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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/murray-mccandless/a-lost-coin/
Luke chapter 15 and verse number 8, either what woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and 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 piece which I had lost.
I have found the piece which I had lost. Luke's gospel chapter 15 is one of the likely most oft-preached passages from our New Testament, from the Bible. The story of the lost. The good news of the gospel is there's only one kind of people that can never be saved, that's people that are lost.
Luke 19 and 10 says very clearly, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. If you just came into this meeting with just a very limited knowledge of what it meant to be lost or saved, supposing you had not heard it a lot, for the best definition of it is the chapter that we've read from tonight, because the Lord Jesus in this chapter tells about a lost sheep, then about a lost silver, and then He talks about a lost son.
In fact, two of them, there's another son, he was lost too, never to be saved. I trust that's not true of anybody in the meeting tonight. Never to be saved. Never to be saved. Do you ever think of that?
Do you ever think I may never be saved? I used to think about that before I was saved. I used to lay back on my bed and think, what if I was never saved? What if I never got what I'm hearing that I need to be saved?
What if it never happened? And I remember it used to grip my heart to think I would never be in heaven, that all I would have to look forward to was hell forever because of my sin and where it had taken me.
So the Lord Jesus in Luke's Gospel, so people would understand what He meant when He spoke about people that are lost, gives us this large chapter by telling us about that which was lost. Now I've only picked out of it one of them.
I'm not talking tonight about the sheep that was lost or the son that was lost, as important as they are. I'm going to talk to you just about the silver that was lost and how that silver is so representative of you in the meeting tonight.
A piece of silver. It's interesting. This silver was something that had more value than its worth in itself. For example, I don't know what it cost to print the coin, but it represented a country. It represented a power.
It represented Caesar. It represented something that could be looked upon and somebody could understand that this here has value. Now we handle a lot in a day that has no value. We live in a day of a throwaway.
But there are certain things that we do have that are possessions, or things as we may call them, and they have value to us. What gives the most value is the present need that it meets. What gives anything its value is the present need that it meets.
It's only coming to my mind now, but we come to discover one of the brethren came and kindly told us we had left the lights on in our car. Of course, that means battery cables. Now suppose we had gone to all kinds of people and couldn't get a pair of battery cables.
And we don't have them. We're out here and we need to get back to Clarksville, Iowa tonight. There's no cable. Somebody comes along and says, I've got a pair. The value of what it meets. Often at the side of a road.
Got a flat tire. As you go rifling through the trunk and you realize, I need a 7 16ths socket and all I've got is a half inch. What you wouldn't give just to have what you need. But it works both ways, friend.
It's like this. People say, well, she only had lost one. She still had nine. But if what she was going to buy was going to cost ten, nine wasn't going to make it. Whenever I think of this, I think of my wife was with me.
We were coming with a large tractor trailer from down. Our boys have some trucks and I was picking up a load of trailers, long trailers, way down near St. Louis, Missouri. Their office girl had given us a bag of change and bills in it for highway tolls.
So we're clicking along and weren't really watching just what was left in the bag. But we come up to the state of Pennsylvania, pulled in to go on to the interstate. I'm not sure we're getting on or getting on it or off or whatever it was.
Pulled up. The man said to me, 58 .92. I always remember that, 58 .92. I said to my wife, Shirley, what do we got in that bag? And we had $56. I said, that's all we got. So I leaned out and I says, you know, I got $56, but I got some Canadian money.
He said, I don't want your Canadian money. I says, I got Visa. I don't want Visa. He said, we don't take Visa, sir. I said, oh, how about a debit card? Don't take that either. I said, well, I'll pay you the exchange on the Canadian money.
No, he said, that's not going to work. Sir, he says, maybe it just wasn't a good day for him. You know what he said? You are going nowhere till you have the money. Now he says, down the highway there, there's a truck stop.
There's an ATM machine in there and you can go down there and get the $2 .82 that you need. So my wife says, do you have to unhook this big load of trailers? I says, I think that's what he means. So we unhooked them, went down, got the money, came back and paid and away we went.
