I Want You to Fail
Biblical Text: Luke 15: 11-14
11 And he said, A certain man had two sons:
12 And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.
13 And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.
14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.
For a few moments I want to speak to you on the subject, I Want You to Fail. You heard me correctly, I want you to fail! I know what you are thinking, how is it that tonight is Education Night, I came up through the Christian Education Department, I currently serve as YACM Central Regional Chair and I am telling you that the message that the Lord gave me to give to you is, I want you to fail? Here we are all excited and fired up and the message I have is that I want you to fail? How in the world can this be true when 7.4 million people every day watch “The Ellen Show” to get good advice but tonight, on Education Night your message is that I want you to fail?
This doesn’t make sense. Everybody knows that failure should be avoided. 13 Billion dollars are spent every year on seminars, self-help books and weight loss diets” and you are telling us you want us to fail? You didn’t come to Alsip, Illinois to hear about failure. Some of you fought hard to get to conference. You triumphed over financial problems at church, not enough money to send your delegate and the Pastor to conference and we aren’t even going to talk about General Claims and unallocated claims that we are expected to pay and the word of encouragement that Lord gave me to give to you is “I want you to fail?” YES! Without fear of contradiction, I am not going to bite my tongue and forth rightly I do want you to fail.
President Robert Kennedy said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly!” You have to understand, President Kennedy was saying that in order for you to be successful at something you first have to fail. There is something to be said when you understand that failure is the price tag we pay for being successful. People who are really successful learned about success from first being a failure. That is why so many of our youth and young adults don’t come to church, because the church has a strong case of spiritual amnesia. Once we get saved, we act like we have never have failed at anything:
1. So we have Youth Directors that act like they have never had a one night stand.
2. We have preachers, pastors and bishops that act like they have never had any gin and juice.
3. We have parents that act like they have never smoked weed.
4. Choir directors that act like they have never failed a class.
However I am so glad that I have some folks in here that are not ashamed to admit that they had some failures. I am glad there are some folks in here who came to the realization that their failure was not falling, but true failure is staying down after you have fallen. All of us have fallen short. I’ve fallen short. You’ve fallen short. Everyone you admire, everyone you’ve put on a pedestal, everyone you look to as an example has fallen short at some point in their lives. You might not have seen it. You might not know about it, nobody told you about it, but if you could hear their whole story, you would find out that they, like you, have fallen short. The failure was not falling. The failure is staying down and not getting up. When you fall down and stay down, that’s when you give the devil the victory. He rejoices when he can keep you down, keep you feeling like a failure.
This is why it makes no sense to be jealous of anybody. If you knew that person’s whole story, how often they had fallen or what it took for them to pull themselves up, you might not be so envious of what they have or what they’ve accomplished. If you had to go through what they’ve been through in order to be successful, you just might say, “Forget it, it’s not worth the suffering.”
Jer 9:23 says, “23 Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: 24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.”
I submit to you that failure is the only way for you to learn to give God the glory. I can tell the folk that have never been through anything, because the folks that have never been through anything have to be pumped up to give God praise. But the folk that have had their back up against a wall, that have had to live in a crazy house, had an uncle touch you inappropriately, had a mother jealous of you, had a father that was nowhere to be seen, had church folk that knew your business and talked about you to others, when those folks get to God’s house, they don’t need anyone to pump them up to praise God. All you have to do is think back over your life, and say that I had some good days and some bad days, but my good days outweigh my bad days! I won’t complain!! I will bless the Lord at all times. His praises shall continually be in my mouth.
You need to understand it is alright to fail, because that is when you get your praise on. In John 11, when Lazuras was sick and his sisters Mary and Martha Facetimed Jesus to let Him know that, “the one you love is sick unto death.” Jesus didn’t come immediately, because “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”
Hold on preacher you’re going too fast. You mean to tell me that I am suffering so God can get the glory? Preacher you are messing me up! You mean I am in this mess because God wants to see how long before I give him the Glory? Slow your roll preacher. You are standing here saying I could have been out of this drama by now if I just started giving God the Glory when my haters brought the drama?
I know some of you can’t identify with this because you aren’t going through anything. On the other hand some of you are happy to be here at Annual Conference because you left hell back at home. Some of you are happy to be here because you don’t have to worry about anyone looking at you funny when you start to praise God in worship. You can shout and not have anyone pull and drag you out of church because they don’t worship like that at your church. I am not talking to the whole conference; I am talking to who I am talking to! You don’t need the Bishop, the choir or anyone else to pump you up; you just need the opportunity to praise God! Because if I praise God in my mess, he is faithful to see you through!
