Luke 15

Luke 15:4

The Lost Lamb What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?—Luke 15:4.Once upon a time, there dwelt in an Eastern land a shepherd who had a flock of sheep. He had exactly one hundred sheep, and he knew each of them by name.In the daytime this shepherd led his flock out to green pastures on the hillside. Sometimes there were rough places to cross in going from one pasture to the other; but the shepherd was always at hand with his crook to help any sheep that got into difficulties. Now and again they came to a swift stream; but he always went first to find the easiest crossing; and the sheep who kept nearest to him and followed where he led came through the waters best. At night he brought his flock back to the fold. It was enclosed by a high wall crowned with sharp thorns so that no robber or wolf could get in to steal the sheep.Now one year the shepherd had a worrying time on account of a little lamb that was very willful.

It was always loitering behind the rest to finish a particularly juicy clump of grass, or going a little bit up the hill to crop a daisy that looked specially nice. When it came to a stream it preferred to choose its own crossing, and many a time it would have been drowned if the shepherd had not rescued it with his crook.

Several times it nearly broke a leg by going into rough places, just to show how well it could jump from rock to rock. And altogether it cost its kind master many an anxious hour.As it grew older it grew bolder, and that was how it got into the great difficulty of which I am going to tell you.When the shepherd brought his sheep back to the fold at night, it was his custom to count them all to make sure that none was missing. One evening he found he had only ninety-nine instead of one hundred. He counted them again twice to make sure he had made no mistake, but it was only too true—one sheep had gone astray. Anxiously he scanned the flock to find out which was missing, and he discovered that it was the poor naughty lamb.Now this is what had happened. When the shepherd was leading his flock from one pasture to another, the lamb had seen, farther up the hill, a nice little bit of green which looked most inviting.

Why shouldn’t he have it? He was sure it was much nicer than the grass where they were going.

In any case, he would just run up and have a nibble at it, and he could easily overtake the others. Then he saw another bit of green a little farther on, and he must just have that too. The lamb was enjoying himself immensely. Why should he bother about that old shepherd and the silly sheep? And, as a matter of fact, he soon forgot about them.Later the sun began to sink and the shadows to grow longer. Then the lamb thought it might be safer to turn homewards. But which way to turn? He had reached a part of the mountain that was quite unfamiliar to him.

The shepherd and the sheep had long ago vanished from sight. He gave a bleat, but there was no answer—they were out of hearing too!The sun sank to rest behind the hills, and swiftly the darkness of the Eastern night began to fall. By this time the lamb had become very much afraid. He thought of the wild beasts that he had heard prowling round the fold at night. He remembered how he had crept closer to his mother, and how she had comforted him, saying, “We are quite safe in the fold and the shepherd is watching.” Ah, how he longed now for the shepherd and the safe fold! Then he thought of the stories he had heard of the robbers who dwelt in the mountains, robbers who seized and slaughtered silly, straying sheep.

And he shuddered with terror lest they should find him.On and on he wandered, bleating piteously. His little legs were so weary that they could hardly bear him; his beautiful fleecy coat was tangled by briers and soiled with mud; his throat was parched with thirst.

Far up the mountain, the howl of a wolf answered his bleat, and he held his breath and ran lest his enemy should find him. At last, utterly exhausted, he lay down under the shelter of a rock and prepared to die; for he had given up all hope of ever finding the fold again.And now let us return to the shepherd. When he discovered his loss, how did he act? Do you think he said, “Well, this is most unfortunate; but I have still ninety-nine sheep and I must just make the best of things. He was a troublesome creature anyway or, “Poor little lamb, I am very sorry for him, but it can’t be helped! No doubt by this time he will have fallen over a precipice, or into the hands of robbers; or perhaps he has been devoured by a wild beast.

I should only risk my own life by going after him. It is more valuable than his.

