Lost Things Week 1

If you've got a copy of God's Word, go to the book of Luke chapter 15. Luke 15, one through seven. Luke 15, one through seven. I'm gonna start a collection of messages right now that's just simply called Lost Things. And it is a series for seekers. Are there any seekers in the house today? Yeah, some of you remember we started off the year saying 2026 at our church and for our fellowship that the word seek was gonna be kind of our word for the year. And we talked about seeking three things in that, seeking the presence of God. And we started off the year with just that and fasting and prayer and just an emphasis on the presence of God. We've talked about seeking the will of God for our life and how we are to be used of God. And so, man, we spent most of the year kind of talking about different ways that we can be used of God. And we wanna end the year strong by talking about that third kind of level of seeking and that's seeking to save that which is lost. And so, that's what this collection of messages is gonna be about, lost things. It's a series for seekers. And I don't know if anybody still have your bag tag or your key ring?

We passed those out in January. And if you did get one and you haven't been a seeker, you gotta turn it in at the end of service today. Because this came with commitment. And for those of you who didn't get one, maybe you've come to the church since January. That's kind of one of the reasons why we're kind of updating you on that and where we are. And you go, oh, I want one of those. They are all gone. And I don't know that there's gonna be a reorder. First service, I kind of accidentally said we might, but we probably won't. But we might, all right? Who knows? But you can still be a seeker with or without the key chain. But let's read this passage in Luke chapter 15. And I love this. I love Luke 15. It says, now the tax collectors and the sinners were all gathered around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and he eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable. Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he 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 he goes home.

And then he calls his friends and neighbors together. And he says, rejoice with me. I've found my lost sheep. I tell you in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. Today, the title of this message is Sheep, Shepherds, and Shouts. Sheep, Shepherds, and Shouts. Let's pray. Let's ask God to speak to us today. Come on, I want you to pray that God would speak to you and that God would shift you and that God would bring a shift even in our church, even today. Father, thank you for your word. I pray just fresh anointing on this word today. And I thank you that you are moving and that you are active and that God, you're meeting needs even as we have gathered here. And I pray, Lord, that this word would do more than just be something that we hear, but it would become part of our existence, part of our spiritual DNA, part of our culture, God, as Christians and as a church. And we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, everybody said amen. Amen.

Anybody have a tendency to lose things? Any chronic losers in the room? You know what I mean, right? Chronic loser, like, no, you're winners in Christ. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying you can lose some things from time to time. And there's a couple spouses right now, there's a couple husbands going, yes, she doesn't have her hand up, but she is a loser, right? Constantly losing our keys or constantly losing our purse or our wallet or constantly losing our remote. Oh, God help you when you lose that remote and you can't find it. And then also the phone has become the thing that I think maybe is the most treasured possession that we lose at times. And I remember the very first cell phone I ever got, like I had it for a day or two and I lost the very first cell phone I ever got. So you're thinking, Pastor, how old were you when your parents let you get a cell phone? Oh, I'm older than that, folks. Okay, it wasn't my parents that bought me my first cell phone. I was in my mid to late 20s when I got my first cell phone and I was pretty proud of it. It was one of those,

it was probably like a Nokia 3 or something like that. You know what I mean? Just a little cube looking thing with a little nub of a antenna on it. You know what I mean? And I got the phone and then I was going on a missions trip like just a day or two after that. And so I wasn't gonna have coverage in the country I was going to on the missions. because it didn't work like that back then. Now you can take your phone everywhere and get coverage, but it did not work like that back then. So I wasn't gonna have coverage anyway. And I mean, my wife even saying, are you sure you wanna take it? But I said, well, that's a long plane ride. And I gotta program all my numbers and I gotta program all my stuff and I gotta find my little computerized ringtones I wanna use. And I was like, it was all such simple little technology back then. But so I'm on the plane and I'm kind of figuring out all my stuff. And then at some point, I don't know if I fell asleep or what happened. And all of a sudden I start looking around for my phone and I cannot find that phone anywhere. And I'm tearing my seat apart.

