John Newton Lost and Found | March 30, 2025

Today’s sermon continues our Lenten theme of Everything [in] Between by looking at what it means to be “Lost & Found.” In particular, we hear Jesus describe God as a shepherd who goes out to search for a missing sheep. Jesus’ promise is that no matter how far you run from God, no matter how many times you turn your back and wander away, no matter how lost you might feel, God never gives up on you. God never stops looking for you. And when you are found by God, all heaven rejoices!

Here’s the sermon audio podcast from Living Hope and full worship livestream from Christ the King.

Powered by RedCircle

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

What is the worst job you can imagine? I don’t mean like the most boring, the hardest, or dirtiest job, but the most despicable profession, the one where the world would be better if it didn’t exist?

I’ve thought of a few: Chemical weapons researcher, private prison operator, cigarette marketer, maybe some telemarketing jobs. Next week we’ll hear about Zacchaeus, a cheating tax collector; if you think people don’t like IRS agents, imagine how they felt about collaborators with the occupying Roman empire! But the worst occupation I’ve thought of is slave trader.

If you looked ahead to see our song of the day, you might know where I’m going with this. How many of you are familiar with the song Amazing Grace, and especially with its author, Englishman John Newton? Wikipedia says it’s “possibly the most sung and most recorded hymn in the world.” We’ll sing a modern arrangement in a couple minutes.

As we sing it, I think it’s helpful to know John Newton worked as a slave trader. But by the end of his life, he was an active abolitionist, publishing pamphlets against the evils of slavery and lamenting his own involvement. He wrote Amazing Grace in the middle of his second career as an Anglican priest, and when he says “I once was lost but now am found” he means it literally.

During this season of Lent, the idea of our everything [in] between theme is to question the polarities of some ideas we assume are opposites. We’ve talked about how faith and works are both important, how rest and growth go together, and our theme for today is “Lost & Found.” When I started working on this sermon, I was going to just lift up Newton as a quick example of how God can redeem even the worst person—even a slaver—and transform him to a hero of faith. Lost to found, right?

But as I learned more about John Newton, I discovered his story is much more complex than I realized, and I think his life is actually a great illustration of being both lost and found, not consecutively, one after the other, but at the same time.

John Newton was born in 1725 in London. His parents were religious, but his father was a shipping merchant who was often gone at sea, and his mother died when he was six. He himself didn’t have much use for faith. His first sea voyage was at age 11, and he was pressed into the British Royal navy at 18.

He tried and failed to desert, which led to his eventual transfer to a slave ship crew. Quoting from Wikipedia: “Newton often openly mocked the captain by creating obscene poems and songs about him, which became so popular that the crew began to join in. His disagreements with several colleagues resulted in his being starved almost to death, imprisoned while at sea, and chained like the slaves they carried. He was himself enslaved by the Sherbro and forced to work on a plantation in Sierra Leone near the Sherbro River.”

(This would be the part of his life where he’s lost.)

“Early in 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain who had been asked by Newton’s father to search for him” and he returned to England. (Found.)

On the way, his ship was caught in a storm, and he prayed for God’s mercy. After the storm ended, he began reading the Bible, and converted to Christianity. He gave up profanity, swearing, and drinking. Again, he’s found. All good, right?

Now an experienced seaman, he got a position as first mate, he got married, and he served three voyages as captain on different ships…slave-trading ships. Remember, this is after he’s declared he’s a Christian! After he’s had experienced what it’s like to be a slave himself! Lost and found, all at once.

In 1754, at the age of 30, he suffered a severe stroke and gave up seafaring. Done with his personal time in the slave trade. And yet, he continued for years to invest in others’ slave businesses.

In 1764, ten years after his stroke, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of England, and he served 16 years as the pastor in Olney, where he was known as an excellent, relatable preacher. During that time, he wrote the hymn Amazing Grace about his conversion.

