People Matter to God: The Lost Coin | Sis. Jin Ai

Um, you know, that’s really something special. I believe as we come together as believers, you know, when we celebrate our amazing Heavenly Father, we see His everlasting goodness from generation to generation. And you know, it really reminded me that when we come and we look to God and His character, when we go up to a higher place and we get His perspective on things, we begin to see things differently, don’t we? We begin to see things differently, we begin to get His strength to respond to challenges that we have on a daily basis, and we get His direction as well on what really matters, on what matters the most. So, it’s always a blessed Sunday, isn’t it, church? Right? Amen.

So, today is actually a continuation from what we started last week—uh, “People matter to God.” And we looked last week at the parable of the lost sheep, and today we’re going to look at something else that is lost. But first, before we look at the lost thing, we’re going to actually join another gathering of very different people. And I want to bring us to that gathering because it’s going to be a scenario that’s really going to give us something to reflect on, something significant to take back with us.

So, for this, let’s go to Luke chapter 15, and if you have your Bibles, I can invite you to turn to that, otherwise, you can follow on the screen. Luke 15:1–2:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So, this gathering that we see was a gathering of tax collectors and sinners, and they were all gathering around to hear Jesus. You see, Jesus was like a magnet for these people. And we actually ask ourselves, why? The Pharisees and the teachers of the law didn’t like it. They complained about it. And we want to ask ourselves a very important question—why did they complain about this group of people that were gathering around Jesus?

And verse 2 shows us the reason: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Now, what’s the big deal about welcoming sinners and eating with them? So, they thought Jesus shouldn’t be welcoming sinners. And because Jesus was doing just that, they were shocked—they were scandalized. And so, to respond to their reaction, and at a deeper level, to address their attitude, Jesus told them a parable. In fact, we saw last week that Jesus told many parables in His ministry—simple, ordinary life stories that illustrated what God was trying to tell the people. And that’s because He really cared. He really cared that ordinary people like you and me could understand the father-heart of God.

And throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus telling one parable to address a certain situation. But here, as in some other situations, you see Jesus telling a series of parables. And here, He told not just one, but three: first involving a sheep, then a coin, and then, as we’ll see in two weeks’ time, a father and two sons. And this shows the importance that Jesus gave to the issue. It also shows that He had certain aspects of God’s truth that He wanted to bring to us.

That’s why He told three. There were similarities in each one, and there were differences. So, to understand the full impact of what Jesus was trying to tell those around Him, we need to appreciate who He was talking to. Who was He speaking to?

A meal with tax collectors and sinners—and the Pharisees were there to observe it. See, tax collectors and sinners—they were seen as one group. And we saw last week that tax collectors were hated by the Jews. They were hated because they were friends of the foreign ruling power, the Romans. And because they were friends, it’s not surprising that they were hated by the Jews.

The Jews were living in their own land, but they were really under foreign occupation. They had no independence—politically and economically. They had no independence; they were under foreign rule. So, they had no power. And, as in all such situations, the Romans required the people to pay tax.

So, tax was a symbol of Roman rule, Roman conquest. And, of course, the Jews hated being taxed. Ordinarily, they would just pay taxes to the temple—to God, and God alone. But now, they were forced to pay to another ruling power in addition.

And worse still, the person who was collecting the tax was a fellow Jew. So, how could a fellow Jew side with their enemies? He was a traitor. He was a betrayer. He was also a dishonored person. You see, because Jews looked at these tax collectors and thought, “You know, these guys, they’re collecting as much money as they can.” And tax collectors did that. They abused this tax system by collecting as much money as they could, and they benefited from the people’s wallets.

And the Jews hated that. Anyone would hate that. A tax collector was also considered an unclean person because, if you remember, he was always in contact with non-Jews and their practices that were different from Jews. He would always be associating with those kinds of things. And being a tax collector, he would obviously collect as much money as he could, and would he observe the Sabbath? No. He would be collecting as much money as he could on every single day.

So, the Jews and the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law—they hated tax collectors and called them all kinds of names. They called them sinners, robbers, prostitutes, bar keepers.

But this kind of hatred was not just at a moral or a religious level. It was not just at that kind of level. And bear with me as I explain this, because the hatred for tax collectors had something to do with the significance of the parable that Jesus told.

