Lost 2: The Lost Coin
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 15:8-10
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning to those of you here in the room, and good morning to those of you online today! Thanks to our praise band, Worship 424, for leading us in our musical worship, and for their faithfulness week after week. I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor for the church family of Eastern Hills, and I’m grateful that we are gathered together to worship the risen Lord Jesus Christ this morning.
We would really like to be able to thank you for being here in other ways as well, so if you would, please grab one of the communication cards that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you, and you can just fill that out during the service and drop it in the offering boxes by the doors as you leave. If you’d rather complete a digital card, you can text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card. You can text that number whether you’re here in the room today or joining us online. If you are in the room this morning, I’d like to meet you briefly and give you a small thank you gift following the service, so please plan to come down and say hello later on.
Announcements
Announcements
The NM Singing Churchmen are giving a concert on Tuesday night at Del Norte at 7:00 pm if you’d like to come.
Bible Study Leader Appreciation meal and Training is coming up for all Bible Study leaders and people who might want to be Bible Study leaders at some point in the future. It will be held on Saturday, September 9, from 8am to noon in Miller Hall. We’ll have a great meal, great fellowship, and a time of training from Ken Braddy.
I would like you all to mark your calendars on Sunday, September 17, for something that we haven’t done in a long time at Eastern Hills. That day, we will have a special Revival Sunday with guest Garrett Wagoner. Garrett is a gifted speaker with a heart for the Lord, and he is planning to come and share a message of the hope that we have in the Gospel during Family Worship that morning, and to have a special service of challenge and encouragement with the church family that evening at 5:30. Plan to be here for both of those times, and invite someone you know who needs to hear the Gospel that morning.
Because of the Revival Sunday needing to fall on the 17th, we need to move our September business meeting to 5:30 pm on September 24.
I got many comments of thanks last week from the update that I gave on the building work that’s going on. So this morning, I thought I’d show you a few of pictures of the progress that happened this week.
Picture 1. You may have noticed that we don’t hear pigeons any more. That’s because they no longer have a nice cozy place to hide under the overhang of our sanctuary roof on top of the foyer roof. The new design removes that overhang in order to house our air conditioning ducting.
Picture 2. If you’ve ever been on our roof, you know what a mess of furnaces, swamp coolers, and conduit it has been, and how poorly it drained. Now, the roof has been cleared, and is ready for its needed upgrade, followed by the installation of the new HVAC units when they arrive.
Picture 3. Here is a photo of the far east part of the foyer roof, which has started having the upgrades done. The slope has been improved, the surface is brand new, and… Picture 4, new working roof drains have been installed in that section!
Again, thanks for your patience as this work progresses. Now that most of the demolition is done, we’re working on the possibility of getting things moved around so we can perhaps have access to the main doors to the foyer again. No promises, but we’re trying! Continue to pray for Ric Rutherford and his team and for Tim as he works with Ric.
Opening
Opening
Last week, we opened our series on the “lost” parables of Jesus with a look at the parable of the lost sheep. We made the application in that message that: 1) All “sheep” are valuable; 2) God is a “seeking” God; and 3) Followers of Jesus are called to seek the lost as well. So our focus last week was on the shepherd and the sheep, and rightly so. There are obviously many parallel themes amongst these three “lost” parables. However, we can make various applications to our lives from these parables by looking at them from different perspectives, or from the view of different characters in the parable itself and in the given meaning. This morning, we consider a slightly different vantage point of a very similar parable: the parable of the lost coin.
Let’s read that parable from Luke 15, verses 8-10:
8 “Or what woman who has ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found the silver coin I lost!’ 10 I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents.”
PRAYER (X-Factor, Scott Downing… who’s the youth pastor but the only pastor on staff right now)
The night that we found out that we were going to have our first child, Melanie and I could just about not contain ourselves. We learned that Mel was pregnant on Memorial Day of 2000, and we were so excited that we immediately started calling people and letting them know. We wanted to share the excitement, to share the thrill, to share the wonder of the fact that we were going to have a baby (we had actually believed that we couldn’t have children before that).
I think that it’s a common part of our human nature to want to share it when we have something good happens. We’re excited! There’s an old saying about friendship that it multiplies our joys, but divides our sorrows. When we have something positive happen in our lives, we want to tell about it, to share it, to celebrate it with other people. This is because God made us to be relational not only with Him, but with one another as well.
