You are listening to a message from Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.
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Thank you all.
Love that song, The Strong Love of God.
It's a thing that we love, love, love to get to talk about here, to rejoice in for ourselves,
to share with others.
Church, another person who's here with us this morning that has shared about that with
this Huntsville community for several years is Reed Jones.
Reed and his family, who was right there a second ago, I'm sure they were, I saw him
there, have been here in Huntsville as he's been the campus minister for our denominations
Campus Ministry, RUF, Reformed University Fellowship, here at UAH.
Reed is leaving here in just a couple of weeks after they head to summer conference to take
the same position at a very special university in South Carolina named Clemson.
So he's obviously thrilled about that, very honored to be a part of that distinguished community.
And my only hope is this for y'all, we're going to miss the Joneses a lot here in Huntsville
and this community will, if you haven't gotten to know them, they've been a huge blessing
to Huntsville.
My hope is that what's going to happen is Reed is going to become so close with Dabo and
a part of the program there that when Dabo comes back to Alabama in a few years upon the
retirement of Nick Saban, he will insist that Reed comes back with him to be the chaplain
and to bring Christianity to the Alabama football team.
So that's how I've got it figured out.
Reed, we're bringing you back to Alabama.
But for this morning, we're looking forward to hearing the Word of God from you.
Thanks so much for your friendship to me and your love for our church.
Thanks, man.
That would be the most difficult undertaking I've ever been called to if that were the case.
Thanks.
I love being with y'all and always appreciate the opportunity to preach here and to worship
with you.
Let me just say before we get into the text that you've been a huge part of our lives
and our ministry for the last five years.
And more than that, for the last 10 years, RUF's ministry at UAH.
That's an organization that you brought to town, Southwood Presbyterian Church, along with
a couple other churches, brought RUF to UAH 10 years ago.
And just last weekend, we got to celebrate with many of you.
You joined us as we celebrated the 10th anniversary of RUF at UAH.
The Tuba Sings were back in town.
They founded the ministry 10 years ago.
And then we got to celebrate together the work God's been doing on that campus and through
our ministry into this community, even into this church and so many others.
And so thanks for being a part of that with us.
You hosted part of that event last weekend, the Shrimp Boyle.
Many of you volunteered and were part of that.
So I just want to say thanks.
You have loved us well and you've cared for our family well.
You've supported our ministry.
You've prayed for our ministry.
You've welcomed our students into your congregation and our graduates into your group here.
And we're grateful to be ministering with you.
And I know you'll show the same love and welcome to the next family who's coming in.
And Vinny and Molly Athie have been named and called here pending their final presbytery
work that Vinny will be doing this summer.
But they'll be moving in this summer and be the third campus minister at UAH.
And we're excited about that.
All right, we're going to be looking at a text, Luke chapter 15 this morning.
Here we have two parables on lostness.
Three actually.
The third one being the more famous of the three.
We're going to look at the first two.
We're going to answer some very basic questions about lostness.
What does it mean to be lost?
What does it look like?
How is something that is lost ultimately found?
And what happens when it's found?
You'll see my outline there, very simple, lost, found, rejoicing.
So let's look at these two parables together.
This is Luke chapter 15.
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats
with them.
So he, this is Jesus, told them this parable.
What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the
ninety-nine in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them,
rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
Just so 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.
Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and
sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?
And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, rejoice with
me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.
Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but these are the words of our Lord and they will
stand forever.
When I was ten years old, I accidentally ran away from home.
I remember it as one of the funnest days of my childhood.
My mom remembers it as one of the worst days of her life.
It all started with a jump rope and a misunderstanding.
Here's how I remember the story.
My mom and I were supposed to run some errands that day.
We were going to go to who knows where in little Brundage, Alabama.
And she was on the phone with my friend Clint's mom before we were supposed to leave.
And what I heard in the conversation, I heard her say, yeah, Reed and I are about to leave
and I'll drop it off on the way before we blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that's all I needed to know because what I wanted to do was kind of get ahead of my mom
in this.
Clint, my friend Clint, lived about three quarters of a mile, maybe a mile down the street.
I used to walk to his house all the time.
And so I asked my mom, I was like, I said, Ken, do you mind if I go ahead and go early
to Clint's house and then you just pick me up when you drop the thing off?
And she said, that's fine.
So here's the other part of the story.
I was 10.
