This sermon delves into the concept of being lost spiritually and the importance of understanding God's desire to seek and save all who are lost. It emphasizes the need for believers to have a heart for the lost and to pray for the salvation of all people, aligning with God's will. The scriptural basis for this belief is explored through passages like Luke 19:10, 1 Timothy 2:1-4, 2 Peter 3:9, and Colossians 1:28, highlighting God's longing for all to come to repentance and be spiritually mature in Christ.

Lord, I thank you for your word and for the truth that leads us into a deeper relationship with Jesus. I pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes to see wonderful things in your word and that your Holy Spirit would lead us and guide us into all truth as we consider these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. So, I'd like to begin with Luke chapter 9, actually Luke chapter 19. Luke chapter 19, beginning in verse 10, now the background for this is Zacchaeus. It's an episode in the ministry of Jesus when he came across a man named Zacchaeus who had climbed a tree to see him, and I'll not go into the entire story because it's a teaching all by itself, but what I want to focus on is verse 10. It says that the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. The Son of Man has come. Why has the Son of Man come? To seek and to save that which was lost, and I want you to think about what it means to be lost because today I want to talk about our attitude towards the lost. Those of us who are found, those of us who are saved, what is our attitude toward those that are lost, toward those that are not found, and I want to begin with a story. A lady by the name of Sharon Roseman, when she was five years old, something very strange happened to her. She was playing a game in her backyard with some other children in the neighborhood, and she had a blindfold. It was some kind of hide-and-seek game, and they tied the blindfold on her, and when Sharon removed the blindfold, she was completely lost. She didn't know where she was. Nothing was recognizable. Her house didn't look like her house. Her yard didn't look like her yard, and she became panicked, didn't understand what was going on, and she saw a woman sitting on a back porch of the house closest to where she was, and she went up to the woman and realized it was her mother. She said, what are you doing here? Her mother said, what do you mean, what am I doing here? This is our house. And Sharon said, I don't know where I am. I'm lost. I don't recognize anything. And her mother, because she was afraid, her mother was afraid that people would think that Sharon was mentally ill or something. Her mother told Sharon, don't ever tell anyone about this confusion or this thing that you are experiencing, or they will think that you are a witch, and they will burn you at the stake. So for years and years, her whole life, Sharon kept this secret to herself that she had these moments when she felt lost, when things were just not recognizable, not the sort of occasions that you and I have all the time when we get lost on the way to some place. She literally lost her sense of where she was, didn't recognize her home, didn't recognize her yard, and these things would happen to her all throughout her life until in her 60s, she finally found an answer. The reason why she had that experience. Turns out that Sharon suffered from a neurological condition. Part of her brain, her hippocampus, that processes our maps, our short-term memory about where we are, it helps us to be oriented to where we are in the world. It turns out that her hippocampus was not quite fully developed in that area. So there was a neurological reason, it wasn't a psychological reason, it wasn't a spiritual reason, she wasn't a witch, but she was suffering from a condition known as Developmental Topographical Disorientation, or DTD. You can read more about Sharon Roseman if you type her into Google, you can see her story. It's very fascinating, and it turns out that there are many people in the world who share this neurological condition. What does that have to do with you and me? Well, this condition of feeling like you're lost kind of relates to a spiritual condition. All of us, in fact, were born lost, disoriented. Something in our life, in our spiritual life was not fully developed when we were born into this world. And just like Sharon Roseman could be in her own backyard amongst her own family, in her own home and not even recognize where she was, many of us as well were lost in this world, in the world that God created for us, a world that He wanted us to live in and enjoy and have fellowship with Him in. And yet we were born into a condition where we are lost, and all this time, mankind has been trying to navigate its way back to this place of connection and relationship with the Lord. You and I already have that connection and that relationship with the Lord, so you may take for granted the fact that you are saved and that you know who you are and you know to whom you belong. But all of us started out like Sharon Roseman did, a certain part of our heart, a certain part of our life, not fully developed, not complete, incomplete, vacant, empty. Theologians call it a God-shaped void in our heart that can only be filled with Christ. So that leads us to considering the spiritual condition of mankind as a whole. Mankind is lost. But I want to get you to think about being lost in a different sense than the way that we have typically thought about being lost or thought about being not saved. In fact, I want to share a vision with you today, a vision that will get you to change the way you see this world and mankind and the universe and all those people out there that are lost. I call it a vision. Some would call it an impossible dream, but I believe that there is a scriptural basis that we can pray and that we can believe for the salvation, for the finding of every man, woman, boy and girl on the face of the earth. Now, I know to some that sounds like an impossible dream, but instead I call it the vision of the kingdom of God, that in all things and in all people, Christ would have the preeminence. Now, I'm not going to make that statement to you just by itself and ask you to believe it, but I would ask you to keep in mind the mission of Jesus. The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. I want to give you some supporting evidence from Scripture that gives us, I believe, a reasonable spiritual basis upon which we can believe and upon which we can pray for the salvation of all people. 1 Timothy chapter 2, 1 Timothy chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. So, what I want to do is share with you what I believe to be God's heart. Now, some people are going to question the theology, some will question the doctrine, some will question how is this possible. I'm not even going to address how. I just believe that with all things and in all things that God is working all those things together for good according to his purpose, and that with God nothing is impossible. So, I'm not trying to satisfy your theological curiosity, and I'm not trying to enter into a debate upon, well, what about this and what about that? I just want to present a vision. I want to present a scriptural viewpoint, a perspective on why you and I can believe and can go into the world and preach the gospel to everybody with the expectation that it is God's heart, it is God's will to seek and to save all that are lost. 