“1 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.”
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 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.
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.””
“I once was lost but now am found was blind but now I see.” That’s perhaps the most famous line from the most famous English hymn. It resonates with us all, even unbelievers, because being lost is such a familiar and terrifying experience and being found is such an unexpected and relieving experience.
I remember camping when I was twelve and losing my jean jacket. I looked everywhere, worried unreasonably, and was overjoyed when I finally found it right where I left it. I also remember being lost myself as a child—the multiplying fears, the feeling of being divided by lostness, and the feeling of home that came from being found.
Being lost and found are elemental to what it means to be human. The Lord’s first words after our fall into sin were about being lost and found; “where are you?” He asked. Being lost is our natural state since the fall. Being found is the only way home. Jesus knows this. He, after all, is the finder. He thought of his work as coming to seek and save the lost. We are by nature lost. Praise God that He loves to find us. That’s the thrust of this parable and the claim of this sermon: we are by nature lost. Praise God that He loves to find us.
We will study this in three points. First: the setting. Second: the lost sheep. Third: the lost coins. First, in verses 1-2, we see the setting. Second, in verses 3-7, we see the lost sheep. Third, in verses 8-10, we see the lost coins.
Being lost is our natural state, but we’d rather not admit that; that’s our first point: the setting. Jesus told parables for a reason. He had purposes. We need to remember that nothing was written in the Bible simply because it needed to be written. There were always purposes. Jesus told these stories about being lost and found because of the way some lost people were treating other lost people; that’s verses 1-2, ‘Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”’
As usual, a mixed multitude was listening to Jesus. We’ve been thinking about different hearts when it comes to God’s law in the morning; those same hearts were there in the first century too, and they were responding to Jesus differently. The tax collectors, whose real wickedness we considered last week, were willing and even eager to listen to Jesus as were other folks who would be categorized as sinners. ‘Sinners were perceived as forfeiting their relationship to God because of a lifestyle unfaithful to God’s law… it was these “reprobates” who were drawing near to Jesus,’ as Bock explains.
The fact these individuals were willing to listen to Jesus as if he had something to say to them was no small matter. These people didn’t feel comfortable listening to the other group who was there—the Pharisees. They avoided the Pharisees the way the Pharisees avoided them. “Let a man never associate with a wicked person not even for the purpose of bringing him near to the Torah,” the Pharisees taught and the so called wicked picked up on their contempt and so avoided them. They didn’t avoid Jesus.
That’s something for us to consider. Are we sinner friendly? Am I sinner friendly? Not sin friendly but sinner friendly. I can look back over my life and so how very mixed I am on this matter. I think I really do like people, but I’m often afraid of their sin. I want to fix it in ways that isn’t in my power. We all struggle with this in different ways, and the Pharisees had decided that the cleanest way to deal with the struggle was to keep others at arm’s length until these people cleaned themselves up. It wasn’t right but I do think we need to see the attraction of their purity mindset if we are to act differently than they did.
The Pharisees were listening to Jesus too and were offended that Jesus acted differently than they did toward these other sinners. They muttered about Jesus saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” The offense of eating with sinners was that in that culture eating with someone was a sign of agreement and honor. ‘To understand what Jesus was doing in eating with “sinners”, it is important to realize that in the east, even today, to invite a man to a meal was an honor. It was an offer of peace, trust, brotherhood, and forgiveness; in short, sharing a table meant sharing life,” as Jeremias explains.
The fact that a religious teacher like Jesus would treat the wicked as if they were honorable led the Pharisees to question Jesus’ moral integrity. They grumbled about him, which is a better translation than muttered. Grumbling is never a good word in Scripture. It takes us back to the wilderness and that’s what Luke wants us readers to consider. Just as Israel grumbled in the wilderness about God’s ways so here Israel is grumbling about Jesus’ ways.
Grumbling about Jesus—grumbling about God—is the most foolish response possible. Fault-finding perfection is a sign of unimaginable pride and intellectual insanity and yet we all do it more regularly than we would like to admit. These parables weren’t told so that we could look back on the foolishness of the Pharisees. They were told so that we could see this same impulse in ourselves and turn from it and come home to God.
