The Lost Sheep Restored

OCTOBER 5, 2023

 “My people hath been lost sheep…” (Jeremiah 50:6)

“My people,” He says, “hath been lost sheep.” –  God’s people, whom He has chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world. (Eph. 1:4) When God saves lost souls, He is not, as I have heard some preach, turning “goats” into “sheep.” They do not become His sheep by being found, nor did they cease to be sheep by being lost. They were sheep eternally in the mind of God, and their being lost did not alter nor destroy their character of being sheep. Neither does the wandering astray of one of God’s sheep from the fold turn that one into a goat. It may be lame, sick, and diseased, its fleece may be torn with briars or soiled with dirt, its appearance altered so that the shepherd may scarcely recognize it, but it is a sheep still, and ever shall be.

They are “lost sheep;” lost, undone, without hope, without strength; lost, having no power to find the way to glory. They are lost having no hope of ever reaching the heavenly shore, save under the immediate work and guidance of the Holy Spirit. When He takes up that work, just as the fingers of a man’s hand wrote the sentence of condemnation in the plaster on the wall of King Belshazzar’s palace, so does the Spirit of God write the word “LOST” upon the conscience of every lost sheep. And when He has written this word with power on their conscience, they are branded in such a manner that the impression is never to be erased until it is blotted out by the atoning blood of the Mediator.

In the two verses that precede the text, and in the text verse itself, we have a description of the way in which the Lord leads His people. They have been carried away, far astray. The cause of this is assigned to their false shepherds. “Their shepherds have caused them to go astray.” They are “going and weeping.” God has caused them to know the horrible state of their lostness. They are in the enemy land. They begin to “seek the Lord their God.” They are “asking the way to Zion, their faces thitherward.”This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Notice first, He brings a soul to know the horror of his lost state. He then causes that lost one to seek help – to seek the Lord. He causes him to “ask the way to Zion” – the heavenly Zion, yes, but the way there goes through the earthly Zion, the Church. “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.” (Mic. 4:2) The way to heaven is found in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ; in the Gospel that she is commissioned to preach. Oh, we beseech you, consider the awful danger of being lost; seek help – ask the way to Zion; seek the Lord your God. He is to be found in the Gospel, for “it is the power of God unto salvation for every one that believeth.” If you would know the way to Zion, please ask of them who are going there.

But the Lord here speaks of His people as having “forgotten their resting place.” God is, therefore, making an appeal to His people who had known the sweet rest and comforts of His Church and had gone astray. This sheds some light on the fact that God’s sheep were lost “on the mountains” where their false shepherds had led them. God’s sheep are lost in the first instance because of the fall – they are lost from their very conception. In this case, however, it is rather the straying away of sheep who have known the fold, than of those that had never known the voice of the Good Shepherd. Thus, it corresponds with the parable of the lost sheep. (Luke 15:4-6) In either case, the situation is one of grave danger. Professed sheep, who have gone astray, dare not presume while they are “away on the mountains,” lest they be found, in fact, to be of that number to whom Jesus said, “Ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep.” He said quite clearly, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)