Bruce Kimball was a 1984 Silver Medalist in the Olympics. Bruce was involved in an accident sometime back. We are told he was intoxicated at the time. Two people were killed. Bruce withdrew from life because of that tragedy. He was depressed. He secluded himself in a trailer home with his father. He had the shades drawn. He turned inward. He was feeling sorry for himself. He could not sleep at night. Just to pass time he would sit and watch television all night long until he couldn’t hold his eyes open any longer. He would fall asleep from emotional as well as physical exhaustion.
A close friend came to see him. Bruce said, "I don’t want to see anybody. I don't want to talk to anybody." This friend walked in anyway, looked at Bruce and said three words, "Reestablish your faith." That’s all he said, "Reestablish your faith." Through those words Bruce Kimball took stock of his life and became a changed man. (1)
Jesus told two parables. One was about a lost sheep. The other about a lost coin. A shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness in order to find one lost sheep that has strayed. A woman loses a coin and she lights a lamp and sweeps out her entire house until she finds the lost coin. And both the shepherd and the woman throw parties to celebrate the fact that which had been lost was now found. God is like that, Jesus tells us. There is rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents over one lost person who is found. What wonderful Good News that is. Also what a challenge to Christ’s Church.
For you see, there are people who are lost. That’s the first thing we need to see. There are millions of people who are hurting, who are almost beyond hope, for they have no hope, who are wandering frightened and alone like a little lost lamb in a terrible wilderness.
Playwright Arthur Miller years ago gave us a classic portrait of what it means to be lost. The play was DEATH OF A SALESMAN. The tragic central character was Willie Loman, the man who searched all his life but "never knew who he was." We see his family being poisoned by Willie’s inclination toward dreaming all the wrong dreams. Those who loved him most suffered the most. Throughout the play Miller, however, gives us hints of how Willie’s life could have turned out the man Willie could have been. For example, he was a bitter failure as a salesman, and yet Willie was not completely without merit. He loved to work with his hands. His one masterpiece was the house steps that he had built himself. What if Willie had pursued a vocation in which he could have used the gifts he did have? He had a family who loved and supported him. He had a reasonable amount of intelligence. His was hardly a hopeless life and yet Willy finally kills himself, hoping by this last desperate act to give to his son, a drifter, insurance money that will improve his chances for a better life.
It didn’t have to end that way. Things could have turned out better. Willie simply could not get it all together. He was lost there is no better word for it lost like a lamb in the wilderness. There are lots of lost souls in this world. We encounter them every day. Some are young, some are old. Some live in poverty in the ghettos, some in quarter million dollar condos. Some can’t read or write their names; others have PhDs. Short, tall, fat, skinny, debonair, dull-they are of every size, color, and family background. They share but one common characteristic. They are lost. They are confused, lonely, frightened. And they seem paralyzed to do anything about their situation. That is the first thing we need to see. The world is filled with lost people.
This brings us to the second thing we need to see. Lost people are God's greatest concern. That is what Jesus is saying to us in these two parables. God's heart breaks in concern for all those who are lost.
Henri Nouwen tells the story of an old man who used to meditate early every morning under a big tree on the bank of the GangesRiver. One morning, after he had finished his meditation, he saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the water. As the scorpion was washed closer to the tree, the old man reached out to rescue the drowning creature. As soon as he touched it, however, the scorpion stung him. Instinctively the man withdrew his hand. A minute later, though, he tried again. This time the scorpion stung him so badly with its poisonous tail that his hand became swollen and bloody and his face contorted with pain.
At that moment, a passerby saw the old man struggling with the scorpion and shouted: "Hey, stupid old man, what’s wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don’t you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?"
Looking into the stranger’s eyes the old man said calmly, "My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save." (2)
What a parable of the love and grace of God! Just because it is our nature to sin, does not change God’s nature which is to save. We see that saving nature made manifest on the cross of Calvary.
There was an intriguing letter to the editor in the Smithsonian magazine recently. It was from a man named Neil J. King. King told about a strange encounter he had about 1971 at the Mayan ruins of Central America. As he carefully climbed down from the top of the an ancient temple one steamy, hot day he saw a frail elderly man starting up. Though a small retinue of traveling companions was encouraging him, the old man was negotiating those high, narrow steps by himself.
