MAN is thrice lost! He is lost as a sheep! Lost like a piece of silver! And lost like a young man! That is, in other words, he is lost as to his soul; lost as to his body; and lost as to his spirit! Lost! Lost!! LOST!!!
We have in parable in Luke 15 the history of the way that God seeks and saves this thrice lost being; and all the wealth of love that is in Him wells up at every stage of His dealing with him. Happy the man who has to do with the God who is depicted here!
We do not get redemption in Luke 15, because it was not yet accomplished; but He who wrought redemption there set forth, in graphic, thrilling words, the results of it, in the activities of divine love. Grace is love in activity towards undeserving objects; and we get here the grace that seeks, ― as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, and the woman the lost piece of silver; and the grace that receives, ―as the father received the prodigal. Though redemption is not spoken of, it is the basis of all this; apart from redemption there could be no seeking of sinners, and no receiving them, and the sinner never seeks the Saviour until the Saviour has first sought him. Scripture asserts “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3:1111There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. (Romans 3:11)).
Luke 14-16 form a section in themselves, and it is very complete. In 14, we have a man, who, having heard the Lord enunciate the principles of the kingdom, says, “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” Immediately the Lord, in grace, presents to that man the opportunity of eating bread there, in the parable of the great supper. That is all very well, but man will not come. Not only does he not seek God naturally, but he will not come when invited. And although mentally owning it is a good thing to eat bread there, he begins at once to make excuses. God has something better for man than anything down here, but man makes an excuse of the very blessings He has given for refusing His invitation.
A farm! Five yoke of oxen! A wife! Earthly temporal blessings! Good things in themselves, but used wrongly by fallen man to shut himself out of heavenly, eternal blessings. There was nothing wrong in any of these things; but man gets so much occupied, even with right things, that he refuses what is infinitely superior. Note, it is not bad things, necessarily, that hinder man from reaching heaven; but good things do so. A solemn consideration!
A man, if asked today,
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO TO HEAVEN?
might say, Oh yes, I hope to go That is, you say mentally, that it is a good place. But suppose we put another question and ask, Would you like to go now? Oh, no, you say, I don’t want to go now. Well, when would you like to go? Oh, when I die. What does this mean? It means simply that you do not want to go to hell. Heaven is as unnatural to a man as hell, and an unrenewed man would be miserable in heaven, and if he could would quickly get out again. Ah! my friends, if you knew what heaven was, it would be the supremest moment in your history if summoned to go there. A man made ready would say: Oh yes, let me go at once! But the natural man, while owning it is a good thing, will not give up anything for God’s supper, nor for heaven. Many sell their souls for less than a farm, or a bale of merchandise, or five yoke of oxen, and are found eventually in hell, as the man of chapter 16:23.
Man’s proclivities are all to earthly things; he is an earth dweller; and an earth dweller, if he continue to be such, is a man that will make his abode in hell, for man has forfeited earth and cannot possibly hold it. Yet, alas, “There is none that seeketh after God.” Are you an exception to this? By no means! But you may say, Well, does God seek after man? Yes, there is in Him the infinite,
GRACE THAT SEEKS.
Think of this!
It is, however, necessary to accept the truth in the end of Luke 14 as to our natural condition, or we shall never consider ourselves suitable subjects for the grace set forth in the next chapter. Savorless salt! that is just what we are. It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill, but men cast it out. What an awful picture of that which had savor at one time! Alas for Judaism then! Alas for Christendom now! Alas for you, unless you own it! Yet though savorless salt is a very unsavory truth, it is a very salutary one.
Luke 15 gives us the bright, the other side of the picture. There were two classes then gathered round the Lord. The publicans and sinners on the one hand, the Pharisees and scribes on the other. The first said, as it were, “We are savorless salt, we have nothing for God; but has God nothing for us?” None have ever taken that place before God that He did not manifest His grace to them! But the Pharisees and scribes murmured at Him, and cast in His teeth as an epithet of opprobrium the saying “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” This Witness is true, and the Lord Jesus Christ, although in glory now, binds on His brow, as one of His greatest glories there, this very epithet, ―This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them! Dear reader, do you know what it is to eat with Him?
