STRAYING SHEEP
[p. 52] STRAYING SHEEP
Isaiah 53:6; Psalm 119:176; Song of Songs 6:6
I have in mind tonight to speak to souls who haven gone astray. There are many abroad who were born into light, as indeed everyone in Christendom is, but there are those who were born into light in a more immediate sense — in the sense that their parents were Christians. Those born in heathendom are different, of whom there are, alas, vast millions, for there are perhaps four times more of them, including Mohammedans, than there are of nominal Christians. That is a very solemn consideration, and one that baffles many, especially in view of the fact that Scripture says that the world, including the heathen part of it, is in reconciliation. But we have also to bear in mind that God is in charge of all these matters and is not obliged to give an account of them to us. Did He do so, we could, perhaps, scarcely understand. Nor are other things any clearer; there are many other things that we have to leave. We are creatures and generally very limited in our knowledge, although these modern days, days of research and investigation, may seem to have brought much to light as to things that had been obscure. Yet many things remain obscure; we look into the heavens, for instance, and the thought arises, ‘What is beyond that, and what is beyond that, and what is beyond that?’ and we are lost, in danger indeed of losing our minds if we keep too long on that line. So we have to admit that we are exceedingly limited, and that our very efforts to understand may endanger our health. It is well to humble ourselves, dear friends, as to these matters, and each to come back to his own little self, and even there he is baffled, at least I am, as regards his physical constitution. I mean to say that as we come back to ourselves, each is just as limited as to knowledge of what he is, and of what is current every instant in his [p. 53] body and in his mind. God has intended the environment in which He has set us to affect us in this way, and it is only a fool that disregards this.
Thus such foolish questions are asked, and, indeed, were asked the Lord Jesus. “Are there few that be saved?” (Luke 13:23) one says to the Lord. The Lord could tell him every one of the saved; He could tell him every person that is in the counsels of God, and yet the book of Revelation speaks of a number of persons who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and it says that no man could number them, even that particular set. The Lord could tell that particular man the exact number of those required for the counsels of God. God has His own number and the Lord knows that number, and He could have told that man that number, but what good would it have done him? The Lord did nothing of the kind. It was a question for that man to find out whether he was amongst the saved. That would be the burning question for any honest person; I mean honest in the sense that God has begun to work in his soul; there is no honest man otherwise. I am not accusing any person of being dishonest in the ordinary sense. The Lord Jesus says to Nicodemus, a very great teacher in his day, a leading teacher in Israel, You must be born anew. That word anew means that you must be born throughout, that the old birth does not count at all; and it is the effect of that operation called ‘new birth’, for it is really born from above, born throughout; it is the effect of that that makes an honest man, and every such man will question before God as to himself; he will smite upon his breast like a certain man the Lord speaks of who went up to the temple to pray. He smote upon his breast. Another man went up too, but he did not smite upon his breast. There are very few going to the temple, even what is called the temple of God today. There are very few going to the churches today, alas! One would very much prefer to see the churches filled than to see the picture shows filled,
[p. 54] not that I am commending you to go, but I am saying that we are in terrible times when men on every hand are giving up even a semblance of Christianity. But here is one man who goes up to the temple to pray and he smites upon his breast and says, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13) — to me. That is an honest man. They are very rare. Someone says that an honest man is the noblest work of God. I do not believe he meant what I am saying, I do not believe he understood what I am saying, but what I am saying and what he said is true, that an honest man is, you may say, the noblest work of God, morally so. Every such man will stand up before God and challenge himself in His presence as to whether he is fit to meet God; and not only so, he will avail himself of what God provides to make him fit for God. He will accept the gospel. He will see that it is the only remedy for man, and if he is advanced in years he will say, ‘I have been a fool all these years’; moreover he will say, ‘I have been morally unrighteous all these years’. And so it is, beloved friends, an honest man will face things; he will admit his limitations and he will acknowledge and answer to his responsibility before God, and he will be unhappy until matters are settled between his soul and God.
