Lost and Found | The Book Of Luke Week 2 | Anywhere Service

What happens when you take the wrong path in life? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a “Google Maps” for life? The good news is, when we get lost God isn’t just waiting for us, He’s looking for us.

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    - Today on Crossroads,
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    we're going to dive into the Book of Luke
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    and look at three parables that may feel separate
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    but are actually the same,
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    and what we'll find is that Jesus comes to look for us.
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    - Hey. Welcome to Crossroads. I'm Hannah.
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    - I'm Kyle. Today we're in this series
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    talking about stuff Jesus made up.
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    - That's exactly right.
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    In the Book of Luke, Jesus gives us
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    what He calls parables, and He just made them up,
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    but they actually have some truth for our life.
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    So what are you talking about?
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    - Well, today I'm going to teach you about
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    one of His most famous ones
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    about lost coins, lost sheep and lost sons.
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    It's going to be a blast.
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    - It's going to be something
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    and I'm going to tell you I'm excited.
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    - Before we get started, I want to invite you
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    into a spiritual discipline
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    that we believe can change the world.
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    - And if you want to give,
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    you can actually do so in our app, it's super simple.
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    You just click your profile, the gear shift,
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    and then you click give.
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    So, Kyle, come on, what are you teaching us?
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    Get in there, it's time for the message.
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    - Actually going to start with
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    our Senior Pastor, Brian Tome, a quick message from him.
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    - All right. Let's get into it.
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    - Hey, I'm Brian. Welcome to my garage.
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    We're in the midst of a series on the book of Luke.
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    And one of the key things going through the Book of Luke
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    are these stories that Jesus made up.
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    These were things that He was trying to create
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    to help people understand absolute truth about God,
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    His Kingdom, and heaven.
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    So He would just make things up.
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    He would draw parallels from what they would see
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    in their day to day life and say,
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    "That's what God is like, that's what heaven's like,
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    that's what the Kingdom of God is like."
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    Now, why am I in my garage right now?
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    Well, part of why am I in garage
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    instead of with you right now is the story
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    that Jesus made up is going to be told by Kyle today,
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    because I've talked about these three stories
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    a number of times over the last 25 years.
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    I just thought, we probably need a fresh voice on this.
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    You can't go into the Book of Luke
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    and not deal with the thing that Jesus does
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    back to back to back.
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    There's no other story, there's no other teaching
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    that Jesus has where He gives three different examples
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    of the same thing, boom, boom, boom.
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    And that's what it is today, we've got a lost coin,
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    a lost sheep, and a lost son.
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    As I've been restoring this 1978 Jeep CJ7
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    it's going to be a long, long process.
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    And here's the thing, when I tear this down,
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    there's this process called tagging and bagging,
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    where every single bolt needs to be tagged and bagged.
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    Like right here just before I was getting ready
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    for this video shoot, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh,
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    what is this?"
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    And this was and this thing right here,
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    it was separated and it was just sitting here
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    and I thought, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't tag it and bag it.
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    What is that?"
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    It's been probably two weeks since I took this off
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    and I already had started to forget where it was.
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    What I don't want to do is have my whole jeep torn down
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    and then I start putting it back and I've lost parts,
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    I don't know where they are.
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    The amount of time and energy I would spend
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    scouring the garage, trying to find it,
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    and parts, by the way, many of which
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    don't exist anymore for me to buy.
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    I would be consumed.
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    I wouldn't be going, "Oh, yeah.
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    But look, I still got a distributor cap.
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    Oh, yeah, but look, I still have a power steering pump."
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    No, I'd be fixated over that part. That's God.
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    He enjoys everybody who's with Him,
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    but He has a part of Him that fixates
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    over people who are lost,
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    people who are disconnected from Him.
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    It's like He puts it out of His mind
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    and just goes on a massive seeking mission.
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    That's part of what Kyle is going to talk about today.
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    He's going to do it better than I could,
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    and he's going to do it fresher than I could.
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    So let's go to Kyle.
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    - So we're in Luke looking at the teachings of Jesus
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    and all of His teachings had one goal:
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    to help us know who God is and what He's like.
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    Today, we're going to look at
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    the world famous lost parables:
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    the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son,
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    also known as the Prodigal Son.
