Pastor Brodie Kalamen | Easter Sunday | April 4th, 2021

Thank you for joining us today for our Easter service here at KCC.

My name is Brody Callman.

I'm one of the lead pastors here, and we're so glad to have you joining with us online.

It's uh great to be able to share, let other people know that the service is happening because what a day to be celebrating together.

What a day to be able to be celebrating the message of the gospel, the good news.

So we've entitled this message today, The Father's Love for the Lost.

The Father's Love for the Lost.

And it's a conclusion, we're capping our series called The Homecoming Journey, where we've taken you, hopefully, one step closer to the Father's heart.

And so for those who have been far from God, we want to see you getting closer.

And those who have may have spent a lot of time on your journey, we hope you've taken one step closer.

This message has been for everyone.

And of course, just like every journey, there are obstacles that we have to overcome.

So we've dealt with fear, we've dealt with blame and shame and guilt and all the things that uh trip us up on the journey.

And we've recognized that God's love is greater than all of those things.

And God's love reigns supreme.

And there's nothing more supreme and no day more supreme than the day of Easter when we recognize what Jesus did on the cross and rescued us from whatever pit we were in and put our feet on solid ground.

So I'm excited for this message today and hope you enjoy it with me.

Now the message of Easter is all about the Father completing a mission through Jesus, rescuing as many people as possible with his love for them.

He rescued you and I with his love, demonstrated on the cross, demonstrated through Jesus.

And he gave us a hope for a better today, but also for a better tomorrow.

In fact, a better eternity, many tomorrows to come.

God's life in us and his grace that he's given in us, and that joy in us is going to just continue to grow and grow and grow through eternity.

And he achieved this through the cross, a place of incredible suffering.

But there was a joy in his heart as he saw you and I, and he endured the cross for our sake.

So, have you ever lost something?

I just want to connect you back to those memories where you may have lost something.

And I want to connect you back to the moment of panic when you realized that it was gone.

Or that moment of anxiety where you check your finger.

All those things that you've overcome in life, where you've realized that you've lost something.

And what did you feel when you lost it?

You felt this incredible pressure.

I remember thinking of the one time we lost our keys, and I was searching everywhere.

And this was a time where my uh oldest girl now, who's just about 15 years old, she was just a baby, and she would always take my keys and rattle them.

And I remember searching the house and finally in the garage, I found my keys dropped in a boot.

I don't know how they got there, but I I suggest she was the one walking around with my keys and just dropped them in the boot and thought, you know, I can't reach them, I'll just leave them.

But I remember that moment of being found, finding those keys.

Well, in your life, I'm sure you can have similar experiences, similar moments where something that you've missed over time, perhaps something that you're longing for, that at one point in time of your life you once had, Jesus shared some incredible stories about lost things.

And he knew that telling these stories would identify with every human because every person has a lost part of their heart.

Every person has a lost piece of their soul.

And it's Jesus who helps us find it.

So when we hear his stories, uh he remembers this story, he recites this story over and over and over using different illustrations about lost things that become found.

And he says this so that we might know it personally, but that the world might know it publicly, that God cares for lost people.

God cares for lost people.

The Father cares for his lost children.

So he speaks about this and he speaks about the lost, and he says, Don't forget about this.

I want you to know this.

And he says the same story about the same theme over and over and over to get it into the hearts of people.

Now, Jesus wanted us to know this because there was nothing better, and he wanted you to know that there was nothing more precious than knowing the Father and knowing how much he cared for you.

So the first parable, the first story I'd like to share with you today is this parable of the lost sheep.

I'm just gonna read it for you here, and then we're gonna discuss it for a moment.

It says, Jesus told a story.

He said, Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and loses one of them.

Doesn't he leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?

And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it over his shoulders and he goes home.

Then he calls his friends and his neighbors together and he says, Rejoice with me, let's party.

I found my lost sheep.

I tell you, in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents than over 99 righteous people who have no need to repent.

This is incredible.

Now, we're not closely identifying with sheep on a day-to-day basis in our culture today.

But let's talk about sheep for a bit.

Sheep are considered dumb.

