Hey, thanks for being here this weekend at The Gathering of Christ Community Chapel. My name is Zach weRock. I'm lead pastor here at CCC, and I'm so glad you're here this weekend. 'cause you're gonna get to hear from my friend, pastor Sean Sears, pastor of Grace Church in Boston. This weekend, we're putting the focus on Orchard in eeo, our church planting ministry here at CCC, where we have a mission to plant 60 churches in the next 30 years.
And I can't think of anyone better for us to learn from and to be inspired by than Sean. That's because in addition to pastoring Grace Church, Sean leads a network a lot like Orchard in Boston, and they have seen God do amazing things. I cannot wait for you to hear some of the incredible stories that Sean has witnessed and been part of God's faithfulness to Boston and to his mission to plant churches.
And my hope is that we'll find something in Sean's story and in what he comes to share from God's word that will encourage us to continue down the road of planting local churches all over northeast Ohio. Sean is a phenomenal leader, a great pastor, loves Jesus, loves his family, and is a personal friend of mine. Would you join me in welcoming him to the stage and in praying for God to do incredible things this weekend through his ministry.
It's an honor to be here at your church and, uh, to be a friend of your, of your pastor. Uh, we met through a, uh, coaching network that I've been in for seven years. We've locked it up so that nobody else knew can come in. And when they told us that they were bringing a new guy into this network, we said it's not gonna work. And they brought in, uh, Zach, and he ruined the whole thing. I'm just kidding. He did. Uh, yeah, he's got fantastic stories.
And actually, what I got to watch your pastor do, uh, this this week, uh, is a, uh, I, I told him earlier, I, I said, it's actually a really beautiful example of what we're talking about today. Uh, I have a, uh, rookie Mark McGuire, uh, baseball card. There were five rookie cards. Uh, this is not the most valuable of the five rookie cards, but if this was a in mint condition, meaning that it would, if it was scored as a 10, it would be worth anywhere between $1,500 and $3,000.
Uh, this one in this condition is only worth about 200. But the weird thing to me about it is that it's just a piece of cardboard, right? It's cardboard in ink. How in the world can that be worth? Uh, $200, let alone 3000. When I was nine, our church secretary had a son who turned 13 and thought he was too mature for his baseball cards and football cards. And he asked me if I wanted them. I was the youth pastor's son. And so I said, yes, please, can I have them?
And he brought me the next Sunday, two grocery bags full of baseball cards and football cards from the sixties and seventies. Does anybody remember paper bags? Anybody at all? These are the old people in the room. Um, but two full grocery bags of baseball cards and football cards all from the sixties and seventies. And, uh, I, I sorted them by sport. I sorted them by team. I sorted them by year. Uh, then I put them in shoe boxes and then put them back in the bags.
And then a few years later, my family moved. And when we got to the new place, I wasn't old enough at the time to do most of the heavy lifting. So I was waiting for the adults to unpack my bedroom. And when my bedroom was finally unpacked, um, I couldn't find my, my, uh, my, my football cards and baseball cards in anywhere. Couldn't find 'em anywhere. And I went to my mom and, uh, I said, mom, uh, do, do you, do you know where my football, my football cards, my baseball cards are?
She goes, yeah. Uh, do you remember the yard sale we had before we moved? I know. And I said, yes. She said, I sold them. And I said, how much did you get for him? And she said, $5. And that's why I still don't talk to my mom today. Jesus can forgive all kinds of sin. I don't know if he can forgive that kind of dumb. Sorry, I have my mom's permission to say that, by the way. She, she knows I tell that story and she's like, just make sure that they know I'm not your right mom.
Um, but she, but from her perspective, it's two bags of cardboard. And she got some joker to pay $5 for two bags of cardboard. Like from her perspective, that's a smoking deal. It's just cardboard in ink. But you and I both know that a baseball card or a football card is not what it brings to the table. It's worth what somebody else would put on the table to make it theirs. Does that make a sense? Does that make sense? And value is completely sub subjective.
