Can I Come Home?

It’s honestly, it’s easy to share God’s word after a morning we’ve already had so far of multiple folks professing their faith publicly in Jesus Christ. And you know, it’s truly an honor to be able to have any part in that at all. You know what God does is He, He uses us to introduce Himself to people that are far from Him, some people that think they’re close to Him, and all sorts of folks in between. And man, He can, He can use you. He can use you to help get a hold of somebody else for their life to be dramatically transformed. So far in the last couple years, 22 times, 22 times according to Luke 15:7, heaven has thrown a party. 22 times folks have made their faith in Jesus public through baptism. This morning we’re going to look at one of those heavenly parties when a son finally returns home to his father. It’ll be in Luke 15:11-32. If you have your Bible, please go ahead and open it up or turn it on and get there with me. If you don’t, that’s okay. We’ll have it on the screen. But next week, I pray that you would bring your own copy with you.

As you are turning there, let me go ahead and pray for us before we jump into the passage. Father, thank you so much. Thank you for making a way for us to come to know You and to have a relationship of peace with You, Jesus. Thank You for living the perfect life in our place, one that we were supposed to live but can’t because of our own failures and the sin that lives inside of us. And not only living a perfect life but also dying as a sacrifice. But You did not stay dead as Michael just sang about. You came back from death, and death died on that day. Holy Spirit, thank You for personally applying that work to our hearts, calling us out of our death and out of the things that bind us. God, I’m asking You work right now. In my strength, I can get up and I could talk for a few minutes somewhat eloquently about what You have done. But God, that’s where it stops. However, You in Your strength can do something powerful in this moment. Father, I pray for the person in the room who does not yet know You as Lord and Savior, that in the next few minutes as I open Your Word, You would help them to see You that way, that they would know that there is a loving God who has made them, who wants them, who has done everything necessary to redeem and save them. Holy Spirit, do that. Please, please get a hold of us. Please use these next few moments to do something that only You can do. God, we love You, and it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, Luke chapter 15, we’re going to be looking at a common parable. We’ve been going through this series on the parables, these stories that Jesus taught which have this incredible effect of shaping us. You know, when Jesus, who is trying to gather a group of people to start a global movement, a rescue mission that He was sent from heaven to accomplish, had all the opportunity in the world to give His followers the clearest marching orders possible. But instead of giving a step-by-step instruction of this is how we take the good news to the world, Jesus a third of the time He opened His mouth would not teach in a strategy. He would not teach in very clear plans. No, what He would do is He would share these stories. Jesus knew that we learn best not through lecture but through story, something we can connect with. So a third of the time He told these parables. Each of these parables, they have these earthly figures and these earthly details but always meant to communicate some sort of heavenly truth or meaning. This morning we’re going to look at one that you may have heard called the parable of the prodigal son. Growing up, in my Bible the heading is the parable of the lost son. Either way, this is a story that everybody in the room can resonate with and connect with. So let’s begin. Look at it with me. Luke chapter 15, starting in verse 11. We’ll just take it a chunk at a time, drawing some details out and ultimately come to the same conclusion for everybody in the room regardless of where you are with Christ. Jesus also said a man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the estate that I have coming to me.” So dad distributed the assets to them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and he traveled to a distant country where he squandered his estate in foolish living. After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country and he had nothing. Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The man longed to eat his fill from the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one would give him anything.

Man, that’s a hard start to a story. Immediately, we see someone running from grace. This son, through his own doing, creates incredible distance between himself and his dad. That distance starts in verse 12 where he demands his share of the estate coming to him. Man, that’s his inheritance. It doesn’t take a PhD to understand that if I go to my dad and I start demanding my own inheritance, I am saying you are as good as dead to me. What I’m not supposed to get until you pass away, I want right now. Dad, I’ve got no more use for you. Go ahead and give me what I’ve got coming to me.

That demand becomes distance as the son takes his stuff and he leaves for a distant country. The distance between he and his dad becomes his own disaster. In verse 13, that man goes and he squanders all that wealth. He squanders all the money in reckless living. He runs away from the security and the stability of his dad’s house into the chaos of his own wild, reckless choices. And the chaos of those wild choices become the emptiness of a famine that strikes the whole country.

