You Didn’t Get a Goat?
(Good Song: When God Ran)
Luke 15:11-32
A group of well-intentioned people met to discuss ways and means of helping a friend who had been down on his luck recently. Knowing him to be an extremely proud person, who would not accept money, they decided to arrange a bogus raffle. They told him that they would all draw numbered slips of paper from a hat, and the person who drew the number four would win $200. They didn’t tell him that the number “four" was on every slip.
After the drawing, each of the conspirators glanced at their slips and crumbled them up in the manner of disappointed losers. Then they waited to hear their friend announce that he had drawn the winning number. But he didn’t say anything. Finally, one member of the group asked him, knowingly,
"What number did you draw?"
He said "Six and seven-eighths," holding up…the hat-size tag.
That is a fairly good example of a man who is really down on his luck. But, in today's text, Jesus gives us an even better one about a wealthy young man who leaves the comfort of his father's house to strike out on his own. We are all very familiar with this story.
(Read Luke 15:11-32)
Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. The misguided, inexperienced youth has his fortune but they are soon parted. He is in a distant, famine-plagued land, and penniless. The only employment he can find is caring for pigs. Then he discovers that they are eating better than he is. In Jesus' words,
"He longed to fill his belly with the husks that were fodder for the pigs, but no one made a move to give him anything" (Luke 15:16).
He was lonely. He was without resources. He was starving. There was no one to offer him a helping hand. He was really down on his luck. And it was in that state; of utter desolation, that he came
"To his senses," as the Bible puts it.
In the spirit of repentance, he acknowledges the urgent need for him to radically change his attitude and his approach to life. And he sets off on the long journey back to his father's house. I can believe he was repentant because he was practicing what he was going to say. (Mimic him) Don’t you do this too? Sometimes (when we’re desperate, even to God) but mostly to those around us. I do! (Play it up for laughs!)
"While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him and was deeply moved. He ran out to meet him, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20).
(This is the only time in scripture where we have the picture of God running to someone.) Humbly and contritely, the son responds:
"Father, I have sinned against God and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son"(Luke 15:21).
At that point, of TRUE repentance, the joyful father begins to make preparations for a party to celebrate the boy's return.
Enter the villain in this episode--the boy's older brother. He envies his errant brother because he was so warmly received by their father. He is critical of the father's joyous, no-questions-asked response to his brother's return. Consequently, he responds in anger to his father's earnest plea that he join in the celebration. He will not accept his father's act of unconditional forgiveness and mercy toward his brother. Even though I feel certain, he would have expected it for himself.
Here maybe we need to get a good understanding of the brother who is upset. I mean I have heard a lot of people say, very similar things. Here is a little history of the times. Let’s assume that there are only two brothers. In that case when it was time to divide the estate or the inheritance, it would be split equally…three ways.
Three?
Yes, the older brother always got a double portion. So the one here pitching a fit has twice what was given to his younger brother coming to him and that is not at all in jeopardy! Whatever the Father does he will never take from the riches assigned to you.
But this guy was complaining about the big party and what?
“He got the calf and I didn’t even get “A GOAT!” (Do David Crain’s routine)
The Father in the parable was merciful and understanding…of both sons’. I have this mental picture that if it was, for example…MY MOM, I can see me sitting at a table stuffed to the gills with goat…and she just keeps on bringing it!
“No Mom, I’m full, I’m about to explode!”
“You better eat, You want Goat, Goat you get!”
“OK MOM, I Give Up! You were right!”
Many years ago, executives of the Time-Life publishing organization discovered that the company's profit margin had shrunk to an alarmingly low level. Consequently, they began an intensive effort to try to cut costs.
Efficiency experts suggested that substantial savings could be effected in the renewal department. There were 350 people working full time sending heartbreaking pleas to readers whose subscriptions were about to expire.
(For example, "Will you dare face your children without "Time" magazine on your coffee table?")
In any case, enormous quantities of these letters were being prepared manually. It was calculated that if a machine could be found to replace the manual labor, millions of dollars in overhead would be saved. In time, IBM came to the rescue with an enormous computer, delivered to Time-Life in a blaze of klieg lights and fanfare. Then the New system was installed.
The name of each subscriber was put on a separate little plate and run through the vast machine. Whenever a nameplate came along that was within six weeks of expiration, a series of dots and dashes at the top of the tab triggered an electronic impulse that caused it to drop into a slot. The name was then affixed to one of the "heartbreaking" letters which was then folded, stuffed into an envelope, labeled, stamped, and dropped down a chute to the basement where a United States Branch Post Office was set up--all without a single human hand touching the operation.
The system worked flawlessly for a while, until that fateful, hot, humid, sticky day in New York City when one of the nameplates stuck in the machine. A few days later a lone sheepherder in Montana received 12,634 tear jerking letters asking him to subscribe to "Life" magazine.
