OPEN: (This is a video of a 3 yr old girl “reading” the story of the lost sheep. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QIhNBzK6dQ
Begin at 31 sec mark. Quit at 3 minutes)
In keeping with this idea of children’s stories, I want to share with you a children’s song about sheep. Sing along is you know the song:
“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
And one for the little boy who lives down the lane
Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full.”
ILLUS: Years ago black sheep were not the kind of sheep you wanted in your flock. Black wool was considered commercially worthless because it could not be dyed. Even today, black wool is so difficult to sell commercially, that many merchants require that there not even be a strand of black in their wool.
In the day of Jesus, a sheep that was black was a liability to the shepherd, and their owners would often remove them from the flock so that they wouldn’t taint the purity of the flock by interbreeding with the white sheep.
Black sheep were undesirables.
Because of that, people tend to use the term black sheep to describe someone who is “undesirable”. Someone they don’t want “in their flock.”
For example: You’ll hear the term “He was the black sheep of the family”
It means he was not a nice person.
Nobody wants him around.
No one even wants to have him in the family tree.
This tendency to ostracize people that are undesirable is so prevalent, psychologists even have a term for this behavior: it’s called “the black sheep effect”
APPLY: In our text today, we have Jesus dealing with “the black sheep effect”.
Luke 15 tells us:
“The Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them.’"
They were upset because Jesus has been spending his time with the “black sheep” of society.
He’s been coddling the losers.
Eating with the sinners.
He welcomes them into His flock!
That’s just not right.
But that’s why Jesus came.
In Matthew 15:24 Jesus said He was sent “…to the lost sheep of Israel."
And in Luke 19:10 He said he’d “… come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
Jesus came for the lost sheep.
And so, to illustrate that truth, He told a parable about sheep.
But in His parable - Jesus didn’t use this term “Black Sheep”.
Why not? I mean, it’s perfectly descriptive of the kind of people He came to save, so why not use that term?
Well, a few of reasons come to mind
1st – Black sheep are born black sheep.
They have an excuse – that’s just the way they are.
And you’ll hear sinful people try to use that as an excuse for themselves.
For example:
An adulterer will say, “I feel bad about having slept with that woman… but I couldn’t help myself”
The child molester will say, “I know it was wrong to molest that child… but that’s just how I am”
Or the homosexual who will say, “You don’t understand – I was born this way.”
They were all saying the same thing:
I have an excuse.
I was born a black sheep.
I can’t help myself.
That’s just how I was born.
“Science” has even come to their defense.
ILLUS: Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, were the authors of “A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion” they argued that rape is rooted in biological impulses of all men to procreate.
Because all men could be potential rapists, they argue, women should consider dressing and acting more conservatively to reduce their risk of being raped. … Rape, the authors contend, should be viewed “as a natural biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage.” (Michael Precker in The Dallas Morning News 2/13/00)
So these so-called scientists contend that sinners can’t help themselves.
They were born that way.
They were wired to do evil.
That’s just the way they are.
(PAUSE) No it’s not.
Neither the rapist, nor the adulterer, nor the child molester, nor the homosexual were BORN that way.
They didn’t do what they did because they “couldn’t help themselves”.
They did what they did because they were sinners.
They were black sheep by choice… not by birth.
Jesus didn’t tell a parable about a black sheep … because the sheep that got lost in Jesus’ parable, got lost because it made a choice.
It wandered off because it chose to wander off.
And that’s the 2nd reason Jesus didn’t use “black sheep” in His parable.
Black sheep are NOT rejected because they’ve made a choice.
Black sheep ARE born that way.
They’re never going to change.
They CAN’T change.
You can’t condemn a black sheep for being a black sheep.
But the people Jesus spent time with were condemned.
They were condemned because the righteousness of God condemned them.
In I Corinthians 6 God tells us
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” I Corinthians 6:9-10
The people Jesus spent time with were condemned because they made a choice.
And their life choices were going to separate them from God – for eternity.
They didn’t come out of the womb as prostitutes and tax collectors.
They WEREN’T “Born” sinners… they chose to sin.
ILLUS: Do you know how a sheep gets lost?
The sheep lost because it kept its eyes on the wrong things.
Its head was down looking at something that appealed to it rather than looking up at Good shepherd who promised to take care of it.
ILLUS: One man told a story about the ranchers in his hometown.
He said their cows would often wandered off and got lost.
He says: “If you were to ask a rancher how a cow gets lost, and chances are he would reply,
"Well, the cow starts nibbling on a tuft of green grass and when it finishes, it looks ahead to the next tuft of green grass and then it nibbles on a tuft of green grass right next to a hole in the fence. It then sees another tuft of green grass on the other side of the fence so it nibbles on that one and then goes on to the next tuft.
The next thing you know the cow has nibbled itself into being lost."
(Mike Yaconelli in The Wittenburg Doo;r Craig Brian Larson, Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching, Baker)
The reason the sheep in Jesus parable got lost… was because it had nibbled itself into being lost.
Its head was down looking at something that appealed to it rather than looking up at Good Shepherd who promised to take care of it.