So you might not like, uh, uh, Mark McGuire at all. She'd say, I, I don't care if it was $5. I wouldn't, I wouldn't buy that cart. Uh, but then you, you might would buy another one that I'm, it's subjective. And that idea of placing different value on different things is that the heart of an entire chapter in the life of Jesus. So if you've got your Bible, why don't you go to Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15 is where we're at.
It's one of my favorite chapters, uh, in the Bible, uh, because of these three stories that Jesus tells. And, and actually it's the reason why he tells these stories that make the stories to me, um, me meaningful. Luke chapter 15, verse one, um, says this, tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. And I wanna stop right there because I don't, I don't know what it takes to be a notorious sinner. Uh, I think all of us would probably admit YaMma sinner.
I've, I've made mistakes, I've done bad things. But I don't know how many of us would classify ourselves as notorious sinners. That's for people like our brother-in-laws, but right. Um, but I'm not necessarily like, what would it take for them to say that this person is a notorious sinner? And the other thing that I like about just this first verse already is that it's not that Jesus was going to them. They often came to him.
And the truth is, you and I both go hang out with people that we feel comfortable with. And so what I, I think I wanna point out before we get to the rest of the, we're not going verse by verse through the entire chapter, that would take too long. But the first thing I wanna point out is that the people who were farthest from God felt most loved by God, the notorious sinners wanted to hang out with Jesus because Jesus actually made them feel like they mattered.
You don't like hanging out with people that pick on you. You don't like people telling you, you hanging out with people that always criticize you. You and I both enjoy the company and people that make us feel good about ourselves. And I'm not trying to imply that Jesus made people feel good about themselves and their sin. It's that Jesus made people feel valuable even though they had not done, They had not lived the life that others would've assign as valuable, broken people felt seen by Jesus.
And unlovely people felt loved. Sorry, I'm not even into the sermon already. I'm getting emotional. But they felt loved by him. I, I'm a preacher's kid and my mom and dad raised me in a Christian school to keep me away from every, and I, I think they wanted to protect me. That's the honest truth. But on accident, they kept me away from everybody that was intended to benefit from my faith.
I I graduated from a Christian school, went to a Christian college, graduated from a Christian college, then went to a Christian grad school, uh, then worked for a church, then went and taught at a Christian college. And it wasn't until I moved to Boston when I was 31 that I ever had any close friends that didn't share my worldview. Um, Yeah. So I didn't know how much of the story I was gonna tell and I don't have the time to tell the whole thing.
But moving to s Stoughton, Massachusetts, which is on the southern edge of, uh, just just outside the city of Boston, uh, there are, there are four gospel preaching, evangelical churches in the whole town of 30,000. And only one of them speaks English. Uh, the other three are Portuguese. And, um, we didn't have anywhere to take. So for the first time in my life, none of my friends shared my faith. And that was the first time that I had skin in the game.
And these were amazing people. I'd always taught that people couldn't have a happy marriage if they weren't Christian. They think they're happy, but not really happy. 'cause if they're Christian, then they could be really happy, then they could have a good marriage, then they could be whatever. But some of the most generous, phenomenal, awesome people I've ever met in my entire life were great people. They were just disconnected from God.
And I knew that if they spent the rest of their life disconnected from God, they would treat eternity the same way, disconnected from God. And there wasn't a church in the area that I felt comfortable bringing people who weren't religious to, there's churches that are good for Christians. Do you know what I'm talking about? And then there's churches that you would actually take a friend who wasn't necessarily religious.
You want to take them to a place where they're not gonna feel like everybody's looking at them. And I didn't feel like there was a church close that they would attend with us. And so my wife and I began praying that God would send somebody To start a church in our town. And I, I, we asked everybody I knew from Bible college that was a, I thought that if God wanted me to start a church, we'd move into this city. We didn't. We moved outside the city.
I thought that was God telling me no not to start this church. And so I called all of my friends, if you come start this church, we'll help you. You can live in my attic. You can, I'll give you my minivan. You could, you could borrow my dog, keep my dog. I'm like, whatever. We'll help you do this. Just please come do this and nobody would do it. And finally my wife said, maybe God already sent somebody. I was like, who? And she goes, maybe it's us. And I said, you're smoking crack.
