WWUTT 2432 The Parable of the Lost Coin (Luke 15:8-10)

There was a woman who had 10 coins, lost one, found it, and threw a feast with her friends and neighbors because she found her lost coin. Jesus said, so there is in heaven much rejoicing over one sinner who repents, when we understand the text.

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Hey, once again, it's Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel of Luke, we're in chapter 15 this week, where Jesus tells a trilogy of parables about one who was lost, and now he is found, and there is much rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.

Let's come back and read this again. Actually, I'm gonna read the parable of the lost sheep that we looked at yesterday. I'll read that again, and go on to the parable of the lost coin. So this is Luke 15, verses one through 10.

Hear the word of the Lord. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Jesus, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. So he told them this parable.

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the one who is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing.

And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

Or what woman having 10 silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.

Just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Yesterday, when we read the parable of the lost sheep, I said to you that if you've ever seen somebody who has a reputation for having done wicked, evil things, and they come forward and say, I have turned to Christ and he's forgiven me.

And I'm no longer guilty of those things that I have done. I am justified and Jesus has made me clean. I'm saved. I'm a Christian now. If you've ever seen that happen, a person with that wicked, awful, wretched reputation for doing these evil, evil things.

And now they say they're a Christian and your response to that is no way. There's no possible way that they're a Christian now. Huh, I do not believe it. Do you know what it is that that person had done?

Do you know the wicked things that they had done? You can even look it up on the internet. It's all still there right now. There's no way that person has come around and is a Christian now. And if that's your response, then maybe you don't know Jesus.

You don't think Jesus can save such a person? And in a moment, their life could be turned around like that and the moment they come to Christ and put their faith and trust in him for their salvation, they trust in Jesus who died on the cross for my sins, who rose again from the dead so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

The moment we believe. And you don't think that person who's put faith in Jesus can possibly be saved in that moment, then you don't know the right Christ. For Jesus in a moment will turn a sinner from the error of his ways and clothe him in his righteousness.

And he will be made a son of God, adopted into the family of God right then, right when they turn from their sin to Jesus Christ and now they are a child of God. That is the power of Christ. That is the mercy and the grace of God.

And if you don't think that God can do that, then you don't know his loving kindness. You don't know his loving kindness toward you. You are just like the Pharisees who grumble and complain when they see these sinners draw near to Jesus and desire to hear from him and learn from him.

The Pharisees and the scribes, they grumbled saying this man receives sinners and eats with them. But Jesus tells them a parable at the conclusion of which he says, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance.

Another way that you can read that is there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 persons who think they're righteous and need no repentance. Because that's really what it comes down to.

The person that scoffs at the sinner who says that I'm forgiven and I am a Christian now and I've been saved, person who scoffs at that is the person who thinks they need no repentance. I don't need any righteousness, I'm good.

But that person, do you know what they've done? Why don't I get any recognition for the good things that I've done? They've been nothing but evil and now they follow Christ and look at all the praise they're getting.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, they're throwing a party in heaven. And you're not there because by your own stubbornness and grumbling, you don't even wanna be part of it. We're gonna get to that when we get to the parable of the prodigal son.

The Parable of the Lost Coin and the Joy of Repentance

But going on here to this next parable, the parable of the lost coin. And this ties right in with what we read with the lost sheep. In the parable of the lost sheep, you had 99 sheep, one that went astray.

In this parable, the parable of the lost coin, you have 10 coins, nine coins and one that is lost. So what woman having 10 silver coins, if she loses one, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it.

And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, rejoice with me for I have found the coin that I had lost. And just so I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

I remember there was a man in my church named Jason. I'm gonna use this name. It may not be the right name, but it's easier for me to tell the story if I pick a name. So there's a man in my church whose name was Jason.

And he had not been in my church in a long time. There was another fellow in my church who'd been there consistently. His name was Richard. And Richard said to me, hey, we haven't seen Jason in a while, but I've managed to make contact with him.

And so can we sit down and talk with him because he needs to come back to church. And I said, I agree. Whatever Jason's been up to, would love to talk with him and make sure that he is getting his life back on track.

