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Aug 04, 2026 06:00am

Luke – Finding What is Lost

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Have you ever lost something?

We all have some time. Whether it’s your earbuds, your keys, or your wallet, you have
probably misplaced something at some point. And when you do, you usually tear the house
apart looking for it. You want to have back the thing that belongs to you but has been
misplaced.

Earlier this year, I had agreed to a phone trade-in for an upgraded model. My new phone
arrived, and I was to send back the old one within a certain timeframe. Around the same time,
my wife and I were doing some spring cleaning at the house. My dad called to remind me that
the deadline for turning in my old phone for the trade-in price was closing in. I went home from
work that day intent on finding it.
But it was nowhere to be found.

We tore the house apart. Made a mess of it all over again searching for the lost phone.
We asked my three-year-old if she had taken it; she said no. We searched her room anyway.
We searched the garage. We dug through the trash. There was no sign of the phone. The night
before the deadline, I decided to search one more time. I was putting up some other things, and
as I did, something told me to check that shelf. I shone my phone flashlight back into the
shadowy recesses of the shelf.

Lo and behold, my old phone had fallen down from one of the upper shelves and landed upright,
screen outward, at the back of the lower shelf. With the darkened screen facing outward, it had been
hidden in the shadows, all but invisible until it caught the reflection of my flashlight.

Overjoyed, I called my dad to let him know I’d found the phone. Early the next morning, I
hurried to the store to trade in the phone. Thankfully, they accepted it and applied the credit to my new phone.

I celebrated because I had found something important that I had lost. This is
similar to the attitude Jesus expresses in two parables in Luke 15:1-10.
The Pharisees were complaining that Jesus spent too much time with sinners and tax
collectors. Those societal outcasts flocked to Jesus because He accepted them without
judgment, seeing them for their value as an image-bearer of God rather than identifying them by
their sins or their political choices. These encounters regularly led to those same sinners and
tax collectors (such as Matthew and Zacchaeus) repenting of their wrongful actions and
committing to following Jesus, but the Pharisees did not make a note of this. They were more
concerned with the fact that He even associated with them at all.
In response, Jesus told a story that would simplify things for them: a shepherd who had
a hundred sheep would go hunting for one of them, even if ninety-nine were safe. The shepherd
had a responsibility—a charge to care for all the sheep. More than that, he would have grown
attached to each sheep. In a corporate world, losing one sheep out of a hundred might be a
simple percentage that could be written off; in the world Jesus lived in, a good shepherd would
not be satisfied taking care of a percentage. His responsibility was to the whole flock.
And so, he locked the gates, leaving the other ninety-nine in the pen, and set out into the
wilderness in search of the one he had lost. He would keep up his search relentlessly until he
found the sheep. When he did, he carried it home on his shoulders—showing tenderness and
compassion, rather than harsh scolding—and called around to all his friends. His lost sheep was
safe! He wanted them to gather together with him so they could celebrate its return to the fold.
He said it was the same way in heaven: God rejoiced over the return of one lost sinner
to the fold. The repentance of one sinner was more worthy of celebration to God than the
behavior of ninety-nine people who believed they did not need to repent because they were
upholding the rules. This may have been a subtle jab at the Pharisees: they considered
themselves righteous, but God took no joy in their legalism. He wanted humble repentance, not
proud displays of self-righteousness.

The second parable spoke of a woman with ten silver coins. One of them got lost in her
house. Immediately, she lit a lamp—even in the daytime, New Testament-era houses were dark
and sometimes did not even have windows—and began searching. She even swept the floor;
perhaps the coin had gotten mixed in with dust or straw. At last, she found the coin. And just as
the shepherd did, she called her neighbors and celebrated with them.
Jesus reiterated that there was joy “in the presence of the angels of God” over a
repentant sinner. I think it’s interesting that it says “in the presence of.” We often hear it said that
it’s the angels themselves who rejoice when a lost person is saved, but I don’t think that’s what
the language communicates here. While it’s possible the angels do rejoice, in this case they are
not the active party: the celebration happens in their presence, which means where they are.
And where are they? The throne room of God. The celebration is coming directly from God
Himself.

The moral of these parables is simple, but profound: God sees every person as His. He
has merely lost connection with them because of sin. There was no individual sheep among the
one hundred that were not equal property of the shepherd; none of the ten coins belonged less
to the woman than the rest. They were simply lost. God so loved the world that He sent Jesus to
offer us a path to salvation (John 3:16). There are no exemptions from that love. No one is too
bad that they could be unforgivable.
So why did Jesus spend His time with sinners and tax collectors? Because He was
seeking the lost. Simply by the way He lived His life, He opened the door for them to flock to
Him naturally.

At one time, we were lost, too. Each of us had to humbly come to Jesus and submit
ourselves to Him for forgiveness. And if we’ve done that, we should begin drawing others to
Him, too. We are salt and light, sent as envoys from His kingdom into the world. Once, we were
the lost sheep and coin. Now, if we’ve trusted Him for salvation, we are safely—and
eternally—in His possession.

And we can invite others to find that same security, too.