Jesus hears the grumbling and rather than be corrected by it, he corrects it. “Jesus,” as a commentator explains, “does not share the separatist mentality of the scribes and Pharisees. He is interested in befriending such undesirables, regardless of what others may think. His rationale is simple: he wishes to draw them to God.” Jesus understand the Pharisees’ concerns, but he doesn’t share them. Jesus’ concerns are quite different from theirs. His “why” and their “why” was much different and so his “how” and their “how” is different. Jesus tells this parable not to justify his love but in hopes that they might join him in it.
We see the first parable in our second point: the lost sheep. Tending sheep was a typical Palestinian job. It was one, however, that by this time wasn’t all that respectable. That’s remarkable because for centuries it was the perhaps most typical occupation among God’s people. This would be like not respected auto workers in Michigan in middle of the twentieth century. Barclay explains how this happened. “In the very nature of his calling [the shepherd] could not observe the [Pharisees’] rules and regulations; he could not always observe the hours of prayer; he could not perform all the minute regulations of hand washing before he ate; the claims of his flock made such things impossible and the result was that those who thought themselves good looked down on the shepherd as being low in the scale of religious precedence.” The Pharisees couldn’t see it but they had created a religious system in which they not only looked down on tax-collectors and sinners but on people like David, Moses, Abraham, and their ancestors in Egypt who tended flocks. “It is difficult to know how the rabbis managed to revere the shepherd of the Old Testament and despise the shepherd who herded the neighbor’s sheep. But this seems to have been the case,” as Bailey explains. These leaders apparently despised the people who made the animal sacrifices they so cherished possible. The sort of self-righteousness we studied last week is that delusional and we need to beware lest we fall into it.
Jesus knew this danger and so included these Pharisees in the thought experiment of verse 3, Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” The Pharisees’ response would likely be the sort of arm-chair quarterback spirituality which self-righteousness excels in—something like, “well, I would never find myself in that situation because I wouldn’t keep sheep.” Jesus doesn’t give them that option because he though that they, like he, should be looking for lost sheep. The problem was that they thought themselves above it when they, as spiritual leaders, were tasked with it. That’s Ezekiel 34 with the call for the leaders to pursue to lost sheep, which Jesus certainly has in mind here. The problem wasn’t as the Pharisees thought that Jesus was sullying himself by spending time with sinners. The problem was that the Pharisees weren’t willing to get their hands dirty with the work God gave them to do. We are all terrible self-swindlers and Jesus’ parables are designed to surprise us out of our own lies.
Lost sheep, both the animals and the people, don’t tend to find their way back on their own. Sheep lie down in their lostness and stay lost. Jesus points out that any shepherd worth his salt would give a coworker charge of the ninety-nine and find that lost one. “The point is that the lost sheep receives special attention over those that are safe and sound,” as Bock explains, and that’s what the tax collectors and other people who seem to have ruined their lives loved about Jesus and that’s what the Pharisees hated about him. We humans aren’t that different from children clamoring for attention and despising others who get more than we do.
Jesus, who in spending time with those who wrecked their lives found the lost, points out that finding the lost sheep, however, isn’t the end of the shepherd’s activity; verse 5, “when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.” Finding the sheep is not the end. The found sheep must be restored to its equal place in the flock. This is what the Pharisees had problems with—the idea that these sinners could be on equal footing with them. They hated the fact that the lost could be found because then how were they better than the lost? You see this in us humans. There is something sick in us that wants those who do wrong to grovel, to come in through the doggy door, and to stay in the dog house. That’s Satanic meaning it is anti-Christ.
Christ expects not condemnation but celebration; verse 6, ‘Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.”’ Inviting the neighbors over to rejoice over the found sheep might be an exaggeration but it is an exaggeration with a point. It’s the finder’s joy that is the climax of the story—God’s joy in finding, Jesus’ joy in the lost being restored, and that is the proper response of us to being found and others being found. The opposite of that, the grumbling of the Pharisees, is the correction of verse 7, “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.” Jesus is asking the Pharisees, “why are you grumbling about me finding the lost rather than rejoicing with me the way a friend should?” He’s telling these religious leaders that their grumbling about the loss shows that they aren’t friends of God. As always the criticism of Jesus is a critique on the criticizers.
