So, one thing about me is I am notorious in my family for "misplacing things." Keys, wallet, phone, pretty much anything I can hold in my hand, I can lose. So much so that my keys and wallet all have what's called a Tile on them; that way, if I have just one of those things, I should be, in theory, able to find the others. I'm so bad about this. I actually have an upgraded service, so like if I drive off from my office and leave my wallet in my office, my phone will notify me, basically saying, "Hey, dummy! You left your wallet." It's frustrating to be me and keep up with my stuff.
When you lose stuff, there are three types of searching: Casual Searching, Critical Searching, and Careful searching. Let me demonstrate with a penny.
If I lose a penny, normally, I'm going to think, "It's only a lost penny." You know how you’d react if you knew that you had lost a penny: "If I happen to stumble across it, fine, but if not, well, it’s no big loss. It’s just a penny." That's casual searching.
If I lose a penny but when I find it, I think, "Since it is not lying heads-up, I'm not picking it up." That's Critical Searching.
But if I lose a penny and I determine in my will that I will search for that penny until it is found, no matter how long, no matter the effort and sacrifice, then that's careful searching.
Depending on the item's value, that normally determines which way we search for the item. The reverse is true: How diligently I search for an item reveals how much I value it.
Today, we're going to read a story Jesus tells. It's about searching. Its about what we value. And ultimately, it's about the purpose of life.
Bible Passage
Luke 15:1-10 (ESV)
1Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.
2And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."
3So he told them this parable:
4"What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?
5And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'
7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
8Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?
9And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.'
10Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Scriptural Analysis
Verses 1-2
Before chapter 15, Jesus had just described heaven as a banquet for the poor, crippled, blind, and lame. He had told the rich banquet hosts to invite such people to their feasts, not seeking repayment. Naturally, such people found Jesus and his teachings attractive. They wanted to hear more.
The tax collectors were disliked not just because they were tax collectors; nobody much liked them in any culture, but it was because they were collecting money for either Herod or the Romans, or both. Tax collectors were also in regular contact with Gentiles, so they would have been considered unclean. The sinners may just have been people who were too poor to know the law properly or to try to keep it. Certainly, they were people who were regarded by the self-appointed experts as hopelessly irreligious, out of touch with the demands that God had made on Israel through the law.
Therefore, Pharisees and legal teachers did not consider it proper to eat with those excluded from the religious community. Their “grumbling” could remind biblically knowledgeable ancient readers of Israel’s unbelief and murmuring in the wilderness. If Jesus is truly a teacher of proper Jewish piety and theology (much less Messiah or Son of God), he should not associate with such people. It is in response to this attitude, therefore, that Jesus tells the parable.
Verses 3-7
Jesus addresses a parable to his religious accusers, in effect turning the tables on them and demonstrating that they were not truly God’s friends. Pharisees considered shepherds members of an unclean profession and thus would not readily identify with the story's protagonist. Notice how the parable starts, "What man of you." Your translation may be something like "Suppose one of you." This places the parable in the interrogative mood. The listeners become participants and characters in the story and must choose a course of action. The story turns the self-righteous, ritually clean scribes and Pharisees into dirty shepherds involved in an occupation that constantly makes them unclean. Everyone should now see themselves in this story.
The first parable is about a shepherd who loses one of his hundred sheep, and his efforts to find that one lost sheep. One hundred was probably an average-sized flock. The word “lost” is the same word that is translated to “perish” in John 3:16. It means “to be lost, ruined, or destroyed.” It is used to refer to heading toward Hell! In other words, this little sheep is in great danger! It is headed for ruin. It is headed for destruction. The shepherd knows this and is concerned about the condition of the sheep! He is moved to do something to save this lost sheep. By the way, this sheep is lost because it wandered away. It is lost by its own fault. Yet despite that fact, when the shepherd finds the lost and soon-to-perish sheep, he rejoices.
The parable's point is that if one values something when it is lost, one will seek it out diligently, and when it is found, one will rejoice. Jesus applies the parable to God’s attitude toward the lost who repent. There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. The love of God provides an opportunity for repentance, and the Pharisees and scribes should rejoice instead of grumbling over the tax collectors and sinners who were turning to God. Their failure to rejoice shows how far they are from the heart of God.
