The Parable of the Lost Sheep
We all lose things from time to time, but some things are worth searching for and others are not.
I’m not looking for lost socks, like ever. I’ve given up. I’m convinced there really is such a thing as a sock monster. I’m not looking for lost Lego pieces, lost puzzle pieces, or lost change. It’s just not worth it.
But I did lose my son one time. He was 2 years old. That was fun. We went on vacation, and we weren’t there more than 5 minutes and he was gone. He just walked out of our 3rd-floor condo that we had just checked into.
I’m running up and down scanning everywhere, yelling his name. Nothing. It was the scariest day of my life. I ran by an elevator and decided to jump on it to go down and look on another floor, and when the elevator door opened up, there he was in nothing but a diaper and a big ol’ grin on his face.
Some things are worth searching for no matter what it takes to find them, especially if they are people.
But what is sad is that sometimes we don’t see certain people as worth looking for either.
LOST CAUSES
I mean, we all know people who have kind of lost their way, right?
And what do we say when people are really far gone and have made a total mess of their lives? We say, “They’re a lost cause,” right?
And at that point, what we are really saying is that they aren’t even worth giving our attention to any longer. We don’t need to try and waste our time trying to help them because they are too far gone.
The hard part is sometimes that can be how you and I can feel about ourselves. We can begin to lose our way in life. And there’s kind of a sense of shame that goes along with that.
And it too can get to the point where maybe we feel like we are kind of a lost cause. We wouldn’t expect anyone to come looking for us to help us find our way back.
I mean we understand that there are some people who are valued in our society and in this world, and others who are not. And we don’t feel like we are that valuable. We’re not worth trying to find.
We’ve lost our way and we know it. We’re too far gone to matter in this world.
But I wonder what Jesus thinks? I wonder how being lost is valued in His Kingdom?
Well let’s find out. In Luke 15, Jesus tells a parable about a lost sheep and a lost coin.
Here’s what it says in Luke 15:1,
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So before Luke shares these parables with us, he makes sure that we understand the context in which Jesus begins to tell these parables. It was in response to the Pharisees muttering and complaining that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them.
In other words, the Pharisees were saying, “Jesus, these people you are eating with have lost their way. They are lost causes, Jesus, so why are you associating with them?”
And just to be honest, these really were people who were lost.
“Sinners” were murderers, robbers, deceivers, prostitutes, and anyone of dishonorable vocations.
And the tax collectors that Luke also mentioned weren’t seen as being any better. They were seen as traitors by the Jews because they were Jewish people who were now working for the Roman Empire. They were taking advantage of their own people and helping fund the very regime that was responsible for torturing and killing and strong-arming their own people.
So tax collectors were hated and despised. They were seen as people who were beyond “lost causes.” There was definitely no room for people like this in the kingdom of God!
But here Jesus was associating with them and eating with them, and it’s in response to the religious leaders complaining that He tells these parables…
PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEP
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
PARABLE OF THE LOST COIN
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
So in these 2 parables, Jesus is using a lost sheep and a lost coin to represent lost sinners and tax collectors, and to show how they are viewed in God’s Kingdom.
And there are 4 things these parables tell us about sinners.
4 FACTS ABOUT SINNERS FOUND IN THE PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEP & LOST COIN
1. SINNERS ARE LOST
If Jesus is using lost things to represent sinners in these parables, then we have to acknowledge that sinners are lost. They have lost their way.
In a world that sometimes celebrates sin and uses it to define and celebrate our identity, we see the opposite here, and really all throughout Scripture.
And as sinners, we are separated from God. We see that all the way back in Genesis 3 in the garden. God is holy and cannot associate with sin.
We have all lost our way from our home with God due to sin in our lives.
2. SINNERS ARE LOST, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Because we are lost and separated from God because of things we’ve done that are offensive to Him, it would make sense that we would just kind of be forgotten by Him.
We walked away from God and turned our back on Him, and people who have lost their way in our world get forgotten all the time, so it's easy to think that we would just be forgotten as well.
But that just isn’t true. These parables show us that God has not forgotten you!
The God of the universe knows your name, and He thinks about you. You are on His mind. You are in His thoughts. He is concerned for you.
He has not forgotten you even though you are lost.
3. SINNERS ARE LOST BUT GREATLY VALUED
The shepherd in the parable had 99 other sheep! The woman had 9 other coins! They both could have easily just said, “Oh well, I’ve got so many others.”
But they didn’t. They both searched frantically for them which shows us that each one of us is greatly valued by God.
It can be so easy to think that you aren’t worth much because of the choices you’ve made and the fact that you have lost your way.
But these parables show us that God greatly values you.
You are a valuable part of His creation.
You may feel worthless, but to God, you are a treasure.
4. SINNERS ARE LOST BUT SEARCHED FOR
Think about that for a second. We often think of ourselves as being lost and needing to find our way back to God. Like He is just sitting up in heaven, saying, “Good luck, I hope you find your way to me. I hope you get your life back in order enough to find your way back to me!”
But that is not the perspective we see in this parable. God is not waiting and expecting you to be able to find your way back to Him. God is the One searching for you!
Later in Luke’s gospel, he tells us that Jesus said this is why He came to earth in the first place. Look at Luke 19:10
10 The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.
You may have lost your way, or feel like a lost cause and that you are forgotten, worthless, and that no one cares enough to look for you in this world we live in. And that may be true in this world that we live in, but not in God’s Kingdom!
God, your Creator thinks about you constantly, sees you as a treasure, and He turned the world upside down to find you.
See, what was necessary to pay for your sin and to be able to bring you home was death. Death on a cross.
And He was willing to pay that price for you because you were not forgotten, and you were valuable to Him. So valuable that He was willing to give His own life for you to be able to bring you home.
So now all that is left for you to do is to let him rescue you by putting your faith and trust in Him.
And when you do, Scripture tells us that at that moment there is a change that takes place.
Your sins are forgiven (Ephesians 1:7) and you become a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You become part of His Kingdom, part of His family, and you have a place to belong.
LEARNING TO VALUE LOST PEOPLE
As we become part of God’s Kingdom and His family, He wants to manifest the values of His Kingdom through us into this world. And God values lost people.
Remember that Jesus was telling these parables in response to the Pharisees muttering and complaining that He was eating with sinners.
He is showing them that lost people are valued by God and that they should have been rejoicing that the lost are being found, rather than complaining about it.
They had missed it. They thought that lost people were too far gone.
The value they thought was important was staying away from lost people and separating themselves from them.
The value they thought was important was to call them out for their sins and shame them for being such terrible people.
But Jesus was saying to the Pharisees that they are valuable to Him and that they should have been valuing the lost as well in their own lives.
The same is true of you and me. We can miss this in our own lives as well.
We can feel like what is valued is us separating ourselves from all the “sinners” in this world.
That our job as Christians is to not associate with people who do bad things, to shame them, and to call them out on social media for being such terrible people.
But the truth is that lost people are valued in the Kingdom we are now from and that we belong to. And so, as citizens of His Kingdom who are ambassadors here of that Kingdom, Jesus wants to manifest this value through us into this world.
He wants people in this world to see that He values them and loves them no matter how lost they are.
He wants you to know that He wants to use you to love the lost, to serve the lost, and to invite the lost to be a part of your life.
Will you make yourself available for Him to do that through you?
If so, and we all as the Church do that, more lost will be found, and we can rejoice and celebrate with Jesus and all of heaven! May it be so!