See, in Jesus’ day, the Jews were anticipating a Messiah to come. Remember, they were under foreign rule, right? And they were expecting this Messiah to come and overthrow the Romans. Now, who is this Messiah? The Messiah would be God’s chosen King, God’s rightful King. And when He came, the Jews believed He would free them from all this oppression. They would find peace; they would find prosperity. They would no longer be living in exile in their own land.

The Pharisees believed that the Jews were living in exile in their own land. Why? Because they had been unfaithful to God. They had not been following God’s law, and so God had allowed the Romans to come and invade their land because the people had sinned. So, tax collectors and sinners were part of this bigger group of sinners.

And why hate them so much, right? Because if anybody God was displeased with, it would be them—those people. Because of their ritually unclean practices, their immoral conduct, their compromises. Because of them, God was punishing the nation. Because of them, this group of immoral, compromising fellows, the ordinary, respectable Jew—the Jew that was just trying to get along in life—was suffering, they thought. Because of them.

So, that’s why the Jews hated tax collectors in general. The Pharisees, in particular, hated them as well. And so, it was at a very personal level. It was not just because these guys were religiously bad. No, it was at a very personal level because it impacted them.

And here, can I invite us to just pause and think? Does any of this sound familiar to us? Does any of it sound familiar? We don’t have similar tax collectors in our day, right, because LHDN is not the same, okay? But we may have other people that come to mind—other people, for example, those whom we expect to behave in a certain way. People who we expect to have confidence in, who we expect to be able to put our trust in. People in authority—maybe the police, immigration—people who are supposed to be what we expect. But maybe they don’t represent or they don’t live up to those expectations.

Individuals who misuse their authority—you know, you think of politicians, you think of world leaders, you think of people in legal circles, finance, business. They don’t practice transparency, accountability. They have no regard for integrity or governance. They abuse their position; they take advantage of other people because of their power. And you can just think of, you know, some of the scandals that have happened in our nation. I mean, actually, one of the world’s greatest financial scandals. You just think “42 billion,” and you think, can we even describe that in such kind terms as “robbery,” the word that the Jews used to describe tax collectors?

But maybe for you, it’s not really, you know, those kinds of people in higher-up places that have disappointed you. Maybe for you, it’s really in your own neighborhood, in your home, in your backyard. People who you did not expect to have betrayed your trust or compromised your safety or physically abused you, and you have suffered as a result.

Now, when we think of all these words, like “traitor,” “dishonest,” “unclean,” “evil,” “sinner,” they suddenly become very real, don’t they? Because we feel the backlash of their actions very personally—physically, emotionally, mentally, economically. And the impact of other people’s immoral conduct weighs on us. And maybe we can begin to sympathize with the feelings of hatred that the Pharisees had for the tax collectors.

But when Jesus came, He called a tax collector to be His disciple. Matthew, one of the twelve disciples, was a tax collector. When Jesus came, He ate with tax collectors. He even went so far as to dignify one of the chief tax collectors, Zacchaeus, by eating at his house. And you know, when I was a Sunday school girl, I grew up singing that Sunday school song: “Zacchaeus was a very little man, and a very little man was he.” Remember? Well, yes, because he was short. But he was not a little man in their eyes. He was a big, bad man. And Jesus ate with him.

So, if you rethink the Jews’ longing for the Messiah to come and bring freedom from these kinds of people—and you would want that too, if you were a Jew—you would understand why the Pharisees said, “You know, you guys have to clean up your act so that the Messiah will come.” And so, that’s why they imposed all these rules on people, so that people would begin to live holier lives. And hopefully, they thought, because of that, the Messiah would come and free them.

But Jesus, on the other hand, He seemed to relax so many things, right? He healed on the Sabbath, so He seemed to disregard the Sabbath. You know, He mixed with tax collectors, so He seemed to ignore their purity laws. He seemed to water down everything that the Pharisees were trying to do. And because of that, they hated Him.

And so, in this very, very controversial situation, Jesus told this series of parables. Let’s read Luke 15. The first one that we saw last week was about a sheep. Then Jesus told them this parable:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”

See, to Jesus’ listeners—the Pharisees and the teachers of the law—the truly shocking thing at the heart of these stories was the first line itself. The first line.

Sheep. A coin. Good, precious sheep. A precious coin. You see, the Pharisees and teachers of the law saw these people as bad people, right? To be shunned, ostracized—you know, sinners, robbers, prostitutes. They are, in their minds, bad people. And we have our own Malaysian names, right, for what we call our “bad people.” You know, we talk about them at the mamak and coffee shop and all that. We have names for people whom we see as bad. But Jesus saw them very differently. He saw them as lost people.

