Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning, church
[00:00:03] Speaker B: man. What a joy to be together. Amen.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: God is good to us. We are continuing this series today.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: We're taking this break from First Samuel,
[00:00:15] Speaker A: doing this short series that we're calling who's your One?
And in this, what we're doing is we're talking about what it actually means for you guys, for us as believers, for everyday Christians to actually own our role in God's mission to seek and save the lost.
And I gotta be honest, man, like, it is so easy to miss that piece.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: We sit here and we proclaim these beautiful truths about God, like His sovereignty,
[00:00:46] Speaker A: like, he's the one who's doing the work of seeking and saving the lost.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Right?
[00:00:50] Speaker A: And so can't we just kind of like, do our deal and. And like, live our lives and seek faith and all those different things? Like, it's really easy to fall into that trap even in the life of faith. But the problem is you can't ignore
[00:01:04] Speaker B: the mission of God.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: If you want to actually have a vibrant faith, if you want to actually obey Christ, if you want to actually have relationship with Christ, a living faith will always seek out Christ.
And if you want to be with Christ, there's only one place he is
[00:01:23] Speaker B: seeking and saving the lost.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: I am excited, I am prayerfully excited to see God shake us awake a
[00:01:32] Speaker B: little bit as a church family and to see what work he does through us in these short weeks.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: So where have we been so far? Last week we opened this series by looking at Jesus's parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: We're going to be there again today in Luke 15.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: There's so much in that teeny, tiny parable. But we zoned in on this one question as our starting point, which is simply this. For those of you who follow Christ, do you notice the lost?
We ended last week by passing out these prayer cards and asking you guys to prayerfully consider who are the people in your life. They're the people that God is calling you to participate in their redemption story.
And I would say the first and most important step of that is to
[00:02:18] Speaker B: notice who they are and to begin praying for them.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: And by the way, we'll continue to consider this each week of the series. We'll continue to pray each week. I'll put these cards out so that hopefully over the course of the whole series, you'll get at least one home and get it with you. And I would encourage you to keep it with you. And as God clarifies one or two or three names and faces that you can actually write them down and begin the work of regularly.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: I would even say daily praying for that person.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: But it starts with noticing them and
[00:02:55] Speaker B: hopefully, and I've heard this feedback as our church families talked about this over the week.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Hopefully you were beginning to notice the
[00:03:03] Speaker B: reality of lostness around you.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Today we continue our time in Luke 15. If you want to go ahead and turn there. If you don't have a Bible with you today, we have house Bibles around the room. Just look under the chairs at the edge of the row.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: We really believe in the importance of access to God's Word here to Mango, if you don't own a Bible, we say this all the time. Please take one or snag one. One of the nicer ones. I have a pastor. We'll get you a nicer one.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: But Luke 15 is where we're going to be today.
And just real quick, if you don't remember the context, because we're picking up directly where we left off, what's going on here is that verse one of this chapter tells us there were these angry religious folk, these religious leaders who were accosting Jesus. They were challenging him, grumbling against him, complaining about him publicly. And they were frustrated because Jesus was spending too much of his time with tax collectors and sinners.
He was giving fellowship and relationship to people that these religious leaders looked down on and they got angry about it. And so Jesus responds to that accusation, why do you spend so much time in so much relationship with such evil people? He responds to that by telling this series of three parables, one after the
[00:04:16] Speaker B: other, bang, bang, bang.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Last week we looked at the first one, the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus immediately steps into the second one. So in the beginning, in this first parable, he compares himself to a good shepherd who has a flock of a hundred sheep. He loses one. And so he goes out, leaves the 99, goes out, finds the one that's missing, and when he finds it, he celebrates. And we, we use that to just kind of talk about this reality that, that God notices those who are lost to him and he seeks them out. Right?
There's celebration when a sinner is brought back to God. Our text picks up as Jesus continues the thought by doubling down. He tells another short parable that is unique but makes almost the identical point. So look at me with, look at, look with me at Luke 15. Starting in verse 8, we read this or because he just finished the first parable or what woman who has 10 silver coins, if she loses one, does not light a lamp Sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it.
It's a really simple parable.
There's a lot going on here.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: We're going to zone in on a thought that I think is really important for us.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: So pray with me before we dig
[00:05:34] Speaker B: into this too deeply.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: Jesus, we need you today.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: We need you today to be our disciple.
We need you to be the one who challenges us.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Lord, as we look at these kind of texts that are short, that for
[00:05:51] Speaker B: those of us who are church people, they're familiar.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Lord, I pray that you would cut through.