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    There are three back to back parables that highlight
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    not just the genius of Jesus, but the most unique part
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    about the Christian God versus all the other ones,
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    which is what He does when we take
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    the wrong path in life and end up lost,
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    which to me happens all the time.
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    I was in California a few weeks ago,
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    driving around through Silicon Valley.
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    If you've never been there, you just have to know
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    that their basic strategy
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    for how to design roads was spaghetti.
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    Like, I think they just took a picture of spaghetti
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    and they went, "That, that is --
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    let's just make the roads exactly like that."
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    So I got Google Maps out.
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    I'm driving along and I'm following
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    the little blue line that you follow.
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    I'm trying to follow the right spaghetti noodle,
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    and every single time I'd pick the wrong one,
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    I just end up like way off, had to turn around, come back.
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    It was so frustrating.
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    And so I did what you do when you get frustrated,
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    I called my person, which in my case is my wife, Sarah.
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    She goes, "Hey, babe, have you ever noticed,
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    in addition to the blue line,
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    there's a giant box in green?
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    It looks exactly like the road signs.
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    It tells you exactly where to get off."
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    And I was like, "I had not --
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    I had not previously noticed that.
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    That seems -- that seems very --
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    that seems very helpful. Thank you so much."
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    That's how I learned there are
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    two types of people in the world.
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    There are the blue line people
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    and there are green box people.
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    I don't know which one you are.
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    I'm just saying there's a clear right answer --
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    and I'm just kidding.
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    The point is, everyone ends up lost at some point.
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    Not lost like on a map looking for directions on a road,
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    but lost in life.
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    Like we thought we were headed in a good direction.
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    We took this path that we thought would be
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    the onramp to happiness and satisfaction and success.
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    But we took it, and we've gone down it,
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    and we ended up in a place that's not that.
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    There's no better feeling for getting
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    to the end of that road, you just feel lost,
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    nowhere to turn, you don't know what to do.
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    And I wonder about you and your life right now.
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    Are you lost in any place?
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    Most people I talked to would say,
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    yes, lost in faith or lost in career plans,
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    lost in a relationship that I thought
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    was headed towards this direction.
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    And now it just kind of broke apart,
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    especially when it comes to faith.
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    What happens when you end up lost in faith?
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    What happens when you get off the path
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    you know that God wants you on?
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    What happens when you run down the road
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    you thought would lead to happiness, only it hasn't.
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    The big question of the day is
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    when you get lost, how do you get found?
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    Do you have to make your own way back to God?
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    Do you have to figure out the Google map direction
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    in blue or green or whatever?
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    And if you do get back to God,
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    what's His response to you going to be?
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    Those are the questions that we're answering today.
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    So it turns out there's no Google Maps for life.
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    Thankfully, Jesus knew that,
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    and He gave the answers to those critical questions
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    most powerfully and clearly through
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    what have become known around the world
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    as the lost parables.
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    And Jesus tells them towards the end of His life,
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    just before He started walking towards Jerusalem,
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    where He'd be crucified.
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    In a way, the parables act almost like
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    a thesis of his entire mission.
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    Now, the audience for this scene is crucial to understand.
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    Jesus wasn't telling these parables to His disciples.
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    There wasn't crowds of average people,
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    like the Sermon on the Mount up around Galilee.
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    It wasn't that at all.
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    It was actually two groups together
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    who couldn't be further apart.
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    One group is lost
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    and the other group thinks they're found.
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    The first group are the tax collectors and sinners.
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    Sorry, IRS agents, I understand you get lumped
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    into sinners like PB gets lumped into J,
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    and I just want to apologize for that.
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    Now, these people are the people
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    who know something critical.
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    They know they're lost, which means
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    they're actually the best kind of lost you can be.
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    See, there's two types of being lost.
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    There's being lost and knowing it,
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    or much worse, you can be lost and have no idea.
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    It's better to be lost and know it
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    because when you know it, you can stop,
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    you can look around, you can reassess.
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    Where did I come from?
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    Where did I maybe get off the path?
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    And critically, you can listen for help.
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    There's a story at the end of last year
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    about a hiker who was hiking in Colorado.