He was the explorer Richard Halliburton’s father, at age 91, intent, he said, on repeating as many of his son’s adventures as he could.
Isn’t that interesting-a father tracing the steps of his famous son? Imagine, if you can, God’s emotions as He stares down at the cross of Golgotha that held his Son? I wonder if He asked Himself, "Are all these sinful humans worth the life of my Son?" Evidently they were. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son...." Lost people are God’s greatest concern. This brings us to the final thing to be said.
Lost people will be found by people who care as God cares.
Here is the ultimate test of our Christian commitment. It is not our perfect attendance at Sunday School and worship, as important as that is. It is not how often we open our Bible, although we are people of the Book. The ultimate test of our faith is how much we care about a lost world.
Some people, even in the church, simply don’t care about people who are lost. They want to see everybody get what they deserve. Chuck Colson tells about a new family game called "Capital Punishment." Instead of buying houses on Boardwalk or collecting $200 for passing "Go," the players in this game are each given four "criminals." The object of the game is to get them past "liberals" and into the electric chair. The first player to execute all four of his criminals wins the game.
The manufacturer advertises it as a way to "allow citizens frustrated by violent crime to punish criminals vicariously." Sales are brisk in more than 400 retail outlets. (3)
I don’t have an answer to the problem of crime in America. I do know that if we ever forget that every criminal, no matter how heinous his crime, is a precious soul for whom Christ died, we are in terrible trouble. We care, not because it is fashionable, or because we are goody-goody, bleeding heart liberals. We care because God cares.
The people who want to make sure that everybody gets what he or she deserves have no idea in the world what the Gospel is. If it were God’s intent to see that we all get what we deserve, He would never have sent His Son into the world to die for our sins. We hope that we don’t get what we deserve. We want mercy. And thus we are able to show mercy. "There but for the grace of God go I," is our response to meeting one who is lost. Some people don’t care what happens to the lost. Others care, but only in the most superficial kind of way.
A recent immigrant to America was quickly impressed by everyone’s interest in his welfare. Wherever he turned, people asked, "How are you?" This was great, he thought. So, when anyone asked, "How are you?" he told them. He told of his sinus headaches and his colds, appreciating this interest in his well-being. Then the immigrant noticed something else. Those who asked the question did not wait for an answer. "How are you?" had become an empty question. (4)
Some people don’t care at all. Others care in a superficial way. Then there are those like Bruce Kimball’s friend who care like God cares and who seek to help lost people reestablish their faith. Who seek out the hurting and introduce them to the great healer of hearts. Who ask, "How are you?" and mean it. Of such is built the Kingdom of God.
Several years ago, there was a story from Wales about two seventy-four-year-olds who had married, each for the first time. The two were lifelong neighbors who had been parted by a lovers’ quarrel when they both were thirty-two years old. Every week since then, for forty-two years, David Thomas had written a love letter apologizing for his part in the quarrel and had slipped it under Rachel’s door. Finally, one momentous day, David plucked up the courage and knocked on the door rather than slipping a note under it. Rachel answered, he proposed, she accepted, and the wedding followed. (5)
All those letters. Then a knock. My friend, if you are among the lost this morning, there is someone who stands at the door of your heart knocking, asking to be let in. He seeks to give you new hope, new meaning, new joy. If, on the other hand, you are among those who have already said yes to the Master, he is asking you to care as He cares. He is asking you to help him in the business of knocking on the doors of lost people’s lives. You and I encounter such people every day. Some of them are our friends. Some of them are in our own family. We have a grand calling to care for the lost. For there is rejoicing in Heaven whenever one who is lost is found.
1. As told by Motivational Speaker, Les Brown.
2. Brennan Manning, THE SIGNATURE OF JESUS, (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1988).
3. Charles Colson: WHO SPEAKS FOR GOD? (Westchester, Ill:Crossway Books, 1985).
4. Harold Hazelip and Ken Durham, JESUS OUR MENTOR AND MODEL,(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1987).
5. Gary Inrig, QUALITY FRIENDSHIP, (Chicago: Moody Press, 1981).