You would cut through the distraction of everything going on in our lives right now. You'd cut through what's going on in our hearts right now.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: You cut through all of it, and you would draw us to yourself today.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Spirit, we need you to be the
[00:06:12] Speaker B: one who reminds us of the truth of the gospel, who teaches us, challenges our hearts.
God, we know you're the only one who can do this work, so we pray it in your name, Jesus.
Amen.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: My main point today in a short
[00:06:27] Speaker B: text is going to be really simple. It's going to be this.
The lost are valuable.
The lost are valuable.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Last week we asked the question, do
[00:06:38] Speaker B: you notice the lost?
[00:06:40] Speaker A: This week we're going to sit in
[00:06:41] Speaker B: the idea that the lost have value.
We're going to be reminded, as we
[00:06:47] Speaker A: consider this text, the reality that God sees his creation here and that he sees his people here in that he sees you and me.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: And he sees us as immensely valuable.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: He sees us as so immensely valuable. Hear this. That for whatever reason, we are worth the effort of the gospel,
[00:07:13] Speaker B: which is
[00:07:14] Speaker A: a way of saying christ Jesus is worth the effort of the cross,
[00:07:20] Speaker B: which for us as believers means that those around us are lost, are certainly worth the effort of living intentionally on mission. Amen.
I think the problem is simply this many of us, we just plainly flat
[00:07:38] Speaker A: out don't believe that.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: We don't believe it about ourselves, and as a result, we don't believe it about the world around us.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: I mean, we look at our own lives, we see how sinful and hypocritical we are, we lose sight of the immense value of a human being. I mean, guys, and I'm so serious when I say this, like, even just setting aside the fact that we live in a cursed and broken world, we live in a culture that devalues people in all sorts of ways. Think about the world within which you live. We devalue people based on their age, based on their country of origin, based on their ethnicity, based on their wealth, based on their education, based on their body type or size, based on their social popularity, or we look, we invent new things to devalue humans.
We come up with as many as we possibly can.
It's not enough that we, we live in a culture of death that dehumanizes people. It represents the very heart of Satan.
But we miss how much even God
[00:08:41] Speaker B: sees us and treats us.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: It worms its way into our own understanding of self. I mean, honestly, I, I'm serious when I say this, this is kind of heavy right at the beginning, but consider yourself for a moment, a real second.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Do you, do you, in your heart of heart, do you actually believe that God values you?
I would encourage you, church, breathe on that question for a second.
Sit in your heart with that.
Do you believe God values you specifically with your hypocrisy, your sin, your screw ups, with your evil?
How does that sit with you as
[00:09:36] Speaker A: that worms its way out into how
[00:09:39] Speaker B: we view the world, how we view God, how we live in the world.
But I'm telling you guys, God has something to say to us in that.
And I'll read it again because it's one verse.
It sounds like this.
What woman who has 10 silver coins, if she loses one, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?
Jesus is doing this verbal sparring with these religious leaders and he shares this parable as a continuation of the same thought in the parable of the Lost Sheep.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: This story, just as simple as the first, tells about a woman who has lost some coin.
And so last week I gave us a couple interpretive lenses we can use
[00:10:29] Speaker B: to look at Jesus's parables. We'll start with one of those. We'll look at the intersection between what is strange and what is normal in this text.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: The setup for this story is very normal, right? A lady has 10 coins and she loses one and she starts looking for it. The coins here are silver. This is likely representing the Roman denarius, which would be a day's labor wages.
Now sometimes if you study this on your own, if you Google it later, you'll hear interpreters suggest these 10 coins would have been a part of a headdress that a single woman wore, representing her dowry, her ability to get married. And there actually was a tradition in the ancient near east of young unmarried
[00:11:08] Speaker B: women wearing these dowries in the form of silver coins.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: It's actually unlikely that that is what
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Jesus is referencing here.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: We can't know that 100% for certain, but historians seem to believe this tradition
[00:11:20] Speaker B: didn't make its way into Palestine until after Jesus lifetime.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: It seems much more likely to me that Jesus is simply referencing this lady's savings, right? This is, this is her savings. You have to remember this is a day when most workers are agrarian and they live in kind of this self sufficiency lifestyle. And so most didn't work every day for their denari. 10 denarii is literally 10 days wages, but it could represent half to even two thirds of of the money a family might bring in in a given month.
But here's the deal. Regardless of whether or not this is a dowry, this is this lady's savings or even just the paycheck she cashed that morning, right? Like regardless what happens is this lady has the money, she loses one of the coins. And hear this, that's a lot of money.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: It's a lot of her money.
