Our Father God Gives us of His Kingdom

Introduction

Well, good morning. It is a good day, and we are glad that you are worshiping with us here at the Church of Christ at South Bumby. If you are visiting with us, you are our honored guests, and we’re glad you’re here this morning. If you are our members, welcome back to another study of What Saith the Lord. Today’s a special day to people in our world, and it’s a special day to all of us who are here today. Because today is Father’s Day, a special day where people think about those that brought them so much funny jokes. Robert and I like to, my oldest son Robert and I, when I drive to him to school, now he’s driving, but when we drove to school, we would have a proverb that I would read to him and we’d talk about as we drove.

He would read it and we’d talk about it, and then I’d tell a dad joke. And one of the jokes that I told him is what good clean dad joke. And I like dad jokes. And you’ve probably heard it, but I’ll tell it anyways. There is an old uh musician, 80s musician, and by the name of Rick Adsley. And as the joke goes, it goes something like this. Rick Adsley has a very large DVD collection. He has a very large DVD collection of Disney and Pixar films. And he will let you have any one of them to check out of his collection. But he’s never gonna give you up. Have you seen that movie Up? The story of the old fellow that loved his land, loved his family, loved his wife, and had treasured memories about them together.

We recognize the idea of never gonna give you up. And we sometimes hear that song and think about those types of pleasant memories between husband and wife and those types of things. But I think of God, who’s never going to give up on us. A God who loves us, who is our heavenly Father. And no matter how our earthly fathers were or are or were, whether they were good, bad or somewhere in between, God is our example of our heavenly Father. And he will never give up on us. He will never give us up. As long as there is hope, and as long as we have the ability to strive to follow after him, and as long as we try to obey him, he’s never going to give up on us.

But sometimes what happens is that people walk away from their spiritual life. They have spirituality, they believe in God, they have something there of faith, and then they go astray.

There are instances in the Bible of all sorts of ones who apostasized and fell away. But there’s a tender story in the Bible, if you’ll turn with me to the book of Luke, chapter 15, of one who’s called the prodigal, one who wasted his life with prodigious living or prodigal living. And a complaint had arose against Jesus, that Jesus was eating and socializing with people that were, as the scribes and Pharisees said, sinners and doing evil things. And the tax collectors and sinners, they drew near to hear Jesus. They knew they were not living a perfect life, but yet they still wanted to hear what Jesus had to say. And so the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious people, they said, we don’t like that Jesus is associating with those people that are not who we would think he should associate with.

His reception of people who historically had made bad choices, he’s eating with them, and Jesus told a parable of a bereaver who had a long lost son, and he was never going to give up on him. Meaning that as long as that son had hope, that that father would walk to the periphery of his land.

But I want to say it in this way.

One who is sick of home, and then one who was homesick, wanting to come back to home, and then one who was homeward bound, sick of home, homesick, and then homeward bound. Let’s look together at the story of what our Heavenly Father does when all hope seems lost. Let’s look at that together. By and by, an old man of about the age of somewhere between roughly 50 to 70. We don’t know his exact age, but we would gather he’s of that age, because he has two sons that are of age of beyond accountability and are able to reason about the estate of his uh land. And also we recognize that he’s probably between the ages of 50 and 70 because later on it shows that he could run to one of his sons later.

1. Sick of Home

So we recognize that he’s not a hundred years old, but he’s not a 40 year old. This man had two sons, and the younger one went up to him and said essentially this dad, I think it’s come the time that we should divide the estate. I think it’s come the time that we should divide up what you have, and you should make a divvying up of the plot of land that you own, and what’s the cash value of that, the cash part you should give what you’ve earned, what you have worked so hard to uh accrue, and we should divide that up. According to Alfred Edder Sheim, a writer who wrote the book, The Life and the Times of Jesus of the Messiah, two volume book about this thick, he writes that most likely this divvying up of land was a possibility to be done at that time.

