The piece of silver whatever it was was great to the owner. And here lies the point in the analogy. A soul, an individual creature, an atom in God's universe, may be in itself a very insignificant thing, but it is great to God. This is its dignity. How great, how dear to God, no man can adequately judge, because no man is a creator, and no man is a redeemer. It needs absolutely to have created a thing, and absolutely to have redeemed a thing, before you can calculate what its worth would be to one who stood to it in those relations. Let us go with this woman in her quest. It is deliberate, painstaking, protracted, effectual.
I. First she lights a candle the well-known emblem in the Bible, of three things: first, the Spirit of God in a man's soul; second, the word of God; third, the consistent lives of ministers and other servants of God. And these three together make the great detective force, and so ultimately the great restorative power, which God uses in this world.
II. With the lighted candle, the woman went to sweep the house. In the parable of the shepherd, the sheep was gone out into the wilderness. Here, the lost one was still in the house. It seems to me more affecting to be a lost soul in the house, than to be a lost soul out in the wilderness. It is a great commotion and disturbance to sweep, but then it leads to cleanliness and order. So God's sweepings are severe things. But then it is only to brush away what had no right to be there. You will not presently complain, you will not regret the turmoil when the costly thing, that was almost hidden sparkles again in the. hand of its great Proprietor.
III. All the parables agree in the one blessed, crowning thought "till she find it." It is not a light achievement. Even with the lighted candle, and with the close sweeping, she had to seek diligently to go up and down, and do her work over and over again. But love the love she had for her lost treasure, carried her on, and she did not stop, she could not stop, till she found it.
J. Vaughan, Sermon preachedOct. 29th, 1865.
Man's Fall God's Loss.
I. The first division of the picture in this parable represents God as contemplating as a loss to Himself the state of sin into which man has fallen. God had a property of the heart in man's welfare: He had created him holy, like Himself. When sin waylaid man, cast him down, stripped him, and robbed him, and left him for dead, God was as one bereaved.
II. In the second part of the picture God is represented as making an effort for the recovery of man from the sin and misery into which he has fallen. God will not let His human treasure go without an effort to recover it a persistent effort to recover it. This is the chief and abounding meaning of the second part of the picture. This is the gospel which has been ringing clear above the world's sin and trouble for ages. There is no one point, as I understand the teaching of Christ, so urgently insisted upon in that teaching, and so much impressed upon the mind and heart of the world, as this idea of God seeking for His children. The more one seeks to look at this, the more one feels how true it is that the inflexible righteousness of God, that the infinite love of God, is full of a determination not to let His human treasure go without an effort to recover it. This is the key of history.
III. The third point is that, God and the good angels rejoice in heaven over the recovery of man. It is often represented that the angels rejoice, and they do; but the Father rejoices first, and with an alert and subtle sympathy the angels catch the influence of the Divine joy as the high mountain tops catch the early rays of the rising sun. God's heart is the centre of the joy. See who the separate parts of the picture answer to one another. There is the first, the householder weeping for her lost piece of money, then searching for the piece, then rejoicing over the recovery: that is to say, God contemplating man's sin as a personal loss, God putting forth effort for His creature's recovery, and God rejoicing over his recovery, and the empty place in His Divine heart filled again.
A. Hannay, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 113.
References: Luke 15:8-10. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 970; C. Stanford, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 136; R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 385; H. Calderwood, The Parables,p. 32; A. B. Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Christ,p. 274; G. Dawson, The Authentic Gospel,p. 27.