🐑 Parables of the Bible — Unit 9: Lost and Found

Orientation

For about four hundred years the Ark of the Covenant, the gold-covered chest that held the tablets of the Ten Commandments, rested in the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple. Then, when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC, it disappeared. The Bible does not tell us what happened to it. Most likely the conquerors melted it down for its gold. It has inspired treasure hunters, archaeologists, and at least one famous Hollywood film, but it has never been found.

Jesus told three stories about lost things in Luke 15, and all three have the same point: something valuable is lost, someone searches for it, and there is great joy when it is found. In Unit 1 we saw why the setting matters so much here. "Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, 'This Man receives sinners and eats with them'" (Luke 15:1–2). These three parables are Jesus' answer to that complaint. They defend His mission, and they invite the grumblers to join the celebration.

I. The Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3–7)

"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?" (15:4). Sheep have a tendency to wander, which is why they need a shepherd. A shepherd was responsible for every animal; if one was lost, he was expected to find it or bring proof that a predator had taken it. By leaving the ninety-nine, the shepherd was not saying they were unimportant. Every sheep was dear to him. When he found the lost one, he put it on his shoulders, called his friends together, and said, "Rejoice with me." Jesus concludes, "There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance" (15:7).

The sheep was lost through its own foolishness. It simply wandered off, one mouthful of grass at a time, and nobody ever plans to be lost. Three celebrated explorers were once invited to a dinner in London. Among them they had explored Greenland, Antarctica, the Sahara, and the Amazon. They set out on foot from the Royal Geographical Society to a restaurant a quarter mile away, and within fifteen minutes they were lost in the back streets of London. Sometimes a person is lost and does not even know it.

Jesus is concerned for those of us in the church, but He is intent on reaching those outside it. "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). Evangelism professor Roy Fish told of an Indiana town of about four thousand people, where fewer than seven hundred belonged to any church. A small Baptist church held three weeks of revival meetings without stirring the slightest interest among the lost. Finally a young stonemason from Chicago, with rough manners and a foreign accent, agreed to come. He took a deacon with him and began calling at every house in town, praying with families and inviting them. Within days others joined him. Soon the building was full, the Methodists and Presbyterians were holding meetings of their own, and before it ended every lost person in town had heard the gospel two or three times. Hundreds came to Christ. The shepherd does not wait for the sheep to find its own way home; he goes after it.

The parable also speaks to believers who have wandered. Christians of different traditions disagree about whether a true believer can lose salvation, but all agree that a believer can lose the joy of it through sin and indifference. That is why David prayed, "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation" (Psalm 51:12). Indifference may be the most miserable state a Christian can live in.

II. The Lost Coin (Luke 15:8–10)

"Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?" (15:8). Each coin was a drachma, about a day's wage. Some interpreters suggest the coins may have been part of her dowry, perhaps even worn on a headdress as a sign that she was married, which would make the loss something like losing a wedding ring. My wife has lost her wedding rings enough times for me to understand how anxious this woman must have been. Village houses had few windows, so she lit a lamp and swept every corner until she found it. Then she too called her friends: "Rejoice with me." "Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents" (15:10).

The sheep was lost through its own foolishness; the coin was lost through someone else's carelessness. The coin did not know it was lost and could not do anything to be found. Some people are lost because of the neglect of those who should have been caring for them. A newspaper once told of a diamond cutter working on a very expensive stone. He tightened the vise one more turn, and the diamond shot out, struck the ceiling, and disappeared. He locked the door and searched every corner. The owner searched with him. They never found it, and by the rules of the factory, sixty dollars a month was taken from the cutter's salary to pay for it. Six months later a repairman opened the little telephone box on the wall, and cried out, "Look what I found!" There was the diamond. Precious things we think we could never lose can be lost, and precious people can be lost right under our roof. Some Christians have lost something too: their sense of purpose. Why are you here, and what has God given you to do?

III. The Lost Son (Luke 15:11–24)

The third story is the most famous. We call it the parable of the prodigal son. The word prodigal means wasteful. The younger son said to his father, "Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me" (15:12). In that culture, asking for your inheritance while your father was alive was like saying, "I wish you were dead." Yet the father divided his property. The son went to a far country and wasted it all in reckless living.

Then a famine came. The young Jew who had wanted freedom ended up feeding pigs, unclean animals in Jewish law, and longing to eat the pods the pigs were eating. "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!'" (15:17). He rehearsed a speech: he would confess his sin and ask to be made a hired servant.

This story differs from the first two. The shepherd searched for the sheep and the woman searched for the coin, but the father did not go to the far country. It was the memory of his father's goodness that brought the boy home. "But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him" (15:20). As we saw in Unit 1, a dignified older man in that culture did not run. This father did. The son began his speech, but the father cut him off before he could ask to be a servant. "Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet" (15:22). The robe restored his honor, the ring his authority, and the sandals his place as a son, since servants went barefoot. Then came the fatted calf and the feast: "For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found" (15:24).

Look at the father. He was patient: the son had been gone long enough for a famine to ravage the land, yet the father saw him "a great way off," because he had never stopped watching the road. He was loving: he ran, embraced, and kissed his son before asking a single question. He was forgiving: he did not let his son finish his plea but restored him to full honor. And he had his priorities right: the most important thing was not what the son had done, but that he was alive and home.

