“This Man Receiveth Sinners”
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Him, the more earnest the longing and the greater the sacrifice for their
rescue.
All this the teachers of Israel might have learned from the sacred
scrolls of which it was their pride to be the keepers and expounders.
Had not David written—David, who had fallen into deadly sin—“I
have gone astray like a lost sheep, seek Thy servant”?
Psalm 119:176
.
Had not Micah revealed God’s love to the sinner, saying, “Who is
a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the
transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His
anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy”?
Micah 7:18
.
The Lost Sheep
Christ did not at this time remind His hearers of the words of
Scripture. He appealed to the witness of their own experience. The
wide-spreading tablelands on the east of Jordan afforded abundant
pasturage for flocks, and through the gorges and over the wooded
hills had wandered many a lost sheep, to be searched for and brought
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back by the shepherd’s care. In the company about Jesus there were
shepherds, and also men who had money invested in flocks and herds,
and all could appreciate His illustration: “What man of you, having an
hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and
nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?”
These souls whom you despise, said Jesus, are the property of God.
By creation and by redemption they are His, and they are of value in
His sight. As the shepherd loves his sheep, and cannot rest if even
one be missing, so, in an infinitely higher degree, does God love every
outcast soul. Men may deny the claim of His love, they may wander
from Him, they may choose another master; yet they are God’s, and
He longs to recover His own. He says, “As a shepherd seeketh out his
flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I
seek out My sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they
have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.”
Ezekiel 34:12
.
In the parable the shepherd goes out to search for one sheep—the
very least that can be numbered. So if there had been but one lost soul,
Christ would have died for that one.
The sheep that has strayed from the fold is the most helpless of all
creatures. It must be sought for by the shepherd, for it cannot find its