In our text we find at the beginning of Luke 15:1, “[1] Now the tax collectors and sinners (the failures) where all drawing near to hear him (Jesus) [2] and the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, “This man receives sinner and eats with them,” So Christ hearing there murmuring he tell them three parables: 1. The parable of the lost sheep. 2. The parable of the lost coin. 3. Then the parable of the lost son (or, as we know it, the parable of the prodigal son). All three parables are on the subject of recovering the lost (the failures of society) which is the implicit explanation of why Jesus receives sinner and eats with them. They are lost and he wants to recover them. Jesus’ parables are based on real-life situations, though they often veer off from the expected course of events in surprising ways. They teach us surprising lessons. You know the story of the prodigal son. Jesus relates the situation of a father who has two sons, one of whom can’t wait for his inheritance. In Jewish society, there were laws regarding how inheritances were typically divided. The oldest brother got a double share (Deut 21:17), while the other brothers got a single share. When there were two brothers (as here), the older brother would get 2/3rds of the estate, and the younger brother would get 1/3rd.
In this parable, the younger son demands “the share of property that falls to me” (v.12). This means he is asking for the 1/3rd of the father’s possessions that he would ordinarily get when his father dies. Think about that. He’s asking his father to give him 1/3rd of everything that he owns right now, before the father is dead, when his father would still have use for these possessions. How many fathers would receive that suggestion well today? How many would comply with that request if one of your children asked the same question? This is a truly astonishing request, and it would have been even more astonishing in the ancient world. In a society that highly reverenced parents, it would have been the equivalent to saying, “Father, I can’t even wait for you to die. Give me 1/3rd of everything you have right now.” But isn’t this how we treat God, we treat God like some entomological Santa Clause.
What does the father’s reaction teach us? Despite the breathtaking and insulting audacity of the younger son’s request, the father grants his request. This reflects the amazing indulgence that God shows towards us, even when we are acting selfishly like the prodigal son, a selfishness that led to his downfall. He gives us what is his and allows us to misuse it out of respect for the freedom he has given us. He does this because he knows if we don’t learn to get up from our failures, we will never appreciate all that he does for us. God trusts that we will learn from our failures and come back to him. There are three points I want to make about failure from this text:
First, the prodigal son failed because what he asked for, he couldn’t handle. We too often ask God for stuff not considering the cost. You can’t manage the $5 in your pocket, but you want God to help you win the mega millions so you don’t have to want for anything. Over 73% of lottery winners are broke within 10 years of winning large sums of money because they aren’t prepared to manage that much money.
The prodigal son show us this, because he takes everything he has and goes “into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living.” (v.13). In context, this means he abandoned the Holy Land to go, voluntarily, into exile into a gentile, pagan country where he could live loosely without being censured by fellow Jews living all around him.
The prodigal son isn’t the only one who goes out of town to let his hair down, to get loose, to test the phrase that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. If you can’t say amen, say ouch! The prodigal son wants to get out of God’s land so that he can live in sin and fund his sinful lifestyle by what he took from his father. But eventually the resources he had were exhausted and then came hard times. If he had not spent what he had on loose living, he would have had the money he needed to weather the hard time, but he didn’t. Thus he was reduced to a state of hunger and found himself in humiliating circumstances (humiliations #1) and to feed the pagan’s pigs (humiliations #2). He would have been happy just to eat as well as the pigs (humiliation #3), but nobody gave him anything to eat, not even from the pigs’ slop (humiliation #4). Having been brought to such a low state, he recalled how his righteous father treated even his hired servants better. “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger!” (v.17). He realizes that he has failed, which brings us to the second point.
Secondly, the prodigal son realizes that he has failed, but he doesn’t plan on staying a failure. He realizes the depths of his failures and plans to take action! Church we can’t allow a failed Sunday school program to stop us from trying. My mother was raised to go to Sunday School. She promised herself that when she got grown, she wasn’t going to Sunday school again. My entire childhood I never saw my mother go to Sunday school. Now my Father and Grandmother are Sunday school teachers and they went to Sunday school every Sunday, but not my mother. At John Wesley Southfield, Alan Hunt, my youngest daughter’s Godfather, became superintendent of the Sunday School. He noticed that my mother would bring Aunt, Vashti Lee to Sunday School, but didn’t come herself. She would sit in her car and come it for 10:45 service. So Alan invited my mother to Sunday school, but she didn’t go. He kept asking her for years! He never gave up asking. Then one day, he looked up and my mother was in Sunday school and she has been attending ever since. Alan didn’t allow the 1st or the 104th rejection stop him from asking. He would have been a failure if he stopped asking. Thus the prodigal son has a plan to return to his father and say three things:
1. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you” (v. 18),
2. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (v. 19a),
3. “treat me as one of your hired servants” (v 19b).
Even being treated as one of his father’s hired servants was better than the treatment he was receiving in the gentile world. If we are bent on leaving God, things will go badly for us. We will be humiliated in an uncaring world. The farther we get from the father’s loving care, the worse off we will be, and our best course is to return to God and his forgiveness. The prodigal son realizes that he failed, that he has fallen down. But he doesn’t stay down. He has a plan to pull himself up.
