The lost sheep, Luke 15: 1-7

Many years ago, when my daughter Melissa had just learned to walk, we moved to the house that we are presently living in.  And not long after we moved in, some friends dropped by in the middle of the day to see the house and give us a house warming gift.  We gave them a brief tour of the property and were talking for a while, when suddenly I became aware that Melissa wasn’t around.   I called out her name, expecting her to be right around the corner, but there was no answer.

Immediately, all of us started looking for her.  We live on an old chicken farm, and so we were going all around the property calling out her name.  No Melissa.  That’s when I suddenly moved into panic mode.  I began running, praying and yelling at the top of my lungs.  It seemed impossible that she would have gone but so far.  It couldn’t have been but a few moments that she could have wandered away.  I remember running along a deep irrigation ditch that ran alongside one  of the fields, thinking that maybe she had fallen in.   Every horrible scenario I could imagine played out in my mind.

When I got near the end of the ditch, I noticed an older woman across the highway probably 150 yards away from our house, and she was waving at me.  And holding her hand was little Melissa.  And Melissa was holding onto our dog Goldie.  Turns out, Goldie our dog wandered across the field and across the highway and Melissa followed Goldie.  Then two men driving a work van stopped and picked up Melissa from the middle of the road and knocked on the lady’s house, thinking that she may have been her grandchild.

To this day, 12 years later, I can still recall the horror of knowing that Melissa was lost.  There must be no greater fear or nightmare on the part of a parent than losing your child.

Now, I could have made the focus of my story about losing my dog.  But I wasn’t concerned about Goldie. She would have eventually come home.  But I was terrified about my daughter, because she was my child and she was helpless. She couldn’t find her way home by herself.  And so I tell you my story to help set the context for this parable that Jesus tells about a lost sheep.  Jesus isn’t concerned about sheep, He is using sheep as a metaphor for people.  People who are lost and helpless.  And Jesus tells this story about sheep because sheep characterize the nature of people.

Isaiah 53 says, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.”  And the Apostle Peter says in 1Peter 2:25 that we all were continually straying like sheep.  This is the natural disposition of man.  After the fall, man was blinded by sin, and the Bible says his heart was deceitful and desperately wicked.  Romans 3:23 says that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  And Paul quoting David from the Psalms in Romans 3:12 says, “ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”

But the scribes and the Pharisees didn’t see themselves as lost or in need of repentance.  They were very religious.  I’m sure they voted conservative.  They kept the law.  They worshipped the one true God.  And so they viewed themselves as righteous.  They saw themselves as being the good people, and tax collectors and sinners were the bad people.  Now tax collectors were at the bottom of the barrel in their estimation.  These guys were much worse than the IRS.  These people were considered traitors to the Jewish nation.  They had gone over to the Romans, their enemies, and purchased a tax collection franchise from the Roman government whereby they levied taxes against their own people for profit.  They were the worst.  And the second worst people were what they called sinners.  Sinners wasn’t a term applied to everyone.  It was reserved for people that had given themselves over to a sinful lifestyle without apology.  They were the outcasts from decent Jewish society.  They were made up of prostitutes and low level criminals.

So when these tax collectors and sinners started to come to Jesus and listen to Him preach, the Pharisees saw an opportunity to try to discredit Jesus by proving Him guilty by association.  The Pharisees and scribes were jealous of the attention that Jesus was getting.  And because they were jealous, they had been trying to discredit Him for some time now.   For the last three chapters Jesus has been having a running dialogue with those guys who were constantly trying  to catch Him in something so that they could use to dishonor Him or shame Him in the sight of the common people.  And so in vs. 2 it says they began to grumble and said, “this man receives sinners and eats with them.”

So Jesus answers them with a parable.  He tells a story to illustrate why He would associate with these sinners.  But don’t misunderstand something folks.  Some people have used this passage as a pretext to say that there is nothing wrong with hanging out at bars because Jesus hung out with tax collectors and sinners.  But that isn’t what the Bible says.  It says they were coming to Him and listening to Him.  They were coming to be saved.  Jesus wasn’t having a few drinks down at the pub so that people would think He was just one of the boys.   He wasn’t stooping to their level of debauchery in order to relate to sinners.  No, Jesus makes it clear in this parable and the next two, that the key to His acceptance is repentance.