And so everything stops.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: And look how immediate and complete her search is. You know these ancient Palestinian homes in this particular area, in this region, they were usually earthen and they usually had zero windows.
So think compacted earth floor and no windows. These houses were dark. And so she lights a lamp and she begins sweeping the floor. These teeny tiny little denarius, they could get lost in the dust easily. And so she's sweeping, hoping to kick it up and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding and kind of find it, right? She's looking for it really intensely, she's checking every nook and cranny, she's lighting the place up. And I think this is immediately relatable.
You lose something and all of a sudden your life stops until you find it. And if that's not relatable, just think back to the last time you were leaving the house and couldn't find your car keys, right?
Like it happens, it happens. Recently we had a situation strikingly similar
[00:13:15] Speaker B: to this at my house.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: I was inside making dinner and the kids were all outside playing when suddenly
[00:13:21] Speaker B: all four of my children ran in
[00:13:22] Speaker A: the house, desperate, desperate because they had
[00:13:26] Speaker B: heard the sound that marks the neighborhood play of American children every summer for generation upon generations.
They heard the ding, a ling of ice cream truck.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: And the thing you have to understand if you've never been to our house, is that we live in a tiny neighborhood that is kind of cut off.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: It's not connected to the larger neighborhoods in Baldwin. It has one entrance, one exit right off Manchester Road. So it's kind of out of the way.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: And because of that, this is a tragedy of tragedies. But the ice cream man skips our neighborhood. He does not see it as worth it. And so the vast majority of the time, when you hear that he's not coming for us, but the kids hear the ice cream truck, and they run inside, Bab, it's coming. It's coming up our street.
And so I do what any responsible
[00:14:11] Speaker B: dad would do in that given situation. I give them some cash, right? I dig out my wallet, I give them $15. Now, if you're stopping going $15, I have bad news for you.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: It's 20, 26. I have four kids. It's rough out there, guys. So I give them $15, and they run out excited, eagerly anticipating ice cream truck, only to discover to their sorrow,
[00:14:33] Speaker B: that it was in fact, in the other neighborhood.
They were hearing it through the yard. I know, I know. So they come back in, ejected, sorrowful, but they have hope. They go, can we hold on to your money in case it comes through our neighborhood again?
[00:14:49] Speaker A: And I go, you know what?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah, you can, because it's summer and it's a billion degrees and you're outside. So, yeah, go right ahead.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: So they take the $15.
A couple hours later, we eat dinner. We finish out the night. The ice cream truck never came.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: He's a jerk. Ignores our neighborhood. If you see him, let him know I said that.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: And as the evening begins to fold up, I say, hey, Millie, I need
[00:15:09] Speaker B: that 15 bucks back.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: And my thought was, you know what?
[00:15:11] Speaker B: I'll throw it up in the kitchen cabinet, and then we'll know where it is if ice cream bag comes back.
And horror upon horror, she'd lost it.
Yeah, it was rough. She lost the $15.
And because my daughter is a good daughter, is a good person, she felt terrible.
He felt bad that she lost dad's money. And so suddenly, everything for our family stopped. Everything stopped.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: The house was ripped apart, the yard was ripped apart. The pants pockets were turned out, Couch cushions were pulled. Furniture was slid. Shoes were looked in. Everything we could possibly do, I mean, for a good hour, you name it, we checked underneath it or inside it,
[00:15:53] Speaker B: and we never found the money.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: So after an hour, we gave up. I had a moment where I went, you know what? It's in the house somewhere.
It'll turn up. You kids have to go to bed.
And so we gave up. Now, we gave up after a good,
[00:16:11] Speaker B: solid hard hour, right?
[00:16:13] Speaker A: But we gave up.
I thought of that story this week
[00:16:18] Speaker B: because first, just how dominating the that search is, right? And you've been there before when you just need something and you're just getting progressively more angry and you're ripping apart
[00:16:29] Speaker A: the house bit by bit, like we've all had that moment.
But I also thought about it because after an hour we gave up.
Like this is. This is no longer worth it.
This lady doesn't give up.
Jesus makes sure we know.
She searches diligently until the coin is found.
And honestly, it's still not that strange, right? At the end of the day, we were looking an hour for 15 bucks. But what if it had been a missing, I don't know, 200 bucks or 250 bucks. That's probably a little closer to what this lady actually lost. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have stopped until we found it either. Right? Like, I think most of us would be in a similar place. And if you had 2 or 300 bucks cash missing in your house, right?
[00:17:17] Speaker B: But imagine how much you could actually get from the ice cream truck for 200 bucks.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: That's actually what I'm getting at is this.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: The coin is a big deal for the right? It's not like she lost a quarter coin is a big deal. It's valuable enough to her that when she realizes it's missing, her whole day now revolves around finding it.
