The Prodigal Son
October 7th, 2001
We are going to spend the next few weeks focusing on what might be the most foundational truth of our faith… the Father Heart of God.
- Paul prayed in Eph 3:18 that we would “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ”.
- John wrote in 1 Jn 3:1, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us”
- The Bible says that love isn’t simply a characteristic of who God is… it is His very essence. John wrote “God is love”
- And, He created us to be the object of His love and affection.
o Created in us is a longing to live in that love… to live in intimacy with the Father.
o The question then is what happens within us when that longing isn’t satisfied?
The fact is that that longing for a father’s love is not only going unfulfilled with regard to our Heavenly Father… but with our earthly fathers as well.
- In his book, Fatherless America, David Blankenhorn says, “Tonight, about forty percent of American children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live. Before they reach the age of eighteen, more than half of our nation’s children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their childhoods living apart from their fathers.”
- Later in his book he writes… “in addition to losing fathers, we are losing something larger: our idea of fatherhood. Unlike earlier periods of father absence in our history, we now face more than a physical loss affecting some homes. We face a cultural loss affecting every home.”
- This cultural fatherlessness is evidenced by the prodigal lifestyle of so many.
- In the movie Field of Dreams, we see Kevin Costner plowing his cornfield to make a baseball diamond, which, in the end, allows him to experience a miraculous reunion with his father… a chance to express the words of love that eluded them in life. I think that movie struck a nerve in all of us b/c of the need in us all to experience a father’s love.
We live in a fatherless generation.
a. Biological fathers not present in 16% of homes with kids <18 in NJ (national average is 40%) with average in Morris County about 8.7%
b. Daily Record says that this level of “fatherlessness” is directly associated with the problems of education, teen pregnancy, and crime.
c. I don’t think any of us are surprise by this… that when the natural father’s love isn’t present, many choose to hit the party scene to find the love that is missing from their loves.
i. Many try the quick fixes offered by immorality, drugs, and alcohol. Yet the need for a father’s love is still there.
ii. The sex, drugs, and rock and roll solution only leads to a discovery of emptiness and a reawakened desire to find the father’s love.
d. But, you know, there are plenty of people we know who went off even though they had great dads. This only demonstrates a deeper longing, a deeper need in us.
Wherever we find fatherlessness, whether in the world, in the home, or in the church, we will find an emptiness, a longing, that we will either fill with the stuff of the world, or with the Heavenly Father’s love.
Perhaps on of the most powerful parables Jesus ever spoke was the story of the Prodigal Son. It is so often preached that I, at first, decided against preaching thru it. But nothing paints a more profound picture of the need for the Father’s love than this story.
LUKE 15:11-32 Read & Pray
We see, in this story of the prodigal son, two sons: the younger son who runs away from home to an alien country, and the older son who stays home to do his duty.
- The younger son fills his life with booze and women; the older son alienates himself by working hard and, with a great sense of duty, fulfills all his obligations.
- The fact is, as we’ll see, both are lost… both a prodigals. And, as we read the story, we can see that the father grieves over both b/c neither of them really experiences the intimacy he, as their father, desires.
- Lust for the things of this world, as well as cold obedience, will prevent us from experiencing all that God has for us. While on son stayed in the father’s house, both needed to come home to the place where they can rest in the embrace of their Father’s unconditional love.
In spite of having a loving, intimate father, the younger son approaches his father asking for his share of the estate…
- what a horrible thing to do to your father… to ask his father to divide up his estate like that would mean even further hardship for his father.
o Jewish law said that upon death, the father’s estate is to be divided up by giving 2/3 to the eldest son and the last 1/3 divided amongst everyone else. It’s clear that he didn’t value his father’s love.
o But as horrible a request as it was, and as much as it must have hurt the father, he gave the son what he requested.
- So he took his money… then went off to another county… why? Probably so no one would recognize him... so he could really enjoy his new “freedom”.
- Vs 13 said that while there he thru away his money on wild living… parties and prostitutes.
The son represents the reality that most people in our society respond the same way the son did in the face of fatherlessness… thru immorality, drugs, and alcohol.
- Notice that it wasn’t like the son didn’t have a father… for him, like countless others, he had a father, a loving Father… but he had moved far from the love and intimacy of the Father’s house.