All the way back at creation, before the Fall, mind you… there was something “not good” about what God had made: the fact that Adam was alone, without another just like him:
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper corresponding to him.”
Now, this addition of the “helper” was in the context of God providing a wife for Eve, but the two of them had a command to fulfill before the Fall as well, one that was also decidedly relational, both for the two of them, and for further human relationships:
28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”
Being fruitful and multiplying involved being a part of God’s plan of filling the earth with humanity: and here we sit as results of that initial command to the first people. We were made to be a part of each other’s lives. And being a part of each other’s lives means that there are those with whom we share our joy and our pain, our successes and our failures, our wins and our losses… We want to share all of these things with those that we are close to.
Think about it for a moment: if something really exciting, something that you’ve been praying for and wanting, suddenly happened, who in your life would you want to tell first? And if something that exciting happened in the life of someone that you love, how thrilled would you be when they told you?
The vantage point from which we are going to look at this morning’s parable in Luke 15 is from the outside looking in. But first, we’re going to look at the loss that occurred in the parable.
1) The Loss
1) The Loss
Our focal passage makes up only three verses, including the explanation or meaning of the parable. Jesus told a story of a woman who, like the shepherd with the sheep, had lost something very valuable to her.
8 “Or what woman who has ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?
This woman has ten silver coins, probably all that she owned of monetary value. She loses one of them. And so a search ensues in an effort to recover the one coin.
The coins that Jesus was referring to were called drachmas. Their value varied at times, but at this point, they were likely worth about a day’s wages for an average worker. While it wasn’t a massive amount of money, I think it was enough that any of us would go searching for it. And if we looked at it from the perspective that it was 10% of all she had, that makes it even more valuable to her, obviously.
We might wonder why she had to light a lamp and sweep the house to find this coin? For us, we’d probably just look in the cushions of our sofas or recliners. But houses at the time in Israel, especially for those of more limited financial means, were earthen. They were made of either stone or mud bricks, and had either no windows or a few small ones, which would have been up high. The doorway would have been low, and not much light would have been in the space naturally. So she would have ignited the brightest lamp she had and gotten to work.
The other problem would have been the floor. It was likely not covered with anything: just dirt. A coin could easily fall to the floor and be concealed in the dust. A visual search in such a dim, dusty environment would have been difficult.
This coin holds great value to her. Like the shepherd and his lost sheep from last week, she is unwilling to just let the coin go without expending much effort to find it. Both the coin and the sheep point to the same thing in reality: lost people. Both parables reveal to us something about God’s heart for sinners.
God loves mankind. He made us for relationship with Himself. But because of our sin, we are like this coin: we’re lost. We’re in the darkness. We’re separated from the One who loves us. The Bible tells us that our sins put us to death, they in a literal sense killed our relationship with God, because they set us against Him. And since God is also perfect and just, our sins deserve His punishment and wrath:
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. 3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!
Even though our sins have separated us from God, in His rich mercy and His great love God sent His Son Jesus to take our place in spiritual death by taking our sins on Himself when He died physically on the cross, paying the price we owe because of our rebellion. The death of Jesus showcases God’s love, because God Himself paid the penalty for us:
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus died in your place and my place, so that we could be restored to a living relationship with God. He overcame death by rising again. And He can never die again, because He has conquered death according to the Scriptures. If we believe in Jesus—meaning that if we place our trust in what He has done to save us, surrendering to His desire and direction for us—then we also will receive that eternal life.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
We cannot earn it. We can only be given it. Believing is not jumping through a hoop. It’s giving up our rights to ourselves as we collapse into His amazing grace to save us, which He does so by giving us Himself by the Spirit:
4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 5 he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6 He poured out his Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.
Are you a lost coin today? Are you covered in sin, stuck in the darkness, in need of finding and rescue? You are here because God is seeking you! Turn from your own way and believe in Jesus. Surrender and be saved even right now, this very moment!
For those in the room who are already believers, one connection point that I want to make with last week’s parable for this week as well Is this: Remember that our calling as disciples—those who follow Jesus—is to be like Him. If His heart for sinners is that He seeks them because they are lost, then that is our calling as well. Notice what the woman who lost the coin does: she lights a lamp to commence her search. Jesus has already lighted a lamp—a lamp called the church.
