There were a hundred sheep, but one of them went missing. What would you do in that situation? Ninety-nine are right before your eyes, but one is nowhere to be found. If you go to look for the lost one, you might worry about the ninety-nine that remain. Some people might think, “It’s only one sheep,” and choose to stay to guard the rest. After all, if you leave, who knows? Another might wander off and get lost as well. So you decide to wait—keeping watch over the ninety-nine, hoping that the one that strayed will somehow find its way back on its own.

But in today’s passage, Jesus says that the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes out to look for the one that is lost. That’s the heart of a shepherd. He doesn’t know where that one might be, yet he searches and wanders until he finds it. In his heart, that one missing sheep begins to weigh even more heavily than the ninety-nine that remain. “Where could it be? What has happened to it?” Maybe it’s hard for us to relate, since few of us have ever been shepherds. So let’s imagine it differently. Suppose a parent has seven children, and the youngest suddenly goes missing. Would that parent ever say, “I still have six, so the youngest will come back someday,” and just wait? Of course not. No loving parent could stay still. They would search desperately, crying, calling out, doing everything possible to find that one child. In that moment, that one child matters more than all the others combined. In the same way, when God looks at the world, He may see ninety-nine who are safe and one who is lost. If we think in numbers, ninety-nine should obviously seem more valuable. Yet in God’s heart, that one person can be even more precious. When the shepherd loses a sheep, his heart is filled with that one more than with all the rest. So he searches and searches until he finds it. And when he finally does, what does he do? He doesn’t simply say, “Good, I got back what was mine,” and move on indifferently. No—Jesus says the shepherd rejoices! He calls his neighbors together and throws a feast. Even though the sheep was his all along, the joy of finding what was lost overwhelms him.

From God’s perspective, every one of us is someone He is still searching for. When He first created mankind, He didn’t start with a multitude. He began with one person, and through that one, humanity multiplied and filled the earth. Yet from the very beginning, God had a clear and specific plan for that one person. Each human being belongs to Him and carries His will. But people have forgotten this. They live saying, “My life is mine,” spending their days apart from God. In God’s eyes, such people are lost. Still, He doesn’t look at them and say, “It’s just one person; I already have so many who belong to Me.” No—He sets His heart on that one who is lost. That is who God is. He treasures each person, one by one, with immeasurable care. So when even a single person is saved—when that one becomes part of His kingdom—Scripture says that heaven itself rejoices. It’s the greatest joy imaginable, because someone who was destined for eternal destruction has been rescued. And when you meet God, when you are united with Him and begin to receive the love He gives, there is no greater delight in His heart. More than all the countless others who already belong to Him, your change—your coming to know Him—fills God with unspeakable joy. It’s astonishing, really, that the Almighty God would place such worth on each individual person.

Each nation has its own political system. Have you ever been to North Korea? You’ve at least heard about it, haven’t you? Would you want to go there? Would you want to live there? I once met someone who actually believed that North Korea was a paradise on earth. It happened when I visited Harbin, China. There I met a North Korean woman who had defected and married into a local Korean-Chinese family. Though she was living illegally, she lived much like a local Chinese citizen. While staying at a house church, I had the chance to talk with her. To my surprise, she said, “North Korea is the best place to live!” I couldn’t understand it. So I asked, “If North Korea is such a wonderful place, why did you leave?” She answered, “Because there was no food.” I said, “Then how can a place with no food be the best country?” She replied confidently, “Because we have our Fatherly Leader!” She went on to tell me how wise and clever he was. I asked, “In what way?” She explained that he had taught the people how to make money when food was scarce. According to her, during the winter, people would dig into the frozen ground to catch frogs. Since the frogs had stored up fat before hibernating, a small incision behind their legs would release oil that could be collected and sold for money. She proudly said, “Our Fatherly Leader taught us that! Isn’t he brilliant?” I was completely stunned as I listened to her story. I imagine you’re probably thinking the same thing right now—“Is this story even real?” But she truly believed it. Years of life under that system had built a fierce pride in her. Though she had escaped because of unbearable hunger, that pride remained deeply rooted in her heart. Later, by God’s grace, she attended a revival meeting in the village and received the Holy Spirit. She wept, repented, and was deeply moved. It was a powerful moment. But when I returned to that area some time later, she was gone. I asked what had happened, and people told me that she had been taken away—abducted by other North Koreans. I didn’t see it myself, but I was told that when North Korean agents captured defectors, they would hook wire through their collarbones and drag them away.

