Christ Seeks the Lost / Luke 15:1–10 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday September 14th 2025 / Season of Pentecost / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday September 14th 2025: Season of Pentecost / Ezekiel 34:11–24 & 1 Timothy 1:5–17 & Luke 15:1–10 “Christ Seeks the Lost”

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

So He 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.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends how does someone get lost? Have you ever been lost? Lost in the woods? Lost at the fairgrounds as a kid or while out shopping with your parents? It can happen by accident, you wander away look up and no one is with you and everything is unfamiliar; it can happen on purpose, you took it upon yourself to go on an ‘adventure’ and your over confidence and unpreparedness overtakes you as you wander down the unfamiliar path; perhaps you ignore the warning signs posted for your good or it can happen simply because of bad directions possibly even from someone who was sincere — but sincerely wrong — or from someone who was spiteful and wicked leading you astray on purpose (The kind of person who sees that you’re lost but doesn’t help you to return to safety and maybe even seeks to take advantage of your sad situation). It can also be the result of associating with the wrong crowd, as Saint Paul says, “Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”[1] Generally people don’t set out to get lost but it certainly happens, but what if it’s not just being lost at the mall or in the woods and it is more like getting lost in life? And what if it’s not just you who ends up lost, not just someone in your family what if it’s your whole family or an entire town or community or even an entire nation? What then? How does that happen? Is there any hope when it’s as bad as that?  

What Saint Paul writes to Saint Timothy in our Epistle Reading today is as applicable now as it was when it was first written: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons,” Saint Paul says, “by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”[2] You will find many confident assertions on the 24 hours News Networks; you will also find many confident assertions on Social Media but just because the assertion is made with confidence doesn’t make it true.

So when people have wandered away from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith they simply will not be trustworthy teachers of the Law of God and whatever they expound on will be hollow and vain at best or vain and wicked at worst. They may believe that their teachings and encouragements are true but believing that they are true will not make them true. Such commentators, and reporters and influencers and talking heads when they have abandoned the one true faith, the Christian faith, may present and encourage you to follow a kind of Worldly Law but it will not be the Law of God. At best it might be a mutated and twisted mockery of God’s Law and at worst it will be a Pagan or Secular or even Satanic Law unhinged from what is true and good and honourable and godly.     

Saint Paul continues to explain that “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient ... [for everything that] is contrary to sound doctrine.”[3] Now it is easy to lay down at the feet of political ideology the sort of violence that shoots through stain glass windows at school children and their families as they assemble for a back to school opening church service, or that brutally stabs a woman to death on public transit and then fails to help her as she bleeds to death for the crime of being the wrong colour of skin in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that crawls up on a rooftop to target and assassinate a man engaged in public dialogue on a university campus with 3,000 traumatised people as witnesses ... but before you can lay all of this down at the feet of political ideology and political tensions ginned up by inflammatory rhetoric you first need to remember that behind all of this violence is an abandonment of the Law of God; The abandonment or downplaying of its authority and truth. When people are encouraged to break God’s Law, first in small ways and then in large ways, it will eventually lead to wickedness and evil. Now when it somehow doesn’t apply to you even when you certainly want it to apply to others, when you’re family is the very exception to the rule, and your actions are justified because you think you have good reasons, you then are likewise contributing to lawlessness. For example when instead of encouraging marriage and marital faithfulness centring that encouragement on the Law of God we rather turn a blind eye to premarital sex and adultery can we really be that surprised 30 and 40 years later when the family as a foundational God pleasing institution begins to fall apart within society? When we are permissive and complacent in such things we need to hear Saint Paul’s warning from His letter to the Galatians “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”[4] So in our Epistle from 1st Timothy Saint Paul says the Law is for, “the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers,” for everyone who refuses to live by the law, refuses to teach it to the next generation, refuses to walk by it together as a community, as a people.

When the Government and Father and Mother, and sadly sometimes even the Church, fail to judge according to the Law of God remember ultimately it is the LORD who stands in judgement over the breaking of His Law. Judgment will not be pushed off forever and so in our Old Testament reading from Ezekiel we have the warning, “As for you, My flock, thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats.”[5] The rams and male goats are the fat and the strong,[6] the ones who the Lord charges with feeding on the good pasture while they tread down with their feet the rest of the pasture for everyone else; who drink of clear water as they muddy the rest of the water for everyone else with their feet forcing the Lord’s sheep eat and drink what has been trodden upon and muddied.[7] These rams and male goats push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with their horns, until they’ve scattered the Lord’s sheep abroad.[8]