Everything stops until that is done.
And I think even 2,000 years later, it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination for us to relate to that.
It's a big enough deal that it's this is my Dang it.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Read on with me and we'll see
[00:18:00] Speaker B: how the text gets strange. Verse 9.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, rejoice with me because I have found the silver coin I lost.
I tell you in the same way there is joy in the presence of
[00:18:15] Speaker B: God's angels over one sinner who repents.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: If you were here last week, you
[00:18:19] Speaker B: already saw this coming. When she finds the coin, she calls
[00:18:22] Speaker A: her friends and neighbors to celebrate with her. We easily miss this and just how
[00:18:26] Speaker B: kind of it's worded in the English.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: But in both these parables, the idea here is that she is inviting her friends, this lady and the shepherd. They're inviting their friends and neighbors to stop what they're doing and have a party.
She's having a I lost my coin and now I found it party. And you need to know that's weird.
That is where the story gets strange. It's not strange that she would tell her friends. It's not strange that she would tell people or be excited, right? Think about yourself.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: If you lost $200 cash, then you found it.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: That would probably Be the story you told to your friends for a couple days, right? Ripped the whole house apart, turned out it was in my kid's shoe. How to get in the shoe, right? Like that's what we would do. But you wouldn't go rent an event space and get a caterer and have a I found my 200 bucks party, right? That's really weird, but that is exactly what this parable wants you to hold on to.
Searching for something lost, especially something valuable, is not strange.
But having a big party because you
[00:19:32] Speaker B: found it is weird.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: It's weird because even though the thing is important, it feels like an overreaction, right?
The party costs more than the coin is worth.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Now would be a good time to remember our other interpretive lens for thinking about Jesus parables. So we talked about what's normal and what's strange and where do they intersect. And now we talk about what would the parable mean if Jesus was the primary character? You start there. What would the parable mean if Jesus was the main character? And then you switch. What would the parable mean if the church. If we were the main character? So we'll start here with Christ.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Jesus is obviously meant to be the
[00:20:10] Speaker B: main character in both of these parables
[00:20:11] Speaker A: because he's responding to a direct criticism about his ministry, right? Like he's telling these stories to answer the question of why he eats and fellowships with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is the shepherd. And interestingly, Jesus now presents himself as a stressed out homemaker panic cleaning her house, right? And in both parables, in this strange intersection of why would someone celebrate so much over something important, but not that important, right?
Jesus says that the very angels in heaven have jubilant celebration over real repentance and the lost being found.
That's the point. He brings back each. At the end of these stories, when someone lost in their own sin comes home to Christ, heaven itself celebrates.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: And here's the thing about that truth, beloved, that's strange.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: That's strange to consider.
If you're a church person, you can
[00:21:18] Speaker B: hear that kind of thing, sing that kind of thing so often that you numb yourself to the strangeness of it.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: But that's a weird claim.
The idea that the God of the universe, the God who spoke stars into existence, the God who designed the intricacies of gravity, the God who grew up the mountains, the God who filled the bottom of the depths, the God who knows all things, who sees all things, who holds the unfolding time in his hand. He stops what he's doing and he turns on the lamp and busts out the broom and lets his whole day go into finding a lost coin.
The sinner, you and me.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: That is incredibly strange.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: The idea that the spiritual realm would celebrate as one of, let's be honest,
[00:22:10] Speaker B: just billions of selfish little sinners figures out how terrible they are and comes back to God in repentance and faith. The idea that heaven would celebrate that
[00:22:21] Speaker A: the angels who, according to Isaiah, fly
[00:22:24] Speaker B: around the throne of God himself singing,
[00:22:27] Speaker A: holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Almighty who was and is to come
[00:22:31] Speaker A: the angels whose wings cover their face and their feet because the very glory of God lights them ablaze. And the only word Isaiah can use to describe them is burning ones.
Those angels see you and me go to vbs and go, yeah, I am a sinner.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: I do want Jesus to be my Savior.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: And they party.
That's strange.
It's wild.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: The angels sitting in the Shekinah glory care that you heard the gospel and prayed a prayer of repentance and turned to Christ.
And according to Jesus, that strangeness is reality.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: That God was not content to allow sin the final say on you and me. So he stepped out of his eternity into this sinful and broken world and sought us out.
That he really did turn on the lamp. He really did start sweeping. He really did turn out the couch cushions. He really did seek you and me out. Because God sees you as valuable.
He sees you as valuable.