A veteran missionary in China once led a talented young artist to Christ. The artist said, "I best take truth into my heart by painting it. Tell me how to paint the Christian faith." The missionary opened to Luke 15 and said, "Paint this." The artist's first painting showed the son trudging home in rags, and the father standing at the gate with his arms folded and a stern, "I told you so" look on his face. "It is beautiful," the missionary said gently, "but it misses the point. The father should be running." The artist tried again. This time the father was running down the road, robes flapping, face full of joy, and his shoes did not match: one was red and one was blue. "Why the shoes?" asked the missionary. "Because he was in such a hurry to reach his son," the artist said, "that he grabbed the nearest two shoes and ran." That is what God is like: always anxious to love, quick to forgive, eager to reconcile.

IV. The Elder Brother (Luke 15:25–32)

The parable does not end with the feast. The older son came in from the field, heard music and dancing, and learned why. "But he was angry and would not go in" (15:28). So the father went out to him too. The older son exploded: "Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him" (15:29–30).

Notice his words. He calls his brother "this son of yours," not "my brother." He describes his years at home as slavery: "I have been serving you." And the father gently corrects him: "Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found" (15:31–32).

This is the point of the whole chapter. The Pharisees who grumbled about Jesus eating with sinners were the elder brother. They had stayed home and kept the rules, but they did not share the Father's heart. The younger son was lost in the far country; the older son was lost at home. And the story ends without telling us whether the older brother went in to the feast. Jesus leaves that ending open because the Pharisees, and every religious person since, must write it with their own lives. There is no compassion in the elder brother, no celebration, no mismatched shoes. Bitterly he turns away, and he misses the party.

V. Living in the Spirit of the Mismatched Shoes

This parable shows us not only what God is like but what He wants us to be like: anxious to love, quick to forgive, eager to reconcile. We can live in that spirit in three places.

In the church. Preaching professor Fred Craddock told about his father, who never went to church. Whenever a pastor visited, he would say, "You don't care about me. All you want is another name for your rolls and another pledge for your budget." Years later, Craddock rushed to the veterans' hospital where his father was dying of throat cancer. He could no longer speak. Craddock looked around the room and saw flowers, plants, cards, and gifts everywhere, every one of them from people at the church. His father took a pencil and wrote on a tissue box a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story." "What is your story, Dad?" Craddock asked. His father wrote: "I was wrong." The church had kept right on loving him. Its shoes did not match.

In our families. I once held a funeral for a young father named Jerry who died suddenly, leaving his wife and an eight-year-old daughter. The week before, he had given his daughter his boyhood coin collection for her birthday. It was worth perhaps sixty dollars. Three days after the funeral, Jerry's mother demanded the collection back and ordered them out of her house. When she asked me what I would do, I told her gently that she could lose her granddaughter over this, and that I would go to them at once and ask forgiveness. She looked at me with hard eyes and said, "All hell will freeze over before I would do that!" Twenty years later, her granddaughter has grown up, graduated with honors, married, and is expecting her first child, and her grandmother has not seen or spoken to her since. All because of a coin collection worth sixty dollars. That is the elder brother's spirit, and it always ends outside the feast.

In our personal relationships. A minister friend told me what happened in a small town in west Arkansas. A young man named Bertram was pumping gas one Saturday morning when Old Man Jones, drunk and belligerent, began cursing him and hitting him in the back. Finally Bertram threw his arm back to push him away. The older man stumbled, tripped over a curb, struck his head on a concrete bench, and died. The whole town split into two camps. That afternoon Bertram asked the Methodist pastor to go with him to see Mrs. Jones. Relatives filled the house and yard, and no one would speak to them. When Mrs. Jones heard Bertram was there, she jumped up from her rocking chair, ran into the living room, and took both his hands. "Bertram," she said, "you don't have to say a word. I was with your mother when you were born. The doctor put you in my arms first. I know you are a good person. I know it was an accident." Then she hugged him tightly, and with that hug she healed the whole town. If we could have looked down at her feet, I think we would have seen a red house shoe and a blue house shoe. She had learned that spirit from Jesus.

VI. Preaching Luke 15

A pastor can preach the three parables together under the theme of lost things: the sheep lost through foolishness, the coin lost through carelessness, and the son lost through willfulness, with the elder brother lost at home. Three truths run through the chapter: nobody ever plans to be lost; sometimes a person is lost and does not know it; and there is always rejoicing when the lost is found. Or the prodigal son can be preached on its own, focusing on the father who is anxious to love, quick to forgive, and eager to reconcile, and closing with the open question to the elder brothers in the congregation: will you go in?

A young couple lost on a rural road once stopped to ask an old farmer where the road would take them. "Son," he said, "this road will take you anywhere in the world you want to go, if you move in the right direction." The road home to the Father is always open.

Closing

A new mother stayed with her parents for a few days after her first baby was born. She remarked that it was surprising the baby had dark hair, since she and her husband were both fair. "Well, your daddy has black hair," her mother said. "But that doesn't matter," the daughter replied, "because I'm adopted." Her mother smiled and said the most wonderful words the daughter had ever heard: "I always forget." That is how the Father receives every prodigal who comes home. He does not hold the far country over us. He runs, He embraces, and He throws a party. "He was lost and is found."

— Dr. Wayne Cook
Chapala Theological Seminary

Submit Exam & Check Pass Reset