SLIDES

Parable of the Lost Coin and the Prodigal Son

Part 2 Luke 15:8-10; 11-15

Introduction

How many of you ladies ever lost something that was valuable or somewhat valuable? It may have been an expensive pair of diamond earrings or it could have been an expensive pair of Prado stilettos. The interesting thing is that you had several other pair of earrings that were similar and expensive and several other pair of expensive stilettos. Regardless of how many of expensive pair of earrings or stilettos you had, you still wanted to find the expensive pair of earrings or the stilettos you lost. As a matter of fact, it could be said that you were diligent in trying to find them.

Today we are going to continue our study of the Parable in Luke 15 about lost things. In the second part of parable, a Jewish lady in Isarel lost something valuable and was intent on finding it and a father who lost his son.

In our last lesson we discussed a shepherd who went after a sheep who had lost his way from the herd. The shepherd was intent on restoring the lost sheep to the herd of 99 others. The spiritual meaning of the parable was that God for hundreds of years God displayed His love and concern for Isarel by sending the prophets to encourage and to warn the believers in Israel to return and be restored to fellowship with Him through repentance. When they did not return, God sent believers and unbelievers to captivity in Assyria and Babylonia. After the 400 silent years between Malachi and Matthew, God sent John the Baptist and then Jesus the Messiah to encourage Israel to be reconciled and restored to God in fellowship with Him.

We also discussed that the parable had nothing to do with reaching out to unbelievers to trust in Christ as their Savior and to join the church. There was no church at this time. The parable told by Jesus was intended to get the attention of the Scribes and Pharisees concerning their misconception about God’s love for those who were considered outcasts such as Tax collectors, prostitutes, shepherds, tanners, etc. Their view was that God hated these outcasts or misfits, If God hasted them, they should hate them and never associate with them. They considered themselves as the righteous ones, but the outcasts as the sinners. 

Jesus, on the other hand, displayed God’s real attitude toward these kinds of people. Instead of despising them, He loved them. He fellowshipped with them by eating in their homes and associating with them in the marketplace. For the most part, these are the people who had trusted in Jesus as the Messiah. He accepted them into His fold. Because He had shown that He indeed loved them and cared for them, they came to Him because He was the Messiah and because He had profound things to teach them that they knew came from God. Jesus came to seek and to save those who were unbelievers. He also came to encourage those believers who were out of fellowship with God to repent so that they could be restored to fellowship with Him.

The second part of the parable is about a woman and a lost silver coin. As we shall see, the second parable in verses 8-10, complements the first part of the parable.

B.   The Lost Silver Coin (8-10)

8 “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light

A lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”

The conjunction “Or” shows a transition from one part of the parable to another. It shows that the second part of the parable will be compared to the first part of the parable. The story is about a woman instead of a man. Maybe Jesus told a story about a woman to give Him more credibility with the women listening to him. Women in first century Isarel were seen but not heard, at least publicly. During this time, it was certainly a male oriented society. Jesus certainly had a different view of women than society at that time. Many women followed Jesus. Some were healed by Him and many believed in Him as the Messiah. We also know that there were women who supported His ministry. Let’s look at Luke 8:2-3.

2 and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses:

Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,

3 and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many

others who were contributing to their support out of their private means.

Chuza was the manager of King Herod’s household. The only thing we know about Susanna is that she was a follower of Jesus and supported His ministry. We also get some insight into Jesus’ relationship with women from Mark 15:40-41. The context of these two verses is Jesus dying on the cross.

40 There were also some women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less and Joses, and Salome.

41 When He (Jesus) was in Galilee, they used to follow Him and minister to

Him; and there were many other women who came up with Him to

Jerusalem.

We can also add other women to these numbers such as the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and the Samaritan women from Sychar who also trusted in Jesus as the Promised Messiah.

Jesus’ view of women may have had something to do with the fact that Jesus created them. In any case, the story is about a woman who loses a silver coin. The woman in the story had ten silver coins and she lost one of them. The coin in question is a drachma. It seems to have been quite valuable. BDAG (page 261) says that a drachma was worth enough to buy one sheep or with five one could buy an ox. I could not determine the physical size of a drachma. Its worth was certainly more than us dropping a nickel or dime on the floor. Note that the woman certainly takes the credit for losing the coin.  