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    They get lost.
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    You know, the nightmare happens, the sun goes down.
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    They can't find their way.
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    They did have their phone on, though.
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    This is an advantage, right?
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    The search party calls the phone
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    and the hiker doesn't answer.
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    Why? Because they didn't recognize the number.
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    Now, that's a problem.
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    But tax collectors and sinners, they don't do that.
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    They actually recognize the number. They recognized Jesus.
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    They've seen what He's done at this point.
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    He's been around for a while.
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    They've seen the life change He brings.
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    They've seen the way that He's helped people.
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    And they wonder, "Maybe He could do that for me.
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    Maybe as a lost person, He could help me get found."
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    And so they draw near to Him to hear Him.
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    See, the problem is, if you don't know you're lost,
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    if you don't understand
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    that you've driven the wrong way,
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    it's a lot harder to be found.
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    That's the most dangerous place to be in all of life.
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    And that's the second group,
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    the Pharisees and the Scribes.
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    Today, that would be the pastors and the priests.
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    It would be people like me, the professionals
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    who are so good at religious stuff
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    that they pay you for it.
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    See. if they're lost, they don't know it,
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    so they don't drill near to Him to hear Him.
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    Instead, they complain in his face.
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    Let's pick up the story in Luke 15:1. It says:
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    The Pharisees and the scribes, they complain to Jesus.
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    And their complaint was that Jesus receives sinner,
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    and when sinners come to Him,
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    He'll actually sit down, He'll talk to them.
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    This is wildly offensive to the Pharisees and Scribes.
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    See, in their view, God wanted perfect people like them.
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    People who had never messed up,
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    people who were perfect, people who had followed
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    the letter of the law without fail.
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    See, their God turned
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    and left lost people when he saw them.
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    He didn't -- he didn't receive them.
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    He didn't eat with them.
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    As a response to that complaint,
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    Jesus launches into the three parables,
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    all in a row that now the same point,
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    and they build on each other.
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    Now, a quick overview of them before we jump in.
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    The first is about a shepherd who loses one sheep.
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    The second is about a woman who loses one coin.
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    And the third is about a father who loses one son.
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    Two important things to understand.
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    First, the character, actions, and intentions
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    in the parables transfer one to the next,
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    so what happens in the first one
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    can carry over to the second and to the third.
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    Second, three in a row of anything
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    in Jewish literature is very significant,
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    and anything repeated exactly in all three
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    is highly significant.
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    So pay attention to what gets repeated.
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    Let's start with the parable of the lost sheep.
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    Jesus said this:
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    Right out of the gate.
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    Jesus takes their accusation,
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    that when sinners come to Him, He receives them.
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    And He's like, "When they come to me, I receive them.
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    That's not even the half of it.
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    I don't wait for them to come to me.
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    I go after them."
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    That's the first good news today.
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    See, when we're lost, God comes looking for us.
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    In fact, Jesus says that's actually
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    the very reason why he came to the world
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    was to seek and save the lost.
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    Luke 19:10, Jesus said:
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    For the Son of Man, (that's Him)
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    Has come to seek and to save that which was lost.
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    Jesus knew that we'd get lost.
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    He knew we'd hit the midlife crisis,
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    the quarter life crisis.
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    He knew there was no Google Maps for life.
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    There's no app you can get.
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    There's nothing to tell you the path back,
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    nothing, in fact, that you could ever do
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    would get you back to God.
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    That's why He comes looking for us.
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    And this is radical. This is absolutely radical.
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    This is a moment where that line you hear
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    all the time that all religions are the same.
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    I'm sorry, they're just not.
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    See in other religions, when you get lost,
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    the gods turn their back on you,
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    and then it's up to you to make your way back to them.
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    Do a pilgrimage, do the right things,
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    work the formula to get back,
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    and hope that when you do get back to your god,
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    they find you acceptable.
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    But the God of the Bible is radically better
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    than all the other ones.
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    And the way Jesus makes that clear
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    is by talking about God first as a shepherd.
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    I think He started with this one
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    because God as a shepherd was a concept
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    that all of his listeners, the scribes, the Pharisees,
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    the tax collectors, the sinners,
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    everybody in Jewish culture
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    would have been very, very familiar with.
