Lost Things Week 3

Luke chapter 15, we've been in this series for seekers called Lost Things, and Luke chapter 15, we're gonna read the first couple verses to begin with, and then we'll jump to the third story that Jesus tells in response to these first couple of verses, these first three verses of Luke 15. Luke 15, verse number one, it's so important. Tax collectors and other notorious sinners. I just like the thought of a notorious sinner. These weren't just common sinners, these were notorious sinners that often came to listen to Jesus teach. Well, man, I thought the world was not interested in Jesus, and here, this is opposite of that. The notorious sinner's coming to hear Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people, even eating with them, and so then Jesus told them this story. He actually told them three stories, and we're gonna get to the third story today, but let's pray. Let's ask God to speak to us. And as we pray, we're gonna pray, I want you to pray this with me. Pray, God, I don't wanna just agree with your word, I wanna be obedient to your word. Can we pray that? That's a dangerous prayer, but can we pray that together? Let's pray that.

Lord, in Jesus' name, thank you for your word. Today, God, we don't want to just agree with your word. That's a start, but God, we wanna be obedient to your word, so let it become a part of our DNA. Let it become a part of every fiber of our being that we just walk in obedience in alignment with this word today. In Jesus' name we pray, and everybody said amen, amen. Jesus tells three stories in response to being accused of hanging around with such notorious sinners, and the first story he tells is a story of 100 sheep a shepherd has, one runs off, he leaves the 99, he goes after the one. Second story he tells is a woman who has 10 coins loses one, and she searches the house, does everything she can till she finds that one coin. In both those first stories, man, they call all their friends together, and they celebrate the fact that the lost had been found. The third story's a story of a lost son. I know what it's like to have a lost son. Not in the sense of this story, not in the sense of a prodigal, but certainly in the sense of me and my wife were not always the most aware parents. I'll just put it out there because the statute of limitations is past some of our previous crimes when it comes to our poor parenting.

Okay, they've all turned out great, all right? So there, God's good. But I mean, when they were little, man, it was hard to keep track of all of them. We had five, and at one point we had four kids, four and under, all right? I don't recommend that. I'm not writing a book about how to do that. It was just hard, and so we would a lot of times arrive at the same place in two different cars because we would come at two different times, and it was just more often than it should have been that when it came time to leave, I would have a couple kids, she would have a couple kids in the car, and we would assume that the one kid that was missing was in the other car. Sometimes it might be a second before we realize it. One time on the way home from church, I got a call from one of our youth leaders saying, hey, you want me to bring him home? He's still here. I'm like, yeah, that's what I was, I thought you were gonna hang out with him today. Like, that's what, just run him home when you're done. It's all good. We were just talking the other day about one of my sons was saying, we were all at Chuck E. Cheese where a kid can be a kid, and right next door to Chuck E. Cheese was the pet store,

and so our family decided, let's go from Chuck E. Cheese into the pet store. When I say our family, I say, I mean our family, all but one of our children who stayed in Chuck E. Cheese because he didn't know we left, and it just so happened that somebody from our church was walking into Chuck E. Cheese as we were walking into the pet store, and they see our son, they say, come on, I know where your parents are, let's go. And somehow she got him out of Chuck E. Cheese security and got him into the pet store to find us. So whether it was church or Chuck E. Cheese or the baseball field or a cruise ship, I know what it's like. I ain't got time for all those stories. I know what it's like to have a lost son, and I know the urgency that kicks in and the panic and the call to action. I know what that's like, and so maybe that's some of what was going on here, certainly at a heightened level than even what I am describing in my own situation. But this third story that Jesus tells is a story of a lost son. It gets the title, prodigal son, but let's go to verse 15 of Luke, verse 11 of Luke 15. And it starts by saying this, to illustrate the point further.

So it's still one point. These three stories are illustrating a single point. So to illustrate the point. Point further, Jesus told them this story. Let me tell you this story. A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, I want my share of your estate now before you die. So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his two sons. A few days later, this younger son packed all his belongings and he moved to a distant land. And there he wasted all his money in wild living. About that time, his money ran out and a great famine swept over the land. He began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him and the man sent him into the fields to feed pigs. And the young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, at home, even the hired servants have food enough to spare. And here I am, dying of hunger. I'll go home. I'll go home to my father and I'll say, Father, I've sinned against both heaven and you and I am no longer worthy to even be called your son.