And, after all, I should probably not find him.”If your pet cat or your dear dog went missing, is that the way you would behave? No, I think you would put forth every effort to find it. You would go to the police office, and you would ask all your friends and neighbors if they had seen it, and you would put an advertisement in a shop window or in a newspaper offering a reward for its return.What did the shepherd do? He looked round on the ninety-and-nine sheep. They were quite safe in the fold, and he could leave them in charge of his hireling. But up somewhere on the bleak mountain-side a poor, unhappy, naughty little lamb was needing him badly. What matter that it had been troublesome? Did it not the more require the shepherd’s tender care?

So girding his cloak about him, he set out into the dark night. Not a thought of his own weariness and his well-earned rest! Never a care for the perils of the mountain or the danger from wolves or robbers! Something he valued more than life was in trouble, and he alone could save it.On through the darkness he stumbled, calling now gently and tenderly, now clear and loud—on over the rough rocks, and through the cruel briers. Once he found himself at the edge of a precipice where one more step would have meant certain death. Again he had to ford a swift river which almost bore him away. Now the hills echoed to the cries of the wild beasts hungry for their prey. But he only hastened lest his dear one should be in immediate danger.

Weary, bruised, and torn, he never gave up hope. With untiring patience he searched the night through.And then, at last, in answer to his call, he heard a faint bleat. He called again, and stopped to listen. Yes, it was the cry of his lamb—so piteous and feeble, but the cry of his own dear lamb!In a few minutes he was by its side. Do you think he reproached it for all the weariness and pain it had caused him? Do you think he thrashed it for its wicked willfulness? Ah no! In his heart there was room for only one thing—a great joy at the recovery of his lost treasure.

Tenderly caressing it, calling it by name, he lifted the frightened, bleeding creature up in his strong arms, and, laying it on his own weary shoulders, he bore it all the long way back to the fold.Boys and girls, we have a Good Shepherd, who gave His life for the sheep. For them He left His happy home in heaven; for them He trod the thorny path; for them He worked, and suffered, and bore the bitter cross. He knows each of us separately and calls us by name, and if you have not come into the fold, there is an empty place in His great heart which nothing else can fill He seeks for you just as if you were the only child in the world, and He will never be satisfied until He finds you.The lamb was a very silly little thing to wander away from its kind shepherd, but what would you have thought of it if, when it heard his call, it had turned and run away as hard as ever it could until it fell over a precipice. Don’t you think it would have been sillier still? And that is just the way some of us are treating the Good Shepherd. When He calls us we run away, and we are sillier than sheep.Jesus told the story of the Lost Sheep to help us to see how much God loves us and how much He wants us, however wicked and troublesome we are. Will you let Him guide you safely into the fold?

Luke 15:8

The Lost Coin What woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it?—Luke 15:8.Are you clever at finding things that are lost? Little people usually are, perhaps because their eyes are so sharp. If a coin rolls away on the floor, give me a boy or a girl to find it. You know all the tricks of the best way to set about it. You pop down on your knees at once and crawl under the tables and chairs. If that fails, you lay your cheek against the floor so that your eye may be on a level with the ground and very likely you discover the missing coin that way.

If not, you turn back the rug and poke your fingers under the edge of the carpet, or you take a stick and fish about with it under any piece of furniture that has a small space between itself and the floor. And in less time than it takes to tell how you do it you produce the lost coins.Sometimes it is something more valuable than a few coins that you are called in to help to find—a contact lens, or the key to a bookcase; mother’s earrings, a gemstone from a ring, or car keys.

Sometimes what is lost does not appear to you worth all the fuss that is being made about it, till you hear its owner say, “It is not the actual value of the thing; it has sentimental value that make it precious to me.” Then you understand that what seems to you a small thing is of priceless value to its owner, because it was the gift of some dear friend, or it recalls some special occasion.Now today’s text makes us think of the hunt for some seemingly small thing such as that. Christ was talking to the scribes and Pharisees, those men who were always criticizing Him and complaining that He was too friendly with the people whom they contemptuously called “publicans and sinners.” Christ wanted to show those scribes and Pharisees that the people they despised were inestimably precious to God. Christ had a special name for such people. He loved to speak of them as “lost”—He thought of them as children of God who had wandered away in paths of their own foolish choosing till they had lost the road to the Father’s house. Christ said He had come to this world for the very purpose of seeking and saving such “lost” people. He had come to tell them that God was ever looking for them and longing for them and would not be satisfied till He had them all safe at home.