Is the Christian to be frightened into silence when the guns and bullets are marked with political slogans? Are we to shrink away when they come for us in our places of worship, or upon community transit or in the public square? Are you to be anxious when the news stations and social media feeds stoke the flames of unrest or stifle and undermine the voices of those who seek to teach the Word of God with love that issue from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith? Are you to live a life of fear when you look up and suddenly feel lost, when you look up and everything has become unfamiliar, when you look up and the whole world seems lost? No, you are not, because “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,”[9] because the Lord promises, “I Myself will be the Shepherd of My sheep, and I Myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak,”[10] because Jesus is the Good Shepherd who goes after the one sheep that is lost in the open country, until He finds it,[11] He is the one who will lift you up on His shoulders, rejoicing and will bring you home. It is a comfort to know that He both seeks you out when you have gone astray, when the World has led you astray, when bad company and bad actors have lead you astray; and it is a comfort to know that He will judge between the sheep and the goats, that the rams with their horns hungry for violence and dominance are not the final say, that no matter how muddy they make the waters with their feet, how trampled down they make the gifts of God, Christ Jesus nevertheless is still the Truth and the Way and the Life.

When you are lost in your sin and the Lord finds you and lifts you up upon His shoulders make Psalm 22 verse 7 you prayer, “Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to Your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of Your goodness, O LORD!”[12] When you look around and see that the whole country is lost, that the whole world needs saving remember first that our Old Testament Reading from Ezekiel is one in which the Lord promises to rescue His flock from among the scattered sheep, promises to save a nation that has become lost;[13] and then secondly remember what Saint John writes, “For God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”[14]

Dear ones in the midst of everything going on in the world today and in your life remember likewise Jacob from the Book of Genesis when after escaping death at the hand of his brother Esau and after waking from his sleep, in which he was found by the Lord and promised protection, Jacob says, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” And [then Moses tells us Jacob] was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”[15] Jacob, one of the Lord shepherds, who in the dream saw the heavens opened and angels ascending and descending upon a ladder reaching down from heaven to earth realised that he wasn’t lost if the Lord was with him. This place here, Mount Olive Lutheran Church, is one of the places where the Lord promises to meet us, to meet us in His Word and in His Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.

In Psalm 23 we pray how it is that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil, for Jesus our Good Shepherd is with us; His rod and His staff, they comfort us.[16] So even if death is upon the horizon and you find yourself in the shadow of deaths valley, even there the Lord is with you, even there He finds you, even there He lifts you up upon His shoulders and brings you home. And so in the Lord’s Prayer when we pray deliver us from evil it is taught that should evil come to us that, even in death, the Lord will deliver us out of it. What does the catechism teach? “The Seventh Petition: ‘But deliver us from evil.’ What does this mean? We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.”[17]

Those who slaughter us all the day long, those who seek our martyrdom, or seek to lead us astray in life will receive their judgement and will reap upon themselves what they sowed upon us, unless they repent, but this is not to come from our hand, it is the Lord’s as Saint Paul writes in his letter to the Christians of Rome, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.[18] And this is what was laid before us last Sunday when in the Old Testament reading we heard the Lord say to His people through Moses, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.”[19] Then Moses says to them and you “choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days,”[20] Truly living your life as one who is no longer lost but found by the Lord, as one who respects and follows the Law of God for the glory of God and the good of your neighbour, who seeks to help the lost in body and soul and points them to Christ will have an impact on those closest to you, upon your community, upon your nation, even upon the whole World, the World Jesus came to save, the World He shed His life blood to redeem right down to the most lost sheep you can imagine. Dear ones there is no one so lost that they cannot be found and lifted up by the Lord, those who shoot and stab and speak or tweet or write the worst of things can all be redeemed by the Lord.

As Saint Paul says, “neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you [Saint Paul says]. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.[21] Pray each day that the lost will be found, that they will have these things in their past and not in their present and that what Jesus says of the lost sheep and lost coin comes to pass, that as they are redeemed and rescued from their lost condition, that there will indeed be joy before the angels of God over each and every one sinner who repents, over each and every one who is redeemed, over each and every community that returns to the Lord, over each and every nation that is pulled up out of the thorns and thistles of the wilderness of their wanderings; that each and every one of us will embrace the aim of our charge which is a love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Amen. 

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen. 

[1] 1 Corinthians 15:33
[2] 1 Timothy 1:5–17
[3] 1 Timothy 1:9-10
[4] Galatians 6:7
[5] Ezekiel 34:17
[6] Ezekiel 34:16
[7] Ezekiel 34:18-19
[8] Ezekiel 34:21
[9] 1 Timothy 1:15
[10] Ezekiel 34:15-16
[11] Luke 15:4
[12] Psalm 25:7
[13] Ezekiel 34:11–14
[14] John 3:16–17
[15] Genesis 28:16–17
[16] Psalm 23:4
[17] The Lord’s Prayer, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, page 22.
[18] Romans 12:19–21
[19] Deuteronomy 30:15
[20] Deuteronomy 30:19–20
[21] 1 Corinthians 6:9–11

Photo Credit: Main photo of Le Bon Pasteur Philippe de Champaigne from wikimedia commons.