Well, it's great to be with you again this evening.
I just want to reiterate what Sam has said already.
If anything I say tonight resonates with you,
we want to give you the opportunity
and we want to encourage you to respond in some way.
And Sam's going to talk about that more afterwards.
But I want to begin by making a confession.
I hate reading instructions.
I know that shouldn't come as a shock, given that I'm a man,
but I hate reading instructions
and I especially hate reading maps.
And I want to tell you a story.
It's a little embarrassing.
One day I applied for a job as an accountant.
That's not the embarrassing bit, by the way.
And I organised an interview with a recruitment consultant.
And I thought...
I was on the phone, I was trying to take the address down,
and I thought, yeah, I've got the address in my head,
and lo and behold, the time comes around to go to the interview
and I've forgotten the address.
Now, I think I know roughly where this guy's office is,
so at the right time I head out to try and find this office
and I don't seem to be making much progress.
And about ten minutes after the interview was supposed to have started,
I get a phone call from this recruitment consultant.
And he says to me,
Matt, are you lost?
And I say, I'm not lost.
I'm just directionally challenged.
And I realise that I'm often reluctant to admit
I often don't recognise that I'm lost until it's too late.
And this is about a story about a guy just like me
who's reluctant to admit that he's lost.
In fact, he doesn't realise that he's lost until it's too late.
Now, to appreciate this young man's situation,
we've got to go back in time
and understand just how fragile life can be
in Middle Eastern culture 2,000 years ago.
If you were in a wealthy family
who maybe owned a farm,
you might have hundreds of silos full of grain.
And if you have a bad couple of years,
if the harvest fails a couple of times,
you could go broke very, very quickly.
There's a very real danger of starving to death.
So, when this young man sets out from home,
blows his cash on fast living
and finds himself working as a slave
in a land that's struck by famine,
he's in very, very dire straits.
He's quite literally at death's door.
Just as an aside,
Jews aren't allowed to eat pork.
So, you know things have gotten pretty bad
when you're a Jew and you long to eat pig food.
But this guy's problem isn't just physical hunger.
He's got deeper problems.
And his problems don't actually start
when he gets to the foreign country.
His problems actually start at home.
At the very beginning of our passage,
in verse 12,
the younger son asks
for his share of the family's inheritance.
And there's no apparent reason.
He doesn't need the money.
He doesn't want the money for any particular purpose.
It's only later in verse 13
that he actually heads to a foreign country.
There's a much deeper problem involved.
In Middle Eastern culture,
it's very, very shameful
to ask for your inheritance early.
Because when you ask for your inheritance early,
it's like saying this.
It's like saying this to your mum and to your dad.
I wish you were dead.
That's what it's like.
You see, the father and the son
have a broken relationship.
They're estranged.
They're alienated from each other.
And later, the physical distance between them
merely underlines the emotional distance between them.
So when you find yourself in a mess like this,
how do you find your way out?
When you've got very deep physical needs
and emotional needs,
what can you do?
Well, there's basically,
there's two solutions.
The first is to try and fix the problem yourself.
It's interesting that the young man in our story,
he's not as useless as you might first think.
He tries to fix his problems for very early on.
If you have a look at verse 13,
he tries to fix the hole inside him
by going travelling and by living up a party lifestyle.
Now, there's nothing wrong with travelling
and there's nothing wrong with going to parties.
But they can't fill all of our physical
and our emotional needs.
Then things get worse.
He finds himself short of cash
and so he gets a job
to try and work his way out of his problems.
It's a pretty menial job.
Now, maybe he's hoping that
he'll rise through the ranks
and maybe make something of a career for himself one day.
And I want to say,
that's okay, work's terrific.
But again,
work can't fulfil
all of our physical and our emotional needs.
Travelling,
partying,
working,
none of these things worked.
They couldn't fix the hole
inside this young man's stomach
and they couldn't fix the hole
inside his heart.
But then,
in verse 17,
it says,
he came to his senses.
And what he does next
is really critical.
In verse 18, he says,
I will set out
and go back to my father.
So I want to take a step back
and ask,
what's Jesus trying to tell us
by telling us this story?
It's this.
If you're at death's door,
if you have
very deep physical
and emotional needs,
come to your senses
and return to God
who's your heavenly father.