Well now, I said all that in relation to the puzzles that people are talking about. What is going to become of the heathen, of the little children and so on? To anyone who is questioning about little children I would say to you that the Lord Jesus says, “Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven”, (Matthew 18:10). A most assuring word! The truth is that we do not accept God in His infinite greatness or recognise that that greatness is also seen in His ability to take account of the minutest things, of the very smallest particles, of the very seeds put into the ground. A seed of corn, or any seed you like, which falls into the ground, God gives a body (think of that!) as it pleases Him. It shews His ability to take up details and to follow [p. 55] them up; so that we can well leave everything with God. We often quote and rightly, the great believer, the father of us all, even Abraham, saying “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). What a fine question! It was no question really. It answered itself, and how settling that is to those who believe. We leave everything with God, but then we do not claim irresponsibility as to our salvation. We are responsible to God about that, and if we are honest with God and with ourselves we question before Him as to it. And what I believe some here will have to arrive at and own in honesty is that they began in light, that they came into this world into a wonderful heritage of light — the light of the gospel. Suppose we were born into this world with no sun, moon or stars in the heavens. Well, you say, ‘It would be impossible to live’. Surely, but is that not applicable to the moral system of things? Morally it is impossible to live unless there is such light as Christ in heaven and the Holy Spirit here; but think of being born into that light! That light is known here in Christendom but in no immediate or positive way; that is to say, you are born into a believer’s household where God is owned, where there is an altar, so to speak, where the Bible is owned, believed in, and read and practised. Think of being born into that! Think of the heritage that is yours! Yet there are those here and myriads throughout Christendom who have gone astray. The force of the word would mean that. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way”, (Isaiah 53:6). These are not the words of a heathen, beloved friends, these are the words of persons who were born into light, for every Jew was born into light. Even the apostle Paul says, in regard to the Jew, “What advantage then hath the Jew? ... Much every way”. And what particularly? “Unto them were committed the oracles of God”, (Romans 3:1,2). Every Jew is born into that, no heathen is born into that. So the apostle Paul says again, “Of whom, as according to flesh, is the Christ” (Romans 9:5). Think of the heritage a Jew was born into! And these speakers in this well-known chapter in Isaiah belong to these. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way”. One goes about the world a little, and many others here also go about, and we know that particularly in the British Dominions there are many young men and women grown up now into middle age, and perhaps old age, who were born into light and took their own way, they would go abroad and they got into the world. They abandoned their heritage. They have gone astray, you see. Many of them have been known as remittance men. Many of them would start out to see the world and say, ‘The world owes me a living’. The world owes you nothing, you will find that out. It has nothing to give in the sense in which I am speaking; if you are on that line you have chosen a false way. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way”. Let each question himself here tonight as to what way he has chosen. You have gone astray, you came into light and you have left it. You have taken on a by-path instead of the highway of God, and now you are stranded. You are stranded, maybe, financially and morally, and the Lord is here tonight to meet you in the gospel; and so the Spirit of God through the mouths of these speakers says, “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”. For it is not only that I have gone astray, but the straying means iniquity. What sins entered into those straying ways, who can tell? We can be sure that it is will from the beginning to the end; you have taken your own way. It is a way of your own choosing; not that you have inaugurated the thing, for it is usual that young people follow examples. There are very few originals. The world really is built up on leadership; you hear what others have done and you say, ‘I will try too’, and you do, and it is a steadily crooked way. The world, you know, is built up for such as you.
[p. 57] Satan has designed it and has been working at it for thousands of years and has in mind such as you.
