BOOK - The Heart of God

SECTION 1 - THE HEART OF GOD FOR THE LOST

Chapter: Lost Things

One day, our dog ran away. We were visiting my mom, and someone had put him into her backyard, and he escaped through a hole in a fence. We looked for him for a few hours. I drove around and yelled myself hoarse. Eventually, we found him cornered in another person’s yard, trapped their by a stranger who knew he was lost. We were so relieved and happy to find him.

In Luke 15:1-2, Jesus was surrounded by a crowd of ‘tax collectors and sinners’. But when this happened, the pharisees and teachers of the law started muttering, ‘this man welcomes sinners and eats with them’.

They were appalled at the idea that a righteous person could have any association with a sinner or a tax collector.

RESEARCH - HOW DID THE PHARISEES TREAT SINNERS AND TAX COLLECTORS? WHAT DID THEY DO CULTURALLY TO AND AROUND THESE PEOPLE?

In response, Jesus tells the pharisees not one but 3 different parables to drive home what His father’s heart was like.

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

Luke 15:1-7

‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one’

We live in a disposable culture. But to Jesus, it’s obvious that the shepherd would go after the one lost sheep.

‘When he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home’.

The goal of the shepherd isn’t to abandon the sheep. It isn’t to punish it for wandering off. It isn’t to teach it a lesson. The goal is to get it back home.

‘I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent’.

We think that God’s opinion is that, the ‘good ones’ are the easy ones, the loved ones, they are the ones who bring Him joy. If we walk away, if we’re lost, if we sin, if we have never known Him - God obviously has anger.

But the fact is, Jesus is saying, there is a greater celebration, a greater joy, a greater party in heaven finding and bringing back the lost things.

The Parable of the Lost Coin

Luke 15:8-10

I’ve swept my house to find a lost set of keys before. It can be an incredibly draining, frustrating process. And it’s a real relief to find them again - though one set I still haven’t found!

These two stories, the coin / sheep, there’s a common element - that the person in each situation calls their friends, and calls people to rejoice together with them.

Jesus is driving home a big point to the pharisees and tax collectors. He’s saying

when God sees a sinner, he doesn’t see something that’s abandoned - he sees something that’s lost. He doesn’t see something that’s worthless - he sees something of value.

When God finds that lost thing, he GREATLY rejoices. He celebrates so much that he calls his friends and neighbours and tells them that they need to rejoice with him too.

That goes beyond finding some object you’re missing. That goes beyond finding a set of keys, or a book you want to read, or a screwdriver bit that you really need. God isn’t looking for us like he’s looking for a decorative statue somebody walked off with - it’s annoying to lose, he’s happy to get it back, but it’s not that big of a deal because it just goes back up on a shelf.

We lost our son once. He was very young, it was only for a few minutes, and he had wandered off at our trailer park - a fairly secure, safe, secluded area filled with many people we knew. We didn’t run the risk of coming across our son’s body, so much as we ran the risk of coming across our son shoving his face full of chocolates that one of the neighbours slipped him to keep him in one place. But it was still an incredibly stressful time.

Now, I told the story earlier of having lost my dog. And we loved him dearly, and I would have looked into the wee hours of the night. But we were visiting family in another city, and I had my work to return to sooner or later. And if we hadn’t found him quickly - if hours turned into a day, turned into two, we may have lost a bit of steam. Started putting up posters, maybe not driving around as much. Post something on facebook. and sooner or later, we would have returned home without him.

But if it was my son? I would have looked to the ends of the earth. I would have given up my job, my time. Spent all my money. It hurts my heart to watch movies now where kids go missing or die. I literally tear up. I can’t take it. My children occupy an entirely different area of my heart and my priorities, that apart from my wife, nothing else can come close to their value to me, and how badly I would want them back if they were missing.

And that leads into our next story.

Chapter: Severed Ties

The Parable of the Lost Son

Luke 15:11-31

Now, this story is different from the previous two. Because it doesn’t start with a mindless creature wandering off (like a sheep) or an inanimate object simply falling into the wrong place at the wrong time (like a coin). This one starts with a son. And the son doesn’t get lost - he leaves.