Luke 15:8-10

Luke chapter 15, and I’ll be reading 8 through 10 for our text and study this morning. 15 verses 8 to 10. Either what woman, having 10 pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle and sweep the house, seek diligently till she find it. And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends, and her neighbors together saying rejoice with me, for I have found the peace which I had lost. Likewise, I say, and to you there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning. Some of you know, Pastor Gordon Ketty, and he said every time that he came to this piece, terrible, and reminded of an incident that occurred in his childhood in Scotland. He said, in the early 1950s, money was scarce, and a 10-pound note was certainly worth much more than it is with today’s inflated money. He said, his mother had just started a fire going on the fireplace, and he was watching the embers of the flames dance up around the coals, and suddenly he spotted a 10-shilling note in the back of a fireplace. He was watching this and he was afraid it was going to get consumed. It was unburned at the moment. So he shouted, hey, there’s a 10-pound note in the fire. Before he could think about what to do, his mother’s arm flashed through the flames, grabbed the 10-biled note. It was singed a little, but as he said, it was still spendable. How the money got in the fireplace in the first place no one could figure out. But how it got out was because Kettie’s mother, quick mind and determined action. As previously noted, the trilogy of parables is founded here on the first two verses of chapter 15. then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners to hear him, and the Pharisees and scribes and murmured saying, this man receive his strangers and eateth with them. The Pharisees and the scribes were thoroughly disgusted with Jesus receiving sinners. And from this, they concluded Jesus couldn’t possibly. be the Messiah. For the Messiah, surely, we’re not fellowship with sinners. Jesus, however, did not come to call the so-called righteous, but sinners to repent. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. The first parable, as we said, depicted Christ as the good shepherd, seeking the Lord. And here you find a slightly different perspective, and that is the church seeking the lost in this passage of Scripture. Now, let me begin by saying you’re called here to consider the parable of the lost coin. The home of a person of the poor class here, such as this woman, was generally small, had a dirt floor and either no windows or maybe a very small one. And this woman had ten pieces of silver, or in verse 8. Literally, they were drachmas. This was a coin in Palestine, which was approximately equal in value to the Roman denarius, which the two of them would be like a day’s wage. at the time. And so that was quite valuable. These coins probably constituted most, if not, all, of this woman’s personal wealth. She loses one of these silver coins. We’re not told why it must not be important, but like the 10-shilling note, somehow, fluttering in the fireplace, such things happen. The pound, excuse me, the point is that this was a major loss. What is she going to do about the situation? Well, she’s going to search for the coin. She’s going to try to find it. So because the house was rather dark, the light of a lamp was used, and she got a broom and started sweeping the floor. And she swept every nook and cranny of the house. And finally, her diligence pays off, and she finds the coin, and she rejoices. And she tells her friends and neighbors who rejoice with her over the found coin. Now, this story has spiritual implications. For Jesus compares this young woman and her friends rejoicing, and her friends rejoicing over her. over the lost coin with the angels rejoicing over repentant sinner. So how do we interpret this parable? This parable is similar to the previous one, and yet there is a different perspective to this one. We have ten pieces of silver. The ten pieces of silver here represent all the Jews, or the Jews, or the a nation as a whole. Nine un-lossed coins are like the 99 sheep. They are the self-righteous who need no repentance. The one lost coin is like the lost sheep. It’s an elect, one of the elect people of God. Lost in the dirt and dust of this world. The woman here represents the church. You recall in Revelation 12 that the woman there, clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet, is representative of the church. The church is the bride of Christ, a chaste virgin, espoused to Christ. The candle is the gospel, the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, according to 2 Corinthians 4-4. Christians take it. the light of the gospel in the world of sin and darkness. The broom depicts the effects of proclaiming the truth. The law of God stirs up the dust of sin within the consciousness of the sinner. So he comes to know his own sin. You remember in Pilgrim’s Progress when Mr. Christian comes to the