“MINISTERING TO THE LOST”
Luke 15:1-10
When I was a boy, and I wanted to go someplace or do something, I pestered my parents with great enthusiasm. “Can I go? Huh? Can I? I’ll clean my room. I’ll go to bed on time. I’ll eat Brussel sprouts. Please. Pretty please.” This past week I thought: If only I had the same youthful enthusiasm for reaching lost sinners with the Gospel of Christ. “Can I go, God? Please? Pretty please?” Or in the words of our last hymn: “Here am I. Send me. Send me.”
A Christian congregation wants to grow. That’s understandable and appropriate. However, growing is not the same as going. When Jesus commissioned His Church to spread the Gospel, He did not say “grow.” He said “go.” “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age,” Matthew 28:18-20. The going was to be our responsibility; and the growing was to be His.
Going and growing are connected. However, when the emphasis is only on growing—statistics, revenue, the focus is more inward than outward; more on pews than on people. Pews are not lost and condemned by nature. People are. Consequently, there is a far greater need to fill hearts than to fill pews.
“Go and make disciples of all nations” does not always mean traveling to India, Burma, or Nepal. Going also means crossing the street to read Scripture to an elderly neighbor; or mailing a Sunday sermon to a friend; or sharing the comfort of the Gospel with a hurting coworker.
The question is not if we should go. The Lord told us to go. Rather, the question is what will make us willing to go; willing to seize every opportunity to share Christ; willing to stand up and say, “Here am I. Send me. Send me.” The answer is found in today’s text, Luke 15:1-10; the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.
These lost-and-found parables of Jesus are among the most familiar and cherished in Scripture. Each uses heartwarming imagery. Each has the same theme: losing, finding, and rejoicing. Each is richly colored with Christ’s own ministry to the lost; as Jesus Himself stated in Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost;” and as Paul wrote to Timothy, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” 1 Timothy 1:15.
But Jesus told these lost-and-found parables for a reason. And the reason is provided in Luke 15:1-2. “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.’ ”
Who were the tax collectors and ‘sinners;’ a side by side combination used at least six times in the Gospels? In antiquity, tax collectors were viewed with even more venom than we view the IRS today. Most often Jews in the employ of the hated Roman government, tax collectors were considered to be traitors by fellow Israelites; and despised for their greed, corruption, and extortion. The so-called ‘sinners’ were generally those with notoriously bad reputations: prostitutes, town-drunks, troublemakers, career criminals, outcasts, misfits.
By contrast, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees were among Israel’s religious elite. Some were priests. Others were experts in the Mosaic Law. All were prominent church-goers and tithe-givers. Yet, these very individuals, who should have been the first to search for the lost and to welcome the contrite—these religious leaders were the first to condemn them. As Jesus stated in Matthew 23:13, saying, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”
Why did the scribes and Pharisees grumble when Jesus welcomed sinners to hear the word of God? They grumbled because they did not believe that God could love and forgive such people. Even more so, they grumbled because they did not see themselves as sinners in desperate need of God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness.
Can this same misplaced attitude afflict Christians today? Sadly, yes; whenever they conclude that a particular group of people—whether measured by race, color, social status, financial condition, poor reputation, or past misdeeds—is not worth reaching with the Gospel of Christ. This was the view of the religious leaders of Israel. However, it is not God’s view. Nor should it be our view. In the parables of Luke 15:1-10, the lost sheep and the lost coin, we learn the true characteristics of a ministry to the lost. Let me suggest four such characteristics: gratitude, commitment, urgency, and rejoicing,
The first characteristic: gratitude. Over my years of ministry, I’ve heard many Christians voice fears over witnessing opportunities: What to say; how to say it; what materials to use. Granted, being prepared to bear witness to the grace of God in Jesus Christ is something every believer is urged to do. The apostle Peter wrote: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have,” 1 Peter 3:15. But why does this worry us so? The answer is not complicated, is it? The answer is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the reason for the hope we have amid suffering, loss, pain, hardship, sin, and death.
A ministry to the lost—let me be more specific, our ministry to the lost, whether in Lemmon, South Dakota or elsewhere, does not begin with a church building. It does not begin with a voters meeting or an Excel spreadsheet of revenues and expenditures. It begins in our hearts; hearts opened, enlightened, prepared, and motivated by the Spirit of God. It begins with the personal confession of Romans 3:22-24, “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
A ministry to the lost begins when we see ourselves in the words of Ephesians 2:1-5. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature the objects of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
These words are describing each of us: once dead, now alive; once blind, now seeing; once deaf, now hearing; one lost, now found. And if we understand these words and take them to heart, how can we fail to leap to our feet, saying, “Oh, thank you, God. Here I am. Send me. Send me.”?
Think about the great apostle Paul; a man who traveled thousands of miles to share the Gospel; founded numerous Christian congregations; endured enormous hardships for the sake of Christ. What filled him with such enthusiasm and determination to proclaim Christ? His extensive vocabulary? His personal strength? His eloquence of speech? No. He tells us himself in 1 Timothy 1:12-17.
He said: “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that He considered me faithful, appointing me to His service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”
The second characteristic: commitment. In the parables of Luke 15:1-10, when the shepherd realized that one sheep was lost, did he wait for a more convenient time to search? No. He went immediately. Likewise, when the woman realized that one coin was lost, did she search half-heartedly? No. She searched diligently. In fact, the Greek verbs used to describe her search are all in the present tense, meaning ongoing actions. She keeps the lamp burning. She continues to sweep, clean, lift the sofa cushions, and check every shadowy corner, until that one lost coin is found.