And here, this is the first lesson that we learn from this series of parables: that God sees people differently. God sees people differently. When the Pharisees saw a bunch of people who had no value—in fact, negative value, to be hated—Jesus was earnestly trying to tell them, and us, that God sees them differently.

What we see as bad and to be rejected, Jesus sees as lost and in need of rescue.

You know, church, when we see someone whom we know with different moral standards than us, who is maybe, you know, downright annoying in school, who does questionable things in the office, who has, you know, really deeply disappointed and hurt us, how do we see them?

Bad or lost? To be rejected and to stay away from, or to be rescued?

Jesus renames and reframes people. You know, I believe that most of us, you know, we have heard Jesus’ kind and assuring words to us. We have heard Him say to us, “You know, I see you differently, you know, right? I value you differently. No matter who you are, I value you. I see your problem of sin that’s, you know, been messing up your life. I don’t want to save you from sin.”

And, you know, most of us who are here, we have responded to Jesus. And with all of our personal struggles, you know, we continue to find Jesus—we continue to find a lot of comfort, you know, in Jesus’ assurance to us that He values us, that we are precious to Him.

But Jesus also says to us: “Those whom you might hate, those whom I might hate, and those I feel are not worthy of our forgiveness and kindness, they are precious to Me too.”

Can we believe that? Maybe the more important question is, can we accept that?

In verses 3 to 4 and 8, Jesus told them this parable:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one.”

See, instead of labeling the outcast as a sinner—”This man eats with sinners”—Jesus lovingly calls him or her a sheep, valuable to the shepherd. What society rejected, Jesus called him or her a lost coin, precious in the woman’s sight.

Now, did you notice two differences between the lost sheep and the lost coin? Jesus was deliberately building up a picture.

The shepherd had a hundred sheep, but he lost one. The woman had ten coins, but she lost one. One.

And in the third parable, you’ll see this picture developed further. But for here, do you see the two differences? The ratio and the object. Let’s talk about the ratio first, right? A hundred to one, then ten to one. That shows us the growing intensity of how the one is valued. Right?

So, I’m not really that good in math, okay? But I can see this, okay? Can you? Right? So, ratio-wise, the lost sheep equals 1%, right? The lost coin equals 10%. Which would be a greater loss? One or ten? Ten, right? So, of course, you see both the sheep and the coin were equally important to the person who lost them. But Jesus was using this example to illustrate a growing value for the one.

The second parable shows us the intensity of how precious lost people are to God. And besides the ratio, look at the object: a lost sheep, a lost coin, and finally, a son. And it builds up the preciousness of the human person to God.

Now, the woman had ten silver coins, and those were also known as drachmas. In some of your translations, you will see this word drachmas. And one coin, one drachma, was equivalent to one day’s wages in those days. And so, losing one coin would have been a significant loss for this woman in those times. You know, it’s not just 1% of your life savings—it’s 10% of your life savings.

I’m not going to ask you how much you have in your bank account, but if you think about losing 10%, how would you feel? And so, the implication is that if the shepherd felt sad about losing 1% of his sheep, how much worse would the woman feel about losing 10% of all that she had? And this shows that God’s heart really aches for people because they are so precious to Him.

You know, church, friends, is this different? Is the Pharisees’ perspective different from this? And how is this different from our perspective of people whom we consider are unworthy of our love and attention? As far as the Pharisees were concerned, they did not consider the tax collectors and sinners a loss at all. But Jesus definitely considered such people as a loss—and not just a loss, a valuable loss.

See how God sees people differently? And this brings us to the second lesson from Jesus’ stories. Because God values people and cares for them—people without hope, people who are separated from Him, who have gone so far away from Him—He seeks and pursues them.

God seeks and pursues us. You know, there are two points here which we saw last week, but they are so important that Jesus repeats them in the second parable. And the first one is this: God takes the initiative, doesn’t He? God takes the initiative.

Let’s read that verse that shows us this. Yeah, Luke 15:4 and then 8: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”

So, in both parables, notice the expression “Doesn’t he?” or “Doesn’t she?” Look for the lost sheep or the lost coin. And the Message translation says it like this: “Suppose you had a hundred sheep and lost one. Wouldn’t you leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the lost one until you found it? Or imagine a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and scour the house, looking in every nook and cranny until she finds it?”