interpreter’s house. He’s taken to a large hall that’s full of dust because it had never been swept. And after they had looked at the room for a moment, the interpreter called for a man to sweep. And as he was sweeping, the dust rose in such clouds that Christian almost choked. The interpreter then told a maiden who stood by, bring some water and sprinkle the room. and then the room was swept clean. What does this mean? asked Christian. And the interpreter said, this hall is the heart of man. The dust is the sin that has defiled him. He that begun to sweep at first is the law. She that brought water and sprinkled it is the gospel. The law, instead of cleansing your heart of sin only revives and increases sin in the soul. It stirs it up. But when the sweet and precious influences of the gospel come in, sin is vanquished. The soul is made clean and fit for the king of glory to inhabit. The house here is the house of Israel, which the woman, the church dwells, as well as the coin, which represent the whole nation. The nine coins, the self-righteous, the Pharisees, the one coin, the Alexa. So you’re called to consider here the parable of the lost coin. Now, what are we to learn from this? Let me ask this question. Do you desire to seek the loss? As part of the church, you should be vitally interested in the repentance of sin or In the parable, the sheep, as is the good shepherd in the previous one, is the one that brings back the wandering sheep here by the shepherd’s orders. The parable of the lost coin adds to the previous teaching, because Christ uses his church to reach out in the deal with sinners and proclaim the message of the gospel. brings the sinner to repentance coming after him by his word, the word of the gospel of Christ. So the word is preached by the church in the world, and the spirit, working with the gospel, restores the lost sinner. The work of regeneration is like the sweeping of a house. A great stir is made, dust is raised, things are moved out of place. So there’s an uproar made in the sin. First by the law, which points out of sin, and then, of course, the sprinkling of the water of the main gospel itself brings them to repentance by God’s grace. So you are stirred up to seek Christ for salvation, and it’s a life-changing event. wherever the gospel goes, things get shook up. Remember, they said about the disciples, they turned the world upside down. Now, our message is not a story about the goodness of man. It’s about man’s depravity and sin. It’s not a story about God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. We don’t come with a message of man’s free choice and cooperation in society. salvation. How would that start up? And he does. But it’s the old message of divine grace that man and his depraved in sinful state can do nothing good, that he’s chosen to salvation according to God’s good pleasure. And the power of the gospel unto salvation is worked by the spirit and people are drawn to Christ, irresistening. and it’s by Christ alone that we are saved by his sacrificial death, his substitution in the place of sinners. Love for your neighbor should enliven you in your efforts to search for the loss, the witness to the loss, and shine light upon a dark world in which you are living. so as part of the church, you should be vitally interested in repentance, sinners. Now, you should seek to bring sinners to repentance to repentance. Now, when we talk about repentance, what are we talking about here? It’s not a matter of making the sinner respectable through external changes in his life. A mere cleaning of the outside of the cup. That’s not what we’re talking about. True reporting. repentance is a God-given change of mind. The meaning of repentance is found in Hebrew 721. The Lord swear and he will not repentant. When God swears to something, he doesn’t change his mind is the idea. He fulfills what he is said. So to repent, involves a change of mind. Scripture reveals that repentance is the result of regeneration or the new birth. It involves the transforming of your mind by God’s grace. And you are made to think differently before, which leads to, then, a change of life. But first, the mind has to be changed. Repentance involves a change of mind brought about by God’s grace. It involves regret. It involves self-reproach and dissatisfaction with the way you’ve been living and the way you’ve been thinking. It’s not a matter of doing something, you know, to atone for your sin, as the Roman Catholic Church talks about penance, but it’s an honest and contrite acknowledgement to God of your sinfulness. You should understand repentance. Now, repentance involves the knowledge of your sin. If you understand divine plagues that come upon you, this would be helpful. Look with me at Revelation chapter 9, verses 20 and 21, if you would. Revelation chapter 9 and verses 20 and 21 read these words And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands that they should not worship devils and idols of gold and silver and brass and stone in a wood which neither can see nor hear nor walk. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their feasts. Here you have the plagues of God falling upon the ungodly, and many are killed by the plagues. Some survive, but the survivors here didn’t show any remorse for their sin. They continued on in their sin, in four ways. What have they been doing? Well, all these things that I read about are violations of the law of God. The idol worship, the murder, the theft, the fornication, and so forth. So they saw firsthand the wrath of God poured out upon people doing such things, but they did not have a change of mind. They stubbornly persisted in doing evil. Repentness and involves a knowledge of your sin. The sin is transgression of God’s law. The law that God has written on tables of stone for its permanence and its demand of you. So to repent then requires the knowledge of the fact that you have sinned against the Lord, that you have been an evil doer. You must acknowledge that fact that God is just and right in punishing our violations of his law. As we read in Romans 1, 29 the 32, that men continued on doing these evil things and did not change. Suppose you got up late one morning and you were hurrying off the work and we were racing off the work and we were racing down Route 19 or route 18 here, making up for lost time. As you’re flying down the road at breakneck speed, you pass many signs with the speed limit. It’s just 35 miles an hour. However, you don’t want to go 35 miles an hour. It’s too slow. You’ve got the pedal to the metal of the metal, and you’re going 65 in the 35 mile in our zone. Now, all of a sudden you hear a police iron behind you. Flashing lights, telling you to pull over. The policeman comes up to your window and asks for your license and registration. And then he asked you this question. Do you know how fast you were going? He already knows. He’s used the radar gun on you. But he wants you to acknowledge that you were violating the law. by speeding. You know you were violating the law, going 65 and a 35 mile in our zone. So you acknowledge you deserve a ticket for speeding. Now, repentance involves Godly sorrow over your sin. Only when you know you have sinned against God will you have true sorrow about your sin. You know, the Bible talks about worldly sorrow and it talks about true sorrow, godly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is remorse over the fact that you got caught and punished. When you get a speeding ticket, you may be sorry that you got caught going 65 miles an hour and a 35 mile on our zone. But you’re not sorry. You want 65 miles an hour. You do it again if you thought you’d get away with. You’re only sorry. You have to pay the hefty fine. There’s sorrow in people’s hearts because they’re punished for their evil. But godly sorrow does not primarily focus on the devastation and ruin you brought upon yourself. You’re grieved because you provoke God to anger. You’re grieved because you have broken his law. And you say with David long ago, I’ve sinned against the Lord. You abhor yourself for acting so. You fear the wrath of God that must surely come upon you. You know you deserve every lash that God sends. Repentance involves a longing for your sin to be taken away. As a sinner, you long for forgiveness. You cry out that your sins may be removed and God’s wrath may be taken away. More than this, you pray for a clean heart. You pray for a right spirit. And you don’t want sin to have dominion over you. You have a change of mind about the way you’ve been living. You have a desire to turn from your evil ways and do as God has commanded. It’s this longing to have sin burden removed which drives you to come to Christ that your sins may be forgiven. Unless the Bible speaks of repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s connected together. So if you desire to seek the laws. Well, a 10-chilling note almost got burned up in the fireplace in Gordon-Kaddy’s childhood home. But his mother reached in quickly and snatched it out with flames. In the parable of the loss coin, we have an emphasis here on the church seeking for the laws, using the law and the gospel itself together to deal with the souls and sweep the floor, so to speak, and find the coin. May we see in this then, our duty seek the loss and the means by which this is brought to pass, the salvation, is by bringing someone to repentance. It’s God’s gift that is given. Repentance is his gift. But our duty here is to point out men sin and point them to Christ that they might be saved from their sin. Let’s close with a word prayer. Heavenly Father, we bow before you, thankful for all your goodness and grace to us in this life. We thank you, Lord, for your word this morning. We pray, Lord, that you’d make it lively to our souls and bless us. Encourage us in the things of the Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Let’s stand for the benediction. The grace of our Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen.