Flip the House

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Lost my car keys once. Twice, actually.

Luke 15:1–2 NIV

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

I always like to ask myself when there’s a parable, What is jesus trying to answer here? What’s the point of the parable? And the gospel writers usually help us out there.

the pharisees and the teachers of the law were muttering to themselves about how Jesus treated sinful people.

I think if I had to respond to these people, I have to admit, I might have thought of somethign different off the cuff.

The value of always being nice to people

We shouldn’t gossip - if you have a problem, come talk to me about it

I’m having dinner with them, i’m not bankrolling their sinfulness.

But Jesus, he points to a completely, RADICALLY different idea. And Jesus REALLY drills it into these people.

Jesus tells 3 different parables to the crowd. To the jews, this was a big indicator that this was really important, and they had to pay attention.

I highly encourage you to go read the last one especially - Luke 15 verses 11 to 31. We’re going to focus on just one of these parables, the middle one.

Luke 15:8-10

Luke 15:8–10 NIV

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

There’s some conversation about what the coins were. Some scholars say that the coins could have been

a cultural thing. Women would receive 10 silver coins as a wedding gift, losing one was akin to misplacing a wedding ring

great value - they could have represented her entire life savings. Or maybe she was extremely poor.

The point isn’t the coin culturally. The point is how the woman felt about them. They were extremely valuable to her, for whatever reason.

I think there’s something very big and meaningful we can learn about Jesus, and about our job as a church, through this parable.

Jesus isn’t really teaching us about money

Let’s get that one out of the way.

STORY - I’m bad at misplacing money, and receipts, cheques, emails. Whatever.

This isn’t that. This is about people.

STORY - Lost caleb for a few minutes at our trailer park.

She flipped her house upside down

And this isn’t some, ‘oh, i’ll keep it in the back of my mind, so if i’m doing laundry later, maybe i’ll give it a shake to see if something pops out’.

She is desperate. She is committed. She is thorough. and she isn’t quitting untli the job’s done.

It was a big deal when she found it

She made a lot of extra work for herself. She probably got a lot of cleaning done that she had been putting off. But I bet she was also moving things, looking under things, rearranging things.

I bet it took some time. But at the end, she wasn’t bitter, or angry. She wanted to celebrate.

And she even goes a step up, she’s not calling her friends or neighbours on the phone and saying ‘hey, just fyi, i found that lousy coin i’ve been looking for’. It says she called her friends and neighbours together. She threw a party just to say, ‘Rejoice with me! I found it!’

And trust me, if ANYBODY has the right to look at us as sinners and say ‘do you know how much grief you caused?’, it’s Jesus. But he didn’t.

Now, i said last week, that we find value in understanding who we are in the story. Jesus made it plain - the woman represents him. He says, I will never stop searching, I will flip this house upside down, to find that lost coin. And when I do, there will be rejoicing in the presence of the very angels of God for every single coin that I find’.

And where this was Jesus then, this story is about US now. So I have two questions for all of us.

Who is your lost coin?

It’s really easy for us to lose a sense of urgency with this topic.

The fact that it’s a really, really big deal when a person comes back to Jesus tells us something else - that it’s a really, really big deal to God when they haven’t.

I told the story of losing my son for a few minutes. What if it was longer? What if it was years? What if it was the rest of my life? What if I never had a chance to see my son again? How devastating would that be? How would you feel?

Now, you’re starting to understand just the tiniest bit of how God feels when he sees every single person on earth who doesn’t know Him.

Because we’re not here to put on some production. We’re not here to make ourselves feel good.

We’re a rescue operation

We need to care so, so much that we’re willing to flip the house just to reach more people.

Because if we care less than that, we don’t know the real heart of God for the lost.

And let me let you in on a little secret about Jesus.

There’s nobody on earth that Jesus wouldn’t flip the house over to find. Nobody. There is no time where Jesus is going to say ‘sorry, I’ve looked enough. That person’s just GONE. Oh well!’

What are you willing to do about it?

Are you willing to flip the house?

And I’ll guarantee you this. This is the way to make Jesus proud. Every single time we pull this off as a church, heaven throws a party.

Something for someone out there who doesn’t know Jesus:

You are so very, very loved and wanted

It kills me, it KILLS me, when people in the past have portrayed God as this vengeful judge just WAITING to smash the gavel, waiting for you to step out of line so he can throw you in prison. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is the Jesus we preach. The one who says that heaven itself rejoices when even one person comes back.

This is the Jesus we invite you to get to know. He wants to know you, He wants to be in your life, and He wants to do great things for you and with you.