The sheepherder, who hadn't received a letter in years, took his knife, carefully slit open one of the mailbags and began reading his mail. Three weeks later, red-eyed, weary and up to his hips in 12,634 opened pieces of mail, he made out a check for $6.00, filled out a subscription coupon and sent it to the President of Time-Life personally, with the following note:
"I give up!"
That’s a story to remember, when you begin to wonder about the limit of God's mercy. You don't have to plead or beg for it. You don't have to ask Him 12,634 or 1,000 or 100 times for it. You don't have to ask him even once for it. God's mercy is always there, always being offered, always present to you. God has already said,
"I give up: I love you; I forgive you.”
I’m speaking to Christians now…His forgiveness does not depend on whether or not you ask for it. There is nothing you can do to change who God is or God's attitude toward you. Any change in your relationship with God necessarily takes place in you because He didn’t go anywhere and He didn’t change!
Your plea for mercy and forgiveness, therefore, represents your acknowledgement of God's mercy, your acceptance of His forgiveness. The New Testament revelation of a gracious, understanding, merciful, forgiving God, is meant to change your attitude toward God and His creation, not God's attitude toward you.
A Sunday-school teacher had a dream about the Lord Jesus. "Where are the souls of My children?" Jesus asked. "Here are their manners”, the teacher replied. "They are well-behaved children; they listen respectfully to everything I say." Whereupon, Jesus took the children's manners in His hands and turned them into dust. "Where are My children's souls?" Jesus asked again. "Here are their bodies," the teacher offered. "They come to Sunday School class promptly every week." Jesus took the bodies into His hands and turned them into dust. Again, He asked, "Where are My children's souls?" “I can give you their brains," said the teacher. "They have memorized the list of books in the Bible; they know the names of the major and Minor Prophets; they can recite verbatim the Sermon on the Mount." Jesus took their brains in His hands and turned them into dust. "But where are the souls of My children," He asked sorrowfully. With that, the teacher woke up and, in an agonized voice, cried out: "I thought I had done much for my children, but it was all for nothing because I have not done the one thing needful. From now on, the only goal of my teaching shall be to communicate the incredible Good News, the Gospel of a Merciful, forgiving God who loves all His children and will never abandon them, not even one of them."
If, like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, we should call the wisdom of our Father's mercy into question, we have lost our way on the heavenly journey toward fulfillment. He definitely didn’t lose His way. God's mercy is never withdrawn. It is yours to acknowledge and accept, whether you are riding high or you are down on your luck. In either case, you need it. God's Mercy is not a matter of chance, luck has nothing to do with it!
My favorite way of looking at heaven…is in terms of this homecoming, through the eyes of the story of the Prodigal in Luke 15. Thinking about the father looking out of the window for days, months, maybe years, hoping for the sight of his youngest son. His whole heart is in that gaze. He has waited so long. And then, one day, he catches a glimpse of a figure in the distance. Dare he hope? But there is… something familiar about the way he walks, about the way he carries his head. And then he catches a clear-eyed view…of his son. Yes, it’s him! The old man runs from the house, his arthritis forgotten, toward the son he has all but given up seeing again. The son blurts out words like,
"Father, I'm so sorry, can you ever forgive me?"
But he is already forgiven. He decks his son out with rings and robes and shoes for a king. And soon there is a party. And all the neighbors are invited and they celebrate. Some may have been celebrating the return, but I think they were celebrating the love. The love beyond our deserving, beyond our knowing and far beyond our ability to love in return. They celebrate the love that brought us all home to our Father, a reunion that began at the foot of the old rugged cross. They celebrate heaven as homecoming. As that great lost and found department, as the party where the fatted calf is killed, and the great joy…of eternity rings through heaven and earth.
Terry Morgan shares this favorite description of heaven as homecoming . . .Teddy, was a big black Scottish shepherd. Teddy was my dog, and he would do anything for me. He waited for me to come home from school. He slept beside me and when I whistled he ran to me, even if he was eating. At night, no one could get within a half mile without Teddy's permission. During those long summers in the fields I would only see the family at night, because Teddy was pitch black…but he was with me all the time. And so when I went away to war, I didn’t know how to leave him. How do you explain to someone who loves you that you are leaving him and will not be chasing woodchucks with him tomorrow as always?
So, coming home that first time from the Navy was something I can scarcely describe. The last bus stop was fourteen miles from the farm. I got off there that night about eleven o'clock and walked the rest of the way home. It was two or three in the morning before I was within a half mile of the house. It was pitch dark, but I knew every step of the way. Suddenly Teddy heard me and began his warning barking. Then I whistled…just once. The barking stopped. There was a yelp of recognition, and I knew that a big black form was hurtling toward me in the darkness. Almost immediately he was there in my arms. To this day, that is the best way I can explain what I mean by coming home.
What comes home to me now is the eloquence with which that unforgettable story speaks to me of God. If a dog, without any explanation, would love me and take me back after all that time, then how much more my God? God Bless.
