It is certain that in the next few weeks we are not going to be able to extract all of the nectar from this precious rose in the Scripture. We will not plumb its depths nor climb its highest heights. But with Gods help we will show you some spiritual truths that can change your life forever.
(Read Luke 15:11-24)
We'll stop there today & take the things that God gives us for your lives.
Father in Jesus name, bless this powerful story & let us see ourselves within it, that we may be changed & transformed into the image of Christ. And all of God's children said, Amen.
I want you to notice first the departure of the prodigal son. Look at him. He is an accident looking for a place to happen.
He is the picture of arrogance, he is cocky, he is rebellious, he is impulsive, he is absolutely sure that he knows of the answers to life. How many of you have met this little fellow before? Don't look around.
The word prodigal means recklessly extravagant. Say that with me, Recklessly Extravagant. It doesn't mean someone who leaves home, it means one who is recklessly extravagant. If you allow your child to live in extravagance you are creating a prodigal son or a prodigal daughter. If you want a formula for creating a monster, here it is. "you give your child everything he wants, or she wants, when they want it, as long as they want it" and the day will come when that little creature will grow up a monster & look you right in the eye & say, "give me the goods. And give it to me now & give me all of it. I don't care what you want."
I want you to hear that, because that is happening in America. I'm sick & tired of hearing people say, "I'm trying to get my child what I didn't get." We are so busy giving them what we didn't get, we are not giving them what we did get. Your child needs to know something about thrift, something about work, something about integrity, something about getting up & providing for themselves. They need to hear that message.
If I would have said to my German daddy, "give me all the goods I have coming to me." Shoot. The next thing I would have heard would have been the voice of St. Peter saying, "Welcome to heaven Stupid boy."
The prodigal attitude is "I don't care about the rules. I'm tired of hearing my father say, "get up and go to church son." I'm tired of hearing my father say, "get a job son". I'm tired of hearing my father say, "clean up your room son." My mother use to say, "Son, before you leave the house to straighten up the world, you should at least straighten up your room." That's a good principle. I thinks that's good.
Look at him packing his bag with Jordash jeans and designer shirts and Goocie shoes and he is bounding down the stairs with a smirk on his face. He knows how to live. This omnipotent one leaps down the stairs of his poor ignorant parents who are social creatents who are stumbling through life in a fog. They don't know how to live, but he does!
And so he bounds out the door, leaps on the back of his Honda, pops a wheelly. He's going to the big city. Don't miss the fine points of this story. Here is a boy who left home saying "Give Me." And he came home saying "make me."
There is a lot of difference between those 2 positions. He left home saying Daddy O, and he came home saying "O Daddy". There is a lot of difference between those 2 positions. He left home a son, he came home begging to be a slave. There is a lot of difference in those 2 positions. You think life in the far country is really the good life. But I'm telling you it's hell on earth. The far country will break your heart. The far country will crush your dreams. The far country will send you back home stinking like pigs. The illusion of the far country is a demonic hokes. The good life is back home with your father, under his authority, obeying those stuffy rules because they will bring you into the paradise of God.
The far country is not meant to be a place as much as it is a condition of the heart. I want you to get that. I really don't have trouble with a atheist. Madolan Marie O'Hara has got more half baked Christians to read their Bibles than 10,000 preachers. God bless her. Really. People knash their teeth over Madolan O'Hara, but she is no threat to God. I don't understand why she has dedicated her whole life to fighting something that doesn't exist.
You know, an atheist dies, gets all dressed up and has no place to go. I read the other day of an atheist prayer line, you dial it and get a busy signal. And so it is, I don't have trouble with an American pagan. Some bourbon breathe beast, smoking a cigar about this long (hold up hands to show size), with fire blowing out both of his nostrils. I don't have trouble with a red necked renigade who knows that he is a heart beat from hell. That doesn't bother me.
But I do have trouble with children of the Father who are in the far country, who are talking the talk, but not walking the walk. They profess to have Christ, but don't have Him. Paul said, "they are blasphemers, they are heady, high minded, lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God. They have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof, from such---turn away."
I have trouble with that. John the Revelator said, "I wish that you were hot or cold and because you are neither, hot or cold, I will spew you out of my mouth." God said, "I can't stand a half baked, compromising Christian. Either be hot or be cold. But be something so distinctive that the world will know what you are."
