I’m so glad I learned to trust Him,

Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend;

And I know that He is with me,

Will be with me to the end.

This morning I want to preach a message to you from the 15th chapter of Luke’s gospel. But I will take three Sundays to do it. It’s a really long sermon! The message is based on three parables that Jesus told about things that get lost – a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost boy. They are parables that illustrate to what lengths a loving heavenly Father will go to in order to seek and to save lost people. After all, Jesus told his disciples that was the reason for his coming. In Luke 19:10 “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” KJV

The chapter begins with an account of who was coming to Jesus. Our Lord attracted the common people to himself. They were people who had nothing to offer him, but he had everything to offer them. One day, as Jesus is teaching the crowds who have followed him, he overhears some Pharisees and scribes – the religious elite of their day – mumbling. They are questioning his fraternization with certain questionable individuals. In their self-righteous eyes, Jesus has committed the politically incorrect social blunder – He has befriended sinners!

• Luke 15:1-2 Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” NIV

These religious leaders were criticizing Jesus for keeping company with sinners. They complained that He was the “friend of sinners.” Aren't ya glad he is? Bailey Smith, a Southern Baptist evangelist and a past president of our convention, once said that too many of our churches have become "sacred societies for snubbing sinners." I've been in some churches where that was true. It was certainly true in Jesus' time, for the scribes and Pharisees were criticizing Jesus for keeping company with sinners. In answer to their criticism, our Lord tells a series of parables. They are parables that reveal just how great friend to sinners and outcasts Jesus is. It was John Newton who said, “Two things I know: I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior. Each of us needs a friend like Jesus because we are all ‘great sinners’.

I. WE NEED A FRIEND LIKE JESUS BECAUSE WE ARE ALL LIKE LOST SHEEP

1. the first story tells us that the sinner is weak and helpless
• “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? "And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. "And 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.’ "Just 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." (Luke 15:4-7,ESV)
2. Jesus says that you and I are just like sheep
1. we're weak and totally helpless and we’ve wandered away from the Great Shepherd
3. Jesus reminds us that God is just like the shepherd
1. He actively pursues lost sheep!

A. SHEEP ARE WEAK AND HELPLESS BECAUSE THEY ARE DENSE

• ILLUS. I can remember a 4-H participant (Eric Bohon) telling me that if animals could be tested for IQs, he was sure that sheep would rank somewhere below your common garden slug!
1. they're just not the smartest of animals
• ILLUS. One web site on raising sheep I look at simply stated: “Einsteins they are not.”
2. when a sheep is lost, it can't find its way home
1. they nibble hear and nibble there and just keep on wandering
2. dogs will come home; cats will come home; even Salmon return to the mountain brook they were hatched in
3. but sheep just keep wandering
1. is it any wonder why the O.T. prophet Isaiah would write:
• "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (ISA 53:6)
3. friends, let me tell you something, you can have degrees as long as your arm, but if you don't know Jesus you are stunningly ignorant
• ILLUS. Many of you will recognize the name Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was a very intelligent man. He hosted the PBS series called Cosmos. In that show, he frequently implied that with the rise of modern science, we no longer need God because we no longer need a god to explain the universe. Scientists have done that for us. Shortly before his death in 1996 Sagan had a conversation with a rabbi friend. In that conversation Sagan asked his friend, “You’re a very intelligent person. Why do you insist on believing in God?” To which the rabbi responded to Sagan, “Carl, you’re a very intelligent person. Why do you not believe in God?” Stephen Hawking, who first articulated the theory of black holes is one of our world’s great intellectual powers. In an essay titled The Origin of the Universe he concluded the article with these words: “Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question: Why does the universe bother to exist? I don’t know the answer to that.”
4. the Bible, however, does answer the “why” question
1. very simply it says this universe exists because God intended it to be so
2. you may know how to judge the seasons, produce abundant crops or breed prize-winning stock, but if you don’t know Jesus, you’re wearing a spiritual dunce cap
3. you may understand nuclear fission and how to split the atom, but if you don't now Jesus your unlearned and unschooled in that which really matters
5. Sheep are weak and helpless because they are dense
1. the Bible says that lost sinner are like sheep – they’re spiritually dense
• "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, "and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." (Romans 1:21-23,ESV)
• "Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. "They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. "They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity." (Ephesians 4:17-19,ESV)
2. these verses speak to the spiritual denseness of heart and mind of those outside of Christ
6. because they’re spiritually dense and spiritually discerned, sinners have wandered away from the shepherd

B. SHEEP ARE WEAK AND HELPLESS BECAUSE THEY ARE DEPENDENT

1. without a shepherd to lead them to water, they would die of thirst
2. without a shepherd to lead them to pasture, they would go hungry
3. without a shepherd, sheep will die
• ILLUS. In a book entitled, A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm, the Philip Keller writes about what shepherds call a "cast sheep." One of the most dangerous times in the life of sheep is just before they are sheered for their wool. They are so large and round that if they lie down and happen to roll into a small depression in the ground, they cannot right themselves. It is in a position which the shepherd calls "cast." The sheep may paw the air frantically and try to get back on its feet. It may bleat, but most of the time it will just lay there and suffer in silence. If the shepherd is not alert and finds such a sheep in a hurry, the heat from the sun or wild animals will eventually kill it.
4. like sheep, we are in need of a shepherd to pull us out of the depressions and pits we have fallen into
• "When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things." (Mark 6:34,ESV)
5. the most difficult pit for the lost sinner to right his or her self from is the pit of sin
1. sin is a burden that the lost person cannot escape from
2. sin is a condition that the lost person cannot fix
• "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24,ESV)
3. the world, the flesh and the devil will do all that they can to make sure that you do not escape this body of death
6. only Jesus has the power to make the dead live again
• "even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—" (Ephesians 2:5,ESV)
1. in the KJV it reads: “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ . . .”
2. that phrase hath quickened us means to make one alive
3. the word is a verb which is in the aorist, active, indicative mood—which I know you all wanted to know
1. what it means is that God’s the one who made us alive in Christ, He’s done it once for all and will never renege, it’s a done deal!
7. sheep are weak and helpless because they are dependent
1. the lost sinner is dependant upon God for eternal life

C. SHEEP ARE WEAK AND HELPLESS BECAUSE THEY ARE DEFENSELESS

1. they have no claws, no fangs and are not very fast compared to those animals which prey upon them
1. they are totally defenseless without the protection of a shepherd
• "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8,KJV)
2. God has a plan for your life, but so does the devil
1. that plan is to destroy your life
3. why is Jesus a friend of sinners and outcasts?
1. because we so desperately need him!
4. we need Jesus because we are weak without him

Jesus Is Your Friend Because He Is the Great Shepherd Who Seeks Lost Sheep