- I believe the further away from his father he got, the deeper his emptiness became… and the more he tried to fill that emptiness w/ the stuff of the world.
- He took the emptiness of being separated from the Father’s love and filled it with immorality.
o Immorality is at its root, a false affection.
o We need the father’s love… the affection, love, affirmation, encouragement of the Father’s love.
- Yet even in the church, we turn toward immorality, as a false affection, to fill the emptiness that’s inside of us.
Immorality, according to Ed Piorek, is a futile attempt to fill the core of our being with some rush other than the Father’s love. It is a counterfeit to the experience of the Father’s love.
- Immorality always comes under the guise of affection… it gives us an artificial sense that those deepest longings are being satisfied.
o s/a an out of control fantasy life… that gives a rush to the emotions and gives you a false sense of affections (dreaming of mr. Right). Trying to fill that place of emptiness in your heart.
o pornography… filling that empty place. Several years ago an internet monitoring organization noted tha the most hits on an Internet website during a 24-hr period was 374,000… it was an adult website. On that same day, the highest hit non-sexually related site was hit 37g times.
§ There is a great hunger in our society for love, and there is a great multitude of prodigals looking in the wrong places for it.
o Adultery… same attempt to fill the core of our being with some warm rush other than the father’s affection.
Our society has gone nuts… day in and out, we are bombarded with immorality... from billboards to the movies and TV.
- We live in a fatherless generation, amongst people crying out for the father’s love.
- We all so desperately need God to come and touch us in a real, tangible way… for God to fill our core with his love.
- Folks, if you’re struggling with immorality… if you are being drawn to it or feel out of control by it… it is a red light that there is an emptiness in you… you need more of the father’s love.
o It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person… but like everyone else, you need His love.
o That place inside of you will not be filled with immorality… not by pornography, premarital sex, or anything else… You need to come back to the Father’s house
We struggle so much with immorality b/c of the empty core need within us to be fed by the Father’s love.
- But our society says, “fill that need with this, with that…”
- We get emptier and emptier. “Looking for love in all the wrong places”.
- When you’re struggling with immorality, the solution is to come back into the Father’s house. God, I have this need in me and I’m trying to fill it with things… come and love me.
o I know I’m eating to give my self some comfort
o I realize my anger is coming out of a need for your love
- This is what happened to the younger son. After his money ran out, he began to “be in need” as vs 13 says. Once he understood his need, as it says in vs 17, he “came to his senses” and decided to return to his Father.
But even when we seem to “come to our senses”, we often loose our perspective against as Satan begins to get us to condemn ourselves…
- to believe we’re not good enough for the Father’s love.
- “I can’t worship God… I can’t receive the father’s love.”
- So we move further away from the Father’s house and that emptiness b/c deeper and more intense.
- And you wonder why, when the temptation comes the next time, why you’re even more helpless than before.
- The solution is not condemnation, not beating yourself up. If you are struggling with immorality of any type, the solution is to let the Father love you.
Stop beating yourself up… stop saying to yourself… “if I can just go without sinning for a week, then I’ll be worthy of the Father’s love… then I can come back to God and all will be ok.”
- It doesn’t work like that. You and I will never ever be worthy of the Father’s love. No matter what. The Father says to you… “Come back to my house”.
o You don’t have to earn it or deserve it… He knows you want it and knows you need it.
o Let Him love you and fill those empty places in you with His love. Don’t allow the cycle of shame to continue in your live… sin, condemnation, etc.
o 1 Jn 1:9 says that God is always faithful to forgive when we acknowledge our sin to Him. Yet, we prefer to do emotional penance.
o He wants us to put the sin behind us, like Paul did, and move forward.
So we see the younger son struggling with immorality. But we can safely assume from the expression, “wild living”, that he had gotten himself involved with substance abuse.
- Another result of fatherless living… not letting the father’s love fill the core of our being.
- Trying to anaesthetize the pain… that’s what substance abuse is.
- There are so many people in the church struggling with substance abuse w/o anyone knowing. One prominent pastor finally resigned his pastorship b/c of his alcoholism.