But what they would generally do is that in a state of situation where there are two sons and no more, because a lot of these families a long time ago had big families, but in the situation where there’s two sons, the older son would get two thirds or around 60%, and the youngest son would get 30% or one third. So what this son is basically saying to his dad in the parable is, I think it’s time to do that. We ask, how do you know that he gave it to both of them? For it says in verse 12, the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of good that falls to me. So he divided to them his livelihood. That right there, when I hear that, that just makes me cringe.

As an American, I think that’s almost like a kid saying to the dad, give me what’s on the will. I can’t imagine that. Someone saying, Give me what’s owed to me before you die. As a Western person in this side of the type of situation, I can’t imagine that. I don’t want what somebody else has that’s theirs. I don’t want that. I value them and who they are as the one who raised me. But yet we recognize that this father does something amazing. He doesn’t say, you know, I’m not gonna do that. Because he could have, he could have said, No, you just do your work and you live your life and you do what you’re supposed to do, and I’m not dividing up my estate, because it is my estate.

And he was able to do that. He could have said, No, I’m gonna keep my estate, but he goes out and he does something unique in the parable. The reason it’s a parable is a story told by Jesus to make a point. And he says, the father does that. He says, Okay, I want to divide the inheritance, two thirds to the older son, one third to you, and here it is. But the next verse is what becomes very, very strange to me. Not many days after, in verse 13, the younger son gathers all together and journeys to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. Notice the word days. It doesn’t say this son got his inheritance and then started thinking about how he would invest it, how he would use it, what he would do to uh uh make the family situation better.

It says days. Just in a number of days, the son says, Okay, it’s time for me to go. Let’s get everybody together, and I’m going somewhere. And notice he doesn’t say I’m going right beside you or to some land of Israel right here in this area to basically say, I want to be near you, Dad. He says I’m going to a far country, somewhere far, far away.

And it says here that not many days after the younger son gathered all together, he journeyed to a far country and then wasted his possessions with prodigal living. The idea of wasting his possessions with prodigal living is that he spent it all in things that were worthless. It says in verse 14 that when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in the land, and he began to be in want.

He had spent everything he had, and things were of a great challenge to him. Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of the country, and he sent him into his fields to feed the swine. And he would have gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. Our Father God gives us of his kingdom. Our Father God gives us of things of great value. And it’s up to us to decide what we will do with those things to which we are blessed with. But when we recognize in this parable in Luke 15, 11 through 22 that this young fellow had spent all that he had, and life got tough for him.

But this fellow did something that is so telling.

But think about this for a moment. He doesn’t say life gets tough. I know dad’s got a lot, and so I’m going to go back and make amends with dad right away. He does eventually. But first it says he joins himself to a citizen of the country where he was. Perhaps enslaved to that one. Don’t really know. It’s scary to think what it might have all meant to say he joined himself to a citizen of that country, but that citizen gave him the task of feeding the swine. To the Jewish person, swine is unkosher food, even now today. Following after Leviticus law that came in the Old Testament times, there were certain foods that were not able to be eaten by the Jew, dependent on whether it had a cloven hoof or chewed the cud, the swine.

You couldn’t eat the swine, you couldn’t eat the pig, you couldn’t have the pork chops, couldn’t have the bacon. You could have cattle, you could have beef, you could have steak, you couldn’t have swine. You could have fish, but only some fish, some with scales versus some without scales. There was a very distinct law as to what they could eat. But this guy was so down and out that not only was he associating with a food that commonly would be eaten by those Gentiles, he’s fattening up the food that he can’t eat, and he’s willing to eat the slop that the pig’s gonna eat. It’s a very sad situation. It says he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate. And no one gave him anything.

2. When He Came to Himself: Homesick

The next phrase is interesting. It says, but when he came to himself, hold that word. Think those three words. When he came to himself, he said, How many of my father’s servants have bread and enough to spare? And lo, I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and earth. He’s saying, My father’s servants have more than this. And I’ve come to myself.

He had had rebellion against God, and his mind was deluded. His mind hadn’t been where it needed to be, but when he got to the right frame of mind, he became to recall the right conscience, the right mindset, the right soul, sound conscience he needed. We sing the song, God is calling the prodigal, come without delay. And we sing that verse that sometimes said, uh, in my father’s house there is bread and bread to spare. Hero hear him calling. We sing that song, and that’s based on this verse, where he says, Lo, the table is spread and the feast is waiting there. Hear, O hear him calling, calling now for thee. If you have wandered away from the Lord, and you’re not where you need to be, you need to come back to the Lord.

In this particular passage, in this particular passage, you can recognize here in verse 17, he’s homesick. He knows where he needs to be, he knows he needs to be serving in such a way, whereas before he was inheriting, he’s recognizing his dependency needs to be in work. And what’s interesting here is when the father receives him back, as you’ve probably heard the story before, the father doesn’t make him a servant. He esteems him very well, but he’s coming back thinking, I could just work for dad. If I could just get back to work for him.

We could, but it never actually says that in the parable. So I’m always a little hesitant to call something by something the scriptures don’t call it. Listen carefully. Doesn’t call the parable the parable of the prodigal son. Says the son wasted his life with prodigal living. He did bad things. But he changed. He reformed. He decided, I’m gonna do what’s right. He doesn’t say, well, I’m just gonna stay prodigal and wayward. He’s lost. He loses his footing. He goes away from where he should be, but that doesn’t mean he won’t repent. As long as someone has breath in their body, they have hope to come back to the Lord. Let’s not give up on those who have drifted, but let’s remember what the father did. He goes to the edge of his property each day and he looks out and says, Is he coming back?

3. Homeward Bound

Is he gonna be there? Will he return home? Will I see my son again? Because he’s lost. He recognized something that we sometimes fail to articulate so clearly. His son was lost, and he was spiritually dead. He knew that. He knew he had lost his footing. He knew he had lost his spiritual equilibrium and he needed to become to himself. He needed to come to himself senses. He needed to do what was right. And to a degree, he began that journey towards dad. And it says in verse 18, as he’s homeward bound, willing to be a servant of his dad. And once he was sick of home, couldn’t stand it. Then he became really homesick. Looking at the pigs and says, This little animal has got better than me.

And then he becomes homeward bound. He says, I will go bound back if I have to. I’ll be a servant if I have to, but I don’t want to be in this condition.

He looks at the guy and he says, That’s my son. He’s off running towards him. I did a little research on what he did when he found them because I’m guessing the guy’s between 50 and 70, because I mean, there are a lot of hundred people year old people running or 90 year olds running. No offense. You’re not taking off running for you, okay, I’ll get to my son. But this guy is running to his son, which makes me think the son is young enough to know better. And too old to care, if we sometimes say. But he comes back and he’s he sees the dad running to him, and the father embraces him. Listen very carefully to what it says in verse 20 of the text.

If you’re looking at Luke 15, look at Luke 15, verse 20, where it says, He ran to him, he fell on his neck and embraced him and kissed him. Now, I want to emphasize something here.

Now, here is an interesting phrase fell on his neck and kissed him. This is an ancient Greek word that uses a compound word, combining fell on his neck and kissed, using the coordinating conjunction and.

And the dog goes, Oh, it’s outside. It’s the world. It’s something I want to go see. And the dog just takes off running out the door, and you go, Am I ever gonna see my dog? And he just took off and he doesn’t come back for six hours. And you go, I’m not in trouble. I’m really in trouble because that’s my kid’s dog. If that dog’s not home by the time my kids are home, I’m in big trouble. Well, what happens if that dog doesn’t come back before your kids come home from school? And they’re like, Where’s the dog? And you say, Well, I had the door open. I was letting in an Amazon package come in, and the dog bolted. When the dog returns, because it finally knows who feeds him, and it comes back home, and all the kids start clinging to the dog because they’re glad he’s home.

