The Word

Introduction

I’ll bid you a very pleasant good evening. If you have your Bibles with you, open them if you would. Put your bookmark in the book of Luke in chapter 15. I’m gonna look at a very familiar passage of scripture this evening.

We’ve had this meeting scheduled for man uh seven, eight years. And uh one thing or another would uh come along and uh uh cause some delay or some rescheduling, and then COVID came along and delay and rescheduling, and so uh I’m glad to finally uh get to be here and to meet you folks. Uh most of you, many of you knew my dad. Uh and and so let me just let me just get this out right now. My dad was Brother Bowman, okay? Uh I’m just Russ, and so you are more than welcome. You’re not gonna offend me. In fact, dad’s been gone two years, and every time somebody says brother Bowman, I’m looking around to see if uh if he’s uh come back. So uh please uh please feel comfortable uh calling me by my first name.

Uh I I’m I’m a country boy and I’m I’m good with that. So uh appreciate the elders and all the work that’s gone in uh to this weekend. I hope that we can accomplish some of the things that uh uh that that we’ve talked about uh this evening particularly, we we want to try to address some things uh for those of you who might be visiting. Now, if you’re uh visiting and not a Christian, maybe I should say. If you’re visiting from other congregations of the area, you’re more than welcome to get up and leave at this point. Uh but uh hopefully the things that we talk about will have some profit for you as well. Uh but we do have uh some things we’re trying to accomplish through the weekend.

And so if if one of the members here has invited you, uh and uh maybe you have religious uh inclinations, maybe you’re a member of some kind of a religious organization. Uh, but you’ve been invited here because they’re having a meeting and uh you thought you’d come and check it out. First, we’re we’re really glad you’re here. Uh and second, uh, some of the things that we want to talk about this evening are really kind of focused upon you. Uh I don’t use PowerPoint very often. Uh, we are gonna make reference to quite a few passages of scripture if you’re kind of old school and you want to get a piece of paper out and a pen uh and jot some of them down as we go along.

I’m not gonna stop and take the time to read them all. Uh, but uh if you’ll jot them down, you can go back at your leisure. I want you to make sure that you double check uh that the things that we’re talking about are things that are uh underscored and uh supported by what God’s Word has to say. So I would invite you to do that as we uh go along through our study. Uh and then one last thing. If you’re gonna be with us tomorrow, uh, and if you’ve looked at the titles, then you know we’re gonna be talking uh tomorrow’s second session, if I remember the order right, uh, about uh sacrifices uh from the book of Leviticus. I know you’re really excited about that.

Uh I would ask you if you haven’t already done it, uh, to try to take the time between now and then to read the first 10 chapters of Leviticus. Uh if you don’t, I’ll read them as we get started. And instead of an hour, it’ll be a two-hour session. So uh you can save yourself some time tomorrow afternoon uh if you’ll do a little preparation. But thank you for being here. Thank you for the invitation. Um I work with the Northwest Church in Beaumont, Texas. I’ve been there for uh uh 30 years at this point, and uh uh my wife is Tracy, my daughters are Haley, Tori, and Emily, and they are grown and almost completely off the payroll. Uh and so I’m excited about that, and uh as well.

So if you hear me make reference to them through the weekend, you’ll know who I’m talking about. So thank you for having me. Let’s study together, if you would. A couple of you I went to Florida College with. Most of you I don’t know. You don’t know me, but a couple of you, uh, Vicki and I went to school, and she was asking a minute ago, said, okay, well, tell me, tell me about your family. So I gave her the quick rundown on my kids. Uh, that’s not hard for me to do. I think of all the relationships that we have in our lives, probably our relationship with our children is the one where you feel the most just raw, pure affection. Uh now, don’t run call my wife and say that I love my kids more than I love my wife.

It it’s it’s different. And if you have kids, uh you understand that. And uh I think that there’s a reason that we feel the way we feel about our children. Uh and I think the reason is because uh we are made in the image and likeness of God, and and that’s the way that God feels about us. I remember when my oldest obeyed the gospel, uh, and and you know, I’ve been preaching ever since I got out of college, and like most preachers, I’ve baptized a person here or there, and uh it’s always a good feeling to see somebody obey the gospel, but I must tell you, when my little girl obeyed the gospel, I felt things I had never felt before. And it hit me after we came back down out of the baptistry, and everybody’s standing around singing a song.

