"The Shepherd who goes after the one" Matthew 18:10-14 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This is the word of God, Matthew chapter 18, verse 10.

Matthew 18:10

See that you do not despise one of these little ones.

For I tell you that in heaven the angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

What do you think?

If a man has a hundred sheep, one of them has gone astray, doesn't he leave the ninety-nine up on the mountains to go in search of the one that went astray?

And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray.

So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

This is the word of God.

It was probably about a year ago at 2.30 in the morning, there was a knocking on my door.

I actually woke up with my eldest daughter, whose room is above her front door, shouting, Dad, someone's at the door.

And I said, Go get it.

Now her bedroom is right over her front door.

She looked out the window and apparently the person talked to her.

And the next thing you hear from my daughter is uh he says he's the police.

To which I said, Well, it should be safe for you to go get the door then.

At which point I was kicked out of bed.

Um so it turns out it was indeed the police.

Uh, and he asked me if he could see my ring camera.

He saw that we had a ring camera, he asked if he could see it.

He also wanted to see the ring camera from ICHS, the high school, uh, the cameras that they have there, because there was a neighborhood kid who had gone missing.

And the parents said the kid often plays in our yard, which is true, and so they wanted to know if they could look at our cameras and see if the kid went by.

And so I pulled up our cameras and all it showed was a lot of police dogs.

There were police dogs everywhere in our yard, uh, crisscrossing every which way.

Uh I, you know, so that's all I had.

I asked if I could help them look because I knew where they played in the yard, and he just said, you know, the more people outside, the more it confuses the dogs.

So don't come outside yet.

If we get to like getting everybody in the neighborhood together to go look, we'll let you know, but just stay in your house for now.

And uh yeah, and then and then went away.

The kid I know is another family, they're a wonderful, wonderful family.

They have lots of kids.

Lots of kids.

Uh so many kids that a skeptic might say, Do you really need to go find that one?

I mean, you have others, they all look kind of the same.

Uh, I did not say that at the time.

I did not volunteer that idea because it probably would have made me a suspect.

And because we intuitively know that it's not true.

We intuitively know it doesn't matter how many kids you have.

Each one is the responsibility of the parents, and in a broader sense, the neighborhood and society, to protect.

It doesn't matter how many there are.

That basic moral principle is the backdrop of this encounter here in Matthew 18.

It begins with an imperative where Jesus commands it to you.

It's kind of obscured in the English.

In the English, it translates it, the SV translates it, see that you don't despise, but it's an imperative, a command, and the word behind it is a word that requires energy or effort or work.

So it's almost as if Jesus saying, exert yourself.

Do this work.

You could translate it, focus on this, labor for this, pay attention to this.

I like the idiom pay attention because it implies it has the word pay.

You're exerting something towards it.

That's this word.

What are you supposed to work at?

Not despising these little ones.

So it really begins with a command.

Do the work of rescue.

As you take the paragraph together, you're supposed to labor to rescue people who are stuck in sin.

Immature believers.

In the flow of Matthew 18 here, remember the chapter starts with the disciples arguing who's the greatest in heaven, and the answer Jesus provides is he takes a child, likely a toddler kind of age person, puts him in the middle of the floor, and says, This is the kind of person who's the greatest in heaven.

He brings nothing to the table.

He's not there because he deserves to be there in any way.

He didn't work to get there in the middle of the room.

All the kid did was respond to Jesus' voice when he called him.

That's it.

And as a result, he will be rewarded.

That's greatness in heaven.

It's less about your work and your labor and more about your humility.

And you remember we talked about how, you know, little kids are not humble, for goodness sakes.

If you've met a little kid, they're not humble.

They're not others-oriented, they're not, you know, putting the needs of others before themselves.

Of course not.

The point of the illustration is not that kids are humble, but that kids recognize compared to adults, they're low.

Kids recognize they can't do things by themselves.

Kids recognize they're dependent.

They receive gifts at Christmas.

All the gifts they buy, they buy with their parents' money.

That's the humility Jesus is talking about.

That's the lowness.

And so now the analogy shifts from an actual toddler to a new believer, an immature believer.

And here we're using new and immature kind of synonymously.

Because they are.

A new convert to Christ is a relatively new and therefore an immature believer.

There's a sense in which that new convert is in danger.

Like an animal born in the wilderness.

They're vulnerable at their young state.

They need the protection of those around them.

And so, how obscene is it if older believers, more mature believers, lead a younger believer into sin?

