You see, he goes after the sheep, he discovers where he is and then comes all the pain and the difficulty of retrieving the sheep and taking it back into the fold. Now there's a bit of a glimpse of the cross here.

It's not much but it's there. It's going to be fleshed out more fully in the third parable as I shall show you in a couple of weeks time. You see, there's great cost in finding a lost sheep because in the very purpose of recovery, a life is risked and pain is inflicted for this is not just an ordinary shepherd and indeed some ordinary shepherds nonetheless are in this category.

This is a special shepherd who has a love relationship with his sheep. And so this shepherd is successful about his business. He finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and he goes home.

Then what does he do? Well, he calls a party. The Orientals and the Asians are good at having parties. It's only European Christians that turn Christianity into something miserable.

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. Why? Well, I found my lost sheep.

Now remember, we're in an Asian setting. Probably the shepherd lives in an Asian village. In fact, most definitely he does.

And in an Arab village, property is communally held. That means to say that if you suffer the loss of one sheep from the fold, then all the villages who are interrelated one with another for the family villages, all the villages suffer. And so here is the shepherd who's gone out risking his own life across the tractless wilderness.

He's found the sheep and at great cost, he's hazardized his life and brought the sheep back to the fold. So what does he do? Well, he calls all the relatives together and they celebrate. It's a natural thing to celebrate when something successfully has been achieved, when property has been recovered.

Now you Pharisees, you who are muttering, you who are murmuring, you who've got a death threat lurking in your minds as you think about me and the purposes of fathers as I'm teaching them, should it not be the case that when these sinners, when these tax farmers receive what I have to say and they come into my circle of friendship, when they have been recovered, should you not be jubilant? Should you not be joyful? For this purpose, I was sent to seek and to save the lost. So our Savior puts up that simple little story. It's brilliant, isn't it? He doesn't deal with the Pharisees at the level that they want to be dealt with.

This is no great theological argument. You see, our Lord will address these people like I would address Cambridge University students, not as intellectuals, but as sinners who need to be saved. You see, in the economy of God, there is no class structure.

As far as God is concerned, we're all wandering sheep and we all need the method of recovery that our Lord Jesus illustrates. And so our Savior talks to the Pharisees and they don't understand, or rather they don't accept what he has to say. He speaks to them on the level of ordinary men, about ordinary things, about something that you might anticipate a shepherd would do.

And then from the smaller, he moves to the greater. From the minor, he moves to the major. Look, if a shepherd will do this, how much more in the name of the Father should I do that? And seeing me on the base in this ministry of recovery, should not each one of you be rejoicing because these sheep were lost and they are gradually being retrieved and returned to the fold? Now in one sense, my good friend this morning, I need go no further.

You see, if you can understand this about the Father heart of God, then you have learned a very great lesson indeed. He deals with the individual and not with the mass. If he hadn't done that, then as I repeated, as I mentioned a few moments ago, all of us would be in jeopardy.

But you see, he's concerned about the one, not just about the 99. And the fact that he's concerned about the one makes the 99 feel more secure. Do you understand that? I hope so.

It's a fairly logical deduction for me to reason with you from scripture and bring before you right now, isn't it? And so our Lord Jesus sets up this parable. And he's just been speaking about the irreligious in effect because it's the irreligious who recognize their need of being saved. And that's why it is that they come to the Lord Jesus and consort with him and discover that far from repelling them, he is prepared to have food with them, accepting their meal and accepting their person.

Now, just in case I've missed the point, because often the Pharisees do, it's amazing how educated people can become the most stupid. He sets it up with another illustration. He moves from a man to a woman.

Or suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and loses one. Incidentally, ladies, you never know, or you will never know unless you move into a Muslim society. Ask Muriel Bucking, she will tell you that what I'm saying is accurate.

You will never know how blessed you are as women being reared in a Christian, inverted commas, society and not a Muslim one. The way that women can be treated. I was on a bus, a two-hour journey going to Murray School to see Barbara Hatton last Wednesday.

And the way the women felt were treated on that bus, it just made my blood boil. However, that's in passing. Here is a woman.

Or suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and loses one. How did these women keep their money? Well, sometimes they would wear a band around their heads and the money could be kept within it or dangled from a chain around their neck. Or more often than not, as I've often seen illustrated on the streets of Bombay or Calcutta or many an ancient, many an ancient city.

It will be placed in a bit of rag and then the four corners tied together in one knot. And they carry their money around. Now, money is not easily available in some of these third world countries.

So when you've lost one coin, even though you've still got nine, you do get agitated. One coin would represent one person's work for the day, you see, and husband has entrusted this coin to the woman and she's dropped it. So what does she do? Well, you might feel it's easy to discover one coin in your wall-to-wall carpeted floors, but we're not in Worthing, are we? We're out in Asia.

We're out where the walls are mottled walls of clay, where the floor is often just the earth, where the animals sometimes will use the home as well as the courtyard, where the dust is often turned up and there's not an even surface, where the windows are small and high and you need a lamp even during the day to see what's going on in your room. Now, that's the situation in which this woman finds herself. She's dropped the coin and there's 101 places where she can have, where the coin may have rested.

And so what does she do? Well, she has a spring clean, a perpetual spring clean. You know, some women folks are constantly cleaning. You've ever noticed that? Incredible to me.