Sam mentioned that
I told some of my story last week.
If you weren't here last week,
I shared that my dad's a prison chaplain.
He works out at Long Bay Jail
and it's been a great privilege
for me to go out with him sometimes
and visit some of the inmates.
And one day,
I went with him
to the psychiatric ward
and I met a guy named
Anthony Waterlow.
Now, Anthony suffers
from schizophrenia
and four years ago,
he went to visit his father
and his sister in Clovelly
and in a schizophrenic rage,
he stabbed them both to death.
And he's been in the psychiatric ward
ever since.
But when he got to prison,
two really important things happened.
Someone started to treat
his schizophrenia
and someone gave him a Bible.
And he started to read the Bible
and he started to pray.
And he quite literally
came to his senses.
After a short while,
he approached my dad
and said,
can you start running
church services for me
and my friend?
It's incredible.
He's a guy
who has killed
his earthly father
and sister.
But now he knows God
as his heavenly father.
If it's possible
for a man like Anthony
to know God
as father,
it's possible for anyone.
So what sort of thing
can you expect
when you come back
to God as father?
How might an earthly father
respond?
Perhaps you would expect him
to stand there,
arms folded,
waiting for a pretty good
explanation.
Maybe he might be thinking,
you know what,
I'll put him to work
for a few years
until he learns his place
and then I'll slowly
let him back
into the family.
Maybe he's thinking,
you know what,
what this son has done
is just too much.
I can't handle it.
I don't want to even
acknowledge that he exists
anymore.
The father in this story
shatters all of our
expectations.
Take a look with me
at what happens.
It's actually pretty funny.
I kind of think it's
almost like slapstick comedy.
You see,
the father sees his son
a long way off
and that tells you
that he must have been
out looking for him.
And when the father
sees his son,
his heart literally
skips a beat
and he starts to run
through the town.
He lifts up his ropes
and he starts running
through the town.
And again,
in Middle Eastern culture,
that's just something
you don't do.
It's very,
very embarrassing
for a patriarch
in a family
to do that sort of thing.
And then the father
literally throws his arms
around his son's neck
and he gives him
a great big sloppy wet kiss.
And the son hasn't
even said a word.
He tries to.
He tries to begin
his apology
but the father
cuts him off.
And he's about
to say to your father,
Father,
I'm not worthy
to be your son anymore.
But the father
actually reinstates him.
And he gives him
an expensive robe.
He puts a ring
on his finger
and he puts a robe
on and sandals
on his feet.
And he throws
the homecoming party
of the century.
The father welcomes
the son
with complete joy
and acceptance.
Why?
He gives a reason
in verse 24.
He says,
this son of mine
was dead
and is alive again.
He was lost
and is found.
For all intents
and purposes,
this guy was dead
to his father
and now he's alive again.
Every time
someone returns
to God
as their heavenly father,
this is how God
celebrates.
Just like this.
He jumps for joy.
He throws a huge party.
If you come to your senses
and return to God,
he's going to accept
you back.
You don't have to try
and gain
the father's acceptance
by trying to fix
your past mistakes
or by trying to live up
to any expectations.
Just come back.
I want to tell you
a story about
a young girl
from Brazil
named Christina.
Christina.
She was living
in a small town.
She thought life
was pretty boring.
She wanted to enjoy
the big city
so one day,
without a word,
she leaves home
and heads to Rio.
Now,
she had no way
of earning money
and after a couple
of weeks,
she resorts
to prostitution.
When Christina
left home,
her mum was sick
with worry
and she was
a pretty clever woman.
She takes a photo
of herself
and she prints off
a lot of copies
and she takes
each photo
and on the back
of each photo,
she scribbles
a little note.
Then she goes
up to the city
and for days,
she walks around,
walking around
all of the clubs,
walking around
all of the dirty streets,
walking around
the brothels,
the hotels
and she leaves
all of these photos
around.
She attaches them
to letter boxes
and phone booths,
hundreds and hundreds
of photos of herself
with these little notes
on the back.
But after a while,
she doesn't find
a daughter
and she has
to go home.
Well,
a couple of months
later,
Christina
is a broken woman.
