Luke 15 opens with two crowds.
One is the church crowd. The other is very much not. The tax collectors and the sinners are pressing in to hear him, and the religious professionals are standing off to the side grumbling: this man receives sinners and eats with them.
Ask yourself why the people who would never darken a synagogue door were flocking to Jesus. He never softened anything. He called sin sin. And they still could not stay away, because he genuinely liked them. He went to their houses. He went to their parties. People accused him of being a drunk because of the company he kept.
Meanwhile the religious leaders were busy building walls. Walls against the world, which they considered unclean top to bottom, and walls inside their own camp, where everybody was ranking everybody. The only thing they fully agreed on was that they did not like Jesus.
That is what religion always does. You are trying to earn a standing with God, so you had better hope your good outweighs your bad — and honestly, you had better hope the person next to you is doing worse. It puts distance between you and God, distance between you and people, and distance inside your own chest, because you know you cannot actually change.
So do not miss this.
Religion builds walls. Christ builds a table. He was literally a carpenter.
He starts by insulting them
Verse 3, and Jesus comes out swinging. What man of you, having a hundred sheep...
I used to read straight past that. To a Pharisee it was an insult. These were men of the law, not men of the land. Top of their class. Best of the best. They would not be caught anywhere near shepherds, who they considered unclean. And Jesus opens by saying, so, when you're out with your flock —
It would be like telling a Dolphins fan he's lucky. It does not compute, and that is the point. He has your attention now.
Then he tells them about a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine to go find one.
Sheep
If Scripture calls you a sheep, understand that is not entirely a compliment.
Sheep are dumb. They are, I would argue, proof that evolution is not true. They get lost constantly. They are anxious little creatures. They will not drink from moving water — although if you and I were wearing a hundred sweaters we might be nervous around a current too. That is why Psalm 23 says he leads me beside still waters. And if a sheep that has not been sheared falls over, it cannot get back up. It just lies there.
Think about it this way. If a trailer full of sheep tipped over on the highway, you would load the kids in the car and go look. If it were a trailer full of tigers, you would call the kids inside.
That is the animal God picked for us.
Now, our sensibilities look at the math and object. Ninety-nine out of a hundred is a fine number. Why throw the party for the one?
Here is why. If you have a hundred sheep safe in the barn, you are thankful. If you have one sheep in a barn that is on fire and you get it out, you rejoice.
Seventy pounds
Verse 5 is the part that undid me this week.
He does not just find the sheep. He lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
So I brought Abraham up on the platform, because a sheep weighs about seventy pounds and I happened to have a seventy-pound sandbag. He picked it up like a bag of feathers. Then I asked him to hold it while we talked.
Picture the day. You stopped everything. You have been searching for hours, over miles, and sheep look like rocks in Israel once they are down. You are hungry. You are exhausted. You are frustrated. And when you finally find the thing, it is too spent to walk home on its own.
Would you rejoice about that? I would rejoice that I found it. I do not think I would rejoice about carrying it.
And that is exactly what God is like.
Luke does not say how the sheep got lost. Matthew tells the same story and says it wandered — walked away from safety on its own. The shepherd finds it helpless, picks it up, and the rejoicing carries him the whole way home.
The sheep never lost its value. Its value was in jeopardy while it was separated. It was never gone.
This is heavy for you and me. It is not heavy for God.
We have taught this here for decades. God is not lost. We are. He finds us where we are, and he saves us, and he sustains us, and he brings us home. So if you have decided you have wandered too far, embarrassed yourself too thoroughly, become too much weight for anybody to carry — that is foolishness. You have a strong God.
Then I asked Abraham to keep walking back and forth with that sandbag while I kept talking, and I told the room the truth. That is what some of you look like. Regrets. Guilt. A hardened place you cannot soften. Stacked up and carried around all day.
Abraham could handle seventy pounds for a few minutes. You were never built to carry yours. Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Cast your cares on him, because he cares for you.
Put it down at the foot of the cross, where it belongs.
Joy, joy, joy
Count the rejoicing at the end of the passage. Three times. The shepherd rejoices. The neighbors rejoice. Heaven rejoices.
And it runs directly against the grumbling we started with. The Pharisees actually had a saying that God rejoices when one sinner is condemned. Jesus says the opposite as loudly as he can: there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.
At first that stung me a little on behalf of the ninety-nine. Then I remembered it is a parable, and that there is none righteous, no not one. All of us are lost. All of us are only found in Christ.
So two questions before you go. If you have wandered, what exactly are you waiting for?
And who is your one?