The most common example of this in the New Testament is convincing somebody to go against their conscience.

Where your conscience tells you something is sin, your conscience might even be wrong, of course, but it is a sin to go against your conscience.

When your conscience restrains you for you to ignore that or violate it or get around it is a sin for you.

And so it's a common temptation for older believers and more mature believers to lead younger believers into sin.

Because it takes work to inform the conscience.

It takes Bible study and time and effort and conversations and prayer.

And it takes, it takes laboring, planting the word and watering it and laboring it for the immature believer to grow into maturity.

Of course it does.

And sometimes we want to short circuit that, and so we convince younger people to sin.

That's the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario is, you know, actual like peer pressure, actual convincing somebody to lead a sexually immoral life or to be a drunkard or to steal or a hundred different things that you're actually leveraging, you're like, I'm a Christian, I'm telling you this isn't wrong to do, that kind of attitude.

And that's the more extreme version of it.

But the point is, in the first part of Matthew 18, it is better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck and be thrown into the ocean and die than it would be for you to lead a younger and more immature believer into sin.

Because God sees it and God will judge it.

And the flow of Matthew 18, what comes next is church discipline.

If you see someone in sin, you confront them.

If they don't respond to you, you bring a witness.

If they don't respond to you in the witness, you bring the elders.

If they don't respond to the elders, you bring their name before the church, you read their name before the church, and you remove them from communion, from the fellowship of the church.

So there is a way to despise immature believers stuck in sin.

One way is leading them into sin, of course, but the other way is not following through what Jesus says next.

So this parable is the bridge between leading an immature believer into sin and leaving an immature believer in sin.

You can lead them there and that's bad, you can leave them there, and that's also bad.

That's despising the believer.

That's what Jesus says here.

See to it that you don't despise one of these little ones.

Refusing to go after a Christian stuck in sin is despising that person.

Even though we might spruce it up and call it love.

We might say something like, oh, the person is, you know, a full-grown adult, they're making their own decisions, they're deciding what's best for them, they want to lead their life that way.

What am I supposed to do?

In fact, I love them so much, I'm letting them go their own way.

Jesus calls that not love, but despising them.

Despising them.

Now, why is it that Christians often, too often, don't follow through with Matthew 18?

They don't go confront the person for their sin.

They don't try to win him back, they just let him go.

Why is it that they so frequently do what Jesus calls despising the weaker, the more immature believer, the little one?

Why is it?

And I spent a lot of time thinking about that.

And I have a little list for you.

Um and as I made the list, I didn't get these from commentaries.

I got them from actually thinking through in my own pastoral experience what are the main justifications I've encountered for other people saying I'm not gonna go after that person.

What's the main justifications I've used in my own heart for saying I'm not gonna go confront that person for their sin?

And I want to share this little list with you as we go through it.

Uh the first, I'm just to head this list, why people avoid the rescue.

This isn't from this passage, this is just me thinking through what I've actually experienced.

The first is spiritual apathy.

This is probably the most common reason where you don't go after the person because you don't care.

There's a person stuck in a sin over there, and you just frankly, it doesn't trigger your radar yet.

It doesn't ping on your screen as something to observe or care about.

It's not that big of a deal to you.

You could say it in a good way, like it's a big world, lots of things are going on, I don't have time for that.

And you could say it in in this kind of way.

Underneath is just spiritual apathy.

I don't I don't care enough about that person in their situation to actually go after them.

It would be hard, it would be difficult, people don't want you to, blah, blah, blah.

Bottom line, I don't care enough.

And as I was thinking about this, I remembered a situation where my wife came home from the store one day and she walks in the house, and I hear her call me and ask, why is the daughter who at the time was 10 or 11, why is she on the roof?

That was the question I hear.

And I knew she was on the roof.

I could hear her up there.

And I answered, because she's doing her math.

I mean, what's the point of homeschooling if you can't do it on the roof?

Uh that's the wrong answer, by the way.

In such a situation, wrong answer.

Uh but the truth is, like, I didn't care that she was on the roof.

I think she may have even asked.

I don't remember exactly, but I knew she was up there, and she had her school books with her up there, and it's totally fine with me.

Uh, not fine with my wife.

And so she asked, and my answer was, I just don't care.

Maybe I should, but I don't.

Now, parenting analogies are helpful with this list because remember, this is framed around the starting with the little kid, and now Jesus using that as an example for immature believers that should be have more mature believers come alongside them.

That's the flow of the narrative here.

So, parenting and examples actually work really well.

