Child's Story of the Bible

by Mary A. Lathbury

He also told them of the love of the Father in seeking His lost children. That if a shepherd had but lost one of his hundred sheep, he would leave all the others to go out into the wild mountains to look for the lost sheep. How much more would the Father do for His own, and especially for His little ones.

"Even so," He said, "it is not the will of your Father, which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."

Before going to the Feast at Jerusalem the Lord Jesus said many things to His disciples that would help them to be loving and forgiving toward each other and all the world, for they were very soon going to meet trouble which would try their love and their faith. He told them to deal gently with those who had done wrong, that they might win them back to the right way. He told them that they should have help from heaven when they asked for it, even if there should be only two to ask.

"For where two or three are gathered together in my name," He said, "there am I in the midst of them."

"How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" asked Peter, "till seven times?"

"Until seventy times seven," said Jesus, and He did not mean that we should even count the number of times that we forgive.

Then He told them a story of a forgiving king and an unforgiving servant that you may read in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew.

At the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, the people went up to Jerusalem to offer gifts in the golden Temple for the harvest that the Lord had given them, and to join in a praise service there.

They brought oil, and wine, and wheat, and barley; dates, pomegranates, and figs—something of all they had gathered, and while they marched toward the holy city they sang joyful songs that David had written long before. When they reached Jerusalem they built bowers of branches cut from the trees and lived in them for a week.

Even in the city the people came out of their houses and lived in bowers on the streets and public squares, or upon the flat roofs of the houses, and the hillsides round were covered with the green booths.