And when I was 10, I loved to jump rope.
Do we still have jump rope for heart?
Is that still a thing?
Okay, I was like the poster boy for jump rope for heart.
I was jump roping my little 10-year-old self all over the place.
And so I wanted to jump rope my way down to Clint's house.
And so off I went.
Well, some time passed, maybe a couple hours or so.
And I didn't realize it, but, you know, I was lost and I didn't know it.
And here's how I found out.
I heard all the police cars going through our neighborhood, all four of them,
all four police officers of Brundage, Alabama, were looking for little Reed Jones,
last seen with a jump rope in his hand.
Because what happened is my mom left right after I left.
Here's the miscommunication.
My mom wasn't on the phone with Clint's mom.
She was on the phone with Ms. Shehane, who lived next door.
So when she went to Ms. Shehane's house, you've put it together now,
she went to Ms. Shehane's house and said, where's Reed?
He said he was going to be over here.
And she's like, I don't know.
He's your son.
You should probably know.
And she called the cops and that was that.
When we think of lostness typically, we think of someone who has kind of deliberately gone away.
They have lost their way.
They've made some terrible decisions.
They've ran to the far corners of the earth.
They're on the run.
And we think that if they would just kind of get their act together, they would come home.
They would stop wandering if they would just get their bearings.
But lostness in the way that Jesus talks about it is more complicated than that.
That is the story of the lost son, which comes next.
But in these two parables, lostness is something different.
This kind of lostness is more of an ignorant lostness.
It's more of a helpless, hopeless type lostness.
Desperate.
Not able to find its way home.
That's the case for the sheep and the coin.
Let me work through both of those scenarios.
First, the sheep.
The shepherd has a flock of 100.
99 are safe and one is lost.
He wandered from the fold.
He is missing.
And we should note that sheep are notoriously dumb animals.
They aren't very smart.
They don't think for themselves very well.
They're most always in danger because of the potential attacks from a predator like a wolf or from their own dumb decisions.
Sheep will walk far too close to a cliff.
They could easily fall off.
They're not aware of that kind of danger.
They will eat anything that's basically green, including poison, and they will hurt themselves.
Because if sheep become lost, I've been told and I've read, then they will basically lie down.
They just kind of give up.
And they just lay there.
They're unlike dogs or cats.
Like if a dog gets lost, it will wander around in concentric circles until it finds its way home in maybe a couple of weeks.
Cats, you can't lose a cat.
I've tried.
You can drop a cat off in A-Rab and it will find its way home by 3 p.m.
They have like a built-in GPS system or something.
You can't lose them.
But sheep are not like that.
Sheep literally will just lie down when they're lost.
So the point is if a sheep is lost, that sheep is helpless.
It is absolutely helpless.
Okay, what about a coin?
We have a children's book that we use with our girls.
It's from the same author who did the children's storybook Bible, Jesus' storybook Bible.
And it's kind of a collection of poems or stories.
And there's one called Getting Found.
And it's about these parables.
And here's how Sally Lloyd-Jones puts it.
She says, if you think a sheep is hopeless about finding its way home, what about a coin?
Can a coin do something to be found?
Can it get up and search for its owner?
How silly.
And our girls are like, how silly.
Of course it can't.
A coin that is lost is a hopeless coin.
I think you get the picture.
Its only hope is if it has an owner who will search relentlessly until he or she finds it.
The only hope for a lost sheep is a loving shepherd.
The only hope for a lost coin is a relentless searcher.
The only hope for a lost little Reed Jones is a mom who would stop at nothing until she found me.
This is true spiritually as well.
To be lost is to be in a helpless condition.
A place far from your intended home.
This is how Scripture puts it all throughout from the New Testament to the Old.
Starting in Genesis.
Beginning of the fall when Adam and Eve fell for the lie of a better life that the evil one offered.
They hid in their shame.
Do you remember when God came to them in the garden?
They were hiding behind the bushes.
And what did he say?
He said, where are you?
In other words, they weren't home.
They weren't where they were supposed to be.
They were lost.
Hiding in their own sin and shame.
The theme continues throughout the Old Testament.
God's people, Israel, always losing their way.
Lost in the wilderness for 40 years.
Lost in exile because of their own unfaithfulness.
The prophets pick this up.
Isaiah says in 53 that all we like sheep have gone astray.
Each of us has turned to his own way.
