Have you ever found yourself digging through the trash looking for something precious when there you are, up to your elbows in banana peels and dirty napkins, and God speaks a word to you? Not really? All alone out here? Well, listen in to what I heard Him say when I was doing just that.

Episode Transcript:

Intro

Hi, I’m Alexis Busetti. Welcome to That Makes Total Sense! This is the podcast where we talk about faith, finance and everyday life in a way that makes total sense and today I want to offer up to you guys a teaching. This is something that God really just downloaded to my spirit this last week and I have been praying and I hope that it ministers to your hearts and to your spirits like it did to me this week.

So I want to start with a short passage of scripture from Luke. This is actually from Luke Chapter 15 and it’s verses 8 through 10. And this is Jesus talking and He says, “Or what woman, having 10 silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it. And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors saying, rejoice with me for I have found the coin that I had lost! Just so, I tell you there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Now these few verses, this short story, is housed like I said in Luke 15. But it’s sandwiched between two more familiar stories. They’re a little bit more popular. We quote them more, these other two parables. But all three of these tellings are in direct response to the Pharisees and the scribes when they were grumbling about Jesus. And what they were saying about Him was He is a man who, and this is the quote from the ESV, “who receives sinners and eats with them.” And I just originally thought – Oh my goodness, what madness! Like he receives sinners and eats with them! And we know Jesus as that man, as that God now. But this was extremely disruptive to the way of life that was happening in Jerusalem and within that culture at that time. And so they were beside themselves. This is a man who receives sinners and eats with them. And so in direct response to that, instead of getting mad right back at them instead of grumbling in return, He tells these three stories back to back to back. And I believe He was trying to introduce love and compassion into the situation and really into their hearts.

So the first and third of these illustrations are really familiar. We learned about them if we grew up in church and went to Sunday school, we sing popular worship songs about the first illustration. And the third one is really made its way into our own popular and secular vernacular. So the first story He tells is about a man who, and again this is familiar, having 100 sheep, this man would leave the fold of 99 to go and find the one who lost its way. And he would carry that last one home again on his shoulder celebrating. And asking the ones who despise him for this meeting with the tax collectors and sinners – He says, who among you wouldn’t do the same thing even for your sheep? He says that this is, this is who we are. This is who I am specifically.

The third example that He gives – remember the second one is the woman with the coins – but the third example is a little bit closer to home I think. I think it’s a little bit more personal because sometimes we can put ourselves in the place of one of these three main characters. And that’s the one of the story of the prodigal son. Where in that parable, Jesus puts God the Father in the place of the pacing, praying, waiting, gentle father who’s waiting for his wayward son to come home.

But what about the story in between? The one about the woman with the lost silver coin. I’m going to speak for myself when I say that her featured parable usually gets lost in the pages of my Bible or in this space on my Bible a