Like, why didn't I stop my daughter?

Because I didn't care that she did it.

And that maps onto spiritual activity very well.

Like, why don't I go confront that person for their sin?

Well, because I don't really care.

I don't care enough about that person, I don't care enough about that sin, if we're just being honest, it fails to meet my caring threshold.

And it's probably true in your life as well.

Secondly, political motivations.

This is very, very common.

Somebody says, I can't go after that person in their sin because of, you know, they're an influential political figure in the church, or because they are uh, you know, represent a voting block kind of thing.

I've heard this so many times.

You know, you can't say something about Catholics not truly believing the evangelical gospel because they make up such an important voting block.

And, you know, if we start to separate them, then it phrase at the voting block and aren't you pro-life, like don't you want pro-life legislation to pass kind of thing?

Mormonism, that's a big one.

Don't critique Mormonism, Mormons are Christians too.

For political endeavors, this kind of big tent idea that you need as many people in the tent as possible, and if you start calling this sin or that sin or letting somebody get sucked into this or that, and you call them out on it, then it starts to fray the tent.

And listen, as far as politics go, that is a that that's a good strategy.

Big tent politics is great.

I mean, the phrase big tent uh politics came into usage with the Republican Party back in the day.

It was designed to be a big tent with as many people, as many perspectives as possible.

That was the idea.

And that makes for wonderful politics.

But it makes for dreadful ecclesiology, very bad church.

To say if we call out this person on their sin or that family on their sin or this or that, then it will undercut what we're trying to do with the political agenda.

Very bad.

Third, I've heard people say we can't go after somebody in their sin because it will be too much for the congregation to bear.

Congregational stress.

You know, people won't understand.

You know, the person's well known in the congregation.

If you confront them, it's gonna make a lot of waves.

What if you read their name to the congregation?

Could you even imagine?

They don't the congregation doesn't know that person that well.

They know of that person, but they don't know them.

They would be so confused.

It's likely they they wouldn't be able to bear it.

R.

T.

France, in his wonderful commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, writes, quote, how easy it is for the work to rescue one individual from sin to be overlooked out of a supposed love for the whole church.

The church leadership, France goes on to say, justifies not going after someone because frankly, it is easier to care for the 99 than to go after the one, and going after the one might spook or scare the 99.

Congregational stress, which you recognize, I put it congregational stress.

That's a phrase I got from France in his commentary, but it resonated with me because it is a very, very common thing to think, you know, if we go after somebody from their sin, that might have a disruptive effect on those who remain behind.

Now we know that's not true because of the rest of Matthew 18.

I'm not saying these are true, these are obviously not good, but they are common concepts.

Fourthly, a false a false concept of love.

You know, in our Western world, we have this idea of love as letting people do what they want to do.

Somebody gave me a blowtorch for Christmas.

Got a little one?

Like a little blowtorch.

Uh one of my kids wants to use it in the house.

The cat hair grows back, I mean.

And of course she recognized, oh, she wants to.

Well, no, out of love for her, she cannot.

Out of love for her, she needs to be corrected.

You see this at every level, right?

From the bottom line of like braces.

There's a little, does the 12-year-old want braces?

Of course the 12-year-old does not want braces.

But out of love, you make the 12-year-old get braces, or whatever, you make your own dental opinions.

I'm just using an example.

Out of love, we sometimes baptize our inaction by calling it love.

And we say, I'm not gonna go after this person or try to win this person back or make a case to this person because I love this person too much.

What's interesting about this is it's not really love, is it?

And Jesus calls it despising the person.

Despising them.

There's one more reason it's not on the slide, because I forgot to put it in the slide, but my fifth reason would be I guess I would say it this way, that you just don't like the person.

Like you're bothered by their sin.

They bug you.

Like they've always been annoying and arrogant because they're immature, and now you see them wander away into sin, and you're like, okay, we all saw that coming.

There might even be part of your heart, and this applies not just to church leadership, this applies to all believers.

There might even be part of your heart where you're actually a little bit happy that they're getting stuck in sin.

Because then everybody will know how shallow they really are, how immature they really are.

There's that temptation.

It's of course a bad temptation.

It's wicked.

But it probably resides in our hearts, doesn't it?

And it is work to go after them.

And Jesus says failure to do the work is despising the little ones.

And it fits with the person, you know?

You don't you don't like him, and he's immature, and he's stuck in the sin, of course, right?

So he's stuck in the sin, he's drinking again, and you're like we've appealed to him to not be a drunkard so many times, and now he's back at it again.