It hit me the way I was feeling right then, must be the way that God feels. Every time somebody obeys the gospel. Because while the world is full of doubt and there are all kinds of ideas about God, does he even exist? What is he like? One of the things that the Bible underscores at the very outset is that God looks at his creation and mankind in particular in a very special way. In Luke chapter 3, when you have the genealogy of Jesus that Luke offers, Luke ends with the beginning. He works backwards from Jesus back to the origin. And Adam is referred to there as the Son of God. And the only sense I can make of that is this is the way God wants us to understand his view of mankind.

When he sends Moses to Pharaoh in Egypt in Exodus chapter 4 to bring the children of Israel out of captivity, what he tells Pharaoh is, release my Israel is my son, my firstborn. And again, if you have children, if you have more than one, there’s something about that first child that doesn’t make them better than the others, but there’s a difference there. And this is the way that God is describing the children of Israel. In Hosea chapter 11, as he talks to the child about the children of Israel, he describes them in terms of I took my child by the hands, and this is the picture that Hosea is painting there. This is the way I trained my children. At times he refers to mankind, and particularly Israel, as the apple of his eye.

The dark part of the pupil is the idea. The very most sensitive thing that you can imagine is the way that God describes man. And this is especially true in regards to those who accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. John chapter 1, we are told in verse 12 that as many as received him, he gave them the right or the authority or the power, it’s translated, to become the children of God, the sons of God. And he goes on to say they weren’t born of the flesh, they weren’t born of the will of man, they were born from God. Peter in 1 Peter chapter 3 takes that same idea and describes us as the begotten of God, who become heirs of God. And Romans chapter 8 does the same thing.

If you’re familiar with Luke chapter 15, the beginning first two verses says, all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him, that is Jesus, to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes complained, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. In Jesus’ day, these religious men looked down upon people who were lost in sin, people who were given over to unfaithfulness to God, people that didn’t keep the law the way that they kept the law. And they are critical of Jesus because Jesus is dealing with these people, receiving these people. And the point of the parables here, there are three parables in the chapter. If you’re not familiar with this, and I’m going to talk as if you aren’t. Okay, I don’t want to insult anybody’s intelligence, but I don’t know who’s who here, okay?

If you’re not familiar with it, there’s three parables here. There’s a parable about a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep and goes and searches for one because that one sheep is so valuable to him. There’s a parable about a woman who has ten coins and she loses one of them, and she searches intently, sweeps the house, empties it out, because that coin is so valuable to her that she engages in great effort. And then this one is the third one. And this is the way that Jesus offers it. Verse 11. A certain man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. So he divided them as livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.

And when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and began to be in want, and he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine, and he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. When he came to himself, he said, How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare? And I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. And so he arose, and he came to his father.

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him, and he had compassion, and he ran. He fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven, and in your sight I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring out the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his hand and put sandals on his feet and bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and make merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to make merry. Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.

And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, Your brother has come. And because he’s received him safe and sound, your father’s killed the fatted calf. And he was angry, and he wouldn’t go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. And he answered and said to his father, Look, these many years I have been serving you. I never transgressed your commandment at any time. And yet you never even gave me a young goat that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatty calf for him. And he said to him, Son, you are 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, was lost, and is found.

1. God Is a Good and Generous Being

And you can approach it from any number of ways. Well, what I want to do for the remainder of our time is I want to make three or four observations here about God and about us. As we try to come to grips with this relationship where God looks at us as his children and loves us and makes sacrifices for us and what that should mean to us. And so I want to start with this observation. When you look at this parable, there is a reflection in the Father of the nature of God as a good and generous being.

