Love the Lost More

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

Hey, I'm Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and privilege to be able to bring God's word to us this morning.

I know that Thanksgiving is right around the court.

First off, first off, be honest with me.

Have you started listening to Christmas music?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I have too, and it's been wonderful.

My life has had a little pep in it.

I wake up a little happier.

It's just a wonderful thing.

But we all have to realize there's still a whole holiday in front of Christmas, right?

It's called Thanksgiving.

I love Thanksgiving.

I love food, first and foremost, and I love that time with family.

We have all these like meals that we make, these dishes that are really traditional for our home.

We invite our family in and we eat, and then for some really strange reason, which I still haven't figured out in 16 years of marriage, my wife starts a thousand-piece puzzle every Thanksgiving.

It's just such a great time to have this meal with people you love and to be thankful, to have this extra gratitude.

We even have a tradition where we go around the table during our Thanksgiving meal and we talk about what we're thankful for with one another.

Actually, it's personal.

It's not just just like, oh, I'm so thankful to be standing up today.

It's like a, hey, I'm thankful for you, and here's why.

It's such a rich time with our family.

When we're looking at Luke 15, we're in the context of a meal.

Jesus is eating a meal at the ruler of the Pharisees' house.

And there comes some unwanted guests inside of this meal.

And I want you to think for a moment, as much as you probably love Thanksgiving as much as I do, I want you to think and picture in your mind one moment, someone who would show up at the door and ruin everything.

Who's a family member, right?

A brother or sister, a mother or father, uncle, aunt, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, someone you can think in your mind that if they showed up at your door Thanksgiving day would ruin everything, would flood your heart and mind with anger, disappointment, or even hurt.

Fundamentally would cost you that Thanksgiving meal.

Jesus is eating a meal at the rule of the Pharisees' house in Luke 15.

And it doesn't start there.

It actually starts in Luke 14.

It talks about how he went to this man's house to eat.

And there were Pharisees and scribes who were present at this meal.

And Jesus starts to actually talk in these parables.

He takes opportunity to start teaching in the context of this meal because he starts to see how the people present at the dinner start acting, how they start behaving within this time together.

And so he teaches this series of parables.

We have the parable of the wedding feast.

And in this parable, Jesus talks about how you really should not try to sit at the highest place of honor when you come to a meal.

Because here's what could happen.

If there was someone who was to be honored higher than you, think about the shame you would have to experience if the host of the dinner would say, Hey, buddy, I got somebody who's going to take this seat.

You need to go sit down here.

What Jesus says we should do through this parable, he says, you should sit in the seat of humility, not the seat of honor, so that if the host decides to honor you, you move up instead of moving down.

But give the host the space to make that decision for you.

Don't strive to take that for yourself.

Then he gives this parable of a great banquet.

And this banquet is thrown by this uh this wedding party.

And they they're having everyone come in and feast, and they invite all of these people that they know and love to come.

But the problem is no one shows up.

And so what the host of the party says to do is to his servants go out into the highways and hedges and call everyone.

Literally, it says to compel them.

That would be like a persuasive argument.

Why you should come and sit at this table and feast with us.

And the the place is full.

And they ask about, well, what about all the people that you invited that didn't come?

And Jesus says they've got what they wanted, right?

They kind of got their reward.

But then Jesus goes on and he talks about the cost of discipleship.

And he says, unless you're willing to hate your mother and father, unless you're willing to hate your brother or sister, unless you're willing to lose everything and take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy to be called my disciple.

Unless you're willing to bear a cost, you're not worth being called the disciple of Jesus.

And then the last part of chapter 14, he talks about salt.

And he says, if salt loses its flavor, it's useless.

It's useless to such a degree that it's not even worth throwing it on the garbage pile.

That's how useless it is.

As I was studying this, I'm trying to understand why Jesus is talking about this in Luke 14, and then why does he go into the conversation and parables that he shares in Luke 15?

And I think that there's a commentary writer that helps us understand something very critical to this section of the Gospel of Luke.

Philip Graham Riken, he wrote a commentary on Luke.

He says this about this closing statement in Luke 14.