He's immature and he's stuck in his sin.

He gets what he deserves, and you're bothered by him.

Spurgeon has a really great insight onto this.

He says, quote, we must care for the drunkards while they pass the cup.

We must pursue the swearers while we hear them swear.

The profligates, we must mourn them while they're polluting our midnight streets.

But so often we try to wait until we see something better than them, better in them before we go after them.

Shouldn't be that way.

And there's a lot of reasons why.

Of course, you can go down this list.

You should care about people spiritually because of your brothers and sisters in the Lord.

The politic motivations are trash and garbage as much as they are everywhere.

It doesn't excuse them.

The congregational stress, you recognize that it's the body of Christ with the heart of Christ, the mind of Christ, the strength of Christ.

It can endure it.

And you recognize that love is not giving people over to their desires, but calling them to submit their desires to God.

So you recognize all of this as being false.

But there's one reason Jesus gives you at the end of verse 10 that's so important.

I tell you, Jesus says, their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

God has angels that go to and fro throughout the world.

They're ministering servants of Him.

They're fiery angels, the scripture even calls them.

They're before the presence of glory, and they go to the world to do a thousand things, a million things.

They providentially orchestrate events, they send sinners on their sinning way, they protect nations by ways that we don't even understand.

But they're not primarily concerned about kings and empires, although they are also concerned about them, but they're concerned for the little and the immature believers.

Which we sometimes don't understand.

We think that, oh, this guy is a king.

If he got saved, how important would that be?

Or that athlete has so many followers, that movie star, and if they got saved, they'd be so important.

And then if you find a Christian in the high position of authority and you're like, oh, it's so important, they stand with integrity, because think of if the devil could bring that person down, it would have a wide effect.

And I'm sure that's true.

But the flip side is also true.

The most immature believer, the most brand new baby Christian, if the devil can get that person to fall and apostasize, he wins also.

There are ways that an immature believer might even be an easier target than a mature believer.

And so there are angels that protect them.

There's angels that are aware of what's happening.

Now, God's aware also, because he's omnipresent, he's everywhere, he's omniscient, he knows all things everywhere.

He knows what's happening with the most immature believer, but his angels do too.

And his angels are there and they're bringing news of it back to God.

This is the news that is in heaven.

This is what's brought before the throne of God is angels delivering reports about what's happening with new believers, with immature Christians.

Christians.

So God sees.

He sees our apathy.

He sees our indifference.

He sees that sometimes we are reluctant to go fetch someone who has gone astray.

Well, that's a command to do the work of rescue.

That leads to the story.

Consider the shepherd's love.

Consider the shepherd's love.

Jesus shifts gears here, kind of abruptly in verse 12.

What do you think?

That's a jarring change, isn't it?

First it was do the work.

Now he's saying, before you do the work, actually I got a story for you.

Think about this.

Contemplate this.

Engage your mind here.

What do you think?

Pretend a guy's a hundred sheep.

That's a lot of sheep.

Wouldn't be unusual.

It's a lot, but it wouldn't be crazy to see a guy with a hundred sheep.

One of them goes astray.

By the way, the Israeli sheep back back then, they're smaller than if you're picturing like the American sheep in the petting zoo, like the fat American sheep know.

Fat American sheep eat McDonald's, the Israeli sheep eat hummus, they're skinnier.

You can pick up these sheep.

You got a hundred of them, you know, which means they're more of a risk.

A group of foxes could probably take one of these things down.

But he's got a hundred of them.

He's counting them off at night and he finds only 99.

Somewhere from the morning time they went out and the evening time they got back, one is missing.

Now, play this out in your mind because this is a very realistic scenario.

How many times do you think this shepherd would have counted the sheep?

You're counting to a hundred.

You know many of them, of course.

He probably doesn't have names for all 100 of them, but he knows a lot of them.

You start counting.

And you get towards the end, you're like, there's only five or six left, and I'm only at 93.

Like, how confident are you in your count?

Do you count again, probably?

Maybe a third time?

Maybe you separate them like you count pennies at your house into groups of ten.

You know, but they might run around.

You're doing your best, and you're finally you're like, there's no way around it.

One is missing.

What do you do?

What are you supposed to do?

Shepherd thinks about his options here.

There's no good options.

Nothing at this moment is a good option.

Doing nothing, the one is gonna die.

Leaving the 99 puts the shepherd at risk.

This is a rural place.

There are thieves, there are bandits, there are bears, there are lions, there are animals that will attack human beings out there.

