The Rebel Returns Series

The main social event of the year in many Sunday Schools is the summer picnic. William Porkess was in an English Sunday School that was granted permission by an Earl to have a picnic on his large estate. How excited they all were as they were being carried to the estate by horse and carriage. The woods on this estate contained a million trees, and many were hundreds of years old. In the course of time walks had been planned by marking certain trees. All you had to do was follow the marks and you could walk for miles under a continuous canopy of leaves, and come back to where you started. It was pointed out very strongly the danger in not following the marks. Bill and some others boys were not going to bother with such warnings. They determined to do as they pleased, and they wandered off the path. After a time they began to sense that they did not know where they were.

Their smart-alick enthusiasm cooled rapidly, and they began to feel desperation. They went on and on with no sense of direction most of the day. At last they came to a clearing and found a cottage where they got direction back to the camp. It ended happily, but as Bill reflected back on the experience, he saw the foolishness of his rebellion against rules. He lost two meals and all of the fun that had been planned, and on top of that, he never really came to appreciate the woods, for in their wandering they were gripped with fear, and could not enjoy the beauty of it. He learned a lesson he never forgot. If you wander anywhere in your life according to your own will, and rebel against the path established by those who know the way, you are bound to get lost.

We want to look at the story Jesus told about another youth who learned this lesson the hard way. It is often called the parable of the Prodigal Son, but it could just as rightly be called the parable of the Faithful Father. Whatever you call it, it is the pearl of the parables. It is the most widely known short story in the world. It's message is so simple that it needs no comment to make it clear. We want to look at each of the three main characters of the story to see if we can get some insight into our own personalities, and that of God. Both sons made major mistakes, and so the father is the only hero in the story, but we want to look first at-

I. THE PRODIGAL SON. The first thing to see about him is-

A. His Rebellion in verses 12 and 13.

Here is a typical young man in any age. He is not necessarily disrespectful of his father, but he had desires he wanted to gratify, and to do so he had to get away from dad. Dad is all right, but he has lived his life, and now all he wants to do is hand out rules. I'm old enough to make my own rules, and I'm getting out of here. So he gets this things together and goes to a far country. It is no good just going into town, for that is too near father to be free. He wanted real freedom, and so he went far. There he wasted his substance in riotous living.

He soon learned how deceptive liberty is without law. He lived high off the hog for a while, but ended up eating with the hog. What he thought to be freedom became slavery. All he wanted was to be free. He did not want to destroy his life and disgrace his family. No one sets out to wreck his life. No train leaves the station with a plan to derail; no plane takes off with the design to crash; no young man goes off to a far country to fling himself into famine and filth, but that is what happens when he goes with a misconception of freedom. He thinks freedom is having his own way, and doing just as he pleases. He has to learn the hard way that true freedom comes by being obedient to law.

I can walk over to the piano and do just as I please. I am not bound by any rules. There are no limitations to the way in which I can bang on the keys. Yet, with all my so-called freedom I am a slave to discord. I can not make pleasant sound because my complete freedom is based on complete ignorance of the laws of music. My freedom is really a form of slavery to my ignorance. I can only be really free to produce music by learning to obey the laws of music. Liberty without law is folly, and that is what the Prodigal experienced.