Lastly I notice how the father treats his son who has returned a failure. When the prodigal son returns to his father, something significant happens. While he is still at a distance, the father sees him coming, has compassion upon him, runs to him, hugs him, and kisses him. This is far from the humiliating reunion that the son might have expected based on his previous audacious and insulting treatment of his father. The returning son must have been astonished, but he sticks to his plan and begins to recite his pre-scripted speech to his father. He manages to get the first two parts out. But before he can say the third part—before he can ask to be treated merely as a servant—the father interrupts him and takes them in a very different direction.
Rather than treating his younger son as a mere servant, he turns to the actual servants and orders a celebration. The father is not going to treat his son like a hired servant. The younger son is still his son! As a result of him still being a son, his return is something to be celebrated! He is to wear a fancy robe! A fancy ring! Fancy shoes! He orders a feast! There is to be music and dancing! Why? Because “This my son was dead, and is alive again;” “he was lost, and is found. God doesn’t begrudge us because of what we have done. He doesn’t turn his back on us when we fail. He doesn’t take us back reluctantly, but like the father in the parable, he takes us back joyously! Eagerly!
In the father’s reception of the prodigal son, there is a lesson there for all of us. How do we treat people when they have failed?
How real is the church when it comes to Christians who have failed?
Do you remind them of their torn past? Remind them of their sins?
When people make a move to come back home, we have stop reminding them of their past.
What I really want to know is how real you really are?
Because I haven’t always worn nice clothes
I haven’t always been the preacher you see tonight
I HAVE some issues that I am dealing with right now
But if you knew some things about me would you still want to hear me preach?
I haven’t always been a good husband and father
But I want to know if you knew how dirty I was before the Lord saved me, would you still call me brethren?
I haven’t always been who I am; I haven’t been clean like am right now.
But if you knew me before he saved me, would you still want to hear me preach the Gospel?
I believe some people are going to start coming back home.
But when they come home, don’t turn your back on them, don’t throw their failures into their face, but rather let them know that Jesus still saves. The blood still works. It will never lose its power! It’s not their failure that is important, but the fact they have come back home, gotten up from the gutter, left the street life, given up drugs. They are intending to lead a new life and they are drawing near WITH FAITH to get closer to God. Failure led them back to the church.
Let the fallen know that God can reach them no matter where they are in life.
Even if He has reach way down, no matter how deep in the gutter they fall, God can reach them.
I am so glad that God didn’t turn his back on me when I was sinking deep in sin, far from the distance shore!
But God picked me up, turned me around, and planted my feet on solid ground.
Is there anybody here that has been to the far country? If you don’t mind, If God has ever done anything for you, ease your arm around your neighbor and rock’em and shake’em, shake’em and rock’em.
Is there anybody here that knows that God can use failures? Let them know that Daddy is waiting on them. He’s got a robe for you, new shoes, and is having the table set to hold a feast!
If you know he will save you say, “YEA!!!!!”
Maybe you realize tonight, that you haven’t always been where you are right now.
You have had some dark days in your life but you know that your trials have only made you strong.
The reason you are able to help somebody is because you been there and done that, so you know what God can do! Though your sins be as crimson, he can wash them white as snow.
If you aren’t ashamed of where God has brought you from, make sure you go home and tell the story of how God saved you! Tell sinners about your failures. Tell them how you once were lost but now you’re found, was blind but now you see. Tell them how God picked you up, even though he had to go in some gutters and down some alleys to save you
I hope you fail, because failing will put you in good company!
I am done teaching!
Winston Church Hill, failed the 6th grade and wasn’t elected until he was 62 years old, I hope you fail!
Albert Einstein, didn’t speak until he was 4 years old, couldn’t read until he was 9 years old, I hope you fail!
Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, went bankrupt five times before he got Ford Motor Company off the ground, I hope you fail!
RH Macy was arrested by the IRS for tax evasion, but when he got out of prison he opened up the Macy’s Department Store in Downtown, NY, I hope you fail!
Michael Jordan was cut from the JV basketball team, and was told to take up baseball, but now Michael Jordan has 6 championship rings, I hope you fail!
Anita Baker sent her demo record to every record company in America, but the people at Arista sent her back a letter saying, “don’t quit your day job!” But Anita Baker is still saying, “I am still giving you the best that I’ve got!” I hope you fail!
Luther Vandross was booed off the Apollo Theater three different times, but tonight, even in death, a chair is not a chair, unless Luther is sitting there. I hope you fail!
Sean Puffy Combs was in special Ed, he rode the short bus to school, but now Puffy is worth over 300 million dollars, now Puffy is saying, “I thought I told you, that we won’t stop!” I hope you fail!
Then there was a man named Jesus, they hung him high, they stretched him wide, he hung his head, for me he died! I hope you fail!
But that’s not, where the story ends, three days later he rose again, I hope you fail!
Can I tell you my testimony?
You are looking at a guy, who failed study hall in high school; my advisors told me to look into community college; I had two kids out of wedlock; But God restored me!
I have failed at school
I have failed in some relationships
I have failed my family
But I won’t fail to give God some praise!
