Intro: We are living in a time of runaways. All around us we are hearing of cases of children and teenagers running away from home in search of the “good life”. We have adults that are packing up and leaving their families, marriages, and responsibilities behind to start a new life; all because the old life wasn’t meeting their needs. The church too has felt the blows from runaways; members and saints are leaving it all behind because they feel as if their needs are not being met by the Church and by God. All around us we are surrounded by runaways. Satan is convincing people that there is always a better way, one that is more gratifying than the latter. Today church I want to talk to you about “Home is where you Left It: The Three Gifts of the Redeemed”.
I. It starts when he wanted to be on his own.
A. The Prodigal Son is back drop for many sermons and scenarios. The text can be a type of the fall of man paralleling with the account in Genesis 3. But its most common use is that of a former child of God or son of the flesh leaving to join themselves in the World. It is this back drop I will use, but with a different angle added. That angle being what provoked this son to leave.
1. We are introduced to a father that has two sons. The younger decides one day that he wants to leave and go out on his own.
2. He is not leaving his father to cleave to a wife but rather to a new life and experiences.
3. Upon examining scripture the first thing that sticks out is that the younger son is the one that wants to leave. The young are always a type of inexperience, immaturity, and inpatients. The term youth refers to a condition of life as well as symbolic of one’s moral, spiritual and social state.
4. Such a young man was this Prodigal; full of life and zeal looking for adventure, willing to break tradition and taboos, breaking the restraints of his up bringing, in search for the “good life”.
5. This young man would take all that he had and leave in search for home.
B. Before we lay all the blame on his age lets examine a few possibilities in his thinking that would cause him to go to his father and ask for his portion.
a. This young man could have fought a battle with anger and frustration. A battle within him over his mind over who he was. This battle could have caused him to vent and become angry and frustrated.
I. Such anger and frustration could have resulted from a disagreement with his older brother.
II. This young man could have become a victim of living in his brother’s shadow.
III. He could have felt that he was never taken serious enough and that the older brother was always instructing him and giving him advice. Never giving him a chance to spread his wings.
IV. This advice and instructions could have been looked upon as the older brother being domineering and manipulative toward his younger brother. Instead of loving brotherly advice and instruction.
V. Fueling a rage of emotion within until the conclusion was made that the brother never wanted his younger brother to become more successful than he.
b. But maybe it was a disagreement with his father that started him on his journey from home.
I. Sometimes it is easy for a parent to favor one child over another. A parent may do this act without knowledge of there action, but they are sometimes fully aware of there actions.
II. Such was the case for Joseph in Genesis 37. He was loved more than his brothers because he was the first born of the wife that his father loved.
III. It was such favoritism that caused Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery and fake his death.
IV. Which ever the case may be within this young man there may have been an anger and frustration kindled against his father for not loving or spending equal time with him or what he felt was amply time.
c. Either or both of these scenarios could have been possible or it could have been a case of rebellion against his father’s rules.
I. The rules of his father could have been too much for this free spirit, a yoke to keep him from enjoying life, and all that it has to offer.
II. Within this mind these rules were nothing more than unobtainable values that were not in respect to the times in which he lived. These rules had there place long ago but were not for this time. They were nothing more than a reminder of what could never be.
d. But what if this was simply a case of depression and anxiety that drove this young man from home.
1. Today millions of people suffer from these debilitating mental disorders.
2. This Prodigal could have been a victim of depression and anxiety. Impairing his judgment and causing him to think and act rashly.
3. His situation at the time could have forced the thinking that he was trapped. An overwhelming emotion would lay hold of him. Causing him to examine his life and failures.
4. Maybe he felt that he could never be as his brother or ever please his father. Maybe decisions in his past caused him to doubt his place in his father’s house and the company of his brother.
5. He would fell alone and inadequate, the pressures of his life were too much and he needed to get away and sort them out, with maybe hopes of returning when he is more stable and could better please his father.
6. What ever the case was it all started from within him, somewhere along the way his mind would direct him away from his father. Causing him to take his portion and leave to a far country.
II. It wasn’t what he thought!
A. This new country would give the young man new experiences.
1. After gathering his belongings and setting out for a new home and life. He would settle in a far country.
2. Away from his father he was now free to experiment and try new things. Looking for those thrills and wonders that he wasn’t accustomed to seeing.
3. He could be classified by today’s standards as a swinging bachelor with the world as his play ground. He was free from all that he once knew and was now able to be who he always thought he was.
4. With his new portion I can image he was quick to show off and make plenty of friends. This Bachelor would be like a child in a candy store with a million dollars. His money would be used to indulge his desires and the desires of his new friends.
5. He would spend it all until there wasn’t a penny left; the Bible says that he wasted his substance with riotous living.
B. It would take him further than he may have wanted to go.
1. This new found life style of sinful free living would take him to a far country where he knew no one.
2. All his money made him somebody until it ran out.
3. He went into this new country as a man with a plan. He was free to do as he pleased. But this new freedom would take him down roads he could have never imagined.
4. His new friends would take him to places he was told to avoid. He would use and be used. All for riotous or excessive living, wasting it all on what was available.
5. That is until the funds dried up. Once the money was gone so was the good times and those that provided it. Those that called him friend and sweetheart left him high and dry.
6. This was not supposed to happen the plan never included being broke and abandoned.
C. It was going to keep him longer than he would want.
1. His riotous living enslaved him, taking him from one extreme to the other.
2. Each new ride was taking him further and further away from who he was and keeping him in more bondage than was anticipated.
3. What he thought would only last as moments and memories would become more of a lifestyle than a simple pleasure.
D. It was then going to cost him more than he was willing to pay.
1. This new life style would cost him all that he had. Leaving him unprepared for the famine that would take the land and him.
