The text for the sermon this evening comes from Luke 15. Last Sunday, we looked at Luke 15, verses one through seven, and which are recorded for us, Christ's parable of the lost sheep. Tonight, we're gonna be looking at the parable of the lost coin, reading Luke 15, verses one through three, and then verses eight through 10. This is the word of our God. Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. The Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. So he spoke this parable to them, saying, or what woman having 10 silver coins If she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it. And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together saying, rejoice with me, for I have found the peace which I lost. Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. I believe one of the best verses in the scripture is found here in this text. And this verse communicates hope, great hope to all of you who are here this evening. In verse two, we read, this man receives sinners. Jesus receives sinners. This text does not tell us that Jesus avoids sinners. This text does not tell us that Jesus sends sinners away. But this text tells us that Jesus receives and welcomes sinners. He invites them to come, to trust in him and to be forgiven of all their sins. He receives them to make known to them the riches of His goodness. Even as we say in Psalm 100, because the Lord is good, His mercy endures forever. Jesus receives sinners that we, as His creatures, might know that He is good, that His mercy endures forever. For those of us who know our sin, there is great hope to be found tonight in Jesus, for this man receives sinners. And this is truly surprising for us if we remind ourselves who the sinners are in our text. Our text says, In verse one, then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. Last week, I mentioned in some detail who tax collectors were. They were social and moral outcasts. They were rejected by their own people. They were Jews who, for their willingness to work for the pagan Roman government, For their willingness to exploit their own family and countrymen, for their willingness to do this, they were rejected by their own people. The tax collectors weren't religious. They were the last people you would expect to be interested in anything to do with religion. And John Chrysostom, a pastor in the early church, said that the tax gatherer is a personification of licensed violence, of legal sin, of specious greed. The tax collector was an odious man. And yet he comes to Jesus. Not just the tax collector, but sinners, adulterers, fornicators, murderers, thieves, liars. These all found in Jesus something to seek after. Though they were great sinners, they come to Jesus because they know in Jesus they can have hope. They come to Jesus because they find Him to be someone who can truly deal with their condition. When somebody finds out they have a life-threatening illness, they will expend great energy and time to find a doctor who can actually understand and treat that illness. somebody finds out they have a spiritual illness, someone finds out they have sin and that they are indeed not just—they don't just have sin, but they themselves are sinners, the best doctor they can turn to is Jesus, because Jesus deals with our condition. And these tax collectors and these sinners in our text know this. That's why it says, then all the task collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. Jesus received them. Jesus doesn't just send the sinner on his way, but instead promises forgiveness for all sin with a call to repent, that is to turn from sin and believe upon him. Jesus did this throughout his ministry. Remember in John 8, the Jews bring a woman who's caught in adultery to Jesus for the judgment of the law, and the judgment of the law would have been death for this woman. The witnesses are all there. It's not just one witness, but there's a multitude of witness. According to the requirements of the law, this woman deserves death. She's been caught in the act. She's not disagreeing with that. She is guilty. And yet, what does Jesus say to her? He says, go and sin no more. Danger when we think of sinners is to say, well, I'm not that one that the Bible speaks of. I'm not that sinner that the Bible speaks of, and yet this passage tells us that Jesus received sinners and tax collectors to demonstrate for us that Jesus saves to the uttermost, and it's a person who recognizes that they indeed are a sinner, who recognizes that what the Bible says about our fallen condition is true. It's a person who recognizes this, that is truly able to be helped. Whom Jesus is truly able to receive, because they know their condition. They know they are sinners. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew that he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance, and that those who are whole, those who are healthy, do not need a physician, but those who are sick. Jesus receives sinners. And Jesus does not just receive sinners, But Jesus also goes and searches for lost sinners. Here in our text, Jesus compares himself to a woman who has 10 silver coins, who loses just one of those coins and searches with diligence her entire house until she finds that one lost coin. And here it's interesting for us to know that Jesus compares himself to a woman. While God generally refers to himself in masculine terms, it's important for us to remember that God does not have a gender. God is spirit. And while he refers to himself often after masculine terms, there is God the Father and God the Son, but also occasionally gives himself feminine characteristics. In Isaiah 66 verse 13, God compares himself to a mother. He says, as one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you. God says he will comfort his people like a mother comforts her child. The same is true of Isaiah 49 verse 15. Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. And finally, in Matthew 23, 37, Jesus compares himself to a mother hen, crying out after Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I want to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Luke, out of all other gospel accounts has a special emphasis on how women come to believe in Jesus Christ. It'd be highly unusual in Jesus's day for a rabbi to give one story about a man, that's what we find in the parable of the lost sheep, it's about a shepherd, a man, going and searching for that lost sheep. It'd be unusual for a rabbi to give one story about a man and then also as a counterpart to go give another parable with a woman at the center. Even more unusual would be for a rabbi to take a known story about a man and make it actually about a woman. And there are some commentators who believe that this is actually what Jesus is doing. They argue the rabbis in Jesus's day would tell a story frequently about a man who had lost a small little coin. And then this man searched for it until he had found it. And the rabbis would tell this story to highlight to the Jews with what faithfulness they needed to search the Torah, the law of God, to find hidden treasure. Here it seems that Jesus is taking this well-known story and repurposing it. He repurposes it in a way that gives honor to women. And this serves as a reminder for us, the gospel is not just for men, it is for women as well. The gospel is for all people. It is for all to come to Jesus and be found by him. The gospel is for men and women, for boy and girl, to come to Jesus, to confess their sins to Him, to know that He forgives sins. And not just to know that, but to believe it. Now, in Jesus' parable, the woman had ten coins. These were valuable coins that were often worn around the neck. You have a small little pouch, and you would tie it around your neck for safe keeping. And these 10 coins would represent this woman's entire life's savings. So these coins are worth much to her. The estimated worth of one of these coins in today's economy would have been probably about $100. One of these silver coins, a drachma, was worth about a day's wage. And so this woman's fairly poor. She was, in some sense, the average poor person. Now, imagine you losing one-tenth of your entire life's savings. That's a lot of money. That's how the Jews would have heard this. This woman's lost one-tenth of her entire life's saving. And you wouldn't just say, well, I lost that coin. What's lost is lost. No, you would make diligent search for that lost coin. It would be exceedingly precious to you. There's a story of a man who invested in the early days in Bitcoin, and he thought it was worthless, and so he threw the hard drive that he had the Bitcoin on, he threw it into the garbage, and it ended up in the dump. And then, of course, Bitcoin got really, it was a really good investment and was worth millions later on. And this man spent thousands of dollars digging up the dump where he thought this hard drive had ended up while he never found it. those hard drives, but that's the sort of energy that this parable should convey to us. Here's a great sum of money that has been lost, and this lady is going to spend whatever energy she has to win back, to find back that money. And yet, this parable isn't about investments. It's not about money. This parable is about the value of lost souls. Just as this coin was incredibly valuable to this woman, so the soul of lost sinners is incredibly valuable to God Your soul is valuable to God. He made you, he created you, he has placed his image upon you. And some commentators believe that Jesus tells this story of a coin, specifically of a coin, because coins have an image stamped upon them. This woman's coin would have had an image of Caesar stamped on it. And just as a coin today might have an image of a king or a president on it, so every single person who is born in this earth has the image of God stamped upon them. And because of that, they have great value and worth. And yet, this image has been marred by sin. Children, I'm sure if you've ever spent time looking for coins, sometimes my brothers and I, when we would go to the supermarket, would try to get under the vending machines and try to find whatever coin we could possibly find. And some of those coins under the vending machine, they were so dirty, we could hardly tell what the face value of that coin was. This is the effect of sin so often upon us. It obscures and hides the image of God with which we've been stamped. Sin does this to the image of God. Sin mars that image. It hides it, it obscures it. Sinners do not contribute to the value for which they were created. The reality is that we have been created for so much more than sin. And yet you do a disgrace to yourself, to who