<p>15:6<i>&nbsp;And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbours, saying to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost</i>- The shepherd-owner calls his &ldquo;friends&rdquo; together. This surely refers to the clubs the Pharisees formed in villages, called the <i>Khaburim</i> &lsquo;friends&rsquo;. They ought to have rejoiced to be eating with sinners, as the Lord was- but they wouldn&rsquo;t. The whole context of the three parables is the Lord justifying why he ate at home with sinners, thereby showing that He considered them as somehow &lsquo;in fellowship&rsquo; with Him. The Pharisees wouldn&rsquo;t do this unless those people repented and learnt Torah in great depth. But the Lord is surely saying that He sees those men who ate with Him as the sheep which has already been brought home. He reflected the gracious outlook with which He saw people; and His hopefulness that by treating a person as if they had &lsquo;come home&rsquo;, then they would indeed do so. Probing this line further, the Lord Jesus speaks of the found sheep as being symbolic of the repentant. But the sheep did nothing- it was simply acceptant of having been found. To accept being found is, therefore, seen by the Lord as what He calls &lsquo;repentance&rsquo;. Now surely that&rsquo;s grace- salvation without works. &nbsp;</p><p>The element of unreality is seen in the way the shepherd takes the sheep <i>home</i> and not back to the fold, inviting neighbours around to rejoice that his sheep had been found. The quite unusual joy and humanly inappropriate love of the shepherd for that sheep is of course there to signpost to us the &quot;love beyond all reason&quot; of the true shepherd for us. The way the lost sheep is brought home rather than returned to the fold was also perhaps some sort of allusion to the teaching of Dt. 22:1 that the lost sheep of your brother's must be returned to <i>him</i>. This would mean that our pastoral care should not simply be for our 'own' sheep, those for whom we have responsibility; but for the lost sheep of other 'pastors' who've not done their job. See on Jn. 10:12.</p><p>There is an element of unreality in the story of the lost sheep. And that unreality reflects the sensitivity of Jesus. The shepherd doesn&rsquo;t return the sheep to the fold, but takes it home and calls his friends around to see the dumb animal and rejoice (Lk. 15:4-6). The Lord knew we would frown a bit at this. He foresaw how hard it would be for us to rejoice in the return of a difficult sheep to fellowship.</p><p>This parable was told by the Lord to justify His eating with sinners. He justifies it by saying that He is holding a party over the finding of one lost person; and those sinners are His friends and neighbours. Truly He is the sinner's friend.</p><p>To carry a sheep on your shoulders, fighting and struggling with you, as you climb down a mountainside in the dark&hellip; isn&rsquo;t something which is usually done <i>rejoicing</i>. But this is the unusual, humanly inexplicable, <i>joy</i> which there is in the Father and Son when day by day they 'find&rsquo; us and bring us back. And where would a shepherd usually take such a lost animal? Back to the flock, whom he&rsquo;s left in the wilderness. But then comes another unreal element. The shepherd takes the sheep <i>home to his very own house</i>. This sheep had such extraordinary value to this wealthy man. He came back dirty and exhausted- he humiliated himself and made himself a fool in the eyes of the world, all because of this humanly senseless love and joy which he had over this lost sheep. And we have to fill in the details, answering the unasked but implied questions- what about the 99 left out in the wilderness? The story ends with them out of the house- paving the way for how the elder son is left standing outside of the house. Note how Lk. 15:3 speaks of the three parables as one, in the singular, &ldquo;parable&quot;.</p><p>In respect of God's relationship with the Angels, it is interesting to note that there seems to be a theme in Scripture of all of the Angels being involved in each action one of them performs, due to the perfect unity that exists between them and God (see on Lk. 11:7,8; 1 Kings 22:19-23; Ex. 12:41). Thus when one of the Angels acts in our lives, all the others are conscious of it too. Consider how Luke 15 describes the joy in Heaven when one sinner repents; the man who found the lost sheep &quot;calls together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me... when she (the woman) has found it (the lost coin) she calls her friends and neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me... likewise I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the Angels of God over one sinner that repents&quot;. The man and the woman must therefore represent God manifested through our guardian Angel. The Angel physically leaves the presence of God in Heaven and then goes off to arrange circumstances to encourage the sinner to return. He then calls all the others together to rejoice &quot;when He comes home&quot; (into Heaven, into the multitude around the throne of God from which Angels go and return in obeying God's Word). The whole Heavenly household then rejoice together. Thus we read in Hebrews 1:14 that <i>all </i>the Angels are &quot;ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of&nbsp;salvation&quot;. <i>All </i>the Angels are involved together in this work. All things in Heaven (the Angels) and on earth (the things they arrange on earth) are for our sakes</p>