She's just
devastated
that she's thrown
away everything
that she had
at home
and one evening
in a little hotel,
she's climbing
the stairs
and she looks
across at a mirror
and she sees
one of these
photos attached
and she recognizes
the picture
and she thinks,
that's my mum.
And she goes
and she picks up
the photo
and turns it over
and looks at the note
and this is what it says.
Whatever you have done,
whatever you have become,
please come home.
if you return
to God
as your heavenly father,
whatever you have done,
whatever you have become,
he'll accept you.
Now,
you would expect
the story
to finish there
but it doesn't.
You see,
there's an older brother
in the story
and he's really upset
and to be honest,
you can understand why.
Try and put yourself
in his shoes.
Your younger brother
has just blown
some of the family inheritance
in the space
of a single generation.
He's embarrassed
the family
and to add insult
to injury,
the father
has put on
an extravagant meal
to celebrate.
Why did he have
to do that?
Why did the father
have to kill
the fattened calf
for crying out loud?
I mean,
that was the kind of thing
you did when someone
got married.
Couldn't he just have
celebrated with some
pizza and Coke?
Surely the older son,
he's got a right
to be upset.
But here's the problem.
The older son
doesn't want the father.
He wants
the father's stuff.
And he thinks
he can get
the father's stuff
based on his performance,
not based on
the father's love.
You see,
the older son
lives in his father's house,
but his heart
might as well be
a million miles away.
And this is the great
tragedy of the story.
Neither
the younger son
or the older son
understand what it means
to be a true son.
But I want to ask,
who is the more
tragic figure
in the story?
Well,
it's the older son.
Why?
Because
older sons
don't realise
that they're lost.
Now,
it's important
to know
why Jesus
is telling
this parable.
Jesus
is in a crowd
sitting and talking
with sinners
and tax collectors.
Tax collectors
were very bad,
I can say that
because I was one
for a while.
And the reason
they were bad
is
they were Jewish
tax collectors
but they cooperated
with the Romans
in order to get taxes.
So basically
they were considered
traders.
They were
socially undesirable.
They were considered
lost.
But there's a few
other people
in the story as well.
At the start
of the chapter
there are some
Pharisees
and some teachers
of the law
looking on.
Now,
they're basically
the religious
and social elite.
They're the movers
and the shakers.
They're powerful people.
They're the kind of people
that you see
on red carpets
and at celebrity parties.
They're successful
and they're admired.
But they're also
confused.
They're thinking
why would Jesus
want to eat
with these kind
of people
and talk with them?
Why would he want
to talk with
sinners and tax collectors?
People who are
spiritually
and socially
lost.
So Jesus
tells them
this parable.
And here's
what he's saying.
He's saying
the religious
and the social
elites
of this world
are often
like the older son.
Society
might look up
to them.
They might do
all the right things.
They might be
generous.
They might
even go to church.
They might be
heavily involved
in church.
But they're still
estranged
from their father
because they
don't want
their father.
They want
the father's
stuff.
Now,
if you're
offended by
the idea
that God
could love
people like
the younger
son,
if you're
offended by
the idea
that God
could love
people like
Anthony
Waterlow,
then you're
an older
son.
When you're
offended by
God's
generosity,
when you
feel personally
wronged,
that he
looks after
the people
that the
world looks
down on,
you're an
older son.
And you
need to know
that God's
love,
the father's
love,
is big
enough for
everybody.
Not just
the spiritual
and social
elite.
And you
need to
return to
your heavenly
father.
So I
want to
say this,
if you're
just outside
the door,
if you're
a long way
off,
whoever you
are,
come home,
come back
to the
father.
It doesn't
matter what
you've done.
Well,
it does
matter,
actually.
It matters
so much
that Jesus
was punished
for our
wrongdoing.
sin.
You see,
God has
run out
to us
in the
person of
his son.
And his
son endured
great shame
by dying
for us
on the
cross for
our sins.
God
desperately
wants us
to return
to him.
And he
showed that
desperation
through the
death of
his son.
So if
you're a
younger son,
if you're an
older son,
if you
would like
to know
God as
father,
we can
give you
a map.
We can
show you
the way.
Whatever
you have
done,
whatever
you have
become,
please
come home.
Come
back to
the
father.
Amen.