Week 8 Tuesday — Walking with the Word
Tuesday: The Shepherd Who Seeks - Luke 15:3-7 / John 10:14-15
Tuesday: The Shepherd Who Seeks - Luke 15:3-7 / John 10:14-15
Introduction
Yesterday the psalmist spoke the last word of his 176-verse journey. Not a declaration of arrival. Not a summary of everything he had learned. Just the most honest thing he knew to say at the end of all of it:
I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant.
It is a prayer. A cry. An admission that after everything — the love and the affliction and the midnight praise and the pre-dawn darkness and the great peace and the whole-heart crying — he still cannot find his own way home. He needs to be sought. He needs the Shepherd to come after him.
And Jesus answers.
Not eventually. Not after the sheep has found its way back on its own. The Shepherd leaves. He goes after the one that is lost. He searches until He finds it. And when He finds it He doesn’t send it home with directions — He lifts it onto His shoulders and carries it back rejoicing.
This is the gospel answer to the final verse of Psalm 119. The prayer the psalmist prayed at the end of his greatest psalm — seek your servant — is a prayer that has already been answered in Christ. Before the psalmist finished the sentence. Before any of us knew we were lost. The Shepherd was already leaving the ninety-nine.
And there is one more thing Jesus says — not in the parable but in His own voice, His own identity, the great I am that echoes through every page of John’s Gospel and back through the entire Old Testament: I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.
He knows the lost sheep by name. He knows where it wandered. He knows the way home. And He is already on His way.
Scripture
³ So he told them this parable: ⁴ “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? ⁵ And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. ⁶ And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ ⁷ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
— Luke 15:3-7 (ESV)
¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
— John 10:14-15 (ESV)
Reflection
The One Who Goes After
Jesus sets the scene simply: a man has a hundred sheep, one goes missing, and he leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one that is lost. “And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:5). The shepherd doesn’t wait at the gate. He doesn’t send word that the sheep is welcome back whenever it finds its way. He leaves. He searches. He goes to where the sheep is rather than waiting for the sheep to come to him.
This is the answer to the psalmist’s final cry that has been true since before the psalm was written. Actually, before time began God determined He would come and seek the sheep of His flock.
Seek your servant. That is what the psalmist asked. And what Jesus shows us in this parable is that seeking is precisely what God does. Not reluctantly, not as a last resort, not after the sheep has demonstrated sufficient remorse and made enough effort to deserve being found. The shepherd goes after the one that is lost because it is lost — because it cannot find its own way back and he knows it and he goes anyway.
The prayer “seek your servant” is not a request God needs to be persuaded to answer. It is a description of what He was already doing. The psalmist asked to be sought at the end of 176 verses. The Shepherd had already left the ninety-nine. The search was already underway. The shoulders were already ready. All that remained was the finding — and the finding was never in doubt.
This is what the whole series has been building toward. Not just the psalmist’s love for God’s Word, magnificent as it is. Not just his faithfulness through affliction, costly as it was. Not just his great peace or his whole-heart crying or his declaration that the sum of God’s Word is truth. All of it — every verse — was a lost sheep calling out in the dark. And the Shepherd heard every word.
I Am the Good Shepherd
Then Jesus steps out of the parable and speaks in His own voice: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14-15). I am. The words that stopped every Jewish listener in their tracks — the name God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, now spoken by a carpenter from Galilee standing before them.
I am the good shepherd. Not a good shepherd among many. Not one option among several for the lost sheep to consider. The good shepherd — the One the whole Old Testament had been pointing toward, the One the psalmist’s cry had always been addressed to even when he didn’t have a name for Him yet. Every time the psalmist declared you are my hiding place and you are near, O LORD and deal with me according to your steadfast love — he was speaking to the One who would one day look His people in the eye and say: I am the good shepherd. I know you. I have always known you.
“I know my own.” Not know about. Know. The same deep, personal, covenant knowledge the psalmist had been building across 176 verses of intimate devotion — the Shepherd has it too, and He had it first. The sheep didn’t introduce itself to the shepherd. The shepherd knew the sheep before the sheep knew it was lost. The relationship was always His initiative. The seeking was always His first move.
And then — the line that takes the breath away: “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” The knowing between the Shepherd and the sheep is drawn from the same well as the knowing between the Father and the Son. That is not a small thing. That is the most intimate knowledge in the universe offered to a lost sheep on a hillside.
Joy in Heaven
The parable ends somewhere nobody expected: “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost’” (Luke 15:6). The finding produces a party. Not a quiet relief, not a private satisfaction — a celebration that spills out into the neighborhood, that cannot be contained, that has to be shared with everyone within reach.
And Jesus makes the application explicit: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (v. 7). More joy. The mathematics of heaven run differently than the mathematics of earth. On earth the ninety-nine who stayed seem more valuable than the one who wandered. In heaven the one who was lost and is found produces more joy than all the rest combined.
This reframes the psalmist’s final confession completely. I have gone astray like a lost sheep — those words, spoken honestly and without pretense at the end of 176 verses of passionate devotion — are not a disappointment to heaven. They are an occasion for celebration. The honest admission of wandering, the undefended cry of seek your servant — this is not the sound of faith failing. This is the sound of a lost sheep being found. And heaven throws a party every time.
The finish line is not perfection. It is not triumphant arrival or sustained faithfulness or a spotless record of devotion. The finish line is this: honest confession, empty hands, and a Shepherd who was already on His way.
The lost sheep is home. The party has already started.
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” — This is the way.
Prayer Prompt
Lord, I am the lost sheep. I have said it out loud now — yesterday in the psalmist’s words and today in my own. I have wandered. Not always dramatically, not always in ways that are visible from the outside — but I know the places I have drifted, the places where Your voice got quieter and the noise got louder, the places where I chose my own path over Yours and ended up further from home than I intended.
And You already knew. Before I said it. Before I found the words. Before I even knew I was lost. You knew — because You are the good shepherd and You know Your own. Not know about. Know. By name. By the specific shape of my wandering and the specific sound of my cry and the specific place on the hillside where I ended up when I ran out of my own direction.
Thank You that the seeking was never my idea. That before time began You determined You would come after the sheep of Your flock. That the search was already underway before the psalmist finished his sentence, before I finished mine. That the shoulders were already ready. That the finding was never in doubt — because You are the Shepherd and leaving the ninety-nine is simply what You do.
I receive that today. Not just as a beautiful truth about someone else — as the truth about me. You left the ninety-nine for me. You searched until You found me. You lifted me onto Your shoulders and You carried me home rejoicing. And somewhere in heaven a party started that I didn’t know I was the occasion for.
Good Shepherd — keep me close today. Not because I have finally learned to stay but because You are faithful to seek. Lead me in the paths that keep me near Your voice. And when I drift — seek me again. You always do. Amen.
Response
The One Who Goes After: The shepherd doesn’t wait for the sheep to find its way back — he leaves and seeks. And before time began God determined He would come after the sheep of His flock. That seeking was never a response to your wandering. It was always the plan. Today sit with this: the Shepherd was already on His way before you asked. Before you knew you were lost. Before you had the words for it. Where do you need to receive that today — not as a general truth about God but as a specific truth about you? Let the prayer be simple: You were already on Your way. Thank You. Then rest there for a few minutes before the day begins. Let the finding land before you move on.
I Am the Good Shepherd: Jesus doesn’t say He knows about His sheep. He says He knows them — the same deep, covenant knowing that exists between the Father and the Son, offered to a lost sheep on a hillside. That knowing was His initiative. The relationship was always His first move. Think back over these eight weeks — where have you heard the Shepherd’s voice most clearly? Not the loudest moment or the most dramatic — the most personal. The place where something landed with your name on it. Write it down today in the margins of your Bible so the next time you go there the feeling and the knowing will return. Your testimony to your future self. That is the evidence of a Shepherd who knows His own. That is the sound of being known.
Joy in Heaven: The honest confession of wandering — I have gone astray like a lost sheep — is not a disappointment to heaven. It is an occasion for celebration. The finish line is not perfection. It is honest dependence and empty hands and a Shepherd who was already on His way. Before you move into Wednesday’s Series Finale take a few minutes to say it out loud in your own words — not the psalmist’s words, yours. Name where you have wandered. Name what it means to you that the Shepherd came after you anyway. Then listen — somewhere in the distance, if you are quiet enough, you can hear the party that started when He found you. You are the occasion for that joy. Your name was on that banner. Don’t let the week end without receiving it.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: Walking with the Word — Psalm 119
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way