For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost.
17 sermons cite this verse
… compliment. He loved to be known as the friend of sinners. That was in keeping of his mission. He said in Luke 19 10, my mission is to seek and to save those who are lost. And so to prove that point that God doesn't hate sinners, God loves sinners. He tells these three parables. Verse four, he says, what man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and he's lost one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it. verse 5 and when he has found it he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing and when he comes home he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them rejoice with me for I have found my sheep which was lost I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons if they had quotation marks back then that's what they would have put around it. Luke said, 99 so-called righteous persons who feel like they need no repentance. You know what sets off the fireworks in heaven? What gets God excited? …
Isn't that just like Jesus? To seek us out? To search for and find the one that others have cast out, oh, it's exactly like him. In Luke 19.10, we read that the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. To seek and to save. and regarding verse 35 I like what Dr. John MacArthur has to say when he says rejected by the religious leaders he was sought by the redeemer rejected by the religious leaders he was sought by the redeemer and of course Jesus ends up finding the man because those whom Jesus seeks he finds Let's get started. in the second half of verse 35 upon finding the man Jesus asks him the most important question that anyone could ever be asked do you believe in the son of God and this man bless his heart he expresses a true willingness to believe he wants to he says who is he that I may believe in him, Lord. And I wonder, I seriously wonder how many people are right under our nose, how many people that we know that are in this exact same spot, willing to believe, but need to be told who to believe in. …
You guys okay? For the Son of Man, Jesus says of himself, has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Now as they heard these things, he spoke another parable. Because he was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately, That was their error, not his. Therefore he said to them, and he's going to explain to them what's really up. A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. And so he called 10 of his servants and delivered to them 10 minas. Let's just say 10 bucks. It's a currency. And he said to them, do business till I come. Before I move on from this, Jesus is speaking about himself. He's telling his disciples, Hey, look at it this way. there's an owner of a kingdom, he's going to leave. and he's going to come back to his kingdom. While he's gone, he's going to invest in these 10 guys. …
… This is the reason Jesus came to earth. Look at the next verse, Luke 19, verse 10. Jesus said, I came to seek and to save those who are lost. That's why Jesus came to earth. God came to earth in human form to seek and save the lost. He's on a rescue mission, a search and rescue mission. Now, follow the logic on this. If we weren't lost, Jesus wouldn't have needed to come. So it clearly implies we're lost without God. If you could get to heaven simply on being kind of a nice person, and you have more good works, outbalancing all your bad works, if that's how you could get to heaven, then Jesus dying on the cross was a total waste of time. Believe me, if there was any other way for you to get into heaven, except by Jesus Christ, God, coming and living a perfect life than dying for your sins, because he didn't have any, don't you think God would have used it? …
Luke is trying to show us off the heels of the rich young ruler in Luke chapter 18. He's going to show you and I the impossible made possible in the very next chapter. Luke chapter 19 verses 1 through 10 says this. Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and he was wealthy. So let's take note. He was wealthy and corrupt. And remember last week, it's impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Verse number three, he wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short, he could not see over the crowd. I found out my research this week that in the Middle East, the average height of a male was 5'5". So he was probably under five feet tall. And I just can't help but think, man, I was born at the wrong time. I would have been a giant back then. That would have been great. …
… because he's caring, because he loves humanity. So he would see someone hurting and he would heal them. But that wasn't the reason he came. The reason he came was to seek and to save that which was lost. And throughout all of his ministry, although he would at time do other things, his mind was always focused on his purpose, on his mission to seek and to save that which was lost. And everything else was just a distraction. And he was focused on his mission. Too many of us get caught up and spend our time in the distractions, not the mission. We get caught up in all the distractions, all the things that don't matter. And we miss out on what really matters. Jesus wanted to avoid becoming an exclusively political or miracle working figure. He wanted people to focus their attention on his message rather than on these spectacular acts. Healing drew the crowds, but preaching defined the mission. Miracles were the signs, the message was the substance. …