This is what life looks like in a totalitarian society. In North Korea, such hardships have continued for decades. But in a place like that, can the idea of “I” as an individual even exist? It’s natural for us to ask, “What do you want to eat?” or “What do you feel like wearing today?” But in North Korea, such questions make no sense. When food is available, people don’t eat according to their own choice—they eat together as a group. What someone personally wants doesn’t matter. They simply go to the communal dining place and eat whatever has been distributed equally to everyone. And these days, when even food is scarce, people don’t get to ask what they want; they just eat whatever there is. In that society, it’s strange to ask questions like, “What do you want to eat?” “What clothes would you like to wear?” or “Which university do you want to attend?” In a communist or totalitarian system, even going to college is not a personal decision. I remember when I first went to China about thirty years ago, I would ask people who were already working, “Why are you at this job?” Almost everyone would answer, “Because the government assigned me here.” After graduation, people didn’t choose jobs according to their interests or skills; the state simply decided for them. So imagine this—if two students fell in love during university, what would happen after graduation? Naturally, they would want to stay close to each other. But there was no guarantee of that. One might be sent north, the other south, each to a different province, and they would have to obey the assignment. Saying, “We want to work in the same city because we’re in love,” would be out of the question. In such systems, the concept of personal rights simply doesn’t exist. Even now, it’s the same. You can’t freely say, “I want to live in Beijing,” or “I want to move to Shanghai.” You might stay temporarily, but you cannot obtain a permanent household registration there. Without that registration, you can’t even get medical insurance. For instance, if your registration is in Henan Province, even if you move to Beijing and work there for years, you’re still considered an outsider—essentially an undocumented resident—unable to receive proper social benefits. And what happens if you marry and have a child? When the child reaches school age, you would think they could attend a nearby school. But they can’t. Because your official registration remains in Henan, you have no right to enroll your child in a Beijing school. Even after living there for over ten years, you would have to send your child back to Henan—perhaps to live with grandparents—or move back there yourself. There is no freedom of movement, no freedom of personal choice. In such societies, the idea of an individual’s freedom simply does not exist.

When we hear stories like this, they may sound strange to us. We might think, “How can people live in such an uncomfortable way?” Yet throughout most of human history, that was exactly how people lived. The kind of freedom we now take for granted in Korea—the freedom to move where we want, to choose what we eat, to pursue what we desire, and to be respected as individuals—only began about seventy years ago. It’s a very recent development. Because of that, we haven’t yet formed habits of truly exercising personal freedom or taking responsibility for our own choices. Even after seventy years, this still feels unfamiliar. Let me give you an example. Imagine going out to eat with your boss and a few coworkers to a good restaurant. The boss asks, “What would you like to eat?” If an employee boldly answers, “I’d like this,” it might create awkward tension. Suppose the boss says, “Order whatever you want. I’ll have the spaghetti.” Now, who would dare to order something different—say, the steak? Even though the boss said, “order anything,” once he picks something modest, everyone else feels they must follow suit. Technically, freedom was offered, but no one knows how to use it. Freedom requires the ability to choose, and choice comes with responsibility. But we often fail to take responsibility. Instead, we look for someone else to blame. When misfortune strikes, we point fingers—why? Because many have never been taught that they are the ones making the choice. If I don’t believe my decision matters, then I’ll always find someone else to fault. That’s why, in our society, there’s so much of this “blame culture.” Children blame their parents—“Mom told me to!” or “Dad said I should!”—because parents make all the decisions for them. If children were trained to choose for themselves, they would also learn to take responsibility for those choices. But when they aren’t, they grow up thinking, “It wasn’t my decision, so why should I be responsible?” Then you look at children in the West—three or four years old—and they already seem mature. They know what they want and what they don’t. A small child will confidently say “No!” when an adult pats their head if they don’t like it. If they’re hungry, they eat; if they don’t want to, they say so. Why? Because their parents give them opportunities to choose. They’re asked, “What do you want to eat? What would you like to drink?” And through those small moments, they learn the dignity and weight of personal choice.

A culture that allows people to make their own choices and take responsibility for them is what we call “individualism.” Its opposite is “collectivism” or “totalitarianism.” In our country, the word individualism is often misunderstood as selfishness—something negative, even shameful. But in its true sense, individualism is not a bad thing at all. In fact, it is something good and necessary. It means that each person makes choices for themselves and then takes responsibility for those choices.

