“…we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother here was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.” These words from Luke 15:32, are the total expression of what God has done for us. In fact, they remind me of a story...
There once was a young man who while not strong in his own faith knew he loved God and that God loved him. However, one day tragedy struck and the young man’s father was killed in a freak farm accident. In the month’s following the accident, the young man’s faith in God lessened and his anger began to grow. Over the years, his anger took many forms leading him down a life that God did not want for him. His anger at God cost him family relationships, friends, and even allowed him to enter into a bad marriage.
However, in each of these situations, unbeknownst to the angry young man, God was there. No matter how bad it got in the young man’s life God was watching out for him. When his marriage ended, and the young man moved back to his home town, semi-homeless, his family took him in and gave him a place to stay so that he could continue to take care of his baby daughter.
However the young man could not let go of the anger he had toward God. This young man wrestled daily with why did God let that happen? Why did that tree have to fall that way? Meanwhile God put people in the young man’s life to bring him closer to God. He had a grandmother, and mother who prayed daily that the young man would accept Christ into his heart. A two-year-old little girl who needed her daddy and friends who provided support as the young man struggled.
You see each day, God nudged the young man a little bit closer toward God. Each day as the man questioned faith, he received answers to his questions. Each day, that the young man was allowed to experience just a little more of the kingdom of Heaven.
Finally, the young man decided it was time to have his daughter baptized, she was a little over two years old, and he felt it had been long enough. So, he approached the pastor about having his little girl baptized. The pastor had the young man come for couple of sessions and let his daughter get familiar with the pastor as well.
On the day of the baptism, the ceremony was taking place, the young man and his little girl were at the front of the church with the pastor. However as the young man read the words of the baptism covenant, words he had read before with the pastor at her office, God allowed His Holy Spirit to enter the young man. It was at that moment the young man realized not only did God love him and his little girl, but that what he was doing was making a commitment to bring his little girl up to love the Lord! He realized God had called him back, just like the Prodigal Son, and that he was back home and God wanted him to be with him always.
You see that young man is standing before you today. I was that angry young man. I have been the prodigal son. I have eaten with the pigs, I had thrown away the treasure that God had given me, only to come back and repent. Verse 32 could be rewritten for my life. It could very easily be read to say these words…”it was only right we should celebrate and rejoice, because your brother Carl was dead and has come to life; he was lost and is found.
You see, God was with me even when he allowed me to be in the depths of misery. He never allowed me to sink beyond what He knew I could handle. He knew that when I reached that critical point, I would call for Him. I would repent, and He would wash away all of my transgressions and welcome me, that angry young man, back home. Just like the father in Luke welcomed home his wayward son.
Paul wrote in our epistle for today:
…anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old order is gone and a new being is there to see. It is all God’s work; he reconciled us to himself through Christ and he gave us the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17-18 NJB)
In other words, when a person accepts Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, they are a new person. God gives them the chance to start over and to look at life in a new way. They begin realize that they need not carry the burden of guilt any more, because God has forgiven them of their wayward past.
In fact Paul reminds the reader that; God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding anyone’s faults against them, but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. In other words, once God has forgiven us of our faults or sins, He will no longer hold them against us.
This does not mean though that everyone will feel they way God does. Much like the son who stayed home, others will be there to remind the newly washed in Christ, of their past. They may even attempt to test that person, in an effort to “trip them up”.
However, through God the new in Christ will be given the way to resist the temptations. If you recall in my sermon last week, we learned that God will always provide us a way out of temptations. We do not have to succumb to them and this is done not because of who we are, but because of who HE is. They know it is God who controls their lives. Moreover, it is God in whom they must put their whole heart and trust.
For the prodigal son, he learned that earthly inheritance’s only go so far. The redemption he received from his father allowed him to have a place to live and sleep. He was allowed to return to his place among the family as well.
God does the same for us each and everyday. We can never do anything so terrible that God will not love us. He created us and he knows us better than even we know ourselves. He will always be there, just as was the father in Luke, ready to welcome us back home. All of our past transgressions will be wiped away, never again to be remembered by Him because of His mercy and His forgiveness.
I can only imagine how heart wrenching it was for the prodigal son’s father to know that his son had turned away from every good thing he had been taught. We can assume that the father certainly did not teach his son to go out into the world and do the things he was doing. As children grow up and begin to make their own decisions about life, it is often very hard for a parent to stand back and watch their child make mistakes. It is also hard for them when their child chooses not to listen to their advice or words of wisdom. You do not want to see your kids hurt. You do not want them to have to experience hardships or strife within their life. Sometimes, even when we feel helpless in those situations, we can still pray. Pray, pray and then pray some more. Prayer works, and we can take comfort in the fact that we have covered them in prayer and you know that because of your prayers, God will be working in their lives. I know I praise God for the prayers from my grandmother and mother, which covered me in the years following my dad’s death. Had it not been for those prayers, I am not sure how different my life would be today.
I was watching a pastor on TV just the other day. In addition to pastoring a church in Philadelphia, he is also a singer and tours around the country on occasion, doing performances. After he was finished singing a few songs, the host of the TV program brought him over to sit and talk with him a few moments. During the interview, the pastor confided in the host that he had not always been a Christian. In his youth, he lived in a very rough part of Harlem and he felt he had to do what he had to do to survive there. Life was not easy for him and he did many things that he should not have done. But, he said the reason he was sitting on that stage at that moment, was because he had a mother who covered him in prayer. She prayed continuously for him, each and every day. She prayed for him without ceasing, carrying a prayer for him on her heart, and God listened to her prayers….and he answered them by bringing that young man back to Him and in addition, calling him into the ministry. So, prayer works.
There is another little story I would like to share with you this morning. This story just reaffirms what we have been talking about this morning. We have always been and will always loved by God, no matter what. The story goes like this.
A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill.
In the room of over 200 people, he asked the question, “Who would like this $20 bill? Hands started going up. He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the $20 dollar bill up. He then asked, “Who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air.
“Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. Now who still wants it?” Still the hands were up in the air.
“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. Because it did not decrease in value, it is still worth $20. Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value in God’s eyes. To Him, dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to Him.
You see, it did not matter to the people sitting in that room that the $20 bill was dirty, crumpled, torn and worn down. They knew that in spite of its appearance or faults, it was still a $20 bill and none of those things decreased its value, not even a cent. Therefore, they were still more than willing to accept it because of what it was.
So just like the story said, even if we are crumpled and dirty or even if we are fresh and clean, we are all priceless in the sight of God because our value to Him will never decrease. And like the prodigal son, we can never go so far away that we cannot, with God’s help and prayer from loved ones, find our way back to His love and grace.
With that, I would like to close with these words from Romans 8: 31-39:
“What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen.
