0803b Trinity Iii: The Hound Of Heaven, Part Ii Series

There is none righteous, no, not one:

There is none who understands;

There is none who seeks after God.

They have all turned aside;

They have together become unprofitable:

There is none who does good, no, not one. (Ro 3:10-12)

Isaiah tells us:

All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way (Is 53:6)

In fact, can you really blame the sheep for wandering away? Think it through a little more. Why does shepherd keep and seek sheep? To either shear, kill, eat, or sell. What does our Lord promise us?:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. ... he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it. (Mat 10:34-39)

If today’s verses about Jesus seeking the lost were a sales brochure, the verses just before it would be the fine print. It seems what Jesus gives with His right hand He takes away with His left. With the sheep and the coin we have the "giveaway", while we hear just before this,

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)

And please understand that the Scriptures make no such separation that is common today, that you can be saved without being a disciple. All who are saved are disciples; there is no other kind.

If Jesus makes it so easy that He comes to find us when we are lost, how can it at the same time be so hard that we must give up all, endure persecution, and hate ourselves to be in His flock?

VIII. The Found Sheep

[up] Yea, faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist ;

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist

I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,

Are yielding ; cords of all too weak account

For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah ! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount ?

Continuing with the parable,

And when he has found it, (v15:5) he entices it home, pleading with it to follow him back to the flock. He says that I’ve done all I will do, now it’s up to you to choose to turn around. I’m giving you the opportunity. I never force myself on anyone. I’m knocking at the door of your sheepy little heart. Won’t you open it so I may come in? (pleadingly) Please?

Oh wait a minute! I must have gotten this quote from one of those translations on the internet. You know, the one read by most evangelicals today? But what does the verse say?

And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. (v5)

Notice that the shepherd does not ask anything; nor does he give it a choice. He simply puts it on his shoulder and carries it back home.

Let me ask you again, whose sheep is it? It’s HIS. Not Joe’s next door or Sally’s down the street. The sheep that he hunts for so diligently is his own. And this, dearly beloved, is precisely who Jesus seeks out in this way: His own people. Does the shepherd give equal opportunity to all lost sheep to come join his flock if they were not originally part of his? No! When another shepherd’s sheep is lost, he does not try to take it as his own. When his own sheep is lost, he claims it back, regardless of whether the sheep wants to return or not. This is how he maintains his flock. Well, what about increasing his flock? How is that done? Does he play the winsome shepherd, gaily inviting sheep of other folds into his own? Again, I say no. He buys them from other shepherds; the sheep themselves have no choice about which fold they belong to.