I know I said that because the next words outta my mouth were, it can't be me because I still use the word crack in sentences. Uh, then my non-religious neighbors across the street who are closest friends, had a friend go through trauma and she's at the hospital, says to her friend, you need God, my neighbor knows and I'll be right back. She knocks on our door. There's a few other things that happened this week, that week that I don't have the time to share.
But uh, then we go into the hospital and she, uh, non-religious, a friend of ours who hadn't been to church since she was a little girl, is saying to her friend who's not a disconnected from God. Uh, if you need to be in a Bible study, if Sean and Billy Jane started a Bible study in their house, would you go to it? She goes, yeah, if you and your husband Glen will go. And she goes, okay Sean. She's like, crap, now I gotta start this church in my living room.
So I might be the only guy who's pastoring a church that was started by Pagans, but it rocks. So it is totally my my vibe. But I'm wondering if you're the kind of Christian that people who are farthest from God feel most loved by, that's where I'm going.
I think sometimes we place a value to a person based on the stats on the back of their card, how many times they've been divorced, whether or not they're sleeping with their partner, how many baby mamas they got, whether or not they've been through bankruptcy, whether or not they make the same kind of money we have, whether or not they have an education, whether or not they speak English, Right? And we assign a value and we put that mentally on a sticker and we put that on the front of the cart.
And what I'm saying is that the people who are farthest from God actually felt most loved by him. And I think that if you are a genuine follower of Jesus, then the people that maybe you were taught not to be friends with growing up because they what ruin you or whatever those people are the very reasons why you have that job there with them. Like your job, I don't believe is just for your income.
I think that you work with people, you go to school with people that genuinely do not care about anything Zach will ever say, because he's not their friend. You are. And you, you might not even be yet. I'm just saying that the person who's farthest from God near circle of influence of all the people in the world, they've got to know for a fact that if they ever needed anything, you were the first person they would come to because the way you already treat them.
Because that's the way Jesus treated people who are far from God. Alright, that's verse one. All right, you guys ready for verse two? Uh, and by the way, I, I, I wanna say that as a person who was raised in church, I was always taught we're supposed to love everybody. And that's not the question. The question isn't if you love those who are farthest from God, I think the better question is if those who are farthest from God feel loved by you.
'cause if they don't feel loved by you, then what good is your love? Right? Uh, verse two, this made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people. Look, look at the crowd he hangs out with. He's even eating with them. Like that was the part that was so over the top for them.
Because if Jesus was just gonna hang out, if he was gonna hang out with them and then invite them to synagogue, or tell them they needed to repent, they needed to take their sacrifices according to the law of Moses, they needed to reconcile their hearts to God. Like they would've been fine with all of that, but you're just hanging out with them watching. I almost said the Browns, I don't know anybody in New England that has ever hung out and watched the browns.
I'm sorry, I don't think that has ever happened in Boston, ever. But I'm just saying, Jesus, like you're just eating with them as though you genuinely just like them. And I think that's the question is if those who are farthest from God are the type, if you are the type of friend to those people that they would actually ask you to go to their barbecue, like I think that's the mission. That's the job. That's what we're supposed to do.
Like my wife and I early on, I told you none of our friends were were fathers of Jesus. And we're, we're at a, uh, a football, uh, we're watching the football game on the back of somebody's house. They had like one of those projectors and invited every, like all the, all the, all the cool parents in town go to this. So if you, you're not a little league dad, you have no clue what I'm talking about. But there's a social, there's a dorks table as an adult, just like there was in middle school.
So when you finally get a chance to go to like the cool kids like football party at their house on a Monday night to watch the Patriots in the back of the house, you go. And when my wife and I got in the car, the difficult thing for us, she's a preacher's kid too, is uh, by the end of the night everybody was trash drunk. Everybody was drunk. And when I carried my wife to the car, I'm just kidding, she wasn't, I just wanted to say that, uh, she's not gonna see it anyway.