Those of you who are older probably would say the same thing. It’s not just an age of ecumenicalism among religious people. It’s really an age of doubt in our culture. The latest statistics are kind of puzzling to me from the uh uh whether you look at it from the uh uh Gallup people or the the religious studies uh I’ve lost the name of it. Bamfa, uh Barna. Uh there’s something like 90% of the people in this country that will still tell you that they believe in God. But the reality is when people in this country in our culture say that, they’re not necessarily saying they believe in the God of the Bible. Rather, some greater being or greater force, sometimes personal, sometimes impersonal. Uh, and they don’t really know what to make of this being, many people.

Uh, and and and the reason I say that is there’s only about 70% of the people in this country that think religion is important, even on a even on a moderate basis, and there’s only about 20% of the people in this country that believe the Bible is the Word of God. And so you’ve got belief in God, and then you’ve got religion, and then you’ve got people who absolutely disregard the only source of knowledge that we have about God. And you know what that does? It means people aren’t sure about God. That’s why you hear people say, well, I’m spiritual, but I’m not really religious. And maybe that describes you. I don’t know. One of the things that people try to grapple with is what’s God like?

And that’s an important question. And what’s a curiosity to me is how do you come to that conclusion? We kind of create God in our image. We kind of take the Bible and reverse it. In the Bible, man is created in the image of God, but in our culture, very often, God is created in the image of man, and we pick certain qualities that we think God may be like. And I tell you, folks, sometimes I think even our brethren are guilty of this. We are really not willing to say, you know, God is a being of infinite power, infinite wisdom. He is a being that has absolutely no limitations, as Paul says in Acts chapter 17. And he’s omnipotent, he’s omniscient, he’s all knowing, he’s all wise, he’s not limited by time, he doesn’t dwell within our universe.

And therefore, we have to be really, really careful about our concepts because it’s easy to make God what we want him to be. In the religious world, I would propose to you that many people see God as this kindly old granddaddy. I’m about to have my first grandchild. And everybody, without exception, when I tell them I’m about to be a granddaddy, they say, Oh, this is the greatest thing that’s ever going to happen to you. You know. You liked your children, okay. You may have even loved them some days. You still wanted to kill them, but you’re never going to want to kill your grandkids. You know, your grandkids are just going to be awesome. They can do no wrong. And I’ll tell you, this is kind of the way some people see God.

He is this kindly granddad who sits in the rocking chair at his house, which he has maintained through his children’s childhood with great care. Don’t tear up the furniture. I don’t, I had three daughters. They could have destroyed a ball bearing with a Barbie doll. That’s the way they were. And so everything in my house got torn up or got put up high enough that they couldn’t get to it until they got older. And when your parents, buddy, you work really hard to keep your house. But then the grandkids come along and you sit in the rock and chair and you just let them tear up everything. Oh, aren’t they cute, aren’t they, darling? Come here and give granddaddy a hug. Now I’m going to tell you, I think a lot of people see God that way.

It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter what you practice. Because God is this merciful, loving being who doesn’t want anyone to be lost, who wants to take care of everyone, and he just, he’s just patiently waiting for you to die. And until that time, if you’ll just kind of accept that he’s there and he loves you, everything’s going to be good between you and God. And I think that that’s the way a lot of the religious world around us looks at God. But then you take the non-religious world. There are a lot of people in the non-religious world that take certain qualities, certain other qualities of God. Like, for instance, that God is a God of justice. And they’ll take the incidents in the Bible that they’ve heard about where God renders punishment.

Whether it’s Sodom and Gomorrah or whether it’s the flood story or whether it’s the children of Israel taking the land of Canaan and exercising God’s punishment upon the Amorites. And their picture of God is this hawking, muscled up, white bearded, white-haired, mean-looking, kind of Greco-Roman God sitting up in the clouds with a thunderbolt, a lightning bolt in his hand, just waiting for you to take one step out of line so he can run you through. And there’s a lot of people who think that’s the God of the Bible. And then sometimes our views just kind of fall somewhere in between.

Because it’s going to make a difference as to how you respond to God’s messages and God’s invitations. The biblical portrayal of God. There are many facets, but I want you to appreciate this one from this parable. He is a being who wants to bless his creation, and particularly the part of his creation made in his image and likeness. He is a God of blessing. And you see it repeatedly in the parable, Luke chapter 15 and verse 12. The younger son, and this is audacious, audacious to me. I can’t see myself ever going to dad while dad was still alive and saying, hey, Dad, I know I’m the younger son, and I only get one of the three parts, and then, you know, uh the older son gets two parts, but I tell you what, I’m ready for my inheritance now.