You come into the New Testament, the theme continues.
All throughout Jesus' teachings and Paul's writings and Peter's sermons.
We are not just sometimes doing what we ought not to do and you need a slap on the wrist to kind of get your act together.
No, we are lost.
On our own, we are hopeless and helpless, wandering around, scooting way too close to the cliffs in danger.
Not exactly sure of what predators are on the attack and poisoning ourselves to death, eating and consuming what's killing us from the inside out.
And sometimes we don't even know it.
It's what it is to be lost.
And we're all lost in this way, right?
In one way or the other.
I was talking with a student just this week who's just going through a very difficult, very, very difficult season.
From some of the decisions she's made herself, some from things that have been done to her.
And as we sat and talked about what's going on as her life seems to be unraveling, she just said these words.
And I wonder if you've ever said this.
She said, I just feel so lost.
Have you ever been there?
Maybe you're there now, confused, conflicted.
You don't know which way is up or down.
So what do we do?
What do we do if we're lost?
What is our hope?
Our only hope is a shepherd who would come after us, an owner who will seek us out.
We have to be found.
This shepherd imagery is really an interesting choice for Jesus.
I learned this as I was studying this passage through commentaries that this shepherd imagery would divide the crowd more than it was divided already.
If you notice at the beginning that Jesus is talking to really two different groups of people, right?
This is the case.
I know you guys are in Luke right now and Jesus is doing this a lot in Luke.
On one side it's the tax collectors and sinners.
In verse 1, who are said to be drawing near to Jesus.
And then on the other side it's those who are the Pharisees and the scribes who are said in verse 2 to be grumbling about Jesus.
So something about Jesus' message is very attractive to those sinners and it's very offensive to the Pharisees.
Well, by Jesus employing the shepherd metaphor, He divides them even more.
Because those two groups of people would have had a very different opinion about shepherds.
It's interesting, the Pharisees used to would have thought very highly of shepherds.
Back in the Old Testament setting, shepherds were thought to be kind of noble and highly esteemed.
You have David who was a shepherd, Moses who was a shepherd.
There's a history of shepherds being great leaders and some becoming kings.
But over the course of time, shepherds really were more subjected to kind of the outcasts, the dirty, mangy old men who went out there chasing after dirty, mangy animals.
And they were looked down upon by these Pharisees from their kind of high positions.
But the tax collectors, they knew shepherds.
They knew them.
They didn't look down on them.
They were their friends.
And so when Jesus simply brings up the shepherd who would leave 99 and go after the one, the Pharisees would say, who in the world?
How dare him?
And the tax collectors and sinners would say, of course.
Of course he would go after the one.
I know guys like that.
How else would they be found?
There's an amazing passage, one of my favorites.
In Ezekiel chapter 34, where God is rebuking the shepherds of his people, these shepherds that he had kind of set up to lead his people.
And he's rebuking them because they weren't taking care of his people.
They have not fed God's people well.
They have only fed themselves.
They have not bound up the wounds of God's people.
They have only kind of taken care of themselves.
They have not protected them from their enemies.
They have only protected themselves.
And so God comes after these shepherds and he rebukes them in Ezekiel chapter 34.
I want to read a part of that section.
This is a little bit lengthy, but listen to the extent God says that he will provide for his sheep.
He says, starting in verse 11,
Thus says the Lord God,
Behold, I myself will search for my sheep.
I will seek them out.
As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among them that have been scattered, so too will I seek out my sheep.
I will rescue them from all the places where they've been scattered.
I will feed them with good pasture.
And on the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land.
In verse 15, he says,
I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.
I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God.
I will seek the lost.
I will bring back the strayed.
I will bind up the injured.
And I will strengthen the weak.
Listen, it was God's intention from the very beginning, from the first sin of Adam,
all the way up until the last sin that you or I commit in our own lives.
It was God's intention from the very beginning to seek out and to save his lost sheep.
For Adam, for Abraham, for Moses, for all of Israel, for those in Isaiah's day or Ezekiel's day,
Jesus had a plan.
I will seek the lost.
I will bring back the strayed.
I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak.
So the question for us then is how does he do it?
How does God do this?
How does he come after his sheep?
Will they find their way home?
Will the sheep stand up and start searching?
Will the coin find its way back into the hand?
That's not the picture this parable gives.
It won't be based on their own effort.
So how does Jesus know so much about shepherds?
