Intro In the hardened reality of life, love has its limits. In the music you hear, you don’t usually hear about that, the limits of love. Instead, you’ll hear lyrics like, “Climb every mountain, search high and low, follow every highway, every path you know.” Or maybe you’ve heard this one: “I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down at your door.”
Yet, we know that those songs, no matter how much we may like to sing them, don’t reflect reality. Do you know anyone who has walked 1,000 miles to throw himself down before his beloved? Do you know anyone, who knows anyone, who would? Some mountains are just too high for our love to climb. Some obstacles are just too entrenched for our love to sweep away. Look at the littered shipwrecks of relationships floating on the sea of love. In our nation, most marriages end in divorce. Every day, people break off their engagements. Prostitution and pornography thrive. Our longing to quell the lonely ache in our heart often leads into seaports of sin, pain, and grief. Indeed, love in this broken world is, well, broken. Main Body Our love is impatient; we want it now. Our love is unkind; it serves only our wants. Our love envies what others have been given. It boasts that it’s better than someone else’s. It is rude instead of kind. It is self-seeking instead of self-giving. It is easily angered, and it keeps a meticulous record of wrongs. It rarely protects, seldom trusts, seldom hopes, and rarely perseveres. Our love fails way too often. So now consider the Parable of the Lost Sheep. To us, if we think about it, this parable is a parable of folly. A shepherd abandons his flock to go chasing after one lost sheep. How foolish, that would endanger the other 99! It isn’t a sound-business practice to leave 99% of the flock to fend for itself--not if you’re concerned about the results: Profit! That’s crazy! It’s absurd! No real-life shepherd would do that. It’s better risking the death of one sheep than possibly losing 99. Does it make sense for you to chase after one dollar bill on a windy day? Not if you have a pile of 99 other dollar bills, which the wind easily could also blow away! The Parable of the Lost Sheep is not about what is sensible to do. It’s a parable of love. That’s one of the obvious, in-your-face points of this parable. The shepherd acts with reckless, loving abandon. Out of love, he leaves the 99 to search for the one. He doesn’t seek out the one because He hates the ninety-nine. No, he does it because He loves the one! Sheep need a shepherd. Sheep easily get lost and don’t have the natural instinct to find their way back to where they belong. Once lost, a sheep won’t stay put; it continues roaming. This makes it harder for the shepherd to find it. It keeps wandering. Even if the sheep tries to find its way home, it just aimlessly wanders and roams even more, getting more and more lost. That is the way of a lost sheep. Scripture calls you a sheep. I know it’s not flattering--but let’s stick with God’s description, since it is His description! Left to your own inclinations, you will wander from the flock. You will try to be your own shepherd. You will separate yourself away from where your Shepherd cares for you and feeds you. When you do this, you will spiritually begin to starve. Yet, Christ in His compassion and love seeks you out. That’s the shepherd you have, a shepherd with a reckless love for you. He searches for you, finds you, and brings you into His house. For it is here where you receive God’s nourishing food, the Bread of Life. It is here, where God forgives your sins in more than just an abstract way. Here, the Gospel is preached to you. Here, the words of absolution ring soundly in your ear. Here, the Lord’s body and blood are placed into your mouth. That’s why Christ set up His Church, to be the dispensary of eternal life in a dying world. Sadly, much of today’s Church has also become lost. The Church is supposed to be where the sheep are fed. Within the Church, however, you will find many malnourished and emaciated Christians, for they have been fed the things of this world and not the goods of God. Like lost sheep, they prefer the things of this world, for the things of this world look like the greener pastures. But they’re not. Oh, on the outside those spiritually starving sheep may look healthy; but on the inside, they are suffering from spiritual malnutrition. Many misguided shepherds, pastors, say you don’t need the Gospel after you’re converted. Somehow, they’ve lost what Jesus commands them to preach. In Luke 24:47, Jesus told His apostles that “repentance and the forgiveness of sins is to be preached in His name.” They’ve lost--or never learned--that salvation isn’t just a one-time event. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “For the Word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). Imagine that, saved Christians “who are [also] being saved.” Such is the mystery of the faith: Even saved Christians are still “being saved.” That’s why you come to Church. When pastors don’t understand salvation, they starve the flock. They don’t preach what God did, does, and will do to save you. They don’t think you need it! Sure, you entered the Church by the mercy of God, but now you’ve got to earn your keep! So they don’t forgive sins. They minimize what Christ has done, and does, because Christianity is, as they see it, more about what you need to be doing for God. You won’t hear them preach that Christ forgave you for that fight you had yesterday. You won’t hear that Christ went to the cross even for the sin you committed this morning. They might even tell you that if you are still struggling with those sins, you may not even be a real Christian. Those are lies, dearest flock of God. The Gospel is life. Only Jesus crucified on a cross, having suffered the full punishment for all your sins, can save you. Only Jesus, a risen-from-the-dead Jesus, can save you, promising to you in your Baptism eternal life with Him. Jesus and His work for you are the full content of the Gospel. Anyone who would preach another message let him be accursed, even if he comes to you as an angel of light. You see, “practical Christianity” gives us something to do. Our sinful natures love that! Now we can be proud of what we have done! Do you remember how the Gospel reading for today started? “The Pharisees and scribes were complaining, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!’” Jesus doesn’t eat with the self-made, the proud, the successful, or those who have achieved much by following a “practical,” moral message. Jesus eats with sinners. Jesus calls you a sheep for a reason, because the many distractions of life can easily lead you away from Him. That’s why Christ, the Good Shepherd, has to keep looking after you. Every week, He calls His flock to gather, to save them, to save you, to keep you from getting lost. He keeps leading you to the green pastures and the still waters. He continues to speak tenderly to you. He nourishes you with His Word of forgiveness. He even gives you His body to eat and His blood to drink. He keeps giving you everything you need for your salvation--everything--everything that He won for you on the cross! At this point, you might be thinking, what’s pastor saying? I’m here. I’m saved. I’m not starving. Pastor read me God’s written Word from the lectern. That’s feeding me. Right now, I’m listening to his sermon. That’s feeding me. I’m at the Shepherd’s house now. I’m not lost! That may be so. But if you are now at the Shepherd’s house, it’s only because you were once the lost sheep. And a found sheep can get lost again. That’s why Jesus calls you to repent everyday. The Parable itself lets us know that. So the Parable is not only about rescuing the lost sheep, but also keeping the one sheep from getting lost. Once, you were the one separated from the flock, starving, alone, without true hope in this world. Whatever your circumstance, Jesus has sought you. He abandoned everything that would make sense to us, and He searched and found the one lost sheep. As He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, He was seeking you. And the road He had to take to you, led through the cross. Yes, Jesus did suffer the cross for the life of the whole world--but that’s not the Word He speaks, today, in our Gospel text. Our Gospel text for today is about Jesus for you, not someone else. You are the one Jesus is seeking. You are why Jesus went to the cross. You are the reason that He embraced its bloody wood. You are the reason He went to suffer. You are the reason He went to die. As you consider Christ, nailed to the cross, consider His sacrificed blood crying out. It cries out to you, “I love you.” Jesus’ love does not envy. Jesus’ love does not boast. It keeps no record of wrongs. In love, Jesus came not 1,000 miles, but from heaven to earth. In love, Jesus did not climb every mountain, but a specific one, for you: Golgotha. In love, He even destroyed death, so that He could seek and find you. When the Holy Spirit first created faith in your heart by the Word of Jesus, Jesus stood in heaven at the right hand of the Father. There, He said, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” And there was much joy before the angels in heaven over you. Did you catch that? There is much joy before the angels in heaven. Most of us think the text says that it’s the angels who rejoice over the one sinner who repents. No doubt, they probably do, but that’s not what this text says. It says that such joy is BEFORE the angels. So, who is rejoicing? It’s Jesus; He is rejoicing. The One who sought you out is the One who rejoices when He brings you back into His house. It’s reckless that Jesus would embrace a bloody death for you, but He did. It’s outrageous that He would rejoice over one sinner who repents, someone who had come into the world hating God, but He does. Jesus doesn’t care that you are, by nature, His enemy. He doesn’t care that it was your sins that nailed Him to the cross. No amount of pain was so great that He wasn’t willing to endure it for you. No lies of Satan could divert Him from His cross. Conclusion Jesus loves you. He speaks tenderly to you. He feeds you, cares for you, and does everything needed for your salvation. He rejoices over you and sings with countless angels, ten thousand times ten thousand. That’s the God you have! You’re just going to have to get used to it, because Jesus outrageously and recklessly loves you. Yes, indeed, that’s the Savior you have! Amen. -- Rich Futrell, Pastor Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Kimberling City, MO Where we are to receive and confess the faith of the Church (in and with the Augsburg Confession): The faith once delivered to the saints, the faith of Christ Jesus, His Word of the Gospel, His full forgiveness of sins, His flesh and blood given and poured out for us, and His gracious gift of life for body, soul, and spirit. ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. 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