After losing the coin, the woman begins to seek to find what she had lost. She knows where the other nine are, but it’s the tenth one that she lost that she is concerned about. The Shephard left the 99 and went after the one and the woman left the 9, so to speak, and went after the one coin that she lost. The sheep was valuable to the shepherd and the coin was valuable to the woman. Also keep in mind the definition from the Greek Lexicon or dictionary we read last week.

③ to lose someth. that one already has or be separated from a normal connection, lose, be lost.

The definition is clear. The lost sheep was once part of the 99 and lost coin was once part of the nine. The objective of the shepherd was to find the lost sheep and retore him back to the 99. The objective of the woman was to find the lost coin and retore it back to the 9. The lost sheep and the lost coin were both valuable to the one who sought to find and restore them.

To find the coin, the woman had to light a lamp. Either the house was dark because there was not much natural light or it was night time.  Also, either she kept a cluttered and unclean house or she had not been able to sweep that day. Whatever the case might have been, the woman needed light and a broom. The coin may have been in some dark nook or cranny where there was considerable trash or under the dirt. Most people in Israel lived in dirt floor ho using.  One thing that is stressed in this part of the parable is that the woman looked for it diligently. How long did she look? We don’t know, but we do know she diligently looked for it until she found it.

This part of the parable fits the reality that there were those in Isarel who were true believers in Yahweh, but because of following the examples of the Pharisees or Scribes or being caught up into some immoral or addictive, some became involved in the spiritual darkness and filth of the unbelieving world. Again, these beleivers had lost their way but not their standing before God.

Luke 15:9 - “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’

The woman was so happy that she had found the valuable coin that she, like the shepherd, called her friends together and had a party. The interesting twist to this story is that she calls her lady friends and lady neighbors to rejoice with her. The Greek words for friends and neighbors are both feminine. In any case, the lost coin was restored and reunited with the other 9 coins.

Luke 15:10 - “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Jesus gives an application to this part of the parable. In the same manner that the woman diligently sought to find the coin she considered valuable, God through the prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus sought diligently sought for believers in Isarel to repent and return to Him in fellowship.  When this occurred, several things would happen. First, they would be restored to fellowship with God and other believers, Second, there would be joy in heaven every time a believer repents and returns to fellowship with other believers and God. Who is rejoicing? Look closely. Is it the angles? No! If not them, who is it.” It is God who is rejoicing in the presence of His angles. God rejoiced over every believer in Isarel who was out of fellowship with Him but now has returned through repentance. Again, we see a contrast between the attitude of God and the attitude of the Pharisees toward sinners.

Various features establish the complementary relationship of the two stories: one deals with a man, the other with a woman; In each case someone loses something of value; in both cases the person finds the missing thing; and both conclude in a scene of rejoicing with others followed by an insight into heaven.

Also, this part of the parable, like the first part, has nothing what so ever to do with evangelism. The lost coin was part of the ten coins until it went missing. When found, it returned to the group of coins from which it came. The ratio of those lost to those that were not lost is 90% to 10%.  This does not fit the MO for evangelism. In reality 90% would have been unbelievers and only 10% believers. 

Lastly, it’s time to make another appeal to those of you who are believers but are out of fellowship with Jesus. For those of you who were here last week but did not respond to God’s invitation to return to Him, He continues to diligently seek you to return to Him and He is using this lesson to do so.  For those of you were were not here last week but who are out of fellowship with God, He is giving you an opportunity right to return to His fold. The road back to fellowship with God is through repentance – a change of mind or heart that results in a change of behavior. Please also keep in mind that when a believer repents and returns to God, God rejoices in the midst of angles. He is inviting and encouraging you to return to Him this morning.

Let’s take a few moments of silence.

C.  The Lost Son (11-24)

1 Corinthians 13 is the classic chapter on Agape” love found in the New Testament.  Luke 15 is the classic New Testament. chapter on repentance. Here, if anywhere, we should meet the fundamental teaching on New Testament. repentance. As we saw in our study of Luke 15:1-10 the first two parables of the chapter—The Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin—very clearly refer to the repentance of a born-again person who has wandered away from God’s flock and become “lost” in the sense of being out of touch with the Lord and His people.

