Lost
Charles Haddon Spurgeon once wrote: “You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: He who counts the stars, and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting His own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature He ever made or the only saint He ever loved. Approach him and be at peace.”
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Lost (by David Peterson)
While in Capernaum, Jesus instructs His disciples in humility and He relates a parable about one lost sheep. In Matthew 18:10-14 Jesus says: “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones; for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains, and go and search for the one that is lost? And if it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven for one of these little ones to perish.”
Parallel scripture for this is found in Luke 15:1-7 and Jesus is showing how important just one wayward soul is to Him. That one lost sheep, that one lost soul, is indeed worth going after.
The “Prince of Preachers”, Charles Haddon Spurgeon once wrote: “You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: He who counts the stars, and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting His own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature He ever made or the only saint He ever loved. Approach him and be at peace.”
Spurgeon echoes Jesus in that He knows us intimately and by our names and that He will not pass us by or forget us. With Jesus we are never really lost!
A poignant hymn about this scripture was offered by Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane in 1868 entitled “There Were Ninety and Nine” The 5th and final verse is:
And all through the mountains, thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There arose a glad 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,
Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!"
Clephane correctly writes that Jesus searches and finds His own sheep from His flock.
Let us pray: Jesus, Our Good Shepherd, we are part of Your flock but we become lost from time to time. We are blessed that You find us when we are lost. We rejoice that You never give up on us!
Amen.