I can tidy our house up in 20 minutes flat. It's amazing how much my dear Rowena takes in keeping it. But you see, there is a difference between my effort and her effort, as would be very obvious to anyone who happened to call on the rare occasions when I do it.

So this lady is spring cleaning perpetually until she finds the coin that is lost. Can you imagine her? She's engaged in this. How stupid I was.

Fancy doing that. You know, whenever I lose a contact lens, I'm like that. So I can understand this lady.

I've groveled around looking for the things before now. And then she finds it, that moment of finding, the contact lens that you've been looking for for two hours. It was there on the carpet all the time.

Now, as far as she was concerned, this coin, it was there covered up by some of the loose earth. And she's elated. Now, in an Asian village, there's not much really that's of great interest to make the day less than boring, or more than boring.

But she's got this coin back, and so she goes and tells her friends. Now, it's an Asian context. She only speaks to the women because women can only speak to women, even today.

It's very, very difficult for women to have any cross-sex relationship. And so she tells the story. Now, isn't it worth celebrating? You've got a coin, you've got friends.

Bring them all in, give them chai, and tell them again, and again, and again, and again, ad nauseam, this coin of mine. Well, you see, this is what happened. There was a hole in the rug, and it fell through, and it went.

You know how women carry on sometimes, don't you? Nearly as bad as men. Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost coin. In the same way, says our Lord Jesus, speaking of Father God, I tell you that in the company that He keeps in heaven, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God.

Over one sinner who repents. You see, when a sinner comes back to the Lord, there's great festivities in heaven. Heaven is a place of rejoicing.

In my Father's house are many mansions, says our Lord Jesus. And the psalmist supplements the activity within those mansions. In the Father's presence, there's fullness of joy.

At His right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. You see, our God is, as William Cooper said, a God of mirth. A God who loves to be happy, who rejoices in the retrieval of that which is lost.

The sons, the daughters of Adam, recovered by the faithful work of the Son who was pledged at the very beginning of leaving heaven to come onto this earth, to find men and women like ourselves. And now you see, our Lord spins back on these scribes and Pharisees, these religious people. Look, this is what I have been doing.

I have no apology to make. Yes, Zacchaeus, I will come to your house. I will receive you.

I will take you as a person. I will take what you have to offer me. And I will give a benediction in your home because you're one of the people that I have come to discover.

And now I have no apology to make for this because this is what Father has told me to do. Now, it's not just, of course, the sheep and the coin that's important. Those are simply emblems of humanity.

You and me. Who suffered the most in those two parables? We'll come out further in the third parable and I'll commence expounding that next week. But who suffered the most? Not the sheep.

The sheep are dumb animals, aren't they? I don't know whether they have a sense of panic. Maybe they do. I guess they must fear.

But it's the shepherd, the loving, tender shepherd who suffers the most because the sheep has gone astray. I remember once when I was in Morecambe as a lad of about seven years of age getting lost. It was a horrible experience.

I can still recall it, though the years have gone by since then. But the person who suffered most was my mother. Who suffers the most when human sheep are lost? None other but the father.

An inanimate thing like a coin, of course, can't suffer, but the woman was suffering, wasn't she? I mean, she symbolizes in one sense the rescue work of Father God. And as she's engaged in doing what she wants to achieve in finding the coin, during the moments of search, there's suffering. Now, my good friend, I'm going to conclude what I have to say at this point.

In those three stories, there is, if you like, a mathematical equation that needs to be thought through. The first story, one was lost in 100, and God was concerned for that one. In the second story, one was lost out of 10, and God was concerned for that one.

In the third story, one will be lost out of two, and God will show you that he has a concern for that one. The Lord Jesus starts with a large number, and he goes to a small number. He starts with humanity, and he narrows it down to you, because as the Apostle Paul so eloquently and precisely says of the Father God, speaking of the offering of our Lord Jesus, he loved me, and he gave himself for me.

That's the Christian's concept of the Father God, who searches us out at great cost to himself in order to bring us back into the family circle. May you discover even more truths of this as we look together into the parable of the prodigal next week. Let's sing together 411.

You hardly need the words, for it's the Lord's, my shepherd, I'll not want, he makes me down to lie. 411, and then we quite quickly come around the Lord's table. We'll empty the balconies and come down.

It's still quite early. Let's spend a comfortable time around the table of our Lord, which symbolizes for us the retrieval process by which the Lord Jesus went out into the wilderness to recover you and me and shed his life in order to obtain his objective. 411.

♪ The Lord's, my shepherd, I'll not want ♪ ♪ He makes me down to lie ♪ ♪ In pastures green, he did have me ♪ ♪ I adore him ♪ Father, those parables speak to us of lostness, the awful, hideous agony of being dislocated, separated from yourself, but we praise you that they speak also of a supernatural ministry of recovery. We thank you, many of us here, because once we were a sheep, lost, but the Lord Jesus found us. Once we were as coins, hidden away, but he retrieved us.

We praise you that what he did was at your dictate and illustrates forever your compassions and concerns for each one of us. Now bless this company of your children, and as we come around the table of our Lord Jesus, help us again to appreciate the largeness of the great heart of our God in dispensing with the Lord Jesus Christ, sending him into this world to seek and to save and ultimately to die for us who did not deserve such great love. Send us then ultimately on our way, rejoicing in your goodness and in your favor.

For his name's sake, amen.