Now, beloved, there's an interesting distinction here. Have you ever considered the difference between
[00:23:56] Speaker B: something's worth and something's valued? We tend to use those words interchangeably because most of the time they're close enough to meaning the same thing that it doesn't matter. But there's actually a nuanced distinction in the meaning that I think is really helpful for a discussion like this. You see, worth is more connected directly to, like, market factors.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: It has to do with the monetary or material cost of an object.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: How much does it cost to make it? How much does it cost to purchase it? It's generally more concrete. It's generally more objective. That's. That's what worst means. Value, on the other hand, is more subjective. It's more connected to something's usefulness, something's importance. Or, hear this, something's significance.
Value is what we connect to family heirlooms, right?
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Or I'll give an example.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: I like better Pokemon cards.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Now, if that's too nerdy for you, you can take the next 30 seconds
[00:24:51] Speaker B: and just replace Pokemon with baseball and you'll be good. Because the point is, the Same.
But these things are interesting for discussing this exact idea. This week Millie and I had a
[00:25:03] Speaker A: day where we got up early and
[00:25:04] Speaker B: we camped out at Target with probably about 150 people. There's a picture of us, we got there at five in the morning and we stayed at Target in line with 150 other people until 8am when they opened so we could run inside. We didn't run inside, we walked very calmly. So we go inside and get some new Pokemon cards that just came out just for funnel, just for the memory, just because we could.
And we all know that Pokemon cards,
[00:25:29] Speaker A: like all cards are worth nothing.
They're pointless.
The cardboard with ink on them, they take no money to make.
They're so cheap. They're nothing.
And by the way, even if you actually care about them, they're parts of a kids game.
They bring nothing into the world.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Nothing.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: And yet, because of the cultural moment
[00:25:59] Speaker B: we live in right now, they're incredibly hard to get and expensive.
Certainly not because they're doing anything to make the world a better place. Certainly not because they're hard to manufacture.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Certainly not anything other than just people
[00:26:12] Speaker B: like the way they make them feel.
So they go and they wait in line in Target and they buy them. One of the guys standing in line with us had a laptop open and he was showing us the live values of individual cards inside the pack. As stores like as the time sweep
[00:26:28] Speaker A: like started, different stores to open across
[00:26:30] Speaker B: the country and people were ripping open
[00:26:32] Speaker A: their packs and selling the cards online and trading them. And he was showing us the live going as more people open more packs and more stores open. There was a card that while we were watching it went up to like $2,000 in value and down to $50 in value and back up to a thousand and settled out somewhere around like 300 bucks for a piece of cardboard, right?
It's crazy.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: It's crazy.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: It was fun, but it's crazy.
Value is really about how much you're
[00:27:03] Speaker B: willing to give for something, regardless of what it's worth.
Pokemon cards don't have any more, but they have enough value that 150 people got up and set a target, right? That's weird.
You need to know something beloved about Jesus.
Jesus sees you as worth having.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Jesus sees you as worth having.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: You have value to him.
He's willing to give a heck of a lot to happen.
Heck of a lot.
So what makes you so valuable?
[00:27:50] Speaker A: There's a guy none of you have heard of named Matt Berginski. He was the singer of a band
[00:27:54] Speaker B: called the OC Supertone, a ska ban in the late 90s, early 2000s.
Lucas, you now owe me $10 for making a non ironic ska reference mid sermon.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Anyway, yeah, anyway, Matt Berginski is one of my favorite lyricists.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: He wrote one of my favorite lyrics in an old song called He Will Always Be There. And he says this of Jesus in that song. He.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: He says it's just because he loved me and he'd rather die than live without me. He loved me and he'd rather go through hell than go to heaven without me.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: That is the wonder to consider for us today.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: And it's a wonder that is so easy to misconstrue. I mean, God's action on our behalf,
[00:28:44] Speaker B: what he actually did for us.
Dying on the cross is so incredibly wild that it's really easy actually to trick ourselves into thinking we're more important than we are. Right. Like in a very real sense, Jesus
[00:28:58] Speaker A: did experience hell for us.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: He had the full wrath of God
[00:29:01] Speaker A: for sin poured out on his own head. He drank the full cup of God's wrath. He endured the cross. He was abandoned and betrayed and killed. And he did that to have us.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: As a 90s ska song, so poetically
[00:29:19] Speaker A: put it, he'd rather go through that
[00:29:23] Speaker B: than sit in his perfect heaven without us.
So I'll say it again.
What makes you so valuable?
Well, the answer to that is simply what Jesus is willing to do to have you.
That's what makes you so valuable.
See, this isn't because we're some inherent treasure that's so amazing that Jesus just has to have us. He can't do anything else. Remember, God is complete and perfect on his own.