I'm looking underneath my seat. And that thing was so valuable to me at that point. Like I just had it for a couple of days. This is before insurance. I'll just get the insurance thing. It was gonna be, if it was gone, it was gonna be gone. And I knew it was on that plane. And so I get all the students on the missions trip. They were going on, we're all on that same flight. And I had like 25, 30 people looking. We were up and down every aisle asking people, I never found that phone. And trust me, I searched. And the reason why I searched for that lost thing is because it was valuable to me. And Jesus in this passage in Luke 15, I love what launches him into this tirade of stories and illustrations and parables and scenarios about lost things. Cause we just read the first one and we'll cover the next couple over the next few weeks. But what launches him into this tirade about lost things and the value of lost things is that he gets accused and he gets criticized by the religious leaders for welcoming sinners. Oh, look at this. He welcomes these people of poor reputation. These people who are making all the wrong life decisions. These people that are going all the wrong directions and they have all the wrong conversations.

And he welcomes them. And not only does he welcome them, they're murmuring. Not only does he welcome them, but he sits with them and eats with them. And when Jesus senses, and I don't know if he heard it or if he felt it in the spirit realm, but he knew what they were murmuring and what they were saying. Jesus just launches into these three stories and repetition in the Bible means importance. It means emphasis. And so he's like, one story about this is not gonna get through your heads. And so he goes story, story, story, all about lost things. And we're gonna cover the first one. And the first one is the one that he talks about. Sheep, shepherds, and shouts. Let's talk through this real quick. Let's start with sheep. So Jesus begins to tell this story in response to this criticism that has come his way, begins to talk about sheep. And the reason why he talks about sheep, and really the Bible talks about sheep and shepherds quite a bit. And the Bible also kind of puts us as sheep. The Bible refers to us as sheep. And part of that is because a lot of the existence of a sheep, it kind of mirrors and demonstrates aspects of the human predicament and the human condition.

So it's things like this. It's like sheeps have a tendency to wonder a lot. Like so they'll just kind of wonder off. They'll just kind of stumble along and they'll just kind of wonder into trouble and wonder into the wrong places. And boy, is that not the human condition, that we are just prone to just wonder and get ourselves into trouble. Another condition of sheep that kind of mirrors maybe the human existence is their eyes are always down. So they're just looking down in this patch of grass right here. And when I eat this patch of grass, I'm gonna find the next patch of grass and I'm gonna find the next patch of grass. And with sheep, there's not a lot of looking ahead. With sheep, there's not a lot of anticipating what's coming. And sometimes the human condition can become that. And we know people who maybe are living their life all for today. And we're going, hey, maybe have a picture of eternity. Hey, think about maybe what's going on after you die and where you're gonna spend eternity. And all they're thinking about is right now, eyes down on just today. That's a condition that the sheep share with us. Sheep will also stray further and further and further away from the home base. Very rarely will you ever hear

of a lost sheep returning back home. You hear stories about dogs doing that. Some of you talk, your dog will find his way home. Sheep won't find their way home, okay? It's a different thing. Well, that's kind of the same. Sometimes on our own, man, we're gonna stray far from, if God is our home and relationship with Jesus is our home, we're gonna continue to stray further and further away without someone helping us, without somebody praying for us, without God reaching. for us, and also I think one of the other predicaments that sheep get themselves into and kind of shares maybe the human condition is, and stay with me on this, but sheep are not that bright. And I do think there's something to that, that why we get kind of counted in as sheep, and here's what I'm saying, like I know there's some very, very intelligent people here in all of our services, and I know that, you know, some people on this earth, they may think that they are in the top 3% of intelligence, and maybe they are, but can I tell you that whatever the smartest people on this earth is, compared to the wisdom of God and the wisdom of eternity, it's just a drop in the bucket, and so for us to get haughty and think, I got this all figured out,

and I know exactly what I'm doing, and I don't need anybody telling me anything that is such a dangerous place to live, and yet that's kind of how sheep are, just not the brightest. And so Jesus launches in as he's answering this criticism on talking about sheep, but not just sheep. Actually, Jesus talks about lost sheep. And so he says, suppose one of you has 99 sheep and loses one of them, and so now this lost sheep kind of becomes the spotlight of this story. This sheep is now lost to his flock. So he did have a community, he did have a congregation, and now he's lost to his flock. This sheep is lost to himself. As Jesus describes this sheep, he doesn't even realize how lost he is. He's lost to his flock, he's lost to himself, and maybe worse of all, he's lost to his shepherd. And so this shepherd has 99 sheep, and he loses them. And again, this is happening because this story and these stories is because the Pharisees ridiculed and criticized Jesus for sitting with lost people, lost sheep. And one of the reasons why they criticized him for this is I think that they maybe thought that Jesus was going to lower his morals because he was sitting with people with low morals. But can I tell you that when Jesus sits with sinners, it's not so that he can sink into their sin,