So I agreed to meet with Richard and Jason at a particular time and place. And I showed up, it was like on a Saturday morning at a cafe that was a little bit outside of town. And I come in and there's Richard there and Jason sitting across the table.

So I sit down and I say, Jason, what have you been up to? Where have you been? I know there had been some difficult things that were going on between he and his wife. As a matter of fact, if I recall at this particular moment, they were now divorced.

And his wife was upset with me about the whole thing because she just felt like I should have picked sides,.

I suppose.

I don't even remember that particular aspect of the situation well enough to know what she was mad at me about. But she wasn't coming to church anymore either. So Richard has me talking to Jason to find out what he's been up to and convict his heart so that he would come back to church.

And while we were talking about that, I said, Jason, are you attending anywhere? He said, no, I'm not going to church anywhere. And I said, well, you need to come back. You need to come back to church.

Don't worry about what anybody will say. You just need to be there. And Jason said, well, you know what? I need to, I got some things I got to figure out first. Like there's no way God is ready for me to come back to church.

I've got to get some things figured out. And once I got all that worked out, then I'll come. I promise you, I'll come. You'll see me again. And I said to him, Jason, if this is about you having to get your life in order before you think God will accept you, then you're never going to get there.

You can't get your life in order. You can't do enough works to get yourself in the right place so that you will finally be someone who is acceptable to God. None of us can ever do that. We can't clean ourselves up.

You have dirty, sinful hands. And when you try to clean yourself off, you're just smearing the dirt around. That's all you're doing. You're never going to make yourself any cleaner. So you need to come to God just as you are.

He will clean you up. He will straighten you out. And again, don't worry what anybody else says. If you need discipline, well, you're going to have to face the music on that and receive some discipline, but it's all for your good.

And if you have some things that you need to confess, that's also for your good. Confession is good for your soul, as talked about in James chapter five. And so as I talked with him about those things, I was trying to convince him to come back to church.

He just never really was convinced that he needed to until he got his life in order first. But again, assured me, you'll see me again, I promise. I'll work these things out and I'll be there. I never saw Jason again, not in any capacity, not in the community, never came to my church.

Somewhere out there is a man who's probably still trying to get his life in order before he comes back to God. But it's like I said yesterday, you can't make yourself good enough to come to God. You come to God as you are, and he's the one who straightens you out.

Jesus is the one who cleans you up. We'll take that wretched, filthy sinner that you are, cleanse you and clothe you in his righteousness. But you come to Christ to do that. We cannot do that. And there's no sin that can keep you from God.

I encounter this all the time. It was like this with my conversation with Jason. People who will say, well, I've done so many things. How could God ever want me like this? It's prideful to say that. You might think it's humble to say that, but it's not.

You're full of pride because you think that you can actually do something that is out of God's reach. God can't possibly get me over here because I've sinned so bad, he would never come over here and get me.

Are you kidding?

Jesus left his throne in heaven and came down from a holy place to dwell with us filthy sinners. Even the lepers and the prostitutes and the tax collectors, Jesus was with them. Humble yourself, get rid of your pride, fall before Christ and say, save me, and he will.

And there is no sin so great that he cannot forgive. As the apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 1 .15, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of which I am the foremost. You will never know anybody's sin more intimately than you know your own.

You are the worst sinner that you know, but you are not out of God's reach. He will reach down and save you, all who come to him and ask for his grace. You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all your heart, as God said in the book of Jeremiah.

And those who are sinners who come in repentance and faith, there is great rejoicing in heaven. And far be it from any one of us to ever look at one of these sinners and say there's no way that person could possibly be saved.

As I said yesterday, I hope that I would never have that attitude. And if somebody says that they repent, then I'm ready to accept that until they prove otherwise. I mean, a person can say that they're repentant and they're lying, and it's not really genuine.

And maybe they felt the conviction in the moment, but it didn't really stick. And after time went on, then they revealed themselves to not truly be repentant. But that's gonna come about with time. And there's a certain level of trust that they may need to earn, certainly.

