Why do we as a church, as a body of believers exist? 

<p>Why do we as a church, as a body of believers exist? </p>

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Amazing Facts

Doug Batchelor

Our Greatest Privilege


Loving Lord, thank you for this beautiful new day, a new day of life, and just pray that you be with us as we consider spiritual things and calibrate our minds towards the mission. In Jesus' name, amen. Back in 2008, there was a burglary in Berlin. Some thieves managed to steal a very expensive and precious gold coin that Canada had lent to a Berlin museum. It was called the Maple Leaf coin.

It had Queen Elizabeth on 1 side and a maple leaf on the other. And the coin weighed 229 pounds. And they're still not sure how these 4 thieves were able to get this coin out of the building, down a ladder, across the street, across some railroad tracks, into a getaway car. They eventually apprehended some thieves and never did recover the coin. They're afraid that it's been melted down now and converted to money.

You know, we have a gold rush in America. I don't know if you know that in Australia they had a gold rush also. Matter of fact, the largest gold nugget ever found was found in Australia and it weighed 173 pounds. Like 1 gold nugget, they turned it up with a wagon wheel by accident. And in Australia, in honor of their gold history, of course in Sacramento, we've, you know, we got a lot of history surrounds us with Sutter Creek and the gold rush in San Francisco.

I think the first gold up here was found actually on Sutter's Mill, if I'm not mistaken. Well in honor of that in 2011 the Perth Mint, wanting to outdo Canada, They achieved an incredible triumph with a successful casting of the world's largest gold bullion coin. It's called the Australian Kangaroo 1 Ton Gold Coin. And it tips the scales. It's 99.99% pure gold.

And this colossal coin is 31 inches around and 4 inches thick. And it's worth 50 million Australian dollars. Depending on the economy, their dollar's worth less than ours now, but that's the biggest coin in the world. It's not the most valuable coin necessarily in the world. For coin collectors, 1 of the most valuable coins, well there's a few, that depends on what auctioneers or what people will pay at an auction.

For more than a hundred years 1 of the most valuable coins in America has been an 1804 silver dollar. It's known as a king of US coins. The coin is dated in 1804 but actually it wasn't made until 1834 which is 1 reason it's so rare. The president at that time he wanted to mint a number of coins to be gifts for international figures that he was going to be visiting. And so he asked them to make a limited number of these coins.

But they didn't have a die for 1834 coins. So they pulled out their old dies that they found from the 1804 coin that was 30 years old and they issued a number of silver. Now the original 1804 coin dye was made for gold but they use it now for silver. So they made a limited number of these 1804 silver dollars and the guys in the Mint realized hey you know these are gonna be valuable someday so they made a few extra for themselves that they ended up selling and I think that 1 recently sold 1 coin, a 1 dollar coin, sold for 3000737 dollars in Dallas, Texas. So Luke 15 verse 8, then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him.

And the Pharisees and the scribes complained, saying, this man receives sinners and he eats with them. So he spoke a parable to them. Actually, he speaks 3 parables. He talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. You only find this in Luke, by the way.

I'm gonna talk about the lost coin, not very long. What woman, having 10 silver coins, If she loses 1 coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search successfully until she finds it. And when she has found it, she calls her friends and her neighbors together saying, rejoice with me, I've found the piece which I lost. Likewise, I say to you, there will be joy in the presence of the angels of God over 1 sinner who repents. You ever lost something precious and you had to search for it?

Now, you might be thinking, it's a coin. Oh well, you know, she lost 1 out of 10. But in Bible times, it's implied these are not coins that are used in regular currency. Sometimes when a woman got married, different family members would bring them a coin. Now coins were pretty special because, you know, in the Bible when they paid, coins actually didn't come around until the time of, oh, they became popular in the time of maybe the Persians and the Romans.

Before that, when the children of Israel left Egypt and they got paid for the wages, did they get coins? Or did it say they spoiled the Egyptians and the Egyptians paid them with gold jewelry? I mean all the... I don't know why they never thought about just pressing it into equally weighed coins, but back then they gave him bracelets and rings and that's all that was their money back then. And when Elegazer paid Rebecca for watering his camels he took and gandered her jewelry.

They didn't have coins back then. They didn't have paper money. Chinese invented that. That's fairly new. So these were usually something that she received at her wedding as a dowry or gifts and they're very precious and when 1 was gone it was a tragedy and she looked high and low.

I lost a car key yesterday. Now, you know, it's not 1 of these typical car keys you just plug in, you turn the key, they're 1 of these expensive things that you, see I just lost my chapstick. And I looked online, I couldn't find it. I looked online and it's $140 to replace it. So I was looking high and low.

