Hungry for the Lost

Luke 15: 1-7  ESV

1 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." 3 So he told them this parable: 4 "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'
7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. †

About Shepherds

We always see pictures of Jesus with a little, tiny lamb on his shoulders. It warms our hearts. We love the image of the little lamb because it reminds us of God’s fatherly love for each one of us. As for the text, there’s a problem: little lambs are not the ones that wander away. Little lambs stay with the flock, usually close beside their mothers.

Grown lambs wander.  They can run from 45-75 pounds each. Yeah, not so cute.

There is a work of art from Jesus’ day in the Rockerfeller Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem—possibly a very early depiction of Christ as the Good  Shepherd. We know this image of the good shepherd was the first used in artistic depiction of Jesus, found repeatedly in the catacombs beneath Rome.

See—that sheep is almost equal to the shepherd’s body weight. No little lamb here. And zooming in, we get a closer look at the face to see something rare in ancient art: he’s smiling. This is the joy of the shepherd at having found a lost sheep.

Jesus says, "...there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents..." The sheep represents the sinner, which raises the question, What does the sheep do that resembles repentance? How does a sheep repent?

When a sheep realizes that it's lost, it freezes, according to scholar Ken Bailey, who specializes in the peasant, middle-eastern context. Because it's terrified, all it can do is bleat, cry out. Even when the sheep hears the voice of its shepherd, it still can't move. It won’t follow the shepherd home as a dog would. It doesn’t seek the flock. The shepherd must pick it up and carry it back to the fold. In the Middle East, with its rugged terrain, carrying 45-70 pound sheep is a difficult and dangerous task. It could take two to three days to find and restore a wandered, lost sheep. And what is the response of the good shepherd to such a difficult task? Joy.

The Good Shepherd

Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd in John 10:11-18, who not only searches for lost sheep (sinners) but who lays down his life for them. The parable also brings to mind Ezekiel 34:11-16:

"For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search and find my sheep. I will be like a shepherd looking for his scattered flock. I will find my sheep and rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on that dark and cloudy day. I will bring them back home to their own land of Israel from among the peoples and nations. I will feed them on the mountains of Israel and by the rivers and in all the places where people live. Yes, I will give them good pastureland on the high hills of Israel. There they will lie down in pleasant places and feed in the lush pastures of the hills. I myself will tend my sheep and give them a place to lie down in peace, says the Sovereign Lord. I will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak..."

The point of connection here is clear: Christ is the Good Shepherd. God is the one who saves the lost sheep. God alone.

Different Sheep

We should consider that there are many kinds of sheep as well. Among them, those from the flock who wander off and need to be restored to the herd, but also those who have never known the flock—complete outsiders—who are in dire need of rescue.

What all have in common is what is common to every human being: each is a lost sheep. All are lost.

None seek after him; all have gone astray.

The parable speaks with one voice on this: God alone is the one who seeks and saves.

When I picked this text, I was looking for verses to support our WIThNESS series—something to encourage our best evangelistic tendencies, but it can’t come from this text. We cannot squeeze this into a lesson for how we should seek the lost.

To do so is to abuse and twist the written word. I know; I was tempted.

God alone seeks.

God alone rescues.

God alone saves.

God alone wins souls.

God alone truly evangelizes.

Christ alone is the Good Shepherd.

Now, having said this, we must consider the implications of God’s seeking/saving love.

How is our witness shaped by this parable? It may not be our role to play “little Good Shepherds” pursuing the lost, lest we fall into our own kind of messianic complex, but we can share in God’s heart for the lost. Indeed, it is right and good that we should grow into sharing God’s heart for every stray sheep.

To be clear, we are not the Shepherd, but we work for the Shepherd. We seek as he calls us to seek and we evangelize only with his empowerment. Whatever sheep-seeking we do, we do only in conformity to the Shepherd’s call.

As I’m fond of saying: We are not the Shepherd; we are more like sheepdogs.

Sheep that wander

The first kind of lost sheep are those who started out in the flock, but for some reason wandered off.

I think of college students.

While I have no kids of my own, I have helped hundreds of parents spiritually nurture their children. As a pastor to youth in Oklahoma, I helped launch dozens of kids every year off to college and careers. It’s true—I don’t know what it feels like to send my own kids off, but as a pastor—part brother, part mentor, part uncle, and part parent—I have stood at that threshold with hope and anxiety as my protégés departed for the wider world of Oklahoma State University and elsewhere.