So, um, when we got in the car, the conversation was whether or not we should have left earlier because of the example the other adults were setting for our kids that we were uncomfortable with. Like, at what point should we have left the party? Should we have stayed as long as we did when everybody got drunk? And we settled on a solution of that that I don't have time to unpack that I'm very comfortable with, and if, if it would help you, uh, find me after this service.
But, um, I told my wife, I said, the fact that we're having this conversation means that we were at least at the right party. Jesus was called a publican, a sinner, and a drunkard. Was he any of those things, yes or no? The answer is no. Was he any of those things? Yes or no? No. Why was he called those things? Because the company that he keeps, and I'm saying that I think God's calling us as devoted followers of Jesus to keep verse company. I think that's what Jesus would do.
How will those people farthest from God ever know they are loved by him? If the people who claim to know him don't make them feel loved? So as a result of their misunderstanding of the character and nature of God, Jesus tells 'em this next story that's in verse three. So that means because of this, because they misunderstood the character and nature of Jesus. So because of this, he tells them the story. Uh, if a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?
Won't leave the 99 others in the wilderness and go to search, uh, for the one that was lost until he finds it. And the answer to that question is yes. Like if you're a business owner and uh, you find out that you're losing 1% of your income, uh, ev every week, every day, every month, you're, you have a responsibility to find out where the leakage is and stop it.
So if you have a hundred sheep and you just lost one, one matters, uh, because you can't get loose with one, you get loose with one, then it's two, then it's three, then it's four. You guys get how this goes. So if you lose one sheep, whatcha gonna do, you're, you're going to go find it. So Jesus is talking to an agrarian culture and they get this. And so the obvi, I mean the answer, it's a rhetorical question when he go find it, yes, of course he's, they're shepherds.
They would've done that too. Keep reading. Uh, and when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. And when he arrives, so call together his friends and neighbors saying, rejoice of me because I found my lost sheep. Now, this isn't a guy who's like brought his sheep back into the pen or into the gate or whatever. He is got to keep his sheep. And he is like, I can't find one. And then he, he looks over and then he, he sees the other one behind the wagon.
You don't throw a party over that, right? It's like, okay, it's just over there. It's behind the bush. I mean, if you're throwing a party because you found a sheep, like this is a sheep that's like really lost. Like this one's this one, you can't see it. It's far enough away from you. When you whistle it can't hear it. Like you've, you have to aggressively and you to go find the one that's lost. You actually have to leave the 99.
And that might have made the 99 nervous that the shepherd's leaving. And that wasn't the point. The point is, I, I have to find the one that was lost. And then when he finally finds it, he's excited throw. So he throws a party. Okay? So, so far everybody that Jesus is preaching to is with him.
Nobody's upset and everybody's with him on the story until he gets to this verse, this, this next statement, verse seven, in the same way he said, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repent and returns to God than over 99 others who are righteous and haven't straight away. And that's when they felt offended. Here's what it'd be like. Uh, I don't know everybody in in this. I don't know anybody in this church other than the people that I was introduced.
I don't even know them though, right? Um, like I'm barely sure your pastor's a Christian. I don't know. I'm just, I don't know the spiritual condition of, of anybody here. So let's say that you're in this service and you're not sure where you're at in your relationship with God. You're here because you love your spouse and your spouse is really into it. So you're here more or less supporting them. And every time you show up, you look around the room and you're like, this is not my thing.
I don't, what the heck am I doing here? I want you to know from Jesus's own mouth that God is quantifiably measurably happier that you are here today than all of these other Christians combined. And it's true. The whole thing is a rescue mission. The whole thing from Genesis to Revel, genesis to Revelation, the entire thing is a rescue mission. It's never been about the people who have already been found. It's always been about those who still have not yet been found.