And man, let’s zoom out for a second and recognize sin always does this. Sin will always promise something to you it cannot provide you. Sin is like junk food. Man, later tonight after dinner, I know this is going to happen. It happens to all of us. You’re going to go to the kitchen. You’re going to go open the fridge, open the pantry. You just want a little something, man. A little something turns into a lot of something for me. So, you’re going to go and look for a little something and your mind is going to be drifting to the sweets or the junk food, whatever it is. And it’s going to promise you some sort of satisfaction. It’s going to promise you some sort of enjoyment, but man, doesn’t junk food just leave you feeling a little bit worse on the back end of it? Junk food always promises something it can’t actually give. And sin is that way. Sin says, “Hey, come have a good time. Hey, just do this and you’ll be happy. Hey, just make this type of a choice and you’ll finally have your fill. You’ll finally be satisfied.” But sin always leaves you feeling empty and worse than before.

Just like this man right here. He had chased the wild dreams. He had chased the recklessness. And the money and the fun runs out. Is that you today? Man, if we could just be very honest, just you and me in this room. Have you come here today and you are just chasing stuff? Living for things that you know you shouldn’t be living for. Dogged by desires for stuff that you know doesn’t satisfy. A relationship, a habit, a promotion, an experience, and you know this is leaving me worse than before. And what I want to tell you is that you don’t have to stay there.

The distance and the disaster that the younger son experienced led ultimately to his desperation in verses 15 and 16. Man, he is so bad off. He is so poor off that he has to hire himself to one of the citizens of the country who sends him into the field to feed the pigs. Now being a pig farmer is not just a difficult blue-collar job. For a Jewish person, and Jesus is speaking primarily to Jewish people, for a Jewish person to go become a pig farmer would have been the most morally upsetting thing he could have done for work. He’s not just taking a job that you wouldn’t prefer. He’s not just doing a difficult job. He is doing a bad job. The type of thing that if your child started doing to make money for them and word got out, you would be ashamed. The type of thing that you don’t want your friends to know about. That’s what he’s doing. And he is so bad off in it. Verse 16 says he longs to even eat the pig food. Man, he is totally desperate. That’s his situation. He is at rock bottom. But man, rock bottom is where this son needed to be. Rock bottom is where he needed to be to be able to see what was going on in his life. From rock bottom, he only has one way to look, right? It is up. From rock bottom, he can finally return through repentance.

Look at verses 17-24. The son when he came to his senses, he said, “What? How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food? And here I am dying of hunger. I will get up. I will go to my father and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Please just make me like one of your hired workers.’” So with his plan made, verse 20, he gets up, went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father sees him, sees him coming from a long way off and is filled with compassion. Man, the father runs. He throws His arms around his neck. He starts kissing on his son. The son says to him, “Dad, father, I have sinned against heaven. I’ve sinned in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the dad is so overjoyed, he says, “Hey, hey, quick, bring out the best robe. Put it on him. Put a ring on his fingers, sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf. Let’s slaughter it. Let’s celebrate with the feast. Because this son of mine was dead and he is alive again. He was lost and is found.” So they began to party. Man, they’re clapping. They’re so excited. The dad is overjoyed. He is beside himself. The son can’t even get the full apology out before the dad is cutting him off and saying, “Hey, hey, don’t worry about all that stuff. Hey guys, let’s party. Let’s celebrate.”

The son comes to his senses. Verse 17. Come to his senses, man. That’s this phrase that means he repented. The son was able to turn away from something and turn towards something else. To repent, man, it’s this church word you’ve probably heard at some point. Here’s what it means. It’s a change of your attitude and your actions from sin towards obeying God. This younger son hits rock bottom and that’s the place where he’s able to finally repent. He had to get to a place where he understood his attitude and his actions toward sin and toward his heavenly dad. And in this parable, meaning toward God Himself, man, he wasn’t going to get any better. It was not going to improve whatsoever for him. He had to turn away from the way he was living and turn toward God instead.