2. His sins would take him so far and keep him so long and cost him so much that he would be forced to take a job that was considered the bottom of the barrel.
3. Taking a job as a pig feeder would be a reproach to the Jews. Pigs were looked upon as unclean and filthy animals. Also Gentiles in the Jews eyes were looked upon as pigs, because they felt both were unclean and filthy animals.
4. Taking a job as a swine feeder would be a degradation to a Jew. Such a degradation did the Prodigal succumb too.
5. He was now at his lowest point in life. He was so low that he would have to look up to touch bottom. His pride, his self image everything was now striped from him.
6. His new life took him to the pig pits he would feed and feed with the swine. He would become a mockery and a joke; no man would even look upon him with pity and give him meat to eat.
7. He would become hog pig liven swine. The lowest of the low. He had hit rock bottom.
III. The journey Home.
A. It would be in the pig pin that he would find the road home.
1. It would be at his lowest state that this prodigal would realize that what he was looking for was at his father’s house the entire time.
2. It took rock bottom to realize he had it all. That even his father’s servants were doing better than he was.
B. There were three steps this prodigal would make to recovery.
1. He admitted he was wrong. In verse 17 &18 it says And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!(18) I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
2. The Prodigal knew he was wrong and admitted it, and his next step was to go to his father and ask for forgiveness.
3. He was willing to humble himself before his father not asking him to take him back as a son but as a servant.
4. He knew he had blown it, but if his father would take him back he would work to repay it all. He would do what ever it took to be accepted back in the father’s house.
5. All this son wanted was to be back at the father’s house. Where there was protection and provision. The son may not have known what the next day would be in store for him, but he knew that the father would, and would make the provisions for that day.
6. His next step was to get up out of that filth and go HOME! To leave it all behind and go to the Father.
IV. The Home Coming.
A. The road home would take this prodigal down a course he had first started when he left his father.
1. When this young man started he was but a babe looking to spread his wings from his fathers.
2. But now this babe has been plucked, and stripped. The joy he had in leaving has become grief in returning.
3. The joy and fun were now gone, leaving behind pain and hurt.
4. This boy was broken, when he left he looked like a son of the King but now as he returns home he looks like a son of a slave, with nothing to call his own.
5. His feet were once covered to take him where ever life would carry him. But now these feet are bare and carry the burden of returning home. The path home would cut and tare his feet making the journey all the more difficult, fueling reasons for given up and given in.
6. His robe that once looked liked royalty was now tattered and torn. Showing signs that the one that is wearing it is nothing more than a vagabond. His clothing did not reflect a desired lifestyle but rather a life that was ruined by his style.
7. He left with the markings of one that was somebody, but now is a nobody. He is an unknown, with only his eyes that tell a story of better days, but a face that carries the punishment of his choices, and a heart broken by mistakes.
B. Home is where he left.
1. As he prepares his speech to tell his father he draws near to a familiar place that meets him with excitement and anxiety.
2. Would his father take him back after all he has done, will his brother forgive him. Will relationships be mended or only will there be more pain and disappointment.
C. The father waits.
1. As this prodigal weighs his burden in his mind.
2. The father is waiting for his son. When his son left to begin his journey to find home, he waited on his son.
3. I can see this father going to his porch every morning after his son left looking out upon the road he had taken hoping to see his son return on that same road.
4. Every morning as the sun rose painting a picture of bright colors across the sky, the father waited for the silhouette of his son.
5. Then one morning what had become a daily routine as he stepped out to look at the road in hopes of his sons return. The image that he saw was not as the previous days but this time it was different. Come up with the sun was his son.
6. In verse 20 it says that the father saw his son a great way, and had compassion on him and ran to meet his son. Not with scolding words but with a hug and a kiss, a sign of welcoming.
D. The son would reply to his father by confessing his sin and humbling himself by saying he was not worthy to be called his son.
1. The father saw other wise. His son was lost but now he is found.
2. The father would order the servants to go and get the best robe, and put it on him, as well as a ring, and shoes for his feet.
3. The new robe would restore his life, by replacing the old garment with a new garment.
4. The ring was a signet ring showing he belonged to the father.
5. The shoes would cover his feet, for only the poor wore no shoes. From now on his walk would be easier.
6. The son was restored with question and was received as if he had never left.
V. This story was for you!
A. There are those that have found themselves as the prodigal. Overwhelmed or looking for a new beginning; ready to leave home in such of home.
1. But Home is where you left it.
2. There are those that are realizing the sin they stepped out into wasn’t what they wanted. It took them further than they were willing to, and was keeping them longing then they wanted to stay, costing them more than they were willing to pay.
B. This story is more than a story it is an account of how we sometimes leave God in search of better circumstances and a better life.
1. The psalmist said in Psalms 16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence [is] fulness of joy; at thy right hand [there are] pleasures for evermore.
2. There is no God like Jehovah.
3. 1 John 2:16 For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
4. The world will leave you broken and bruised. It will strip you of everything and pick you clean.
5. The foundation of your new home was built on the sand. It wasn’t going to last forever all it would take is one good wave to wash it all out from underneath you. Leaving you barren.
6. That which you have sown may have choked the life out of you.
C. But God was still looking after you, you may have left him but he never left you. He stayed closer than any brother.
1. Psalms 36:9 For with thee [is] the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.
D. For those that come back to the father there awaits them the three gifts of the Redeemed.
1. There is the Robe of new life. This robe is a type of the new life given by Christ and not just any life but abundant life.
2. The wool that made this garment was not sheared from the lamb, but cost the lamb his life.
3. The signet ring that shows the son belongs to the family and has all the rights as a child of the Father.
4. The feast. For all that finish their faith there waits for them a celebration feast.
