![]() I take you on your own estimation of yourselves, and tell you that My mission is to the wanderers.' And so He vindicates Himself to the ninety-and-nine: 'You do not need Me, you are found. It may be a poor little creature after all, but it is lost, and that is enough. He simply follows the lost because it is lost. He does not ask about its worth, or anything else. Of course a shepherd goes after and cares for the lost sheep. To them He answers, in effect-I am a shepherd that is my vindication. Of course I need scarcely remind you that in the immediate application of the parable in Luke's Gospel, the ninety-and-nine were the respectable people who thought the publicans and harlots altogether too dirty to touch, and regarded it as very doubtful conduct on the part of this young Rabbi from Nazareth to be mixed up with persons whom no one with a proper regard for whited sepulchres would have anything to do with. I wish merely to look at the two figures-the wanderer and the seeker.įirst, then, let us look at that figure of the one wanderer. There the Shepherd seeks till He find, here the Shepherd, perhaps, fails to find for our Lord says, 'If so be that he find it.'īut I am not about to venture on all the thoughts which this parable suggests, nor even to deal with the main lesson which it teaches. There the seeking Shepherd is obviously Christ here the seeking Shepherd is rather the Divine Father as appears by the words of the next verse: 'For it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.' There the sheep is lost here the sheep goes astray. ![]() There it is spoken in vindication of Christ's consorting with publicans and sinners here it is spoken in order to point the lesson of not despising the least and most insignificant of the sons of men. There are some significant differences between this edition of the parable and the form which it assumes in the Gospel according to Luke. That feeling in a man may be only selfishness, but homely as it is-when the loser is God, and the lost are men, it becomes the means of uttering and illustrating that truth concerning God which no religion but that of the Cross has ever been bold enough to proclaim, that He cares most for the wanderers, and rejoices over the return of the one that went astray more than over the ninety-and-nine who never wandered. Still there is a keener joy in the recovery of the one than in the unbroken possession of the ninety-and-nine. The unstrayed may be many, and the strayed be but one. They may not be nearly so valuable as things that were not lost. The most prosaic shepherd looks for lost sheep, and everybody has peculiar joy over lost things found. It does all this by the homeliest image and by an appeal to the simplest instincts. It touches the deepest things in His relation to men, and sets forth thoughts of Him, such as man never dared to dream. It is an unveiling of His inmost heart, and therein a revelation of the very heart of God. Perhaps our Lord repeated the parable more than once. ![]() ![]() We find this simple parable, or germ of a parable, in a somewhat more expanded form, as the first of the incomparable three in the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel. They are not to be used in any context where the accompanying message is undermining of the Christian faith and gospel.If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth Into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray!- Matthew 18:12. Downloaded pictures can be used in the retelling of Bible stories and narrative that are faithful to the Biblical account.You cannot redistribute this set of images online but you can create a link to the relevant page on to allow others to download these images under the same Terms of Download.As the LUMO project produces its own publishing, photos cannot be licensed to other clients outside of. These images are not licensed for re-use in video, publishing or other media and cannot be sold under any circumstances or used in any format for commercial gain.Images can be used in educational presentations, blogs and social media with attribution to.These images are the copyright of the LUMO project (Big Book Media) and distributed for free download, under license exclusively by FreeBibleimages for teaching purposes only. ![]()
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