I knew I had it and I looked, I mean you folks would be laughing. Yesterday was trash day. And so I thought, could it have fallen out of my pocket into the trash and the trash now was not full of it wasn't good I mean I dumped the vacuum dust in there and it was it was a mess and I thought well you know for $100 I'd look through the trash And so I didn't look very deep, but I kind of ferreted around in the trash a little bit. And I went to the laundry. I thought maybe it fell out.

And I went through the laundry hamper and pulled through. And when you're searching for something, you know, have you ever looked for something, you go back and then you say it was there and I missed it the first time. So I not only looked in the obvious places once I look like 3 or 4 times I checked my pocket 50 times I mean I'm looking all over the house and Karen I had a lot of other plans for yesterday but I'm looking all over for this key. Well, I found it this morning. It's kind of funny how I found it.

Is it occurred to me, I can't start my car unless the key is in the car. I'll leave the second key in the bedroom and I'll go see if the car starts. And it started. So it's somewhere in the car, but I haven't found it yet. But I know it's there now.

That or my car is running on its own. So this woman, she looks high and low. Now what does she do? First of all, what's a woman? A church.

She's lost one-tenth of something very precious. Can you think of something biblically that comes in denominations of 10? Commandments? And she lights a lamp. What is a lamp a symbol of in the Bible?

By word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path. And she gets out the broom. Well you have to speculate a little bit. The broom is usually something you use for just diligence and work. And she begins to sweep the house.

And she carefully searches. It says she sweeps. She's looking in all the corners. She's going underneath the bed. She's gonna just comb every area.

You've probably heard before that when a child gets lost, I heard that a child was lost in Utah, five-year-old, and they got 220 rescuers together. And when they're combing a wooded area, they spread out, you know, like 5 yards apart and they get in a big line and they just completely sweep the area so that everybody is looking over every inch as they move forward because they're looking for something precious. They don't want to miss it. Child could be unconscious. So she is sweeping through every area.

And finally, because of that diligence, she finds it. And what does she do? She calls her friends and every, now if I said, hey guys, I lost a dime out of a dollar. We're gonna have a party, come over and celebrate. You think, oh, what's wrong with Doug?

Matter of fact, I can't understand, if you've got a hundred cheap and I lose 1 and I find it, I probably wouldn't throw a party. But back then, that was really precious to them. And so this woman, all her friends know that she's looking and she's anxious. And this is something from her wedding. And she calls them all together and she rejoices.

And Jesus then goes on to say, likewise I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over 1 sinner who repents. Now when you think about why you came to work this morning, did you ever think I came to make the angels sing? 1 of my big fears, you've heard me say it many times, is that we should ever forget. I was watching a Memorial Day special on PBS yesterday and they were interviewing some of the few remaining Pearl Harbor survivors and they said we're so afraid that people are going to forget what happened back then, and that America's going to become lax again. We were caught off guard.

And I think there's a danger that we can forget as a church sometimes why we do what we do. And it just turns into a job and pretty soon it gets mundane. You know, God warns us not to forget certain things. And when you come to work here, you're doing the most important work in the world. I heard about this church they were building in England years ago.

It's an old evangelistic illustration. And a reporter wanted to go interview the workers. And it was just a beehive of activity as they were all working on this church. But so he went and he talked to 1 man who was putting in the windows. Said, so tell me about what you're doing.

He said, well, I'm putting in the windows. And I'll tell you, this is really difficult because these stained glass windows, your regular windows are a lot easier. These things are so complex, I'm ready to rip my hair out." And then he goes and he talks to another man that's framing a door and he said, well, I'm framing up the doors here and it's just you got to get them really precise. These church doors are really heavy. And then he goes up on the roof and he talks to a guy up on the scaffolding doing the roofing.

He said, yeah, well, I'm up here doing the roofing. He said, and these church roofs, they're very difficult. He said, I like it much better working on regular houses because they're all uniform. He says, these things are round and they're odd shapes and they got these flying duchess buttresses. And he said, it's making all the seams work.

I can't guarantee it's not gonna leak. Then he goes down into the basement, and a plumber's putting in the boiler to heat the church. And the reporter said, so what are you doing? Said, I'm building a monument to the glory of God. I guess down to the basement, he's got the right attitude.

He's, I'm building a monument to the glory of God. So whatever you do here, it's part of making angels sing. The last words of Christ should be the first priority of Christians. He said, go teach, baptize. And you know, let's never take it for granted.

When we get these testimonies, we hear them all the time. I hope you hear them too. That of people who say, I was reading, I was watching, whatever the means is, and my life has been transformed. I mean, that's what we're doing. That's really exciting that you're involved in seeing lives transformed.

God forbid we should ever forget how wonderful it is, what a privilege it is. I still pinch myself. It's a privilege to be involved in God's work, amen? This media was brought to you by AudioVerse, a website dedicated to spreading God's Word through free sermon audio and much more. If you would like to know more about Audioverse, or if you would like to listen to more sermons, please visit www.audioverse.org.

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Our Greatest Privilege

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