On this occasion Christ told three stories to explain how God felt about the matter—the story of the lost sheep, the story of the lost or prodigal son, and, wedged between them, today’s text—the story of the lost coin.We cannot tell if Christ invented this story. Quite as likely He was just recalling something that had happened in His own childhood.

He may have been going back to a day when Mary, His mother, had been greatly distressed because she had lost one of the ten small silver coins which she, like other married Eastern women, wore strung as an ornament on her forehead. For those who know about such things tell us that the coin mentioned here is a Greek coin and not the usual Roman silver coin for spending which is spoken of in other parts of the New Testament. That string of dangling coins had been given to Mary by her husband on her wedding-day. It was as sacred and precious to her as your mother’s wedding-ring is to your mother, so no wonder she was sadly grieved when one of the coins slipped from its fastening. Perhaps Christ helped her to look for it. Perhaps He was so small at the time that He only watched with breathless interest while His mother turned the house upside down in search of it.Turning the house upside down was rather a different operation in the East in Christ’s day from what it is in our homes today.

There were no wardrobes to ransack, and very few pieces of furniture to move about. But hunting for a small thing not much larger than a dime would not be easy, for there was no light in an Eastern peasant’s house except the scant rays that entered by the open doorway.

So first Mary lit a lamp then she lifted and shook the straw or reed mats that were the only kind of carpet she had, and then she took a broom and carefully swept every inch of the hard-beaten clay floor. As she swept she stooped every now and then, and with lamp in hand examined closely the pile of sweepings. At last her eye caught the glitter of silver, and with a cry of joy she bent down and picked up from the heap of dust her lost treasure.And then what a scene of rejoicing there was! Mary ran to the door and called to her neighbors the good news, and they gathered round the threshold, and turned over the recovered coin in their hands, and all talked at once, and exclaimed how glad they were that it had been found.When Christ had got so far in the story He added the most important bit of all. He told the scribes and Pharisees that there was as great joy among the angels in heaven when one of God’s lost children was found as there was among Mary’s neighbors when she discovered her missing coin.A Sunday-school teacher was once relating this story to a class of small boys. They listened very quietly till she came to the words, “And she swept and swept, till at last she found it.” There was silence for a moment, and then one little fellow held up his hand. “But,” he inquired anxiously, “where did she find it?” He wanted to know the exact spot.Well, as we have already said, it was most likely in a pile of dust and trash that the coin was found.

And that is where many of God’s lost children are to be found today. In the lanes and alleys of our great cities, amidst all their squalor and dirt and misery, there are thousands of God’s lost children—lost, like the coin, through no fault of their own.

Would you not like to help God to find them? When you grow a little older you can do it by going down and working in the missions. But even now you can help by giving your money, by gathering bunches of flowers from the woods or from your gardens to send to those who live in these cheerless streets, by sparing a toy or two from your store for some little sick boy or girl. These may seem very little things to you, but they are your share of Home Mission work, and they are not little in God’s sight.

Luke 15:32

Making A Fresh Start Dead, and . . . alive again.—Luke 15:32.I feel sure that every boy and girl here likes making a fresh start. Don’t you love getting a new drawing book? The clean pages look just as if they waited for your pictures. You toss the old one carelessly aside; you feel you are done with it. That is a pity, I think; old drawing-books are most interesting. Take my advice and begin keeping yours.I looked into one the other day. I learned many things from it, and they all had to do with a boy called John. He had a real taste for drawing; I saw that at once. “John has the making of an artist in him,” I said to myself at page number one.