He doesn't need anything. He certainly doesn't need us. It's not as though heaven is incomplete without us.
Heaven has God and God is perfect and complete and lacking nothing.
Instead, Jesus just straight up loves you and wants you there.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Straight up.
You are valuable because he loves you,
[00:30:17] Speaker B: because he's glorified in you. Hear this. Our value is inherent in our person as people, made in God's image. But it emanates from the Father, not from us.
Emanates from his love, emanates from his grace. Paul said it better than me in Ephesians. Abby read this text earlier. I'm going to read it for us again.
Hear this.
You were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. You were Dead in your sin.
Sin killed you, killed your soul, killed your spirit.
There's an interesting thing about dead people.
They don't bring anything to the Torah.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: They don't act, they don't work, they
[00:31:05] Speaker B: don't think, they don't have opinions, they don't do anything. They're dead. You were dead in your sin.
Verse 3. We too all previously lived in our fleshly desire. We carried out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts. We were by nature because of our sin, because of our spiritual death, children under wrath, as the others were also first score.
But God, you see, that's the interjection.
Dead people can't intervene on their own behalf.
Dead people can't advocate for themselves. Dead people can't save themselves. Dead people can't do things to make their circumstances better. They can't do anything better. But verse four.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: But God, God who is rich in mercy because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespass.
God intervened. Why?
Because of his mercy, because of his love.
He made you alive even though you were dead. He made you alive. You were saved by grace.
He also raised us up with him and seated us in the heavens in Christ Jesus. He didn't just save us, he gave us the riches of his righteousness and glory, so that in the coming age he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: There was kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace, through faith. That is not from yourselves.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: It is God's gift. Hear that Church?
It is not for new.
You didn't bring anything to the table. If someone falls off the boat and they drown, you pull them back up and you start cpr.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: You're blowing their lips, right?
[00:32:56] Speaker A: What does that person contribute to saving their life?
[00:33:00] Speaker B: But the contribution they make is they
[00:33:03] Speaker A: hack and cough right at the end, right?
Because they were dead.
You intervened, the lifeguard. Whoever intervened, their contribution was.
You did the rest of it.
You were dead in your sins and trespasses. God intervened on your behalf, in his mercy, not because of anything you did, because of his love for you. You were saved by grace, through faith, not of yourselves. It is God's gift that not from works, so that none of us can boast.
For we are his workmanship.
For his workmanship. You are a declaration of the glory of God.
Because you are a resurrected dead person.
Because your sin destroyed you. Because your selfishness, your sin, your participation in the evil of this world, it ruined you.
And there was nothing you could do.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: To fix it.
And yet you bear the stamp in Christ of God's redemption.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: The blood of Jesus washes away your sin and doesn't just give you mercy, doesn't just give you a pass from your consequences. It's not like he catches you and goes, oh, I know you didn't know any better. It's okay. No, no, no.
Christ redeems you and restores you.
He takes his own righteousness, his own perfection, his own goodness, his own spirit, and he drenches you in it and covers you in it and reforms you in the likeness of Himself and the very Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit that made all things, that preserved the word that rose Jesus from the dead, dwells within you as his holy temple.
And day by day, and bit by bit, he sanctifies you and restores you and redeems you and makes you like Himself.
It is his work.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: You got nothing to boast about.
You have nothing to boast about.
You're his workmanship.
But here's what's amazing in all that.
That is amazing.
That is precious, that is valuable.
You are of immeasurable value.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Immeasurable value.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Because the king of reality desires you and is willing to go through extreme lengths to happen.
If you're a church person. Do you remember the controversy around that worship song, Reckless Love? Do you remember this?
This is a song we sang in church. I don't know, it was probably two or three years ago. It was one of the worship songs that made the rounds and churches enjoy them and all that. And it's a fine song.
You probably remember if you heard it. It's written actually explicitly about the three parables in Luke 15 that we're reading. And the chorus of the song has a line that says this. Oh, the overwhelming, never ending, reckless love of God. It chases me down, it bites, confound it leaves the 99. I couldn't earn it, I don't deserve it. Still, you gave yourself away.
And the debate in the song rose around this word reckless, because recklessness includes the idea of something being foolish. So why would we associate foolishness with God?
[00:36:20] Speaker A: And here's the thing, it's actually really
[00:36:23] Speaker B: important to be nuanced and specific about the language we use in our theology.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: It really is.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: That's really important, especially, I would say, in the songs we sing as a congregation, because the songs you sing in church and in your private worship, they form your theology more than all the sermons you listen to your whole life.