But if a person comes forward and says, Christ has forgiven me and I am saved, who am I to say they're wrong? Because I know what the scriptures say. And I know that Jesus has saved me and can save that person as well.

So I hope it would be far from me to ever hear a person say that and go, yeah, I don't know about that. I don't know that that person can be saved. Anybody can be saved. God is that compassionate, that merciful, that loving, that gracious, that he will save the worst of sinners to himself.

I remember this was, oh goodness, over 20 years ago. I may have shared this story on the podcast recently, but I don't remember. So forgive me if you've heard this before, but I'm gonna share this again.

I was invited to come and play piano and lead worship at a revival service. This was happening in Southwest Kansas. And revival service, I use that loosely. It was just a series of services that this particular church was doing every week night and I was leading the music for it.

It was a great time. Enjoyed visiting with the people while I was there. Well, there was one night, it was like the second or third night of four. So it's like four consecutive evenings that we're doing this and on about the second or third night.

But before the pastor got up, I was sitting in the front pew, and this was an actual pew. They had wooden pews in this church. I was sitting on the far left side of this pew and there were like two or three people to my right.

The pastor, the guest speaker is sitting to my right and then there's the pastor and then there's another guy to the right of the pastor. And I lean forward or I just kind of look down a little bit and I see the guy that's four persons down looking at me.

And I look at him and I recognize him. His name was Ryan. I knew him from high school, only this had been, you know, at this point could have been six or seven years before or something. Ryan used to bully me.

He didn't do it in high school so much, but in middle school, he really bullied me. We were even on the same baseball team and I was a good baseball player. I really was a good player. It wasn't like he was picking on the player that didn't do anything, but Ryan was like twice my size.

So for whatever reason, he just did not like me. It was constantly picking on me and bullying me. And it wasn't a good sporty kind of a thing, like in good humor. No, he really disliked me and wanted to make my life miserable.

And I hated it. And as far as bullies go, he probably bullied me more than anybody else. Little bit too when I got into my freshman and sophomore year of high school, not so much when I was an upperclassman, maybe I was bigger by then, I don't know.

I was always kind of a skinny guy. But anyway, so Ryan is sitting down there at this revival service. I know he wasn't there the night before, but I'm looking over at him and he's looking at me. So we see each other, we make eye contact and we're recognizing one another.

And he's the first one to speak. He goes, Gabe, that was it, just said my name. And I went, Ryan. And about that time, the pastor gets up and he stands up before the congregation. And he's like, we're about to get into some worship tonight.

Brother Gabe is going to come up to the piano. He's going to lead us in some songs. The speaker gets up. I can't even remember his name now. But anyway, the pastor said, I want to introduce you to Ryan.

And he has something that he wants to come up and confess to you this evening. And Ryan got up and he stood before that congregation and shared his story about how he had gotten into drug use, alcohol abuse, that he had been fornicating and all these other kinds of, just listing off one of those wretched testimonies that you sometimes hear.

Here's what all of the wicked stuff was that I was doing. But you know what? The pastor here introduced me to Jesus Christ. And I'm a Christian now. And I know he's forgiven me of my sin. And I have turned away from all of that.

And I desire to live now, even for Jesus. You know, one of the things that Ryan would pick on me for, one of the things he would bully me about is because I was a Christian. And I worked at a Christian radio station.

He used to make fun of me constantly for that. And here was this guy, used to bully me over this stuff. I mean, to the point I would probably say I was even persecuted over it. And here he is standing up there and saying that he is now a Christian.

He's a believer. And he was gonna be baptized at the church that coming Sunday. And so the pastor was introducing him to everybody. And now Ryan was gonna be joining us for these revival services and everything else.

Ryan probably didn't even know the songs that we were singing. But he knew that now I love Jesus. And Jesus has forgiven me of my sin. And I wanna be where Jesus is worshiped. And after that pastor had introduced Ryan and he led us in prayer.

And then he told me to get on up there to the piano and play. As I'm walking up there, I passed by Ryan. And I stuck my hand out and he stuck his out and shook it and pulled me in and gave me a big old hug.

