To Seek and Save the Lost

[Daily Devotional]

To Seek and Save the Lost 

For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke
19:10. 

The heaven-appointed Teacher appears, and He is no less a personage than the
Son of the Infinite God. Unroll the scroll, and read of Him. Moses declared
to the children of Israel: "The Lord said unto me, They have well spoken
that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their
brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall
speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass,
that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my
name, I will require it of him." Here is the prediction announcing the
distinguished arrival. His words were not to be disregarded; for His
authority was supreme, and His power invincible. 

Unroll the scroll still further, and read what Isaiah says of His work: "The
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint
unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of
joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that
they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that
he might be glorified." . . . 

Again we read of Christ as the messenger of the covenant yet to come, and as
the Sun of Righteousness yet to arise. The prophets made Him their earliest
and their latest theme. . . . 

At His coming [the Jews] did not receive Him, because they had gathered a
false idea as to the manner of His coming. This Jesus, a peasant and a
carpenter, of obscure origin, the Son of God, the Messiah? It could not be. 

But the peculiarity separating the Jews from other nations disappeared in
Christ. He placed Himself where He could give instruction to all classes of
people. Often He told them that He was related to the whole human family,
Jew and Gentile. "I am not come to call the [self] righteous, but sinners to
repentance," He declared. He came to seek and to save that which was lost.
For this He left the ninety and nine; for this He laid off His royal robes,
and veiled His divinity with humanity. The whole world is Christ's field of
labor. A sphere narrower than this does not enter His thoughts (Signs of the
Times, June 24, 1897). 

>From Lift Him Up - Page 27