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[0:00] This is a sermon from King's Church West Northean. Any guesses what scripture we're going to be reading this afternoon? Lost sheep did you say! You're so close, so close. Let's see shall we. Alan's gonna read if you want to follow it in your Bible it's from Luke chapter 15 or it will be it might be up on the screen in a moment. Thanks Alan.

[0:25] Okay so reading from Luke 15 verses 8 to 10 the parable of the lost coin. Well suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search curfew until she finds it?

[0:43] And when she finds it she calls her friends and neighbors together and says rejoice with me I have found my lost coin. In the same way I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

[0:59] Brilliant thank you Alan. Super so we are going to be thinking about the parable of the lost coin this afternoon. And one of the reasons I picked this is what I was thinking about this quite a lot last weekend. So last weekend Shara and I and our kids went along to help with the youth weekend away. So with some of the young people from our church and from King's Church Edinburgh.

[1:19] And which was fantastic by the way we had a really really good time. So thank you if you were praying for us and thinking about us. It was really really good. And we were at guess what we were at the windmill centre in Arbroath. Wow what a place. Hands up if you've been to the windmill centre in Arbroath.

[1:38] Keep your hand up if you remember the vending machines. Does anyone remember the vending machines? Yes very important vending machines. Right you can put your hands down. The vending machines in the windmill centre are these little, they're like cylinders and they sell, they sell things in cylinders don't they?

[1:54] Sell little tubes of Pringles if you remember that. And sweets and stuff like that. And you need to have a very special coin to be able to get something from the vending machine. Do any of the kids remember what coin?

[2:04] David you'll know. One pound. So poor David came to me. He said, look I've got some money. I've got five pound note. And I said, I don't have any one pound coins David. I'm so sorry.

[2:17] So David was like scouring the place for one pound coins. He couldn't spend his five pound note because he needed the one pound coins to use the machine. And it was quite funny because Flora found, when we were there, Flora found a penny. A penny. And she's 10 years old.

[2:34] So she quickly realised that a penny wasn't going to get her very far with these vending machines. So do you know what she did? Shock horror. She threw it away. She threw the penny away.

[2:45] She'd obviously not heard the phrase, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. Well, Evie, who's five, she heard that Flora had chucked this penny.

[2:56] And she was determined she was going to find this penny and use it in the vending machines. She's five. She didn't quite realise that she might need a few more pennies than one pea.

[3:08] But she was looking for it. And she was on the case and she was searching. She just needed a little magnifying glass, maybe like a deer stalker hat. And she'd be like a little Sherlock Holmes looking for this penny. And she was searching and searching. And straight away, it reminded me of this story of the woman and the lost coin.

[3:24] Searching and searching to find this coin that was so valuable to her. Just like the penny was really valuable to Evie. And stories like this that Jesus told, they're called parables.

[3:35] I don't know if we really use parables in modern day, but a parable is like a simple story. It's usually about sort of everyday things like money, like coins or maybe farming or family.

[3:46] Things that the people of the time would have related to. But the simple story pointed to a deeper truth. So it had a simple story, but had a deeper truth about God or life with God.

[3:58] And in this case, the parable is about a lost coin. In fact, the woman had not 20, however many Gordon had. She had 10 silver coins, 10 little coins.

[4:09] And in your Bible, if you were reading it, it might have called them their name. So these coins are called drachmas. It was a coin of the time. It was the name of these little silver coins. Now, I have a little silver coin.

[4:22] If you've got good eyesight, you might be able to tell. What kind of coin do I have? Anyone know? What do I have, Peter? Oh, so close. It's the right color. It's not 20p?

[4:32] Toby. 5p. Okay, so it's maybe a bit like a drachma in color, silver. And maybe it's the same sort of size. But you know what?

[4:43] This has got nothing to do with the coin that the lady was looking for. Because the coin she was looking for, again, it might say in your Bible, was worth a whole day's work.

[4:55] Imagine doing a whole day's work and then someone gives you a little coin. It's quite different to today, isn't it? I don't think I'd be very happy if someone gave me this after a whole day's work. But would anyone like this 5p? Would anyone like to do a little job for me?

