Tag Archives: a hundred sheep

LUKE’S GOSPEL…LOST THNGS – 41a

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“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭15‬:‭4‬-‭7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jesus told three stories about lost things…a sheep, a coin, and a son. 

The sheep was one of a hundred, the coin one of ten, and the son one of two. Does this mean that these lost things were ascending in value? For example, was the son more valuable than the coin, or the coin more valuable than the sheep? No to the owner!

I don’t think that the value of the lost thing was more important to the owner than its condition. The sheep, the coin, and the son were lost to their condition and their purpose and needed to be found and restored. 

The sheep was one of a hundred sheep in the farmer’s flock. When it wandered away, the flock was incomplete. Not only that but the sheep was in danger and needed to be rescued. The farmer was restless, knowing that his sheep was vulnerable to serious accident or death by wild animals. He had to do something to find it and bring it back to safety. 

God often used the imagery of sheep to describe His relationship with His people. Sheep are precious but foolish. They follow…they need to be led. They wander after food, not concerned about their safety. They are vulnerable…unaware of their environment or of danger. They need constant care to stay alive. 

Jesus’ story was not only about the sheep but about the shepherd. As a true shepherd, he kept tabs on his sheep. One lost sheep meant immediate action. He left his flock to search for the lost one and refused to give up until he found it. 

The shepherd’s mission accomplished, he called his neighbours to celebrate with him. So, Jesus insisted, if a lost sheep that was found was the cause for celebration in the farming community, how much greater is the celestial joy when a lost sinner is found and brought home. 

It’s important to understand what “lostness” means. In the Bible, lostness is what sin does…leaves us wandering away from the path that leads us to the Father and into the wilderness where we are in danger of dying without shelter, food, and water or being devoured by “wild animals”.  

The shepherd goes out to “find” the sheep and bring it back to the path from which it wandered. 

The whole human race has wandered away like lost sheep, away from the truth about God…His live and purposes for us…about us, and about the danger we are in when we leave His way to follow our own. Our destiny will be the rubbish heap of wasted lives. 

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭53‬:‭6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So, Jesus came to earth to find the lost sheep and bring them back to God’s “way”. 

“Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭19‬:‭9‬-‭10‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jesus fell foul of the religious leaders of His day because He kept company with the “lost” people whom they despised. So, His story led from lost sheep and a lost coin to the son who had no compassion for his lost brother and who, like them, despised his brother because of his “lostness”. 

To be continued…

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – LOST AND FOUND

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LOST AND FOUND

“Their grumbling triggered this story, ‘Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? When found, you can be sure you would put it across your shoulders, rejoicing, and when you got home call in all your friends and neighbours saying, ‘Celebrate with me! I’ve found my lost sheep!’  Count on it – there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner’s rescued life than of ninety-nine good people in no need of rescue.'” Luke 15:4-32.

Jesus’ stories always had a target audience. Sometimes they were used to teach and other times to expose wrong thinking or bad attitudes – especially of His religious opponents. In Hebrew thought, parables were intended, not for information but for identification. Who am I in the story?

This story was one of three, called chain parables. There was a theme running through them, except that the third story had the punch-line. In the first two, Jesus spoke of lost property, a sheep, a coin, of value to the owners. In both stories, the search yielded success – the valuable property was found and the owner called on the neighbours to celebrate. We assume that the neighbours obliged by rejoicing with him or her because there was legitimate cause for rejoicing.

In the third story, something changes; not a sheep wandering away, or an inanimate object like a coin being misplaced, but a wayward son choosing to renounce his father, his family and his heritage and to celebrate his ‘freedom’ by squandering his inheritance with equally worthless hooligans. Of what value was he? In that state, a disgrace to his father and family.

And yet, when he shamefacedly made his way home, his father did not reject him as one would expect, but welcomed him home with open arms, and ordered a huge celebration for the ‘lost’ son who had been ‘found’. But unlike the neighbours in the previous two parables, the elder brother did not value him as a returning lost brother but rejected him as a worthless good-for-nothing. He focussed on his behaviour, not on his intrinsic worth as a son.

And here is the point of the story. It was glaringly obvious who the elder brother represented. The Pharisees had just been criticising Jesus for eating with rejects. They saw no worth in the people who did not ‘behave’ as they did, forgetting that their attitude of superiority was a stench in the nostrils of Jesus, far more offensive than the sins of the ‘sinners’ they despised.

Particularly offensive to Jesus was the contemptuous attitude of those who refused to rejoice over the return of lost sinners. From His perspective, it was nothing short of idolatry because they were elevating themselves above people and even above God. They were honouring themselves as the epitome of virtue and writing everyone else off as worthless.

There were two categories of people that Jesus warned about the fires of hell – the greedy and the hypocrite. Of no other groups did He tell stories to highlight God’s attitude to them. Unless they repented, they would be consigned to the garbage dump where worthless rubbish is burned.

The Pharisees thought sinners were worthless but they could not see that their own attitude stifled their potential and made their lives fruitless for God. The returning sinner was welcomed home and came back on track to fulfil his purpose in life. The interlude of his wandering away did not disqualify him from being a son. It only interrupted his fellowship with his father and his growth in becoming a mature son. It was not only an interruption but, in the long run, also a learning experience.

But for the hypocrite there was nothing of value in his attitude, only alienation from the father and the family. This series of stories should have alerted these religious prigs to the very thing in themselves that they judged in others. No wonder they could not rejoice over the return of lost sinners because they had no idea of just how ‘lost’ they were!