It’s a similar term to profusely being with joy. This dad is so happy to see his son. He’s kissing, kissing, kissing him. He’s kissing him on the cheek, and then the hugs in the neck and he embraces him. I looked up the word the churches of Christ salute you from Romans 16 16. It says, it says, Greet one another with a holy kiss. I looked up another passage of scripture about Judas who betrayed the Lord with a kiss. Neither one of those passages uses the Greek like this word. Judas betrayed him with a kiss. Kiss him on the forehead, and he goes, Oh, you betray me with a kiss? That’s what you’re doing? Versus the churches of Christ salute you, greet one another with a holy kiss.

Well, that’s not profusely kissing everybody in the church building. That’s kind of like shaking hands with somebody. It’s a greeting they had of cordial acceptance of somebody. When you see somebody, you shake their hand or you give them a hug, or at that time they give a kiss on each cheek. Something like that. This is different. This is his son has come home, and he thinks his son could have been dead or lost. He doesn’t know. But the he’s gifts trade to say to his dad, he says, I’ve sinned against heaven and earth. He’s prepared this speech. He thinks he knows what he’s gonna say. The father says, Don’t want to hear it. Bring out the fatted calf, put a robe on him, put sandals on his feet, clean them up, get them better looking, spiff them up fully, serve them food plenteously, and celebrate, and here’s the key word, celebrate instantly.

How do I know it was instant? It says the father said unto his servants, bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet, verse 23, and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead, we say spiritually, and is alive again. He was lost, he truly was, and is found, and they began to be merry. Go to the next verse in your scriptures. Go to verse 25. It’s not on the screen, but turn your scriptures there to verse 25. We’ll read it. It says, Now his older son was in the field. Nobody came to go get big brother to go see where he was.

Little brother comes home, and nobody goes and says, Hey, let’s throw a party, let’s coordinate this, let’s get this all cued up because we want to make sure everybody’s there and let’s organize this real good. That’s not what happened. Brother’s out in the field working diligently, working hard, doing what he’s supposed to do to help the family. Comes to the house, he hears all this noise. He’s like, What’s this? He doesn’t even go inside. He calls one of the servants to him and he says, What does this mean? And he said to him, Your brothers come, and because your dad’s received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf. But that older brother was angry. He wouldn’t go in, and his father came out and pleaded with him.

4. Our Father God Challenges the Faithful unto Perspective

Notice the father wastes no time in beginning the celebration for the returning. It’s an interesting tidbit that sometimes people miss from this context. This is instant celebration. This is instant. When somebody comes back to the Lord, we need to instantly celebrate. But there’s some challenges to this. The challenge is what of the faithful that have been, as best we could tell, in the Father’s kingdom, not doing evil, living the best they can for the Lord. He says here in verse uh 29, he says to his dad, the the older brother, he says, These many years I’ve I’ve transgressed your commandments, I’ve not transgressed your commandments at any time, and you have not so much as given me a young goat. And yet here, this son of yours comes, and you go and kill the fatted calf.

Do you hear all the little nuances of how he uses the words that he says to him? He says, I didn’t get a party. I didn’t get a planned party. And you throw an instant party, and when you throw an instant party, you don’t just kill a goat, you kill the best calf we’ve got. And there’s a famine in the Gentile countries round about us, and you’re killing the best we’ve got to give to this son of yours. And he goes, It was right that we should have done this. Your brother was lost and he’s found. He was dead, he’s alive again. Please celebrate. Rejoice that your brother is okay. That’s what he’s trying to tell him. And our Father God challenges we, the faithful, unto perspective.