What's the solution? The solution if for Christians to live up to the New Testament standards. I want you to hear this, the Bible says that "without holiness, no man shall see the Lord." (repeat)
So the answer is a return to personal holiness. A return to living according to the dictates of the Word of God. A return to obedience to the Word of God. Everything in the far country is an illusion. It'll break your heart. It'll ruin your marriage. It'll destroy your children. It'll crush you, it'll shame you, it will cause you to stink like swine.
Live by this (Bible) and know the joy of the Lord that maketh us rich and haveth no sorrow.
After his departure, notice the duality of God. A certain may had 2 sons. (repeat) Why not 3, why not 5. Why not 12 like Abraham? Two, because in the Bible there is a principle of duality. A doctrine of two-ness if you want to say it that way.
Moses said, "I have set before you life and death. Choose life that you may live." Jesus said that there were 2 builders. A wise builder and a foolish builder. The Bible says that you are either saved or lost. You are righteous or you are unrighteous. You are walking down the broad way that leads to hell, or the narrow way that leads to God. One of those 2. You are either the prodigal son or the elder brother. Every person in this room is represented by one of these 2 boys. You are either a sinner saved by grace, represented by the prodigal son, or you are an arrogant, egotistical religious peacock, full of yourself, home thumping your Bible, belly aching about what God's not doing for you. The elder brother.
Which are you? Saved or lost. The prodigal or the elder brother. You are one or the other. Jesus didn't say there are 3 propositions, there are a dozen----There are 2! You are either saved or lost. You're either in the kingdom or you are out of it. You are not sort of saved. You can't be any more sort of saved than you can sort of shoot a shotgun. You are either saved or lost. It's that simple.
Joining the church doesn't make you saved. Giving to the poor doesn't make you saved. Giving your body to be burned doesn't make you saved. So every person here is represented in this story. By the prodigal or the elder brother. Where are you? In the pig pen, then get up and go home. Are you the elder brother? I'm going to take his shirt off in about 2 weeks and I don't want you to miss it. If I can make you loathe this creep, than I have done my job. If you see anything in your nature that looks like him, get it out, because Jesus look right at His crowd, and understand this is a story that Jesus the Rabbi is giving to a crowd of Jewish people and He says to those who are Pharasees, "I want you to hear this message, because I am painting your picture in the elder brother story here."
The elder brother is what Jesus was driving at. And He look right at them and said, "I want you to know that tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God before you do."
That's as strong as you can get it without hitting them right in the nose. Where are you, are you the prodigal or are you the elder?
Notice the prodigal's progressive deteriation. He started off saying "Give me". He came home saying, "Make me." He left home saying, "Don't fence me in." He said, "I'm rich, I'm ready and I don't care about the rules."
I want you to hear this, Sin is fun for a season, the Bible says that. There is pleasure in sin for a season, that's a Bible truth. But just for a season. Sin is fun for a while. Sin is fun until you get AIDS. Then you quit laughing. Sin is fun until your hands are shaking in an alcoholic ward and you see elephants and snakes in the room and you're shaking and dying with DT's. Sin is fun until you are in an abortion clinic flat on your back murdering the fruit of your lust. It's not funny then.
Sin is funny until your child walks thru the door so hooked on cocaine, so hooked on drugs and his brain is fried and he doesn't know his name or what day it is and he can't recognize his mother's face. It's not funny.
Notice the deteriation. While the boy was leaving home he said, "I'm being independent." As he drank and partied he said, "This is the life." When he lost his money, he called it bad luck. When he smelled like pigs, he said, "I've been a fool." But when he finally got it down to the bottom line he said, "I have sinned!" ( Repeat ) He nailed it on the head. Notice the phrase, "when he came to himself." It simply means that he had not been himself. How can you come to yourself if you are yourself?
Think about that, "He came to himself". What does that mean? It is the Bibles way of saying that he was morally insane. That's what sin is. Moral insanity. It make you think that life in the far country is exciting, it's good, it's where the good life is. I'm telling you It's where hell is, and if you go there, it'll break your heart.
When he came to himself, he said, "I have sinned." What is sin? The Bible says, "to him that knoweth to do right and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Sin is walking away from the Father.
Sin starts with a fascination, and then it has a form and then it becomes a fact. Sin comes with a desire for the far country. And then it takes a form by leaving and then it becomes reality when you smell the pigs and you are fighting them for something to eat.
That's what sin does to you. Sin does not begin with the act, it begins with the thought. Murder does not begin by buying a gun and squeezing the trigger. Murder begins with anger and bitterness and resentment in your heart, that's where it begins.