… great lifestyle but spiritually they're blind spiritually they're lost oh I love what Jesus says, put this on the screen, Luke 19, 10, for the son of man came to seek and to save the what? The lost. Jesus said, I have come and I'm looking for anybody that is spiritually blind, looking for anybody that's on a path to destruction. And it's going to be my mission. I'm going to go on a rescue mission to help people find the love of God. This is love that God sent his one and his only son to find us when we were lost. You didn't find God. God found you. And God didn't find you when you were in your right place. God found you when you were in your lost place. When you were spiritually blind, when you were on a path towards destruction, God, through his grace and his mercy, rescued you. So you got to understand something about God. God places a premium on lost things. God places a value on things that are lost. …
… seeker what do you mean by that well john chapter 4 says the father is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth luke chapter 19 verse 10 says you just came to seek and to save those who are lost second peter chapter 3 verse 9 says god desires that all would come to repentance, that none would perish. So we've got a God that we're worshiping in this room this morning who is longing to see people come to know his grace and his salvation, who has a zeal for people to come to know his grace and salvation that is greater than all of our zeal in this room combined. And I believe the Bible is teaching us in worship, if we will exalt his character and exalt his voice, then we can trust him to do the seeking after people. And if we exalt what he wants us to exalt, then he knows a lot better than we do how to reach people in 21st century culture. So let's take him at his word. Let's exalt his greatness, expose his voice, and let him do the seeking. And then guess what? He'll get the glory for what happens and not the seeker-sensitive worship service. I want to show you this in scripture. Let me show you this. I want you to turn to the right and look in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. This is such a great passage. This is in the middle of some of the disputes that were going on with the church at …
… It's a reference to an Old Testament prophecy about him that he would be a deliverer. The Son of Man, the deliverer, the Savior, came to seek and to save the lost. Savior. has come. to seek and to save the lost. I think those may be the two most important things about you. Number one, that God is seeking you. you're like well i'm not even seeking god he's seeking you that's what he came to do and that's who he is and he's doing the work to save you the two most important things about you this Christmas is that God is seeking you to save you. And why is he doing that? Because that's how much you matter to him. How do we know how much we matter to him? Well, we see the way he's seeking us and we see the way that he saved us. How was he seeking us? He came into the mess of the manger. That's how he was seeking us. We have sanitized the manger. …
… I came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Luke 19, for the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. Jesus replied, foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. Luke 9 the son of man must suffer just focus on that word for a moment he must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders the chief priests and the teachers of the law and he must be killed Thank you. and on the third day be raised to life, reaching back to Daniel's prophecy. Jesus chose Son of Man to let you know that he's the coming king, but he also chose Son of Man to let you know that as the coming king, He wants to highlight the values of the kingdom, which are humility and service. so what does it matter to you that he chose son of man it means this it means a that you can know him it means b that you can be real with him and c that you can be sure that he understands we're talking earlier about christian's new album it just came out come to jesus There's a song on there I love so much. …
My name is Luke and I get to be the youth pastor at Life.Church Northwest Oklahoma City. And I just have one question for you as we get started. What would change about your life if you truly believed that you didn't have to do it alone? What would change? For some of you, your head immediately jumps to the day that you walk down the aisle ready to kiss singleness goodbye. And others of you, maybe you're starting a new season of life and you crave this sense of belonging. Some of you, if you're being honest with yourself, you know that when things get difficult, you tend to isolate. you tend to withdraw maybe even from the people that care about you the most maybe others of you you're here today and you're trying to heal from a wound that feels impossible to heal from and i'm here to tell you that in god honoring community no one stands alone it was in 2020 that my wife and i we moved away from home about a couple hours away from home in In fact, here is a picture of our family. …
… do you? And then he says, it's the son of man, which is what he called himself, the son of man came to seek and to save those who are lost. And that's why he came. There's a lot of lost sheep out there. We've been them. You've been a lost sheep. Maybe you are right now and you just happen to tune in today. But he cares for you. And he wants his church to be people, to be a community that cares for the lost sheep. That's been our driving passion for nearly 35 years. So at Resurrection, we have a purpose statement. It shows up at every one of our buildings. I'll show you the picture of it from our Leawood location just outside of the sanctuary. It says, our purpose is to build a Christian community. Why don't you say this with me if you would? Our purpose is to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people, the people Jesus looked for, are becoming deeply committed Christians. …