He says it's a lengthy quote, but follow along with me.

In the same way that salt has to be salty in order to be salt, so also a disciple has to be a disciple in order to be a disciple.

This means being a disciple in the biblical sense.

Hating your family, carrying your cross, renouncing everything for Jesus' disciple.

A disciple who does not love Jesus more than anything else he loves is not his disciple.

Disciple who does not carry his cross and daily death to self is not his disciple.

A disciple who does not give everything over to Jesus is not his disciple.

However extreme this may sound, it is Jesus himself who says that unless we do these things, we cannot be his disciples.

So what Jesus says, unless if salt loses its flavor, it's so worthless that it's not even to be beneficial to throw on the garbage pile.

He's talking about the cost of discipleship.

The cost of discipleship that we are called to, that unless we are willing to give everything, to cost us everything to follow Jesus, we're not even worthy to be called one of his disciples.

In fact, I think that all of Luke 14 and Luke 15 are about cost.

What will it cost us?

And so outside of this chapter 14 and Luke 15, we see this outflow of Jesus' teaching on the cost of being his disciple that we come into this parable.

And in verses 1 through 3, this is what we see as we set the scene for Luke 15.

We see grumbling men in need of corrected hearts.

Grumbling men in need of corrected hearts.

As we look at the story, we have to ask, who are the characters in view?

Who are the characters in view?

This is going to help us understand what Jesus is really trying to communicate and tell us with inside of this story.

Well, what just entered the scene at the top of Luke 15 are tax collectors and sinners who were drawing near to Jesus.

Literally means they were pressing in with force to be able to hear the words of life that might be coming out of the teacher's mouth.

They longed to be present in proximity, to be able to hear what he would have to say.

But there's also these other men, right?

Remember, he's having dinner at a leader of the Pharisee's house, and there are scribes present also.

A leader of the Pharisee would be uh called a member of the Sanhedrin.

It was like the top primary council of the Jewish people that established law and order uh for them.

And so you have some of the top reigning officials of the Jewish people, plus the scribes.

Who are the scribes?

Scribes are people who would translate the text and they would make copies of the text of God's holy word so that the people would have access to it.

They had a very rigorous uh uh job of perfectly copying, right, books of the Torah over to new uh parchments or animal skins or so forth like that.

So you have these people present, and what the Bible says happens is as they, as these people, the Pharisees and scribes, see these people, the tax collectors and sinners, drawing into Jesus, they begin grumbling.

Grumbling is literally like this low-toned complaining and murmuring.

You ever been in a situation where like you you you caught out of the side of your ear?

Oh, I heard what you said.

I heard what you you tried to keep it low, you tried to whisper it, I heard what you said.

Now we've got a problem, right?

That's kind of what happened here.

There's this murmuring.

And what are they saying?

This man receives, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

So the Bible tells us that Jesus tells them a parable.

He's literally directing his attention toward the specific people in the story, the Pharisees and the scribes, and he tells them a parable.

His direction is being set toward them because they are grumbling men in need of corrected hearts.

And so in verses 4 through 10, we're introduced to this parable, and we see this a passionate pursuit of costly things.

A passionate pursuit of costly things.

As Jesus sets the direction of his teaching on the Pharisees and scribes, the Bible says that he tells them a parable.

Now, this is one, all of Luke 15 is a single parable broken into three scenes or chapters.

In scene one, we have a lost sheep.

In scene two, we have a lost coin, and in scene three, we have a lost son.

And Jesus is trying to get their attention, he's trying to show them that there is something about that which is lost that communicates costly.

There's something important to focus on here, and it's the relationship of the language between lost and costly.

He's not trying to use the language of lost as something derogatory or demeaning.

We can tend to use lost.

That person is lost.

What you're saying is that person's so far gone that there's no hope, or you don't have value or worth on that individual because they're just a lost person.

That's not what Jesus is actually trying to communicate.

When he's communicating the language of lost, he's communicating cost.

I don't know about you, but I was a radical 90s kid.

And uh I had pogs, and I had these slammers, right?

