Twenty-fourth Sunday
Luke 15:4-7
Once again Jesus uses something very simple – an everyday thing – to teach us about eternity.
An animal – a sheep š – is lost.
The lost sheep š – wherever sheās got to, that place where sheās lost is actually the road to Hell. Until that sheep is found by the shepherd sheās in grave danger. The shepherd knows that unless he gets to the sheep quickly sheāll be killed by a wolf šŗ, a predator. She wonāt last long, so itās time sensitive. So thereās real concern, a sense of urgency. If the sheep is killed thereās no undoing it, itās final, a finality that means Hell, eternal loss, itās an irretrievable loss.
And thatās precisely why thereās so much joy when the sheep is found in time, before tragedy strikes.
So in the simplest of terms, using a shepherd and a sheep thatās got separated from the shepherd, Jesus teaches us about God, about the nature of God and affirms not just the existence of Heaven, but the existence of Hell too.