… This is the heart of God for people who've wandered away. from God. I think of Jesus' ministry in Luke chapter 19, verse 10, a passage I ask all of our members to memorize. We capture this idea of what Jesus came to do. And he says, the Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost. He's drawing directly from Ezekiel chapter 34. He says, I've come in the flesh to do what God said he would do in Ezekiel 34, to seek and to save the lost. And Jesus is constantly scanning the horizon, meeting with people, caring for people, tending people who'd been pushed away from church, pushed away from God, not church, synagogue, pushed away from God and trying to bring them back again. That is his heart's desire. That is why I'll tell you at Church of the Resurrection, our purpose statement is to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians. Everything we do, we're asking this question. How can we be the church for the people who are lost, the people who have strayed? How can we go out and find the people who have lost their way or slowly wandered away from God? That is our driving passion here, is to help people come. …
… for the salvation of sinners. We pray to God that He would save sinners, and God, who is by nature a Savior desires to save sinners. The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. God is a saving God. And that's why the church is in the world as His instrument to bring about the proclamation of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit to change hearts, to give sinners salvation, salvation from death and hell, eternal judgment. This is the work of God. This is the will of God. And I guess at this point in time, our period of time where we're now living, we have wondered whether or not there might be some great global work of salvation, some massive response to the gospel across the entire earth. And I suppose in these days we think about that more than maybe in the past, even though it was hoped for. …
… of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. That last verse is a definitive declaration of the purpose for the incarnation. nation. Jesus came into the world to seek and to save lost sinners. This is the divine enterprise in God's redemptive plan. From the fall of man, God has always sought out sinners. All the way back in the book of Genesis, after Adam and Eve had sinned, God comes into the garden and says, where are you? Where are you? And ever since then, God has been seeking sinners, seeking the lost. In one of the most beautiful Old Testament texts, Ezekiel quotes God saying this, I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, and strengthen the sick. Ezekiel 34, 16. God is a seeking God. He is not in some form of isolation waiting for us to figure out a way to get to Him. He rather seeks us. And by the way, Romans 3, 11 says, no man seeks after God. We are neither able nor willing to seek after God. He is beyond human discovery. God has to seek us. And that is the story of the Bible. That is the story of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. …
… because he too is the son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Now here is a simple incident in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ on his way through Jericho to Jerusalem and within just about a week or so he's going to the cross. But he takes the time to recognize and to serve someone else. I want you to jot down five words. The first word in the requirements for servanthood, if I'm going to learn to be a servant, the word number one, awareness. Awareness is the key word. Now listen to what happened here. The Bible says that Jesus was passing along through Jericho and there were crowds all alongside the street they'd heard he was coming. The streets are lined up and there's a fellow there by the name of Zacchaeus who is a tax collector. Now, a man who was a tax collector in those days among the people of Israel was considered a traitor to the cause of his own people. So here he is, the chief tax collector. He's the administrator. He has other people working under him. And besides that, he's known as a thief. People don't like him. They've rejected him. He doesn't have any friends. When the street. He felt all kinds of rejection. Why do you think he had to climb a tree to see Jesus? …
… NOW IN THE STORY OF THE LOST SHEEP, YOU SEE THE RESCUING NATURE OF THE SON. JESUS IS THE GOOD SHEPHERD. YOU REMEMBER WHAT JESUS SAID IN LUKE 19 VERSE 10, THE SON OF MAN IS COME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH IS LOST. THAT'S WHY JESUS CAME. JESUS SAID, I'M THE GOOD SHEPHERD. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Why did Jesus leave the glories of heaven and come to the agonies of earth to seek the lost? Why did Jesus leave the golden streets of glory and walk the dusty streets of Galilee to save the lost? Why did Jesus leave his scepter of righteousness and come and take a wilted reed in his hand as they mocked him? To seek the lost. Why did the Lord Jesus Christ leave his diadem of glory and wear a crown of thorns? The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. Why did Jesus settle Calvary's dust with his blood? …