[Machine transcription]
Making the poor sound guy. There we go. Okay, we’ll go from over here.
Okay, so the sheep parable is very interesting. The one that the kids sang about and the one that you heard read to you. Because none of you, not any one of you, have ever experienced this in your life. Because if you’re like me and your family was like my family, and let’s face it, all of us grew up in that kind of a family. When you were lost and your parents found you, they may have been relieved and rejoiced for a millisecond, but you know and I know that after that first millisecond, the rejoicing went out the window and a different posture was taken toward you.
And if you had siblings… Oh, did your siblings remind you of this event every day of your life? Remember when he got lost at the store? That’s why I said none of you have ever experienced this in your life. And when it was your child, it’s the same thing. When you found your child, you did not rejoice. You grabbed and you led with an arm back to the family, and the family didn’t rejoice with the father or the mother. As I just said, they reminded you of your mistake.
Kind of like the Pharisees, aren’t it? Grumbling and complaining because Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. We have a different shepherd than our parents and then as we as parents. We are not like the Good Shepherd either.
And what the shepherd points out to us in the Old Testament reading is this. Hear it again, just the first part of it. I myself will search out for my sheep. I will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock, I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them. I will gather them. I will bring them from all the places. I will feed them. I will feed them good pasture and… Good water. And you don’t want to make what those sheep do? I’m not going to make them work. I’m going to make them lie down. That’s what I’m going to do.
So says the good shepherd to you. I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strayed. I will bind up the injured. And I will strengthen the weak. So you see, you’ve never experienced this in your life in this world from any human being. And you’ve never given it to another human being in the same way as the shepherd has given it to you.
Do you know what sheep do when they’re lost? They don’t wander around going, bah, bah, so the shepherd can find them. No, they stop where they are and they lay down. And when sheep get lost, by the time that they’re found, they’re typically not beautifully clean and white because they’ve tromped through a lot of things to find out that they’re lost before they lay down.
So when the shepherd finds them, he doesn’t find them looking as if they didn’t need to be found. He finds them looking very broken, looking very battered, looking quite bruised, and definitely looking bested by the world and their own flesh, not to mention Satan. And yet your shepherd, when he finds you in such a state, He joyfully carries you. Joyfully.
So consider this. Consider your own life experience. Did your shepherd not carry you? And did your shepherd not carry all of your sins, even the ones in which you are now found? And did he not carry them all the way to that cross upon which he died for you and for those sins? And did he not do that with joy? Not with grumbling, with joy, not with a finger wagging at you, with joy and not a lecture. Did your shepherd not carry you as you lay helpless in your mother or father’s arms or the pastor’s arms? Or however, even if you stood at that font as an adult, did not Jesus find you helpless?
With joy, did he not find you with joy and claim you as his child, as being his little lamb? And does your shepherd not joyfully invite you to his table, to his house where he’s the host? And whenever you go over to someone else’s house, they host you, don’t they?
And when they host you, they’re the ones that feed you. They’re the ones that bring you something to drink. Does not your Lord invite you into his house at his table and give you his flesh to eat with the bread and give you his blood to drink with the wine because he’s the host and not you or me? And is this not an ongoing habitual activity filled with joy that our Lord does to you and practices daily?
And the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Therefore, why would you not? Why would you not come to his house to have him rejoice over you? Therefore, you and I, we need to repent. We need to repent because we’re not thinking that the shepherd is pleased to restore us. We’re thinking in terms of the shepherd like we did our parents or some other individual in our lives where there wasn’t joyful reception. There was lecture. There was an instructional moment. But there wasn’t joy all the time.
Oh, you and I, when if we did get that joy, we were waiting for the other shoe to drop, weren’t we? When is it going to change? Repent if you think he’s going to drop another shoe on you or me. Because he doesn’t. That’s why he died. There are no more shoes to drop, are there? He dropped them all at that hill on Calvary so that he could rejoice over you.
This is how God views you, a sinner, with joy. Now that’s completely counter to your experience, and rightly so. It better be counter to your experience because this world is not like God, and you’re not like God either. And you’ve not been treated this way, nor have you treated others this way. This is only how God treats you because of Him, His only beloved Son.
Now it talks about eating with tax collectors and sinners, the text does. And there are two prominent tax collectors that Jesus ate at their house. The first one was Matthew, the very man who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. At his house did Jesus say these words, I did not come to call the righteous, I came to call the lost and the sinners.
At another man’s house who was very short in stature, Zacchaeus, who was also a tax collector, our Lord said, I did not come to call the righteous, but the lost and the sinners. Because you and I can make ourselves look pretty darn good on the outside. We can iron all of our wrinkles. We can trim all of our frayed edges. We can polish with the best of them. That’s not the kind of people God came to save. Amen.
God came to save the ugly, bruised, battered, beaten, and bested lambs who are lost. If you are that lamb, you have been found. If you are that lamb, he is rejoicing over you this morning because he found you here, where he invited you, where the light of his word drew you into his path, that you may be rejoiced over. And he restores you to the flock.
Your prayer is the same as my prayer. And our prayer? Find me every day, Lord Jesus. Find me every day. In the name of the good shepherd who rejoices over sinners, sheep, and lambs lost. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