We read in Proverbs, which is spoken to young people, to persons in the relation of sons, that the wicked woman has a flattering tongue, she flatters with her mouth. The man is froward; he says froward things. The wicked man in the book of Proverbs represents the intelligent leadership of the world; the leaders on this line are marked by speaking froward things; they always like to bring out something that catches, that has not been heard of before. It is not a question of being right or wrong, but a question of being froward, and drawing attention to the person who says it. That is modernism and all that goes with modernism. But then there is the other side — the flattering side, that is to say, the theatre and cinema. What marks these institutions is flattery, and young people are very keen on flattery; and so it is that the foolish woman is found in the highway, and she entices, she calls out to the wayfaring and to the passers-by, “Turn in hither: ... Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant” (Proverbs 9:16,17). But he turns, as the writer says, “as an ox goeth to the slaughter” (Proverbs 7:22). “But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell”, (Proverbs. 9:18). This is the situation in going astray. How many have been ruined in this way, and one would speak to young men and women here tonight, If you have veered at all from the light into which you were born, the word is for you. The speakers here are acknowledging that they have gone astray. They are enlightened and now it is for you to come in, as you get in the last verse of Psalm 119.
It is a wonderful psalm, the longest of them all, 176 verses. It is an alphabetical psalm, a psalm written by a man who had gone through the deepest exercises in regard of God, and yet he finishes up his remarks with a remarkable statement. He says, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”. How honest he is! You can [p. 58] understand the force of his words if you read the psalm. He says, “I have not forgotten thy commandments”. Indeed he had not. If anyone read the psalm he would be impressed with the wonderful grasp the psalmist had of the commandments of God, and the more he judges himself in the light of them, the more he will acknowledge that he has gone astray like a lost sheep.
The fact of the matter is that he is a repentant person. Repentance is not a mere historic thing at all. It has a beginning, of course, but it is never regarded as finished until we die. There may be repentance afterwards, you know, as in the unsaved, but I am speaking now of truly repentant persons. The word is a repenting sinner. “There is joy before the angels of God for one repenting sinner”, (Luke 15:10). It is that kind of person. It is not the kind of person who says, ‘I attended a gospel meeting 15 years ago. So-and-so was preaching and I was converted’. But where have you been ever since? ‘I have been in the world’. Then you do not belong to the class that heaven rejoices in. Heaven rejoices in persons who go on repenting. The more you know of God and yourself the more you will see the need of repenting. And so this wonderful writer is one of the greatest authors I know. I do not know who it is, the name is not given. It is a question of whether I can go through with things; whether I can write down my exercises alphabetically before God, one after another, and then say, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”. You could not write anything truer. If the apostle Paul himself were to speak to us in the light of these things he would say, ‘I am like that’. Do you think he ceased repenting? I do not think so. I am certain he did not. Luke tells us that what interests heaven in regard to repentance is just that they are repenting sinners, not simply persons who have repented, but who are doing it. That is this man; and he says to Jehovah, “I have not forgotten thy commandments”. I say Amen to that. There is every evidence he had not.
But he says, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”. What an interesting man this is to heaven! Think of what heaven thought of him, after writing this wonderful psalm of 176 verses, and saying this at the close of it, instead of sitting down and saying, ‘Look at that psalm, did anybody ever write a psalm like that?’ He would be inflated if he said that. But perhaps someone is here who is accustomed to look back on his history since he was converted who says, ‘I have been preaching and people have been saved by me. I have written books too’. That is not of any interest to heaven at all. Not a bit. It is the man who is able to say just where he has been spiritually after all his ministry, after all his writings; reviewing them all, he says, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”. But then he says, “I have not forgotten thy commandments”. That is to say, there is a great moral element in the man, and how much God will do for this man. I believe that was a great time in heaven, if you understand me; I am not speaking lightly. I believe it was a great time in heaven when this man said that, after writing such a psalm. Would he not write another? I think he would. As we are told of the prophet John in the book of Revelation, an angel says to him, “Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel” (Revelation 10:8), and then he is instructed to eat it up. And he did, he ate it up. It was in his mouth sweet, but in his belly it was bitter; that is to say, he felt things. He felt what would be the consequences of that little book, of what that little book says, and then it was said to him, “Thou must prophesy again” (Revelation 10:11). It is the taking of the low place. “I have gone astray like a lost sheep”. I do not know who the psalmist was who wrote this psalm, but you may be sure the mind of heaven is, ‘You can write another’. What I want to point out is that he calls upon Jehovah. He says, “Seek thy servant”. The Lord is here tonight to seek every one of us. I never think of preaching the gospel except to preach [p. 60] to the saints who are present, and then to the others, the more saints the better so far as I am concerned. They receive things more freely and intelligently than others and they need to. There is something wrong very often with us. You know most of us need a second conversion, and more than two, more than three. Now this wonderful writer, this spiritual man, this writer of these 176 verses of the most remarkable matter, all treating of the ordinances of God, the precepts of God, says, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant”. The Lord is here tonight, as I said, to seek every one of us. If there be anything wrong with the best of us, the most spiritual of us, that should be the language of his heart — “Seek thy servant; for I have not forgotten thy commandments”. There may be something with you that you have not detected, something that is hindering you, marring your testimony, and if the light comes into your soul at this moment, this will be the language of your heart, “Seek thy servant; for I have not forgotten thy commandments”.