And so when he said this, if it offended you, I don't even think biblically I'm allowed to say I'm sorry because when Jesus said this, he knew it would make them feel some kind of way. But he was hoping it would motivate them to care about the same thing he cared about. But it didn't. It was, what are you saying about me? This isn't about you, dude. This is about me and all of mine that aren't here yet. Like my life has never been about me. Neither is yours about me, but it's also not about you.
Like the whole thing is for the glory of God and those created in his image to turn from the sin that separates them from him and be reconciled to him through faith in his son Jesus. That's the whole thing. That's the whole point. They were a little offended by this and I don't think they were enough offended by it. Or maybe he's looking around the room and says, I don't think you guys get it yet. Because he tells them another story that almost has the exact same punchline.
And that's in verse, there's verse eight, and here's what he says or suppose. And here's his second story. A woman has 10 silver coins and loses one. And it's the idea that in our culture, when you're married, you have a wedding ring. And in their culture, uh, the women would have a headband with different coins on it. And wearing this was a symbol that she had been married and she loses a coin off of that, that headband.
So she's definitely not gonna go out in public with that headband, with that missing coin right here, above her right eye, she'd look like an idiot. So she's not gonna go outside, she's embarrassed. She wants to find it before her husband comes home, right? It'd be like losing an actual diamond out of your wedding ring. Like if my, my wife's done that, she lost actually the first wedding ring she ever had.
The one that I married her with is in the bottom of a paint can and a dump somewhere in Denver. But, uh, so we lost that, but we looked for it forever. We looked for that for that, uh, wedding ring. So, so like if you lost a diamond, you do the same thing, you'd stop, won't she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And the answer to that question is yes, but I have another question.
Why is her house that filthy, I've never had to sweep to see a quarter on the floor? Am I right? Yes or no? The dirtiest place in my whole house is under the couch. Anybody agree with that? You lift up the couch and there are softball sides of tumbleweeds under there, and the skirt is only this far off the floor. I don't know how that that softball size of dust got under there.
But even that, I could pick up my couch, see how strong am I did that with one hand and I could go, oh, there's the quarter. Like the story doesn't make sense unless the woman has what kind of a floor, dirt floor and she doesn't know when she's lost it. This chick's got kids. Where is it? It could be anywhere. Her kids may have run on it. It got pressed into the dirt, got covered up with more dirt. So what does it mean that she sweeps the whole house until she finds it?
Like for her, it would've taken a trowel, a rake, and a shovel. Like she's gotta go through everything. She has no idea where this is at. It could have been kicked over into the corner and then pushed into the dirt over there. Like, is it an eighth of an a 16th? An eighth? Now I gotta practice my fractions five eighths. Like how far down the end of the dirt is this? It doesn't matter. She's going to keep working until she finds it. When she finds it. The punchline was the same.
Uh, that there's more joy in heaven over the one, uh, coin that was found then over the nine that was lost. And they're still not offended enough. So Jesus goes, okay, it's three in a row. It's the only time in the, in the whole Bible where Jesus repeats the same, essentially same story three times in a row. Now I was raised by a southern mama from Savannah, Georgia.
If she tells you once you better do it, if she has to tell you twice you're on notice, if there's a third time, I promise you, you'll remember that one. There won't be a fourth time. So I don't know how often God ever repeats himself. So for Jesus to repeat this three times, I'm thinking that this is probably the one thing he wants every one of us to get. Show me any other place in the Bible where Jesus repeats the same 0.3 times in a row. He doesn't. It's just on this.
And in this story, there's a man with two sons and the younger son, not the older one comes up and essentially says, I wish you were dead. Give me my stuff now. Okay? I I would never say that I don't think I would live if I ever said that again. I told Jim, I'm a little afraid of my mom. She's a strong woman. I even if I said it to my dad, she'd go, what'd you say? Um, doesn't matter. You guys are like, he needs counseling. I do. But that's not a part of today's teaching.
Um, in any case, I would never say that to my dad. And because of the Torah, I know that the, the older son gets twice the amount as all of the other sons. So essentially since there were just two sons, the older son's gonna get two thirds. The younger son's gonna get one third. And so what the younger son did was essentially say by saying, I want my inheritance now, he was saying, you're dead to me and I want one third of all of your assets in cash.
