32 - Matthew 18:13

’Verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.’ -Matthew 18:13.

Lost of God! Is it possible that one of God’s creatures should be lost? The universe is vast, and it is a very simple matter for a creature to get beyond the limits within which it is at home, and wander darkling. A simple matter to lose the power of self-direction, and enter a region where what we know and what we see are in contradiction. But lost to God! how shall this ever be? The universe is vast; but whither shall we flee from God’s Spirit? All creation is but as a speck of dust in the palm of his hand. Shall we ever wander to a region where the omniscience of God shall not compass us about like the atmosphere, and where we shall not live and move and have our being in all his perfections? The Divine perfections may compass us about and interpenetrate us, and yet we may be lost to God. The blind man is lost to the light of the sun, though it be perpetually descending in a mighty torrent all about him; the deaf man is lost to the music of the grove and of the human voice, to the artillery of heaven and the mimic thunder of earth. The sensualist is lost to all that is refining and elevating in woman; the drunkard is lost to all considerations of his own good and the good of others; he that committeth sin is the servant of sin; the transgressor has departed from the living God; unbelief has destroyed the communication between him and God; he is lost to God.

Lost to God, inasmuch as he is without the knowledge of the true God. Whatever knowledge he had, sin has vitiated it; like a drop of fiery and fatal acid in purest water, quickly corrupting the whole. Lost to God, inasmuch as the will of God is displaced for his own will; he is become a god unto himself, and has substituted a decalogue of his own for that which God gave; where God wrote Do not, he has written Do. Lost to God, inasmuch as he has lost the sense of dependence upon God, and is under the sad delusion that he is sufficient unto himself. Lost to God, inasmuch as he is now the victim of a deceitful heart, that knows how to palm off upon him all manner of lies about all things to which his moral nature stands related. Lost to God, since he is without the sense of God’s love, and consequently without the conception of true happiness. And finally, he is lost to God, seeing that he is utterly without the faculty of self-restoration. No experience of the bitter evils of his own way will of itself suffice to restore harmony between him and God. God, in his infinite wisdom, has seen good to extend to man the amplest opportunity of showing how far he could in his own strength and by the light of nature climb heavenward; and lo, the highest heaven to which, under the most favourable combination of circumstances possible, he was able to climb, was Olympus with its Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Bacchus, and the rest, - instead of heaven, to a painted and gilded hell.

Alas! the world is full of the lost. And these all have hold of one another in such a way, that to the gravitation of one you must add that of all the rest, to know the ruin of each. The lost are as many as Christ came into the world to call; as many as he commanded his Gospel to be preached to. So it appears that they are not lost to God in the sense that God has lost his interest in them. The Divine perfections make it impossible that God should ever make light of sin, or deal with sinners in a way to disguise his infinite and undying hatred of sin. As the blissful destiny of all beings is bound up in the Divine will, the violation of that will is an onslaught on all the happiness of all creatures, and requires a tremendous expression of wrath from a God of love. In Christ the wisdom of God has solved all the problems of the case. If the salvation of the sinner awakens such incomparable joy in the Divine Recoverer, how fearful must have been the loss from which he is recovered! Not merely the Shepherd but the ninety and nine rejoice in the recovery of the wanderer. They praise God continually for all that he is to them; but when the lost one is brought back they gain a new discovery of the depths of that love which constitutes all their happiness. The sinner tells the angel what the angel could never by himself have learned. Once saved, does God’s interest in us diminish? This is not what the Saviour teaches. He has in mind particularly the Pharisee. He reasons with him on his own ground. You think that you need no repentance; have always dwelt under the shadow of God’s wing. If this be so, then surely you ought to know that God delighteth in mercy, and rejoiceth in the salvation of the lost. And if he has manifested himself to you, it is that in you he may be manifested to those that know him not. Even in blessing you he thought of the unblest.