In addition to robbers and everything evil in the world.

And the 99 aren't exactly in a you know a zoo either.

So you kind of stuff them in a cave, maybe, or you stuff them in a nook or cranny somewhere.

Maybe you have a little pen that you can put them in, and then you leave them.

And you go looking for the one.

We don't have this experience in our world, but you know what we do have a very close experience to this.

If you ever went and looked for a lost dog or a lost cat, it's not fun.

Like emotionally, it's not fun.

You walk outside, your back porch.

Like, which way do you go?

Do you go right or left?

You don't know.

You're guessing.

I remember it ran away once before and it went right, so you go right.

But you don't even know the whole way you're going that way.

You're still thinking, like, maybe I should have gone left.

I don't know.

You're calling for the dog, you're listening for the dog.

The dog knows your voice.

You know, you can get neighbors calling it.

The dog's not gonna respond to the neighbors.

You know that about your dog, it's not coming to your neighbors, and if you've got a cat, forget about it, it's not coming for anything.

You know, what are you looking for?

Maybe signs of trauma?

Like you see fur somewhere, and then you probably do see it in places.

And you think, oh no, and you look clear, so no, not wrong color or something like that.

He goes out and looks, but notice the first word in verse 13, if he finds it.

There is a universe in that word if there.

If he finds it, oh my goodness.

What are the odds?

What are the actual odds he finds it?

It's not a hundred percent, that's for sure.

It's not nothing either, or he wouldn't go.

It's probably, you know, if he lost him that day, the odds are probably, I don't know, 75% or something.

Just like you looking for your dog.

What are the odds you find it?

Pretty good, but certainly not certain.

And that's why you have this like knot in your stomach the whole time.

Looking around for it, calling for it.

Maybe you hear it.

You hear it the other way.

I I thought I heard it yelp, and so you turn that way and you go, and it's like some crow or something.

But then, if you find it, oh my goodness.

How cool is that?

There's no feeling like it.

You know, have you ever seen a dad walk in the front door with the lost dog in his arms, like kicks open the front door, like a Viking return from conquest.

How amazing is it for the shepherd to come back with the dog in his arms, the sheep in his arms, presenting him to the 99.

Like I did it.

The shepherd's by himself.

There's no party here.

He's not impressing anybody.

It's just his own love for the sheep that he did this.

He's gonna rejoice over finding it more than over the 99 that never went astray.

And that's not the fault of the 99.

And the 99 won't take that personally, will they?

They wouldn't be like, I never ran away.

How come he wasn't so happy to see me today?

I was only number 92.

They get it.

Everybody delights in what's happening.

So it is, verse 14.

Not the will of my Father who's in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

There's so much truth in that one verse.

It brings the analogy home.

We're not talking about sheep and shepherds outside of Bethlehem anymore.

We're talking about God's elect in the world, that he's chosen whom he's gonna save before the foundation of time.

And he's not going to lose a single one of those people.

He doesn't go hunting for the wild beasts, he goes hunting for his own.

He doesn't go hunting for sheep from some other shepherd.

He goes hunting for his own.

And he goes hunting for them while they were yet lost.

While you were still a sinner, Christ died for you.

That Christ left heaven for earth to go after his own.

He came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

He came, he says, to seek and save the lost.

And he will hunt them down and he will find them.

And of course, now the Father and Son are in heaven and the Spirit has been sent to the earth to draw his children to himself, to convert them, to give them faith, to change their hearts, to build them into the church.

And so now there's an immature believer in the church who is one of God's elect for all we know, and they're stuck in sin because they're immature.

Is it God's will to leave that person in sin?

Of course not.

He came from heaven to earth to die for that person.

It's not his will to leave him lost.

Of course it's his will to go get him.

Of course it is.

The Father gave his son for the life of that person.

Is he gonna suddenly withhold a rescue party for him?

Of course not.

He will hunt him down.

People are following the Lord and they wander away.

They make bad decisions, they get stuck in some kind of sin or trespass.

They get ensnared in it.

And they're stubborn and they don't want to turn back.

Now, there is such a thing as apostasy.

There are people, there are, there are weeds in the church.

There are tares in the church, and tares grow up and they leave to go live a life of sin.

And that's in a sense of blessing.

Because it's the way the church is purified.

They went out from us to show that they were never of us.

Praise God for their apostasy, it purifies the church.

But that is not true for God's elect.

God's elect get caught in sin, and you have to go get them.

God will rescue them.