See, nothing was... Can I tell you what $2 was worth then? More than it is tonight. I was going nowhere till I had that $2 .82. So you see, it wasn't a case that this woman here could simply say, well, you know, I still got nine pieces.
I'm not totally broke. There's a lot of people think like that in a meeting. They still think they have enough. Whatever I am or whatever I have, you know, I come a little short. The Bible doesn't say that.
The Bible says that all is sin and comes short, totally short. You are tonight bankrupt before God. There's nothing, my friend, nothing that you can pay or do to improve your condition or to save yourself.
You know, the first thing I think about a coin is this. I think of how hard it is. I mean, you got a coin in your pocket tonight. It's hard. A lot harder than the tubular chairs that you're sitting on.
It is hard. It wasn't always that way. There was a time when it came from the factory, from the mint factory. It was very impressible. You could have put your thumb into it and made an impression on it.
You can't do that now. How quickly, how suddenly. It just took on a hardness. No, it did not go in something to make it hard. In other words, the composition of that coin, its very nature made it hard.
And my friend, your very nature tonight makes you hard. Doesn't take long and you get hardened to things. And the Gospel does not harden people. Please don't allow anybody to tell you the Gospel hardens people.
The Gospel doesn't harden people. Sin does. The Gospel softens people. Job said, God maketh my heart soft. And maybe you're sitting here tonight and you think, well, I'm not hard. I know people that are.
Here's how they dress. Here's how they look. I don't have their tattoos. I don't have their earrings. I don't go to places they go to. I'm not hard. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You're just like this coin.
You have become hard. Through no process of your own, through no encouragement of your own, you have become hard. There's something else. I remember our mother, maybe she's just sensitive to us, but she taught us as young kids that we had to wash our hands after handling money.
She says, that's dirty. You never know who's handled that. She used to always be after us about that. Now, we used to have a big glass jar of coins in it. We loved to play with those coins and buy and sell whatever it was.
And she'd insist before we had our supper or whatever, wash your hands. What you handled is dirty. And my friend, before God tonight, like this coin, you are unclean. The Bible says we are all as an unclean thing.
And all our righteousness is ours filthy rags. And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. We all do fate as a leaf. That's how the Bible describes us. That's how it describes you. So here's a coin and it's lost.
It's in a place of darkness. But there's someone that's seeking it. The coin doesn't know it. The sheep that's lost. The sheep doesn't know it. The son that's lost in the far country, he doesn't know it.
Someone is searching for you. Young boy, you wouldn't be in the meeting tonight. Well, you see, my dad brought me. Hear me again, you would not be here if somebody wasn't seeking for you. And you know the one that is seeking for you is the only one that can save you.
His name is Jesus. And that was the condition of this coin. You know, it's interesting that when it comes to being saved, a man could have a hundred sheep and three of them lost. A man could have a hundred sheep and ten of them lost.
She could have had coins and two or three of them lost. Likewise, the son. But every time, it's singular. It's one that is lost, one that is lost, one that is lost. You know, there's something about being lost, my friend.
It becomes a singular focus. It becomes something. In other words, there's no comfort that everybody else is lost. It'd be like you in the woods, hunting here in the state of Wisconsin. It's late on a Saturday night.
It's dark now. Snow's starting to fall. Is it any consolation to you that there might be two other people that are lost in the state of Wisconsin? That's no consolation. You are concerned about one person, and it's this fact, I am lost.
That's what we want in this Gospel meeting, for you to discover the absolute truth in the Word of God that before God, I'm lost, and that if I continue in the position and the condition in which I am, I will be in hell.
That's why you read this. Something else. Just as you are singularly lost, there's a singular Savior, one Savior that's searched for you tonight. You know, this woman does something else. When she has found the coin, she rejoiced.
She says, the coin which I had lost. In other words, she accepted responsibility for what was lost. There's something about that when it comes to Gospel preaching. People do not want to accept the fact or any responsibility for the condition that they are in.
