Let me speak to you this morning
from Luke 19, verse 10. The Son of Man is come to seek
and to save that which was lost. We are so horribly, horribly
lost. It would be impossible for us
to overestimate the seriousness of our lostness. No matter how
desperately we describe our lost condition, we can be sure that
it's worse than we think it is. We are lost in the sense that
we've gone astray, turned to our own way, and we do not know
where we are. All we, like sheep, have gone
astray, said the prophet. We have turned everyone to his
own way. Our minds are corrupted from
the truth of God. There was a time when we knew
how to approach God. We knew the way of God's favor
and fellowship, and we delighted in it. When our race was only
two people, Adam and Eve, communion with God was the regular order
of the day. He knew where we were, and we
were confident He would come, and we longed for it expectantly.
But sin ruined all of that. Eve was deceived and thought
she was doing the right thing by eating the fruit, but in so
doing she turned to her own way. Adam saw through Satan's deception
and realized the wrongness of eating the forbidden fruit, but
he leaned also on his own understanding, thinking the greater good would
be served by joining with Eve. It's likely he considered it
worse to be cut off from Eve than to be cut off from God.
But whatever his thoughts, they were indeed his thoughts, and
he turned to his own way. And each of us has followed in
our parents' footsteps, choosing our own way, and therefore we
have wandered and gone astray. Our wills were corrupted so that
we became rebels, and we stubbornly persist in our own way, despite
all the trouble it brings us. Cain would not submit to the
need for a substitutionary sacrifice, so he persisted in the way of
human wisdom and offered his own works. And we are like him. We build idols, temples, pyramids,
churches, and cathedrals, thinking that by them we can approach
God. Our hearts became deceitful and
desperately wicked beyond our power even to realize just how
depraved we are. Like those who are delirious
with fever, we are sick beyond the ability to know just how
sick we are. The sickness has spread so far,
it has eliminated our power to even know that it is there. We
call good evil and evil good. We have an excuse for all our
sins, but are full of condemnation for everyone else's sin. We know
the judgment of God that those who live like this are worthy
of death. But we continue to live like that and find our happiness
among others who live the same way. Every known form of evil
is present in the heart of men and he invents new ways of carrying
it out. We are so lost that we have neither
the inclination nor the power to get back to God. There is
nothing we can do nor anything anyone else can do to bring us
back. We may have religious feelings
and do religious works, but these feelings and works are no more
than the broad road that leads to destruction, and our walking
only serves to seal our horribly lost condition. We are so desperately,
desperately lost. We are lost to God. Now, it's
not as though He doesn't know where we are. Rather, we are
lost to Him in the sense that we have been separated from Him.
We have died to Him. We are lost to God as a man may
say, I have lost my wife to illness, or I lost my son in the war. And we are lost to God beyond
retrieval. There is nothing God in heaven
can do to remedy this awful condition. I know that may sound strange
to you. Nothing God in heaven can do? Have we not heard that
nothing is impossible with God? But stick with me and you'll
see the truth of it. There is nothing God in heaven
can do to remedy our lost condition. Oh, how lost we are! Can it be
any worse than I have described? Too lost to find our way home.
Too lost for God in heaven to retrieve us. I am certain that
if we had even a little understanding of how lost we are, we would
fall into an unspeakable despair and an impenetrable darkness.
If men knew how desperate their condition is, they would seek
the Lord with all their hearts and every gospel church would
be full to overflowing. If we had a sense of our desperate
condition, we would never consider the hearing of the gospel to
be a chore, something easily set aside for pleasures, recreation,
and entertainment. If we had an inkling of our lostness,
prayer would be no chore, it would come easily, and it would
sound much different from the prayers we toss off at our appointed
times. Our prayers would no longer be
so much like a Christmas wish list of earthly blessings. Rather,
our continual cry would be, have mercy on me, O God, and we would
never get past that. Never was there a more desperate
condition than ours. We are lost, blindly and stubbornly
lost, and there is nothing God in heaven can do about it. But
what God in heaven cannot do, God on earth can do. And He has
come. And He has come to do exactly
what needs to be done, to seek and to save the lost. Behold
this man who has come to seek and to save the lost. Behold,
a man who isn't himself lost. As he stood there speaking, he
knew exactly where he came from, where he was, and where he was
going. He has not wandered. He has not
gone astray. Yes, he has gone his own way,
but his way is the right way, and he is not lost. What's more,
he knows where we are. He knows where stupid sheep go.