Please take me in as just a hired servant. So he returned home to his father and while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son and he embraced him and he kissed him. His son said to him, Father, I've sinned against both heaven and you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to the servant, quick, bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him and get the ring on his finger and the sandals for his feet and kill the fatted calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast for this son of mine was dead and has now returned alive. He was lost, but now he is found. So let the party begin. That's kind of the title of today's message. Let the party begin. Some of y'all thought you were coming to church today. No, welcome to the party. Come on, let the party begin. The party of lost sons and daughters being found. There are three characters in this story. I just want us to look at the character development of the three characters that are in this story. And the first character that I would want to bring out, our ushers are gonna help us.

We get ready to dive into these characters. We're gonna just have you take one sticky note. Everybody take one of these sticky notes. It's gonna be for the end of service. We're gonna do something together with this. And so grab one, hold on to it. Don't make any paper airplanes out of it. Don't be writing on it, doodling on it. Yeah, we're gonna do something together with this at the very, very end. But let's look at these three characters in this story. And the first character that I would, we kind of just have to focus on. The first one that would probably jump out to us is the one that the story's kind of named after is this prodigal son. I would call him a son who comprehends his sin. That's really the arc of his story is he's a son who comprehends, who comes to his senses. And so that's what the verse 17 said is when he finally came to his senses. And so when we read that, we think that, oh yeah, this son came to his senses about his sin. And there is some truth to that, that the wages of sin for him had started to kind of kick in. And so sin is fun for a season, but in the long term, sin's gonna leave you further away and more distant and more broken and more hurting than you were before.

Ultimately, sin is a destroyer. And so this young man is coming to his senses when it comes to his sin, but church, look at me. He's not just coming to the sense of his sin, he comes to the senses of his father. He begins to remember and sense who his father is. And so look at this, he says, verse 17 says he finally comes to his senses, and verse 18 says, I will go home to my father. It wasn't just the badness of his life that brought this boy to his senses, but it was the goodness, it was the goodness of his father that brought him to his senses. There is a theological term, concept, called prevenient grace. Prevenient grace, it means a grace that goes before. And I think that this son is in this moment of prevenient grace because he has had enough awareness of his father that when his sin is really kicking in and he's coming to his senses, he remembers how wonderful his father is. Well, in this concept called prevenient grace, in this theological concept, what it's saying is this, it's saying that God is active in a person's life, drawing him, convicting him, revealing himself to them. them even before you and I ever interact with that person. Okay? So in other words, when you're going in to talk to somebody, invite somebody to church, talk to somebody about the Lord, maybe pray, ask if you can pray for somebody.

A lot of times you think you're going in cold. Sometimes you think you're going in to talk to a person that would, I mean, they want nothing to do with any of this and they have made it very, very clear. But don't underestimate the power of prevenient grace in that God may have been revealing himself to them and they may be at a come to their senses moment right as you are interacting with them and you think you're coming in cold, but no, God has been helping this thing along. I kind of liken it to this. When I was a, I would coach my kids in different sports and I coached them in baseball and there's a level of baseball right after tee ball and right before kind of normal baseball, it's called coach pitch. Anybody ever see anybody in any games that a coach pitch? And so coach pitch means this. It's not that the opposing coach is pitching to your team. No, you as the coach are pitching to your own team. Now, in normal baseball, the pitcher's working against the hitter. In normal baseball, man, the pitcher is trying to throw a pitch at a velocity and in a spot that the hitter is gonna miss the ball. But it's not that way for coach pitch. As a matter of fact, for coach pitch, that's like the most pressure I've ever felt in sports is when I was the coach pitching to my own team. God help me if I was the coach pitching to my own son

because if I didn't throw my own son a great pitch, I was gonna hear about it from him, I was gonna hear about it from my wife. She's gonna be like, what kind of pitch was that to throw to him? And so the pressure that would be on me because I wanted to set these kids up to win and so I would tell these kids, I'd say, take a practice swing and they would take the practice swing and I'd be studding exactly where that bat was coming across the plate. And I'm like, okay, there's my target. I gotta get the timing just right on that swing and then I'm gonna put the ball exactly where they like to swing the bat. Opposite of what a normal, normally a pitcher's working against. No, I'm working for him. And I say, get ready now, get ready. And I'd put that ball right where their swing was and sometimes because we were working together, they would make great contact and that ball would go flying and yes, they're celebrating, but I'm celebrating too because we're working in this thing together. Listen to me, can I remind you of something? God wants you to win. When God calls you to be light in the darkness, when God calls you to be a city on a hill

