Luke 15 v 9. “And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’
The wandering sheep in the previous parable illustrates the tendency of fallen human nature as it bumbles through life. Like the sheep we unconsciously wander into all kinds of danger – real danger for the sheep that may have faced mountain lions or bears – real for us as we wander into spiritual and moral sinking sand.
But the story of the lost coin is different. This coin may possibly have formed part of the band that eastern women sometimes wore around their heads to indicate they were married. To lose a coin like that would be like a woman today losing her wedding ring. But notice that while the sheep was lost out in the hills, the coin was lost at home. The one thing the sheep and the coin had in common was their lostness. They were away from their owners.
How sadly true it is of our time that very often people who grow up in homes where they are loved and valued, where they may have been taught the Gospel, nevertheless find no response in their hearts to the Gospel invitation? They simply grow up bleak and lost – AT HOME.
These are those on the Judgement Day who will not be able to point a finger at a mother or a father and blame them for withholding the truth from them. They heard it all – but were lost in their own homes.
It is also of course true that the reverse may have happened. Carelessness and neglect by those at home caused them to be careless about the family. And like the unnoticed coin, it just worked its way loose and one dropped into a dark place, where it lay hidden.
But was the owner content to leave it at that? She was not and so she swept the house and searched carefully, That is what God does. He searches the nooks, crannies and dark places of our society and of our homes – and indeed also the dark places of our own lives. One day He finds us, like the woman finds her lost coin. What does she say to her neighbours and friends? “Rejoice with me. I have found my lost coin.”
And what does God say? Verse 10 “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Oh, how God loves to redeem lost people.
He rejoices over them.
Do you?