Luke 15:1-7 — Goodness Pursues

FRANK EDWARDS: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life." David wrote that as a hunted man. For years King Saul chased him through the wilderness. And at the end of his psalm David says that what is really chasing him, every day of his life, is goodness and mercy. Today Jesus tells a story that puts a face on the one doing the chasing. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step fifteen of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. Last time the women found the tomb empty and heard that the Shepherd had gone ahead of his sheep. Today we leave Mark for Luke. Luke chapter fifteen, verses one to seven. Now all the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around to listen to Jesus. So the Pharisees and scribes began to grumble: "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." Then Jesus told them this parable: "What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the pasture and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders, comes home, and calls together his friends and neighbors to tell them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep!' I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous ones who do not need to repent." FRANK EDWARDS: On step one we heard that "follow" is gentler than the Hebrew. The verb is radaph, to pursue, the word for Pharaoh's chariots chasing Israel to the sea. David knew that word from the wrong end. First Samuel 23 says, "So Saul broke off his pursuit of David." In chapter 26 David calls out to Saul, "the king of Israel has come out to look for a flea, like one who hunts a partridge in the mountains." Hunts is the same verb. And Psalm 7 prays, "save me and deliver me from all my pursuers." LINDA BROWN: Proverbs has a line with that verb that sounds like the opposite of Psalm 23. "Disaster pursues sinners." FRANK EDWARDS: That is what anyone would expect to be on a sinner's trail, and Psalm 23 turns it around. For the LORD's sheep, the pursuers are goodness and mercy, tov and chesed, God's goodness and his covenant love. Lamentations 3 says of that love, "Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning." Every morning, a fresh pursuit. LINDA BROWN: The verse opens with "surely." Is that a strong word in Hebrew, or just a way of starting the sentence? FRANK EDWARDS: Stronger than it looks. It is 'ach, a small word that means only, nothing but. Psalm 73 opens with the same two words in the same order: "Surely God is good to Israel." Its writer then admits, "my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." He nearly lost his footing, and he still says only good. David says it after a valley and a table set among enemies. What is on his trail is nothing but goodness and mercy. LINDA BROWN: Luke's story starts with two crowds. Tax collectors and sinners gathering to listen, and Pharisees and scribes grumbling. And Luke says "all" the tax collectors and sinners were gathering, as if word had gone round that this teacher would have them. FRANK EDWARDS: The parable is spoken to the grumblers. Tax collectors gathered tolls and taxes for Rome or its local rulers, and they were widely seen as collaborators who lined their own pockets. When some came to John the Baptist, he told them, "Collect no more than you are authorized." Sinners meant people known for open wrongdoing. And the complaint is precise: "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." On steps ten and eleven we sat at two very different tables. Sharing a table meant accepting someone, and Jesus accepted them. LINDA BROWN: Then he asks a question aimed straight at them. "What man among you?" And there is a question almost everybody asks the first time they hear it. Who is watching the ninety-nine? FRANK EDWARDS: The honest answer is that Jesus does not say. The story is not interested in the arrangements. It keeps its eyes on the one. On step thirteen we heard that shepherds counted their sheep as they passed under the rod, and Jeremiah 33 pictures flocks that "pass under the hands of the one who counts them." One missing out of a hundred would show up at the count, and any shepherd would go. The word for pasture is literally "the wilderness," open country with no town nearby. A lost sheep there was in real danger. LINDA BROWN: "And go after the one that is lost, until he finds it." There is no point in the story where he gives up. FRANK EDWARDS: That is radaph with a face. The pursuit of Psalm 23:6 has become a man walking the hills until he finds one animal. He does not send a hired hand; he goes himself. Ezekiel 34, the chapter that has run through this series, promised it: "As a shepherd looks for his scattered sheep when he is among the flock, so I will look for My flock." And later in Luke, Jesus says of himself, "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." The Pharisees thought they were watching Jesus keep bad company. He was doing the search Ezekiel promised. LINDA BROWN: That search goes back a long way. The first question God asks in the Bible is in Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve hid: "Where are you?" FRANK EDWARDS: From the beginning, the God of Scripture goes looking for people who have run from him. Psalm 139 says there is no outrunning