[5:07] I don't think it'll take you a day. I don't think so. Right, I've got a bit of paper I've been holding. I've been looking after this for a long, long time. This is a hard job. Because when I'm in this center, I never know which bin to use.

[5:21] So does anyone know which bin this should go in? Can someone come and put this in the bin for me? Who'd like to do that? Oh, thanks, Caleb. Go on, Caleb. Well, come on, you do it. I'm not doing the job.

[5:32] There's the rubbish. Or whoever gets it first. Go on, Callum. Where does it go, Callum? You have a look. I hope you get it in the right bin. Oh. Oh.

[5:44] Oh. Yes, fantastic. The blue bin. Well done, Callum. That's right, paper in the blue bin. And my blue bin goes out tomorrow.

[5:56] I need to remember that. So. What did you say? Oh, five, Callum. There you go. Well done. Good job. Good job. You've earned your 5p.

[6:06] Now, that is a lovely little coin, isn't it? But it's not really a whole day's wage, to be honest. A bit of a challenge. If you like maths, any adults here like maths and numbers?

[6:19] Any kids like maths? Okay, I want you to think while I'm speaking. I'll ask you in two minutes. How many 5p's would we need to get a day's wage? And I'm going to call a day's wage £100.

[6:32] Okay? So to make it nice, easy numbers, 100, not too bad. And I'll come back to you in a minute, Daniel. Sit down. You've already got it. Keep it in your head. Check it over. I am a teacher, after all.

[6:44] So. How many 5p's do we need to make £100? I'll ask you in a minute, okay? Now, back to the story. The lady has lost one of her precious coins. And it was worth a whole day's pay.

[6:55] Which is amazing, isn't it? Now, if you'd lost a whole day's pay, and you knew it was somewhere in your house, what would you do? What would you do? Get a metal detector. Metal detector.

[7:07] I love it. In first century Israel, I'm not sure how many metal detectors there were, sadly, but it's a good idea. Well, I think you'd do what Evie did last weekend, the weekend away, looking for that penny.

[7:17] I think you would search and search and search and search until you found your coin. And that is what the woman did. I don't know if you noticed her method of searching. I skip over these things sometimes when I'm reading the Bible.

[7:29] But actually, the first thing she did was she got something out. She lit a lamp. She lit a lamp. That seems a bit strange, but you've got to imagine a house in the time of Jesus.

[7:41] It wouldn't have had big electric lights like this. It wouldn't have had big windows like this. It would have been a very dark, kind of dimly lit house. So she went and she got her little lamp.

[7:52] And it was a little oil lamp, probably. They actually used olive oil. So maybe it smelled quite nice. I don't know. But it would have given off a little, very small, flickering light.

[8:02] The best thing I could imagine bringing was something like this. Do you think this would be very helpful for searching for a coin in a dark house? Maybe. It's better than nothing, isn't it?

[8:14] But I'm not sure how good it would be. So she had her little oil lamp. And then it says she got her brush out. Now, I use this brush every day.

[8:26] Don't I, Shah? I used it today. And she got her brush out and she was sweeping the floor looking for her coin. And again, when I was reading that, I thought, that's interesting.

[8:38] Sweeping the floor. You know, if I look at this floor, if there was a coin on this floor, would I really need to sweep to find the coin? Probably not. I think I'd see it pretty quickly.

[8:48] But again, if you imagine being in the lady's house 2,000 years ago, she would have had a little oil lamp. But the floor wasn't a lovely, hard floor like this. It would have been a dirt floor.

[9:00] So it would have been like clay or something like that. It would have been cracked and dusty. And imagine dropping a little coin. It could easily get covered in dust and be missing, couldn't it? So that's why she had her trusty brush to look for her coin and her little lamp.

[9:14] And the good news is she found her coin, didn't she? I'll pop these away. Now, back to the maths problem.

[9:25] Hands up if you worked out. How many 5p coins would I need? What did you think, Rory? 2,000. Did anyone else think 2,000? You're absolutely right.