And these I had this one rubber slammer that I would just destroy sixth graders' lives with.

They gave up all hope of any future that they thought they had because I would just rake in all of their pogs.

If you don't know what pogs are, there was a thing called milk caps back in the day.

That was before my time.

Maybe that doesn't resonate either.

Anyway, here's the deal.

I had binders full of these pogs.

I had sleeves that I could set them in and I could look at them and know which one I was gonna just mess this kid's world with.

And I loved these things.

But over the years, I've lost them.

I don't know where the heck they are.

They're in the bottom of a landfill for all I can know.

There was nothing that tears me up inside because I don't have them anymore.

There, there's, I mean, if I found them like in my mom's basement, I'd geek out for like an hour and then I'd be done with them again, right?

Or maybe I'd bring them here and we'd have a tournament.

But um but but it doesn't like keep me up at night.

It doesn't tear my heart that these things are gone.

Why?

Because ultimately there was no value to them.

They weren't costly to me.

And so to lose them is no sweat off my back.

But there are things within our lives that if we lost them, the cost that they bear, the value that we place on them, would tear us up inside.

We would be, we would not be able to sleep or rest until we were actually able to possess it again.

Maybe you can think of something within your own possession that, man, if I lost this, right?

Maybe an heirloom piece of jewelry, or maybe something that, a note that someone hand wrote to you that you don't have in your life anymore, or some kind of thing that if you lost it, it would wreck you.

Because there is costliness applied to it.

All three items are referred to as lost the sheep, the coin, and the sun, because of their inherent cost or value.

But Jesus eases us into this parable with scene one and two of the lost sheep and the lost coins.

Let's talk about the lost sheep.

We have the shepherd who has a hundred sheep, and he loses one.

And what does he do?

He leaves those sheep, the 99, and it says that he was in the countryside and that he goes forth to reclaim this lost possession.

Something that was so valuable and costly for him, that he was willing to leave the 99 to find the one.

And when he finds the one sheep, what does he do?

The shepherd puts the sheep over his shoulders and he carries it back home with great rejoicing, Jesus says in his parable.

And then when he comes back home, what does the shepherd do?

He invites his friends and his families to come and rejoice with him, because behold, the one sheep that was lost that was so costly to the shepherd, has been found and been brought home again.

And so it's a reason to throw a party.

Jesus talks about this kind of uh the main idea, right?

He's the punchline of the story here in verse 7.

Luke 15, verse 7, he says, Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

Luke 15:7

Maybe this didn't communicate to the Pharisees.

Shepherds were lowly people.

They were people who actually had to live outside of the city most of the time.

They were seen as some of the lowest of society within Jewish culture.

So maybe this didn't really resonate with them.

So he says, okay, let's hit your pocket.

So story number two is the lost coin.

And he says, This there's a woman who has ten silver coins and she loses one.

And Jesus sets the scene to help us understand the condition of which the woman starts to search for this coin.

It says that she actually lights a lamp, right?

So there's this sense of darkness where hard to see.

And that she would sweep the house, literally, that she would turn over her furniture.

She would tip tables and set uh couches on their side, just so that she could look under and try to find this coin.

And when she does, what does she do?

She calls her friends and neighbors to come in and rejoice with her, because this costly possession that was lost has been reclaimed, has been found.

And Jesus delivers the punchline of this scene of the parable.

And he says this in 1510.

Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

We see three common threads throughout these first two scenes.

Three common threads throughout these first two scenes.

The first one is a costly possession lost.

There's a costly possession lost.

The second thing we see as a common thread is a passionate pursuit to reclaim it.

And the third thing that we see is rejoicing when it's found.

Something interesting happens in the third scene of this parable with the lost son.

The pattern's broken.

The pattern is broken.

Yes, there is a costly possession lost, but it stops there.

In the third scene of the lost son, there is no passionate pursuit to reclaim him.

And this is where Jesus is going to really nail home the emphasis of the point that he's trying to make.

Jesus is working to communicate to his audience a message of costly lost things, the great value and worth that they have to their owner, and the passionate pursuit that the owner will go to find and to reclaim them.