To repent of his sin, the son had to come to this clear recognition of his situation. He said, “Man, look at my state. Look at me. My dad’s employees have it better than me. I can’t even make enough money to feed myself.” And he also says, “Man, I’m totally unworthy. I don’t deserve to be a son of my dad, man.” To repent of our sin, you’ve got to take total ownership of it. The four folks that testified about God’s goodness in their life through baptism this morning, man, they did not blameshift their issues. They did not justify their good intentions. They didn’t compare their badness to other people’s badness. What they said was, “I have sinned against God, and the only way out is God to have mercy and grace on me.” The son of this parable said, “Hey, I have messed up. I’m the one that ran. I’m the one that did wrong.” The son, he knows he sins against his father. He sins against heaven, but he trusts that his father would forgive him. And boy was his trust correct. The father does forgive him. The father gives him a reception unlike anything you can imagine.

The father sees him coming from a long way off. That tells me the dad’s been waiting. The dad gets a break in the work and he’s sitting on the front porch in his rocking chair or standing up against the post and man, he’s just waiting, just yearning to see, is my son coming over the hill today? Is my son walking back home today? Is my son finally going to return today? And one day he does. One day he does see that one day from a far way off he sees the son is coming home. The dad’s been waiting, been yearning for this. And the father when he sees the son, he is filled with something. What’s He filled with? Say it again. Y’all know it. Y’all read it. What’s He filled with? Not I. Yeah. Not I told you so. Not a lecture about the dangers of alcohol. Not judgmental anger. He is filled with compassion. He is filled with joy and with love at His son. Yeah, probably some of those wisdom conversations happen later. But the first thing the dad says to the son is, “I love you, boy.” The son can’t even get all of the apology out before the dad is calling everybody to throw a party.

You see, the son soils the family name with his reckless living. The father scandalizes himself. Also, look at verse 20. The father gets up. Sorry. The the son gets up, goes to the father, but while the son was still a long way off, the father sees him filled with compassion. And look at this. The father runs. That father is hiking up his toga, showing those calves that haven’t seen the light of day in a long time. And he is running a long way to go meet his son. Totally scandalizes himself for a man in that day. When he gets to the son, man, he is just holding him. He’s probably weeping. He’s kissing. I love you. I love you. Welcome back.

Verse 22, the father totally clothe this son with honor. He g he brings out a robe to put on him. That would have been the robe for an honored guest. He gets a ring to put on the son, which would have meant all of the authority of the father now goes with the son yet again. He puts sandals on his feet. Sandals were for sons, not for employees. The son was hoping to be treated like a hired hand. He comes back and is welcomed like a prince. He is totally lavished with grace and with kindness. And all of this happens at the dad’s expense. You remember how the story begins? The son says, “Give me what I deserve. Give me my inheritance.” The dad distributes the assets to both sons. He’s got nothing left. He doesn’t have a robe to give. He doesn’t have a ring to give. He doesn’t have sandals to give. He puts himself in debt to welcome the son back. He totally takes on the price and the consequence of welcoming the son and embracing the son. This dad is so totally filled with grace. He’s got reckless abandon in what He will do to celebrate the son coming back. This dad’s grace-filled reception totally embraced the son. There’s no hesitation, no second guessing, no limits on what the dad would do to show his son love.

But but while the younger son had been lost in rebellion, the story isn’t over because there’s another son who is lost in a far more respectable way. Look at verse 25 with me. Now, that’s not good. Now, his older son was in the fields, and as he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So, he summons one of the servants, questioning him what these things might mean. Your brother is here, the servant says. Your dad, he he slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound. Then he became angry. What? He didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. But the son replies to the father, “Look, I have been slaving many years for you. I’ve never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me a goat so that I could celebrate with my friends.” But when this son of yours, notice he didn’t say my brother, when this son of yours came home who devoured your money with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.

