Desperately Seeking
Matthew 13:44-45; Luke 15: 1-7
Community Service in the Park
May 29th, 2005
Summer Outreach
Have you ever noticed that we are tireless searchers? Jesus points this out to us in our first passage this morning, Matthew 13:44-45. We seem to spend our lives searching for one thing or another. It begins early in life, searching for acceptance. I have two young daughters, both of them very competitive for my attention. My day is constantly punctuated by “Daddy, watch me!” This is the motto of childhood, isn’t it? Watch me!
And this urge to be seen, to be accepted, follows us throughout life. It becomes the root cause of our search. Most of the things we search for are somehow connected to our desire to be accepted – to be loved. And so our radar goes up for that perfect companion; that perfect friend; that perfect lover. We look for that one person with whom we can bare our soul.
And we look in all kinds of places for the relationship we were born to have. We hope to find it in the eyes of a lover. Cautiously, we open ourselves to them. And though we give our bodies to our lovers – they come to know our body as well as their own – we never fully develop the trust needed to reveal our naked soul. And so, in the end our search isn’t satisfied by our lover.
So we throw ourselves passionately into our work. We become the “go-to-guy.” We push for perfection, we glory with each elevation in position and pay and we find satisfaction for a while in the work of our hands. But when the roar of success settles to a dull rumble – wealth and fame not withstanding – we still find we are restless for something else. We start looking for new challenges, even though we know a new challenge will not satisfy us anymore than the first one did.
So we take up a cause – we save the whales, we house the homeless, we advocate for the powerless. We join civic organizations, we play sports, we travel – we fill our lives with activity, thinking that the busier we are the more meaningful our life must be. We try to become invaluable, thinking that our purpose is to leave a legacy. Like so many, we mistake our place in history with significance and so we pursue significance in the eyes of others.
And in the quiet moments before sleep, when that sense of missing significance steals upon us despite our busyness, we play our last desperate card. We decide to have children – not mainly for love, but so that we can leave our mark on the world, leave something of ourselves behind. We seek immortality by reproducing.
But the ache to be really and deeply known doesn’t go away. That one desire keeps popping up. Why? In the Bible, a wise man named Solomon was moved by God to write these words in Ecclesiastes 3:10-11.
I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Solomon here hits upon what drives our search. God has set eternity in our hearts. In other words, we have a longing to know God, to have friendship with God, to search out God – to be in a deep, intimate, committed relationship with God. We are built for that relationship; it is part of our DNA. We were created to love God our Creator and enjoy him forever. We were created to know him and be known by him.
Yet, Solomon says, we cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. That’s what causes the ache, the longing. That’s what sets our feet on the search for a significant relationship. We long to know God passionately, but we cannot seem to penetrate the layers of stuff we fill our lives with to realize that’s what we really need. Why?
The Bible says the problem is sin. Sin is a word we don’t hear much anymore except when it is used in the titles of adult movies as an enticement. In Romans 3:23, however, it says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. What that means is that all of us have this huge problem when we are born – we are sinful. We have a tendency toward doing things that are wrong, that are evil, that are the opposite of what God wants us to do.
You see, sin twisted the desires God created us with and perverted them. Instead of loving God and knowing him as we were created to do, sin has twisted that desire into loving ourselves and wanting to be God. We don’t like the idea of being responsible to someone else, of owing our existence to someone else. So rather than honoring God as we were created to do, we refuse to even acknowledge that he exists. And so sin works in all our natural desires, working throughout our lives and tainting every relationship. Everything we turn our hands to is marred by our predisposition to behave badly. And it is our sin – our waywardness – that separates us from God. It hangs like a thick black veil between us and God.
In the end, we feel like we are playing Macro Polo in pitch dark waters all by ourselves. We keep crying out Marco! and never hear the even slightest Polo! in return. But the problem is not that God isn’t answering, it is that we keep listening to everything else. We desperately seek something to satisfy this longing to be known and to know by looking to other people, to things, to activity, to vice, to anything but the one person who can satisfy our longing – to God!