In other words, we'll hear something like this, well, if God didn't want me this way, why did He make me this way? You understand? You're not the way that God made you. You're the way that sin has made you, not the way that God has made you.
You are tonight never what God intended you to be. Just as when this woman got this coin and when it came from the factory, wherever it was made, they didn't make coins so people could lose them and find them again.
This is something that happened beyond the power of this woman. Yet she says, which I had lost. We long that in this meeting tonight, a boy or girl or whoever it may be, realizes that my condition tonight is my fault.
It's my sin that has separated me from God. I'm like that coin. I'm the defiled one. I'm the hardened one. But what a mercy tonight someone is seeking for you, just as she was seeking for this coin. I want you to know, first of all, where it was lost.
It was lost in the house. What's the house? Familiar territory. My house is. I know where the turns are in it. I don't need your little fancy nightlights. Man told me one time, those little house lights, he says, that little light to see around the hallways, he said, that's my favorite light in the house.
His wife said, no it isn't. It's the refrigerator light. But whatever it might be, and sometimes that's very familiar territory, you can go there without the light on. But what do I mean when I say lost in familiar territory?
Your condition in this meeting tonight. Almost know what the preacher is going to say next. He says, turn to Luke 15, you know the chapter. He says, John 3, 16, you know the verse. He says, 2 Kings chapter 5, Naaman, you know about leprosy.
It's very familiar territory. Yet in that familiar territory, that's where you are lost. We used to live in a two-story house, furtigate-sized house, a little town called Norton. The man we bought the house from owned a lumber yard, and he was a jeweler at the same time.
He owned a jewelry store. My wife was doing some detailed cleaning one day. I was sitting in the family room reading. And she came in and she said, look what I found. And she had a nice little leather pouch, sort of a thing, with a pocket watch in it.
Now very obviously, that wasn't mine. I don't wear those breeds or brands. This thing had some value. No, no, no Timex. Not this, not this battery stuff. This thing, you wound it up. Had a little key right in the side of the pouch and everything.
I said, I got to take this down to Ken. I'm sure he's just given up on it. Ken just had the lumber yard down in the small town near where we lived. Yeah, she's just taken it down to him. I'll never forget it, because I'd spoken to Ken about his soul, about his need of being saved.
So I got in my car, took the watch, and I went down to Mr. Fowler. When he saw me come in, it was always the familiar greeting and everything else. I didn't say a thing to him. All I did was I held out the watch like this.
Listen to the language. I would love that would be the language. We would love that would be the language of some of you in the meeting here tonight. It was like a person getting saved, but he's talking about a watch.
He looked at it and he stepped back. Here's what he says. I can't believe it. That sounds familiar. Remember when we got saved? You just pushed back of that chair. You laid back that bed. You said, I can't believe it.
I'm saved. He says, I can't believe it. He says, I thought it would never be found. Is that how you think tonight? He says, I had, Joan and I had given up on it. Where did you find it? I says, I didn't find it.
He says, somebody did. I said, my wife found it. Shirley found it. Well, he said, I'm going to go and call her. I said, well, that'd be a good idea. And before I was hardly out of the store, he's on the phone calling her up and thanking her and asking her, where did you find my watch?
So she told him. It's right where he put it. You know what the truth of that is? He'd hid it on himself. Now, I'm not suggesting you're playing games on yourself tonight, but I want to make it very, very clear that you are lost tonight.
Not only because of what you are, but because of what you've done. Your sin has put you into that condition between you and God. Isaiah 59 and verse 1 says, your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you.
So here it is, and it's lost in the house in familiar territory. But what is the house? Well, what is your house? Where you buy the groceries? I'm serious. You bought the groceries last week? No, you're right.
You didn't buy them. You just go to the fridge and help yourself. It's the place of provision. Sure it is. I did the same thing for years. I just took it for granted. But I want to tell you about a house tonight.