How does he tell a story about a shepherd who will go after the one?
Because he is a shepherd.
It's worth noting that at a couple of different times in Jesus' ministry,
he said, actually to a group of tax collectors,
he said,
the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.
And then to a group of Pharisees, he says,
Jesus is not just shepherd-like.
He is the shepherd.
He is the good shepherd that God had promised to provide for his people,
his people Israel, that he would come and give them rest.
He would provide protection.
He would give salvation.
He's come to seek and to save that which was lost.
And this is really good news for you and for me.
Because that means Jesus has come to provide you rest.
And Jesus has come to provide you protection.
He has come to feed you.
He has come to give you comfort.
This is the initiating love of God when he sees his children harassed and helpless,
shepherdless sheep wandering around life,
seeking out life apart from him
and finding nothing but poison and empty happiness.
And he comes to give life.
And how does he do it?
How does God deliver on his promise?
We need to see what it costs Jesus to bring back his sheep.
How does God seek the lost and bring back the strayed,
bind up the injured and strengthen the weak?
Only through Jesus becoming lost.
So that we might be found.
Jesus leaving his home, leaving his place of comfort,
coming into this existence, a place far from his intended home,
in order to bring us home.
Jesus becoming strayed into this existence, into this world,
spit upon, persecuted, pushed around,
strayed so that we might be brought back.
Jesus becoming bound up on the cross, injured in his hands and his feet,
so that we might be healed.
Jesus becoming weak.
Weak to the point of death, so that we might be made strong.
Do you hear it?
There's a cost for this shepherd.
And even in the parables, you get the idea that the shepherd went to such an extent to find that sheep, right?
He went and searched it out.
Sheep would have been something like maybe a picture of 70-pound dirty mangy sheep,
and the shepherd, what does he do in the parable?
He leans down, he picks it up, he puts it on his shoulders, and he carries it home.
The owner of the coin gets down in the dirt.
This would have been a dirt home, and he gets down.
She gets down on her knees, and she's scrubbing through the dirt,
taking on the dirt on herself so that the coin might be found.
So what is our hope of being found?
It is a shepherd who will seek us out.
I imagine that you're in one of those four categories.
And I think about you seniors who are finishing up this season of life.
And in many ways, a lot of us are transitioning right now, right?
And in transition, you really kind of start to think through, where am I?
And I wonder if you'll find yourself in this list.
And for the rest of us, are you lost?
Are you strayed?
Are you injured?
Or are you weak?
I bet you can find one of those today.
If you're lost, perhaps you're hearing this, and you're thinking,
I am that sheep lying down, and I've never been found.
I don't even know what it is to be home.
There's a message for you here.
Maybe for some of you, it's you're strayed.
We experience this a lot in college ministry, right?
We see the students who grew up in a setting like this and had a great experience in their
high school youth ministry, and they go to college, and it's time to just kind of figure
it out on my own.
And there's a place for certainly working through our faith.
That's why RUF and so many other ministries exist.
We want to come alongside students during that time.
But for many, that's the time to get strayed.
And it doesn't end well.
It doesn't...it never fills the way that we think it will.
But maybe some of you are strayed.
Now you're running, you're hiding.
No one knows it, but you're strayed in your own heart.
You know the places that you're going,
the things you keep finding yourself doing, and you're far from home.
Or for others, you may be injured.
You're just...you're beat down by the world around you.
You're tired.
You're broken.
You're hurt.
Or maybe you're weak.
You're weak, and you've come to a place where you can admit that now.
You don't have your act together.
You don't know the answers.
You don't know what to do.
Who does the shepherd rescue?
Those who are lost.
Those who are strayed.
Those who are injured.
And those who are weak.
And he comes after you.
And really the invitation here, what do we do?
We lie down.
And we say, I can't.
And he rescues us.
He comes.
He has come into this world to rescue us.
And when Jesus rescues, I don't know if you noticed, there's a party every time.
Did you hear all the rejoicing in this passage, by the way?
I counted five times.
Five times in these short ten verses that there's a party being thrown, or at least a reference to it.
I want to connect why that's the case here.
Five times.
The shepherd found the sheep, and he was rejoicing.
He came home, and he called a party for his friends and neighbors, saying, rejoice with me.
The lady found her coin, and she rejoiced.
She called her friends and said, rejoice with me.
Why?
Why all the rejoicing?