it's so that he can save them from their sin. That's the difference. You might have heard people preach, pastor, aren't we supposed to come out from among them and be separate? Yes, the Bible says that. Pastor, doesn't the Bible say bad company corrupts good character? Yes, the Bible says that. So aren't we supposed to stay completely segregated from lost people? No, the Bible does not say that. No, we're not to sink in our morals because their morals are low. No, we're to come in and have relationship with people who maybe don't talk like us and maybe don't think like us and maybe aren't going the same direction, but we're in relationship with them. Why? So that we can raise them up to a higher standard, a higher awareness of who God is. And so these people with these low moral standards and these sinners, and when the Bible, the word that's used there for sinner, it kind of is indicating like, we're talking the worst of the worst. There's no doubt that these people were going the wrong direction. And yet Jesus is sitting with them.

These are the very people that Jesus has welcomed into his table. And the original language implies that this was a common occurrence. So this wasn't even the first time that they caught Jesus doing this. And now they'd seen it enough times where they start to grumble against it. And I just love this about Jesus, his total absence of religiosity and pride and formality. The fact that these sinners want to be there and want to hear him is so incredible. May we be a church. Come on, may I be a pastor that, yes, I love preaching to all the saints, but could we be a church? And I want to be a pastor who, when sinners come in here, they can find a seat at the table. When sinners of all kinds of different reputations, when they come in here, but they feel like they're hearing from God, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. God help us to never get so comfortable in our churchiness that we don't still interact with lost sheep. So he talks about sheep, lost sheep specifically. Then he talks about shepherds. And so Jesus goes, okay, suppose one of you,

and so what he's doing in that is he's talking to these religious Pharisees who actually saw shepherding as a low position. I mean, it was almost an insult to be mistaking them for a shepherd. They kind of, these rabbis regarded shepherds. Shepherds as low as, you know, gamblers, and tax collectors, and sailors, and camel herd. It was just like, it was like a low tier of society to them. And so when Jesus does this, he does it intentionally. He goes, suppose one of you were shepherds, and he puts them into the story. And when you read the Bible, when you read parables, I think that's part of what we tend to do, and it's probably what we're intended to do, is to put ourself in the story. So where do you put yourself in the story? Well, Jesus was making it clear that he wanted them to put themselves in the story as a shepherd. And he says, what would you do if you were a shepherd, and 99, you have 100 sheep, one of them wanders off, you're left with 99, what would you do, he says. Now, what he tells us that this shepherd does, is this shepherd leaves the 99 to go after the one. And at first glance, we might look at that and go, is that even responsible shepherding? I mean, is that even a good plan? Like, you had 99 there, and you're gonna leave the 99 to go after the one, is that, what about the 99? You could come back with the one and not have,

now you just got one, you should've stayed with the 99. Well, here's why this was a good plan, and why it was the heart of the shepherd is, you see that they leave the 99 in the open field. And one of the things that we also understand about leaving this 99 is that this 99 has each other, and they're in a safe place, they're in the open field, and they have each other. Which is, one of the things we can kind of pull out of that is that you, there's some safety in numbers, okay? There is some spiritual safety in numbers. Like, you are created for community. Sometimes people will walk up to me after a service, and they will say, man, pastor, thank you, I needed that today, I needed this service today. God knew I needed this service, and I love that, man, and I high-fived them, and I think it's true that God probably did something in their life, and they needed that service. But can I tell you what you need more than a church service? You need a church, you need community, because there is safety in numbers, and so much safety in numbers, and safety in the right place, being in the right place with the right people, that this shepherd decides, I can leave these 99 in the right place with the right crowd, and I'm gonna go after this one. And so he does, he goes after the one. I'm not sure if I would've done the same thing.

Maybe, I'd like to think that, but there would've been a part of me that was thinking, like, 99 out of 100, that's pretty good. Like, there would've been a part of me thinking, man, if I would've got to a final exam with 100 questions on it at the end of the school year, and I got 99 of them right, and that teacher came and says, I'm sorry to tell you, you missed one. I'd be like, missed one? High five, Mr. So-and-so. Like, I just nailed, that's an A plus still. 99 out of 100 is pretty good. Think about a baseball manager in professional baseball. They have over 100 games every year in professional baseball. Can you imagine if a team won their first 99 out of, they only lost once out of their first 100 games? They'd be the greatest baseball team in history. They'd be the greatest manager in history, 99 out of 100. Can you imagine if a politician only loses 1% of the vote and gets 99%, it would be like the landslide of all landslides, or maybe in, like, retail, if somebody, if in retail and our store only lost 1% of the product to damage or theft, man, that person would be writing books on how to be efficient in the marketplace. And so 99 out of 100 is pretty awesome. And so I think there would have been part of me that felt like, hey, let's just do that. But here's the problem.