I mean, that how many people do you know that would do that to their dad? Look, I know what you’re worth. Just give me one third and give it to me now. Uh you owe it to me. I know what my dad would have done. He would have said, You just lost your one-third, buddy. Just take it down the road. But what is this being do? Well, he is generous. He is caring. He provides for this son. And I understand in the culture, this is not something that’s out of line, but it is amazing to me that this kind of thing happened. And he freely, verse 12, he divided them as livelihood. And as you go through the parable, the picture of this father is always the same.

When the young man decides to come home, how many of my servants, how many of the servants of my father’s house, verse 17, have bread enough and to spare? Again, when he gets home, and he doesn’t even get the confession. Hey, I don’t deserve to be your son anymore. What is the father doing? Put the best robe on him, put the ring on, make him a member of the family again, put sandals on him. Let’s have a party, let’s kill the fatty calf. And when the older son is upset about that, the father tells him, Look, everything I have is yours. What’s the consistent picture of this being? Well, it’s the same being that you see putting Adam and Eve in a garden and providing for all of their needs.

Telling them, be fruitful and multiply the very fruit. The very first thing that God does for mankind after creation in Genesis chapter 1 is it says that God blessed them. And going forward, that’s the picture you see over and over. Noah after the flood, God blesses him. Abraham is called out of his nation to go to a land of promise, Genesis chapter 12. And God gives him all of these promises of blessing. Exodus, when the children of Israel have been in captivity and they’re going to be carried out, God tells Moses, I’m going to give them a land flowing with milk and honey. And when you get to the to the law that’s given in Leviticus 27, if you’re faithful, look at all the ways I’m going to bless you.

He says, you’re not going to get your crops harvested and eaten before you’ve got the next harvest upon you. I’m going to make the land produce like you cannot imagine. And when you read about the reign of Solomon, that’s exactly you see the blessings of God poured out on his people. In our era, Jesus says, seek and you shall find. Knock the door shall be open to you. Ask and it will be given to you. What father, if a son asks for a piece of bread is going to give him a stone, or if he asked for an egg is going to give him a scorpion. This is the Father that God wants us to understand. He wants us to see this picture of this being and understand that what God wants to do is bless us.

2. We Are Prone to Abuse the Blessings

That’s his desire. God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son. That whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This parable reflects this aspect of God, that this is the being that we serve. And we need to appreciate the bounty. Now, here’s my second observation. We see all these blessings, and we’re not very good at dealing with them. We are very much prone to abuse the blessings that we have in this life. And I think if you look around, this is a pretty obvious statement of truth. We tend to be selfish people. Freedom gives us the choice. And throughout the scriptures, God’s constantly telling man choose. Choose you this day, choose who you serve. Joshua 24, uh Deuteronomy chapter 30, choose who you want to, what land you want to be in.

Exodus chapter 18. Uh, why would you, why would you die, repent, and live? I have I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies. God’s constantly giving us this opportunity. And you see it. Adam and Eve have an opportunity. Deuteronomy chapter 6, what happens when the children of Israel are told, when you go into the land, and here’s all these blessings I’m going to give you. I’m going to give you houses you didn’t build, vineyards you didn’t plant, wells you didn’t dig, but you need to be careful lest you forget me, because that’s what Adam and Eve did. They had all these blessings, but it wasn’t enough. There was this one tree. And Satan convinced them that they could be like God. And so they acted selfishly with the blessings of God and lost his blessings.

That’s what happens to the children of Israel when they go into the land of Canaan. After the walls of Jericho fall down in Joshua chapter 7, God had told them, Look, everything in this city is dedicated to me. This is the first fruits of the land of Canaan. But Achan sees gold and silver among the spoils in this beautiful Babylonian garment. And he takes things that he’s not satisfied. And I’m going to tell you, folks, that’s us, isn’t it? Isn’t it? This is not a rhetorical question, okay? This is a yes or no question. Alright? This is, yeah, yes. I can be pretty selfish. Okay? And this is, no, I’m never selfish at all. So if you shake your head no, you and I need to talk after services.