Yet it would seem as if the first two scenes were insufficient to communicate his message with the weight necessary to his audience.

So he moves into scene three in the story of a lost son.

And here in this scene, the pattern in the parable is broken.

We see a costly possession lost, but we see no passionate pursuit to reclaim it.

And so in verses 11 through 13, what we see is the cost of coming home.

The cost of coming home.

And you've probably heard it in such a way that really focuses on the younger brother and how radical of a life he lived, but how radically of an acceptance he received by the Father.

And look how much God loves us that he would welcome even these younger brothers into his home.

It's a great story.

It's a great point.

There's truth to it, but it's not the reason Jesus is telling the story.

It's not the emphasis of the point that he's trying to make as he's sharing this parable with his audience of the Pharisees and the scribes.

Remember the audience.

Remember the grumbling men.

And in this parable, we don't just have one younger brother, but we have two sons.

Two brothers.

A younger one and an older one.

We need to pay attention to both.

But let's start with the younger brother.

What happens here?

As Jesus sets the scene of this parable, there's this younger son who comes to his father and he asks for his half of the inheritance now.

Now we have to try to understand what that means.

See, most of us understand that in a uh a framework of liquidity, right?

If your child came to you and said, I want my half of the inheritance now, you would be like, okay, kind of stings a bit, but uh let me sell some of my stocks that I have, right?

Let me see my 401k or my IRA and I'll get this money out and then I'll hand it to you, and this is what your half of the inheritance looks like.

There wasn't a liquidity factor back in those days.

What this father would have to have done to be able to hand his son something, his half of the inheritance, he would actually have to sell all of his possessions, his land, his livestock.

He would have to sell it so that he could have something to give to this younger son of his as a portion of his inheritance.

And so imagine the length that the father would have to go to to be able to hand his son.

So you can't hand him half of your land.

You can't just hand him, pick up the dirt and say, here you go, son.

Because remember, in this parable, what the son does, he takes his half and he goes and squanders it.

And so this father would have to go to great stakes to be able to take this half of the land and resources, sell it, to be able to give it to this younger son.

But there's something else.

We don't receive our inheritance until our father dies.

That's kind of how this thing plays out, right?

And so this younger son is actually looking his father in the eyes and telling him, I would rather you be dead and have your stuff than have to be stuck here in a relationship with you.

One moment longer.

Imagine the dishonoring that took place there.

Imagine the hurt and the pain that that father had to feel.

But for some reason, we're not given the reason in the story, he decides to go along with it.

And so he hands his son his half of the possession.

And then he goes off and he squanders all of it, the Bible says.

Actually, Jesus says in the parable this phrase, he squandered his property in reckless living, women and wine, and it was gone.

Verse 15 picks up, so he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs, and he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

This dude is in such a bad state.

He is in such despair that he has squandered all of his inheritance, that he is now a hired servant to a Gentile, and he is has the task of feeding his pigs.

You have to understand how disgraceful this was for a Jewish person.

What low depths they have had to have sunk to to be in this place.

So not only does this dude feel entitled that he should get all of his inheritance now, not only has he looked his father in the eyes and said, You're better off dead to me, and not only has he squandered everything that he was given, but now he finds himself in such a low state that he's a hired servant of a Gentile feeding his pigs and wishing that he could just eat the slop of the troughs of which the pigs feast.

It's here, right now, Jesus has the full attention of the Pharisees and scribes because they would hate this young man.

He dishonored his father.

You have to realize how high of a value honoring your mother and father is in Jewish culture.

Should be to us too.

It's part of the commands of God for us as people.

You have to understand the way that they understood money and inheritance, and he squandered all of it.

You have to understand the way that they view Gentile people and unclean animals that they would stay away from.

They would despise this young man at this point.

And Jesus has them right where he wants them.

Because through the story, they would fail to see that young man as a costly possession lost, and they would start to view him as a worthless disgrace, unwelcomed.

And then he flips the story.

The younger brother comes in and he's comes to his senses with inside the pig troughs, and he convinces himself that he can go to his father's house because even hired servants in his father's house live better than this.