And repentance isn’t just saying you’re sorry, or to try to do better, but it’s being sick of your sin, mourning over your sin, and being desperate to have your sins forgiven and be delivered from the power and enslavement of sin.  That is repentance, and that is why these tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus.

Now there are three aspects to being a sheep that I would like to bring your attention to today in light of this parable;  the lost sheep as a sinner, the wandering sheep as a saint, and the lost sheep in need of a Savior.

First of all, the lost sheep as a sinner.  Jesus paints a picture of the sheep which is lost.  We can imagine that it was evening time, and the shepherd brings his sheep down from the pasture in the hills to the sheepfold down in the valley.  And as he herds them one at a time through the gate he counts them off.  But he comes up one short.  Perhaps he counts again, thinking that maybe he missed one.  But once again he comes up one short.  Maybe he realizes that it’s that one particular spotted lamb that is missing.  And as evening sets in, he can imagine it bleating on the mountain side, afraid and lost and in danger from predators.

They say that a sheep is one of the most defenseless animals in the world.  It can become lost after just straying a few dozen yards from the flock.  If it is frightened, it can literally become frightened to death.  If it falls over on it’s side, it is practically unable to get back up.  It has no defensive mechanisms.  Almost any predator can kill a sheep.  So in compassion for this lamb that was lost, the shepherd sets out with his staff in the growing dusk, to search for the lost lamb.

Jesus said that eventually the shepherd found the sheep, and he put it upon his shoulders and carried it home.  And when he arrived home, he called together his friends and neighbors saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!”

Listen, some of you here today are lost.  Maybe you have come to the point of realizing that you  are a sinner.  If you have, then that’s a good thing.  The good thing about the tax collectors and sinners of Jesus’ day was that there was no denying that they were outcasts.  They had given up on religion.  They had become brazen in their sin.  They didn’t try to hide it.  But they had come to a place where they were sick of it.  They found out that it didn’t satisfy.  They had been trying to fill a hole in their hearts that couldn’t be filled with sex, or alcohol or drugs or money.  And they were sick of being that way.  They longed for real fulfillment.  They longed for real joy.  They longed for forgiveness and restoration with God.

And they heard some good news that day.  They heard that Jesus had come to seek and to save those that were lost.  They heard the good news that if they were willing to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as their Savior, then they would be restored with God, they would attain righteousness before God, and they would gain eternal life.

I quoted Isaiah 53 while ago which says that all of us are like lost sheep. Vs. 6 says, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way.”  That’s the bad news.  But it continues with the good news;  “But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”  Did you hear that?  Our sins were put on Jesus. 2Corinthians 5:21 says it like this; “God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

That’s the picture Jesus was sharing in this parable.  The Shepherd went searching for us, He found us lying wretched and miserable in the enslavement of our sin, and picking us up, He laid us upon His shoulders and carried us to His home, rejoicing.

Isaiah 53 describes Jesus bearing our sins in vs. 4, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.”

See, we were lost sheep, continually straying, sinners, deserving of sin and punishment.  But God sent His Son, Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the world.  This spotless Lamb of God offered Himself as a guilt offering in our place upon a cross, as Isaiah continues; “the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.”

This is what Christ came to earth to do; to make it possible for sinners to be forgiven and accepted by God because the punishment that was due to us fell upon Jesus.  I hope that if you’re here today and you know that you’re lost, you will call upon Jesus to save you and repent of your sins and be saved.

Now there is another application of this parable, and it’s not just to lost sinners, but to wandering saints.  A saint, according to the Biblical definition, is anyone that has repented of their sins and been born again by faith in Jesus Christ.  But it’s possible that having become saved, at some point you have found yourself back in a place of waywardness.  You have left your first love.  Maybe your heart has become cold.

That possibility is born out in this parable in vs. 4 and 6.  Jesus says the lost sheep belongs to the shepherd.  They are His sheep.  He had 100 sheep and one wandered astray.  Jesus uses this same parable in Matthew 18 but with a different twist on it than here in Luke.  In Matthew 18, Jesus is talking about how terrible it will be for the person who puts a stumbling block in front of one of His children.  That it would be better to be cast into the depths of the sea with a millstone around your neck than to face the judgment of God upon the person that causes a child of God to stumble.

And then immediately in that context, Jesus gave this parable again about the lost sheep.  In this context, the lost sheep isn’t an unsaved person, but someone that has been saved and has fallen away, or wandered away from the fold.