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    One of most famous pieces of scripture was one
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    that they would all have known by heart,
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    not just the Pharisees,
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    but even the tax collectors and the sinners.
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    It was Psalm 23, which says that God is a shepherd.
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    It goes like this:
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    Let me just say directly to you,
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    if you've been hanging back from God,
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    I'm sure it would happen if you showed up to church
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    or if you tried to make your way back to Him.
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    If you prayed after how long it's been years,
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    maybe, I don't know.
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    You worried about what would happen
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    if you tried to get close to God,
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    let me just blow up the scenario for you.
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    If you're worried about Him being angry,
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    if you're worried about Him being upset with you,
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    that's not all that's going to happen,
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    that God's coming after you.
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    He's looking for you.
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    He's searching for you carefully,
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    and He won't stop until He finds you.
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    Why?
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    Because of what Jesus makes clear in the next parable,
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    you are His treasure.
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    Jesus goes on, said:
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    Jesus says God is searching carefully for you.
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    You're His treasure.
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    And do you notice how this one ended?
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    It was the same as the first parable
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    about how they lost the sheep.
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    Both of them end with angels celebrating in heaven
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    over just one person repenting.
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    And what does repent mean?
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    It's not about groveling.
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    It's not about a million apologies.
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    It's not about words at all, actually.
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    See, repent just means to stop and to turn around.
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    It just literally looks like this.
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    You're walking and you stop.
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    You realize you're headed in the wrong direction.
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    That's it.
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    The moment happens not because
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    the lost thing did anything smart.
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    Did you notice that? The sheep did nothing smart.
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    The sheep did not find its way back to the right path.
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    Sheep didn't notice it was lost.
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    The coin didn't come out of the couch cushions on its own.
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    It didn't earn a second chance.
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    It's not because of anything it did.
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    It's because its owner went looking for it.
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    And then Jesus gets the culmination
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    of the three parables, the parable of the lost son
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    or the Prodigal Son.
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    That idea and that phrase,
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    it's still huge in pop culture.
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    It actually comes from this one scene.
  • 00:15:41
    Luke is the only one who records it. It's right here.
  • 00:15:44
    Jesus starts by talking about a son
  • 00:15:46
    who asks his father for his inheritance early
  • 00:15:49
    so he could run away and do this stuff
  • 00:15:51
    that he thought would make him happy.
  • 00:15:53
    Let's pick it up in Luke 15:13:
  • 00:16:42
    The son makes a plan.
  • 00:16:44
    He figures his dad won't just take him back as a son,
  • 00:16:46
    but maybe as a servant.
  • 00:16:47
    And here's what I want
  • 00:16:48
    you to pay really close attention to,
  • 00:16:50
    because here's what happens next. It says:
  • 00:17:07
    The father sees him when he's a great way off. How?
  • 00:17:11
    Because the father wasn't at home.
  • 00:17:14
    He wasn't sitting on the porch
  • 00:17:16
    hoping his son was returning.
  • 00:17:17
    Have you ever pictured this story before,
  • 00:17:18
    heard it told about God
  • 00:17:21
    who's the father waiting for you to come home?
  • 00:17:24
    He wasn't.
  • 00:17:26
    He was actively hunting for his son.
  • 00:17:28
    He hadn't slept in his bed for days, for weeks.
  • 00:17:32
    How do I know?
  • 00:17:33
    Because in the first parable, Jesus said
  • 00:17:35
    that the shepherd, who, by the way,
  • 00:17:37
    was the average shepherd.
  • 00:17:38
    You get the point about the 100 sheep size
  • 00:17:40
    and the 100 flock.
  • 00:17:42
    That's an average size of an average flock.
  • 00:17:44
    So the average shepherd goes after his sheep
  • 00:17:48
    and only returns home after he's found the lost one.
  • 00:17:52
    You know, Jesus isn't the average shepherd.
  • 00:17:54
    In John 10 he says He's the Good Shepherd.
  • 00:17:57
    But what does that mean?
  • 00:17:59
    It means the father wasn't waiting for the son to return.
  • 00:18:02
    He wasn't just sipping his coffee in the porch
  • 00:18:03
    and just hoping.