What a history Peter had after he had denied the Lord Jesus! He did not take long to confess, that sin did not remain long on his conscience. It was not like the case in Luke 13 where we are told a woman had been bound by the devil eighteen years before. Something had happened in her life eighteen years before that had not been settled. It was not so with Peter, it took only a few hours, as far as I can see. Luke puts it very beautifully. He says, “Immediately ... the cock crew”,(Luke 22:60) as it were a clock on the wall striking the hour; the Lord looked then at Peter. The Lord had put something on the calendar, so to say — that Peter was going to do, before the cock crew twice. He said, ‘You will deny Me three times before that’. The Lord had said that and the Lord kept it in His mind. Think of the wonderful Saviour we have to do with! He is here tonight on that very principle. He was before the high priest; He knew the cross was ahead of Him; He knew that [p. 61] the terrible agony of the cross and the forsaking of God were ahead of Him, yet He kept that in His mind, that He had said that to Peter, that the time would come when the cock would crow the third time and that He would look at Peter, and He did. He turned around and looked at Peter, as much as to say, ‘Peter — you know’. Think of the Lord carrying in His mind what had happened to that woman eighteen years before! We would have to regard the Lord as about twelve years of age when it happened, but He knew it happened and He says, ‘It is going to be rectified’. He called her, and that is the principle here tonight. “Seek thy servant”. If there is any such question in any soul here tonight, how ready He is to draw near and help you.
I want to say a word about this other statement in Isaiah 53:6. These speakers, or whoever is speaking for them, say, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”. ALL! Think of that! Jehovah, in spite of those crooked wills which took their own way, was thinking of them and of their iniquities and He laid them all upon Jesus. ‘How could it be?’ you say, ‘Retribution should be in His mind’. But no! Retribution, of course, was in His mind for the sins must come in for judgment, but it was the retribution that was to fall on Jesus. Think of the agony of God, if I may speak so of God, of what it was to Him, as He looked down from heaven, to contemplate those wanderers, those strayers who took their own ways, and to decide that in spite of their crooked wills He was going to send His Son and He was going to lay all those iniquities on His beloved Son. Think of that! Let us rest in it. Think of the grace of it. Think of what it was to God to contemplate the laying on Him of these iniquities of those stubborn, self-willed people going astray. I refer to Saul as an example; see how he strayed. He took his own way; he held the clothes of those who stoned Stephen, and he sought letters from [p. 62] the priesthood at Jerusalem to go to Damascus to hail men and women there, as in Judea, to the tribunals, to be imprisoned and to be put to death. He was an insolent overbearing man. That is what he was, but the Lord Jesus met him on the way. God had foreseen that man in his crookedness and He laid his sins upon Jesus. Is not that like balm to your soul as you look back upon your history of sin, that God had seen it beforehand and had made provision for it and laid all those sins upon Jesus? If there is one here tonight repentant, that word is for you. “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”. We do not feel it much. One has to own it. What was it to God to think it out beforehand? He looked down from heaven, we are told in the book of Psalms, to see if there was any good, and instead of good, this is what He saw, these crooked ways, and He had them all on His mind. He knew the end from the beginning of everyone, and laid their iniquities on Jesus. He did it. Does it not touch our hearts? It ought to. What thoughts and feelings were in the divine mind, in view of the incarnation, taking account of all those ways, those crooked ways, in view of men coming to repentance one day. “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all”, and if there is one who comes to repentance tonight, this word applies to you. You will take up these words, you will look into the gospel, you will believe it. Mark says you are to believe in it. He quotes the Lord Jesus in that way: “Believe in the glad tidings” (Mark 1:15), meaning that you are to believe in the gospel in a general way, and look into it and see the depths and wonders and riches of it.
