Sermon For Unbelievers

You Were Already Being Looked For

Luke 15:1-24; John 3:16-17 (Csb)

There is something worth noticing right at the start of Luke 15. Before Jesus tells a single parable, the text gives us the room. Tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling. They said, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." They meant it as an accusation. Jesus took it as a description. He did not correct them. He told three stories.

That is where we begin this morning.

The people pressing in close to Jesus were not the religious insiders. They were the ones who knew they did not belong, the ones whose lives were complicated, whose choices had cost them, whose reputations had preceded them into every room. And they were drawn to him. That detail alone deserves a moment of attention. Something about Jesus made people who felt disqualified feel welcome enough to stay.

So Jesus tells a story about a shepherd who has a hundred sheep and loses one. He does not shrug. He leaves the ninety-nine and goes looking. He searches until he finds it. When he finds it, he does not scold it. He lays it on his shoulders and carries it home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me, because I have found my lost sheep."

Then Jesus tells a second story. A woman has ten silver coins and loses one. She lights a lamp, sweeps the whole house, searches carefully until she finds it. When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors and says, "Rejoice with me, because I have found the silver coin I lost."

Jesus says, "I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents."

Then comes the third story, the one we call the parable of the prodigal son, though it is really a story about a father.

A younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance. In that culture, that request carried a weight we might miss. He was essentially saying, "I wish you were already dead." The father gives it to him anyway. The son leaves, wastes everything, ends up feeding pigs in a foreign country, and is so hungry he would have eaten what the pigs were eating. The text says he came to his senses. He rehearses a speech. He will go back to his father and say, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired workers."

He starts walking home.

Here is where the story turns. While the son was still a long way off, his father saw him. The father ran. He threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son begins his rehearsed speech. The father interrupts it with a celebration. Best robe. Ring. Sandals. A feast. "For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found."

Now hold that picture alongside what Jesus says in John 3. God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Put those two passages together and a single truth comes into focus.

God is not waiting for you to get yourself together before he will receive you. He is already looking.

That is the central claim of this sermon, and it is not a soft sentiment. It is the most demanding and most liberating thing the Bible says about who God is. He is a shepherd who leaves to search. He is a woman who lights a lamp and sweeps. He is a father who runs. He is a God who gave his Son not to condemn but to save.

Now let us be honest about what this does not mean.

It does not mean that nothing is wrong. The sheep was genuinely lost. The coin was genuinely missing. The son had genuinely wasted his inheritance and broken his relationship with his father. The stories do not pretend the problem away. The son came to his senses. He said, "I have sinned." He turned around and started walking home. That is what repentance looks like in plain language. It is not a performance. It is not a transaction. It is a turning. It is waking up to where you are, naming it honestly, and moving toward the one you have been running from.

Some of us have been carrying something for a long time. Maybe it is a choice you made that you cannot undo. Maybe it is a way you have lived that you are not proud of. Maybe it is simply a long distance you have kept between yourself and God, not out of dramatic rebellion but out of habit, or hurt, or the quiet suspicion that you are not the kind of person God is interested in.

The parable speaks directly to that suspicion. The father in the story does not wait for the son to arrive and deliver his speech. He sees him while he is still a long way off. He runs. That is not the behavior of someone who is barely willing to take you back. That is the behavior of someone who has been watching the road.

And that is the gospel. Not a set of rules to perform well enough to earn your way in. Not a religious atmosphere to maintain. Not a vague spiritual improvement program. The gospel is the announcement that God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came into this world to find what was lost. Jesus did not come to stand at a distance and call out instructions. He came all the way. He lived among us. He ate with sinners. He was crucified. He was buried. He rose from the dead. And every one of those events was God moving toward us, not waiting for us to move toward him first.

John 3:16 is perhaps the most familiar sentence in the Bible, and familiarity can dull it. Read it slowly. God loved the world. Not a category of the world. Not the people who had already cleaned themselves up. The world. He gave his one and only Son. That is not a small thing. That is the full weight of divine love expressed in the most costly way imaginable. So that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

And then verse 17, which does not get quoted as often but belongs right beside it: God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

If you have ever felt that God's posture toward you is primarily one of judgment, of disappointment, of waiting for you to fail again, then verse 17 is addressed to you. The mission was not condemnation. The mission was rescue.

Now, this does not mean there are no consequences to the way we live. The prodigal son suffered real consequences. He lost his inheritance. He lost time. He lost his dignity for a season. The gospel does not erase consequences. What it does is offer something the consequences cannot take away, which is a restored relationship with the Father.

And that restoration is available to anyone who turns and comes home.

If you are in this room today and you have never made a personal decision to trust Jesus Christ, I want to speak plainly to you. Not with pressure. Not with a manufactured urgency designed to make you feel afraid. Just plainly. The Father has seen you from a long way off. The invitation is real. Repentance is not a feeling you have to manufacture. It is a direction you choose. You turn from living as though God does not matter and you turn toward him, trusting that what Jesus did on the cross was sufficient to deal with everything that stands between you and God. That is faith. And faith is what John 3:16 calls for. Everyone who believes in him.

If you are already a follower of Jesus and you have wandered in some way, the same parable applies. The father did not love the son less because the son had been gone. The robe, the ring, the feast, these were not given grudgingly. They were given with joy. There is no distance you have traveled that puts you beyond the reach of that welcome.

And if you are carrying something heavy today, something that has nothing to do with spiritual rebellion but simply with the weight of being human in a broken world, grief, illness, uncertainty, exhaustion, the gospel does not dismiss that weight. Jesus ate with people who were struggling. He did not require them to be well before he sat with them. The same Jesus who told these parables also said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." That is not a promise of immediate changed circumstances. It is a promise of presence. And presence, when it is the presence of the God who runs toward you, is not a small thing.

Here is where we land this morning.

God is not reluctant. He is not barely willing. He is not standing at the door with a list of reasons to turn you away. The shepherd searched. The woman swept. The father ran. And Jesus, who is the fullest picture of who God is, welcomed sinners and ate with them. He still does.

If you have been waiting until you are ready, until you are better, until you have figured out how to deserve it, you can stop waiting. The welcome is already extended. The only question is whether you will turn and walk toward it.

Come home.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Luke 15:1-24; John 3:16-17; Matthew 11:28.

Bock, Darrell L. Luke, Volume 2: 9:51-24:53. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 1996.

Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to John. Revised Edition. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1995.

Caird, G. B. The Gospel of St. Luke. Pelican New Testament Commentaries. Penguin, 1963.

Wright, N. T. Luke for Everyone. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.