And so choosing the songs you sing
[00:36:42] Speaker A: is actually very important.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: And being specific about the words is
[00:36:45] Speaker A: actually a really good deal.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Our pastors had a long, drawn out discussion about this exact song and whether or not we wanted to sing it. And by the end of it, I went, why are this three minutes long? Why are we debating this?
[00:36:54] Speaker A: But that stuff is important.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: It is. It really is.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: But here's the point, and here's the
[00:36:59] Speaker B: reason I bring it up.
Regardless of whether or not that song is wise to sing in church, the point of these texts, the point of Luke chapter 15, the point of what we're reading, is when you consider who God is and who we are and
[00:37:20] Speaker A: the lengths to which Christ is willing
[00:37:22] Speaker B: to go to seek and save and celebrate lost sinners.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: It looks foolish.
It does.
From the outside looking in from our limited perspective, it looks like God is wasting his time.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: But God isn't foolish.
He isn't.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: From our limited perspective, the immense value
[00:37:49] Speaker B: he puts on us seems off. But guys, that's why this parable is so important.
Because Jesus is letting us know in pretty clear terms that even if we have a hard time seeing the value he places on us, none of that changes the reality that God made you as valuable, as immensely valuable, as precious,
[00:38:10] Speaker A: as worth the cross to Him.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: Beloved, we can't move past this without sitting in this wonderful and mysterious truth for a moment. Do you believe this?
Do you actually believe that this value God has placed on you is real?
You live in the truth of your value when God dies. I don't say this to puff you up. As Paul said in Ephesians, this is not about you or your works. You have no grounds to boast.
But it is the truth nonetheless.
You are precious to the Creator and sustainer of the universe. You, you, beloved, you.
Jesus rejoiced when you were saved.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Can we sit in that for a moment? Like, can you actually, right now, can
[00:39:01] Speaker B: you take a moment and can you do your best to remember back to that moment when you said yes to Christ?
For some of you guys, that literally might have been a VBS when you were 7, sitting here in a children's pastor talk, that might have been family worship, sitting with your parents, having a discussion. That might have been when you were in college and some campus minister invited you to an event or a church where sermon or a particular song hit you the right way. There was a moment in your faith journey when you said yes to Christ. If you're a Christian, there was a moment, and you need to know something in that moment, Heaven itself rejoiced over you.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: You were the subject of the party Your name was on the banner, right?
Christ celebrated you being found because you're that precious to him. Because God had done it again because all glory to Him. He found the lost coin. That was you, beloved.
That was you.
And you need to know something.
That is every single human being you have ever and will ever meet,
[00:40:08] Speaker B: that
[00:40:08] Speaker A: is every single person on this planet.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: They're that precious.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: Remember the second part of our interpretive lens.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: What would the parable mean if Jesus were the main character?
[00:40:19] Speaker A: But what would it mean if the
[00:40:20] Speaker B: church were the main character? If you were the main character? This is exactly where this text is driving us today. The beautiful value that God places on us should cause us to view the world around us as God views us.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: Do you hear that?
The immense value Christ has placed on you should allow you, should encourage you, should empower you to view the world around you the way Christ views you. The Apostle John says it like this, really succinctly in his first letter, 1 John 4:19. We love because he loved us first.
Period.
He loved us first. And so we love. Jesus noticed you. He values you. So he lit the lamp, he tossed the cushions, he swept the floor. He sought you. He found you. He celebrated you. Praise God.
Praise God.
So what do you do now?
[00:41:17] Speaker B: What do you do with this kind of love and attention?
Can you even help but consider the other lives around you that are just as precious?
Does it not draw you to that truth?
Does it not draw you to consider how much value they have?
I encourage you. I encourage you as I'm speaking, as we land this out, I encourage you to let real names and real faces run through your mind as you think about this.
Let real names, let their faces wash through your brain. Who do you value?
Consider them your friends, your co workers, your grandchildren, your siblings, your neighbors.
Pickleball buddy, the dude you play Xbox Live with.
Think about, are your eyes open?
Is your head up to see them bend? If you want to come back up.
Last week we talked about whether or not we even notice lostness around us, that we opened our eyes to the reality that lostness exists. But beyond this, you have to ask yourself, do you value these people correctly?
I'm going to continue to challenge you on this because we're going to do this a little bit each week. But I want you to grab that card. If you have yours from last week, use that one. If you weren't here last week or you lost it, you can grab a new one.
