To Seek and Save the Lost

Rev. Clevis O. Laverty

"For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost." You have undoubtedly noticed in your own experience that people have always had the inconvenient knack of losing things. They lose almost everything from shoelaces to ideals and themselves. A well-known street car company in California reported that one year over eight thousand people left articles in their cars and failed to claim them. The report said that these articles that were left included everything from Bibles to angleworms.

One railroad company in this country announces that it has hundreds of lost articles left behind by thoughtless passengers. One passenger, evidently a medical student, left a full-sized skeleton, while another very forgetful person left a six months old baby. It is bad enough to lose things, but to lose human beings is something of a more serious nature. Yet there are human beings, made in the image of god, who become lost or lose something vital. Perhaps due to their own carelessness or thoughtlessness or of someone else's. It may be a lost ideal, lost enthusiasm, or most terrifying, lost hope.

"For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save the lost." Christ comes to seek and to save lost ideals. Have you met any of these people who have lost ideals? Let me nudge your memory, just a little bit. These are the might-have-beens which strew the highways of life. You can hear them say they might-have-been important and successful if this had been done or that had been done, if they had had the breaks, if they had not lost their ideals, if they had not lost their perspective.

One night last week, quite late, I saw the last 15 or 20 minutes of a television show, I believe it was called Studio One. The title of the play I did not find out and it is not important. This play was developed around a plot to show that a community of friends and neighbors had lost their sense of values. Their ideals had dropped by the wayside. It was about the accidental death of a small boy and everyone was in a hurry to fasten the blame on another, but all turned out to be responsible because of thoughtlessness, carelessness, or misdirected interests.

I could not help thinking, as I saw this story unfold, how true to life it was. There was the incident: the little boy falling through a loose rail on the school fire escape, the janitor who had put off fixing the railing until after his lunch, the schoolteacher who did not report it to the building inspector because she did not want to involve the janitor in any trouble (and then forgot to remind the janitor), the building inspector who was too weary to walk up the fire escape to look it all over, the alderman whose civic pride was directed toward the erection of imposing statuary instead of safe, adequate schoolhouses, the doctor who thought the emergency call was a cry of wolf, the father of the dead child who a few years before had constructed the fires escape and left off one of the supports. I couldn't help thinking that here was a lesson for all of us in any community. Each one of these people had had a job and a responsibility and had done a little less than his or her best, and in so doing another ideal had dropped by the wayside.

Perhaps we should take stock, see if we have left our ideals somewhere, if we are falsely blaming someone for a predicament that we have had a hand in.

Christ came to seek and to save lost ideals. They can be regained. He set the example and we need only to follow. That which is past we have his guarantee has been forgiven and we can regain our ideals and carry on from there. Someone has written these words that carry the thought well:

Do you wish there was some wonderful place
Called "The Land of Beginning Again?"
You can find that place through the Savior's grace;
He will cleanse you from every stain.
You can keep your ideal and carry it through
Since Christ came to seek it and find it for you.

Secondly, Christ came to seek and to save lost enthusiasm. A very high value is placed on enthusiasm by responsible people. I once knew a sales manager, in fact I worked for him, who used to say, "Give me a man with 10% knowledge and 90% enthusiasm, and I'll show you a many who will succeed." I think he is right.

I was walking through a factory once and saw this notice on the wall: "The man who is like a wheelbarrow, and goes only where he is pushed, is not likely to succeed here." I also remember a little girl's definition of salt: "Salt is what potatoes taste so bad without." Amusing perhaps, but could you give a more vivid description?

All these help us draw a parallel definition of life. Life without enthusiasm is a poor, tame, and tasteless thing. Without enthusiasm, how can we make our daily lives a tasty adventure? Without enthusiasm, how can we make our church a growing and meaningful force in our community? Without enthusiasm, how can we go about God's business in the manner in which he wills? But suppose you have lost your enthusiasm for spiritual things, how do you regain this great propelling power? The Son of man came to seek and to save lost enthusiasm. Sounds good, preacher, but what does it mean? I don't blame you. Let us look at this word enthusiasm we have been flinging around here. The word comes to us from the Greek language and actually means "filled with God." We can take the word just a little further and safely say the enthusiasm is the overflowing life of God in us that breads out in joyous service for him and flows on over all opposition and discouragement.

I once heard a preacher say that the American Can Company is the name of a factory. I invite you to join a can company which is not confined to America. St. Paul belonged to it, for he said: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

There is another one of these things by which human beings are lost when they lose it. Let's see, we lose ideals, enthusiasm, ... and hope. That is a wonderful word in the American language, the very mention of the word hope seems to bring many possibilities to mind. Hope: it's almost a promise, a promise to yourself. Hope: it implies a faith in something better. But take the word hopeless. Is there a more forlorn sounding word, one that sounds so final?

There is a legend that Satan once offered his tools for sale. These implements included hatred, falsehood, vice, strong drink, and many other degrading things. There was one tool set apart from all the rest and marked with the highest price. When asked the reason for this, Satan replied: "That is my most useful tool. It has brought more people within my power than any other tool I possess. It is called 'despair.'"

When we lose hope, when we admit hopelessness, we are no longer working for the Kingdom of God. We become a tool of the forces of evil, the tool that causes the countless suicides throughout the world—that most terrible of all tools—despair. And what is the remedy? There is no one easy, simple solution. We have to keep working at it. But we do have a base from which to work. Robert Service puts it into verse in this wise:

Thank God, there is always a Land of Beyond
For those who are true to the trail;
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A farness that never will fail.

The son of man comes to seek and to save lost hope. God restores souls depressed and made hopeless by the suffering, sorrow and sin of the world. He does this by giving us an occasional glimpse of men. He shows us a loyal suffering Job—I didn't say patient; Job was anything but patient, but he was ready to justify God even if he slay him. He shows us Paul, his former friends ready to kill him, driven out of Jerusalem, later shipwrecked, thrown into jail, yet full of hope. If we give these masterful, triumphing spirits a chance, they will stab out sickly despondency into attention, and send us back into the arena to fight.

God restores our lost hope by drawing us to himself, my illustration here is for you to read the 23rd Psalm slowly and carefully before dinner.

No matter who you are, no matter how desperate your case; there is a renewal of hope through Jesus Christ, you have but to seek him and let him know.