- When we don’t let the father’s love fill the core of our being, we have pain.
o Jabez: “Keep me from evil that it may not cause me pain”. When we wander off to distant lands, away from the Father’s House, it causes pain.
o And if we don’t come back to the father’s house to let Him love us, to minister to that pain, we need to numb that pain somehow… with pot, booze.
We also want to rise above our circumstances… we want to “loosen up” and feel better. But it only aneathetises our pain… but it doesn’t work. It is another red light.
- The road to recovery needs to include going to God to fill that emptiness. When you feel the urge, the temptation, go to God and ask Him to fill you with His love.
- He will come and His love will give you the strength to endure.
The third thing is materialism. We see the son spends all his money… to get whatever he wanted… to feel better about himself and impress his friends.
- There is a rush when you make a purchase… when you buy that new car… you feel good… but after a few days you feel just like you did before.
- 1 Jn 2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world (the stuff)… if you love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
o Clear connection. If you have a need to buy… to buy new clothes, new shoes, in order feel good about yourself... to fill that emptiness… that is a red flag. Come and receive My love… let My love settle deep in your heart and fill and satisfy you.
o If you love the world, needing its toys and stuff, you know that the love of the Father isn’t in us.
§ That isn’t a verse of condemnation… rather, thru it, God is helping us not to confuse the temporary feelings we get from immorality, substance abuse, or materialism, with His love.
§ It doesn’t say the Father doesn’t love you… but that His love isn’t in you. In other words, if you love the stuff of the world, you haven’t take in, you haven’t received all the love the Father passionately desires to lavish on you as His child.
§ If you need those things, then what you really need is the Father’s love.
- He sees all our struggles, insecurities… He watches us jump from one relationship to another, one thing to another thing… while tears are falling down his face, “if you would just let me love you”. “I see that empty place in your heart and my love can come in and fill that place”.
- Matthew 23:27… Jesus is broken hearted as He looks upon the city on a hill. How they have shut themselves off from God’s love.
So, this young Jewish man had to feed the very kind of animals abhorred by his faith... and not only that, but he longed for the very food those pigs were eating.
- To one degree or another, we are living that life. We have a father who longs for us to feast on the best of steaks while we long for the slop the pigs are eating.
- But that can change. Like the Prodigal Son, you can begin that journey back to the Father’s House.
- What you do have to do to start out on that journey? You don’t have to do anything right now in response to what I am saying, except want more of His love… and turn toward Him. And when you get there, the Father will come running to meet you.
When I think of my own life, I realize that “I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.”
- I can’t help but ask myself, “Why do I so often ignore the place of true love and persist in looking for it elsewhere?”
- We need to return to the Father’s House, into the love and intimacy of the Father.
o you know, in the end, the Prodigal Son’s returning home to the Father wasn’t a matter of disgust over his terrible circumstances… or even his deep hunger.
o Rather, it was a deep-seated homesickness for the Father’s House.
Right now I’d like to believe that all of us are somewhere along that journey back to the Father’s House… it is a process
- 1 John 4:16 says that “we need to know and rely on the love God has for us.”
- Like the prodigal son, we first need to see our need… to see how we’ve looked to the world to fill that inner core within us that cries out for the Father’s love.
- Then begins the process of relying on that love. But to rely on it we need to understand once and for all that God’s love toward us isn’t about us.
o “… but while we were still sinners Christ died for us” Rm 5:8
o We need to get rid of the idea that if I just pray more, read the Bible more, witness more, then I will feel more lovable to God… then I can receive His love.
o Fact is, there is nothing you can do or stop doing to make Him love or accept you any more or less than He does right now in Christ.
o When Jesus hung on that cross, He was displaying the Father’s love and giving us access to the Father’s love.
When the son approached His Father he cried out, “I am not worthy to be your son”.
o Funny… but the Father wouldn’t let him even finish the sentence before he called for a feast… that His son has returned to His house… to His love.
o Our dad in heaven is waiting for us to come home to His love.
WORSHIP TEAM
Prayer
CLOSE: I want you, as I read, to picture yourself as the prodigal son…
17 "When he came to his senses, he said, ’How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
21 "The son said to him, ’Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 "But the father said to his servants, ’Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
NIV