So where did this idea come from? Seventy years ago, such a concept didn’t even exist in Korean society. The father made the decisions, and either the children or the wife bore the responsibility. The one who chose and the one who suffered the consequences were not the same person. That kind of culture simply didn’t exist here. In the Joseon era, most people lived like servants. The noble class made the decisions, while the commoners and slaves carried the burden and took the blame. So where did this principle—that an individual makes a choice and takes personal responsibility—come from? It didn’t arise naturally. It came from the West. But even in Western society, it wasn’t always there. It didn’t exist from the beginning of time. Then where did it truly come from? It came from God. God Himself is the source of that idea.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus declared, “Repent!” But notice carefully—He didn’t say, “All of you as a group, repent!” or “People of Jerusalem, repent together!” Instead, His call was personal. He said, “Each one of you, repent.” Repentance was never meant to be a collective act; it is an individual response. Each person must turn back to God on their own. Each person must personally receive Jesus’ name. Each person must personally accept God’s name.

You cannot imagine how astonishing this is. Think about who God is—how great, how majestic! At His level, you’d expect Him to deal with humanity through a representative. If He were to speak with mankind, wouldn’t it make sense for Him to say, “Let the representative of humanity come forward”? In truth, even that wouldn’t be possible, because no human representative could ever be on equal footing with God. In the past, God did choose one person as an example—Moses. Through Moses, He led the entire people of Israel. But even then, the One who interacted with Moses was not the full glory of God Himself, but the messenger—an angel sent by God. It was a servant speaking with a servant, a created being meeting another created being. Yet the God whom we now meet is not merely the One who sent angels. He is the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead—the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the Most High who reigns above all things. If such a God were to deal with mankind today, we would think He’d call out, “Bring me the representative of the human race! Bring me the head of the United Nations! Bring me the president of the most powerful nation!” But that is not what He does. Instead, God says, “I will meet with each person—one by one.” The King of kings, the Lord of all creation, desires a personal meeting not with a nation, not with a church, but with you. Not with the collective body of believers, but with each individual heart. It’s almost too much to take in. Your heart should race just thinking about it. Even among world leaders, meetings depend on status. When President Trump visited Japan, he spent an entire day golfing with its prime minister—sharing friendly conversation, laughing, speaking heart to heart. But when he was asked to meet with the South Korean president, there were times he declined. On another occasion, their meeting in Washington lasted only two minutes. Why? Because if you don’t value the meeting, you don’t make time for it. If you consider someone your equal, you stay longer; if not, you cut it short. Even between presidents, meetings are carefully measured by rank and worth. But think about this—the King of all kings, the Creator of the universe, makes time to meet with each one of us. He doesn’t say, “Come, Sungrak Church! I will meet your congregation today.” No, He says, “Come, you—each and every one of you.” God meets not the crowd, but the person.

And where does God place His name now? In the past, His name was set in the temple of Jerusalem. But the name Jesus is greater than the LORD—the name revealed in the Old Testament through angels. The LORD was a name given to be called upon, a title that represented God’s presence through His messengers. But the name Jesus—that is different. It is like God’s official seal, His very signature. It carries legal authority in heaven and on earth. And to whom has He given that name? Not to a nation, not to a temple, not even to Israel as a whole—but to each of us individually. Can you see now how highly God values each person? He entrusted to a single human being a name that He never gave even to an entire nation. When the Son of God came into this world, no one received Him. Yet Scripture says, “To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” That means God has placed His name—His very identity—within the soul of every person who believes. This is how God elevated the worth of the individual. Such dignity did not exist before. Two thousand years ago, Jesus declared, “Repent, each one of you! For I will repay each person according to what they have done.” When He returns from heaven, He will not judge churches as groups, nor nations, nor peoples collectively. He will judge each person individually, according to their deeds. This is how deeply God values every single person. Each one matters to Him beyond measure.

When did Jesus say these words? About two thousand years ago—during the Roman Empire. And in that time, did the idea of individual rights even exist? Not at all. A few people—nobles, senators, or the wealthy elite—were respected, but most ordinary people had no such rights. Especially servants and slaves—they were considered property, not persons. Yet Jesus came into that very society and spoke words no one had ever heard before. Regardless of a person’s social standing, wealth, or background, He said to each one, even to those who lived as slaves, “I will meet with you personally. I will place My name within your heart.” That was His promise. That’s why He said, “Repent—each one of you!” If people truly understood how precious this invitation is—that the Almighty God would come down to speak with them individually—no one would ever turn it away.