Verses 8-10
The relative value of the lost item increases in each parable: one out of one hundred sheep and now one out of ten coins. Pharisees were generally unimpressed with the moral character of women and would not readily identify with them. The point of this story is the behavior. The ten silver coins are most likely the woman’s dowry. That is the only money she brings into the marriage that is technically hers, even if the marriage is dissolved. That she has only ten coins (worth about ten days of a worker’s wages) suggests that her father’s family is not well-to-do; she would presumably have married into a household equally poor.
When the woman loses one of her coins, she turns the house upside down in search of it. To her, it is a valuable thing! She lights a light, begins to move things about, and sweeps and searches the house until the coin is found. She had a will to find it, and she worked to find it. And when she finds it again, there is a great and jubilant celebration.
The parable of the Lost Coin is more “theological,” for it forces the reader to think about the nature and actions of God, who, like a woman, seeks a lost coin. She insists on her search, lighting a lamp, sweeping, and searching carefully. Reading this parable in connection with the previous one, the focus shifts to a searching God—the shepherd searching after the one lost sheep or the woman searching after the one lost coin. The reason why the “holier than thou” attitude of the scribes and Pharisees and so many of us today is unacceptable is not just that it is in bad taste, or that religious people ought to be more forgiving, or that such attitudes scare people away. All those may be true, but the real reason for seeking and loving the lost is that Jesus is a seeking and loving God.
TODAY'S KEY TRUTH
When We Discover the Heart of Heaven, We Discover The Purpose of Life.
This parable is of the familiar "If _____ is true, then how much more is ______ true" form. Jesus is saying, "If a shepherd believes his lost sheep to be such a precious treasure, and if the woman believes her lost coin to be such a valuable item, how much more should you view the men and women around you as precious treasures, both to the Lord and to you?" It is a direct address to the attitudes of the religious people in the crowd.
The shepherd is forced to give up his comfort for a period of time in order to seek out the sheep that is lost. Likewise, the woman who has lost her precious coin is required to give a little extra of herself in order to locate her lost treasure.
verse 4, "Does he not leave the ninety-nine ...?"
verse 8, "Does she not light a lamp...?"
verse 8, "Does she not sweep the house...?"
Jesus is posing the rhetorical question: do "God's people" understand they are to aside personal routines, personal preferences, and personal delights for the sake of reclaiming those who are separated from their Creator? Jesus’ words here in Luke 15 are that the lost men and women of our world are literal "hidden treasures." Verse 8 says that the one who has lost a treasure will "search carefully" until that treasure is found once again. Jesus inquired of His audience: can you declare that you have been busy carefully searching for the lost so that they might be found? Jesus says that is what he is here to do: Search and rescue.
When Jesus is saying, “I am a shepherd.” Then he's saying, “So give yourself to me completely.” Now, that’s not easy, and we modern people don’t like the idea of losing our independence, but here’s why we should. Jews celebrate Passover to commemorate the time back in Egypt when God led them out by every family slaying a lamb, putting the blood on their doorpost, eating the lamb, and taking shelter under the blood of the lamb so the Angel of Death would pass them over. Every year from that time, they remember salvation through the shed blood of the lamb by having a Passover meal. The night before Jesus Christ died, he had Passover with his disciples. It was the weirdest Passover anybody had ever seen. Every Passover, you have bread, and you have wine, and you have lamb. But you read Matthew, Mark, or Luke, and you’ll see there’s the bread, of course, there’s the wine, of course, but there’s no mention of a lamb on the table. Why not? There was no lamb on the table because the Lamb of God was sitting at the table. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the world's sins. Here’s why you can trust Jesus. Jesus is saying, “I’m the one shepherd you can trust. I’m the one person you can put yourself in my hands, and you can trust. Why? Because I’m the one shepherd who came to rescue you by becoming the sacrificial Lamb. That’s how I am rescuing you.”
The shepherd and the women did not stop until their missions had been completed and the lost valuable had been found! Jesus did not stop on His quest until He could cry, “It is finished.” Jesus is saying He came to search and rescue the lost.
When We Discover the Heart of Heaven, We Discover The Purpose of Life.
What permeates this story is love for the lost sheep and the pure joy of the shepherd at its recovery. Jesus then told His listeners, “Likewise, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.” In each illustration, Jesus emphasized the value of individuals to God, vividly portrayed in heaven’s joy at the one in ten or one in a hundred who repents. Jesus shows how the shepherd gathered together his friends and rejoiced over the sheep that was found. The same is true of the woman. And notice how that comes about—the shepherd and the woman are searching for that which is lost. Jesus was searching out tax collectors and notorious sinners to save, and the angels in heaven rejoiced when one who was dead came to life spiritually.
