Episode Transcript
I think you will all know the three stories that the Lord Jesus told that we have read together in the 15th chapter of Luke. And I want you just this evening to refresh your memories concerning these three stories and by the grace of God to learn together some lessons that they teach us.
You will remember that the Lord Jesus told these three stories in answer to a situation which he saw developing around him. He was as he was speaking and ministering as he was moving amongst the people, he was drawing to himself all those who were in need.
The word here that the charge with which the Lord Jesus was charged was that he this man receiveth sinners and he eats with them. These were people who had very real and great need. They were people who knew their need.
They were people who recognised their need. They knew that others looked upon them as sinners. And they were were able to recognise the fact that they were indeed just like that. They had a great need.
Many of them were outcasts from society. Many of them had been wrecked by life. By the circumstances of life or different situations or relationships. Somehow other through life, these people had been shipwrecked in one shape or form.
And now, as the Lord Jesus came onto the scene, he began to draw these people to himself like a magnet somehow or other these people who could find no answer in religion, who could find no real help in all the service, religious service that was being performed around them and the Jewish people were an exceedingly religious people. They found in the Lord Jesus something that drew them inwardly, drew them somehow in spite of themselves to Him. And they found that they could pour out their needs to Him.
They could somehow or other just be themselves. They could talk with him. And somehow they knew inwardly that he was the only one who could answer them. And the Pharisees and the scribes who were, as it were, the religious leaders of the day looked very much askance at this movement.
They felt that this was something quite wrong. The Lord Jesus was consorting with the wrong kind of people. If he was a prophet, if he was a man of God, if he had something from God, then he should be finding his fellowship, finding his friends and so on amongst the religious people of the day.
Instead, he was drawing what they considered to be the scum to himself. He was drawing somehow or other all those people who by the very circumstances of their lives had somehow or other come to the point of disillusionment, disappointment and despair.
And so the charge was this man receiveth of sinners. And the Lord Jesus answered them, not directly, but he answered them as he often did by telling some stories. And he told three stories. The first story was of a shepherd who had 100 sheep.
His flock consisted of 100 sheep and one of the sheep somehow or other got astray. And when they came back to the fold in the evening as I was saying this morning as the sheep passed through the little opening into the fold and as they were counted one by one when he came to the toward where the end he found 99. The hundredth wasn't there.
I have no doubt that he counted through them all again to make sure. But it was so. One was missing and he said which of you, if you had a hundred sheep and one was missing would just leave it? Would you not leave the ninety and nine?
And would you not go right back to wherever you'd spent the day? And would you not seek and search until you had found that sheep, until you could bring it home on your shoulders and say to everyone come and rejoice with me.
I found the sheep that I have lost. And then he told them another story of a woman. He said, evidently there must have been many women there, they weren't quite so interested in the story of the sheep.
But he said, which woman who lost one of the ten pieces of silver that were hers would not absolutely search high and low from top to bottom in her house until she found that one piece of silver. Now, perhaps it doesn't make a lot of sense to us.
Not only was a little coin of silver of tremendous value in those days, but the ten pieces were on a chain which even today Bedouin women wear around on their head. That is the sign that they are a married woman.
And if she lost one of those silver coins from the chain on her head, it was no longer the same. It hadn't got the same symbolism. It didn't mean the same thing. It was like wearing an engagement ring and the stone had been lost.
She would have been most concerned and most worried until she could find that one piece of silver that she had lost. And so, of course, it all begins to make sense. When she finds the coin she goes to her neighbours and she says you know, that thing I was so worried about, that coin that I had lost,
I found it. Rejoice with me. And then he told us perhaps the greatest and certainly the loveliest story of all, the story of a father who had two sons and the youngest son wanted to get away from the restrictions and the limitations of home.
And he came to his father and he asked to have his share in his father's money, and his father gave it to him. And the youngest son, a few days later, went off into the far country and spent his days, as it puts in our version, in riotous living.
Darby translates it in debauchery. He just let everything go to the winds. And he lived, no doubt, to the full in pleasure, in every form of pleasure, in every way that he could satisfy himself, along every level of his life he sought to answer his need and to have a really good time.
But there came a day when he'd spent everything and all his friends who had been so close to him and enjoyed so much spending his money with him were now nowhere to be found. They would not help him.