He had had no lessons, yet he seemed to be able to do wonderful things with his pencil. You should have seen the soldiers on that first page. There was very little drawing in the picture: the men were just put in with a few strokes; yet, how they ran! But before I had turned over a few more leaves I discovered that while John was an artist he was first of all a boy, a boy, too, like a great many others. He liked making fresh starts, and he was inclined to stop there.I knew another clever boy. He was much older than John—almost a man, in fact. I shall give him the name of Fred. He also liked drawing.

But he loved painting. There was color in it, and the more Fred studied the color of Nature, and the colors of things around him, the more fascinated he became. He made up his mind that one day he would be a great artist, and he managed somehow to persuade his father to allow him to become a student at one of our finest Art Schools. When he started to work there everything was new to him; he had never felt so happy.One thing annoyed him, however; he could not stand the color of the wallpaper in his bedroom! The lady in whose house Fred lived had taken a great liking to him. Fred persuaded her to agree to a new paper being hung. “I will do it myself,” he said, “if you simply allow me to choose the coloring.” He chose a plain brown cartridge paper.

Artists all like it, because it shows up their pictures so well. Fred had managed to collect not a few fine sketches, so when the room was finished even the lady who had to pay all the expense was pleased.

She quoted, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” And Fred was happy. When he had left school, his father had sent him into an office, and he disliked it. Now he had made a fresh start; he had begun to live.But a month or two passed, and Fred was “slacking”; another month, and he had ceased to care for his pretty room. When I saw it everything lay about in great disorder. The fine sketches were on the walls, but at once one could tell that it was the room of a fellow who “didn’t care.” He made another fresh start. You will be glad to hear that he is now getting on famously. Where do you think he learned the great lessons of life? On the battlefield.New surroundings do help us to make fresh starts.

Why, even if a little girl but gets a new dress, a new hat, and new shoes, she feels she is somebody more important than when she wore her old clothes. But new clothes may have a better effect than that. They may make a girl feel that she wants to be tidy, to help mother, to be a real lady. Boys are just like girls, only different. What boy does not feel he is a new sort of being when he puts on his first sports’ outfit? It is getting up a step, and he makes all sorts of good resolutions.Now, think of how well Jesus Christ understood us. The most beautiful story in the New Testament is about a fresh start. A young man went away into the far country and tried to forget his home, but could not.

He fell very low indeed, and when at last he “came to himself” and returned to his father, who had never ceased to love him, one of the first things the father did was to call for the best robe in the house, the ring of sonship, and new shoes. And I believe he dressed his erring boy with his own hands.Boys and girls, we are about to enter a New Year. All over the world the New Year is spoken of as a time for making fresh starts. Even in far-away India, where the boys and girls get bewildered over the number of gods they are told about, there is a New Year goddess. “Her work is to look into every house on New Year’s Day to see whether all is clean and in order. If she finds a dirty house she will send bad luck all through the year. A week before she comes everybody is cleaning, cleaning; all the dark corners are swept out; all the walls and the doorways are painted in grand patterns; all the idols are washed Little girls wear their best dresses then and put marigolds in their hair; fathers and mothers and all are clean and grand.

Then all the lamps are lit so that Lakshmi may see into the corners, and everybody keeps the Feast of Lamps and makes holiday.”Make a fresh start with the New Year. What can you do?

There were days at school during the Old Year when you yourselves felt that you were mean and spiteful. You lost your temper, you had unkind and suspicious thoughts about your schoolfellows. Make a fresh start today by asking God to help you to be true and noble and kind and good. As citizens there is a great work waiting for you—a work that will need all the earnestness of which you are capable, and you cannot wait till you are grown up to acquire it.You will be happy in being earnest. You will play your games all the better; you will be better sons and daughters; you will be better brothers and sisters; you will be better at getting along with others. There is not a man of us who does not wish he were in your place, and could live to see what God has in store for us.

We believe it is something good. Boys and girls, try to deserve it; then, even in making the effort, the New Year will be a happy one for you—happy in the highest and best sense.