Now, having said so much, I want to go on to the Song of Songs, to show how the work of God proceeds in persons like the writer of Psalm 119, how such persons are brought together; and what a group of psalm writers are brought together in the five books of Psalms! They bring together a wonderful group of believers, but they [p. 63] do not bring together all the believers. One loves to think of the myriads of the redeemed, and how the Lord, speaking poetically and feelingly to His bride in the Song of Songs (the saints are His bride), addresses them as seen together; for there are those here tonight who are really the Lord’s, as much as the most spiritual of us, but they are not delivered from the world, they have not committed themselves to the brethren, nor come to see the heritage they have come into in the saints. The Lord, referring to the saints, says of them that they are the excellent of the earth, “In them is all my delight ... Yea, I have a goodly heritage”, (Psalm 16:3,6). The Lord is pleased with the brethren. He would love to see some one, or more, here tonight, come to this, that the brethren are a heritage, they are God’s heritage, they are the heritage of the saints, too. They have love in their hearts; think of a people in this world with love, divine love, in their hearts. They are thinking of you. They know that you are not faring as well as you ought to be faring; they know that you are out in the cold world, that you are seeking something there, that you are not getting on at all. They would love to see you take your place amongst the sheep, amongst those who have spoken so contritely, so uprightly, whose names are not only in the book of life, but in the book of Jasher, meaning the book of the upright people. Those two books go together. Those in the book of life are necessarily in the book of Jasher, the book of the upright people. That is what the people are. Think of an upright people, people who are practically righteous, but who have love in their hearts. What a heritage that there is such a society as that available in this city, as in hundreds of towns and villages and cities in this world; and yet you are outside of it all. We know you are not faring well; we know just where you are; we know that you are not in the house of feasting, the house of music and dancing that Luke 15 speaks of, and your place is vacant. It is [p. 64] indeed. You are needed there; no one can take your place there. If you have a place in the counsels of God no one can take it; it belongs to you. The whole bent of heaven and of the Spirit of God upon earth is to get you there. The Lord looks at such; He calls them sheep here. He looks at them together; He looks at the saints, and pictures them in a remarkable way. He says your teeth — the teeth of the saints — are as a flock of sheep that go up from the washing. They are real teeth that He is looking at. They enter greatly into the symmetry and beauty of the human countenance, and no one knows better how to value a human countenance than the Lord Jesus. He says, “Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice” (Song of Songs 2:14). Did the Lord ever address you like that? He is doing so tonight. He would love to have you look into His countenance. The psalmist refers to the salvations of His countenance, the countenance of God and the face of Jesus; but He wants to look into your countenance and see the effect of salvation in your countenance. And what are the teeth? They are important; they have an important function. There must be mastication, but I am not speaking of that, nor is the Lord here, exactly; He is speaking of the beautiful symmetry and the beauty of the ornamentation of the teeth. What is the figure? It is the saints. Young people turned away from the world; such are like a flock of sheep shorn (He uses the word ‘shorn’ in chapter 4), coming up from the washing. You say ‘washing’? Yes, I say ‘washing’. The Scriptures are full of the thought of washing. There is a great deal made of watering-places in these modern times. One often thinks of them. This month of August in Europe is a great time for holiday making. The idea of watering and bathing is very, very prominent, but not in the moral sense; in fact it is very often the other way, And so the Lord is looking at young people turning their backs on the world. What does that mean? That means washing. “Blessed are they”, says the Spirit of God, “that wash their robes” (Revelation 22:14), not who have done it. No, it is not a past thing; it is a present thing. “That wash their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life, and that they should go in by the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14). It is a present thing.