  • 00:18:05
    If that's your view of God,
  • 00:18:06
    that He's just waiting, probably impatiently,
  • 00:18:09
    for you to shape up and come groveling back to Him,
  • 00:18:12
    you're wrong.
  • 00:18:14
    He is in hot pursuit of you. He is coming after you.
  • 00:18:17
    He is running and trying to find you and get you home.
  • 00:18:21
    And the only reason He hasn't brought you home yet
  • 00:18:23
    is because you've kept running.
  • 00:18:26
    He's coming after you.
  • 00:18:28
    This is the good news.
  • 00:18:29
    Not with anger, not with vengeance,
  • 00:18:33
    not to give you what you deserve, not to lecture you.
  • 00:18:35
    He wants to throw you a party
  • 00:18:38
    and celebrate your return home.
  • 00:18:40
    Here's how the parable ends.
  • 00:19:08
    The summary of the parables?
  • 00:19:10
    That God is a shepherd
  • 00:19:12
    looking for the thing He treasures the most: you.
  • 00:19:20
    So a story that might be unexpected to you.
  • 00:19:23
    When I was going into my senior year of college,
  • 00:19:26
    I left the path I had been on.
  • 00:19:28
    I wanted to do something different.
  • 00:19:29
    So I actually went and I lived abroad
  • 00:19:32
    for a summer over in Oxford, England.
  • 00:19:35
    And I didn't just leave the path in terms of the college
  • 00:19:37
    and the place that I'd been living
  • 00:19:39
    to go live somewhere else.
  • 00:19:40
    I also left the path that I had been following
  • 00:19:42
    in college, following the ways of Jesus.
  • 00:19:45
    I just wanted to try something different.
  • 00:19:48
    So I went over to Europe
  • 00:19:49
    and I just kind of pursued happiness,
  • 00:19:51
    the only way that I could figure out how to do
  • 00:19:54
    over there, which was anything I wanted, basically.
  • 00:19:58
    One weekend I ended up traveling to Scotland by myself,
  • 00:20:01
    had an amazing time, ended up in St Andrew's
  • 00:20:03
    by the old golf course.
  • 00:20:04
    Spectacular if you've never been there.
  • 00:20:07
    I had this plan to get back in time for class
  • 00:20:09
    the next day, which required a train
  • 00:20:12
    that left at 3 p.m.
  • 00:20:13
    So I show up to the train station at 2:45.
  • 00:20:16
    I go to buy my ticket and I see a sign
  • 00:20:19
    that says the trip back to Oxford,
  • 00:20:22
    that train is canceled, which was a problem.
  • 00:20:25
    Now, if you've never been to the train station
  • 00:20:27
    in St Andrew's, you don't know that
  • 00:20:29
    it's very, very small.
  • 00:20:30
    There's only one other person in this train station.
  • 00:20:34
    She was a young woman about my age.
  • 00:20:36
    So we start talking and she says,
  • 00:20:37
    "Hey, if you can't get back to Oxford,
  • 00:20:39
    why don't you come with me to Edinburgh?
  • 00:20:40
    Me and my friends are going to go out.
  • 00:20:42
    You can come with. It's going to be amazing."
  • 00:20:44
    I was like, "Great, I'm in."
  • 00:20:45
    I buy a train ticket, go to Edinburgh.
  • 00:20:47
    We drop my stuff off at a hostel
  • 00:20:49
    and then we hit the town.
  • 00:20:50
    And then her friends, like,
  • 00:20:51
    they must have known somebody because
  • 00:20:53
    we hit all the places
  • 00:20:54
    that you had to know somebody to get into.
  • 00:20:56
    There's this old bank that was amazing
  • 00:20:58
    that was a club, and club after club.
  • 00:21:00
    We're traveling all around the city.
  • 00:21:01
    I'm drinking everything because it's free.
  • 00:21:05
    And I end up in this bar upstairs of a building.
  • 00:21:10
    I have no idea where in Edinburgh,
  • 00:21:12
    because we'd been going left and right and up and down,
  • 00:21:14
    walking, taxis, whatever.
