Finding Lost People
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Introduction - Parents love for their children. Story about the hat in Japan. How much more do parents do when their child is lost?
How much more would the Heavenly Father do for His children? Why?
9 The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Just how far would the Father go to save His children?
1 And He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.
2 “At the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine-growers, in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers.
3 “They took him, and beat him and sent him away empty-handed.
4 “Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully.
5 “And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some and killing others.
6 “He had one more to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
7 “But those vine-growers said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!’
8 “They took him, and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.
9 “What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others.
The Owner of the Vine Yard sent His heir (Jesus). The Heir sent us.
Jesus Mission -
10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
How does it work out that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost? Well this is actually fulfilment of prophecy. Ezekiel 34:11 says:
Ezekiel 34:11 (NASB95)
11 For thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out.
So Jesus had a mission - a grand mission.
But how do we live out Jesus’ mission?
We can’t save them - the lost that is - only Jesus can do that. But we can point them to Jesus and fulfill the great Commandment
37 And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
38 “This is the great and foremost commandment.
39 “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
How many of you believe you are fulfilling the requirements of this passage? Do you Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, and with all your Soul, and with all your Mind? I don’t - there are too many things in this life that pull my attention away from God. The crazy thing is that one of those things is Neighbors. This is that tension between God and others that demands balance. Unfortunately there is no balance.
Here’s a list of 8 ways to love your neighbor that I found on the internet.
1. Look at everyone with tender-hearted compassion.
Compassion: sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others
2. Pay attention – listen to everyone with kindness and consideration while you look them in the eye and smile.
3. Refuse to judge others – that’s God’s job.
4. Pray with and for everyone you know and meet.
5. Refuse to participate in gossip about anyone … ever.
Gossip: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true
6. Forgive quickly and completely.
7. Be kind … always and without exception!
8. Most of all be a Matthew 7:12 person.
12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
We can all look at this list and think “I do this” - but then - do we really? How often do we look away from the scary looking guy, or the guy that looks different than us. Think about it. We can’t always do something for someone’s circumstances but we can at least have compassion and look them in the eye. It’s hard but give it a try you might find it is actually easy.
Once we are completing the Great Commandment those around us then we need to start completing the Great Commission - in other words make disciples.
19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
The Great Commission - how do we live this out in our lives?
First remember that Go - is an action. Not really going from here to there but of doing in your daily life as you GO about your daily life. Make Go a habit. Live your life in such a way that the lost will see the way you live and see something different in you that they don’t have. It’s hard to do. Nothing seems special anymore. A Godly way of life just gets lost in the chaos of all the other lifestyles available.
The idea of making disciples is two fold.
One is the idea of helping the lost know the truth. In other words make converts. Remember 1 Tim 2:4 “ who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” That’s making a convert - helping other come to a knowledge of the truth. The truth that Christ Jesus is the Messiah - the Son of God.
Two is making disciples - taking converts and teaching them what it means to be a disciple of Christ Jesus. This includes the command in verses 20 to teach them all that Jesus commanded us. This takes a church. It takes a whole family. None of us knows everything about what Jesus commanded us. We each have different skills and abilities. This is why the Holy Spirit has given us different gifts to be used for the growth of the church. The greatest thing is to determine what you can do to help complete the Great Commission. The problem comes when too many parts of the body don’t do their part.
So are you doing your part? Do you know what your part is? If you don’t let me know. Maybe I can help you find a place to fit in.
God loves all the little children and the big adults too. Many don’t know Jesus - they are lost and God wants them found. So, let’s get busy making disciples and then get those disciples to make disciples. To do this we have to:
Love the lost with the heart of Christ Jesus. Love them so much that you would do anything to save them.
Love them enough to tell them about Jesus. Jesus will do the saving, but we need to show them the way. We need to show them Jesus.