him: "Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?" David asks it as a man who cannot get away from God's kindness. That is "all the days of my life." The pursuit does not stop on a good day or a bad one. LINDA BROWN: Then the finding. "He joyfully puts it on his shoulders." He does not drive it home or scold it. And he does not keep the news to himself. He calls his friends and neighbors, so a whole village hears about one sheep. FRANK EDWARDS: No lecture, no walking behind it with a stick. Isaiah 40 pictures God the same way: "He tends His flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in His arms." The image of a shepherd with a sheep across his shoulders is one of the oldest in Christian art, painted on the walls of early Christian burial places. And look at what the sheep contributes to the journey home. It is lifted, and that is all. LINDA BROWN: Ezekiel's list had "bring back the strays" in it. That sounds close to another line of our psalm, "He restores my soul." FRANK EDWARDS: Closer than it sounds in English. On step four we heard that "restores" in Psalm 23:3 is shuv, to turn or bring back. The verb in Ezekiel 34 for "bring back the strays" comes from the same root. Israel prayed it in Psalm 80: "Restore us, O God, and cause Your face to shine upon us, that we may be saved." And Jeremiah 31 has Ephraim say, "Restore me, that I may return." God brings back, and then the person returns. In this parable the two lines of the psalm meet. The pursuit of verse six is how the restoring of verse three happens. LINDA BROWN: Jesus ends with joy in heaven "over one sinner who repents." But the sheep did not do anything. It was found. FRANK EDWARDS: Jesus calls that repentance. The word means a change of mind, a turning around. Turning back to God is what being found looks like. It is not a way of earning the search. Paul puts it plainly in Romans 5: "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The pursuit started before the sheep turned. LINDA BROWN: The longest psalm ends exactly where this story begins. Psalm 119, after a hundred and seventy-five verses about loving God's law, closes, "I have strayed like a lost sheep; seek Your servant." FRANK EDWARDS: The writer who loved God's word most still knew he had wandered, and asked to be pursued. The lost sheep is not only the obvious sinner. It is anyone who knows they have strayed. And Luke 15 does not stop with one story. A woman searches her house for one coin "until she finds it." Then a father sees his son coming home: "while he was still in the distance, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him." LINDA BROWN: The father runs. Many readers point out that a dignified older man in that culture did not run in public, so the running itself would have shocked the listeners. Goodness and mercy, running down the road. FRANK EDWARDS: Your picture is exactly the verb of Psalm 23:6. And the prophets say God's heart is like that. Hosea 11: "How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel?... My compassion is stirred!" Zephaniah 3: "He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing." The shepherd's "Rejoice with me" is God's own joy. LINDA BROWN: That leaves the ninety-nine. "Righteous ones who do not need to repent." Is Jesus being serious? FRANK EDWARDS: The line stings, and it is meant to. The grumblers saw themselves as the ninety-nine, safe in the fold. Elsewhere in Luke Jesus says, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." And in the third story the older son "became angry and refused to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him." The father goes out to both sons. Goodness and mercy pursue the resentful brother too. Matthew records Jesus telling the lost sheep story to his own disciples and ending it, "your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish." LINDA BROWN: The same Hebrew verb also shows up for what God's people chase, doesn't it? Psalm 34 says, "seek peace and pursue it." FRANK EDWARDS: Psalm 34, and Isaiah 51, "you who pursue righteousness," and Hosea 6, "let us press on to know the LORD," where "press on" is radaph again. Paul tells Timothy to "pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness." People who have been chased down by goodness become people who chase after it. That is not how they get into the fold. It is what life in the fold looks like. LINDA BROWN: Jesus began with a question, "What man among you?" So the parable leaves one with us, really. Which crowd am I standing in? FRANK EDWARDS: The answer is good news either way. If you know you have wandered, the Shepherd is already looking, and you do not have to make yourself presentable first. If you have been in the fold a long time, every day of your life has been a day of being pursued and kept, and the invitation is to share his joy when others are found. Hear the shepherd's words again, and then the psalm. "Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep!" Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time is our last step, Revelation chapter seven, where the Lamb is the Shepherd who leads his people to springs of living water, and the whole psalm comes home. FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for going after the lost sheep with Luke today.