It seems pretty clear when you look at the lyrics that part of the hymn is Newton reflecting on his involvement in the slave trade, right? “Saved a wretch like me, once was lost but now am found” and even more in the version we’re going to sing: “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free, my God my Savior has ransomed me.”

But it’s not until 1788, 38 years after quitting his life as a slave ship captain, nine years after writing Amazing Grace that Newton came out as an abolitionist, publishing a pamphlet of his Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade.

He wrote, “The Slave Trade was always unjustifiable; but inattention and interest prevented, for a time, the evil from being perceived.” He’d refused to see the suffering he was causing others.

Looking back later, he reflected that even after his conversion experience, quote: “I was greatly deficient in many respects … I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards.”

Newton’s conversion, his growth in faith, his movement from lost to found took decades. But God didn’t give up on him. God kept working on him.

When we are lost, God never ceases looking for us. I think that’s the point of the story Jesus tells about this shepherd who has lost a sheep. He asks, “Which of you wouldn’t leave the 99 sheep behind to search for the one missing one?” Would we? I don’t know. Most of us would search for a while, but how far would we go? I’m not sure our track record is that great as a society. We leave people behind all the time. We get outraged at injustice, then we get distracted.

Obviously, a good shepherd ought to not leave any of the sheep behind. The shepherd is responsible for the whole flock, every single sheep. But for human shepherds, sin gets in the way. People get tired. People get greedy, or fearful.

Rolf Jacobsen talks about how throughout Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, shepherd is a common metaphor for king. Like shepherds, kings are the ones in charge, and everyone else is supposed to follow where they lead. But kings can be good or bad. In Scripture, the good kings provide leadership and protection for the people, where the bad kings are more interested in how they can exploit the people for their own benefit, more interested in the perks of ruling than the responsibilities.

Listen to what the prophet Ezekiel says—this is right before our first reading, in Ezekiel 34:2-3: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: “Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep.”

What happens when the people who are supposed to be responsible stop caring for their neighbors and focus only on their own benefit? And not just leaders, but we who are followers of Jesus, charged with caring for our neighbors?

Verse 9: “Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God: I am against the shepherds, and I will hold them accountable for my sheep and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.”

And the part we read, verse 11: “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep and will sort them out…I will rescue them…I will feed them…I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strays, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.”

God is the good shepherd. When people fail, when governments and leaders fall short and fail to do their duty of protecting the poor and vulnerable, working for peace and justice, God gets involved personally.

In this story, Jesus describes a good shepherd who is unwilling to lose even a single sheep, and the joy in heaven when the lost sheep is found, when the lost sinner repents and returns to God. Elsewhere, he’ll identify himself as the good shepherd who cares for the sheep even at the cost of his own life.

We are called to repent. We are called to turn away from our sin, stop engaging in evil, ignoring injustice, stop harming others, and return to the Lord. We follow the example of David in Psalm 51, who recognizes the sin he’s committed, the hurt he’s caused to the people around him, and cries out, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love…wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleans me from my sin…create in me a clear heart, O God.”

Yet even when we fail to repent, even when we run the other way, even when we continue in sin for years or decades, God doesn’t give up on us. The children’s Bible version of this story describes the shepherd as listening for the lost sheep’s bleating. I think we can assume the lost sheep wants to be found.

But the very next story Jesus tells is about a woman who loses a coin, and how her joy at finding her missing coin is like the joy in heaven when a sinner repents. But a coin does absolutely nothing to be found. A missing coin is entirely passive. And yet God keeps looking.

When we are lost, when we are the sheep who wanders away, God searches for us. There is rejoicing in heaven when we are found, when we turn back to God.

And when we turn away again, when our behavior doesn’t match our convictions, when we should know better but fall back into the patterns of sin, when you forget how precious is God’s grace, forget your chains are gone, and wander off again, God again seeks after you.

When the world lets you down, God is there waiting with open arms, refusing to give up on you, refusing to stop searching for you. Amazing grace indeed. Amen