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"Lost": what the prophets meant

"Lost" did not mean unknown. It meant strayed, scattered and perishing, and the prophets promised God Himself would search for them.

The word Yeshua used, apolōlota, describes sheep that have strayed and are perishing. It is the same idea as the Hebrew avad.

The prophets had already used this picture for Israel. Jeremiah wrote that God's people had become lost sheep, led astray by their own shepherds and scattered on the mountains Jeremiah 50:6. Ezekiel spent a whole chapter on it: the shepherds of Israel fed themselves instead of the flock, so the sheep were scattered over all the earth with no one searching for them Ezekiel 34:1-6.

Then God made a promise:

"I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away." Ezekiel 34:16

When Yeshua said, "the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" Luke 19:10, He was quoting the heart of that promise. When He told the parable of the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one sheep Luke 15:4-7, He was describing Ezekiel 34 in action.

So "lost" does not mean that God lost track of them. He always knew where they were Amos 9:9. It means they had lost their way back to Him.

Lessons

  • How the house of Israel was lost: After Solomon, the kingdom split. The northern tribes replaced God's appointed times with man-made ones and were finally exiled.
  • Scattered among the nations: Israel was mixed into the nations, yet God promised not one grain would be lost, and that Ephraim would become "the fullness of the nations."

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