No one would help him. No one would come to him. So he found that the whole of the society in which he had grown up was now against him. They would not know him. They would not speak to him. If they did speak to him, it was only in a condescending tone.
And so, in the end, he came down to a level where he went out to feed pigs. And that, to the Jew was the most degrading and the lowest form of work that he could possibly do. You know that the Jew was not allowed, and is not allowed to eat pork, let alone keep pigs.
And to the Jew, and especially the noble Jew from wealthy and educated cultured background as this boy had it was the last thing that could possibly happen in dishonour and disgrace. But it says he was so hungry. He had no money.
He was not able to buy food, that he would have eaten the very food with the pigs. He would have eaten that which they were eating. And then it was, in that condition, said the Lord Jesus, he suddenly came to his senses.
Oh, he said, what a fool I've been. I've wasted my whole substance and life in these things that don't mean anything, that are valueless. He said, and how many of my father's hired servants live much better than I? I will go to my father.
I will say to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and I've sinned against thee. Make me as one of your hired servants. Don't take me in as a son anymore, just make me as one of your hired servants.
And so the son went back. But the Lord Jesus said, as he was planning in his heart what he was going to say to his father, how he was going to humbly say to his father, don't take me as a son. I've disgraced you.
I've disgraced the family. I've wasted all the money you give me. Don't take me in as a son. Just take me and hire me, engage me as a servant. The father was up on the roof and he saw, as evidently from it's implied in the story, the father went regularly up day by day to wait and to watch, to see. How many months, how many years the father waited and watched daily. But this day the father saw. And as the figure came nearer, he could begin to distinguish that it was a youngish person. And as it came even nearer, he saw that it was his son.
And it says, the Lord Jesus so beautifully put it, he could not wait any longer. He did not wait for any excuses. He did not wait for any explanations. The father went down, he didn't even tell the servants.
He didn't tell the other members of the family. He fled down the stairs. Out through the house, down the little road, until he came to his son, and it says, he embraced him and kissed him. My version says, kissed him much, but I love the way Darby puts it, literally kissed him all over. There was no need for any explanation. There was no need for any excuses. There was no need to try and somehow give an answer to the, the father understood. The boy had learnt his lesson.
And, you know, the boy began, oh Father, I've sinned against Heaven and against Thee. And he was just going to say, make me as one of thy hired, and a father wouldn't listen anymore, but he said to the servants, bring forth quickly the best robe and put it on him, and a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and kill the fatted calf, and let us have a feast, and let us be merry.
For this my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. Those are the three stories, the Lord Jesus told. I don't know what happened to the Pharisees and the scribes. I only know that if I'd been one of the Pharisees and scribes, I would have vanished.
That was the way the Lord Jesus answered them. Now, what did the Lord Jesus mean? Did he just like to tell stories? What is the meaning? There are, of course, a multitude of lessons that we can draw from these three wonderful stories.
I believe the Lord Jesus has given them to us in order that we might draw from them inexhaustibly. But I want to suggest to you this evening that there are four lessons that we can learn from these three stories that will be of help to us all.
Keeping within the context, we can find four lessons that the Lord Jesus was seeking to underline in the eyes of those Pharisees and scribes and in the eyes of all those who were in his presence, who were in such great need.
And I want to suggest you that the first one is quite obvious. In all three stories, something is lost. That's all. In every one of these three stories, something is lost. In the first, it is one of the sheep.
In the second, it is the silver, one of the ten silver coins on the chain on the head of the wife. In the third, it is a son who is as lost as the sheep or the coin, as far as the father is concerned.
And what does this teach us? It teaches us one great fact for which you can find evidence in your own life and which you can find evidence in history and for which you can find evidence in the international scene today.
It is this humanity is lost. Humanity is as lost as that one sheep, as lost as that one silver coin, as lost as that younger son. The Lord Jesus was seeking to teach them, to instruct them, to reveal to them, to show to them that humanity had somehow or other lost the path.
It was right out of the way of God. It had lost its relationship with God, it had lost its knowledge of God, it had lost its union with God. Humanity is a lost creation. Somehow or other humanity has got out of touch with God.
Oh, we've only got to look at human history to see the truth of that. Something has happened in humanity. Why in all the thousands of years of human history has it not been possible for men to find the utopia that they look for?
Why is it not possible that they can find the permanent peace that they are all in quest for? Why is it that they can never find satisfaction? Why must human history be one long story of misery and evil and so much that is unhappy?
A story of carnage and of bondage of man's cruelty to man. I want to suggest that humanity has lost. It has lost its reason for living. It's lost its destiny. It's lost its hope. It's lost its goal. It's lost the basis for life. Somehow or other, humanity has careered off onto a course of its own making. It has run away from God.
Is this true that I say? I can point you to the first chapters of the book of the Bible and I can show you how at the very beginning when humanity was created by God and put on probation. It chose a path in disobedience and defiance of God, which was to lead it into the catastrophe and tragedy that we find ourselves in today.
And we have thousands of years of history to prove the point. No amount of getting together, no amount of alliance, no amount of yearning and energy and work has been able to produce a lasting peace of any kind.
But we don't have to look at history. We don't even have to look at the contemporary scene. We've only got to look into our own lives if we're honest. Who is a really happy man or woman? Who is a man or a woman who has real peace?
Why is it that our mental homes are filled with people? Why is it that nervous disorder is found everywhere like today? Why is it that there seems to be no real, solid inward peace in men and women? Why is it that so many live in a state of civil war within?
Why are you, why are you and I, why are we always searching for something, always thinking that if we had that which is out of our grasp we would be happy and when we've got it, we find it turns to ashes in our hands.
What is it? I want to suggest to you that we're lost. We're lost. Did any of you, when you were children ever have an experience of being lost? Can you ever remember when you were a little child whether somehow or other you ever got lost, even for a few moments? Can you remember the horror of being lost? Oh, it was terrible. All those strange faces that were looking at you all those strange voices that were trying to help you. It was all so strange.
And somehow you felt so lonely inside and so unhappy inside and so miserable inside that all you wanted to do was to cry. That's only a very small picture of what's happened to humanity. Humanity is lost.
And though it's trying to find along every single avenue but the right one the answer to it's being lost, answer to its need, it can't find it, and it doesn't matter where it turns or what it tries, still it ends in a fiasco.
Why is this? Because I want to suggest that humanity is lost, terribly, unhappily lost. And it doesn't matter where we were born or what our background is, whatever kind of education we have had, we are all lost.
We are born into a world that is lost. It's out of touch with God. Oh, there's a lot of religion in it. There's a lot of man made answers in it that don't work. There's a tremendous amount that is banded about in one shape or form.
But it's a lost world, a sad and a lost world. That's the first lesson we can learn from these three stories. What is the second lesson we can learn? I think we can learn in every one of them that there was someone searching for what was lost.
In the first story, it was the shepherd, and he would not rest until he found that which was lost. In the second story, it was the wife. She would not rest till she had turned everything upside down, swept out every corner, even those corners that hadn't been swept for years, until she found the little coin that was lost.
And the third picture, we have the story of the father who could not rest, who could not settle down to being without his son. But day in, day out, night in, night out, he waited and waited and waited, because he could not bear the separation from his son.
But he knew that it was impossible for him to go out to his son. He had got to let his son learn his lesson. In each three, there was someone who was seeking, someone who was loving, someone who was in earnest over that which was lost.
And I want to suggest that the second lesson we can learn from these three stories is this that the Lord Jesus was teaching us that God has never rested and will not rest till he can find that which is lost.
This is one of the loveliest and most wonderful pictures the Lord Jesus ever painted of the Father in the Gospel. It is the picture of a father who just cannot rest until what is lost is found. I say that's the most wonderful story of God, a picture of God.
And we may sometimes have many real and legitimate questions about human history and about the contemporary scene. We may wonder at times whether we would dare to question God about it all. But there's one thing I want you to see that whether we can understand it or whether we can't, the Lord Jesus taught us that the Father was seeking that which was lost.
He had such a love for that which was lost that he was prepared to leave everything that was safe to go out to find it. He was prepared, whatever the cost, to somehow or other bring back the one sheep that had gone astray, to find the one coin that had got lost, to bring back and reinstate and restore the son who had gone out from the house.
The Bible is the story of God's quest for man. This is the great difference between all religions and Christianity. The Bible is the revelation of God's quest for man. Religion is just the expression of man's quest for God.
Why is the Bible unique and singular? Why is what we call the gospel the greatest thing that was ever proclaimed in human history? Because it was simply the story of God's quest for us. The Bible from the beginning to end is the story of what happened to humanity at the beginning, how it fell away from God, the path that it has taken and the way God has followed it, step by step, down through history until he was able to answer it in the Lord Jesus Christ and was able to open a way by which it could find God again. That's the second thing these three stories teach us. And I want to say that God is not just in quest for humanity generally but for each one.
What a wonderful story this is here the Lord Jesus paints for us when he says, you know, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than ninety and nine just or righteous persons. Heaven, if I may say so, goes wild with joy over one single man or woman who turns to God.
There is in heaven such an appreciation of each single human being, of the value of a single soul, that when one turns to the Lord Jesus and is saved through his grace, heaven is full of rejoicing and joy.
And then you will see that there is a third lesson we can learn from these three stories. It is that there was a tremendous cost attached to it. The shepherd had to leave the ninety and nine in the fold.
It is left to our imagination what he went through, but he went through an awful lot to retrieve that one single sheep. And evidently, as far as we can make out, the sheep was wounded for he brought it back on his shoulders, rejoicing.
And the woman, you know, had to put aside all her daily routine and so much else to give an awful lot of time to searching from top to bottom of her house until she could find the one coin. And I do believe that with the father of the prodigal son, the cost was the greatest of all, though perhaps the most inward.
Now, what does this teach us? Well, here we have three stories that lead us only dimly to a tremendous fact that in order to find humanity, God had to pay a tremendous price. What is the price? The price was the life blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus said, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. Greater love hath no man than this than a man lay down his life for his friends. I lay down my life for the sheep.
The cost was a crucified God. Obviously, in these three stories, you can only dimly see that. There was a quest, but it wasn't an easy quest. It was a quest that entailed sacrifice. It entailed time.
It entailed cost. When God went in quest for a humanity which was lost, he could not just bring it back in an easy way. Somehow or other, he had to find a legal foundation for bringing it back and a practical foundation for bringing it back.
And the way he did it was by himself becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us and offering himself up in the place of a lost sinful humanity. The cost was tremendous. There is no religion in the world that knows as its theme the crucified God.
But that is the Christian message. That's the gospel. Christ crucified, bearing in his body our sin. John said, Behold, the Lamb of God who beareth away the sin of the world. And Paul said later on, him who knew no sin, God made to be our sin, that we might become the righteousness of God.
Here was the cost. God could not just find us and wink at the past, overlook our sinfulness, somehow just pretend that the way that we got lost didn't happen. No, the way he did it was by himself bearing the penalty of our disobedience, bearing the penalty of our defiance, standing in our place, the place of judgment and bearing the judgment that should have been meted out to us.
That was the cost. That is the heart of the gospel. Christ crucified. But the fourth lesson we learn from these three stories is that in every case, what was lost was found. The sheep was brought back with great rejoicing.
The coin was discovered and replaced on the chain with great rejoicing. The son came back to the father in great rejoicing. And I want to say this, that because of what the Lord Jesus has done, the price that he has paid, humanity, as far as God is concerned, can be found.
Christ is the place where humanity can find God and God can find humanity. God is in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. How can humanity be found? God has laid the foundation. He has been on an eternal quest to restore us and recover us.
And not only has he been on an eternal quest because of his love for humanity to recover us and find us and restore us again, but he has laid the foundation by which the whole of humanity can turn to God and be found, can come home to put it another way. The Lord Jesus Christ, his broken body, his poured out love, is the basis by which every sinful man and woman can come back home to God, can be found of God. It's the only way. There is no other way.
Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. The Lord Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. In another place speaking of the sheep, he said, I am the door. By me, if any man shall enter in, he shall be saved. The Lord Jesus is the only way by which we can be found of God and by which we can find God. The only way by which we can come home to God.
There is no other path home. There is no other way to be brought back. The only way back is on the shoulders of the shepherd. That's the only way. In Christ, God can find a lost humanity. In Christ, a lost humanity can find God.
It is as if Christ is the great meeting place of God and man. Through Christ, God reaches out to us. Through Christ, we can reach out to God. In Christ, we can be absolutely reconciled and united to God.
Christ is the door. Christ is the way. Christ is the truth. Christ is the life. If you have Christ, you are a child of God. If you have not Christ, you can have all the religion in the world and not be a child of God, not be a Christian.
You could have been brought up in it. You could have been trained in it. You can be a member of some religious movement and yet not be a true Christian. A Christian is someone who is in Christ and someone in whom Christ lives.
