#DailyDevotion Jesus Seeks The Lost, Calls Them To Repent & Rejoices Over Those Who Do

Luke 15:3-10 ³So He told them this story: ⁴“If anyone of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, don’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you find it? ⁵When you find it, you lay it on your shoulders and are glad. ⁶You go home and call your friends and neighbors together and say to them, ‘Be happy with me. I found my lost sheep! ⁷So, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine good people who don’t need to repent.” ⁸“Or suppose a woman has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the house and look for it carefully until she finds it? ⁹When she finds it, she calls her women friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Be happy with me. I found the coin I lost.’ ¹⁰So, I tell you, God’s angels will be happy over one sinner who repents.”

In order to demonstrate why He (Jesus) is welcoming sinners and tax collectors and eating with them Jesus tells us three parables, two of them are here. I know nothing about raising sheep so I can’t tell you if the first one is what shepherds do. I do know in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jesus gives terrible farming advice but he does it to teach something about the kingdom of God. I don’t know if shepherds actually leave 99 sheep by themselves to go off and find one. Unless I have a good sheep dog that would keep the 99 from straying while I was gone and protecting them, it doesn’t seem like a good idea.

I think Jesus is telling this shocking parable to not teach about shepherding sheep but rather how God works welcomes sinners and tax collectors who repent. We can see from these parables Jesus is not approving of sin and telling people its OK to do whatever you want. No, at the end of this parable Jesus says, “ tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine good people who don’t need to repent.” Of course there aren’t ninety-nine people who don’t need to repent. We all need to repent, everyday. So the tax collectors and sinners whom Jesus is sitting and eating with are these lost sheep of Israel who have heard Jesus preach and are repenting of their sins. The Pharisees and Scribes are shocked these people repented of their sins and still want nothing to do with them. The Church is always open and ready to welcome those who repent of their sins and want to follow Jesus—at least it should be.

Now the woman searching for a lost coin searching all over the place for it does make a bit more sense. There are myths out there that these coins made up some sort or wedding veil or something like that. I have found no proof for that whatsoever. I don’t to say something that isn’t true, have someone believe it and then find out later it isn’t true. The Gospel doesn’t need that sort of help. What this parable does drive home is something I didn’t mention in the previous parable, the desire to find the lost. God takes no pleasure over the death of a sinner. He is patient with the world right now not wanting anyone to perish but to repent and received eternal life. So too, Jesus and his disciples, his Church, should be diligently seeking out the lost. God will use us to meet people who are still in their sins, have us speak the law of God to them to make them contrite and have us speak the free gift of forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name to have them turn to God. When people do turn from their sins and turn to God he calls us to rejoice with the angels in heaven and welcome them as Jesus welcomes them. It’s how he welcomed you.

Heavenly Father, grant us your Spirit that we may join with Jesus in his search for the lost to call them to turn from their sins and to turn to you for the sake of Jesus Christ whose blood made access to you possible. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.