that cannot be hidden, when God calls you to be salt of the earth, when God calls you to be power of God on your life, to be witnesses, God's doing so and he wants you to win and so he is sending his grace before you so that when you do step out of your comfort zone and talk to somebody about the Lord, you just never know how God's been working on them already. God is setting you up to win. Can we give God praise for that? That's good news. That should breed, that should breed some confidence. And so I just love that this young man, when he's coming to his senses, he's going, man, God is, he realizes that his father is good, that his father is good to those of his workers and God's working on people all the time. When you talk about reaching the lost, God is working on them. That's why I think there's statistics that even prove that to be so. Thomas Rainer, former president of LifeWave Research, they did all kinds of studies and other church growth surveys, did some different studies in 24 and in 2025 and the studies aligned and found the same data to be true. They found that 82%, 82% of unchurched people said they would at least be somewhat likely to attend church if a friend or family member invited them. Can I say that one more time?

Because some of y'all don't believe it. 82% of unchurched people said they would be likely to attend if a friend or family member invited them to church. Well, how is that possible when people act like they're so against these things? Could it be that God's prevenient grace is going before them? And they've kind of got a yes in their heart. Sometimes we say no for them when they have a yes in their heart. And so you pair that statistic that 82% are willing probably to say yes, you pair that statistic with statistics to say seven out of 10 unchurched people said they've never been personally invited to church. Seven out of 10 have never even been invited and eight out of 10 said they'd probably come. And yet one out of every three Christians sitting in church said that they've never invited anyone to the church that they're attending. Why? Because we're afraid. Because we're afraid of those prodigals and all the wild living and we don't know what kind of state of mind they're at. Let's get out of that mindset of being afraid and let's get into this confidence, faith. filled mindset that says God's working on my coworker. God's working on my neighbor.

I don't know how, but God's revealing himself to my family member. God's revealing himself to my friend. And when I invite them to church, it's just gonna be one more confirmation that God's reaching out to them. It's a son who's understanding and comprehending his sin. The second character in this story that we just can't miss, obviously, is the father. And I call him a father who can always be found. Father didn't pick up and move houses when the son left. No, he stayed right there. We kind of read in this passage that it kind of seems like the father was kind of watching for his son, kind of hoping that his son would come to his senses. But maybe in verse 20, it says, while the son was still a far ways off, the father sees him coming. That tells me the father's kind of sitting out on the porch and looking. And he sees him coming. And as he sees him coming, filled with love and compassion, this father gets off of the porch and he runs after his son and he embraces him and he kisses him. For this son of mine was dead and now has returned to life. He was lost and now he's found. And so he says, let this party begin. Get all the stuff, get the robe, get the sandals,

get the ring, we're gonna do this thing. A father who can always be found. It says that this father ran to the son. And that's significant, maybe more in that culture than it is in our culture. Because in that culture, men of a certain age didn't run at all in public. It was not considered to be a good part of your dignity to run. It seemed like you'd be acting like a child if you ran in public. Men with the gowns that they would wear would have to pull them up so they would not trip over them in order to run, which means they're exposing their legs, which was another lack of dignity. And so men just did not run in public and yet this dad doesn't care. He pulls up the garment and he begins to run towards his son. Why does he do that? Because the love that he has for his son. Because the excitement he has that the son's coming home. Yes, those two reasons would be part of this. But there might be another reason. Because this son, because of the crime he had committed. When I say crime, I'm talking about spiritual law in that time when he looks at his father and he says, I want my inheritance now. Basically what he was saying to his father is he's saying, I wish you were dead

and you were dead to me. Because that's the only time that the inheritance should come is when the father is gone. And yet he's looking at his father while he's still alive saying, I want you to be dead to me. Give me the inheritance now. And then he goes and wastes it. And there would be old Jewish law that says when a son like that comes home, if a son like that comes back around, he now deserves punishment. He deserves to be stoned for that infraction. And so as this son is walking back home, if some neighbor saw it and begins to pick up stones because that's what he deserved, they can't throw a stone, why? Because the father has run out and embraced the son. And if I throw a stone at the son, I'm gonna hit the father, so I'm not gonna throw a stone. That is such a picture of God's grace. It is such a picture of the love of a heavenly father that loves you so much that he's willing to run after you. So we know that the name of this parable is the prodigal son. That's what it gets titled. Maybe a better name for this parable might be a forgiving father. And I want our church, and I believe churches are this. I think that church, a thriving church is the best gift that anyone can ever give to a community.

