Luke 15:8

The Lost Coin

What woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it? Luke 15:8.

Are you clever at finding things that are lost? Little people usually are, perhaps because their eyes are so sharp. If a coin rolls away on the floor, give me a boy or a girl to find it. You know all the tricks of the best way to set about it. You pop down on your knees at once and crawl under the tables and chairs. If that fails, you lay your cheek against the floor so that your eye may be on a level with the ground and very likely you discover the missing coin that way. If not, you turn back the rug and poke your fingers under the edge of the carpet, or you take a stick and fish about with it under any piece of furniture that has a small space between itself and the floor. And in less time than it takes to tell how you do it you produce the lost coins.

Sometimes it is something more valuable than a few coins that you are called in to help to find a contact lens, or the key to a bookcase; mother's earrings, a gemstone from a ring, or car keys. Sometimes what is lost does not appear to you worth all the fuss that is being made about it, till you hear its owner say, “It is not the actual value of the thing; it has sentimental value that make it precious to me.” Then you understand that what seems to you a small thing is of priceless value to its owner, because it was the gift of some dear friend, or it recalls some special occasion.

Now today's text makes us think of the hunt for some seemingly small thing such as that. Christ was talking to the scribes and Pharisees, those men who were always criticizing Him and complaining that He was too friendly with the people whom they contemptuously called “publicans and sinners.” Christ wanted to show those scribes and Pharisees that the people they despised were inestimably precious to God. Christ had a special name for such people. He loved to speak of them as “lost” He thought of them as children of God who had wandered away in paths of their own foolish choosing till they had lost the road to the Father's house. Christ said He had come to this world for the very purpose of seeking and saving such “lost” people. He had come to tell them that God was ever looking for them and longing for them and would not be satisfied till He had them all safe at home. On this occasion Christ told three stories to explain how God felt about the matter the story of the lost sheep, the story of the lost or prodigal son, and, wedged between them, today's text the story of the lost coin.

We cannot tell if Christ invented this story. Quite as likely He was just recalling something that had happened in His own childhood. He may have been going back to a day when Mary, His mother, had been greatly distressed because she had lost one of the ten small silver coins which she, like other married Eastern women, wore strung as an ornament on her forehead. For those who know about such things tell us that the coin mentioned here is a Greek coin and not the usual Roman silver coin for spending which is spoken of in other parts of the New Testament. That string of dangling coins had been given to Mary by her husband on her wedding-day. It was as sacred and precious to her as your mother's wedding-ring is to your mother, so no wonder she was sadly grieved when one of the coins slipped from its fastening. Perhaps Christ helped her to look for it. Perhaps He was so small at the time that He only watched with breathless interest while His mother turned the house upside down in search of it.

Turning the house upside down was rather a different operation in the East in Christ's day from what it is in our homes today. There were no wardrobes to ransack, and very few pieces of furniture to move about. But hunting for a small thing not much larger than a dime would not be easy, for there was no light in an Eastern peasant's house except the scant rays that entered by the open doorway. So first Mary lit a lamp then she lifted and shook the straw or reed mats that were the only kind of carpet she had, and then she took a broom and carefully swept every inch of the hard-beaten clay floor. As she swept she stooped every now and then, and with lamp in hand examined closely the pile of sweepings. At last her eye caught the glitter of silver, and with a cry of joy she bent down and picked up from the heap of dust her lost treasure.

And then what a scene of rejoicing there was! Mary ran to the door and called to her neighbors the good news, and they gathered round the threshold, and turned over the recovered coin in their hands, and all talked at once, and exclaimed how glad they were that it had been found.

When Christ had got so far in the story He added the most important bit of all. He told the scribes and Pharisees that there was as great joy among the angels in heaven when one of God's lost children was found as there was among Mary's neighbors when she discovered her missing coin.

A Sunday-school teacher was once relating this story to a class of small boys. They listened very quietly till she came to the words, “And she swept and swept, till at last she found it.” There was silence for a moment, and then one little fellow held up his hand. “But,” he inquired anxiously, “where did she find it?” He wanted to know the exact spot.

Well, as we have already said, it was most likely in a pile of dust and trash that the coin was found. And that is where many of God's lost children are to be found today. In the lanes and alleys of our great cities, amidst all their squalor and dirt and misery, there are thousands of God's lost children lost, like the coin, through no fault of their own. Would you not like to help God to find them? When you grow a little older you can do it by going down and working in the missions. But even now you can help by giving your money, by gathering bunches of flowers from the woods or from your gardens to send to those who live in these cheerless streets, by sparing a toy or two from your store for some little sick boy or girl. These may seem very little things to you, but they are your share of Home Mission work, and they are not little in God's sight.