  • 00:21:16
    It's about three in the morning and I realize
  • 00:21:19
    I'm very drunk and I'm in a foreign city
  • 00:21:24
    and I don't actually know these people.
  • 00:21:27
    Maybe this isn't the smartest thing.
  • 00:21:29
    I should probably stopped drinking.
  • 00:21:31
    And so I tell the woman I'm with, I said,
  • 00:21:32
    "Hey, this has been super fun, but like, I need to sober up.
  • 00:21:35
    I need to get back to my hostel where we left my stuff
  • 00:21:38
    because I just -- this is bad idea."
  • 00:21:41
    And she's like, "No, don't worry about it.
  • 00:21:43
    I'm going to get you a Gatorade from the bar."
  • 00:21:45
    So she goes to the bar, she comes back,
  • 00:21:46
    she hands me a red cup
  • 00:21:48
    full of what I thought was red Gatorade.
  • 00:21:50
    But halfway through drinking this cup,
  • 00:21:52
    I realize it's not Gatorade.
  • 00:21:55
    It's a vodka Red Bull with some kind of something in it,
  • 00:21:59
    fruit juice or whatever.
  • 00:22:00
    I'm not sobering up, I'm getting more drunk.
  • 00:22:04
    And then realized something that made me feel
  • 00:22:07
    very, very dumb for not realizing it before.
  • 00:22:10
    This young woman didn't want to take me
  • 00:22:12
    back to my hostel at the end of the night.
  • 00:22:14
    She wanted to sleep with me.
  • 00:22:16
    At this point in my life again,
  • 00:22:17
    I've been trying to follow God for a while,
  • 00:22:19
    but I spend this summer in England pursuing my own path,
  • 00:22:23
    and I realized I had a decision to make
  • 00:22:25
    in this moment of would I go my own way
  • 00:22:27
    and do something that I knew is not what God wanted for me.
  • 00:22:30
    I knew the Bible said that wasn't His best for me.
  • 00:22:32
    I knew all those things.
  • 00:22:33
    Would I go in that direction,
  • 00:22:35
    the direction I was already running, or would I stop?
  • 00:22:40
    I just paused. I thought about it.
  • 00:22:43
    God, this hasn't made me happy.
  • 00:22:46
    I'm drunk in a club in a foreign city with strangers
  • 00:22:49
    and I'm not happy.
  • 00:22:52
    This is not the path I wanted to be on.
  • 00:22:56
    I'm lost.
  • 00:22:58
    In that moment I grabbed the drink
  • 00:22:59
    and I just shoved it in her hand.
  • 00:23:01
    I said, "I have to go."
  • 00:23:02
    And I ran down the steps, I'll never forget,
  • 00:23:04
    it was a second floor bar, I ran down the steps,
  • 00:23:06
    ran out to the night street in Edinburgh
  • 00:23:08
    and I just started walking.
  • 00:23:11
    I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where.
  • 00:23:13
    I didn't know if my hostel was north, south, east, west.
  • 00:23:16
    No clue, no clue where I was.
  • 00:23:19
    So I just started talking to God.
  • 00:23:21
    I say, "God, I know we haven't talked in a while.
  • 00:23:27
    I know I've been doing
  • 00:23:28
    everything You don't want me to do.
  • 00:23:31
    I know that's what's been happening.
  • 00:23:34
    And I need You because I'm lost.
  • 00:23:38
    Would You help get me home?"
  • 00:23:40
    I just sort of processing through
  • 00:23:42
    the things I'd been doing, the ways I felt lost.
  • 00:23:45
    And God just started talking to me.
  • 00:23:47
    And I get these little nudges that were like,
  • 00:23:49
    turn left and I'd turn left,
  • 00:23:51
    turn right and I'd turn right.
  • 00:23:53
    And again, I was drunk.
  • 00:23:54
    I have no idea how long this went on,
  • 00:23:56
    for 20 minutes, maybe.
  • 00:23:58
    It felt like forever. It was probably about 20 minutes.
  • 00:24:01
    I end up walking on the sidewalk and I stop
  • 00:24:05
    and I look up and there's my hostel,
  • 00:24:08
    which interestingly was an old church.
  • 00:24:11
    God had walked me home to Him.
  • 00:24:15
    See, it's that simple.