In the case of Matthew 18, I think Jesus is speaking primarily of a child of God that has wandered astray.  Someone or something has caused the child to stumble.  Remember He said that there were going to be stumbling blocks in the world.  And He warned of the consequences to those that caused a child to stumble.  So in that context, I think we see that child of God that is described in I Tim. 6:10 which says they “have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
They are one of the shepherds flock that has somehow strayed.  He’s gotten off track.  Whether it was the world’s influence or perhaps even another Christian’s influence, this child of God is in trouble.

There has been a few times in my life when I’ve fallen away.  I was following the Lord pretty good for a while, then something happened and I took my eyes off Jesus.  Maybe it was a girl that came along that I was attracted to.  Or maybe it was a friend who influenced me to go in the wrong direction.  Or maybe it was the allure of climbing the corporate ladder of success.  I thought I was ok spiritually, I thought I was standing, and the next thing I know I’m off in the ditch.   Spiritually, I wandered a little further and a little further over time.  First I stopped reading my Bible. Then  I stopped praying. Eventually I stopped going to church. It started as a little thing, a little bit off track, but before I knew it I was completely messed up. It can happen to all of us.  And it probably has at some point in your life.  Lost means that somehow you’ve lost your way.  Somehow, another Christian has disappointed you.  Somehow, the church has failed you.  Somehow, you’ve lost the joy of your salvation.  Maybe you thought God should have done something and He didn’t do what you thought He should. Your faith was shaken.  And so you’ve fallen or you’ve lost your way and can’t seem to get back the Lord.

Jesus is showing through this parable His compassion for this person at this point in their life.  God is a God of reconciliation.  God wants you to be restored.  He isn’t willing for any to perish as Jesus says in Matt. 18:14.  He doesn’t want you to ruin your life or the life of others that you may be connected to.  He doesn’t want to see you ruin your testimony by making wrong decisions or being despondent.  He loved you when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, and He loved you when you were living for him, and He still loves you and pursues you when you stray.

I quoted part of 1 Peter 2:25 while ago, but let me quote the whole verse; “For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.”  Listen, God is willing and ready to forgive you and restore you if you are willing to repent of your sins.  Nobody knew that better than Simon Peter himself.  Before the crucifixion He denied Christ three times.  But afterwards he was heartbroken over his sin. So after His resurrection, Jesus sought out Peter when he was fishing and used that as an opportunity to bring him back into the fold.  Jesus said to Peter three times, once for each denial, “Feed my sheep.”

David, the Psalmist also knew what it was like to backslide into grievous sin.  He committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then effectively murdered her husband to try to cover up his sin.  Earlier God had described David as a man after His own heart.  He was even a writer of scripture!  How does someone like that fall?  Just the same as we do.  A little bit here, and a little bit there, and before you know it you have wandered far away from God.

But David repented of his sin.  He said in Psalm 32:3, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You,  and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD”; and You forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found.” If you are here today as a Christian and have fallen into sin like David, then you can know as he did the forgiveness and reconciliation of God.  David said that a broken and contrite heart God will not despise.

But that brings me to another aspect of a wandering sheep.  And that is the sheep who belongs to God and has wandered away from the Lord and yet will not come back. And because God loves His sheep, He will discipline them to bring them back into conformity with the image of His Son.  Jesus said in  Rev. 3:19 ‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.”

Roy Gustafson, who was a close friend and coworker with Billy Graham and led many parties to Israel, told a story in his book “In His Hand” (p.46).  He said that on one of his visits, on the road down from Jerusalem through the Judean wilderness to Jericho, they met a shepherd carrying one of his sheep with a splint and a bandage on its leg. Their guide, who’d lived nearly fifty years in that area said, “The shepherd broke that sheep’s leg himself.”

Mr. Gustafson asked why he would do such a thing.  It was explained that this was a sheep that was always wandering off, and in the process leading other sheep astray. Membership in the flock carries certain responsibilities, and even though the shepherd feels a real love for his animals, it’s sometimes necessary to discipline them, as they must be kept together for their well-being and their safety.

So to cure this sheep of its self-willed ways, the shepherd had broken its leg, and then hand fed and carried it till the bone was mended.  The process of being dependent upon the shepherd and being close to him would teach the sheep stay near him and not stray when he was well.