May you feel the love in verse 31. Son, you’re always with me. Everything I have is yours. as literal at this point. We had to celebrate and rejoice. This brother of yours, not just a son of mine, a brother of yours, he was dead. He’s alive again. He was lost. Now he’s he’s found. Man, what a picture. The story begins with someone running from grace. It goes into someone returning through repentance. And then it ends with another son resisting grace. Like the younger son, the older son creates distance between him and his dad. The first time the younger son takes his money and He runs away. The second time the older son refuses to go inside. Both times the dad has to cross the distance to get to the son. Even though the brother is back safe and sound and there’s a party going on inside, the older brother can’t bring himself to celebrate and share in the joy. So, the dad has to cross the distance and he pleads with the son to celebrate. He’s begging. The younger son comes home ready to beg to be embraced. The dad has to go and beg the older son to come in and celebrate. The dad is begging, but the older son is also in a desperate situation. His desperation was pride, arrogance, self-righteousness, dare I say, religious performance. While the younger son became trapped in the consequences of reckless sinfulness, the older son became trapped in a snare of his own goodness.

Are you like that? You haven’t come into today strung out on something, knowing that you’re living for all the wrong stuff, feeling dirty because of the sin that you’ve been enjoying. You’ve come in today feeling so proud of how good you are. You’ve come in today with a little bit of frustration perhaps even at some folks being baptized or someone else that you see sitting in the church. You come in and you feel really good about you. This parable has something for all of us. You see, the father offers the older son the same grace-filled embrace He just gave the younger son. Come enter my joy. Celebrate your brothers. Come back, man. He was dead. Now He’s alive. He is safe and sound. He is with us. And verse 32, it just ends. Look at it. Unless they cut something out of mine and you’ve got something special, there’s no end. Why do you think that is? Why would Jesus just end the story right there? I think Jesus wanted to draw everybody to the same conclusion.

But you have to know Jesus was speaking to a pretty mixed crowd. Look at verse one and two in your Bible. You see, we know that Jesus is speaking this parable to a group of people. It’s a mixture. All the tax collectors and the sinners had been approaching Jesus to listen to Him. It’s a bunch of younger brothers, blatant sin, cast out, not accepted. And the Pharisees and the scribes were complaining, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” That’s a bunch of young or older brothers. Jesus is speaking to both of them at one time and He wanted to draw all of them to the same response because here’s the deal. This may be the 50th time you’ve been here, the 500th time, or the first time, but you need to know. All of us are one of these two sons.

You see, some of us are younger brothers. We are younger sons. To be honest, rules, religion, faith, Jesus, it just kind of holds you back. So, you’re trying to live your own way. You’re like, “Man, I don’t need all that stuff. I’m here today for a variety of reasons, but I don’t really need all that.” May you might be the person who grew up in the faith but have walked away from it and you are chasing the thrill of independence but you know that the fun runs out and it runs dry. You might be the the young adult that’s burning through money, relationships and time trying to find joy in stuff or success or if I can say it even sex. You might be the screen addicted dreamer who is thirsting for the next experience, just wishing you were on the other side of whatever you’re scrolling past. Your life might look fun, but is actually totally empty. That might be you.

Others of us in the room, I think, are older sons. Man, you’re the rulekeeper, the faithful attender, the hard worker, but under the obedience is a heart that’s keeping score. You might be the church kid who’s done everything right and never left. You might be the religious achiever who serves, gives, reads your Bible, says grace before lunch. You might be the moral performer that’s generally a good guy that means well. May your world looks clean and respectable, but your heart is cold. The younger son was lost in rebellion. The older son was lost in his religiosity and his rulekeeping. And the father desperately wanted both of them to come to Him.

Here’s what you need to know this morning. What was declared in baptisms and what you need to hear me say right now is that repentance is the bridge to grace. There is no way to get to the Father without repenting. You see, God has made you to love Him and He loves you completely. What we’ve been studying in the Experiencing God groups that Philip talked about this morning is that there is a God who pursues a continuing love relationship with each and every one of us that is real and personal. And He wants you to see that He, before time began, was looking from heaven and He set His sights on you and He knew that you could not live the life that you were supposed to live in His design. So He sends Jesus, His one and only Son, to come and rescue you from you so that you could know Him forever. That is what God wants for you.