And nowhere is this type of ongoing action and commitment better exemplified than in the ministry of Jesus Himself. Listen to this passage from Matthew 9: “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” Sheep with no shepherd are lost sheep.
Yes, throughout the Gospels, Jesus welcomed the multitudes who came to Him. But first and foremost He went to them. He did not wait for them to come to Him. Some of the most heartwarming accounts in Scripture are those of Jesus seeking out lost and lonely individuals: Little Zacchaeus in the sycamore-fig tree; the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well; hopeless Mary Magdalene weeping outside the empty sepulcher; the two grieving disciples on the road to Emmaus. Christ’s ministry was one of personal commitment and involvement. Ours must be too.
The third characteristic: urgency. Why urgency? Because like that sheep and coin, countless numbers of people are lost too. Lost-ness, if I may coin that term, is always frustrating and at times horrifying. No one likes to lose a sports match. No one likes to lose car keys or a wallet filled with credit cards. No one likes being lost on a highway, with darkness falling and the gas tank on empty. Certainly, no one likes to lose a loved one.
One year, when my oldest son Justin was about six, we enrolled him in a California Youth Soccer League. The enrollment meeting was at night, in a local school. Teams had to be formed and coaches assigned. Somewhere, amid all the noise, activity, paperwork, and assignments, Justin disappeared. Realizing this, my wife and I began to search for him; first inside, then outside, with the calls of “Justin! Justin!” growing louder and more urgent.
We searched everywhere, imagining the worst scenarios. Finally, as I raced for our parked car to drive home and summon the police—no cell phones in those days; I found Justin standing beside our car, arms cross, looking relaxed and serene. I was beside myself. I didn’t know whether to hug him or spank him. In retrospect, I may have done both.
But there is a far worse kind of lost-ness; namely, the lost-ness of not knowing God; of not knowing the way to salvation through faith in Christ; of not knowing the peace and forgiveness of the Gospel. And beyond this, there is a lost-ness too dreadful to even imagine; that of being lost forever in that outer darkness of final separation from God and eternal punishment.
It’s been said that the famous evangelist, D.L. Moody, could never speak about hell without being moved to tears. Sometimes, I think that we, even as Christians, may lose that sense of compassion for our fellow human beings. After all, we don’t see the lost. We see people, some polite, some rude; people who are in our way or wasting our time or causing us no end of irritation. But pay attention to your surroundings; to all the cars in the IGA parking lot; to all the people at the office or in the crowded stadiums at NFL football games; to all the children in schools; to all the felons in prison; to all the outcasts and misfits sleeping on street corners; to all the angry mobs shouting “Death to America!” on TV; to all the people around us—who generally mean no more to us that the tax collectors and sinners meant to the scribes and Pharisees.
Dear friends, every one of those people is going to one of two places: heaven or hell. No exceptions. So, you tell me: How urgent is our calling, our ministry to the lost? Can we afford to wait? Can we say, “Our God-given ministry is insignificant?” Doesn’t God Himself rejoice when one sinner is saved?
And what a priceless message we have to share! Some of the most familiar and cherished passages in Scripture assure us that, when we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we will never be lost. Never. John 3:16, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Did you know that the Greek word translated as “perish” in that verse, APOL-LU-MI, is the same word translated as “lost” in the parables of Luke 15? “Whoever believes in Him shall not be lost.”
The same word is used in John 10:27-28, where Jesus said, “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” Literally, “they shall never be lost.” Or 2 Peter 3:9, where the apostle wrote, “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Literally, “not wanting anyone to be lost.”
Yes, sometimes it is easier to stay with the ninety-nine obedient sheep than to look for the one that wandered away. Sometimes it is easier to minister to people we consider worth the effort and avoid all the others. People in certain neighborhoods. People of certain races. People of certain social conditions. People lying in nursing homes like lost, forgotten coins or wandering homeless in the streets like lost sheep. “They aren’t worth the effort, are they? God can’t possibly love or want people like that.” The scribes and Pharisees said the same. But they were wrong. God does love the lost; not because they—or for that matter, any of us—are worth it. Rather, because of His infinite, amazing grace.
If the value of something is determined by the price we are willing to pay for it; think how much God must love and value each lost and condemned sinner. For the Bible says: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect,” 1 Peter 1:18-19. If God placed such value on each lost sinner, should we value each opportunity to preach Christ to lost sinners?
The fourth and last characteristic: Joy. Are we joyful in our ministry at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church? Do we rejoice at every opportunity to share Christ?
When I returned to Florida in 2010, I assumed the full-time care of my elderly stepfather, Andrew Murphy. Even then, his health was in steep decline. There were periodic nurse visits, and eventually hospice care. Occasionally, when he became extremely week, I would have to place him in a rehabilitation center for medical treatments and observation.
One such facility was Palm Gardens Rehab in Winter Haven, where Andy had to stay for two weeks. Every time I visited him, he’d ask, “Can I go home today?” And I would have to say, “No, Andy. I’m sorry. Not yet.” He looked so sad.
Then came the day of his release. And the most remarkable thing happened. As I was pushing Andy down the long corridors toward the exit—he was sitting in a wheelchair, a blanket on his lap, wearing his old, floppy fishing hat—one by one, staff members began to join the procession. They waved pom-poms. They blew horns and noisemakers. They patted Andy’s skinny shoulder and held his hand and shouted his name. It was a celebration, because Andy Murphy was going home.
I’ve often wished we could do the same—that we could shout, sing, blow noisemakers, and outright celebrate whenever one wayward Christian returns to church; whenever one lost sinner comes to repentance.
I know God does.