Now, you want to hear something incredible? We’re not the only ones desperately seeking. Did you hear the passage we read from Luke fifteen, the one about the shepherd? From this passage, it appears that God is desperately seeking, too.
I want to draw this scene for you. Jesus has sensed that the time has come for his appointment with the cross, so he is doing a lot of teaching on what the Kingdom of GOD is all about. Now this didn’t happen in a classroom or auditorium, away from any nay-sayers or distractions. It happened in the public square where his words could be challenged. So it is fascinating to me that the point Jesus dwells on is not how fire is going to rain down from heaven or that hell is going to open up and swallow all the infidels. In Luke fifteen he tells three parables right in a row to emphasize how tender God’s heart is toward us.
Picture this – Jesus is standing and all around him are crowding the dregs of society. These were people who weren’t accepted anywhere else. They were shunned by the religious leaders and those considered decent in those days because they were considered beyond redemption. They were people known for their sinfulness and so were not welcomed in the synagogue or Temple.
As Jesus is teaching, that longing we are all born with begins to burn – they want to know God and Jesus is telling them how to go about it. Now, a sanctified distance away, are the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and the scribes. They don’t want to get too near this motley crowd because they believe to even accidentally touch them means defilement. After touching them, the religious leaders would not be allowed to worship at the Temple or synagogue until after a period of purification.
Maybe you have felt like the church has treated you that way in the past – afraid to touch you or be seen with you. Sure, come in, but don’t get too close. We don’t want your sin to infect our pious lives. If this has been your experience let me say now, don’t confuse the self-righteousness of a few with life in Christ.
Now, don’t let the distance of the religious elite fool you. They were straining their ears to hear every word Jesus was speaking – in part so that they can find things to trip him up. After Jesus tells the crowd right around his feet about what it takes to be a disciple – to really know God – he lifts his eyes from these folks and looks directly at the religious leaders and says, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep, and loses one.”
What a great picture! Here are all these religious types, scared of even breathing the same air as the ones they call “sinners” – as if the religious types weren’t! And Jesus points his fingers at them and says, “Listen up! Because this is how much God loves all these people that you despise!”
Then Jesus tells one of the most well known parables ever uttered – the parable of the Lost Sheep. Now, I just want to concentrate on one thing this morning about this parable. Notice the extravagant love of the Shepherd. He has ninety-nine sheep still in the fold – ninety nine! Only one sheep is missing and it is probably the one who has been a pain in the neck since the day he was born. You know the one, the sheep that keeps wandering off looking for that something better – better prairie grass, better water, better shade. Never satisfied with the food, water and protection the Shepherd provides. Yet, does the Shepherd mutter, “Good riddance!” and move on? No. He risks everything he has – he leaves the ninety-nine – and goes in search of that one troublesome sheep.
It’s like when you are driving down the road eating M&M’s. You go to throw a couple in your mouth and one slips out of your hand and falls between your legs. It doesn’t matter that you still have a ½ lb. bag in your hand – you’re sure that the one that fell is the best one in the bag. You will nearly wreck your car trying dig that thing out. That’s how it is with the shepherd in search of the one lost sheep. No risk is too great, no cost too high. He will put everything on the line to find this one lost sheep.
That is a picture of the extravagant love of God – an image of his heart toward us. He risks all – even going so far as death on a cross for the sake of one lost sheep. That’s why we are told in John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever should believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Nothing is spared in the gathering of God’s children.
Saint Augustine once prayed, “Lord, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you.” We know that ache don’t we, especially during this time of year – memorial weekend? We think of those we have lost and our hearts throb because of the hole left there by our loved one’s absence. The ache comes from an disrupted relationship. That same ache is what moves the heart of the shepherd to look for the one lost sheep. It is what moves the heart of God to search for us. And our hearts are restless, constantly seeking until he finds us.