He knows they lie in the wicked one, that they wander in darkness.
He knows they grope in blindness, dwell in the camp of the unclean,
and lie rotting in the grave of spiritual death. He knows
that some lie drunk in the gutters, and others are drunk with their
own goodness, sitting in church pews. He knows that some are
nearby and some are far off, but that all of them are separated
from God. He knows they are in sin and
under judgment and wrath. He is not cut off from God. He
is in the bosom of the Father, full of God's favor and truth.
There came a time when he would be cut off from God for the salvation
of his elect. But when he came into the world,
he was pleasing to the Father, and he spent every moment of
his time here in this world doing those things that pleased the
Father. Twice his father spoke from heaven,
saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Christ
himself claimed that it was his very food to do the will of the
Father. Christ also said, and he that sent me is with me, the
Father has not left me alone, for I do always those things
that please him. What hope this is for those who
are lost, who through sin are separated from God. Behold the
name by which he comes to seek and to save that which is lost.
He calls himself the Son of Man. As the Son of Man, he is the
one who came down from heaven and returned there. He came from
Heaven to seek and save His sheep, and He has taken them back home
with Him. It is our hope to get there, but we know that we are
unable to get there by our efforts. All our efforts have ever brought
us is further estrangement from God. All our efforts have ever
done is driven us further from God's Paradise. But here is a
man who came from Heaven. and once his work was done he
returned to heaven and he has come to seek and to save the
lost As the son of man, he has authority on earth to forgive
sin. Can there be anyone better suited to the needs of sinners
than one who has divine authority from heaven to forgive sins on
earth? Some of you may think you are too much a sinner to
be saved. That would be true if salvation had anything to
do with your power and authority. But behold one made just for
your case, a man with authority to forgive sins. What else could
you need? As the son of man, he was called
the friend of sinners and tax collectors. The old song goes,
what a friend we have in Jesus. The book of Proverbs says, a
friend loves at all times. Those who think themselves to
be righteous by their own works and will, find no friend in Christ. He came to seek and save the
lost, but there are precious few people in this world who
will confess themselves to be lost. By sinner, we mean what
the Bible means by the word sinner. We mean more than simply one
who has done some sinful things. We mean someone who has never
done good things, certainly nothing so good that God could call it
good. Are you a sinner like that? Someone who has never done anything
good enough for God? Then here is good news for you.
Jesus Christ is your friend. As the Son of Man, He suffered
many things at the hands of religious leaders of His day, all culminating
in His crucifixion. It was at this point, His crucifixion,
that the Son of Man had come all the way to where His lost
sheep were. They were under sin, wrath, and judgment. He must
go there to save them, and so He did. We were sinful, so He
was made a sin offering. We were cut off. So he cries,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We were under sentence
of death, so he gives up his spirit and dies. And having come
all the way to where we are, he finds us and saves us. It is as the Son of Man that
the Lord Jesus will return in the clouds with great glory.
When the Son of Man returns, He will be bringing the wrath
of God with Him, but He will also be bringing salvation to
His own. He will be seeking His own, and
He will find every one of them who are still here when He returns,
and He will take them out of the way before He lowers the
boom on this world. No more joyful words could ever
be uttered than, The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that
which was lost. Can the one who came down from
heaven fail to find one whom he seeks? Will the one who has
authority on earth to forgive sins withhold forgiveness from
any sinner he finds? Will the one who is the friend
of sinners show any reluctance to associate with those who call
on his name, even you? Will the one who suffered the
cross, who endured the wrath of God against sin, will he fail
to find and rescue any for whom he did that glorious work? Shall
the one who returns in glory with a fiery eye of divine knowledge
and wrath, shall he fail to discover the very least of those he came
to save? Shall he accidentally destroy
one for whom he was sent, one for whom he died, one for whom
he returns? It can never be. Glory be to
the Son of Man, who has come, and who will come again. glory
to Him for seeking the lost, and glory to Him for finding
them all, and glory to Him for saving them all, and glory to
Him both now and forevermore.