[9:37] 2,005 Ps is a lot, isn't it? Imagine doing 2,000 trips to the paper bin. That's to earn 100 pounds. It would be amazing, wouldn't it? And that is the key to this story.

[9:51] Do you know, the lady was so intent on finding the coin because it was worth so much. To us, it's like 2,005 Ps. That's a lot, isn't it? 100 pounds is a lot of money.

[10:03] It was so precious to her. The coin was so valuable. It was worth so much that when she found it, she didn't just go, oh, good, and put it in her pocket. What did she do? What did she do, Peter?

[10:14] She had a big party. You're absolutely right. So she invited all of her friends and her neighbours, and they got together to rejoice with her, to celebrate, have a big party. I wonder if someone was to give you 100 pounds on the street, would you tell everyone you knew?

[10:31] I think I would. I think I would tell my neighbours, tell my friends. I'd be like, look, I got 100 quid from someone. Amazing. Now, it's at this point in the parable that Jesus does his thing, where he does the big reveal.

[10:44] You see, the story's not really about a coin, after all. This story is about how God searches out and finds lost people.

[10:56] God searches out and finds lost people. This is what he says in verse 10. In the same way, in the same way as the lady and the coin, I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents.

[11:14] Jesus is saying there is a party in heaven when someone does a 180 degree turn. Running away from God to running towards God.

[11:27] That turning from being away from him to turning towards him. Now, in the sentence that we've just read, Jesus uses the word sinner to describe someone.

[11:39] A sinner is someone who's done that, who's walked away from God. God, this affects everything, doesn't it? When we walk away from God, it affects the way we think. It affects the way we use our words, what we say, what we do.

[11:52] It affects our hearts, doesn't it? Sin breaks our relationship with God. It creates a divide between us and him. But then he talks about this sinner who repents.

[12:06] Repentance is all about choosing to turn away from sin and instead to turn towards God. And in fact, in the next story in the Bible, so if you go home and you carry on reading, you'll find there's a story about a young man who runs away, the lost son.

[12:21] I'm not going to talk about it for very long, but he basically messes up his life and he realizes he regrets it. He doesn't want that sort of life anymore and he decides to go home. If I was him and I knew I'd messed everything up, I'd be nervous about going home.

[12:36] But it says that when he walked towards home, his father was walking towards him. And his father actually started to run towards him and wrapped his arms around the young son who'd got lost.

[12:50] Wrapped his arms around him in compassion and love. And this is a picture of what God is like. Our God is a God who wraps his arms around lost people.

[13:02] He's a God of mercy, a God of forgiveness, a God who loves sinners like me and sinners like you. And we're going to just finish in a moment, but perhaps you know today that actually you are lost.

[13:21] Or perhaps thinking back, you think, yeah, there was a time in my life where I was lost, where I was messed up, where I'd ruined it, where I'd broken things. Maybe you know that you are a sinner, like Jesus says.

[13:37] I think anyone who's here who would say that they're a Christian knows what that's like. You know, churches around the world, they're not gatherings of perfect people.

[13:49] We're gatherings of sinners, united to a perfect saviour, aren't we? As we come to Jesus, we remember that in his life, he loved sinners.

[14:02] You know, in verses before, you had the Pharisees, they were saying, look at this guy, he welcomes sinners. Well, isn't that good news? And in his death, he died for sinners like you and me.

[14:17] He took upon his own shoulders our sin. And we're just going to close in a moment. We're going to pray. And I'd love you to join me in your own heart. And we're going to give thanks to God for all that he's done.

[14:30] But let this story fill your mind as we pray. You might want to close your eyes. Lord Jesus, we just want to listen to this story that you told about the woman and the lost coin.

[14:45] We thank you for what it shows us, that you came into the world to seek out, to search for, to find lost people. And Lord, we see that that coin was so precious to that lady.

[15:00] And in the same way, we know that each person is precious to you. We thank you that each person is so precious that you lived and died for each person to repair our relationship with you.

[15:15] And we're so grateful that you welcome us as sinners to know you, to have a relationship with you, to know your forgiveness. We thank you, Lord Jesus.

[15:29]  Amen.