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 1 says, Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men. For how many men? For all men. For kings and all who are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. God desires, King James Version says that God wills, the Greek word there means he intends, he purposes. It's far more, I believe, than just merely stating a wish. I'd like to have a million dollars, not that kind of a desire, something that's way beyond the reach of reality, it's going into fantasy, but we just have a wish, we have a desire, but we don't really expect that it'll happen. But when God desires something, when God purposes something, when God intends something, I believe that God eventually is going to get what he wants. I'm not of this group of people that believes that somehow man is more powerful than God, that God can have a desire and God can have a will, but his will may or may not be done. They put a big question mark over it, because they want to tie God's hands that God can't do thus and so unless man does thus and so, and I just don't believe that. I don't see that in scripture. I'm not going to bring God down from the level of omnipotence and make him beholden to his creation, beholden to the people that he created as if he is going to somehow be bound and restricted by what you and me do. That just goes against common sense, not to mention going against scripture. So all I'm saying is that God desires that all men would be saved. By that, of course, we understand all mankind, all people, all men, women, boys and girls. It's God's desire that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Greek word there for knowledge is epignosis and it's a compound word in Greek. It means full knowledge, that they would come to the full knowledge of the truth. A lot of people have incomplete knowledge, partial knowledge, some knowledge. But this word here that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth, the epignosis of truth, and epignosis means the full knowledge and it means the kind of knowledge that you can only obtain through experience, experiential knowledge. Jesus expressed eternal life as knowing you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. It's to know him, Paul says, and the power of his resurrection, not to know about him. So many religious people know about Jesus and the majority of the world knows something about Jesus, but it's God's desire in God's heart that all men would be saved and would come to the full knowledge. What is that? The experiential knowledge of the truth. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. So whatever you think I'm talking about, I'm not talking about all paths lead to heaven. There's only one way and that is Jesus Christ. Right after this, right after he says that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, he says there is one God and one mediator. Not many, not many paths, not many ways, not many truths, but one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. So for the time being, I would ask you to set aside whatever doctrinal reservations you think that you have and try to get beyond figuring it out with your mind and see if you can touch the heart of God. What is God's heart? What does he want? What does he desire for mankind? What's his purpose for the earth? What's his purpose for the people of this earth? It's that all would be saved and would come to the full knowledge of the truth. Now, you shouldn't build a teaching off of one verse or even a couple of verses. So let me give you another. 2 Peter 3.9, 2 Peter 3.9, I'm giving you what I believe to be the basis upon which not only can we pray for the salvation of all people, but we can go into the world with authority and can share the gospel of Jesus without reservation, without wondering if God really intends to save this group of people over here or not. This is a universal message. It's for everybody. 2 Peter 3.9, again, reveals to us the heart of God, trying to help us to understand why the Lord delays his coming. I was asking the Lord this the other day, meditating upon what is taking so long. I'm ready for the Lord to return. Why hasn't the Lord returned? Scripture has the answer for us. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, it says, 2 Peter 3.9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but as longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. You say, will they all come to repentance? I'm not even going to deal with that right now. What I'm dealing with right now is, what is the heart of God? What is the heart of God towards all people? What is the heart of God towards mankind? It says here that God is not willing that any should perish, and because he wants all to come to repentance, he delays the return of Christ. He delays judgment. Why? Because he wants all to come to repentance. Now, a lot of people will take that word all and try to tell you that all really doesn't mean all. That all means all kinds of people, all kinds of different people, but it doesn't mean every single person. Well, I think you should just read it for what it says and just use common sense. But even if the word all doesn't always mean all in some contexts, I believe that when you use the word all in the context of God's will, that you should not diminish that word. You should not hedge the meaning of that word to fit your doctrine, to fit your theology, to fit your belief, to limit God by your unbelief. Why would you limit God? Simply because you can't fathom the fact that God wants to save everybody. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And then finally, another mind-blowing scripture, and there are many, but I just want to give you a basis here. In Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 28, it says, Speaking of Christ Jesus. Do you see that there? So you might be able to argue that all doesn't mean all, but how do you argue that every man doesn't mean every man? If every man means every man, then all certainly means all. Every man, perfect. The word perfect there means spiritually mature. It's another way of saying the same thing that he said in 1 Timothy 2, 4, that all men would be saved and would come to the full knowledge of the truth. That's the same thing as saying we wish, we desire to present every man perfect, spiritually mature, lacking nothing in Christ Jesus. You've been listening to Crosswind, featuring the teaching ministry of Chip Brogden. We hope you enjoyed today's broadcast and found it challenging and encouraging. If you'd like to find out more about the School of Christ and how to get additional teachings, audio recordings, books, and other Christ-centered resources to help you grow spiritually, visit us online at www.theschoolofchrist.org. Thank you.