Every week when I preach, I share the message of what Jesus has done for us in His life, death, burial, and resurrection, and every week before service, I pray desperately for those who will be in this room and online hearing the Gospel message—that those who have never believed will trust in Jesus, and that those of us who know Jesus will be emboldened and empowered by the reminder of the incredible truth of the Gospel that we have a calling and a purpose.
Our calling is to seek the lost as well. What we all need to keep in mind and heart I s that while there are likely some who are lost in this gathering, the lost are not mostly in this building or watching this sermon online. The lost ones, the sheep and the coins, are not primarily in here… they are out there. That’s where we need to proclaim the Gospel. We aren’t called to hide our relationship with God through Christ within these walls. We are called to live that relationship out where people can see and hear it. That’s how we are like the lamp that the woman uses. We are to shine into the darkness! Jesus said in Matthew 5:
14 “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
We get to be a part of the finding of the lost! And this leads us to our next point in the parable:
2) The Finding
2) The Finding
The response of the woman in this week’s parable and the response of the shepherd in last week’s parable to the finding of their valuable lost thing are the same: they respond with great joy. Last week, we saw the shepherd put the sheep joyfully on his shoulders. This week, we just see the woman make a statement about her joy:
Luke 15:9 (CSB)
9 When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me...’
We will look at the rest of this in a moment. For now, just focus on the joy of the woman. When the coin is found, she rejoices. She has what she searched for, what she longed for.
We see this same joy reflected in God’s heart for sinners at the finding of the lost in verse 10 when Jesus explains the meaning of the parable:
10 I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents.”
The phrase “in the presence of God’s angels” is a way of referring to heaven in its entirety, including the Lord Himself. He rejoices at the repentance of even one sinner.
For just a moment, we need to take a step back and be reminded of who Jesus’s audience was for these parables. Remember that we saw last week that it was the legalistically religious people—the Pharisees and scribes—who were the primary targets of these parables. We saw that they had no rejoicing in the coming of the lost to hear the message of hope that Jesus was proclaiming:
1 All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and scribes were complaining, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
They cared more about how things looked than what was actually happening. Later in Luke, they still haven’t figured this out, when a tax collector named Zacchaeus was confronted with his need for Jesus:
1 He entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 There was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was not able because of the crowd, since he was a short man. 4 So running ahead, he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus, since he was about to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down because today it is necessary for me to stay at your house.” 6 So he quickly came down and welcomed him joyfully. 7 All who saw it began to complain, “He’s gone to stay with a sinful man.” 8 But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, I’ll give half of my possessions to the poor, Lord. And if I have extorted anything from anyone, I’ll pay back four times as much.” 9 “Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus told him, “because he too is a son of Abraham.
Notice what happened with Zacchaeus. He was hated by his countrymen. He was considered a traitor, a turncoat, a thief. All he wanted to do was see Jesus as He passed through Jericho. But Jesus looks up in the tree and calls Zacchaeus into relationship—Jesus isn’t just going to welcome him and eat with him, He’s going to stay at his house. Zacchaeus responds with joy, even repenting of his likely unscrupulous activities, and I believe that Jesus responds to that finding of the lost one with joy as well. What other tone could He have when He says, “Today salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham?” (v9) He is making a joyful declaration!
But the other folks don’t see it that way. “All who saw it began to complain, ‘He’s gone to stay with a sinful man.’” (v7) There’s no rejoicing with them, only judgment. There’s no elation, only complaining. There’s only condemnation, not celebration. But celebration is what should be happening!
3) The Celebration
3) The Celebration
Now that we’ve seen that the woman rejoices at the finding of the coin, and that God Himself rejoices at the finding of the lost, we can finish our look at this parable by seeing how that celebration manifests itself. It’s not an individual event! In fact, the celebration over the finding of the lost is a group project:
9 When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found the silver coin I lost!’ 10 I tell you, in the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents.”
The woman calls together her friends and neighbors and asks them to rejoice with her. She shares her joy with those close to her because in that, her joy is multiplied. Likewise, all of heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents. Imagine a celebration like this! God’s heart for sinners is that loving, and that thrilled when one repents!
The big takeaway for us this morning, church, is this question: Who are we more like? Are we like the scribes and Pharisees, who pouted and grumbled and complained that Jesus was doing something? Who were way more concerned about what it looked like than about what was actually happening? Who turned a pessimistic eye to the changes that Jesus was bringing in peoples’ hearts and lives? Is this who we are?
