You may think that's naive, but that is the common idea today. Sin is just certain things that other people do, and just occasionally, people think, they themselves will be guilty of some sin or other. The Bible teaches that sin is a condition of the heart. We are all sinners because we are in a constant state of sin. Just as someone with leprosy is a leper, because the poor fellow has a disease in his body, so we are all sinners because the essence of sin is deep-seated within us. We are in a constant state of sin, and it is because we are in a state of sin that sinful deeds are generated from our hearts.
The parable teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to deal with us individually, one by one. Christianity does not save people in blocks. Our tendency is to think that God deals with the whole human race as one, or perhaps with nations as one. God does not divide up lands and save people by postal areas. He comes and deals with us one by one. We think that a prime minister or a king couldn't possibly be aware of every single subject in the kingdom, and somehow we extend that idea to God – God only sees in generalities. No, people are not Christians because they have grown up in Christian families. God makes a man to be a Christian by bringing an individual personal experience of conversion to each one who is saved. He is like the man who has a hundred sheep and if one is lost, he will go after it. If you've never had a personal experience of God, a personal conversion which you know and which you felt, you cannot be a true Christian. We are all lost because we are born into this life with our spirits dead. We are cut off from God, and we pile up this great debt of sin between us and God. We don't know God; we can't pray to him. If somebody is going to be converted, God will reason with you, and work in your heart, and turn you around and bring you to repentance. When you repent of all your sin, he will give you an experience of conversion and a new beginning. Tragically, people don't often know this. The last thing that occurs to them, I am lost. I am cut off from God because I do not worship him and love him and seek him and rely upon him. I'm away from him and doomed to die and be eternally condemned. Lostness is a terrible thing.
We learn also that Christ saves people in the face of incredible circumstances. He saves people in spite of sin. There is the shepherd; he has ninety-nine sheep safe in the fold. One has gone out into the wilderness. It is dangerous out there. The sheep will soon run out of food, starve, lose its way. It will wander about, oblivious of its danger. The shepherd has got to leave the encampment, and risk his own life. He has got to face the hardship of going out, and perhaps enduring the extremes of temperature in the wilderness. Wouldn't it be easier to write that sheep off, rather than face all the discomforts, and the difficulties and the lost time? What a picture this is of the cost on the part of Christ when he reclaims any single one of us and converts us. What is there in it for Christ? What does he have to do? Let’s suppose you are unconverted and you don't know the Lord. He has got to come and persuade you to repent of your sins and make you aware of your awful sin. You are certain to resist him at first, and he has to overcome all your resistance. Why should he spend such trouble over us? What can we possibly add to him? I haven't even got a living spirit when I'm unconverted. I can't identify with him. I can't bring him any love. I can't show him any affection. I cannot bring him any righteousness. He has to do everything for me. You imagine this sheep: the sheep is lost in the wilderness. The shepherd appears over the hillside, approaching the sheep. What does the sheep do? It sees the shepherd approaching, and immediately goes further up a rocky hillside, making it even more difficult to reach. The shepherd has already come across the wilderness, already endured nights and days, and the sheep is worth very little. What is the point? It is a picture of you and I. Not only am I worth nothing to God, but when he begins to reach out to me in his great mercy, what do I do? I fly away. God sends some friend to speak to you, and what do you do? You laugh at them, you avoid them, you make all sorts of excuses. You aren't going to come out to church, you aren't going to listen to their testimony. You argue with them, you insult them? Because you don’t understand your own lost predicament as a worldling, and the great love of the Saviour. Christ has got to save us in spite of sin, in spite of our foolishness.
The lost sheep is, of course, ignorant. The sheep does not know he is lost, does not know where he is, does not know the way back. To be lost is to be ignorant. I do not realize I am away from God. I do not know how to reestablish contact with him. I don't know about the way back to God. I don't know about Jesus Christ, how he suffered and died, to bear the punishment of my sin so that I could be forgiven and come back. I don't know the truth of God.
What is it to be lost? It is to be aimless. There is the sheep, wandering about. The sheep doesn't have a direction, and nor do we. When we are lost, what is life? It is just wandering aimlessly around, tossed to and fro by the circumstances of life, going after this objective and that objective, but we are not getting any nearer to heaven. We have no heavenly destination, no firm spiritual policy for life. We do not know what will happen to us at the end of life's journey. We make no progress.
And then to be lost involves considerable labour and pain. Most of us know what it is to be lost. You have been somewhere where you became completely disorientated. For the time being, you tried going over here, you tried going over there, up this street, down that street, to try and find your way back to where you ought to be. Eventually, you found your way back, or you found some point of reference that guided you. But while you were lost, you went through a lot of shoe leather. You went through a lot of anxiety, perhaps. You certainly got yourself tired out, going in directions that got you completely nowhere. It is the same in life. If I am lost and away from God, I'll have a lot of trials. Oh, there will be happiness too, but I will have a lot of tribulations, a lot of wasted years, a lot of things I wished I had never done, because life is a great and torturous experiment. To be lost very often involves fear and apprehension. To be lost is to be afraid of death, afraid of what may happen. It is to have no compass. It is to have no way of knowing where you are.
What are some of the characteristics of sheep? The chief characteristic of sheep is sheer lack of intelligence. This is a very humbling parable. It is a sheep who is selected to be lost, because we are just like that. We are so foolish, switching all our attentions to this life and ignoring Almighty God, and running away from him. Just like us, the sheep is also very stubborn. When the shepherd goes on to a rocky place to rescue the sheep, it sees the shepherd and runs away. That is just like us. The preacher speaks about Jesus Christ – how you can have a new life, and your sins forgiven, and come to know him, and have a place in heaven – and away you run. We don't know where we are, until God speaks to our souls and tells us the facts. Sheep are described as being shiftless creatures, an old-fashioned word which means they will not provide for themselves. They have no resourcefulness or responsibility to provide for themselves. Before we are converted, the last thing we think of is, I must provide for my soul, I must provide for my eternal destiny. We can go all through life and never give it a thought. Shiftless, when it comes to spiritual things, as the sheep.
This sheep was lost in a wilderness, and the world we live in, spiritually, is a wilderness. There are some areas of pasture. There is the word of God; there is the gospel; there are believing Christians, gathered together here and there. There's information for the salvation of the soul. There you can be nurtured and helped, but by and large, this world is a wilderness. People are on the run from God. And there is no middle ground: that's what we learn from the wilderness picture.