"Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. And he spake this parable unto them, saying,"1 The parable that follows is the first of three Jesus told in immediate reply, and it is addressed to the very men whose complaint provoked it. "What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?"2
A Flock of a Hundred
A hundred sheep were a substantial holding for a shepherd of that country, and every animal in the flock represented real value in wool, milk, and eventual meat. Losing one was not a trivial loss to be written off without a second thought. Sheep by nature wander. They do not set out to become lost, but they drift from the flock a little at a time until the distance is too great to close on their own, and a sheep separated from the flock has no means of defending itself and no way of finding its way back. Shepherds in that country sometimes worked in pairs or small groups on the larger flocks, which allowed one to leave in pursuit of a straying animal while the others kept watch over the rest. That country's wilderness was open grazing land rather than the barren waste the English word suggests, so the ninety and nine left behind were left on ground that could sustain them, not abandoned to danger for the sake of the one.
The Shepherd Who Goes
The question Jesus puts to His hearers assumes an answer they cannot honestly refuse. What shepherd, finding one sheep missing, does nothing? The shepherd goes after the lost sheep, and he does not go for a little while and give up if the search proves difficult. He goes until he finds it. The persistence is built into the grammar of the sentence itself, not added afterward as commentary. Nothing in the parable measures the search by how long it took or how far the shepherd had to travel. What is measured is only whether the sheep was found, and the parable assumes that it was, because that is what a shepherd does.
Carried Home Rejoicing
"And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost."3
The sheep does not walk home under its own strength. It is carried, laid across the shepherd's shoulders the way an exhausted or injured animal was customarily carried, and the shepherd does the carrying without a word of reproach recorded anywhere in the text. There is no scolding for having wandered and no lecture delivered along the road home. There is only the carrying, and then the rejoicing, and then the same pattern already seen in the parable of the coin: a private relief that will not stay private, so friends and neighbours are called in to share it.
The Joy That Exceeds the Ninety and Nine
"I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance."4
The comparison is not a claim that the ninety and nine are worth less than the one. It is a claim about where joy concentrates. A shepherd with a hundred sheep safe in the fold has no special occasion for celebration; that is simply the ordinary state of his flock. The same shepherd with one sheep newly recovered has an occasion, because something that was absent is present again. The joy is not weighed against the ninety and nine at all. It is weighed against the absence that has just ended.
Not the Father’s Will
Matthew records the same parable inside a different setting, a discourse to the disciples on humility and on how the community is to treat its weaker members. "How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."5 Luke's setting turns the parable outward, toward sinners still outside; Matthew's turns it inward, toward a little one already within the fold who has begun to stray. The same picture answers both settings. What is common to them is the Father's own will, stated here in the plainest terms available: not the perishing of one, whether that one has never yet come in or has wandered after having been received.
The Search Promised Before It Was Told
Ezekiel had already described this same shepherd centuries before either Gospel was written, at a time when Israel's own shepherds, its kings and its leaders, had scattered the flock rather than gathered it. God pledges there to do what those shepherds had failed to do: "For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day."6 The parable Jesus told to the murmuring Pharisees was not a picture invented for that occasion alone. It carries forward a search God had already promised to undertake himself: "I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick."7 The men who complained that Jesus received sinners were watching that old promise being kept in front of them, in the very act they found offensive.
The Shepherd Who Lays Down His Life
David had already sung of the Lord under this same figure: "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."8 What Jesus adds to that confession is a shepherd's willingness to die for the flock rather than merely provide for it. "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."9 He grounds that willingness in a knowledge as close as the knowledge shared between Himself and the Father: "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep."10 Peter later describes every believer's own history in exactly the terms of this parable: "For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."11 The sheep that wandered and the sheep that is carried home are not two different animals. They are the same one, described before and after the search that the parable says the shepherd will not abandon.
The parable ends without telling what became of the sheep afterward, whether it wandered again or stayed close from that day forward. That silence is not an oversight. The parable answers one question only, whether a shepherd who has lost one sheep out of a hundred goes after it, and its answer is unqualified. He goes. He finds it. He carries it home rejoicing. What is left unanswered belongs to the life that follows the finding, not to the finding itself.
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Lesson 5: Shepherding with a Tender Heart — 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9
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The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree: The Patience and Judgment of God
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