And I said to him, welcome to the family, brother. And he said, thank you. And not another word was said between us about anything else. We never talked about how he used to bully me, how miserable he used to make me, even the things that he used to bully me for.

I did not demand from him an apology. I did not say to him, Ryan, if you're really a Christian then you're gonna have to prove it to me. You're gonna have to take back all the stuff that you ever said about me and all the things that you used to do to me and all this other kind of stuff.

That did not even cross my mind. And really that's by the grace of God as well. The grace of God shown to me that I'm not there holding grudges. I don't have any bitterness to Ryan. Now I'll tell you, when I looked down the pew and I saw him sitting there, I was quite puzzled.

It was definitely very strange to me.

Like, why is he here?

I will say that I did have that thought in my mind. But then once he got up and shared his testimony and said how Jesus had saved him and he was no longer that sinful man but he was now a child of God.

I don't remember my eyes brimming with tears. I don't remember that I had that kind of reaction but I do remember that I believed him. And there was not a single thing that he had done to me that I thought was keeping him from the throne of grace.

If Christ had saved me, then he saved Ryan too and praise be to God. And we were now brothers in the Lord. I've looked him up since then, pulled him up on Facebook. And by the way, I changed the names in these stories to protect identities.

But I pulled him up on Facebook and looked him up and yeah, he's married, has kids now. I couldn't really tell from the Facebook. Sometimes you can privatize stuff and you can't really look through. Yeah, I'm stalking.

I'm stalking people on Facebook. You can't always see everything that they're up to. So I don't know if he's attending a church or not but it looks like he's living a happy life. Does it look like a man who's gone back to his old ways or anything?

And I hope that Christ is holding him close and he's continuing in the goodness of God. That was quite an experience. Something I will never forget but has been a continual reminder to me to not hold grudges or be bitter toward those people who have ever done anything to me in my past.

If they say Christ has forgiven me, then I need to forgive. And there is nothing so great that Christ will not redeem and wash us and make us new and seed us in the heavenly places with him in glory. And as Paul says in Colossians 3, when Christ who is your life appears then you also will appear with him.

And we will all be gathered together before the throne, rejoicing in the one who saves. You're a sinner in need of a savior. I'm a sinner in need of a savior. Christ is that savior. He is as much a savior for you as he is for me.

No matter what sins you have done, Christ saves and he saves to the uttermost. Praise be to God. Now, as I said yesterday, may we do as Jesus said to those sinners that he saved and we go and sin no more.

But if we do sin as said in 1 John 2, 1 we have an advocate before the father, Jesus Christ the righteous. That expression that Jesus is our advocate, that word advocate means that he is speaking favorably before the father on our behalf.

He's speaking favorably of us. Yes, I've saved him. I've saved her. And we have become sons and daughters of God through Jesus Christ who loves us. And there is great joy in heaven. I tell you there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

But that person who continues in their stubbornness and in their self-righteousness to say, I don't need to repent of anything. I pray that God humbles you before he humbles you. You know what I mean?

There are a lot of people, a lot of Christians that sit in churches and we'll sing amazing grace. How sweet the sound for you, but not for me. That's the song that you need to sing. This sermon is for you today.

This is for you to be convicted over your sin, but I'm good. You're gonna find out very quickly. You are not as good as you thought you were. Humble yourself before God. And at the proper time, he will exalt you.

Heavenly father, we thank you for what we have read. And I pray it would indeed be our great joy to hear of sinners who turn from their sin to the savior and are saved.

And we believe it.

We believe that Jesus will save and he will cleanse from all unrighteousness. We believe it so much that we take the message of the gospel out to the world so that those who are lost would be found. That the spirit would work in their hearts, the message of that gospel that they hear proclaimed and they would turn from their sin to the savior and so be saved.

And we're packing heaven, we're filling it up so that there will be great feasting and rejoicing even on that day of glory. Over the sinners who repent and is cleansed by Christ. Our sins are forgiven for your namesake.

It's in Jesus name we pray, amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website, www .wutt .com and click on the gift tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand The Text.