(NKJ) Luke 15:1-10 - Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him.  ² And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, "This Man receives sinners and eats with them."…  ⁷ "I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance…  ¹⁰ "Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

In the next two years our little synod will be celebrating two big anniversaries:  the 500^th anniversary of the Great Reformation and the 100^th anniversary of the organization of our church body that would come to be known as the Evangelical Lutheran Synod.  You might wonder what these two events have in common, given how much time and space is between them.  Well, something very important ties these two anniversaries together.  When Luther rediscovered the heart of the gospel that we’re saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone—it was something that had to be written about and spoken about!  When those pastors met in Iowa and decided to found their own church body, again, it was to preserve that pure Gospel message so it could go on being proclaimed to the whole world!  It was all about proclaiming the wonders God has done! 

And so we get in line with our own proclamation of that Gospel for our own generation and our own time.  As individuals, as a church, and as a synod, we proclaim the wonders God has done—and we begin today by first of all proclaiming His Joy over Finding the Lost!  

I.     Because of His great love for the lost.

Who were the people that were coming to Jesus, drawing near to listen to Him?  They were “tax collectors and sinners” (v. 1)!  To be a tax collector was right in line with being a thief and a traitor, selling out your own countrymen to line your own pockets.  To be labeled as a “sinner” meant that a person was living an openly sinful lifestyle—maybe living with a boyfriend or girlfriend, maybe giving himself completely over to drunkenness.  At any rate, these people were lost.  They were trapped in the darkness of their sinful lives.  And until Jesus came it seemed like there was no way out.    

The thing is, when the Pharisees and scribes saw these people, they only saw that these were the kind of people you didn’t want to be seen with.  They couldn’t stand to be around them; it was shameful to keep company with people like that.  So when they saw all these people coming to Jesus, they started grumbling and complaining about it:  “This Man receives sinners and eats with them” (v. 2).  What’s this Jesus doing?  Doesn’t He realize who He’s talking to?  Why would anyone want to waste their time on people like that? 

So Jesus tells them these parables, the lost sheep and the lost coin, to show them just how God feels about these people.  And in the end, it’s all about joy—God’s joy at finding lost sinners!  A joy that God has in part because He has a great love for the lost!  Jesus put it to the scribes and Pharisees this way:  “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?” (v. 4).  He was telling them, “Okay, you think these people are worthless.  Well, let’s talk sheep.  Even though you have a hundred sheep, each one of them is important to you, right?  Important enough that if you lose one, you’ll leave the rest behind to go look for him.”  And he challenges them:  “Which of you wouldn’t do that?” 

How much greater is the love of God?  Out of the billions of people in this world, to God not a one person is a waste of time or a waste of space!  He loves each and every one!  And the best part:  in spite of the fact that each person on earth is a sinner, meaning that each person on earth has offended God by disobeying Him and violating His will, God still loves each and every one.  He still finds each and every sinful person on earth worth chasing after in order to find them, lift them up on His shoulders and carry them home.  We have a name for that love:  it’s called grace. 

When I see the love that lives in God’s heart—love for every single person on this earth, love that fuels a desire to seek and to save them—it makes me sad.  Sad because I know my own heart doesn’t have that kind of love.  How many times have we written people off and avoided them because they made terrible choices?  How many times have we grumbled and complained about certain people instead of trying to actually approach them in true love and compassion?  When I see the love that lives in God’s heart—and the lack of love in my own—I’m reminded that I’m just as lost and just in need of repentance as the worst sinners out there.  I’m reminded that I’m in need of the grace of God too. 

And that grace is freely given!  One of God’s great wonders is that He loves each lost soul so much that He seeks them out!  He sent His Son into this world to do just that, “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10).  It was that love and that desire to save the lost that caused Jesus to sacrifice Himself on the cross in our place, in order to set each of us free from our sins, free from the punishment our sins deserve.  In that same love Jesus rose from the dead to show us that our sins are forgiven, and that we now live in the love of God forever.  And it’s because of that love for each sinner that when one is found—when a sinner is brought to repentance and faith in Christ—it brings joy to the heart of God!   And joy to our hearts as well!

That love is only part of the reason for God’s joy, though.  Sometimes our joy at finding something isn’t just reflected in the thing’s value—it’s also determined by how much work we put into finding it.  We proclaim the wonders God has done, His joy over finding the lost—a joy that also belongs to God: 

II.      Because of His persistent efforts to find the lost. 

In His second little parable here, Jesus gave the example of a woman who had ten coins and lost one of them.  The coins were drachmas, silver coins that were worth about as much as a denarius—a day’s wage!  Sure, she had ten of them!  To someone else losing one may not seem like a big deal, but to your average housewife, each of her coins was valuable to her! (Kind of like the lost sheep in the first parable.)  So what does she do?  Doesn’t she “light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?” (v. 8).  Coins are hard to see in a dark house, so you light a lamp to make it easier to find.  And then you can imagine someone tearing the house apart from top to bottom, sweeping out every corner and under every piece of furniture, clearing every crevice where that coin might have fallen, never giving up until she finds that coin! 

Another great wonder is the length that God will go to find lost sinners!  Sending Jesus to offer up His own life in our place was only the beginning!  He lights that lamp of His Word to lead people to repentance—to show them their sins by the law and then to show them their Savior by the Gospel!  That’s what God has done for you and I!  And then He takes people like us and sends us out with the light of His Word to go and proclaim it to others.  And that light has gone out to every country under the sun, to every tribe and people, to almost every backwater village out there—all so that lost sinners can be found by the grace and mercy of God in Christ! 

And God is still going to great lengths to find the lost!  There are so many today who have never heard the truth of the Gospel—maybe you can think of people in your own life for whom that’s true.  Every day God blesses us with opportunities to let the light of His Word shine forth into our lives—either in telling others about their Savior, or leading them to people and places where they can meet the love of Jesus for themselves.  Opportunities to equip others to spread the gospel, like with the Proclaim the Wonders God Has Done offering—our synod’s two year anniversary thankoffering.  Don’t get me wrong:  the work of proclaiming God’s wonders is hard.  There are no shortcuts—and the devil tries to keep us from doing it.  But when we join God in this work, when He uses us to spread His gospel message, He also shares His joy with us—the greatest kind of joy that we can have.   

Did you know that sixteen years ago when the World Trade Center fell there were only twelve survivors, twelve people pulled from the rubble alive?  Two of them were found by an ex-Marine by the name of David Karnes.  As soon as he heard the report of the planes flying into the buildings that morning, he left his job in Massachusetts and drove to Manhattan to help.  Arriving at the site around 5:30, he and another Marine started to walk the flaming pile of debris that was Building 7, climbing over tangled steel, looking into voids, calling out “United States Marines!  If you can hear us, yell or tap!”  They were by themselves—everyone else had been called back by this point.  The searching and calling continued for about an hour or so.  Until Dave stopped and heard a faint, muffled sound.  He kept calling and listening until finally heard a voice say, “We’re over here!”  For the rest of his life Dave Karnes will have the joy of knowing that two men are alive because he found them! 

That’s the kind of joy that the Triune God has in heaven over one sinner who repents, the joy of knowing that this person is alive—and will live forever—because of Him.  And that’s the joy that we get to share.  The joy that celebrates with friends and neighbors the great blessing of salvation, of the lost being found.  Amen.