It had decided to walk away from its shepherd.
ILLUS: John Rigle (one the previous preachers in our congregation) once said
“People do what they decide to do.”
If they want to sin, they’ll sin.
If they want to follow God, they follow God.
It all depends on what they DECIDE they want to do.
Now, for the sake of my illustration, I want to break a flock of sheep down into 3 groups.
1. The first group of sheep had DECIDED to look to Shepherd & follow Him wherever He leads.
These are the “Good sheep” who follow the “Good Shepherd. Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27 KJV
2. The 2nd group wants nothing to do with the Shepherd. They want to run their lives their own way and they deliberately DECIDE to walk away from Him. These are the pagans and atheists of society. They don’t want to hear Jesus’ voice… they don’t want to follow.
3. But the 3rd group DECIDES that they like the Shepherd. They want to hang out with Him… but they don’t want to get TOO close to Him. They still want to keep their options open. They want to look for their own grass once in a while. They want to nibble at a little of this and a little of that….
George Orwell once observed:
“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
That’s the problem with this 3rd group of sheep.
They like being close to Jesus… just not too much, and not just all the time.
And because they have this “loose” connection to the shepherd they’re the ones who end up wandering off. They’re the ones that end up getting lost. They’re just close enough to the Shepherd to feel secure. And just far enough away to not hear His voice.
“My sheep hear my voice… and they follow me.” says Jesus. John 10:27
And so, they wander off into their own little world, and they end up getting hurt and making bad decisions. And those bad decisions cause them pain and heartache.
As Proverbs 13:15 says, “…the way of transgressors is hard.” (KJV)
Because they’ve chosen NOT to listen to the Good Shepherd and to follow Him closely, they are without the protection of that Shepherd and open to the attacks of Satan and this world.
So the 1st reason Jesus didn’t use the term “black sheep” was because people would use it as an excuse to say “well, that’s just the way I am.”
And the 2nd reason He didn’t use that term, was because unlike black sheep (who can’t chose color) we can make a choice/decide to change… and to follow Him or not.
And the 3rd reason Jesus didn’t use the term “Black Sheep” was because… nobody usually wanted a black sheep. They were relatively worthless to the Shepherd.
But in Jesus’ parable He wanted to drive home the fact that this sheep was precious to the shepherd.
* Yes, there were 99 sheep still back in the fold.
* They were good sheep… they’d never think of just wandering off.
* They’re no trouble to the shepherd.
* They listen/hear/ obey.
“My sheep hear my voice… and they follow me.” John 10:27
But this lost sheep didn’t want to listen to the shepherd.
This lost sheep didn’t want to get too close to his shepherd
That sheep had made the choice to go and follow his own agenda.
And as a result, the sheep had gotten itself so tangled up in thorns and brambles of life it was going to take a lot of effort to go and rescue him.
So why bother?
The other sheep were good sheep… this one wasn’t.
So why bother?
Because no sheep was worthless to the Good Shepherd. He was going to seek and save that which was lost. And in Ezekiel God prophesied that this is exactly what would happen:
"‘For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness… I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak…. I will shepherd the flock with justice.” Ezekiel 34:11-12;16
God was willing to make the effort to search for us/ look for us.
God was willing to seek the lost and bring us back to Himself.
Why? Because to God there is no such thing as a black sheep.
There is no such thing as a sheep that has no value.
There are many churches out there that go out of their way to get what they regard as being the “Good Sheep”. They go after the Doctors and the Lawyers, and Politicians. And it’s ok to go after these folks, because they’re usually as lost as anyone else. But God forbid that any church value those people over the prostitute and the drug dealer who repents. God forbid we, or any other congregation should ever choose the wealthy over the welfare recipient.
Jesus came to save the lost.
Jesus came to rescue those the rest of society had rejected.
Because Jesus primary objective was not to build an impressive church, but to rebuild unimpressive people.
One person said it this way:
God loves us just as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way.
John 3:16 tells us “For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
And that gift of love was not a cheap display of affection.
In giving us His Son – Jesus – God paid a high and terrible price.
Isaiah 53:6 declared
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him (His only begotten Son) the iniquity of us all.”
In order to seek us and bring us back to Himself, Jesus went to the cross
He suffered insults, pain and a long lingering death.
He allowed His body to die and be buried.
He did that for you.
He did that for me.
Because – in the eyes of Jesus – there is no one who is worthless
It could be that you’re one of those lost souls today.
Maybe you’re already a Christian, and you’ve wandered off from your Shepherd. Perhaps you’ve done a good job of masking your lostness, maybe you’ve fooled everyone around you and made them believe you have it “all together” – but you know better. And so does God.
Even now He’s seeking you.
Even now, He’s pleading for you to repent and follow Him.
But you have to decide.
You have to decide to quit making excuses for yourself.
You have to decide to choose to leave the life you’ve lived and follow Him.
AND you have to decide that you are worth receiving the blessings God wants to give to you.
INVITATION
Luke 15:7 I tell you… there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
