THE SHEEP FOUND
‘Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.’
A beautiful sight to see the shepherd in Palestine sitting amid his flock, or walking with his staff, while in long line his sheep follow him. Christ’s own words are the best comment on His own parable: ‘I am the Good Shepherd, and I know My sheep,’ etc. The early Christians chose this image as the symbol of their Lord. They carved Christ upon their gems, they painted Him in their catacombs, they gave Him the central place in the glittering mosaics of their basilicas—as the Good Shepherd with the rescued sheep upon His shoulders.
I. One long search.—Let us never forget that the whole drama of Redemption—the Incarnation, the Ministry, the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension—what was it all but one long search for the lost sheep and carrying it home rejoicing? The whole race of man was the lost sheep until Christ found it. All we like sheep had gone astray.
All the souls that are were forfeit once,
And He Who might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.
II. Let us learn three brief and simple lessons.
(a) Let us all be pitiful. As for sin, indeed, we cannot hate it too much. It is the adder which is ever stinging our race to death, and we ought, every one of us, to do all we can to crush its head. But for the sinner—the poor, bitten, poisoned victim, if we be like Christ we shall feel nothing but compassion.
(b) Let none despair. None has sinned too deeply to be forgiven. Often, indeed, it is too late to avert the earthly consequences of misdoing. But whatever sin you have committed, if you will but repent of it, if you will but come to Christ with the burden of it, there is heavenly medicine, there is lustral water at the wicket-gate.
(c) Think noble thoughts of God, even the thoughts which again and again He has taught us respecting Himself. If there be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance, what shall there be over myriads and the multitudes which no man can number?
Dean Farrar.
Illustrations
(1)‘And all through the mountains, thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There rose a cry to the gate of heaven,
“Rejoice, I have found my sheep!”
And the angels echoed around the throne:
“Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!” ’
(2) ‘You cannot share His joy without wishing to share His work. That is the practical point. If you really care about Christ’s enthusiasm for lost and unhappy people, you will do what you can for them yourself. He shows you the methods of God’s hand. He sees God is not a great law standing outside the human race, and so to speak pulling in first one and then another without any intervention of man. God uses man, and looks to man to save his fellow-man. God works through human means, not because He cannot do the work by himself, not because He does not care, but because He wants to maintain His connection with man, because He cannot bear not to have man as a sharer of His joy, because, like a true father, He wants to stir up His children to help one another, and so to promote that real family union by which they feel that He and they are really one. And when the work is done He wants them to feel that rare power of fellowship with His joy, that power that brings them into such intimate communion with man. “Rejoice with Me,” He cries, “for I have found My sheep which was lost.” ’