Because the thing that was found was of tremendous value to the one who lost it.
By the way, I should tell you how the story ends.
I was eventually found by my mom.
We have been reunited since that day.
I know you're a real cliffhanger.
Here's how I was found.
My mom really had called all the police.
She called all of her friends, and they were all searching for me.
And we were in the backyard.
This was probably a couple hours that passed by, and we were still jump roping.
And we were in the backyard, and my friend Clint had this fence.
It was kind of one of those fences that kind of starts about right here.
So you see a little bit of what's underneath.
And Miss Carol, who was my friend Jacob's mom, everybody know the players, there is a test.
My friend Jacob's mom, Miss Carol, was riding by looking for me,
and she saw our feet jump roping on the other side of the fence.
And she stopped her car at the curb, and I remember this so well.
She said, Reed, is that you?
And I said, yes, ma'am.
She said, you should probably go home.
And so she put me in her truck, and we went home.
I tell you what, though, I don't think I've ever seen my mom cry like that before or since.
Why?
Because the thing that she lost was of tremendous value to her.
Parents in the room get it.
We know.
I can't imagine that scenario.
I really can.
I feel kind of bad about it a little.
It was a pretty fun day.
I still feel a little bad about it.
But why the tears?
Why the rejoicing?
Because the thing that was lost was of tremendous value.
Just so I tell you, there's joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
Here's my question for you.
Are you aware?
Are you aware of the value that you hold in your Creator's eyes?
Why the rejoicing?
Because something that the owner loves has been hurt, has been lost, has been wandering.
Someone the shepherd loves so deeply has been brought home.
That's why all the rejoicing.
Are you aware of the value that you have to our God?
And I mean this.
This is a huge theme of our ministry on the college campus.
It's a huge theme of the ministry in this church.
That we need to understand who we are to our God.
Because we are in a world and we are in a context, and I will say Huntsville is very much this way.
We live in a very competitive environment here.
A lot of show.
A lot of look better than the next person.
Have the bigger whatever, the best paycheck, or the best position.
A lot of comparison.
And so we have bought into it, and students have bought into it, that my value is completely
attached to me accomplishing X, Y, and Z.
For our students, it's the internship.
We have students who are crushed, absolutely crushed right now because they did not get the
internship at NASA this summer.
Feel like their life's over.
Students who are crushed because they made only a 393 this semester.
Why?
So much of our value is derived from our accomplishments.
Our world tells us that you are just another engineer.
You are just another nurse.
You're just another physician.
You're just another teacher.
You're just another stay-at-home mom.
You're just another kid in this school.
You're just another graduate.
You're just another freshman.
And we begin to believe that.
And all of a sudden, our value ebbs and flows with just how we're doing on a given day.
Let me illustrate it this way.
There's a very moving scene at the end of the first Toy Story.
You remember Toy Story and that scene where Woody is in jail?
Well, he's in a crate.
He thinks it's jail.
And he's talking to Buzz, who's on the other side of the crate.
And it's just this very somber moment.
It's a three or four-minute scene.
And Buzz is the one who's actually really down at this point because he just came to this realization
that he's not really a space ranger after all.
And he's talking to Woody on the other side, and Woody's trying to cheer Buzz up.
And here's what Buzz says.
He says,
And do you remember what Woody says to him in response?
He looks across the crate.
He looks Buzz in his little toy eyes.
And he says,
There's a kid in that house over there who thinks you are the greatest.
And it's not because you're a space ranger.
It's because you're a toy.
It's because you're his toy.
Here's what I want to say to you.
If you were a Christian, you need to know how loved you are.
You were not just a stupid little insignificant anything.
You were thought so highly of by the creator of this universe
that he would send his only son into this world
to become strayed, injured, and weak
to the point of death
so that you might be with him forever.
That is how loved you are.
That's why there's all the rejoicing in heaven.
And so let me ask you,
Jesus divides the crowd into two sections,
and I would imagine that we're all in one of those two camps too.
The tax collectors and sinners heard this message,
and it was very attractive to them.
They wanted more of what Jesus had to offer.
And then there was the other guys,
the Pharisees and the scribes.
Something about that message was very offensive to them,
and they wanted nothing more to do with it.
And so which camp are you in?
Are you hearing Jesus' words and saying,
I want to be found?
I want to be brought home.
Then lie down and let him rescue you.