Why, because the church should be known as a place where people can find the father. Like this is, we call this God's house. We call this the father's house. And even while this building was being built, I had so many people, when we opened up this building, that would come through and talk to us and say, man, when this church was being built, I just kept driving by it, and I just kept feeling drawn to this thing, to this place. And I just kept telling myself, I don't go to church now, but when that building's done, I'm gonna go to that church. Why does that happen? Is it because there's something special on buildings? Is that why we build church buildings? Is that why we're building a Narcoossee building, and we're doing what we have to do in order to build that building? Is it because there's something special about buildings? Is it because buildings just manifest ministry and strategies to change lives all on their own? No, but buildings do create a generational opportunity to do so, to see lives change. When we invite people to invest in building a building, building a church building, again, because we want people to know that that's a place that they can go reconcile with the Father. And so when you invest through Kingdom Builders and even us building this campus that we're building right now, the Narcoossee Road Campus,

which construction should start very, very soon. But when we invite you to invest in that, we're actually inviting you to invest in more than a church building. We're inviting you to invest in future baptisms, in future life transformation, in future kids and youth being reached, in future marriages being restored, in future missionaries being sent out. Come on, when we are building a building, it's not just about, it's about lost sons, future lost sons and daughters, knowing where they can go to find the Father's house. No, buildings don't change lives, but what happens inside them does. So we as a church, I'll just kind of peel back a little bit here and just, this is kind of for our church people, but we're budgeting and we are stewarding in a way that we can be, that we can stand out to our community and that we're trying to create margins so that we can grow and that we can do these things. And that means we have to say no to some things in order to say yes to larger things. And so we're in a place right now where we're watching every penny and watching every dollar and we're, like some of the events that we normally have done, we're not doing, like this fall, we're not doing a fall festival.

That's been an investment we've made in our community for a bunch of years and we'll probably come back to it at some point. But in this season, we're not, why? Because we're in a place where we're building God's house. We're building a place where people are gonna drive by when that building is being built and they're gonna say, I don't know why, but I feel a draw to that place. And it's gonna be the Spirit of God drawing them. So when you invite somebody to church, you're not inviting them to a building. You're not even inviting them to a service. You are inviting them in order to expose them to an environment where they are likely to encounter Jesus. I gotta say that one more time. I said, when you invite somebody to church, you are inviting them to expose them to an environment where they are likely to encounter Jesus. A Father who wants to be found. So much so that he has put that calling on you to be part of that reconciliation. So we got a son who comes to his senses. We got a father who wants to be found and wants to be known, will be known. And we got a third character in this story that we didn't even read about yet. And the third character is the brother. And today we'll call him the brother who doesn't want to be bothered.

Because that's what he is. He's a brother who doesn't want to be bothered. Now, I said that when we read these parables in the Bible that we should always try to find ourselves. Where am I at in the parable? God, what are you trying to tell me as Jesus, as you told this parable, where am I in this parable? And I think that as Jesus tells this parable, the Pharisees, right, who are accusing him and they were criticizing, saying, well, you're hanging out with these sinners. I think as he gets to this point in the story where Dad's celebrating, everybody's happy, I think the Pharisees think, hey, we escaped this one. We're not in this story. We're not in this story. Okay, good. And then Jesus continues the story. And the Pharisees realize, man, this is the part that's about us. This is where we find ourselves. So he continues, verse 25. Meanwhile, the party's going on. This son of mine was dead. Now he's alive. Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. And when he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house. And he asked one of the servants, what's going on? And he said, your brother's back.

And your father has killed the fatted calf. We're celebrating because of his safe return. Look at verse 28. The older brother was angry. And he wouldn't go in. And his father has to come out and begins to beg him. Father's already ran after one son and now he's having to run after another. And this son replies, this older son says, all these years I've slaved for you and you never once received, never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time, you never gave me one young goat for a feast with my friends. And yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fatted calf? His father said to him, look, dear son, you have always stayed by me and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day for your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, now he's found. I don't know if you caught it. But this elder brother, He's referring to this prodigal son. He looks at his dad and he goes, this son of yours, wasting all of his money on prostitutes.

