April 19
AN EXPERT SEARCHER
"For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search
my sheep, and seek them out" Exod. 34:11
This He does at the first when His elect are like wandering sheep
that know not the Shepherd or the fold. How wonderfully doth the Lord
find out His chosen! Jesus is great as a seeking Shepherd as well as a
saving Shepherd. Though many of those His Father gave Him have gone as
near to hell-gate as they well can, yet the Lord by searching and
seeking discovers them, and draws nigh to them in grace. He has sought
out us: let us have good hope for those who are laid upon our hearts
in prayer, for He will find them out also.
The Lord repeats this process when any of His flock stray from the
pastures of truth and holiness. They may fall into gross error, sad
sin, and grievous hardness; but yet the Lord, who has become a surety
for them to His Father, will not suffer one of them to go so far as to
perish. He will by providence and grace pursue them into foreign lands, into abodes of
poverty, into dens of obscurity, into deeps of despair; He will not
lose one of all that the Father has given Him. It is a point of honor
with Jesus to seek and to save all the flock, without a single
exception. What a promise to plead, if at this hour I am compelled to
cry, "I have gone astray like a lost sheep"!