There's one more invitation that I want to end with.
I heard an illustration that I want to use from,
we had an RUF conference a couple of years ago,
and Kevin Teasley was the guy speaking.
And he gave us this idea,
he talked about the little Bo Peep form of evangelism.
Has anyone ever heard this before?
I haven't heard it.
He talked about the little Bo Peep form of evangelism.
And what he talked about was that too many churches
have resorted to, and ministries alike,
have resorted to this idea of the little Bo Peep form of evangelism.
And what that means, little Bo Peep lost her sheep,
doesn't know where to find them,
leave them alone, and they'll come home,
wagging their tails behind them.
And what he said is that many of us,
in our evangelism and the local church,
what we do is we just put all of our money into our thing
and just say, leave them alone,
and they will come home.
And so we kind of put all of our money into the buildings
or the programs or the budgets,
and we have the nicest nursery
or the best programs or whatever,
and we think that's it.
If we just have the best music,
the best laser show, I don't know,
then they will come.
I think there's a better invitation in this passage
for even us as a church, as a community,
into this place, into North Alabama and Huntsville,
to understand that God has not called us
to the little Bo Peep form of evangelism,
to leave them alone and they'll come home
wagging their tails behind them,
but he calls us into his work
of going out and rescuing sheep.
It's an amazing thing to realize
that God has invited us to be a part
of his rescue program in this place,
in our schools, in our workplace,
in our home, over on that campus,
to join God in his work rescuing the sheep.
By the way, our theology teaches us
that there are plenty of sheep to be rescued,
and we get to be a part of that.
And I'm so grateful that God calls us
to be a part of his rescue plan.
I want to end with one more note
about that scene from Toy Story.
There was an interview,
so last year, I think,
or maybe the year before
was the 20th anniversary of Toy Story.
If you want to feel a little bit old,
the 20th anniversary of the first Toy Story
was like two years ago.
There was a Time Magazine interview
with the creator of Toy Story, Andrew Stanton,
and he's become very famous since,
but Toy Story was his first thing.
He went on to do Wall E,
and Finding Nemo, and Finding Dory,
and The Monsters, Inc.,
and all these other movies.
And the Time Magazine article asked him
if there's anything that he would change
about the original Toy Story.
If he could go back and redo it right now,
would he change anything?
And he said that he's always had one scene in mind
that he wished he could add two seconds to.
You know which scene it was?
The one we just talked about.
The one where Woody is in jail
and Buzz is on the other side.
Because here's the thing that happens
in that scene, by the way.
I didn't mention this earlier.
After Woody looks at Buzz and says,
there's a kid in that house over there
who thinks you're the greatest,
and it's not because you're a space ranger.
It's because you're a toy.
It's because you're his toy.
Got that part memorized.
Buzz looks down at his foot,
and he sees Andy written on his foot.
And that's the moment that he gets it.
What Andrew says that he wished he could do
is he would go back in and add two seconds.
And as soon as Buzz looks down at his foot
and sees Andy written on his foot,
he would look across the crate,
and Woody would do the same thing.
And here's what Stanton said.
He said,
I would have him look over
and see Andy also written on Woody's foot
just to make the extra bit of connection
about how they're brothers
and that they both have value.
There's not a better definition
of evangelism than that.
To look across this community,
to look across this congregation,
to look across the cubicle in the classroom,
and to know that they have value.
You have value.
God's name is written on your life.
It's what we believe with baptism.
God's name is written across your life.
But to look out in our community
and to share that value
with the world around us.
That's the invitation today.
And Jesus said,
just so I tell you,
there is joy
before the angels of God
over one sinner
who repents.
Would you pray with me?
Jesus, thank you
that you give us a parable
to remind us of our place
and our hope.
The reality is that all of us
are wandering
too many times
far from the fold of God,
but you've rescued us
from danger,
interpose your precious blood.
Jesus, you have come.
You have come
to rescue your sheep.
I pray that we would respond
and be overwhelmed
with the great love
that you have
for us,
your children.
For any in here
who are not yet
home,
not yet found,
I pray that you would find them
even today.
That they would respond
to your loving invitation
to lie down
and be rescued.
And God,
call us to go,
to go,
to go out with you,
to be a part of your mission
into this community.
For your glory alone,
we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
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at southwood.org.
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you
In Japan,
to be orn't
in the kiss of the
moon.