  • 00:24:17
    I just stopped running away from God,
  • 00:24:19
    and the moment I did, He was right there.
  • 00:24:22
    I didn't have to run back to Him.
  • 00:24:24
    I didn't have to start doing things the right way.
  • 00:24:26
    I didn't even have to sober up,
  • 00:24:29
    because God had been running after me the whole time.
  • 00:24:33
    You might say while I was still a long way off,
  • 00:24:36
    a long way off from what He wanted for me,
  • 00:24:39
    a long way off for the best path for life,
  • 00:24:41
    God, my Father saw me.
  • 00:24:44
    And like a shepherd, He just scooped me up
  • 00:24:47
    and held me in His arms
  • 00:24:49
    like He just found His favorite treasure.
  • 00:24:51
    And then He led me home and took care of me
  • 00:24:56
    as a father, me like a son.
  • 00:25:00
    You know, I got lost because I ran away,
  • 00:25:05
    not because God had left me.
  • 00:25:07
    Do you know that God has never left you?
  • 00:25:11
    Never, like, not even once.
  • 00:25:12
    See, you're not lost because God's left you.
  • 00:25:15
    He's not the God who turns His back on you
  • 00:25:18
    and it runs away.
  • 00:25:19
    He's been running after you this entire time.
  • 00:25:23
    There's a scene at the end of Jesus's life
  • 00:25:25
    that I've started to see differently
  • 00:25:27
    in light of these parables.
  • 00:25:28
    It's when Jesus is hanging on the Cross.
  • 00:25:31
    Now, it's critical to understand that
  • 00:25:33
    theologically speaking this is the moment
  • 00:25:35
    when all of the sin, all of my sin, all of your sin,
  • 00:25:38
    all the sin of everybody who's ever lived
  • 00:25:40
    and ever would live was transferred from us to Jesus.
  • 00:25:44
    It's when all of our lost-ness went to Him.
  • 00:25:48
    Peter, one of the disciples of Jesus,
  • 00:25:50
    who actually watched it happen in person,
  • 00:25:52
    described it this way, 1 Peter 2:24 says:
  • 00:26:04
    Now all the sins of the world
  • 00:26:06
    was on Jesus in this moment.
  • 00:26:08
    Matthew specifically says it was 3 hours long
  • 00:26:11
    that darkness covered the entire land
  • 00:26:13
    from noon until 3:00 pm.
  • 00:26:15
    Matthew 27 says:
  • 00:26:32
    Now, the traditional understanding of this moment
  • 00:26:35
    is that because Jesus bore all of our sin on the Cross,
  • 00:26:39
    all of our lost-ness, that God the Father
  • 00:26:42
    could not stand to be with Him and left,
  • 00:26:45
    turned His back, which is why Jesus cries out,
  • 00:26:48
    "Hey, where did you go? Why did you leave me?"
  • 00:26:53
    But if any of the parables we've just read
  • 00:26:55
    painted a picture of God the Father
  • 00:26:58
    who sees someone lost in sin and leaves them?
  • 00:27:03
    Did the father and the lost son parable leave his son?
  • 00:27:07
    No, he went looking for him.
  • 00:27:09
    Did the woman who had lost the thing that
  • 00:27:11
    she treasures the most just decide to leave the coin?
  • 00:27:14
    What a bad coin. Leave it there. No.
  • 00:27:16
    She went and she looked for it until she found it.
  • 00:27:19
    And the shepherd who lost the one sheep,
  • 00:27:22
    did he say, "99 is good enough.
  • 00:27:24
    That one is on it," and leave?
  • 00:27:27
    No. He went after it and he found it.
  • 00:27:30
    One of the consequences of sin
  • 00:27:32
    is that it warps our view of God.
  • 00:27:33
    And I wonder, was it that God the Father
  • 00:27:35
    had actually left Jesus in that moment,
  • 00:27:38
    or was it that sin did to Jesus
  • 00:27:40
    what it does to me, it blinds me to God's true heart
  • 00:27:45
    and His presence.
  • 00:27:47
    Have you lost sight of God too?
  • 00:27:48
    I have good news for you, if that's the case.
  • 00:27:51
    He's looking for you, and He'll never stop.