The Pharisees were more lost than the notorious sinners who knew they are lost but hoped Jesus would find them. There is no one more lost than the one who presumes he doesn’t need to be found. That’s the condemnation of the Pharisees. They are never condemned for their law-keeping. They are condemned for thinking that their law-keeping meant they alone were worth finding. Righteousness becomes self-righteousness when it becomes your way of putting yourself above the need for grace. It becomes self-righteousness when it becomes your way of convincing yourself that you don’t need to be found. It winds up with you telling Jesus, “get lost because I’m not lost.” Self-righteousness is the anti-salvation aimed at others which winds up shooting yourself. It’s death and so Jesus tells this parable to save us.
You see this as well in the second parable which is our third point: the lost coins. We will only be studying these two this evening. We will treat the lost sons, or the prodigal son, on its own, but they all do go together. There is a progression here. The last parable was about on hundred sheep. This one is about ten coins. The next one is about two sons. The number decreases and so value increases as we go. The coin in question in verse 8’s, “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one,” was the worth the equivalent of a day’s wage. Anyone would search obsessively for the lost cash from a paycheck and that’s what’s going on here. It’s Jesus’ way of saying to the Pharisees, “you are critiquing me for doing what anyone with good sense would do.” The problem, of course, is that Jesus sees the lost souls as having value and the Pharisees don’t.
Whereas the last parable was about a man, this one has to do with a woman; “suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?” This is the story of a peasant woman. Her home, like the typical Palestinian home, would have been quite small and she wouldn’t have moved outside of it much. This means she knew the lost coin was somewhere in the house and that if she worked hard enough she could find it.
This expands the last parable in which the shepherd hopes he might find the one lost sheep. This coin parable introduces the certainty of finding, but the lost must be sought, and so it was with Jesus with the lost. He certainly found those for whom he was looking. “Such is God’s character,” as Jeremias explains. “He wants the lost to be redeemed because they are His; their wanderings have grieved Him, and He rejoices at their return home.”
The irony is that the finding the lost paycheck doesn’t rejoice the Phairsees but grieves them. They grieve not the lostness but the finding. That’s why the grumble about the lost being found. Sin is that sick. “[God] gives no grudging or hesitant acceptance of sinners but eagerly seeks them and finds cause to celebrate at their recovery. The kingdom comes with limitless grace, even for those that others denigrate,” as Snodgrass explains.
The Pharisees thought they could law the lost into the kingdom. Jesus knew that’s not how it works. “The surest way to lead someone in the path of goodness is to be merciful to them,” as Dallas Willard explains. “The surest way to drive them into wrongdoing and anger is to be unmerciful. It is the power of mercy that conquers the hardened heart.” Consider yourself. You didn’t come to Jesus because you heard God’s standard and considered yourself uniquely worthy, and if that’s why you think you came to Jesus, you haven’t come to him. Only those who accept they are lost are found by Jesus, and we come because he welcomes us and seems happy to do so. He doesn’t tell us to grovel. He doesn’t to live in the dog house. He welcomes us home and seems happy to have us there—as happy as if we were precious to him. It turns out that Jesus wants us found more badly than we want to be found and deep down being found is all we want.
It turns out God is even happier than we at our being found; as verse 10 puts it, “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Jesus tells these parables to make clear that finding is a joyful experience, but “where joy is absent, the kingdom is absent,” as Snodgrass puts it. That’s the Pharisees. The kingdom was absent for them because they take no joy in anyone’s being found. Being dour and critical has as little to do with the kingdom as the Pharisees did. These aren’t signs of spirituality. They are signs of self-righteousness. God doesn’t approve of them. He corrects them.
He invites these people home too. It’s why Jesus told these parables. He’s not just interesting finding the lost so-called sinners. He’s interested in finding the lost self-righteous sinners. He’s interested in finding us all because we are all by nature lost. The question is whether we know it because until we know we are lost, we won’t be found. Amen.