Now, okay, first of all, no Jewish kid would've ever done that. 'cause according to the Torah, he should be taken to the city gates where the elders would pronounce him guilty of breaking the fifth commandment, which is dishonoring your father and mother. And the punishment for that was to be dragged outside the city and be stoned to death with rocks. Your dad throwing the first rock. So no Jewish son, first of all would've ever said this.
So the fact that he said it gets people in the crowd going, what, Noah? Okay, now you've lost me. And here's the most defensive part so far is that the dad actually does it. The dad liquidates a third of his estate and gives it to this moron. We find out later in the story that the sun goes to a far country and wastes all of the money on parties and prostitutes. That's what he did with his inheritance.
And when he is jobless, he's sitting in a gutter and he says, even servants at my dad's house are treated better than this. I'm no longer worthy to be his son. I get that. I told him, I wish he was dead, but maybe he'll give me an immigrant job. Maybe he'll give me a new to the country job. Maybe he'll let me work the field. Anything's better than this. So he goes back home and in Jesus's story, the dad's sitting on the porch every day watching for his son to come home.
And when the dad recognized that it was son walking down the road, he gets up and he runs out to the son. And that's where I think everybody listening to Jesus's story loses it. Because in that culture, that patriarchal society, dad doesn't run for nobody. It doesn't matter if you're 54 years old, if your dad's still alive and he says he's thirsty, you ask him if he wants tea, uh, ice in his tea or not.
In that culture, the idea that this dad in the robe would hike it up and actually embarrass and humiliate himself by running down the street at his age was beyond the pale. When he gets to his son, he wraps his arms around him.
And the way that it's worded implies that it was to protect his son from the beating he was sure to get from the elders because the way he humiliated the family, willing to take the punishment for his son, the son gets his practice speech halfway out and the dad interrupts him and yells back for a robe, uh, sandals in his ring, the family crest. And each one of those means something different.
In Jewish culture, the quickest one to explain is the sandals, because servants were not allowed to wear shoes in the house. So when he said, bring the sandals so I can bring him home, he was saying he gets to wear sandals in the house again because he's family. The signet rings the authority of the family. The robe means you're under my covering. They throw a party. The older son's been away and he comes back and he's ticked, he's ticked. He said, why is there a party I didn't know about?
Your brother came home. Is did he die? No, your dad shielded him. My dad said, what? What's the party? Your dad's actually thrown a party for me, invited everybody in town. I'm not honoring this crap. I'm not going in there. Like I, I can't co-sign this at all like I am. This is all inappropriate. This this against the law of Moses. Like everything about this is wrong. It's wrong. Somebody tells the dad that his son's outside, he runs outside the son.
He said, why don't you in? He said, dad, you never did any of this for me. Like I never broke the rules. I was the good son. Like I've defended your honor, I've handled our, I've possibly even rebuilt our wealth since he's been gone. I've never dishonored your name and you've never thrown a party for me. And he said to his son, son, all that I have is yours. You should have been the one throwing this party with me for him. And the end of the story.
Now, what's the same about all three of these stories is that the lostness of the item never affected its value because the value is not determined by what it brings to the table. And I think there are some of us who feel like in the eyes of God because we have gone through a divorce that it's messed up our stats.
Or because you cheated on your spouse and you lost your family or because you struggled with an addiction that nobody knows about or because somebody hurt you when you were a little kid. And the voices in your head are how worthless you are. And everything that we're doing is we're trying to prove that I'm something. I'm trying to prove that I'm, I'm just trying to erase the stats and write better ones. But what you need to remember from this story is that your value never came from your stats.
Your value doesn't come from what you put on the table. It comes from what somebody would put on the table to make you theirs in God. Put the life of his own son on the table to make you his. That's where my value comes from. There's nothing you will ever do that will make you more loved by God than you are right now. And there's nothing you could ever do and nothing that's ever been done to you that makes you loved be loved any less.