You know, when I read the Message translation, I remembered my mom. My mom kept some of her wedding jewelry at home in a box. And one day, she came to me and said, “Hey, did you see any of my wedding jewelry box in my house?” I said, “No, I didn’t see this box.” And you know what? She had misplaced this box that contained some of her wedding jewelry in it. And you know, for us, wedding jewelry is very precious, right? To us women, it’s all kinds of—not just the value—it’s the significance of it.

And she hunted for that box for days and days. She combed the whole house looking for any box, you know. And there are so many boxes in the house. And so, I was not surprised. Right? Of course, she will look for it. Of course.

And so, the point is, every shepherd, every woman, would go and look for that lost sheep or that lost coin. Why? Because it’s only understood. It’s only natural. Of course, God would come after us. Of course, He will come searching for us. It’s only natural because He cares that much about us. Luke 19:10 says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which is lost—or the lost.”

So, God takes the initiative. Secondly, God has a process of pursuing. Now, it’s the process of pursuing that shows God’s heart. You know, when I looked at how my mom searched for her wedding jewelry, I really saw her heart, you know.

And we notice two things here. In the lost sheep, a man searched for the sheep. For the lost coin, it was a woman who searched for the coin. And this shows us the father heart and the mother heart of God that aches for us.

And the second thing we notice in this process are the steps of pursuing. In the case of the sheep, we saw that the shepherd left the ninety-nine. It says, “Leave the ninety-nine, go after, until he finds it.” And for the coin, it says—the text says—the woman, “Won’t she light a lamp, sweep the house, search carefully until she finds it?”

And so, you see, in the case of the sheep, Jesus doesn’t tell us the details. You won’t find the details of the shepherd’s search. All you will see is that the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes after until he finds it. But in the case of the coin, we see how difficult it is. The search is—Jesus spelled it out for us.

Now, when we look back at those days, we would understand that a lamp would be needed because a house during those times would have, at best, maybe just a few small windows. And sometimes, it wouldn’t even have a window. It would just have a low door. And so, it would be very dark or quite dim in a house.

The surface of the floor—it would be a hard, earthen floor. And it would not make it any easier for that woman to find the coin. She would have to sweep it slowly to find the coin, and maybe try to hear the clinking of the sound on the floor. And she would have to look in every nook and cranny because it was an earthen floor, right? It’s not just like here, in the moment, you’re like, “Ah, I can see a coin right there.” Right?

Because of the dimness, and because of the surface of the floor, she would have to sweep it and look in every nook and cranny until she found it. So, we can see this picture of this tender, nurturing heart of the woman that is aching for her lost coin. And because of that, it drives her. It drives her in the search to find it, despite the difficulties.

So, Jesus describes the intensity of this search. And you can see how it builds up, right? She lights a lamp—one. Then it builds up in intensity. She sweeps the floor. And then she looks carefully for it.

So, what can we learn from this? We see that God values and cares so much for people that He is strategic. He is meticulous. He is detailed. And He perseveres.

You see the strategy? Going to light a lamp first. Light a lamp. Then I’m going to sweep. Then I’m going to search carefully. That’s His strategy. It’s meticulous. Systematically, she sweeps the house.

And those of us who have swept the house or vacuumed the house before, we know, right? We don’t simply just go and vacuum here, then vacuum there, and then one corner here. We start from one corner, and then we go slowly. I hope we all know what I’m talking about, right? Okay.

So sometimes, as we say, right? Sweep the floor, switch off the fan first, right? We have a strategy. And we are meticulous about it because we want to get the job done well.

The woman was detailed. She searched carefully. And so, sometimes, when I’m doing chores at home, I say, “Simply do like that? Come on. It’s not so clean enough! Not clean enough!” Right?

We are detailed because we care. And she cared. And she persevered until she found her lost coin. She didn’t give up. And as we saw last week, God doesn’t give up on people. He doesn’t give up on you and me. And He doesn’t give up on even the worst people we know.

God sees people differently. He values each individual person, no matter how insignificant or how lost they may be. And so, because of that, He seeks and pursues them to bring them into a right relationship with Him.

He takes the initiative. And boy, is He serious about the process. How powerfully does this speak to us of God’s love for us? How powerfully does it speak to us?

God’s love for us is as tender as a woman’s love—a love that gently, diligently, meticulously, patiently seeks and pursues us until He finds us. God goes all out and doesn’t give up.