Because we all know the truth of this, don’t we? Sometimes things are just never enough. Sometimes the blessings that we have are just insufficient in our mind. And we become very selfish. In the book of Romans in chapter 1, I will read a couple of verses from this passage. Paul describes mankind generally, particularly the Gentile world in the context, but mankind as they have rejected God. In verse 18 of Romans 1, he says, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. And if you’re not a Christian, at this point you’re thinking, yeah, I knew sooner or later you’re going to start taking your Bible and bashing it over our heads. Listen carefully to what God says.

Because just like the prodigal son who takes the blessings of the Father and then goes off and just wastes them. Just uses them up on himself selfishly. This is this is mankind. What may be known of God is manifest in them. This is those who suppress the truth. God has shown it to them. Since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God, they didn’t glorify him as God and were not thankful, but became futile in their hearts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. And professing to be wise, they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, creeping things.

And God gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the creator. Listen to the list as he finishes this. Verse 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy and murder and strife and deceit and evil mindedness, they’re whisperers and backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful. Does that not describe our society honestly? Why are we where we are? Because we’re selfish. Because we look around at the world that God has provided.

And he’s offered us all of these things, and our tendency is to pursue our desires to destructive ends. The book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon makes the argument that essentially all of life is a grasping after the wind. And that’s what happens with sin. It may be the desire to provide for our own. Say all you want to for those of us who are Christians.

Temporality and the desire for more money is a problem among God’s people. A lot of times we don’t have time for spiritual service because we’re too busy making more money. And it’s interesting the way the economy’s going now. People are saying, well, it’s made harder and harder to buy a house, harder and harder to live. So what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to work more and more because you’ve got to make more and more money in order to keep a standard of living. And what does that do? It just consumes us. All we think about is what we’ve got, what we need, how much more we need, how much more we can have. And it robs us from service, from helping each other, from being godly, from being part of a local congregation.

And that is true of anything you want to describe. Why do people become alcoholics? Well, because just a little bit of something that causes us to feel good eventually becomes the need for more to cause us to feel good because the effects start rubbing off. Before you know it, you’re just having to have more and more and more. The same is true of drug addiction, the same is true of sexual activity. What happens is we become selfish, and all the blessings that God gives us we use to our destruction. We destroy our health, we destroy our homes, we destroy our comfort, we destroy our peace of mind. And we end up where the prodigal son ended up. He goes to the far land, he wastes his possessions on wasteful living.

3. The Father Wants Us to Come Home

And he ends up in a pig sty wishing he could eat what the hogs were eating. And that’s where people end up when they give themselves to sin. So we’ve got a God who blesses, and we got man who tends to, we just tend to abuse these blessings. So where does this leave us? Well, third observation is this. And this is the this is the real point. This is the big point of the lesson. The Father wants us to come home. This is what the Bible story is all about, folks, for those of you who may not be familiar with it, or those who are just marginally familiar with it, or maybe you’re a young person trying to figure out what you’re going to do with your life.

What the Bible story is about is a God who’s created a man in his image and is blessed him, and the man has messed that up, and the father still wants him to come home. In verse 17, the young man, when he says in verse 17, when he comes to himself, when he looks around and realizes, you know, I’m out in the middle of a pig pen, and we miss part of this because we’re not Jews. This is a obviously a Jewish young man who’s probably working for a Gentile man because the man’s raising hogs, which were unclean to a Jew. And so not only is he doing menial work, he’s doing menial work in an unclean way in a land that is not his own.

And this is just about as low as you could get. And wishing he could eat what the pigs were eating. One of the ironies, it seems to me, of our selfishness is that at some point we look around and realize I’ve done this to myself. I have not been actively involved in programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, but I know people who have, who’ve been a part of the helping process. And I’ve tried to help people with various and sundry things. It just kind of goes with the work when you’re a preacher. And I tell you, one of the things that they will tell you in those programs, one of the things that I think are true because it’s a biblical principle is you’re never going to get better until you admit you’re wrong.