  • 00:27:54
    He's the Shepherd who's looking for the thing
  • 00:27:57
    He treasures, His child, you.
  • 00:28:01
    Psalm 23 says:
  • 00:28:36
    The Psalm says surely goodness and mercy will follow me.
  • 00:28:43
    To follow in Hebrew, the original language,
  • 00:28:45
    it's the word Radaph,
  • 00:28:47
    and it describes an animal in pursuit,
  • 00:28:50
    this picture of relentlessly running down its prey.
  • 00:28:53
    Hunting, chasing.
  • 00:28:55
    It's the most aggressive form of pursuit possible.
  • 00:28:59
    God is in pursuit of you and He'll never stop.
  • 00:29:03
    He's coming after you, even if you're running,
  • 00:29:05
    even if you reject Him, even if you're hiding,
  • 00:29:07
    even if you're still hiding, He will never stop.
  • 00:29:11
    When He finds you, you know what He's going to do?
  • 00:29:14
    He's going to give you goodness and mercy.
  • 00:29:18
    That's what He's going to do.
  • 00:29:20
    All you have to do is stop running
  • 00:29:22
    and start talking to Him.
  • 00:29:23
    You can do what I did in Scotland.
  • 00:29:26
    You can just tell Him you need Him.
  • 00:29:29
    I told you that story.
  • 00:29:30
    I know it might make you think less of me,
  • 00:29:32
    but I told you that story because
  • 00:29:33
    I can think of no better moment, in my life anyway,
  • 00:29:35
    where I experienced exactly
  • 00:29:37
    what Jesus says in the parables,
  • 00:29:39
    that it's not about me getting right with God,
  • 00:29:41
    and then Him helping me.
  • 00:29:42
    It's about me stopping and saying, "God, I'm lost."
  • 00:29:47
    And the moment you do that, God says,
  • 00:29:49
    "I'm running after you with goodness and with mercy."
  • 00:29:54
    We're going to play a song for you
  • 00:29:56
    that describes the God who runs after you
  • 00:29:59
    with mercy and with goodness.
  • 00:30:01
    And while it plays, I want you to just listen to it
  • 00:30:04
    and maybe try talking to God.
  • 00:30:07
    You can say, "God, I've been lost. Would you find me?
  • 00:30:12
    Would you chase me down with mercy and goodness?"
  • 00:34:56
    - Hey, Kyle, that message, it was powerful.
  • 00:34:59
    - Thanks, I appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed it, too.
  • 00:35:01
    I want you to know that what you give allows us
  • 00:35:03
    to make messages and videos just like this one.
  • 00:35:06
    The reality is that under 10% of people
  • 00:35:07
    who watch this will give to Crossroads.
  • 00:35:09
    - That's right.
  • 00:35:10
    And we don't actually use that number to shame anyone.
  • 00:35:12
    - Not at all.
  • 00:35:13
    - It's simply to say that if it was helpful
  • 00:35:15
    to hear that we have a God who, when we're lost,
  • 00:35:18
    will come and get us,
  • 00:35:19
    and you want more people to hear that message.
  • 00:35:21
    We'd love for you to give and to support us.
  • 00:35:24
    And you can do that at Crossroads.net/give.
  • 00:35:27
    - We hope you enjoyed this message
  • 00:35:29
    and hope that you're doing the Bible Challenge.
  • 00:35:30
    It's a thing we're doing as a community,
  • 00:35:32
    digging into Scripture. Here's more on that.
  • 00:35:41
    - There are bad ways to wake up.
  • 00:35:49
    And there are great ways to wake up.
  • 00:35:52
    Start your day connecting with God and your community.
  • 00:35:55
    Explore the app and grow deeper daily
  • 00:35:57
    with the Bible challenge, a great way to wake up.
  • 00:36:05
    - What I want to do today is I want to go to
  • 00:36:06
    a story where Jesus tells a parable
  • 00:36:09
    to a group of people, specifically to one guy
  • 00:36:11
    who was asking a question.
  • 00:36:13
    But what this guy didn't realize
  • 00:36:15
    is he was asking the wrong question.

May 23, 2022 • 36 mins 24 sec

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