This son of yours. He was doing kind of what some of you parents do. When you got one kid that's misbehaving real bad and then the spouse gets home and you go, look what your son's doing. Look what your son did. Now if that son's getting good grades, you're like, well, it comes from my side. Like I did good grades in school and so he's getting good grades in school. So obviously the good stuff comes from me, but look at what this son of yours is doing. And that's what this older brother does. He says, dad, this son of yours is out here doing this. But look at how the dad responds. He says, son, everything I have is yours. But he goes, he didn't say, but this other son of mine has come home. No, he says, this brother of yours has come home. You're a part of this. Okay, church, hear me. We cannot afford to sit in our churches and become older brothers that don't want to be bothered by lost people. Oh, if I'm gonna find myself in this story, if I'm gonna align myself with somebody in this story, I don't want to align myself with a brother who doesn't want to be bothered, who wants to make this someone else's situation, who wants to make this someone else,

who wants to go, this person doesn't deserve to be here. Guess what? None of us deserve to be here. Oh, we can't forget that, church. We can't afford to turn into this mindset of a judgmental attitude. And when somebody does come in and they don't fit in and they don't fit into our little Christian bubble in our Christian culture, oh, we should celebrate that because that means that they're coming from somewhere that has a past. They're coming from somewhere that needs reconciliation with the Father. There's a sound that oftentimes will go off on our phones and it's called an Amber Alert. And it sounds like this when your phone will do that from time to time. And when it does, most of the time, it's happening at a moment that is not convenient for us. And so it annoys us. And we look and go, what is that? And then it's, oh, missing child in Kissimmee, missing child in Jacksonville. We're like, well, that's so far away. Why is that going off? And so we get annoyed by the sound. But can I tell you who wouldn't get annoyed by the sound? All the parents of that missing child they are thanking God that that sound

is being raised across this state. Can I tell you this? That missing child, when that child is found and somebody says, what was the Amber Alert? That missing child is gonna be grateful for that sound that some of us thought was an annoyance to us. And so here we got this older brother who, when the brother comes back from his wild living, it's annoying to him. Oh, but the Father says, I need you to get a little bit of my heart on this. He's not just my son, he's your brother. This is not something to be annoyed by. This is something to celebrate. That's why I keep saying we all gotta be in this. We are praying that we would become an army marching together to find those who are lost. It's all of our job. Keith Green was a musician decades ago and he wrote a book called A Compromised Gospel. He just had a quote that I've referenced many times in my life and it always convicts me every time I say it and read it, but he said, this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls. Can I say that one more time? This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls. He said, if we don't reach them, no one will.

That means these coworkers, these neighbors, these friends, these atheists, these backslidden, these prodigals, they're our responsibility. And we can't afford to be prodigals sitting in church. See, let me point this out about this son. He was in the father's house, but with the wrong attitude. He was in the father's field working, but he had forgotten why and who he worked for. We think that the word prodigal, most of us, I always thought this at least, most of us think that the word prodigal means like to wander off. Prodigal doesn't mean to wander off. Prodigal is someone who is wasteful. And so this father, I would present to you had two. two prodigal sons, one who is wasting his wealth and the other who is wasting his potential. We can be prodigal sitting in church and wasting opportunities to make an impact on somebody's life. Let's link our arms together. I saw last week this story. It happened on June 29th of this year in Stegna, Poland. Bunch of beach goers were there, hundreds of people were there, and a mom all of a sudden couldn't find her two and a half year old toddler. She began to yell and scream, I don't know where he is, I don't know where he is, I need help.

And so some lifeguards and police officers and beach goers and residents all linked arms together in what they commonly and often call a chain of life. It's kind of a common thing because those waters are murky and you can't see in those waters at that beach. And so it's kind of a common thing, but they all linked arms together and then began to walk through very methodically, sweeping their legs through every bit of that water to try to find that missing toddler. And that two and a half year old did end up being safe and so thank God for that. But I was so impacted by this because it's almost a, it's a common, it's an expected part of the society. It's a cultural norm for them to jump in. So I'm thinking about these people that just came to the beach and it's their day to just relax. I'm just trying to lay out. I've been working all week and I just, I'm just trying to have some alone time. And yet when they find out about this lost son, they all decide, no, no, no, let's do this. And they get up and they link their arms together to form a chain. When I saw, I'm sorry, but I just pictured Faith Church just linking our arms, just walking through this city, just not letting anybody perish, not willing that any should perish. This church is linking arms, walking through this city, seeking and saving that which is lost.

As a staff, we're praying for 70,000 ministry moments outside of this church this fall. I don't know if we're gonna be able to keep track, but I know God's gonna be able to keep track. 70,000 times over this fall where you and we are outside of our church properties and yet we're talking to somebody about the Lord. We're inviting somebody to church. We're praying with somebody. It would look like this. If 1,500 of us just did it twice a week, we would hit that number. But that's one of the things we're praying for is to release an army of ministry-minded people. And I'm gonna pray for you that that would happen.