Luke 19:10

Luke 19:10

The Redeemer's Errand to this World.

I. We find in our text Christ's estimate of the condition of humanity. It is something that is lost. Man is a lost thing. You may look at him in many lights. He is a toiling, hardworking creature. He is an anxious, careworn creature. But for the Redeemer's purpose, the characteristic that surmounted and included and leavened and ran through all the rest, was, that he is a lost creature. All error from the right way; all distance from our heavenly Father's house; all destitution and danger and impossibility of return, and imminence of final ruin, are conveyed in that one word, lost.Trace that word's meaning out into its various shades and ramifications, and you will find that it implies, as no other can, all that we are; all that makes our need of the Saviour His sacrifice, His Spirit, His intercession.

II. The text reminds us of what the blessed Redeemer did for us in our lost estate. He came to seek and save us. The world, so to speak, pushed itself into notice when it fell. Ah! the little planet might have circled round the sun, happy and holy; and never been singled out from the bright millions of which it is the least. But as it is, perhaps this fallen world's name may be on the lips of angels, and in the thoughts of races that never sinned. We, when lost, as it might seem, in hopeless loss, were singled out thereby for the grandest, most precious, most glorious blessing that, so far as we know, was ever given by the Almighty. The Son of God left the glories of heaven to die for us. The Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost. It is, indeed, a mysterious thing, a thing not to be wholly explained by human wit, that the Son of God stood by till man had lost himself, and then came, at cost of painful quests, to seek and save him; when we might think He could so easily have kept man from wandering at all. May we not think that, apart from those grand, inscrutable reasons which the Almighty has for permitting the entrance of evil into His universe those reasons which no man knows the fact of the peculiar interest and pleasure which are felt in an evil remedied, a spoiled thing mended, a lost thing found, a wrong thing righted, may cast some light upon the nature of the Divine feeling toward the world and our race? When all evil that can be remedied is done away with, may not this world seem better to its Almighty Maker's eye, than even when He beheld it, all very good, upon the evening of the sixth day?

A. K. H. B., Counsel and Comfort from a City Pulpit,p. 180.

The conventional religionists of our Lord's time were very much shocked and scandalised at His manner of life. It was sufficiently surprising that He should be found so frequently in the society of peasants, and of women, and of children, instead of courting the patronage of the wealthy and the great; but it was perfectly outrageous that He should have become the friend of thieves and harlots; and these respectable persons very frequently expressed their astonishment and their indignation at His strange conduct. And Jesus said to them, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." They had never grasped the fact that Christ was a great Physician, and that His business was not to go to those who were in perfect health, but to go to those who were ill; and, first of all, to those whose case was most desperate.

I. Now in this Christ has left you and me an example that we should walk in His steps; and if we have the mind of Christ we shall follow the wandering sheep into the wilderness, and shall never rest until we find it. Our business is to go to the prodigal sons of God, and to persuade them to come home again; and, however far off they are, we must follow them to the distant country, and we must refuse to come back without them.

II. It is a remarkable thing in this parable that Christ makes no provision for defeat. He does not say what we are to do if they refuse to come in. He takes it for granted that we must overcome if we are in earnest. Christ everywhere assumes that we shall not fail. It was said by a great Latin historian of Alexander the Great that the secret of his marvellous victories, by which the world was brought to his feet, was this: he wisely dared to think nothing of imaginary dangers. All sorts of reports reached him with regard to the difficulties of invading Asia, and so forth, but he put them all on one side. The devil is always ready to exhibit a few ghosts of difficulties to terrify weak saints. Let us despise the ghosts; there is nothing in them. We cannot fail if our heart is full of love to God, and of sympathy with our fellow-Christians. The only real hindrance to the progress of the Gospel is unbelief in the form of downright selfishness.

H. P. Hughes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 184.

References: Luke 19:10. F. W. Robertson, Sermons,2nd series, p. 190; Parker, Cavendish Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 268; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 204; vol. xix., No. 1100. Luke 19:11. T. T. Lynch, Sermons for My Curates,p. 103.Luke 19:11. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 105; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., pp. 387, 385; vol. viii., p. 233; R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 511.Luke 19:12. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 490; H. Calderwood, The Parables,p. 427; A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 273.