If repentance is evident in the first two stories, it will be even more evident in the third story that make up this parable.  The third story of the parable concerns a father and his two sons. This part of the parable also has nothing to do with the church, but repeats the point of the former two, that God gladly receives repentant sinners who had been who are out of fellowship with Him. This part of the parable stresses still other information that the other two did not. It is usually taught that the story focuses on the son that left home, but as we shall see, the story really focuses on all three characters in the story – the father, the younger son who left home and returned, and the older son who never left. The oldest son, the youngest son, and the father have something different to teach us.

Luke 15:11-12 -11 And He said, “A man had two sons.

12 “The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them.

The first word in verse 11, “and,” ties this story with the previous story. Again, as we shall see, all three stories in this one parable complement each other.

An Israelite father had two sons. The names of the father or the sons are not given and nothing is mentioned whatsoever about the father’s wife or the sons mother. The Text does give any information about the age of the sons except the younger one came to his father and requested that he be given his share of his father’s estate. This type of request was very unusual, as it is today, because one usually did not receive his inheritance from father’s estate until after the death of the father.

The popular misconception is that under the Law of Moses that the oldest son was received the blessing of the birthright from father and a double portion. This was a tradition in the Middle East, but was not part of the Mosaic Law. We see this tradition in play about the blessing of the birthright and the double portion in the story of Jacob and Esau four hundred before the Mosaic Law was given to Isarel.  Isaac intended on giving Esau the expected a blessing and a double portion, but Jacob tricked Isaac, with the help of his mother who remembered what God told her. Jacob ended up with both. Before Jacob and Esau were born, the Lord overrode tradition and told Rebekah that the older, Esau, would serve the younger, Jacob. From the Text we do not know if Rebekah ever told Isaac about what God told her before the boys were born.

In any case, from the Text, we see that the father seemed to have divided the inheritance equally between the sons. The youngest showed how selfish he was and had no regard to the feelings of his father or brother concerning the estate. The youngest son could not wait to get his part of the inheritance and hit the road. His carnal nature was surly presenting itself. This reminds one of Isarel desires in the desert. Psalm 106:14-15 says,

14 But (Israel) craved intensely in the wilderness, And tempted God in the desert. 15 So He gave them their request, But sent a wasting disease among them.

God gave Israel what they wanted and even more. God sent them a plague. The youngest son was like Isarel. He wanted to leave the protected oversite of his father and wanted to escape responsibility to his father. The youngest son will also get more than he bargained for.

Luke 15:13-14- “And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. “

Not long after the youngest son received his portion of the inheritance, he left his father house and set off to a distant Gentile County so he could live independently from his father.  There he indulged in his desires and “squandered his estate with loose living.” He senselessly and recklessly waisted his inheritance. Dictionalry.com defines the term prodigal as “a person who spends money or resources in a reckless and extravagant way.” Even though his inheritance evidently was a large, his indulgences exhausted it.

After looking at the definition of the term prodigal, could it be that it is really the father, not the young son, who is the prodigal?

Then, something unexpected occurred. Famine came to the land in which he was living. The land was paralyzed by the famine and apparently food prices skyrocketed to the point he could not buy food. He was in dire need. The result of squandering his resources and the unexpected famine brought something to the forefront he never expected. He never expected to have to find a job to work for the essentials of life as we see in verse 15 & 16.

 15 “So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him.”

The last thing a Jewish person would want to do is to feed trief for a living. The word trief is Yiddish and means unkosher. How degrading that would have been. This shows how low and desperate he really got. Apparently, the humiliating job he had of feeding the swine did not provide enough money to pay for his daily needs to include food. The pigs had more of an adequate meal than he had, He coveted the food the pigs ate. They ate the pod seeds of the carob tree. Because of the famine, no one had food to spare. To repeat, He was in dire need. Sometimes before a person is ready to repent and return to the Lord, they have to reach the bottom of the barrel.

Next week we will continue to discuss the third part of this parable. The focus during our next lesson will begin with the son, then will move to the father. We will discuss the attitude of the oldest son week after next.

SELAH