Adultery does not begin with a motel date, adultery begins when you start to read Playboy. It begins when you start entertaining those thoughts that are less than holy.
Abortion does not begin in the clinic. Sin is a cancer and you either get the cancer or the cancer gets you. Sin is a leprosy, the Bible says that. The knife of a surgeon cannot cut out leprosy from the blood. And the only thing that can save your spiritual soul, is the blood of Jesus Christ. Solomon cups his hands to his mouth and cries, "Fools make a mock of sin". Solomon says, "If you're smart, when you see that cancer growing in your soul, when you detect that leprosy that is in your blood stream, run to the cross of Jesus Christ and be forgiven and be purified, because if you don't, You'll die in the far country."
When you reject truth, you have sentenced yourself to believing a lie. When you have rejected God you have opened yourself to hell itself. God has set the plan into place and that is how it works.
The prodigal's decision - I'm going to get up and go home and face the music. Verse 18 he said "I will arise". Verse 20 "and he arose". What happened between verse 18 and verse 20. I'll tell you what happened. The devil leaped right on his back and said, "Look, you're a Jewish boy, you have sinned too far for your daddy to take you back. You first wasted his substance with riotous living. He is not going to go for that. You've shamed his name, but even worse than that, you became a keeper of pigs. You have sinned beyond your father's ability to forgive you".
I want you to hear this. As you set there this morning there is a voice in your mind is saying, "your life is so far in the gutter, God can't reach you. You have sinned beyond your Father's ability to forgive you."
Look me right in the eye and let me tell you that's a lie from the devil. Jesus will forgive you, the Father wants to forgive you. There's a new beginning in Jesus, if you'll say, "I have sinned". There's a new start, there's a great life if you'll go home to the Father. Try it.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross His blood did not wash away some of my sins, it washed away all of my sins if I'll but confess them.
The father saw him coming and he had the servants bring a robe and brought him shoes. Why shoes? Why give him shoes? Because it was illegal for slaves to wear shoes. The boy came home asking to be a slave. But the father said "give him shoes".
I want you to know that what the Father has planned for you is a lot better than what you have planned for you. The boy was willing to be a slave, but the father said, "No way, he is going to be a son again." Now get this, he was no longer a slave, but he was free. The Bible says, "Whom the son sets free, is free indeed." Some are going to walk this aisle today and God is going to forgive you. I'm telling you in one breathe, you are free from the guilt of the past. You are free from the misery of your past pig pen experiences, instantly by the grace of Jesus Christ.
In one prayer, in one instantaneous burst of glory the blood of Jesus Christ washes the sin away and you stand clean and free from the guilt of the past.
You are free from the fear of the future, you are free from the fear of other people. You are free, because whom the son makes free is free indeed.
There is the choice however between verse 18 and verse 20. He said "I will arise" and "he arose". As I speak right now some of you are having a tug of war in your heart. On one side Satan, the prince of darkness, is saying "you sinned. You are beyond the reach of the Father. The father in no way would reach into the sewer where you are and save you".
That's a lie. That's a lie. On the other side is God the Father saying, "If you'll come home I'll kill the fatted calf. We are going to celebrate like you have never seen. If you'll come home this is going to be the greatest day you have ever lived. and there is a tug of war there. You have to make a choice. Because there is only 2 ways, Saved and lost. Going to heaven and going to hell. Which way are you going to choose.
Can we stand? Father, in Jesus name, let us see in this powerful story, the pearl of the parables. The gospel within the Gospel. The prodigal and the elder brother and may the Holy Spirit now fill this room, to convict us of sin and unrighteousness and half-heartedness and compromise and bring us into the fellowship of the Father, in Jesus name.
While your heads are bowed and the organist is playing, how many of you here can say "pastor, I am a prodigal son, I'm a prodigal daughter. I have rebelled and I need to ask God to forgive me.
Pray this prayer with me- Lord Jesus Christ I ask you to forgive me of all of my sins---and cleanse me from all unrighteousness---I confess that I have sinned---an am no longer worthy---to be called your child---but I know that you will forgive me--and I know that Jesus' blood will wash my sins away--and so today by faith in Jesus--and thru the blood of His cross--and thru the victory of Calvary--I receive forgiveness for all of my sins--right now I receive the robe of righteousness--that covers the stince of my past--the ring and the shoes, that says I'm a child of God--and now in Jesus name--by faith- -in the Son of God -- I am cleansed
