How many of you are farmers? Or shepherds? I’m certainly not either of those things… I’m a city kid through and through who has lived in Toronto my entire life. This means that most of my experience with animals has been taking care of my cat Wilbur when I was younger, chasing squirrels, and saving raccoons that have fallen into holes.
Well, that’s not entirely true actually. There’s also the
time I had that brutal bee sting, the time I saw two eagles dive bomb out of
the sky, and the time when I was really young and got to see a colt (baby
horse) being born and learning to walk. So maybe I have more experience with
animals than I thought.
But if there’s one kind of animal I haven’t spent a lot of
time with, it’s sheep. Sure, I’ve seen them at petting zoos, but I’ve never
cared about sheep that much. They’re smelly, their wool gets dirty really easy,
and, frankly put, they aren’t always the smartest of animals.
I’ve done a little research, and from what I can tell, sheep
are known to follow other sheep without thinking twice. So if there’s a flock
of sheep chilling at a really grassy part of a field, and then one decides to
move to a muddy part of that field where there’s no food, there’s a good chance
that a bunch of the other sheep will follow right after him. And then you’ve
got like 10 sheep stuck in the mud and nobody wants that!
But sometimes, sheep wander a little farther than from one
side of a field to the other. If they don’t have a shepherd to stop them, sheep
can get easily distracted and end up in the middle of nowhere. Yet, this is
also where we see that sheep aren’t entirely dumb. Sheep remember people,
voices, and names really well! Once a sheep figures out who its shepherd is,
that sheep will listen to its shepherd’s voice before anyone else’s. This means
that all a shepherd would need to do to keep a sheep from wandering off is to
call its name (and maybe whack his shepherd’s crook on the ground once or twice),
and the sheep would come running!
At least, that’s the best guess I can make about how sheep
think based on my research. Again, I’m a city kid, so any shepherds out there
are welcome to correct me if these facts aren’t true. But all the stuff I’ve
just said fits very well with Jesus’ description of sheep in His Parable of the
Lost Sheep.
The story is pretty simple. There’s a shepherd who has 100
sheep. He’s taking care of them, bringing them to some good fields with good
grass. The sheep are all safe. Everything’s going according to plan. A few of
the flock got scared earlier and had tried to run away, but the shepherd had stopped
them without too much trouble. So you can imagine this shepherd’s feeling
pretty good about himself at the moment, thinking, It’s gonna be an easy day of shepherding today!
But hold on… Something doesn’t feel right. The shepherd does
a head count and what does he find? There’s only 99 sheep! One of the sheep
must have gotten away while he was distracted saving the other ones. But just
to make sure, he counts again. 1, 2, 3… 46, 47… 97, 98! There’s two missing
now! What’s going on?!?
The shepherd takes a deep breath. Can’t start panicking now!
He slows down and counts again. …97, 98… 99! Okay, that’s better, but that
means there’s still one sheep missing.
So if this was you, what would you do? Stay with the 99 and hope
the missing sheep somehow makes it back okay? Yeah, it’s too bad for the one,
but you still have 99 other sheep to take care of! You don’t want the 99 being
eaten by a wolf or something. So staying behind seems like the most logical
plan.
Or maybe you’re not the only person around. Maybe you can
send out a friend or family member to go looking for the missing sheep while
you guard the rest of them. No, but that won’t work. The sheep won’t recognize
the other person’s voice, and your friend might accidentally scare the missing sheep
even farther away!
The sun is getting lower in the sky. Time is running out,
and the longer that missing sheep is left alone, the more likely it’s going to
hurt its leg or get eaten or walk so far away that it gets lost forever!
Yet, in Jesus’ parable, we see that there was only one plan
the shepherd was ever going to follow. Jesus doesn’t talk about how the
shepherd weighed the pros and cons of going after the sheep or not. Instead,
Jesus says, “Won’t [the shepherd] leave the 99 in the open country? Won’t he go
and look for the one lost sheep until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4, NIrV).
That’s how much the shepherd loves his sheep! He leaves the
99 who are safe to find the 1 in danger! I don’t know what the shepherd did
with the 99 in the meantime. Maybe he left them with somebody else. Maybe he
locked them up in a barn somewhere first. But as much as I like to wonder about
this kind of thing, that detail doesn’t seem to bother Jesus. What’s important in
Jesus’ story is that the shepherd does everything in his power to make sure that
the lost sheep doesn’t stay lost.
In the same way, Jesus doesn’t stop looking for us either.
We are like that sheep that ran away. We all have sin in our lives – we’ve all
done bad things that have made us run away from God – but Jesus, our good and
loving Shepherd, comes looking for us anyway! That’s how incredible His love
is: that He would give up everything just to save one of us!
In fact, that’s exactly what Jesus did when He came to earth
and died on the cross. Jesus gave up all the good things He had in heaven to live
on earth as a man. And then Jesus gave up that life to die so that all those
bad things we’ve done could be wiped away forever! And when He came back to
life three days later, Jesus began the ultimate search party for all of us
sinners who are lost.
Of course, there’s one other part of this story I haven’t
mentioned yet. Did the shepherd find his lost sheep? (Pause for dramatic
effect...) You bet he did! And when the shepherd found the sheep, he picked it
up and immediately brought it home. Then the shepherd ran back to his village
to tell all his friends and neighbours, “Look! I found my lost sheep! Rejoice
with me!” And with that, the village had a huge party to celebrate!
The best part is that Jesus says the same thing happens after
His ultimate search party! Jesus ends His parable by saying, “I tell you, it
will be the same in heaven. There will be great joy when one sinner turns away
from sin” (Luke 15:7). Just like the village celebrated that the shepherd had
found his missing sheep, there is also a big celebration in heaven every time
someone believes in Jesus – every time someone turns away from their sin and
turns back to God.
And all of that is made possible because of Jesus’
unbelievable love for His sheep – for each and every one of us. Remember that: Because of Jesus’ love, He always looks for
those who are lost. It’s up to us, then, to not hide from Jesus’ ultimate
search party. Instead, choose to accept His unbelievable love and go back home
with Him!
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Hey guys! Hope you enjoyed our first look into the New Testament. I'll be doing another parable in a few weeks, but we've got a jump back to the Old Testament first. And I'll give you a hint on which story we're talking about next: It involves someone who really shouldn't be able to talk but does anyway. See you then!
~Brentagious
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