And we're going to read out of Luke 15 the two responses that take place as this younger brother comes home.

There's the response of the father, and then there's the response of the elder brother.

The father says this in Luke 15, uh starting with chapter 20.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his hand, shoes on his feet, bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.

For this my son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

And they began to celebrate.

We need to pause and think about something.

That robe, that ring, those shoes, that fattened calf, whose was it?

It was the older brothers.

Remember, everything that the father had was already sold and dispersed.

The younger brother got his half, the older brother got his half.

And when that son came home, when that younger brother came home, everything that would be given over to him from that point on cost the elder brother something.

That was his robe, that was his ring, that was his shoes, that was his fattened calf.

And we see the response of the elder brother next.

It says this.

Now his older son was in the field.

He came down and drew near to the house.

He heard music and dancing, and he called one of the servants and asked what things these things meant.

And he said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.

But he was angry and refused to go in.

His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never give me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.

But when his son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.

And he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive.

He was lost and is found.

Let me say that again.

They failed to view that which was lost as costly, and they failed to see any value in it costing them to bring him home.

That's the heart of Luke 14 and 15.

It's a message of cost.

The older brother was unwilling for his younger brother's return to cost him.

Ultimately, he was unwilling to bear the cost of the gospel.

He was unwilling to bear the cost of being a disciple of Jesus.

And our main idea this morning is simple but profound.

Jesus loves the lost.

That he loves the lost.

He would go at any length necessary to reclaim these costly possessions back to himself.

He is the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one.

And when he finds them, when he leaves his country of heaven and comes to this rugged terrain of earth, he chases us down, finds us, puts us on his shoulders, and carries us back home.

He's the woman in the house looking for the coin who lights the lamp.

Christ is the light of the world who came into our darkness that he might find the lost coin, the possession of cost, and reclaim it for his own.

And in that moment, when he found you in the darkness, when he found you in the thorns and thistles of your running away from him, he rejoiced.

Because Jesus loves the lost, because costly possessions are worth the cost of finding them.

Jesus was willing to pay any cost to bring us home.

Is it not good news that Jesus loves the lost?

We have to wrestle with three truth statements.

Jesus loves sinners.

That one's kind of easy for us to handle, right?

I am a sinner.

That one might be tougher for some of us.

But here's the good news.

Jesus loves me.

You need to hear that this morning.

Jesus radically loves you.

And that is something that needs to overwhelm your soul on a daily basis.

Jesus loves you.

You are a costly possession that was lost, and he was willing to pay whatever it took, whatever it cost him, to chase you down, to find you, and to reclaim you as his own.

You see, the elder brother should have been the one who went out to find the younger one.

That was his responsibility.

But instead of seeing his younger brother as a costly possession lost, he saw him as a worthless disgrace, unwelcomed back home.

Jesus is the better older brother.

Jesus is the true older brother who goes out to find us, who searches for us in the darkness, who reclaims us as his own.

Many of us, we struggle with this.

We struggle with the idea of loving the lost.

We struggle with the reality that it's going to cost us something to actually love lost people the way that the Bible calls us to.

I think there's two different perspectives that we tend to operate within, but is really the same coin looking at it from two different sides.

One of the ways that we tend to do this is uh some of us we keep the lost in the pig pen.

We keep the lost in the pig pen.

Here's what I mean by this.

Some of you have a compassionate heart toward lost people.

And you press in, you you seek them out, you you try to find them, but when you do, you are so scared of the cost of relationship.

You are so terrified of the cost of social equity.

You are so scared of the cost that when you find them, you keep them in the pig pen.

In the slop and mess and filth of their sin.

And you say things like this God loves you just the way you are.

You don't need to change.

Everything that you're doing is just fine.

As long as you feel good about it, as long as you are happy, as long as you can have some sense of satisfaction in your life.

You're good just like you are.

God loves you.

The problem is you don't love them.

You love yourself.

And you're saying those things because you're so afraid of the cost of the relationship if they reject you because you say you gotta change.

You have to change.

There has to be transformation.

There has to be new birth.

There has to be new life.

There has to be righteousness lived out in you.