Until you admit you have a problem. It is the essence of repentance. It is the concept that says, I have messed up, and if I want things to get better, I need to change. That’s the message John the Baptist came preaching. That’s the message Jesus preached. It’s the message that the prophets preached consistently in the Old Testament. And the irony of all this is at some point we come to ourselves and realize that I’ve messed up, and I’d really like to go home. And my father has hired servants who have bred and to spare. Now here’s the issue, I think sometimes, and maybe you’re dealing with this.

When you wake up and realize you’re you’re in the pig pen. You’ve messed up. Things are bad. You’ve lost your family, you’ve lost your home, you’ve lost your health. And there’s got to be a better life than this. The problem is, if you don’t have a good view of God, you may think that you just can’t go home. And I’ve heard people say this. I have studied with people who walked out of my office and said, I have done things for which I could never be forgiven.

I think we all feel that way when we are conscious of our sins. But this is when your view of God becomes really, really important. And this is why Jesus is telling this parable to these Pharisees who are essentially looking at the sinners and say, you don’t deserve justification. And what Jesus is saying is, this is God. This is the God we serve. This is who I am. This is why I came to the earth. This is home. And that’s the portrait here. Verse 20. He sees the sun coming a long ways away. I almost hesitated to do this last night. My dad was pretty well known for doing a sermon on the prodigal son. You may have heard him preach it at some point. And at this point, Dad was really good at illustrating stuff.

He would say, I want you to see the old man. And every day he gets up and he looks down that road, and that road stretches off at the distance. Don’t you know some days he’d got up and he’d look down that road and he’d see something, something moving and coming toward him, and well, maybe this is my boy. Oh no, it’s just that old possum that walked across the road every time. I don’t know how many people have said, man, I’ve heard your dad tell that possum story a thousand times. Well, I tell you why it’s compelling to people, because that’s probably true. He sees him a long ways off. What does that imply? He’s looking for him. He’s watching for him to come home.

And I’m going to tell you, if you’re marred in sin, or if you ever get marred in sin, one of the things you need to remember is God’s looking for you to come home. He’s watching for you to come home. And verse 20 has compassion and affection. Don’t you know this kid stink? I’m sorry, but have you ever worked around hogs? And I’m not saying have you ever walked past the pen. I’m saying, have you ever had to get in there amongst a hawks of powerful animals? My great uncle and uh Uncle John and Aunt Rachel had hog her farm in Oklahoma. And I remember going out there as a kid.

But you get in that pig pen and one of those, one of those hogs knocks you down. I guarantee you, grandma’s not going to let you in the house for the rest of the day. And yet, how does the father react? He throws his arms around him. He he falls on his neck, he kisses him, he restores him to the family, verse 22. He doesn’t wait for the son to make all of his confession and tell him all the bad things he does. Immediately he welcomes him back and commences celebrating. This is God. The entire Bible is a testament to his desire for reunion. From the very day that Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis chapter 3, God began the process of buying us back. To the point that God the Word came and lived in the flesh, a perfect life and died a horrendous death on a cross, just so you guys can be accepted again.

That’s the God we serve. I understand He is just. I haven’t offered invitation yet. Okay? You can’t come forward yet. What?

Okay. This never happened to the Apostle Paul. Okay.

Okay. Well, you don’t need this.

Alright. This is a commercial break, folks. If I had something worth selling, I’d tell you to buy it out of it. Okay, that’s good. We good up there. Yes, testing one, too. Okay, here we go. I have no idea where I was. From the very day that Adam and Eve sinned. God began this process of restoration. And to the point of making great sacrifices. He hurt for our behalf. And we need to see that if you’re not a Christian and you’re wondering what God’s really like, this God of the Bible and all this junk that you hear out there, this is what God wants you to know about him. Yes, he is capable of punishment and he will punish. But that’s not what he desires to do.

4. Welcome Home the People Who Come Home

What he desires to do is save. So much so that he had a plan in place before he ever created man. All so that I can be accepted again as family. I want you to understand something about serving God. Every day, you are embraced as a child. And let me make one last observation. I know we’re out of time here, but let’s not neglect to mention the older son. And here’s the observation I want to make about him. So far we’ve said God is a gracious and loving being. We tend to take his blessings and abuse them and pervert them to our own destruction. God wants us to come home. And we need those who are his children to be willing to welcome home the people who come home.