You know, church, the people that we considered earlier—those in our society, like the tax collectors—those people that matter to God, God wants to see them repent. He wants to see them transformed and changed. And who will He send to light the lamp? Who will He send to sweep the floor? Who will He send to search carefully until He finds them?

Who else but us, His hands and His feet? We are the men, right? The followers of Christ Jesus, to stand in the gap, to pray for them, to seek after them, to connect after them—in our workplaces, in our schools, in our neighborhoods. They matter to God, and they should matter to us.

And I want to—I just want to pause here. And let’s ask us to consider a question. The most obvious question, as we think about this story: is it interesting that Jesus uses a coin? Why a coin? You know, like a sheep—I don’t know much about sheep, but I have pets at home. I have a dog, a cat, a hamster. And sometimes they show me feelings also, you know, these animals. So, I think sheep, perhaps, they can feel maybe confused, frightened, you know, when they are lost. Maybe they’ll obviously be able to feel hunger and fear.

But a coin can’t feel a thing, right? And it doesn’t even know that it is lost. Can a person not even know that he or she is lost in God’s eyes?

Yes. Sometimes we are not aware ourselves that we were lost in the first place, right?

Mick H. is a writer. He’s just an ordinary guy, like me. And he shares his personal story about how he was lost as a child. And I’d like to read his story to you:

“One day, when I was in the second grade, my mom told me she had an appointment and that I needed to go to a family friend’s house immediately after school. I did not follow directions. Halfway to another friend’s house after school, I remembered I was supposed to go somewhere else too, but I just decided not to.

“That day, I was the object of a citywide search. I had no idea that the search was going on and had no idea that I was being looked for.

“Perhaps four hours after school ended, there was a knock at the door of my friend’s house. The person showed a picture to all of us boys huddled at the door and asked, ‘Have any of you seen this boy?’

“Surprised to see a photo of myself, I said, ‘That’s me.’ I walked a few blocks back to my house with this person—and this was back in the day before you were taught not to go anywhere with a stranger—and was surprised to see that there were several police cars in front of our house.

“Upon seeing me, my mom burst into tears. I had been found.

“I still didn’t realize the extent of the effort that had been made to find me. At the time, it just seemed cool to me to get to wear a policeman’s hat and sit in the squad car. And it was strange that all of this effort had been made to find me, when I didn’t even realize I was lost.

“But my mom’s reaction—a mix of relief, joy, and anger—reminds me even now of the value of finding something you value.”

You see, I didn’t feel lost. And I didn’t even think I was lost. But I was lost by definition, because I was searched for. So, at that moment, it didn’t matter what I felt or thought. I was the object of a citywide search by scores of people, friends.

And all of you listening—if you’re listening in online—the Bible tells us that we are all lost by definition. We may not think or feel that we are lost, but that doesn’t change the fact. We are lost because of sin, because of our rebellion against God and our Creator. And that separates us from Him. And He had to search for a way to bring us back to Him. And that way was the person of Jesus Christ.

Mick H. goes on to write: “Not every lost object knows that they are lost. I didn’t. But I could tell from my mom’s reaction how deeply valued I was.”

Maybe you do not know Jesus. Maybe you have heard of Him, but you have not yet invited Him into your life to be your Savior and your Lord. Do you know that He is searching for you even now?

Jesus is going all out to find you, because He cares deeply about you. Will you allow yourself to be found by Him? And if you’re online, you can type “Yes” in the comments, and someone will get back to you.

For those of us who are here, who—most of us—have been found by Jesus and have given our lives back to Him, do we realize that the reason we have eternal life, a relationship with God, the blessings of hope and salvation, and the blessings of being able to feel the peace of God even when we’re going through difficult times—that is because we were lost in the first place and God found us.

We were lost, even though we didn’t know it, and God searched for us. See, each of us—you and I—were found by God personally through some kind of process of searching, right? For me, it was my parents. You could be found through someone who was praying for you, someone who called and texted you, someone who told you about Jesus, someone who showed you that God cares for you, someone who showed you that God wrote His words in His precious Word so that you could know about Him, someone who explained to you what it meant to repent and to turn back to God and give your life back to Him.

You and I were lost, but now we are found. And God is sending us out to search for other people who do not even know that they are lost—even those whom we dislike, even those whom we might hate and despise—so that they can experience God’s love and His life-transforming power too.

You know, the good news is, when we return back to God, when we are found by Him, there is no condemnation but celebration.