You can't just stay in the pig pen.

You've got to get out and come home to the Father's house.

Because it's there that the younger brother was washed clean and instead of the rags that he wore, he was put on a robe.

There was a transformation that took place.

Was it motivated and informed and empowered by the radical and relentless love of God?

Absolutely.

But there was transformation and change.

He didn't stay in the pig pen.

We offer cheap grace too often that has no power to actually save anyone.

God's grace is not cheap.

God's grace is costly because it communicates the cost of Christ Himself, but also the cost of following Him.

It is through the gospel we are born again.

Not to live unchanged, untransformed lives, but to live new, changed, transformed lives.

God loves us so much, He carries us out of the pig pen.

But some of us, we keep the lost from coming home.

We keep the lost from coming home.

I think it's fascinating.

I've observed this throughout my Christian life.

I think it's fascinating how many of us are saved as younger brothers and quickly turn into elder brothers.

We turn into these people of self-righteousness and unbiblical judgment.

We put arm's length distance between us and others, and we put unnecessary barricades before the entry of the kingdom.

The Pharisees were well known for this.

You see, at the heart of who they were, they saw the law of God as insufficient.

They saw the law of God as something that needed to have rules and customs and traditions added to it so that it could actually be sufficient.

And so they added all of these different traditions, customs, ceremonies, laws on top of God's laws.

They made unnecessary barricades for God's people to come to him.

Ultimately, they kept people from coming home.

And we do that all the time, right?

We become this religious people that don't realize for us to bring in the younger brother home, to bring him out of the pig pen, means that he's gonna sit in this seat of filthy mess.

He doesn't get cleaned up first and then come home.

It's when he's home, the father falls on his neck and begins the process of identifying him with himself.

Too many times we present Christianity as if you've got to get cleaned up first, then you can come to the Father, then you can come to our church, then you can be a part of what we're doing.

I pray that there's a day when this church is so messy with lost children who have come home to the Father that we are having to wrestle through all kinds of issues of sexuality and gender identity and worldview and uh you name it, right?

It's a mess of a place.

But we're willing to be long-suffering.

We're willing to endeavor with them, we're willing to walk alongside people as they experience the freedom and beauty and liberty of the gospel, and that they trust in the Spirit to bring that transformation to them.

But they're not gonna run on day one.

They're gonna try and take a step and fall over, and then what are we gonna do?

Hopefully, we pick them up, be the strength in their weakness, and say, I'll walk with you down this road as you stumble your way toward the cross.

That's what I hope sacred mission becomes.

A place who so radically loves the lost that we're willing to pay the cost of our comfortable Christianity, of the comfortable little church that we're building.

Right?

I am so, I want us so desperately to stop growing by people who are just dissatisfied with the church that they came from.

And that we're growing because we are reaching the lost at a significant cost to ourselves.

And our baptism services are full of people who experience the relentless and wonderful and glorious love of Christ because you were willing to pay the cost to find them, to reclaim them, to bring them home.

That's a better story, isn't it?

If you're here because you've dissatisfied, praise God.

Well, I think we're pretty awesome.

I'm really glad you're I'm not saying, you know, get out of here.

I'm saying, and I understand a need for that at times.

I'm saying, guys, just ask yourself, how much effort do you put into trying to get your friends to leave their church that you don't like to come to yours?

And what if you put that much effort into people who don't even know Jesus and you are sharing the gospel with them?

Does that resonate with anyone?

Like, do we love the lost?

You see, both are unwilling to pay the cost of discipleship.

One's unwilling to pay the cost of relationship and social equity, the other is unwilling to pay the cost of having their comfortableness wrecked, of having their cleanliness messy.

Ultimately, because both fail to see those who are lost as costly, as worth it.

The beauty of the gospel for us church is that Jesus chased down the loss at the cost of his own life.

He was willing to do whatever it took.

He was willing to bankrupt heaven for you.

Why?

Because he didn't see you as a worthless disgrace who would be unwelcomed within his kingdom.

He saw you as a costly possession that was lost, that he was willing to do whatever it took to reclaim you as his own.