God made you to be, to be reveling in sin. You were not created to sin. You were created to glorify God, to give God the glory. That's what we all confess in that catechism answer. What's the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. That's the purpose God created us to fulfill. Yet when we sin, we do not fulfill that. And instead, we bring sorrow and guilt into our lives. Richard Phillips on this passage says, like a coin that is lost, sinners lie unused and unseen, no longer contributing the value for which they were fashioned, while God's image with which they were stamped is increasingly tarnished with the dust of sinful living. And yet God holds that soul still valuable. even though you can't see the face value of that coin. You don't know what it's worth. That coin is still worth whatever is under all that dust and dirt. That coin is still valuable even though its value is obscured. I'm sure many of you have heard the story of the prophet Jonah before. Jonah was a prophet who did not want to be a prophet. Specifically, he did not want to preach to the vile, sinful, wicked Ninevites. But eventually he does. And when the Ninevites repent, Jonah gets so angry with God because God is merciful to them. God responds to Jonah's anger by reminding Jonah of how precious lost souls are to him. God asks Jonah, should I not pity Nineveh, that great city in which are more than 120,000 persons who cannot discern between their right hands and their left, and much livestock? Lost sinners are like those who don't know their right hand from their left. They don't know the truth, they wander about. They're like sheep, not knowing what is really in their best interest to pursue. And the parables here in Luke 15, there's a set of three parables. You have the parable of the lost sheep. You have the parable of the lost coin. You have the parable of the lost son. Each of these parables has an analogy, a different analogy, for how the sinner gets lost. Sometimes they get lost because they're like wandering sheep. They think the grass is greener over the other side, and so they jump over the fence. Then they realize, oh, that wasn't actually grass I was jumping to. That was a pit I jumped into. Sometimes the sinner gets lost, because with great purpose and intention, he says, I will forsake what's good. And instead, I will go and live a life of prodigal, sinful living. That's the story we have that we're gonna consider next week, the parable of the lost son. But sometimes, like a coin that is lost, sin is sometimes something we fall into. And while we all have a depraved human nature with natural inclination to sins, sometimes we fall into particular sins through no fault of our own. Hard circumstances in life conspire to keep us from God. Sometimes we fall, sometimes we are sinned against and are taught sins through those in authority over us. Like a coin that is lost, sin is something we can fall into. And yet, Scripture teaches us that our sins always leave us inexcusable. Our sins bear the awful consequences of death and darkness. The house this woman likely lived in would have been a rather small and dark place. Because of her poverty, she likely had no windows in her house. And when she lost that coin in her house, It would have been very hard to find it. She probably didn't have a nice hardwood floor. She probably had a dirt floor. Here she is on her hands and knees with a candle, trying to find this lost coin in the darkness. A lost coin, unless found, would forever remain in the dark, unspent and useless. But that coin needed the light to be brought to it. That coin could not get up and walk back to the woman. That coin needed the light brought to it. What a glorious thing it is when God, by his spirit, comes to us in our darkness, in our lost states, bring the light of the gospel to us, giving us a new heart, bringing us and showing us the true light. What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? Apart from God's grace, working in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, we are dead and lifeless. We love our sin too much, and pride, we think, well, I don't need God. The glory of the gospel is that God comes to us. Not that we come to God, but that God comes to us. His light searches us out. His light breathes life into us. God's spirit causes us to be born again. He gives us that new heart and that new life. And this is why Jesus says elsewhere that we must be born again if we are to see the kingdom of God. We must be born again. The Spirit must cause us to be new creatures. Are you trusting in Christ? Have you been born again? Has the light of the gospel come and found you? The last part of this parable I want to draw your attention to is the woman's great joy at her coin being found. When somebody wins the lottery, you see them all ecstatic, finally have this great amount of money. Often, there's a sort of hollowness to that kind of happiness at that person winning the lottery. Greed and avarice seem to put a dent in that joy. and yet consider how wholesome this woman's joy is. When she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together saying, rejoice with me, for I have found the peace which I lost. Here's this woman in poverty, and she throws a small party with her neighbors and her friends, with the little means that she has. She is just so