Now, they're not, I don't like to call animals dumb, but if there was a dumb animal, it would probably be the sheep.

These are helpless animals, they're helpless creatures, and they just look so unassuming.

They don't have claws, they don't have sharp teeth, they don't have leathery skin, they can't run very fast, like away from predators, they don't have a loud roar or something that will shock an enemy.

They don't have the ability to camouflage or fly away or do anything like that.

They're just white, fluffy, cuddly, soft sheep.

And they're just something that your parents probably told you to count when you're trying to fall asleep at night because they're that comforting.

Sheep must depend on someone else to defend them.

And whenever you see a flock of sheep, if you call them a flock or a herd of sheep, if we ever see this herd of sheep, you'll see someone around the sheep.

You'll see shepherds, you'll see a sheepdog, you'll see someone there who's dedicated to protecting the sheep, to guide them and protect them.

Without them, they'll generally just wander off and just get lost and become an easy meal for a predator.

When Jesus was eating with people who had, let's put it, a poor reputation, they were politicians, tax collectors, prostitutes, thieves.

They were criminals, people of criminal background, that I'm sure Jesus, as a good Jewish boy, would have been told from his parents from an early age, these are the people you don't identify with.

Jesus was sitting at a table with them, eating with them, connecting with them.

And at that point in time of connecting with them, he actually started to uh demonstrate stories and show stories and showcase a little bit of the Father's heart to the people.

And the Pharisees who were watching, they said, This isn't good for Jesus to be sitting with them.

And when Jesus knew what they were thinking, this is when he began to share these stories because he wanted to address the issue in the Pharisees.

He wanted to address their heart issue.

And so the shepherd is the father in the story, and you and I are those dumb sheep.

And all we like sheep have gone astray.

Everyone's gone our own way.

We've all wandered off at one point.

And you and I all get to decide, and we've decided, hey, at one point in our life, I want to do this on my own.

I want to live life on my own.

And we are the lost sheep that Jesus is speaking of.

Now, the shepherd, represented by the Father, without any concern for himself, he goes and he leaves the 99 and he goes into the dark, he goes over the hillsides, he goes searching and looking for that lost sheep.

I'm sure he must have counted hundred sheep.

99.

Oh man, I probably got it wrong.

I'm sure I missed one.

Count 97, 98, 99.

No, there's one left.

Instead of just leaving it out to wander, he got up and he raced after that sheep.

Now there was a poem.

It was written called The Shepherd's Heart.

And listen to the way this old poem identifies the shepherd.

And you may see a simile to the heart of Christ on the cross.

Says this, but none of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, nor how dark was the night the Lord passed through.

He found his sheep that was lost.

Out in the desert he heard its cry, it was sick and helpless and ready to die.

Lord, who made those blood drops all the way that mark out the mountain's track?

They were shed for one who's gone astray, so the shepherd could bring them back.

Lord, who are the hands that are rent or torn?

They were pierced tonight by many a thorn.

And this identification of the sheep, being lost in at the shepherd, clawing in, climbing over rocky crags, just to get to find that sheep, listening in the night for the sound of the cry of the lost sheep.

And the Bible says that it's a good shepherd who goes and takes care of the sheep and goes and searches after it and doesn't leave it alone.

And that's the heart of Jesus today.

Heart of Jesus is to go out and say, I went to the cross because there was nowhere else I could go that would identify enough and could help enough in actually bringing you home.

So I went to that place.

And just like that shepherd, I looked for you, I sought you out, and I found you, and I did what the shepherd did.

Threw you over my shoulders.

You don't even have to walk home.

I didn't correct you, I didn't berate you, I'm gonna carry you home.

And it doesn't matter if you bleat and scream in my ear, I'm gonna carry you all the way home.

And when he got home, he said, Everybody, the sheep is found.

We found the sheep.

Now let's have a party.

Isn't that the heart of the God?

The heart of the Father towards you and I.

No matter where you are, I'm gonna search you out.

You may have wandered off, but I'm gonna look for you, and I'm gonna search for you, and I'm gonna find you, and I'm gonna throw you over my shoulders.

I'm gonna carry you home.

You don't even have to walk home on your own.

