Brown's Daily Word 8-12-08

Good Morning,
Our Lord was and is a wonderful story teller. While on earth He told parables to demonstrate and illustrate divine mysteries and wonders. In Luke 15 we have three parables recorded for us. In this chapter, Jesus tells the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Wayward Son. IN EACH OF THESE STORIES, THE PLOT LINE IS: SOMETHING IS LOST, then something is found. A sheep is lost, a coin is lost, a son has wandered away from home. IN EACH OF THESE STORIES, that which is lost REALLY MATTERS TO THE HERO OF THE STORY. The shepherd is so concerned about the loss of his one sheep that he risks the other 99 to find him. The woman is so distraught over the loss of her one coin that she cancels all her plans and scours the entire house. The father is so brokenhearted that his son has wandered that he endures the scorn of the entire village by running to him when he finally heads for home. In each case, what is lost matters so much to the one who lost it that it warrants an all-out search. WHEN WHAT WAS LOST HAS BEEN FOUND, THE HERO IS SO HAPPY THAT HE OR SHE THROWS A PARTY TO EXPRESS JOY. IN EACH OF THESE STORIES, THE HERO IS SOMEONE WHO WOULD NOT REALLY BE ADMIRED BY MOST RELIGIOUS LEADERS. The first hero is a shepherd, a second-class citizen. The second is a woman, a third-class citizen. The third is a father, a potentially admirable figure until he does the unthinkable and lifts his robes in order to run and save his son from humiliation and shame. No Pharisee could admire a man like that. Jesus stood in front of a group of longstanding religious types who think they have figured out what really matters to God. They would have read 2 Chronicles 16:9; in fact they would have memorized it by the time they were 10 years old. They saw themselves as the fully-committed. So their honest and best thinking was that they (and only they) matter to God. When they saw Jesus speaking with the outcasts of society, they were angered and indignant because they believed He, being a rabbi, was diminishing God’s name and dignity by associating with such lowlife people. Jesus then told them not one, not two, but three parables, back-to-back-to-back, as if to say, “Your perception of who matters to God and who doesn’t is so far off that I am going to clear this concept up once and for all. I am going to rapid-fire truth into your souls so that you will never again wonder what matters to God.”Then He told them about lost things that matter to people whom they did not admire. What Jesus was really saying to them was that there are two kinds of people that God longs for and searches for: THE FULLY COMMITTED and THOSE WHO ARE LOST. The fully committed are not proud, self-conscious religious types who think that the most important thing is their religious life. Jesus was really saying two things in this parable: (1) lost people matter to God so much that He’s on an all-out search to find them, and every time a lost person gets found, all of heaven rejoices with the hero of heaven, which is God. And (2) the fully committed are those who understand this and rejoice with God when what He has lost gets found so much so that they join the all-out search as well. Can you see why God says in 2 Chronicles, “My eyes are searching the earth to find every person who is fully committed to me”? It’s because God so loves those who have wandered from His Fatherhood that He is enlisting all of His other children who are willing to join the search. Only the fully committed reach out to the lost . . . Only the fully committed serve long hours so the lost can get found . . . Only the fully committed pray diligently for their friends who will otherwise spend a Christ-less eternity . . . Only the fully committed alter their spending habits so they can render the full tithe and fund ministries that reach lost people . . . Only the committed stay up late, dreaming of ways to reach out to their lost friends and neighbors . . . Only the committed look out of eyes that see the way God does and think first about others and second about themselves . . . Only the fully committed do these things. There are two categories of Christians in the world today: the casual and the committed. Which category are we in, and which category do we want to be in?Praise the Lord for the company of the committed.
In and through Jesus, who calls us to be committed to Him and to His local and the global cause,

Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYeNfXpZ0pU