He challenges us to understand this, and he wants us to know so assuredly that this relates clearly to verse 2 and 3, our scripture reading that we had so goodly read this morning, where it says, All the tax collectors and sinners do need to hear him, and the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, essentially, Jesus is receiving the sinners. Well, that’s the audience. The interesting part about the parable is in the context of telling the parable, nowhere in the parable does he say, well, the brother goes into the celebration, the older brother. It doesn’t say that. Nowhere in the parable does it say, well, the other brother decided, okay, Dad, you’re right. But nowhere does this say that the brother that’s the older brother say, No, you’re wrong, I’m gonna stay out here and not go in.

Kind of like the conclusion to other books of the Bible, such as Acts and Romans. You took in the book of Acts, leaves us with a cliffhanger, if you will. And I think that that’s done with intention. I think Jesus makes the point with intention that he doesn’t say whether the older brother decides to go and rejoice with the younger brother or whether he doesn’t. He leaves it open ended so that the original audience can make their decision as to what they’re gonna do when Jesus is mingling with people that are reforming their life and no longer doing what is evil but trying to do what’s good. And he teaches us the same lesson. We shouldn’t grow bitter when people are trying to be better. That’s a hard lesson for us sometimes.

5. Our Father God Challenges the Faithful unto Cheerful Mercy

But we need it, and we need it clearly. Our Father God challenges the faithful unto cheerful mercy.

A type of cheer that is gracious. For he says in verse 32, it was right that we should make merry and be glad for your brother. It was right. It was wrong that he had that younger brother devoured his livelihood with harlots and done evil and made poor choices. That was wrong. Let’s not minimize that. What he did was wrong. But the older brother needs to know that when he when the younger brother truly changed, that he should accept him cheerfully with mercy.

He said to him, Son, you are always with me. And all that I have, it is yours. Remember that passage of scripture that we read early on where he says, divide the inheritance to them, verse 12. He says, All that I have is yours. Everything I’ve got left, it’s yours already. Don’t be upset. It was right that we should be joyous and glad and merriful. Merry and merriment, didn’t I?

Sometimes you get up here and you get tongue tied. It’s okay. Anyways, he says to him, Son, you’re always with me. All that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad. For your brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found. When it comes to God, the cattle on a thousand hills are his. All the gold of Ophir. It’s been melted into de blooms through the centuries. All the silver, all the rubies, he doesn’t need that. He’s in heaven. And of all the things we could recognize, what he wants more than anything, not silver and gold, not a bunch of cattle like the fatted calf, he wants souls to return to him. That’s what he wants.

Conclusion

And he wants we, the Christian people that we are, to recognize when they return, we need to do what we can to help uplift them, in so much as they change and reform their life. And if you were a wayward one, listen, if you were a wayward one coming home, God won’t deliver you to Satan if you return to Jesus. Because God is never going to give up on you.

And Jesus says in Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30. Come to me, everybody, all of you who are weary and heavily burdened, are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Someone says, that sounds poetic. What does it mean? It means it’s like you got two oxen, one’s over here, you’ve got a big piece of wood that’s around its neck, connecting with another ox over here, and we’re the one over here, and the bigger one is Jesus, and Jesus is saying, as long as you’re connected to me, it’s gonna be a whole lot easier.

The burdens of life will be a whole lot easier if you’re connected with Jesus, if you’re yoked with Jesus. He says, Everybody, come here, come to me. If you’re weary, you’re burdened, you’re thinking, I’m trying to trudge through life, plowing my way through life. He says, You’re not gonna plow it all if you don’t do it with Jesus.

And that’s what he wants of you. If you have drifted, if you’re far away from the Lord, please come home. Please do so. Hear the word of God and believe it. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God. Confess the name of Christ. Say, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, as the Ethiopian treasurer did in Acts 8 and 37. Repent of sin, like the prodigal, come home. Say, get out sin and return to your heavenly Father. Be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. For baptism doth now save us, 1 Peter 3.21.

Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Spirit, for the promise is to you. Acts 2 and 38. If we can help you become a Christian through repentance and baptism, or if you’re a prodigal and you just need to come home, please let us know what we can do to help you. Come sit on a front row as we stand and sing our invitation song.