So He looks at the saints coming up. You have been in the world, but now you have turned your back on it and want to be with the brethren, and oh, how lovely you are alongside of them! How different you look from what you looked when you were going along the street with that ungodly acquaintance, that worldly companion! Your looks are different. And so the Lord says, ‘Now I want you to understand what I think of you’. He says, “Thy teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep, which go up from the washing” (Song of Songs 4:2), meaning that a Christian is now ready to give up. Shearing is taking something away from you, it means that you are yielding wealth to someone else. Is it not worth while to sacrifice, to yield your back so that you may be shorn of whatever there is in you that others can use for their benefit? The Lord says, ‘You are just like that — like a flock of shorn sheep coming up from the washing’. They have lost their wool. In the losing of it, others have gained; that is the happy thing. In truth, in the hot weather it is an advantage for the sheep to be shorn. Coming up from the washing is the important thing. How many of us are accustomed to wash? You say, ‘I am washed in the blood of the Lamb’. Thank God. But that may be a historic thing, for faith in the shed blood of Jesus is good for eternity, but it may be only historic, I am not saying it is not valid, but the Lord is not speaking of that here. He is speaking of washing of a different kind, because, you know, the blood flowed from the side of Jesus for our conscience, to deal with our sins; but the water also flowed from the side of Jesus, and that is another matter; that is to do with you morally, it [p. 66] means that all that wretched state that has produced all these wicked things is to be dealt with. So He says, ‘Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep coming up from the washing; that is what you remind Me of’. It refers to ornamentation. The Lord is depicting the beauty of His people as they turn their backs on the world and join with the saints, those who not only have washed their robes, but who are washing their robes; those who do it. And all these people have a right to the tree of life. Do you ever think of that? Do you ever think that you have a right to the tree of life? It is a great time, you know, for the assertion of human rights, but it is not being handled very well in some countries. It is not very long ago that the slogan was that the world is to be fit for democracy to live; but it is not making headway. So we will not get on very well on the line of asserting our rights in this world, but we do get on well when we assert our rights to God’s world. God loves it. These rights belong to people who wash. It is a moral question, that one is accustomed to apply the word of God to himself to rectify his conduct, regulating his conduct by the word of God, He allows the word to come to him in its power. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword ... and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”, (Hebrews 4:12). That is what it is, and the true honest man I have been speaking of allows that, allows the word of God to have full sway in his soul. If you read Psalm 119, you will be impressed with the way the writer allowed the word of God to probe his very inmost being. That man has rights. Psalm 120 to Psalm 134 are all psalms of right, that is to say, they admit of persons going up to heaven. They are psalms of ascension; you have a right to go up. Think of God according that to you! It is on moral grounds. You see, you wash. “Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life, and that they should go in by the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14). That belongs to people who wash, and each of us can tell if it applies to him; that is, am I allowing the word of God, the water that flowed from the side of Jesus, from the side of a dead Christ? The Lord Jesus died in order that I might have water to wash in, and hence acquire a right to the tree of life and enter by the gates into the city.
That is all I had to present, dear friends, and I would commend it to you, especially to the young ones, that you might join in with the brethren as those who wash their robes and whom the Lord delights to look at and whose praise He loves to hear. He seeks to look into your countenance and see you with the brethren whom He loves.