Or are we like the angels of heaven? When we hear of people coming to faith in Jesus, do we celebrate it, regardless of where it’s happening? When we come together here on Sunday morning, do we come with anticipation of seeing God call someone out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9), looking forward to the opportunity to celebrate that miraculous occurrence? Do we gather in order to celebrate what God has done and is doing and will do?
If we don’t do this, why not? In this way, we are given the opportunity to join with heaven! If heaven celebrates every time a lost person is saved, then so should we! We are to be a community that celebrates the work that God is doing in someone’s life, especially if that work is bringing them from death to life through faith in Jesus.
In the early church, after their first mission trip, Paul and Barnabas were traveling to Jerusalem from Antioch, and it’s so neat to see what happened as they went from town to town, meeting Jewish Christians along the way, telling them about how God had saved Gentiles on that first trip into Galatia:
3 When they had been sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and they brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters.
Their telling about the Gentiles coming to faith brought great joy to the brothers and sisters! This is an act of the community of faith! We get to come together to celebrate the work of God in the world! This is why we focus on missions offerings and pray for our missionaries, this is why we share the message of the Gospel every week, this is why we should tell other people about the Good News of Jesus Christ, calling them to repent and believe: so we can join God in the work that He’s doing and celebrate with Him, with the angels, and with each other as people turn to Him in faith!
There are those in this world who I have had the blessing and privilege of personally being a part of God’s work in bringing them to faith in Jesus, and I can tell you that there is nothing like it! To be there when a person passes from death to life, when they are adopted into the family of God, when the weight of their sin and guilt is taken from them because of what Jesus has done, when hope for the future replaces the regrets of the past, when they discover the true meaning and depth of God’s love and His good purpose and plan for their lives… it’s incredible! We won’t experience that if we never share the Gospel!
And the celebration goes on and on. When we see someone who is our child in the faith walking and growing and becoming more like Jesus, it is such a joy to behold, as John wrote in his third letter:
4 I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are walking in truth.
And we can look forward to when we stand before Jesus, that we will have the blessing of being able to revel in the work that God did with us in saving others through our testimony and faith, to know that we were useful vessels in God’s hands, as Paul did with the church at Thessalonica:
19 For who is our hope or joy or crown of boasting in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? 20 Indeed you are our glory and joy!
What a thing to be able to celebrate with Jesus!
Closing
Closing
The parable of the lost coin shares many similarities with the parable of the lost sheep. But most of it is about the celebration. We should be the most celebratory people on the planet, because God is at work in us to call the lost to Himself, and we are witnesses of this, because we ourselves have experienced it. We might not see the harvest, but we get to plant or water the seed of the Gospel, and that’s a joy in itself. Are we filled with anticipation to see what God is going to accomplish in us and with us and through us? Do we want to see God change lives through the hope of the Gospel? Then let’s share His heart and His perspective, telling people about what He has done, how He has demonstrated His love for them in Christ, and what it means to be saved. What a celebration we will get to be a part of!
We would love nothing more than to have that kind of celebration right now this morning. I don’t say that as a manipulation or anything—I say it because it’s true. If this morning you’ve heard and believed the Gospel, we want to celebrate that! In a moment, the band is going to come up and play, and when they do, come and let one of us know that you’re believing in Jesus today, surrendering your life to Him. If you have questions about salvation or the Gospel, come and let us know. We’d love to talk with you about it. If you’re online and today you’ve believed in Jesus, we want to celebrate with you as well. Send me an email to bill@ehbc.org, and we will get you some resources to help you in this journey of faith, and I’ll share your story with the church so that we can rejoice together in God’s incredible grace!
If you have been visiting and you believe that Eastern Hills is a church family that you can be a part of where you can grow in your faith, serve the Lord, and fellowship with other believers, would you consider joining the church in formal membership? I’d love to talk with you about that further. Come and let one of us know, and we’ll set an appointment to sit down with you, go over our Statement of Belief, and share our testimonies. And if you’re someone who has already had that conversation with me and you’re ready to take that next step, come and let us know so we can celebrate that together this morning.
If you need prayer, you can come for that purpose as well.
This invitation time is also a good opportunity for you to give using the mobile app or website. If you’d rather give in person this morning, you can put your gifts in the boxes by the doors as you go out after the service is over.
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Deut 25)
Pastor’s Study
Prayer Meeting
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your graciousness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
Let’s celebrate God’s goodness, and share that joy with those around us this week!