I've got you.

You've been through enough tonight.

I've got you.

Let that just resonate in your spirit today, how much God's love is towards you.

Heaven and earth are gonna party over that one lost sheep that was found.

And heaven and earth party over one individual who's found.

So this sheep is gone away and get comes back.

That's the heart of the good shepherd to bring him home.

Secondly, the parable, he begins to share a second story, this one of a lost coin.

Now, unlike the sheep that wandered by itself, a coin doesn't just wander off.

A coin gets misplaced, lost, on its own.

It just gets put in a place where it should never have been placed.

He says this a woman has ten silver coins, loses one.

She lights a lamp, sweeps the house, searches carefully until she finds it.

And when she finds it, she calls her friend and neighbors together and says, Hey, again, party with me, rejoice with me.

I've found my lost coin.

In the same way, Jesus says it again for the Pharisees to hear in the room, the same way, all heaven, all earth rejoices when one sinner turns to God, repents of his way, says, I'm sorry for the way I've been going.

I was going my own way.

I'm going to turn towards you.

The coin was lost.

And not because it was invaluable, in fact, it was very valuable.

It was a silver token.

But because it was misplaced is why it was lost.

And sometimes we end up in places in our life where we never intended to be.

We are just misplaced.

We missed our place.

And this coin represents those of us who, those of us who've been separated by God and found ourselves so far away that we can't even see the Father, and we forget his connection.

And people can be lost, not only in this world, not only in dark places around the globe, but people can be lost in a good home, in a good school, in a good church.

People can find themselves lost in good relationships.

They just lose their way.

They get lost.

And the coin was lost, unlike the sheep that watered, the coin was just lost and became lost on its own.

And this coin's condition is lost because of neglect.

And the coin may have fallen on the floor, it may have fallen among garbage, it may have fallen around dirt, it may have fallen around all kinds of rubbish on the ground, but that did not change its value.

And you might find yourself today in a place misplaced, and you might find yourself surrounded by garbage, surrounded by things you never wanted to have in your life.

And you don't know how you woke up this morning and found yourself in that place.

But that does not change your value.

And that did not change the value of that coin to the woman.

In fact, the Bible says she didn't just search, she diligently searched it out.

She swept every corner, she lit every lamp she had, she moved all the furniture out of the room, she did a deep clean looking for that one coin.

And that's the heart of God towards us.

The Bible says that God is constantly calling out to us, and there's nowhere you can go where his hand can't reach out and grab you and pull you back.

No far place you can go where he can't find you and you can't call on his name and he'll come and rescue you.

So that's the heart of the God towards us.

It's the heart of the Father towards us.

And we hear in this parable Christ teaching that even those who are indifferent to love, even those who don't know the love of the Father, God can come and reach out and show you his love if you'll allow him, if you'll just open up your heart and welcome him in.

That's the message of Easter.

It's the message that Jesus went to the cross and said, I'm gonna take Father, and I'm gonna take you, and I'm gonna bring you together.

And I'm gonna be that chamber, that voice in the middle saying, You're beloved, you're accepted, you're welcomed.

And that's the heart of the Father through Jesus to you.

It's the heart of the Father to the whole world.

For God so loved the whole world that he gave Jesus.

Not just the select people, but everyone.

Lastly, the parable.

Jesus tells the story of not the lost sheep, the lost coin, and now the lost son.

Now a sheep, yes, is a lovable little creature, and a coin is a piece of material that has great, tremendous value.

But nothing compares to a son, a child.

And Jesus really drove this point home to the listeners, to those tax collectors, politicians, greedy criminals around the table.

He wanted them to know that, and to the Pharisees who were listening outside and listening at the door, he wanted them to know that this is the heart of the Father towards us.

It was like a lost son.

It's one of the most memorable stories that Jesus spoke.

You may have already heard of it.

I'm just going to share with you a piece of this parable, and I encourage you just to let it resonate in your own heart.

Jesus said, A man had two sons.

The younger one said to the father, Father, give me the state for my inheritance.

So the father divided the property between them.

Not long after, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and squandered his wealth in wild living.

And after he spent everything, it was a severe famine.