That's the point of all three stories that the person that you're avoiding at work is as valuable, was gonna say is a Tom Brady card. But I didn't wanna offend you, but I'm definitely not saying Baker Mayfield. Excuse me. Your value doesn't come from your, all of us are cardboard and ink. Dude, everybody in this room is cardboard and ink. Our value comes from the fact that Jesus laid life down to make us His. What I wanna do in closing is show you how they're different.
I wanna show you how they're different. The first story, the first parable highlights the priority God places on those who are far from him, the priority of those who are far from God over those who've already found them. And the point that I wanna make from that for you guys is this, that this church isn't for Christians. And I just, and don't hang on. Don't turn on me yet. This church isn't for Christians. The church is Christians and we're here for everybody who ain't.
Does that make sense? The church is us. And we're not here just for us. This church exists for everybody in your town who's still disconnected from God and your church because the way God has blessed you to whom much is given, much is required. You guys are now responsible for all of North. You guys have volunteered to take responsibility for northeast Ohio. And this church is here for that. That's why this church exists. We're here for everyone who isn't. We don't measure.
We church by the number of people who are in our church. We measure our church by the number of our friends who still aren't here yet. That's what we measure. So at Grace's Church, I ask people occasionally, raise your hand if you have a spiritually disconnected friend. Someone ask you guys that. Raise your hand if you have a friend disconnected from God right now. Raise your hand, keep it up for a second. This church will be done when there are no more hands raised to that question.
And you're not done until then because that's who this church is here, here for. The second parable shows the amount of work we're willing to go through to make sure the loss become found. How long did she look? As long as it took You don't give up. You don't give up. You got a sister you've been praying for forever. She walked away from God. She's not coming back. You don't give up. You keep looking till you find. If you have to dig through an inch of dirt, you dig through an inch of dirt.
And the last story is how much grace. It doesn't matter how far they've run, it doesn't matter how far they've run. And the last set of distinctions, the last set of distinctions is the reason why they're lost. The sheep was lost out of ignorance that didn't know any better. It's just a dumb sheep. We have friends that are far from God and they weren't raised from Christian families. It's not their fault. They didn't know any better. The coin was lost out of negligence.
It wasn't the coin's fault, but it was somebody's fault. Some of our friends, they grew up in church, but they were pushed out by church or they went through some type of bad thing and they felt unloved. They felt metaphorically punched in the face by those who claim to be followers of Jesus. So they're lost by negligent. And then you've got other Christians who have no excuses, raised in Godly families, have no excuses.
They're like Captain Dan who tied himself to the top of the mast of the ship in the hurricane and Forests Gump and said, God, do your worst. I stink and hate you and to God. It doesn't matter why they're lost. It only matters that they are the only people who care. Why is us? That's it. So if you're far from God, 'cause you weren't raised in a Christian family, God says, come home.
If every church you've ever been to metaphorically punched you in the face, they weren't following Jesus, come home. And if you're a Christian who has royally screwed up every could have taken your life, come home. And it's our job as the older brothers and sisters to run out there and meet 'em halfway. Let's pray. God love you with all of my heart, and I'm thankful that you love me first and you love me more.
God, every one of these people raised their hand and said that they had a friend who was disconnected from you. God, it's for them that you brought us into this church family. God, when we look around at people at work or people at school, people that we deem less valuable convict us of that. Dear God, who are we to assign value to another person created in your image. The truth is, if you gave me what I deserved, I wouldn't be here.
And you know that. So God, if I will take love, grace, and forgiveness from you, help me to offer love, grace, and forgiveness to others. If you'll serve me, let me serve them. If you'll be kind to me when I'm unkind, let me be kind to them when they're unkind. Let the people who are farthest from you in my life feel most loved by me.
That's all I'm asking. God, I pray for you to increase the influence of this church and the community, but do that first by influence, by increasing the influence of the members of this church in the lives of those who are farthest from you, that you're drawing to you. This is our prayer. And we ask in the name of Jesus and we all say together. Amen.