Lost and Found – Part 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Each weekday morning at this time, I like to meet with you and just take some time with God together in the Bible, God’s word. That’s the thing that produces spiritual health in you – not just reading the Bible, not just talking about it or growing in your knowledge of what it says, but reading the Bible with your heart open to God.

You know, God moved the people who wrote the Bible to communicate His words, His truth, to us, and through the Bible, God meets with you. He speaks to you right into your heart, right into your life, guiding your life, reorienting your life, getting you focused on the things you ought to be focused on. Never take it lightly. It’s not just a habit to read the Bible every day. It is your lifeblood spiritually, God, meeting with you in His word and changing your life.

We’re talking this week about the theme Lost and Found, really talking about people who are lost and need to be found.

Jesus was spending so much time with these people. Apparently sinful people and the religious leaders didn’t like that He was spending so much time with sinful people. They thought you shouldn’t spend time with sinful people. It might rub off on you. But Jesus had a ministry mindset, and when He saw those sinful people, He wanted to help them get right with God. So He told several stories to the Pharisees to try and help them understand his mindset.

Yesterday we saw the story of the shepherd who lost one sheep and left the 99 to go after that sheep, and we see God’s priority. He loves us so much. He cares for us, but His priority is those sheep that are still lost, the people who still need to find Jesus Christ in their lives.

He goes on and He tells another story. He says, here’s another obvious thing we all know that if a woman has 10 silver coins and loses 1 coin. Doesn’t she light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost in the same way, I tell you, Jesus says, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

What’s Jesus’s point in this story? Search carefully.

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You know, in those days, 10 silver coins were strung together and worn around the head of an engaged woman. It was like an engagement ring. When Jesus says here there’s a woman who has 10 silver coins and loses one. It’s really probable that Jesus is talking about that headpiece with those 10 silver coins. And of course, if a woman loses her engagement ring, man… she’s going to search so carefully until she finds it.

Those Pharisees were grumbling about Jesus spending time with sinful people, and Jesus says to them, Isn’t it obvious? I am searching carefully so that these people can be found.

What does it mean to search carefully? Well, Jesus wasn’t just blasting out the message of truth. No, He was speaking His message into a relational context. He was receiving sinners and eating with them. It says He was being careful about how to connect his message of God’s love with the people that He loved and was trying to reach.

Well, God wants you to have that same approach. Think very carefully about how to help the people in your life to see God and what He’s done for them, the right way.

I’m John North.