That there is tremendous provision that's been made by God. Not only is that house a place of provision, it's a place of protection. Tis, not much this winter, but other winters, when that snow is blowing, when those hills are drifting in, and the stove or the furnace is going at home, and you come in to that house and feel that door sweep shut behind you.
Ah, you see that, the protection and the provision. Am I not speaking to some here, your house is a house of prayer. Something goes on in your house that doesn't go on in the neighbor's house. Something goes on in your house and the other girls who go to school, their parents don't do that.
In your house, there's somebody that prays with you and prays for you. I'm reminded of Mr. John Procopio that lived with his family in Saugus for a number of years. Down the street, there was a young fellow that lived.
They were called the Surrett family. And they got around with the Procopios quite a bit. And Steve Surrett used to wait outside, wait outside for the Procopios to finish supper. And of course, John taught me the first time I ever had a meal with him.
We were on the go. We were going to a tent meeting. We were taking the tent. We were running a little behind. I'm done. I'm ready to go. And he looked at me. He said, Murray, I got to tell you, there's one time when you don't rush him.
And I tell you, you don't rush him when he's eating. Steve said to him, John, what takes you so long there at supper time? Well, he says, Steve, I'll ask my mom. Why don't you come in and find out? Well, it was a deal.
So he said to his mom, he says, Mom, can Steve come for supper tomorrow night? Sure, she says. You know the Procopios, there's always room for one more. Steve came for supper, had a lovely supper. Then Mr. Procopio brought the Bible out, started to read from the Bible.
Oh, they didn't do that in Steve's house. Then when he's done reading the Bible, Mr. Joe Procopio said, we're going to get down. We're going to pray. Oh, he heard about prayers where he went. But now he gets down to the Procopio house and he prays.
You just fast forward that to a number of years later. John Procopio would meet Steve. Steve is now dying. Steve is going out. He looked at John. John, he says, I will never forget your house. What do you mean?
Such a nice house because of Procopio construction? No. Such a nice house because it was there on Forest Street? Lovely spot? No. He says, John, I'll never forget your house. He says, in that house your dad prayed for me.
Did you hear what he said? That happened once. Once. How many times your dad prayed for you? In that house, your dad prayed for me. Your house is a house of prayer. But and that very house is right where this coin was lost.
But not only what was lost in the house. I want to think about light in the house. The woman attempts nothing. She attempts nothing till she gets the light. A light, likely speaking of the Word of God.
And she brings that light in. And you know, she's just not going to casually stroll through the house and say, you know, hope it turns up. It'd be all right, you know. It says that she swept the house diligently.
You know what it means? She was prepared. Stay with me. She was prepared to move whatever furniture was hindering the light. How about you? If you're not saved tonight, there's something hindering the light.
Not saved, there's something, my friend, holding you back. She was prepared to move that. And you can move furniture fairly easy. But how about a fixture? How about something that is screwed to the wall?
How about something the base is screwed right to the floor? How do you make up with that? Those are permanent fixtures, as you think in your life. But you know, sometimes they get moved. We're sitting in a man's home yesterday or day before, telling him about a man I knew back our way.
Gospel preachers went to visit him. He said, listen, fellas, I just want to save you some time. Life is good. Life is good. Man, he said, I got a fantastic job. I've got a beautiful wife and a lovely boy.
And life for me is those three things. And basically said to the preachers, have a nice day. What you've got doesn't interest me. They left. He should have known better than that. Because he knew the gospel like some of you.
He came home from work one day, and there's a big crowd of cars in his yard. Is this a surprise party? What's going on here? They had lots of those at his house. They had a backyard pool and everything else.
It wasn't a surprise party. There's some very sudden, shocking news. That little boy that was his world had drowned in that swimming pool. Devastated him. Devastated him. Didn't know how he'd even face his job without his son to come home to.
His world was shattered. But he made the best he could through it. Within a year or two, they came to him at work one day. And calling him by name said, you're being dismissed from this firm. He says, no, I've been here.