You have come into Christ by faith and Christ has come into your heart. I think that these three stories end on a wonderful note. The note is rejoicing in every single instance. No sorrow, no sadness, no failure, no dissatisfaction, no discontent, no unhappiness, no. Rejoicing. Rejoicing.
I believe that in its heart, humanity knows within itself, we all know within ourselves that we're missing something. We are missing the mark. Somehow, if we were to be absolutely honest and very few of us will be honest with one another, we've got far too much to lose, so we all pretend and all refuse to admit things and refuse to be genuine and true. So often it's the case, isn't it, with us all. But if we were to be genuine and sincere and real we would say you're right.
Somehow or other in my heart I've missed the point of life. Somehow or other I've come short. I don't know how to say it. I don't quite know how to express it. But I've got a sense inside of futility, of emptiness, of aimlessness.
Somehow or other it all seems so futile. Such a vicious circle that ends only in death. Do you know what you're saying? You're simply saying I'm lost. That's all you're saying. I'm lost. That's what it means to be lost, to feel that somehow you missed the way.
You must have all had that experience. I said a little earlier when you were young, but you've all had the experience when you've been on a holiday or someone else of missing the road. Suddenly, as you go on and you go on and you go on, you go farther and farther off the road and get more and more lost.
You know it. There's a sense in it. Sometimes you go too far. You just don't know how to find the way back to the right road. That's what it means to be lost. Now, I want to tell you what is the gospel that we speak so much about?
What is the message of this Bible, this word from God to us in this 20th century? It is simply this: God refuses to allow us to be lost. He will bring back home to himself every man and every woman who will turn to Christ and find God in Christ.
If you try to find God in anyone else, there's a veto. You'll find a closed door. Christ is the only open door to God. If you come to God by Christ, you come home, you find him. That's the way. That's the message of this book.
God refuses to allow humanity to be lost because he loves us so. And he not only refuses to allow humanity to be lost, but he has himself come into this world to redeem humanity, to bring back humanity, to heal humanity, to make a new humanity.
Christ, then is God's only answer to a lost humanity. And if you and I will come to Him, we shall find God is there. And I want to tell you a secret that if you and I will only come to God, we won't find a harsh God there.
We won't find a severe God waiting there. We won't find someone ready to crush us and to smash us with the law and with all other kinds of 'thou shalt not' and 'thou shalt'. But we shall find a God who doesn't want any excuses, who doesn't want any explanations, who doesn't want any answers, but a God who will embrace us, will hold us to himself, will never leave us nor forsake us. But our experience will be that he will kiss us and kiss us again and again and again.
Oh, those of us who know the Lord, how often we've found that the kiss of God again and again in small ways, in big ways, we suddenly find the Lord there and we say why did he do that to me?
I'm so unworthy. I deserve something so different. And yet there is the Lord all the time. Yes, when you come to God in Christ, you find, if I may say so, it's a contradiction in terms, in some ways, a human God.
A God with a heart, a God who is love, a God who will save us the instant by faith, the instant, the moment by faith we step into Christ. He's there. We've got to come home. But as soon as we pass over the threshold, nay, before we've even got to the threshold, the Father's there to take us in, to put a robe on us, to put a ring on our finger, shoes on our feet, and just sit us down to a really good feast.
Well, that's the answer. And if many Christians turn out to be elder sons, that's not the Father's fault. And if they are dissatisfied with the Christian life or find that somehow or other it doesn't come up to their mark and measure, it's not the Father fault.
The younger son was one who sinned much and therefore he loved much. May the Lord Jesus himself open our eyes to see Him, to understand Him, and by faith to give ourselves to Him, and to take Him into our own hearts and minds.
And now, Lord Jesus, we would simply ask Thee that in Thy mercy and in Thy grace, Thou would not allow any of us, Lord, who are in need to go through this evening without having that need met. O Lord, thou hast done everything to bring us home to Thyself.
May it be that if there shall be any Lord who know they're lost or feel they're lost, they might find their hand in Thine, Lord and Thy hand on theirs, leading them home to Thyself. O Lord Jesus, open our eyes, we pray Thee to behold Thee, to behold Thyself as the salvation of God and to be brought into an experience of what it is to be born of Thee. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
If there's anyone who wants to speak with us about anything that has been said or has any need they feel they could share, do come into the study afterwards, won't you? Now unto him be all the glory forever and ever. Amen.