Like parents, I’m anxious for their growth, and anxious that they should be strong in the faith in spite of the inevitable onslaught of academic sophistry. I kept them in prayer and hoped to hear back from them from time to time.

My house was fairly famous for Christmastime gatherings of returning college students, swollen with new wisdom and enlightenment after a semester of psychology or sociology—anxious to try out their newfound knowledge against their old youth pastor. I loved those meetings and believe they continued to provide support and nurture to former youth, but I also know well that sinking feeling in my heart when a college sophomore returns with a new look in his eye—a sharpened, hardened look—and announces that he’s not a believer anymore. Yes, he’s taken a philosophy class (or humanities class, or geology class) and has experienced the light of truth among the towering intellects of Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Sheep that wander. Raised and nurtured within the flock, they now seek a truth other than the one given them by the people who love them most. It feels like rejection—even like arrogance—“I’m better than that old flock”-kind of thing. It’s a good thing that we can place our hope in a God who specializes in seeking lost sheep, isn’t it?

The Flight

One student I was close to—I’ll call him Paul (because his name was Paul)—one who was a leader in the large youth group during high school and who had always shown maturity and wisdom beyond his age—wanted to have a talk with me. He confessed that he wasn’t sure whether he believed anymore. He no longer felt convinced that the Christian narrative was true. He looked at it all from a different perspective—a very critical perspective—and his disillusionment left him in total doubt.

I didn’t tell him that his mother had met with me in the previous two years. She saw it coming, grieved it, and asked me to pray with her about it. She was so anxious for him not to lose his faith that I suspected she was part of his motivation all along. Though I felt some of that same disappointment—some of that same sinking of the heart—I did not feel the same anxiety.

“When you were baptized,” I told him, “it is like you were put on an intercontinental flight. You have grown up on the plane and now you have awakened to the reality that you are on this plane, and you are not sure that you really belong on this flight. You are aware that there are other planes, other international flights going elsewhere, and you wonder whether you chose this flying flock or it chose you. You’re not sure whether you would, today, given the choice, have chosen this flight over the others. Yet here we are, at 30,000 feet traveling 600mph. You’re still on the plane. You’re still part of the community of faith even though you doubt. And changing flights is not so easy as parachuting out the back door.”

It’s okay. Doubt is half of faith. Doubt is not an evil to be eradicated; it is necessary hurdle on the race toward authentic faith. No one develops real faith without searching through one’s doubts. It doesn’t matter if you were baptized as a baby, as a teenager, or as a believing adult—baptism is simply your ticket for the flight. It says you belong here.

Paul did come around in time. God restored him.

More than Lost

The second kind of sheep are those who have never been part of the flock. They may not even know they are lost so they don’t cry out. Never having been part of the flock we call the Church, they may not even know that a loving Shepherd seeks them.

We do know. Our witness comes from knowing—from having been found.

Knowing the Shepherd makes a difference in us and that difference is the substance of our witness. Although we are not the Shepherd (more like the collie in the picture), there are ways that we work with the Shepherd.

1, we have empathy for the lost:

•We understand what it’s like to be lost.

•We are the same—no different in nature.

•We know the pain and share the
    experience of lostness

2. We know the joy of being found

•We know the difference it makes.

•We know the peace of new life in Christ
   (we probably take it for granted).

•We are no longer lost; we follow the
   Shepherd gladly

3. We know the Good Shepherd

•We know he seeks the lost.

•We know he saves the lost.

•We share that hope with every lost sheep.

Plenty of Christians (usually Reformed, like us) have so emphasized God’s role in seeking and saving the lost that they have made a kind of sacred safe-space of their complacency. They have left the business of evangelizing to the Arminian Christians, who excel in sharing God’s heart for the lost.

It can be difficult pursuing the anti-Christian—the never-believer—because Christians are…well, not cool in the wider world. We are the oddballs, the weirdos, the presently marginalized. The good news is that this is nothing new. Christians have been oddballs and countercultural from the year 33 on. But we must persist and the best reason I can give you is not to speak of the terrors of Hell, but the hidden hunger for the Good Shepherd that roils within every sheep’s heart.

It is put best by one of America’s own, favorite atheists: the magician Penn Jillette:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6md638smQd8&t=201s

Quote: “How much do you have to hate someone not to proselytize to them if you believe eternal life is real?”  †