Luke 19:10:

In Luke 19:10 Jesus says of himself, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." This is one of the places in the Gospels where Jesus tells us who he is and why he entered this world, being born in Bethlehem. To us the Son of Man might seem a lowly title, but in fact it comes from the book of Daniel and describes a divine person who is given authority by God the Father and who is worshipped by all nations and whose kingdom will never end. Jesus has come from the other world, from the world of glory, into this world of poverty and shame and despair and confusion.

But why has he come? He's come, as the angels told the shepherds, to be the Saviour - "A Saviour has been born to you - he is Christ the Lord" - he has come to seek and to save the lost.

Perhaps more than any other biblical description of the human condition, this description of us as lost resonates with our modern confusion. It wasn't only the young men who survived the First World War that were the lost generation, as they were called by Ernest Hemingway. Generation after generation in our modern world have felt that lostness. In his brilliant song called "America", Paul Simon pictured himself and his girlfriend crossing the States in a Greyhound bus searching for America, for some ideal worth living for - '"Kathy I'm lost," I said though I knew she was sleeping, "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."' Or more recently Douglas Coupland, author of "Generation X", said in his book Shampoo Planet, "I think I know a person, then I discover I only knew a cartoon version, unknowable and just as lost as I am".

We all know what it's like to be lost in a strange town or city, or when the mist comes down on the hills and the landmarks disappear. This is the way we feel psychologically and spiritually. The old certainties of religion and even science have gone. Our age is described not only as post-Christian, but as post-modern. The artist Francis Bacon summed it up, "Man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason."

The Shepherd King, David, looked up at the starry night sky and asked God, "What is man?" He felt his smallness, but he knew he was not lost. He knew that God had created him in his own image. He knew that God had crowned him with glory and honour, as he puts it in Psalm 8. By contrast, we look out into the vastness of space and feel we are "a generation lost in space" as Don MacLean put it in "American Pie"

The coming of Jesus confirms we are lost. This message sometimes seems surprising to people. They think that the gospel is good news in the sense that it says everything is all right. In fact it's the opposite. Everything is in a mess and the good news is that Jesus has come to put it right. He came to seek and to save the lost. In order to benefit from his coming, we must realise that we are lost, and more lost than we have begun to imagine.

We are lost, Jesus says. It's not just that we feel lost. We are not lost because we feel small and isolated. We have lost our way. "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way", as Isaiah put it in chapter 53 of his prophecy.

In Luke 15, Jesus told three incomparable stories - the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son (or Prodigal Son). And the emphasis is that each one got lost, each went astray. This is particularly clear in the case of the Prodigal Son. He was lost because he went astray. He took the wrong road. He took his father's gifts, turned his back on him and got as far away as possible to do what he would be ashamed of doing in his father's house. We are lost because we have run away from God.

Francis Thompson, in his beautifully enigmatic poem, The Hound of Heaven, describes this flight from God:

I fled him down the nights and down the days
I fled him down the arches of the years
I fled him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter
Up vistaed hopes I sped
And shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after.

But why are we running from God? We run because we are rebels. Instead of recognising that God is at the centre of everything and ought to be at the centre of our lives, we place self at the centre and we go our own way. We are like the child told not to leave her mother's side in the crowd, but she thinks she knows best and wanders off and is lost. Or like the hillwalker who is told not to venture into the hills, because there's a storm coming, but he knows best and goes out into the blizzard and is lost.

And that gives us the idea of the word Jesus uses here. When he says we are lost, he means more than that we've just lost our way. Both the Greek and Hebrew words for "lost" in the Bible include the idea of perishing or being destroyed. It has almost the exact connotation of our expression "lost at sea". The lost sheep in Jesus' story wasn't going to come home wagging its tail behind it. It was going to die in the desert, trapped on some rocky ledge, starved to death, or torn by wild animals. The Prodigal Son wasn't going to survive in the far country. He was going to perish, friendless in the famine, starving in the squalor of the pigsty. When Jesus says lost, he means lost - utterly, eternally, spiritually lost - separated from God and grace and glory.

That's why Jesus came! Because we're lost! That's why Jesus left the glory of heaven. That's why he was born in a byre in Bethlehem. Because he loved us and he came to find us and rescue us. He is the Shepherd who goes out after the lost sheep. Out of Bethlehem will come a ruler "who will be the shepherd of my people Israel".

My father was a shepherd on the Sutherland hills, and when I was little he would sing me to sleep with the old hymn "Ninety and Nine":

There were ninety and nine that safely lay
in the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away
far off from the gates of gold,
Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender shepherd's care.

Lord, Thou hast here thy ninety and nine,
are they not enough for thee?
But the shepherd made answer, This of mine
has wandered away from me
And although the road be rough and steep
I go to the desert to find my sheep.

Jesus came to search for the lost. And no matter how far you have gone, no matter how rough the road, no matter how deep you have sunk, he has come to find you. No distance is too great, no situation is too hopeless, no degradation is too deep, for him to come.

My friends Kenny and Reta MacDonald go out to India every so often. They don't go because they particularly like the climate. They don't go for a holiday. They go because their daughter Alison is lost in India. They go because they love her, and there is no price too high to pay to find her and bring her home.

And there was no price too high for Jesus. He said, "I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." You'll perhaps remember Bill Deacon, the helicopter winchman who rescued every member of the crew from a sinking ship, but he himself was swept overboard. He gave his life to save them. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." But the really astonishing thing is that it was while we were still sinners, enemies of God, that Jesus died for us.

The song my father used to sing to me finishes like this:

But none of the ransomed ever knew
how deep were the waters crossed,
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through
ere he found his sheep that was lost.
Out in the desert he heard its cry
Sick and helpless and ready to die.

Lord, whence are these blood drops all the way
that mark out the mountain track?
They were shed for one who had gone astray
ere the shepherd could bring him back.
Lord, whence are thy hands so rent and torn?
They were pierced tonight by many a thorn.

Then up from the mountains thunder-riven
and up from the rocky steep
There arose a cry to the gate of heaven,
Rejoice I have found my sheep.
And the angels echoed around the throne
Rejoice for the Lord brings back his own.

That's why Jesus came. That's why he was born. Not just to teach, not just to show a good example, but to save. Turn to him. Trust in him. Surrender to him. Admit you're lost and follow him. Let go of the sinking ship and let him lift you free. Leave the pigsty and turn home to your Father's house. Stop running and listen to the sound of those scarred feet that have pursued you throughout the long years through sunshine and shadow.

When the Prodigal Son came home there were no recriminations on his father's part - only complete acceptance and forgiveness. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'

Forgiveness is an amazing thing. One of the most enduring pictures of the Vietnam War is the photo of a young girl running naked along the road fleeing from her napalm-bombed village, her clothes burned from her back. That little girl survived and grew to be a woman, badly scarred by her experience. But she came to know the love of God through Jesus Christ, and years later she met the American who had helped to coordinate the bombing of her village and who had been haunted by guilt. She who had found forgiveness herself was able to forgive him, and he too knew the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

You can find that same forgiveness too. No matter how lost you feel. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. That's why he was born. That's why he lived. That's why he died.