If a man will give up nothing to get to heaven, God, in the Person of
THE SON, GIVES UP ALL TO SEEK AND SAVE THE SINNER,
and to bring him there. Let us look at it.
The Lord then relates this parable to them. It is one parable in three parts, and sets forth not only the grace that seeks, and the grace that receives sinners, but also the fact that the Trinity of the Persons of the Godhead are all active in their salvation. The sinner himself also is looked at in the three ways indicated above. In every part of the parable we find the two classes, viz.― the lost sheep, and the sheep that did not know themselves to be lost; the lost piece of silver, and those that were not lost; the lost prodigal son, and the respectable elder brother, who, in his own estimation, had never left the father. That which was lost, represented the publicans and sinners; and those that were not lost, the Pharisees and scribes, who had never come down to own that they were savorless salt. Unless you learn that such is your case, you will never know the grace of God and the ministry of reconciliation.
If the triune God is occupied in the salvation of sinners, it proves that man is lost; and he is lost in the three ways, like the sheep, like the piece of silver, and like the young man who went away from his father. The sheep is a soul-boing; it has body and soul, and is led by its senses. It has a soul, in common with a man, and the soul is the sensuous part of the creature. To the soul belong the affections and desires. Old Isaac illustrates this when he said, “Make me savory meat, such as my soul loveth.” The piece of silver has body only, but is valuable in itself, and bears the image of the reigning sovereign, A man has body, soul, and spirit. The spirit distinguishes him from the beast, and to it belongs the will and the intelligence. Now, it is worse to be lost as a man who has body, soul, and spirit, than as a piece of silver, or as a sheep. In
THE LOST SHEEP
Eastern shepherding is in view, and such a thing was never known to an Eastern shepherd as that a sheep should get back to the fold. The sheep were led and counted out in the morning, and at night they were penned up for fear of wild beasts. If the shepherd misses one sheep, he leaves the ninety and nine in the wilderness―not in the fold―and goes after the lost until he finds it. This is blessed: He never gives up once He is on the track, until He finds His object.
The shepherd seeks the missing sheep which had wandered away and away, nibbling some little tuft of green grass here, and some tender young shoot of the furze bush there, until it got so far away that it was impossible for it to come back. The shepherd follows its track, over the mountains, guided by a little bit of the fleece sticking on a thorn bush, and a few drops of blood on the ground, marking the track of waste and destruction the poor sheep had followed. So Christ, the blessed Saviour, came down from heaven, and as the Shepherd, follows the track of the lost sinner, that track of waste and destruction over the mountains of sin. On and on He goes, yea, He went down under the mountains of sin, and put it all away, ere He could reach His object.
The shepherd seeks the sheep
UNTIL HE FINDS IT!
Happy work that! and he lays hold of the sheep, two forelegs in one hand, and two hindlegs in the other, and throws it across his shoulders. It was not, maybe, a very comfortable place for the sheep, but it was a very secure one. Many a kick and many a struggle, and many a bleat the silly sheep may give, to try and get on to its feet again; but it is on the shoulders of Omnipotent strength, and the Shepherd means to bring it safely home. And it is as secure on His shoulders as though already there. But where does He take it? Does He take it back to the fold? Ah, no! It is not mere restitution. Not the gospel of relief only. It is excess! The sheep had lost the fold, but he gains the Shepherd’s home; he is secure for heaven, secure for eternity! Far better that than restoration to an earthly fold!
Yet it is natural to man to live on earth: it is not natural to him to go to heaven. Never a man appeared in heaven till Christ went there. You may say Enoch and Elijah were there. Well, we don’t know exactly where they were taken; but Christ said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” and that place was not prepared for man until He went there.
JOY!
