In Luke 15 Jesus gave three parables that had essentially the same meaning. They are the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (commonly called the prodigal son). In those parables someone lost something of value, and the parable shows the joy of the person finding what was lost.
In the first parable one sheep wandered off, and the shepherd left his 99 other sheep to find the one. In the second parable a lady lost one of the ten coins that made up her dowry. In the third parable a father watched as one of his two sons left home for a far country.
Think about those percentages. The father lost fifty percent of his sons, and he was broken. The housewife lost ten percent of her coins, and she turned the house upside down. The shepherd lost just one percent of his sheep, and he risked his life to find it. He could have said, “Oh well; I’ve got 99 more. What’s one lamb?”
That is not the attitude of the shepherd; neither was it that of the woman, who did not say, “I’ve got nine more coins.” Luke 15:5-6 shows us what the shepherd did: “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”
Jesus is that Good Shepherd who goes looking for lost sheep. You are not just one out of a hundred, or one out of a billion. You are worth dying for.
That is why Jesus said in v.10, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The Lord of heaven went on a rescue mission to track down sinners, and He celebrates every time one is saved.
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