Even this, it’s not that you would wipe yourself clean. It’s not that you would clean yourself up and then come to Him. It’s that you would offer your dirtiness to Him and let Him transform and redeem you. You see, Jesus did no wrong. He did not come and sin and have to make a way for Him to be forgiven. No, He came because we do wrong. He came because we, through our totally blatant sin or our hidden religious sin, are so lost in our sin, we can’t get ourselves out of it. The Bible says this: that Jesus was despised and rejected by men. He is a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from. He was despised and we did not value Him. Yet He bore our sicknesses. He carried our pains. But we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But He was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities. Punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds. We all went astray like sheep. We all have turned to our own way. And the Lord has punished Him for the iniquity of us.

May you might be a younger brother, living for whatever the world has, and you find yourself in here this morning, maybe because it’s homecoming or your friend got baptized or you just kind of randomly came—that will never satisfy. And there is only one way out of your rebellion against a holy God that I trust you know is there, and it’s Jesus. And you may be here this morning because this is just what you do. And I’m so glad you’re here. But all the rulekeeping and all the performance, that also can’t get you out of your sin. Jesus had to be pierced for you. God made Him to be sin who knew no sin so that we could become the righteousness of God. You can have peace with God purely because of what Jesus has done in your place. Not through anything you’ve done, but through the incredible, redeeming, transforming work of God. Jesus is the true Son who never disobeyed the Father, who always did the right things, and who made a way for God the Father to forgive us. Because of Jesus, God has grace for us. But will you come to Him?

Some of us need to truly repent of sin for the very first time. Maybe you got baptized as a kid like Philip and Amy and I did. It was just something that you did. But it wasn’t because of any sort of relationship with God or any desire to love or serve Him. Man, you need to truly let go of what you have done and ask God to forgive you. Maybe your sin is blatant. It’s all over Facebook and Instagram and people celebrate it and you’re excited and proud of it in a way. Maybe your sin is hidden under years and layers of religious performance. But either way, there’s only one way out of your sin, and it’s to walk the bridge of repenting by saying, “I am a sinner who needs grace, and God’s got that for me.”

If you need to do that for the very first time, man, please ignore me for the rest of the service and just close your eyes right where you are and just acknowledge to God: God, I am a sinner. I’ve been hiding it. I’ve been running from it. I’ve been stuffing it. I’ve been ignoring it, but I need Your forgiveness and Your grace. Would You please forgive me, Jesus? I believe that You are the rescuer. I believe that You are the Lord and Savior. I believe You died for me. Please save me. Would you do that right now?

Others of us in the room, man, we have made that point. We have repented of our sin. We have tasted God’s love and His grace, and we just need to repent for like the thousandth time this week because we are always going against God’s standard. We are always messing it up. And you would say something very similar. God, here I am again. I’ve run away again. God, please forgive me. Bring me back to You.

Whether you’ve run away in rebellion or you’ve hidden in religion, the Father is ready to shower you with grace and forgiveness. In fact, will you close your eyes with me right now? You just ask Him, “God, have I truly apologized to You for my sin?” If not, you just say, “God, please forgive me. I need Your grace and Your mercy.”

And if you have, if you’ve tasted that, if you’ve gone that bridge, if you’ve traveled that road and you know, man, you are loved by God. You love God, but you also know there’s things between you and the Lord that you need to get straight and be cleansed of. You just say, “God, please forgive me again. Renew me again.”

If you’ve never truly repented of your sin, if you’ve never really apologized to God for what you have done against Him, from running from Him or hiding behind your performance, please don’t leave here today without telling somebody. Pastor Al, myself, our Sunday school leaders would love to talk with you and to help you to cross that bridge of repentance.

Let me pray for you right now. Father, thank You for making a way for us to be saved. Thank You for loving us despite our sin, despite our rebellion, despite all the things we’ve done. I pray for any younger brothers in the room that You’d get a hold of them and You would transform them, that You would save them out of their rebellion. And I pray for the older brothers, God, that You would save them from the performance, You would save them from the rulekeeping, that You would help all of us to taste Your grace instead. Lord, let us now sing this final song like a people who have been forgiven of our sin. Please. Amen.