The people who were treated by God in this way—each one personally valued and called—went on to shape societies over the past two thousand years according to that same principle. From this worldview came what we now call liberal democracy. Its foundation rests on two essential freedoms: the right to private property and the freedom of the individual. That is why, in Western nations, people hold personal freedom and human rights in such high regard—whether others are watching or not. They see the individual as sacred because their moral and social systems were built upon the biblical view that God values each person. In contrast, in much of the Middle East and Asia, such ideas were absent. Because the Christian faith had not taken root there, societies continued to operate under collectivist or totalitarian ideologies. That is why countries like North Korea can still exist today—and truthfully, if we are not careful, any nation could fall into that same pattern. Take China, for example. It has achieved impressive economic growth, yet it remains a totalitarian society. In large cities like Beijing, people often cross the street even when the light is red. To control this behavior, the government installed a system: if someone crosses during a red light, a giant electronic screen immediately displays their name, address, date of birth, and phone number for everyone to see. How? Through facial recognition. Cameras instantly identify the person, and their information is projected publicly as a form of humiliation. Could such a system exist in our country? No—because we have a concept of human rights. It would violate personal privacy to expose someone’s identity like that. In a society that values the individual, such an invasion is unthinkable. But in places where the individual is disregarded and the collective is everything, such practices continue without resistance.

If we refuse the dignity God has given us—if we reject the respect He shows to each person—then we will end up being ruled by the values of the world. The world does not honor the individual the way God does. Think of the Nazis, or the militaristic imperialism of early twentieth-century Japan—those systems did not regard the worth of each human life. Communism, too, treats everyone as interchangeable. Under materialist ideologies people become mere units of production: you can calculate how many grams of hair, how much fat to render into soap, or how many pounds of bone are worth extracting for phosphate—so the value of a person is reduced to a price. When you measure people that way, any single life can be sacrificed without hesitation, because everyone is seen as having the same, replaceable value.

But God never sees people that way. To Him, one person is worth more than the whole world. He doesn’t look at us as material beings, but as souls. And what is the worth of a soul? It is a being that can hold God’s name — a being that can be with God and stand before Him. Because God recognizes and values our souls, He has lifted the worth of every human being to something beyond measure. Why does the world treat people as if they have no value? It’s because the world denies the existence of the soul. You may think that not believing in Jesus makes you free—but that’s not true. To reject Jesus is to deny the worth of your own soul. And when that happens, you have no defense when the world treats you as worthless, because you’ve already agreed with it. We never know how our circumstances may change. The world might strip away our dignity and treat our bodies as nothing. We may even face persecution. And when believers in such times say, “There is a soul,” those who deny the soul—those who follow totalitarian ways of thinking—will hate, persecute, and try to kill us. But Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The One who has the power to destroy our souls is the very One who now treasures them. That same God has raised the worth of every person—your worth—to something beyond the reach of the world.

And so today, we can still find a few nations where human rights and individual freedom are respected—because of the influence of those in the West who once received this truth from God. We in Korea should be deeply thankful. Through those nations where such values were most developed, we received both the Christian faith and the political systems shaped by it. These have taken root in our society. We did not have to pay the great price that others did, yet we now enjoy the blessings that came from their sacrifices. But we must remember this: all of these blessings ultimately came from God. And if we forget that, we will not be able to preserve them.

Your worth—my worth—is that God treats each of us as equal to Himself in value. Not all of humanity at once, but each person, one by one. That means you. Don’t think of someone else—understand that God’s word today is spoken directly to you. Even when He speaks before a crowd, His message is not to the multitude; it is to the individual one. It is to you alone. If you receive His word that way, you will surely meet God. May you truly encounter Him and experience that one-on-one relationship with Him. In Jesus’ name, I bless you.

I’ll pray.

God our Father, we thank You that though we are so small and weak, You have regarded each one of us as precious in Your sight. Thank You for treating every person with such care and dignity. Thank You for placing within us the glorious name of Jesus—the name that carries Your glory—so that we may be one with You and share in Your divine joy. Since You have honored us with such grace, please do not let anyone ignore or take lightly Your love and attention. Help each of us to receive this love deep in our hearts and to become those who truly meet and walk with You. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.