As surely as the sheep is on the shepherd’s shoulders, it is brought safely home with joy. The joy of the sheep is not mentioned, but the shepherd calling together his friends and his neighbors says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.” The joy is the joy of Christ the Shepherd, and of heaven in fellowship with Him, and it is over one sinner that repenteth! Think of all heaven being occupied with and rejoicing over a man who would give up nothing for heaven! Nothing for God! But see the other side. The blessed Son of God gave up everything for His lost sheep! Now we come to
THE LOST PIECE OF SILVER.
Here the sinner is not looked at as a soul—being like the sheep, but as the which has body only. Yet he is lost equally as to his body, and as to his soul. His soul should have been subject to his spirit, and his desires towards God, his body being for His glory. But fallen, his spirit becomes subject to his soul; his desires go out to anything but God, and his body is dishonored as the vessel of sin. The piece of silver just dropped out of the purse, its very inertia carrying it farther and farther away, until it rolls into the dust in some far corner of the house, and there it lies, equally lost with the sheep. Nor may it be hoped that it will ever find its way back to the purse whence it fell. But the woman lights a candle, and sweeps the house diligently; she is earnest, and interested in her work. Now this woman with the light figures the Holy Spirit, the second person of the Godhead, who, Christ’s work being accomplished, comes down into this world to bring to light the lost sinner. Nor is this far-fetched, for the woman in Scripture is an unseen power in a house; she is not the prominent person there, she does not say, “I this,” “I that,” but “My husband, &c.”; she keeps in the background herself, and puts her husband forward. It is, however, soon known upon entering a house if there be a woman in it, although she may not be seen. Here the woman with a light, this unseen power, searches for the lost piece of silver
UNTIL SHE FINDS IT.
She is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In Matthew 13 we have a woman without a light, who hid leaven is the meal. It is still a spirit, but all is dark and hidden there. It is a wicked spirit. Perhaps you do not believe in this unseen power. You may say, I believe in nothing I cannot see! This is a mistake, my friend. You believe in steam, yet you never saw steam; what you see is vapor, i.e., steam mixed with atmospheric air. If you look at the gauge glass of a boiler, the space above the water, where the real steam is, just looks like a vacuum, but the engineer knows this is filled with steam. Again, you never saw mind, but you have seen its effects, and you believe in it. You may have seen the path of a cyclone, or a tornado, which lays everything in its devastating track, level with the ground, whether the trees of the bush, or the houses of a town. So you may have seen the effects of the Holy Spirit’s work, though this is not seen in devastation, but the opposite. Have you never seen a blasphemer converted? Have you never seen a neighbor, your own brother even, converted? And do you not believe in the Holy Spirit? No dead soul is wrought upon, no lost sinner is brought to light, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now there is inherent value in the piece of silver, and it is stamped with the image of the reigning sovereign. So the sinner is valuable in himself to God even as to his body, which was made in the image of God, as His representative here—though a defaced and fallen representative now. We must look to Christ for the image of God. The woman seeks the lost piece of silver until she finds it, and she finds it when a ray from the light is reflected back from some abrased portion of the silver, an abrasion sustained in the fall! So the Holy Spirit is seeking now to bring to light the sinner. The moment when a soul is wrought upon and recognizes the effect of the fall, is the moment when the light of the candle falls upon it. The sweeping and search continue until the lost piece is found, and this goes on in the house. Then, when found, there is joy again, but it is much more specific here than in the first case, “joy in the presence of the angels.” Not the joy in heaven generally, so much as the joy of the triune God specially.
IT IS GOD’S JOY!
You cannot have a more wonderful thought than that. He, the blessed God, who does not need you to make Him happy, comes down to seek you, ―and we read of the joy, not of the sheep or the piece of silver, but the joy of God, when the one or the other is found. If it is as a sheep, a soul-being, alive in sins, led on and on, like a poor drunkard; or if as a piece of silver, a being dead in sins, although intrinsically valuable, the very inertia of his being carrying him farther and farther away, ―the joy of God is alike over both.
G. J. S.
(To be continued.)