A lot of people today don’t like to hear that God is a jealous God. They don’t want to believe that God will actually punish sin.  Or that God will chastise His children.  But the fact of whether or not they want to believe it doesn’t change the nature of God.  Jesus said just before the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18’s version, “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire.”  The point is clear from Jesus’ teaching, God would rather you be lame than wander astray.  In my own life, I know that God had to break me before He could remake me.

The writer of Hebrews puts it this way in chapter 12; “MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”  It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.”  

Did you get that?  Make straight paths for your feet so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint.  That’s a reference to God breaking the leg of the sheep, to keep it from going astray.  But if you repent, then God promises healing. Psalm 51:8, “Make me to hear joy and gladness, let the bones which You have broken rejoice.” Hosea 6:1“Come, let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.”

Listen, if you’re here today and you have wandered away from the Lord, and you deliberately continue to walk away from the path of His word, then if you’re a child of God He will pursue you.  You are His.  You are not your own, you are bought with a great price, the price of the blood of the Son of God.  Don’t trample His grace under your feet. If you’re God’s child and you are rebelling then one day He will discipline you to bring you back.  And if He doesn’t, then you’re not His child.

One last application.  The sheep in need of a Savior. If we are to follow Jesus as His disciples, then we must be willing to go after the lost as He did.  As Jesus said in the last chapter of Luke we looked at a couple of weeks ago, the master sent his servants to go out into the highways and byways and compel them to go in.

We have a commission from Jesus Himself to go out into all areas of the world, starting in our neighborhoods, to our cities, country and then to the uttermost parts of the world and make disciples.  Telling people that there is good news for sinners who are willing to repent and be saved.  That Jesus the Savior has offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins that we might be made righteous before God.

James 5:19 says “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back,  let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”  You want to do God’s will?  You want to make a difference for the kingdom of heaven?  Then devote some time to reaching the child of God who has strayed.  Go to that child in love and compassion and reach him with the truth and in his need.

Jude 1:22 says, “And have mercy on some, who are doubting;  save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.”

This is our calling.  It’s a noble calling.  A great commission.  Jesus said to Peter if you love Me, you will tend my flock.  Feed my sheep.  Feed my lambs.  Jesus has called us as Christians to shepherd the flock of God. Jesus uses people to serve his people.  Jesus wants to use you to reach his sheep.  That is what it means to be part of a church.  We don’t go to church just to watch a performance or hear a message.  Ephesians 4 tells us that we go to church to become equipped to do the work of service of building up the body.  In other words, you become the church.  You begin to serve.  You begin to witness.  You begin to pray for others.

I think so many people fall short of usefulness because they underestimate the power of prayer in the church.  They think because they can’t preach or lead singing then there isn’t anything for them to do.  But if they just understood the power of prayer then they could have a mighty impact for the kingdom of God.  Pray for those that are lost.  Pray for those that are in rebellion.  Pray for God to send someone to search for that lost sheep and bring them back to God.  Pray that God will send you.

So many people say “well I want to do the will of God, but I just haven’t figured out what that is yet.”  Well, in Matthew 18:14 at the conclusion of the parable of the lost sheep the will of God is written right there so you won’t get confused. “So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” That’s His will.  Now let’s get to it. Go search out and bring in the lost sheep that they will not perish.

In closing then, it should be apparent that we are all like sheep.  And like sheep, we have all gone astray.  If you confess that you are a sinner and are willing to repent of your sins, willing to forsake your sins, then Jesus is teaching here that there is a place for you in heaven if you trust in His atonement. Jesus said heaven is waiting with bated breath for you to repent.  The angels are standing on the parapets of heaven ready to break out in joyous celebration for one sinner that repents.  That is why Jesus came, to save sinners.  All that stopping you from being saved today is your rebellion.  I hope that today is the day of your salvation.

And if you are a sheep that belongs to Christ but have wandered away from the path of God, then I urge you today to repent. A contrite and broken heart God will not despise.  But if you continue in your rebellion, then know for certain that a good and loving God will not let you stray forever.  He is calling you to come home in repentance right now.  I hope that you answer His call.  And finally, let us follow the Great Shepherd’s example.  Let’s go out into the world and compel sinners to come to repentance.  Let’s tell them the good news, that Christ has come to bind up the broken hearted, to heal broken hearts to forgive us our sins and provide reconciliation with God.  That is our mission, our purpose, so let us be about the Father’s business of bringing the lost to salvation.