A shepherd doesn't see it that way. No, somebody with the heart of a shepherd, like every single, mm, every single sheep matters to a shepherd. We're not talking about good percentages here. Now listen to me. To God, every single person matters. They may not smell like you. They may not think like you. They may not go in the directions that you're going. They may not live like you live, but I'm telling you, they matter to God. And so if we're gonna be like God at all, they better matter to us as well. God suffers loss in every single sinner that departs from him. And if we wanna be like him, and I do, I wanna be like Jesus, then they're gonna matter to us. Our kids, our youth ministry just got back from National Fine Arts Festival last night, and it was an incredible week, and we'll give you more reports of what happened there in the coming weeks. But it was reminding me back a couple decades ago on one of the National Fine Arts. it was in Kansas City that year. And we took about 100 students that year to National Fine Arts, and it was hundreds and hundreds this year, but back then it was about 100.

And we were coming back home, and we were on our way to the airport to fly from Kansas City to Orlando with the whole group. And we had some time to kill, so we stopped at a mall, and then we told all the students what time the buses were leaving, and they need to be on a bus, and whatever. And we leave the mall, and then we drive about a half hour to the airport. And then we're passing out everybody's plane tickets. And as we're passing out everybody's plane tickets, there are some police that pull up to the airport. And somebody comes to me and said, hey, there's police here, and they're mad, and they want to talk to the pastor. And I was like, well, don't tell them I'm the pastor, okay? Like, go get a leader. I'm not trying to deal with whatever's going on there. But then they told him I was a pastor anyway. So then I see this police officer walking up to me, and he is, he's mad. And I see that he's walking up with me with one of our kids as well. And so what had happened was we had left one student at the mall when we drove to the airport. Now, before you get all judgmental, we would have figured it out. When we would have been passing out tickets, we would have seen Leah's ticket and been like, where's Leah?

She's not here. So I would have figured something out, okay? And I will say this, too, about our youth ministry. They're so much better now than they were then, okay? Once I got out of the way, man, things really started shaping up in this youth ministry. But back then, and we implemented some measures even back then to make things safer, and everybody's coming home, in Jesus' name. Okay, and I never lost another kid after that. Okay, good. But this police officer was mad that I left this student, and so he let me have it, and I was like, I'm sorry. And we got her home. But can you imagine if I'd have got all the way home, and I didn't have that girl? Can you imagine if I went to her parents, and they said, hey, where's Leah? And I was like, well, guys, we had 100 kids on that trip. And to my credit, we brought home 99 of them. Like, I should be getting some sort of award or something. I don't know why you're giving me this attitude about where's Leah all of a sudden. Matter of fact, Leah's sister's right over there. She made it back. Like, what do we? How many knows that no matter what kind of percentages I threw out them, those percentages were gonna be of no comfort to a parent who's looking for their one?

May we understand the importance. May we pray for the heart of a shepherd, a church that will go after the one, even if they're not your one. They're somebody's one. So this shepherd decides to leave the 99 and go after the one. You have ones in your life. Coworkers, neighbors, family members, friends, old high school friends, people you sit by in class. You have ones. Problem is sometimes we can settle in and be glad about the 99. Listen, this is not about, this whole thing, this has never been about building a church or having a big enough church. That church is too big already. Tell that to the one. Which ones are we not supposed to go after now because we're big enough already? No, it's always been about the ones. So Jesus talks about sheep, talks about shepherds, and then he talks about shouts. Let me quickly just break down in verse six. He says, then he calls his friends and the neighbors together, calls them together, and he says, rejoice with me because I've found my lost sheep. And I love that this becomes a community celebration. I love that he calls people together for this.

Like it's not just that this shepherd finds his sheep and so he's happy and nobody else cares. No, we're seeing Jesus describe a community that comes around, a tribe that comes around and says, what, your lost sheep came home? Yes, let's all celebrate that. That's a good picture of a healthy, thriving, vibrant church, is a healthy, thriving, excited, vibrant church is the kind of church that says, what, somebody came home today? Yes. So I'm celebrating that. What? We saw a harvest come in. What, because of this outreach, somebody found Christ? Yes, and we all come around, and we all celebrate that. As a matter of fact, sinners becoming saints is kind of the number one indicator as to how alive and how energetic and how expectant a church is. Somebody's carrying lost sheep home. And so like four weeks from today is our big Sunday, and a couple times, two or three times a year, we kind of put a real emphasis on you not coming to church, but you bringing somebody with you. And I just wanna encourage you to be praying about that day of who you're gonna carry on your shoulders into this house. But even if you invite 30 people and none of them come, don't you miss that day.