Jesus demonstrated deep compassion for people who were alienated from God. He wept over Jerusalem because he envisioned all the sheep without a shepherd. Here, he told three rapid-fire parables about a lost coin, a wayward sheep, and then a prodigal son to make it abundantly clear that lost people matter to God. Jesus' primary emotion toward them was love—even to the point of dying for them on the cross. As Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Throughout Luke, Jesus is not saying that sinners were simply to be accepted as they stand. There is a huge misconception today that Jesus hung out with lost people, which means He was endorsing and accepting of their lifestyle and choices. NO. Sinners must repent. Jesus was with sinners to call them all to repentance. That's why Jesus was with sinners.
Jesus has a different idea from his critics of what ‘repentance’ means. For them, nothing short of adopting their standards of purity and law observance would do. That's what repentance meant to them. For Jesus, when people follow him and his way, that is the true repentance. After confessing our sins, repentance means to go a different way—the way of Jesus. Repentance involves a heartfelt conviction of sin, a contrition over the offense to God, a turning away from the sinful way of life, and a turning towards a Christ-like way of life.
Imagine the impact of this on the sinners who heard the stories. They didn’t have to earn God’s love or Jesus’ respect. Jesus was now looking for them and celebrated finding them. And what Jesus did—this is the deepest point of these parables, and the ultimate reason why the Pharisees objected to them—was what God was doing. Jesus’ actions on earth corresponded exactly to God’s love in the heavenly realm.
The point of the parables is then clear. When one person repents, there’s a party going on: all of heaven is having a party, the angels are joining in, and if we don’t have one as well, we’ll be out of tune with God’s reality. In the stories of the sheep and the coin, the punch line in each case depends on the Jewish belief that the two halves of God’s creation, heaven, and earth, were meant to fit together and be in harmony with each other. If you discover what’s going on in heaven, you’ll discover how things were meant to be on earth. That, after all, is the point of praying that 'God’s kingdom will come on earth as in heaven.’
As far as the legal experts and Pharisees were concerned, the closest you could get to heaven was in the Temple; the Temple required strict purity from the priests, and the closest that non-priests could get to copying heaven was to maintain a similarly strict purity in every aspect of life. But now Jesus declared that heaven was having a great, noisy party every time a single sinner saw the light and began to follow God’s way. If earth-dwellers wanted to copy the life of heaven, they’d have a party, too. Jesus did that as both the shepherd and the woman who represented Jesus in the story. To be Christ-like is to search for the lost, to rescue the lost, and to celebrate when the lost is found.
When We Discover the Heart of Heaven, We Discover The Purpose of Life.
Conclusion
Millions of people are hurting, who are almost beyond hope, for they have no hope, who are wandering, frightened, and alone like a little lost lamb in a terrible wilderness. God's heart breaks in concern for all those who are lost. Imagine, if you can, God's emotions as He stares down at the cross of Golgotha that held his Son. I wonder if He asked Himself, "Are all these sinful humans worth the life of my Son?" Evidently, they were. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Lost people are God's greatest concern. Here is the ultimate test of our Christian commitment. It is not our perfect attendance at Sunday School and worship, as important as that is. It is not how often we open our Bible, although we are people of the Book. The ultimate test of our faith is how much we care about a lost world. Have you ever considered that inside every house, inside every trailer, and behind every apartment door that dots the streets of our community reside people who we should be searching for and rescuing?
When We Discover the Heart of Heaven, We Discover The Purpose of Life.
For over two decades, the idea of living a life of purpose has been a popular thought. Our lives have to have purpose and meaning. We've spent billions of dollars in our country attempting to discover our purpose. We've even done a good job of putting that idea in Christian Culture. We all want to live a purpose-driven life. We are restless and sleepless until we discover our purpose. The fallacy behind this thought is there's nothing new to discover. What Heaven finds important, we should find important; what Jesus came to do, we should design to do. Jesus stated His purpose, so that's our purpose. He came to seek, search for, and rescue the lost. As His followers, that's now our purpose. When we align ourselves with what Heaven values, we find the value of our lives. Heaven's heart is for the lost. And that should be ours.
When We Discover the Heart of Heaven, We Discover The Purpose of Life.