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Location: Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States

Sunday, September 16, 2007

16th Sunday after Pentecost 9/16/07 Text: Ezekiel 34:11-24 and Luke 15:1-6

16th Sunday after Pentecost
9/16/2007
Text: Ezekiel 34:11-24 and Luke 15:1-6
Title: Lost and Found
Today’s readings made it really hard for me to pick which one to preach on. The Old Testament text tells us the wonderful story of God’s promise to rescue his people from the evil prophets and priests of their day.
God told his people, the people that he had chosen that he was going to seek them until he found every one. Then he would rescue them from where they had been scattered, so that he could bring them back to the land he had given them.
But he does not even stop there, for he tells them that he is going to do even more, for he will feed them. Now that is pretty good in itself, but he is not through for he is going to keep on bringing back those who stray and bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.
He finishes the good news by telling them that they don’t have to worry about the prophets and religious leaders that had caused them to fall away from him.
He will take care of it, for the prophets and religious leaders had not done what he had told them to do. Ezekiel, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit uses some beautiful figurative language to describe why God was going to judge those he put in charge of his people.
Look at verse18 and the following. God is talking to those who had harmed his people with false teachings and prophecies. “Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet?”
What God is saying here is that he had given the prophets and the priests the pure Word of God and that they had corrupted it by their teachings and prophecies. The people of God, the people that he had chosen had been led into all types of wickedness and it was their fault and so they were going to pay the price, for God judges good and evil.
God then closes with the most wonderful words. He tells his people in verse 23, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.”
Is not that wonderful news? God is going to do it. He is going to save them from their sins. There appears to be a problem with this text though, for David had been dead for around 400 years. He could not be talking about King David then, but who is he talking about?
God is talking about Jesus, a descendent of David, for you see David was a foreshadow of Jesus. Jesus is the promised Messiah, the holy David who has become our prince.
What can we learn from this text? The first thing is that it is God who does the seeking, the rescuing, and the feeding. Not in worldly things, but in spiritual things as he comes to us in his Word, rescuing us from Satan’s clutches, and then feeds us in His Supper. We can be in peace, knowing that our Good Shepherd is watching out for us today and everyday, even when life is the pits.
Secondly we learn that it is God who does the judging. It is not our business, for he is the only one that truly knows who is his and who is not. That is a good thing, for we all know how badly we judge others. We all know how we think we know someone and are proven wrong. No, it is a good thing to leave the judging to God, for is judging is perfect and just.
Let’s move on to the Gospel lesson, for we see in chapter 15 that nothing has really changed, for the religious leaders are doing the same thing they were doing in Ezekiel’s time, only it is not at as obvious.. They are taking care of themselves and not the people. They had made their religion into a private club.
They were after all on the inside and those sinners, that is anyone who was not like them, were on the outside with no hope of getting in, at least if they had anything to do with it.
Jesus knew that, for in the eyes of society these religious leaders were righteous. We read in verse 2 that the Pharisees were grumbling. Now their grumbling was not just being unhappy. They were continually grumbling, not quietly, but out loud. I am sure they were making quite a show of their displeasure with Jesus.
Why shouldn’t they? Just look at what he was doing; eating with those that are not like them. The next thing you know he will be inviting them to worship. The religious leaders and their followers had had forgotten that the religion they called theirs was God’s and not theirs.
That is something we need to remember too, especially when new ideas are brought forward. Things like new ways to worship God, new ways to do missions, new ways to reach out to others, new programs all designed with reaching the lost with the Word of God.
Just like the people of Jesus’ day we need to watch that religion does not get in the way of our living as disciples of Jesus. We need to remember that we are in God’s church, not our church. We pay the bills, we paint, we cleanup, we come together in a building we have paid for, but it is still not our church. It belongs to God, to be used for his purpose, saving the lost.
That is why these two parables in our Gospel reading for this morning are as meaningful to us today as they were to the people of Jesus’ day.
Before we see what we can learn from these two parables, you need to remember that Jesus’ parables use earthly examples to demonstrate the Word of God. They, just as these two today, take what would be the common sense approach and turn it completely upside down. That should not be surprising for God’s Word, his wisdom that he gives us, is the opposite of the world’s thinking.
Take the first parable, the parable of the lost sheep. Who would in his right mind leave 99 sheep to fend for themselves to go after one lost sheep. To lose one sheep when you have that many is not that bad of deal. The lost sheep was probably inferior anyway. Why he might be hurt, maybe he or she will not be of any worth; so what is the use going after one lost sheep?
The second parable now that is a little different deal, for the coin the woman lost was worth a day’s pay. That we would go after. We would hunt and clean until we found it; that is for sure.
I do not know about you, but I am not sure I would rejoice when I found the lost sheep. Oh, I might be happy, but to call up my neighbors and rejoice. I do not think so.
Now that woman with the lost coin throwing a party, that is ridiculous. Throw a party just because I found a day’s wages, I do not think so. I might call my wife, but to call the neighbors. They would all think I was crazy.
You see we are not that much different than the Pharisees and scribes, and their followers. We too often think about the church being our church, instead of God’s church.
We begin to think and believe that what we do in church is being done to serve us. We forget that we do worship and Bible study to make us stronger in our faith and daily life, so that we can better do Jesus’ work.
We get so that we as a community focus on ourselves and our needs so much that we forget that we are to look out for those stragglers, especially of our congregation, those we call Christmas and Easter Christians.
We forget that we need to help the weak and hurting. And in not doing so we are not fulfilling the mission God has given us. I say this because in these two parables you should have noticed that the sheep and the coin could not find themselves. The shepherd and the woman had to find them.
You might have found it a little strange in verse 7 when Jesus says, “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” That can be confusing because we as people have a natural tendency to focus on the wrong things and because of that we lose the point Jesus is making.
We need to first understand that Jesus is not talking about a sheep that is not from his flock. In other words he is not talking about a new believer, but one that has wandered away from Jesus’ care.
Now, let’s take this verse apart, a little at a time. That way you will get a clearer understanding of what he is telling us. “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.” Let’s stop there and take a look at the word “repents”. In the Greek the word is “repenting” as in one who continually repents. That means a person who lives in a state of continually recognizing his or her sin, being sorry for them, and turning away from them, all because they know that forgiveness and salvation only exists in Christ and his saving work.
The last part of the verse is the most confusing, because there we read, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
It sounds like there are people who do not need to repentant. That is odd because we know we all have sinned and fallen short of God desires. This is another instance of the English not being able to fully say what the Greek word for “righteous” means in this context.
In Greek the word “righteous” carries the sense of those who think they do not need to repent. That is the Pharisees and scribes, and those like them then and today.
They are wrong of course, for it is all about Jesus and his actions, his taking the punishment for us, his pursuing and finding, all so that we can now stand before God cleared of our guilt.
Parents and grandparents, any of you who have relatives or friends that have wandered away from God’s flock trust in Jesus the Good Shepherd, for you can see in our Old Testament New Testament readings that God has not forgotten the lost sheep of his flock, those who were baptized in his name. Until the day they die he will continually go after his lost and hurting sheep, until he rescues them, binds up their spiritual wounds and brings them back into his flock where he will continue to care for them through us. What an honor we have been given. Amen