See, the enemy will whisper in your ear and say, well, but that day's not for you. It's for people that don't know Jesus. See, that message is not gonna be targeted at you. It's gonna be targeted at lost people, so you don't need to be there. It's gonna be more complicated that day because it's gonna be, maybe somebody's gonna be in your parking spot, or God help, somebody's gonna be in my seat, so I'm not even gonna go because the old flesh will rise out of me and I'll be yelling at this new person for being in my seat and so I'm just gonna do the righteous thing and just stay away. Oh, trust me, staying away is not the righteous thing. Can I just be real for a second? Like, listen, you are needed in environments like that. Like, you don't know how God's gonna use you. Even if somebody, you didn't bring, like, you didn't bring anybody because they all said no to you, and listen, I still need you there praying for those that did come. I still need you in there worshiping because somebody could turn off to the side and it's their first time in a setting like this and they're trying to figure out what's going on and they look over and they see you worshiping. And they go, man, that dude has something that I don't have.

They look over and see you worshiping. Man, look at that girl. She is going, there's something real on her life and I want that. You never know how God is gonna use you, but I can tell you this, that on August 30th, I think is the Sunday, we're gonna have this big day and there's gonna be a harvest of souls. There's gonna be lost sheep coming home and Faith Church is gonna celebrate and I want you, come on, to be a part of that celebration. You go, pastor, why are we celebrating that? Oh, I'm glad you asked. We're celebrating that because heaven is celebrating that. Oh, Jesus tells this little story about sheep and shepherds and shouts and he just brings all of those religious people in and then Jesus hits them with this one. He goes, and by the way, if you're interested to know, in heaven, there is more rejoicing over one lost sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who don't need to repent. Can I tell you when heaven really goes crazy is when a lost, heaven doesn't go crazy like that. There's a, listen, I want you to grow in your faith. I want you to grow in your discipleship journey. I want you to be more and more like Jesus every day. That's part of this whole thing, but can I tell you, and heaven might rejoice some on that, but there is a level of rejoicing,

a volume level in heaven that is reserved only for when a lost person comes to Christ, which is why we're gonna be a church that celebrates that, even if it means it makes us uncomfortable, even if it puts us outside of our comfort zone when we're inviting somebody, when we're praying for somebody, even if it, maybe something happens in that service that we don't know about, even if it means we're looking around, oh, I can't believe they're dressed like that in church. I can't believe they smell like that in church. Oh, that's not the heart of a shepherd. No, it's, I'm so grateful that they're here in the late 19th century, kind of the beginning stages of the Salvation Army. William Booth, his wife, Catherine, they'd launched this ministry, and there in the East End slums of London, they started reaching some out there people. I mean, we're talking about prostitutes and gamblers and drunkards, and they're bringing these people and they're experiencing life change, and then they start filling the churches there in that area, and so much so that the people in the churches started complaining about the kind of people that the Salvation Army was flooding into their churches. They said, this is a rowdy atmosphere.

We don't like how they smell. There's these former criminals that are sitting across from me in church. This is, no, this should not be happening, and it got so intense that there became this little group of people called the Skeleton Army, and they would go to the Salvation Army's parades when they would be walking through the streets saying, these people have found Jesus, and they would take rocks and mud and they would throw it at the Salvation Army parades because they were trying to discourage them because of all these new converts that were flooding into their little religious meetings, and it was in that moment Someone comes and talks to William Booth and says, hey, we need to do something about this. And it's in that conversation that he had one of his quotes that he is most well known for, but that's where he said, the church is not a museum for saints. It is a hospital for sinners. Church is not meant to be a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners. He said, he goes on to say, I would rather have a messy church full of newly found sheep than a pristine church full of silent, self-righteous Pharisees. And I'm with them.

I'm with them. Amen. I love preaching to all you Christians and all you sold out, committed Christ followers. But I also love when this room is also filled with lost sheep. And it's not one or the other church. It can be both. If we have an eye for lost sheep, if we have a heart for a shepherd, and if we have a plan to shout and celebrate when they come home.