thankful to have found what she lost. Relief washed over her. Jesus tells us that this joy of hers is a picture of God's joy in lost sinners being found. Verse 10 here says, likewise I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Jesus tells us here that God rejoices and sinners being found with a joy that is so great that radiates out from him and impacts the very angels in heaven. I was just talking this morning with somebody about what joy a child can bring to a room of sad people. The joy and the innocence that a child has has a way of truly lightening the mood in a depressed situation. Here, we have a statement of God's joy, bringing joy, not just to him, but to all of heaven. Scripture tells us in other places that the angels are very interested in our salvation. And here we're told that they're rejoicing in the salvation of lost sinners. And why is it that angels are interested in our salvation? Think of angels, they're perfect, holy, righteous creatures. Why is it that they're so interested in us fallen humanity? As you remember, angels have no salvation of their own. Satan was an angel of light who fell away from God and with that fall, no salvation was provided for him or the demons that fell with him. There's no mediator for the angels, no mediator for Satan or demons, yet not so with us. And could this be part of the reason that angels are so interested in our salvation? Because in our salvation, they see the character of God, that He is gracious, that He is merciful, that He delights to save lost sinners. In Isaiah 59 verse 16, we read this about God. He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor. Here, Isaiah tells us that God saw that there was no savior for men, and he wondered that there was no intercessor. There is no mediator to save men. We're told, therefore, his own arm brought salvation for him and his own righteousness, it sustained him. God saw that there was no mediator for lost men. What does God do? He himself becomes their intercessor. He himself comes their mediator. And this is the grace of God towards sinners. God does not delight in the death of sinners. He does not delight in the death of those who do not repent or believe in him. Ezekiel 18, 23, God asks the rhetorical question, do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, says the Lord God, and not that he should turn from his ways and live? God does not delight in the death of the wicked. Why should it be that you die in your sins? Jesus has come. Jesus receives sinners. Sinners have come to Christ and found him to be their great delight and salvation. The Jewish rabbis would refuse to spend time with sinners. They said, let not a man associate with the wicked, not even to bring him to the law. Imagine that, having such an abhorrence for sinners. When a sinner's committed some great transgression, you can't even associate him to bring him to justice. And yet Christ receives sinners. The Holy One of Israel receives sinners. He receives sinners in order that He might be their salvation, that those who come to Him might rejoice with joy unspeakable. Jesus is the hound of heaven. He will find those who are lost and will bring them to himself. If you are his, he will find you and he will save you. John Stott was an Anglican priest in the 20th century who God used to bring many to Christ. And in his autobiography, Why I Am a Christian, he writes these words. Why I am a Christian is due ultimately neither to the influence of my parents and teachers, nor to my own personal decision for Christ, but to the hound of heaven. That is, it is due to Jesus Christ himself who pursued me relentlessly even when I was running away from him in order to go my own way. And if it were not for the gracious pursuit of the hound of heaven, I would today be on the scrap heap of wasted and discarded lives. What a great Truth, it is that Jesus searches for lost sinners, that Jesus pursues lost sinners. And what hope there is for those who hope in Him, who trust in Him for salvation. John Newton, another Anglican priest, was a great sinner prior to coming to Christ. He served as a ship captain in the Atlantic slave trade. He would later come to Christ being horribly convicted over his sin, how he had treated his fellow image bearers, how he had given much harm to them. And he would later go on to write that hymn that many know, hymn Amazing Grace, and that hymn are those beautiful words, I once was lost, but now I'm found. That's what we have in the gospel, we who were lost. have been found because of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Lord, we come before you thankful that there is hope for sinners like us. Thankful that Jesus receives sinners. that he forgives them of their sins, calling them to turn from their sin and to turn to him. Lord, we pray that you would forgive us of our sins, that you would work in our hearts to believe and trust in you. Help us, Lord, to turn from sin and to love your law. that we might so glorify you with that image you have given us, that we pursue the glory of your great name. Father, we pray for those who can't be with us this evening. We think especially of the Powells. We pray, oh Lord, that you would give them healing from the sickness that they have, that you would encourage them even in this. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.