You're being dismissed by this firm. And they handed him what we call a pink slip. He'd lost the job. The boy is gone. Job is gone. Now it's just the wife. She got used to a lifestyle he no longer could provide.
She got used to something in life that that was over. That was over. Talk about downscaling. They were down and out. She left too. Now he is down to nobody. Nobody. Listen friend. God has his way. When those north winds start to howl.
And when that tree starts to come down. And God starts to deal in the soul of a man or woman, boy or girl. Starts to strip away everything and anything that is hindering the light from doing its work.
John chapter 3. The Lord Jesus spoke very clearly about the light. People coming to the light. People refusing the light. And then would tell people, you're the light of the world. I would announce to them, I'm the light of the world.
Would look at the city of Jerusalem and he said, there's the light. Look at the city. A city that is upon the hill. It cannot be hid. There's the light. Everywhere they would turn there was light. But they turned from the light.
They turned from the light. Now this woman begins to search diligently. She didn't give up until she found it. And is it possible, or maybe you're in the meeting site, you'll never be found. Never be found.
I've never kept sheep. But I would think maybe, possibly by accident, the sheep could wander home. It could. The son, yeah. Given enough time, he could make his way home. But not the coin. Not the coin.
Before the coin could be found, somebody not only had to locate it, somebody had to lift it. And there came a moment when that woman would stoop down and would lift that coin up. And she would go home, calling her friends together and say, I found the piece which I had lost.
So suddenly, what was lost in the house and the light that was in the house, now becomes the laughter in the house. My, they're thrilled. Calls them in. She says, rejoice with me. I have found the piece which I had lost.
There is great rejoicing. And suddenly that coin, that coin took on a value the other nine did not have. Just like that sheep. You know, we used to keep chickens. There are times that we would have a hundred chickens in the shelter.
If we lost one of them, we had 99. I didn't know we lost one. Not unless I saw the evidence of it. The fox could come and take one and slip away in the hours of the night. I'd never know that two are gone.
Not a shepherd. The shepherd would not only knew he had lost one sheep, but he knew which one he lost. Do you know, there's a heavenly shepherd tonight. There's a shepherd that gave his life for the sheep.
And he knows you singularly in this gospel bidding. Knows the very row that you're sitting in. He knows who you're listening to. He knows what you're listening to. Making me accountable. Making you accountable tonight.
And all he wants to do, he wants to save you. Listen to that beautiful text of Luke 19 and 10. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. I hope I never forget it. I hope I never forget it.
Whenever I get on a conference platform to preach, I remind myself that I once sat in a conference where you sit. I once sat with over 60 First Cousins that filled the front rows of the Hannah Memorial Public School in Sarnia, Ontario.
Sixty of us. Three or four of them saved maybe at that time. A number of them gone now. The gospel being preached. I didn't want to tell them I was thinking about this. But I started to think about that in that gospel meeting that night.
I did not get saved that night. But I remember the next day coming to realize if I don't get... The reason I didn't get saved that night, it's not an excuse. It's the absolute truth. We drove home. I'm just not a night person.
I had my hand full of tracts. I grabbed everything I could off the table. There was nothing I couldn't get my hands on. I wanted whatever I could. I wanted to settle it. I made up my mind I'm going to get it tonight.
You hear what I said? I was going to get it. That didn't happen. You don't get salvation. Even though preachers talk about getting saved, which I do too. Salvation is given to you. The Bible never tells you how to get saved.
It tells you how you can be saved. And you can be saved tonight. It was the next night. I fell asleep in the bed that night. Next night I came home and I gave up. I gave up. I could not get this. I remember putting my tracts up on the table.
I picked up one and I was halfway through. I thought I'll finish reading it. The first verse I read was Luke 19 and 10. Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. I thought, can it be?
I thought it would never happen. I'm saved. I'm saved. Now if you'd been there, turned to me and said at that time, are you saved? I'm not sure what I would have said to you. I knew. I knew I had something.
You know how I knew it? Word of God said it. Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Trust tonight, my friend. You will be saved tonight.