And I really want you to consider this. What name needs to be on that card? What names need to be on that card? Are you thinking of them? Are you praying for them? And I mean, are you regularly praying for them? I want you church, I want you to grow in this.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: I want you to take this card
[00:42:57] Speaker B: with you into your day and to actually lift this person up to the Lord, asking him to soften their heart,
[00:43:03] Speaker A: asking him to put Christians in their path today, asking him to. To give opportunities for that person to hear the gospel and respond to it. Like, be specific as you pray for
[00:43:14] Speaker B: them day by day and even as you grow in this one, challenge you to take the next step each time.
Beloved, what would valuing the lost people in our lives like Jesus did, what would that change about how you live your life?
That's a worthy question.
As we close, I want you to look at that woman in the parable again and I want you to see yourself in that house.
[00:43:45] Speaker A: She searched, she worked, she stopped what she was doing. Her seeking out that lost coin was not passive. She didn't give up and go, well, it's in the house. I'm sure we'll find it eventually. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Was active.
Her day stopped until the coin was found because it was important to her. It was primary to her.
So what does it look like for
[00:44:08] Speaker B: you to seek the law to join with Jesus?
[00:44:10] Speaker A: What needs to happen for you to
[00:44:12] Speaker B: care about lostness, to value people like Jesus values them?
I want to give you a couple suggestions to get your brain moving. And that's how, Elaine, I think first and foremost, before anything else, it means this.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Do you pray regularly with the lost
[00:44:31] Speaker B: people in your life?
You think about them day by day.
As their head pops in your mind, as their face pops in your mind, their name pops in your mind, do you immediately, your first gut is to bring them to the Lord.
Lord, please save them. Lord, please put people in their life today. Soften their heart to your gospel today.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: If you're thinking about siblings or spouse
[00:44:55] Speaker B: or kids, do you engage in family discipleship?
Do you sit together with your immediate family and pray together, sing hymns together,
[00:45:04] Speaker A: read the word together? And if you're going, that sounds really weird. That is weird. Not many people do that,
[00:45:11] Speaker B: but it proclaims the gospel into lives that need it.
If you're thinking about grandchildren, I gotta tell you something, grandparents, you have a role in the kingdom that no one else has.
[00:45:24] Speaker A: The Apostle Paul called you out.
He said to Timothy, I remember the role your grandma had in your faith.
He affirmed this young man who he had lifted up his pastor. Part of the reason why you're here is because God spoke to you through your grandma.
Come on, church.
If you have grandkids and you're putting them on that list, you have a role in their lives.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: Pray for them, spend time with them.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: I would encourage you in this, especially
[00:45:52] Speaker B: if your grandkids are getting a little older, man.
Take them out for a meal and tell them your whole life story, beginning to end.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: Tell them the good and the bad. Tell them all the ways you screwed
[00:46:04] Speaker B: up, all the stuff you blew up.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Really?
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Y' all will think of me different? No, no, no, no.
They will see the story of redemption in your life.
They'll see how God can work in forming you over decades and sanctify you
[00:46:17] Speaker A: and draw you from death to life. And it will proclaim the goodness of Jesus to them.
And I guarantee.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: I guarantee you, your grandkids want to know the story of Rebbe.
[00:46:28] Speaker A: They do.
You could call them and say, hey, this is weird, but I'm old. Can I tell you my whole life
[00:46:34] Speaker B: story of a coffee?
And they'll go, yeah, yeah, let's do that. I'd like that.
Think about your own testimony. When was the last time you shared it? You. If you had the opportunity to share your story, to share the story of redemption, could you. Could you share it clearly then? Are you building real friendships with people who are outside of church life?
Not because they're like a to do list where you're trying to, like, get enough gospel presentations because they actually have. As valuable to Jesus is you're building friendship with people.
There's a lot going on there, guys. But I would encourage you, encourage you. Don't leave this space without considering what it means practically for you to value the lost in your life. This week, one of the last texts in the Bible is Revelation 19.
The apostle John, near the end of his life, was given a vision of what heaven would look like, what would happen when Christ returned.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: And at the very end of the book, when all the stuff is done, all the battles are fought, all the judgments have happened, everything is settled as it would, and all of reality, as God made it, is settling into the eternity he designed it for. That's the moment in Revelation 19 when all the work is done, all the evil is killed, all the sin is done, and it's just Christ in his victory with his adopted family. And do you know what image John saw in that moment?
He saw a party.
He actually called it a wedding feast.
He saw a party. He saw heaven celebrating the glory of God and the redemption of dead sinners.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: You, if you are in Christ, have
[00:48:12] Speaker A: a seat at that feast.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: And as the pastor I grew up under, Gary Taylor used to say, still there is room, beloved. Let's take a few minutes to meet with the Lord as our heart needs.