Of course he will.

He won't lose any of his own children.

That's his will.

That's what Jesus says right here.

It's his will to not lose any of his own children.

He will not lose one of them.

But he uses means to keep them.

He uses angels to find them.

He uses his spirit to convict them.

He uses the church to pursue them.

He uses friends to plead with them and plead with them and say, don't do what you're doing, man.

Come on.

That's the means that God uses to keep his children in the church.

Do you understand now why it is so bad to not go after a sinning believer?

To let them go.

Just to let them wander away.

And say, whatever, it's too much work, or they want to do it, or might even be for their own good.

That's confirming in them that they're not part of the church.

That's confirming in them that they're not walking with the Lord.

You wouldn't say that, but that's what it's doing, and that's why Jesus later is going to say, what you bind in earth is bound in heaven, and what you loosen earth, you're playing with live ammo here.

You have to care about them.

You have to go after them.

Because to fail to do so is to basically confess, I don't think that person's saved anyway.

That's what you're confessing.

To fail to act to go after someone, you may as well say, I don't think they're really saved.

Let them wander.

It's the neighbor's sheep.

I don't care.

Even that fails basic biblical ethics, by the way.

The Old Testament says you find your neighbor's ox stuck or lost or whatever, you have to bring it back to him.

But God sends his son to go after the lost sheep.

And of course, this starts with the gospel with the sun leaving heaven and coming to earth.

It doesn't merely end there.

He uses all kinds of means to protect people.

And think of what excuses people use when they refuse to come back.

I've heard them all.

I'm too far gone.

Nobody will take me back again.

I've fallen before.

They gotta be sick.

I bet I frustrated so many people in my sin, which is which is true, of course.

But never to the point where you'd say, we don't want you to repent.

You'd say, Oh, they'll be so mad at me for my sin.

No, they won't.

No, they won't.

You know the kid, I left the neighbor kid lost.

I remember that now.

You might have been wondering what happened to him.

I called out a helicopter, and the helicopter found him with the heat sensors.

He had fallen asleep in the attic of his house.

He was told he couldn't watch video games after a certain hour or whatever, play video games, and so he waited till his parents went to sleep, and then he snuck up into his attic.

His parents told me they didn't even know the kid knew they had an attic.

But he went up there, played on his iPad, fell asleep.

So that's that's bad for a kid to do, right?

Kids, don't do that.

But what do you think he got punished for it?

Of course not.

You know, the dad finds him asleep and is like, yay, they hear on the radio the helicopter is showing something in your attic.

What?

Run up the stairs, grab the kid, throw him on the shoulders, kick open the door.

Yeah.

We found him.

It's an amazing story.

You would never tell the kid, man, you better you better stay asleep up there.

You'll have conversations later, I'm sure.

But not then.

And so it is with us.

You can always turn back to the Lord at any moment.

And the church receives you.

If you feel like you're not loved by anyone, know that the Father loves you.

You feel like your sin has so alienated your friends and family.

That's okay.

Jesus is not going to leave you stuck in the rock somewhere.

He wants you to come back to him.

He wants you to confess your sins.

He wants you to be reconciled at the Lord's table.

He wants you to come back to the fellowship of the saints.

Jesus' last prayer in the upper room, the high priestly prayer, John 17.

Remember what he said?

Father, I thank you.

I have lost none of that which you gave me, not one of them, except for Judas, who was appointed before time to apostasize, except for him.

Everyone you gave me, I'm bringing home.

So I'm not even talking just about these.

I have sheep elsewhere.

I'm talking about all those who are gonna come later who believe on account of the testimony of those that I have here.

That's us.

Jesus thanks the Lord before he goes to the cross.

Says, I'm not gonna lose a single person you gave me, because our God is the one who pursues the lost sheep.

Lord, we're so thankful that you gave your life so that we might live.

You did not leave us in our sins.

I think in my own testimony that how there's no reason I should be a Christian.

None at all.

I wasn't around any, I didn't go to church, didn't read a Bible, didn't know the gospel.

No reason.

But you came and found me.

Such are many of us, Lord.

We have similar testimonies that we were this way and that, and you spent you sent your spirit to and fro to rescue us.

Pray for anyone here this morning who has wandered away and is having a hard time coming back.

I pray that you'd work in their hearts this morning, cause them to confess their sin and to be received by grace.

Pray for our own church, pray for our integrity as we pursue the lost.

Pray for urgency.

Pray for sense of compassion.

Pray that you would do this in our lives.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.