The lost coin is similar to the lost sheep, yeah? And repeating the same—why? So that we can be so sure of it. So sure of it.

Verse 5 reads: “And when he finds it—the man—he joyfully puts the sheep on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ And when she finds it—the lost coin—she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’”

You know, just like in the case of the sheep, there is no mention of condemnation. Let’s go back to that. Oh yeah, in verse 10, it continues to go on to say: “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Rejoicing.

So, in the case of the sheep, as in the coin, there’s no mention of condemnation. We saw last week—the shepherd doesn’t scold the sheep, right? “Are you naughty sheep?” He didn’t say that, right? He rejoiced. He carried the sheep home on his shoulders, taking effort to carry the sheep back.

And as for the coin, would the woman condemn the coin? Would she speak to the coin and say, “Hey, why you got lost in the corner over there?”

She wouldn’t. It’s unthinkable and silly, right? If you lost your wallet, you find the wallet—you scold the wallet? Cannot, right? Doesn’t make sense. And so, condemnation doesn’t even come into the equation.

We have to understand that. Go back to the context, right? Jesus was drawing a parallel between the lost coin and the tax collectors of His day. The Pharisees and all the respectable Jews—they were intent on condemning the tax collectors and the sinners. And they did it openly.

And now, Jesus is indirectly saying, “Condemnation doesn’t even come into the equation when lost people come back to God.”

And the Apostle Paul, if you remember, is one example of a person who experienced this firsthand. Paul was a Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee in his whole tradition, okay? And it turned out that this Pharisee, who hated the tax collectors and Jesus, was himself lost too—until he was found by Jesus.

You see, before Paul was found by Jesus—remember what he was? He was found by Jesus in a dramatic encounter on the road to Damascus, right? And before that, he had hunted Jews down, persecuted them, murdered them in cold blood.

And this is what Paul has to say. 1 Timothy 1:15: “This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I’m the biggest sinner of all.”

See, Paul experienced Jesus’ unconditional love firsthand. And to him, it was all the more amazing because of his background.

And this is why he could also testify to us in his letter to the Romans. Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

God is so joyful when we are found. He does not condemn us. He throws a party.

His joy is so great, He has to express it to everyone, including the host of heaven.

Why throw a party, right? Why throw a party? The answer is so simple, but sometimes we miss it.

And what is it? It goes back to the core of our human identity. The core of our human identity.

God throws a party because we are finally back where we belong—with Him. With Him.

The shepherd recovers what belongs to him: the lost sheep. The woman recovers what belongs to her: the lost coin. And the all-important word that we see in the Scriptures is the word “my.”

“Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.”

“Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.”

The woman rejoices because the coin that she lost is recovered and now is back where it originally belongs—safe in her hands.

Friends, church family, you know, Jesus is stressing in this parable and in His explanation to us that God values and seeks and pursues you and me because we belong to Him. We belong to Him.

And this is the climax of Jesus’ parable, yeah? It’s not just the return, but the rejoicing in the finding, in the rescue, because we are finally reunited back to God. We’re reconciled to Him. We’re brought back into His family, where we belong in the first place.

And you notice—that’s why in NCC, in our church, we call a membership class “The Belong Journey.” It’s all about what it means to belong to God, isn’t it? How we stay connected to Him as a family. How we live as brothers and sisters in Christ. How we love God and love others whom God wants to join His family too.

Friends, people matter to God. You and I matter to God. Even the undeserving people, those people who have really hurt us—it may be hard for us to accept, but they matter to God too.

And today, God is telling us, “Can I count on you to seek, to search for those who are lost?”

I just want to invite the worship team to come up and invite us to stand as we close and consider this amazing truth—that we belong to God.

Let’s just close our eyes and spend a moment. Just take a moment to take in what we have heard today, and just ask the Lord to speak and to minister to your heart.

Where are you now? Where are you now? Are you lost? Are you still lost, really, and you didn’t know that all this while you were lost?

God wants you. And He’s inviting you to open your heart to Him and to receive Jesus as your Lord and your Savior.

For those of us who have come to know Jesus, what has God been saying to us today? Is there some part of our heart that remains lost to Him? God wants to find us.

What about the people around us, the people whom we have ignored? Maybe the people whom maybe we do not want to even think about—what is God saying to you and me about them?

God goes to great lengths to save those who are lost because we belong to Him.

Let’s just stand, and let’s just sing this song. And let’s hear the challenge of Jesus to us. Will we do the same?

Amen. We received amazing grace.