That's the gospel.

That's what we are called to as followers of Jesus.

To love the lost, fundamentally at its root, is a message about cost.

A cost that you have to pay and a cost that we have to apply to image bearers of Jesus as worthy possessions to reclaim for his glory.

Listen, we're in a time and a season where it's probably the most magnified I've ever known to look across the aisle at an image bearer of God and say, you're a worthless disgrace, unwelcomed in my presence.

Maybe it's the way that they're gonna vote on Tuesday.

Right?

If you're a Democrat, if you're a person who is gonna vote blue, if you're gonna not vote the way that I think that you should vote, you're tempted right now, higher than ever, to see that person as a worthless disgrace rather than a costly possession.

If you encounter someone who is uh uh propping up or an ally of the LGBT movement, or you find someone who's struggling with sexuality and gender identity, or you find someone who's trying to wrestle through the understanding of social injustice and what does ethnicity play in it, and do black lives matter in the way that they're communicating it?

There are many of you who will look across the aisle and you will say you're a worthless disgrace rather than a costly possession.

We are so tempted with this right now, and most of us because we are filling our hearts and souls with the ridiculous, ungodly content of the news media rather than the rich beauty of the gospel and the words of God that give us life?

When the Holy Spirit came into your life, he took that heart of stone and he put in your chest a heart of flesh.

How much of our effort is being put into recalcifying that thing?

Should not our effort be to keep it tender, to keep it soft, to keep it with a deep, deep love for the lost.

Because that was you.

That was me.

I was lost, lost.

You imagine a pool of sin and me just backstroking in it like Scrooge McDuck.

That's basically what my life was like.

You name it, I participate in it mostly.

There's some things we'll keep off the table, but nonetheless, I was a younger brother.

And you know what I experienced?

I actually uh I was a I uh I had family members who who thought I was a worthless disgrace.

I had people in the in the church community that my family went to that that thought I was a worthless disgrace.

I had people in my life that did not see me as a costly possession.

And I praise God for two of them, one for Jesus Himself.

But secondly, my wife saw me as a costly possession, and she chased me down in some slum apartment in Dayton where I was living in the thick of sin, and she showed me the gospel.

My wife loved me.

She saw me as a costly possession that was worth the cost to her to come and find me.

Jesus does that for each and every one of us, and he calls us to do the same.

As we close down this sermon, I my heart for us is that we would love the lost like Jesus.

That we would love the lost like Jesus.

Before we started this, I told you to think about a person who, if they showed up at your door, would wreck your Thanksgiving.

Why?

I said, because it would it would cost you.

It would cost you the idea and imagery of what you thought that Thanksgiving day was going to be like.

It would cost you uh feelings and emotional energy and maybe pain and heartache.

Would you be willing to love that person the way that Jesus loved you?

Would you be willing to at any cost to yourself see them as a costly possession worth chasing down and reclaiming?

Would you love them the way you've been loved?

And so you have a great opportunity.

You have a great opportunity to do that, right?

On your seat in front of you, there's invite cards.

This is kind of an easy one, right?

You can like you throw this at your barista's face or or uh slide it under your Denny's pancake plate, whatever.

Um this is like, hey, come to church with me.

Maybe you know someone that you want to invite to church.

Praise God, invite them to church.

I would love you to do that.

Take that card, invite someone, a coworker, family member, parent on your kids' soccer team.

Invite them to come and sit with you, to hear the gospel, to eat lunch with you after church next Sunday.

But more than that, trying to keep the bar low, right?

More than that.

Open the front door of your home and invite them across the threshold.

Share a meal with them.

Sit across from them and share a cup of coffee.

Be present with them.

That's what the Bible's calling us to do.

And I get, I'm thankful if you invite friends and family to church and they're lost and they hear the God, praise God.

But let it cost us something more.

Where people that we don't see eye to eye with, that we that we tend to view as worthless disgraces, we invite in and it cost us a meal, hard work, preparation, time, energy, conversation, just to communicate the very real truth that to God, they're a costly possession worth the blood of his own son to reclaim for himself that they might truly have life.

Let's pray.