That’s the problem with the older brother. He’s looking down upon his brother because he’s made bad choices. I heard Shane Scott make this observation a few months ago, and uh it is stuck in my head. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. All the gender equality stuff that’s going on, it it it’s it’s hard for me to wrap my head around it. It really is. You know, I I grew up on cotton farms and working with families and kids that had animals, and you know, there’s boy animals and girl animals, and that’s all the animals there are, and that’s kind of the way I look at human beings. There’s boy and girls, and that’s all that there are, but we’re pretty confused in our society out there.

And and and it’s really easy to look down at people who are struggling either with their what they would call their their gender or their sexual identity, where their desires are. I don’t understand all that. There’s some legitimacy to it. I’ve studied with people who have struggled with uh same-sex attractions, and I I can’t account for why they feel the way they feel. They feel that. I don’t think it justifies it, but they feel that. And Shane made the observation that there’s a lot of folks who have started in this gender transition stuff that’s so popular. And there’s actually quite a movement of people who are who have decided that they made a horrible mistake and they want to go back. And he made the observation, some of these people are going to be looking for spiritual peace.

And we’re going to have the opportunity to teach them the gospel. And the question is, what kind of attitude do we have? Are we going to welcome them? Because God’s going to welcome them. God’s going to welcome home people who have done things that we consider absolutely horrendous. Things that are unthinkable to us.

Abominations. And Jesus addresses these things. This is the picture of the older brother. This your son. He doesn’t notice he doesn’t say my brother’s come home. He says, your son came home. And the older brother doesn’t know what he did. All we know is that he wasted his substance with wasteful prodigal living. But the older brother puts moral attachments to it. He wasted your money, Dad, with harlots. And you’re just going to welcome him home? And I’m going to tell you that’s real easy kind of mindset to adopt. That’s what the mindset of the Pharisees was. Jesus tells a parable a couple of chapters later in Luke chapter 18 about a Pharisee and a publican, a tax collector go to the temple to pray, and the tax collector is just overwhelmed with his guilt with the fact that he has no right standing before God.

Won’t even look up pizza’s breast. God be merciful to me, a sinner. And the tax collector’s looking at him, I mean, the Pharisees looking at him going, I’m grateful, God that I’m not like that guy over there. Which one of these brothers are we? In Luke chapter 9, James and John want to call down fire from heaven to destroy some people who are a little upset because Jesus was just passing through, and Jesus says, You do not know the manner of men you are supposed to be. People out there in the world, folks, that are struggling in this cultural war that we’re seeing around us, who at some point decide to come home, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, 6, verses 9 and 10, they’ll stand justified, sanctified, and holy, cleansed before our God.

He’ll welcome them home. Will we? Because we’re one of these guys or the other. We’ve either at some point abused the blessings of God. Maybe, maybe our abuses haven’t been horrendous in the eyes of most people, but we’ve abused the blessings of God and we found ourselves separated from a Father who wants to bless us. And we’ve come to the understanding he wants to welcome us home. And we’ve come home and we’ve fallen before him, and we’ve said, I’m not worthy to be your son. And he’s accepted us as his children. We are the children of God. But I’m going to tell you, there’s a lot of folks out there that need to know that God and his people want to help them.

Conclusion

And so how you look at God’s important. And understanding how he looks at us is important. And serving him is important. Honoring him is important. Taking advantage of his blessings is important. If you’re not a Christian and maybe this first time you’ve heard some of this stuff, you’ve got questions, holler, please. We’re trying to help people go home. If you are a Christian, let’s make sure that we are with open arms like our father, trying to bring people back home. And let’s make sure we’re not the older son. If we’re going to be one of the sons, and this is kind of odd to say, if you’re going to be one of the sons, be the prodigal son. Because he came home. And so we’re going to have an invitation song.

And we hope that we can encourage you in your service to God. If there’s something we can do for you spiritually, we invite you to come whether we stand while we say.