A New look at an Old Story

Jesus, take me as I am. I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises forevermore. I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises forevermore.

I wish to exist without the knowledge of your parenthood and your loving care. Now I am your son, I am adopted in your family. And I can never be alone, whose father of your death is hiding.

I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises forevermore. I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises, I will sing your praises forevermore. Our beloved Lord often told parables, stories which had an earthly context and a heavenly meaning.

Sometimes in his audience, in his congregation, which wasn't gathered in a comfortable place like this tabernacle sanctuary, but out in the open air, were people who didn't appreciate his ministry. And some of the people who you found listening to him were not the sort of folk that you would have anticipated in the usual church or synagogue. Well, this one tells us a little bit about the congregation and the diverse, the contradictory attitudes that they had to the Lord Jesus.

Now the tax collectors, Luke 15, now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man, Jesus, welcomes sinners and eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable, one of three stories.

We go on to the third, verse 11. Jesus continued, there was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate, so he divided his property between them.

Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.

He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. 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. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men. 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 through his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. 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.

Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.

When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. Incidentally, if any of you are put off because of the sort of type of expression of worship and praise that you've experienced here at the tab this evening, I bring you back to this verse where our Lord is talking about the sort of celebration that occurs when someone is reunited with the father. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.

So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. Your brother has come, he replied, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound. The older brother became angry and refused to go in, so his father went out and pleaded with him.

But he answered his father, Look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him.

My son, the father, said, You're always with me. Everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this son, this brother of yours, was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found. Father, help us as we open your word to do justice to its contents, to take Scripture no further than it would legitimately allow us to go and help all here to find that within the word of Scripture there is the word of God to them right now. A word that will be so indelibly written upon their minds that come wind, come weather, come months, come years, what they receive this evening will never be erased.

And this we pray in the power of your Spirit and for the honor of your Son. Amen. There's a young fellow who helps me because I'm a bit of a dumb Englishman when I go to the United States.

His name is Leif. I met him two years ago. And when I arrived in the States just three weeks back, he was there to greet me, well, within a couple of days.

And he took me to San Diego to show me the mysteries and explain them of American baseball, which is a glorified form of rounders. I don't tell the Americans that. And then the following day, he took me down the only trip, please note, to the sea that I had during the three weeks that I was there.

He took me down to the coast and we bathed together. And we came back to the home where I was staying because he's the grandson of my host and hostess. And because, well, he's a manly sort of fellow and we've got a good relationship.

He said, come on, let's shower together. So we showered. And then he said, can I use your bedroom? So he came in my bedroom and we had a man-to-man talk.

And from his 10 years of experience of life, he told me a little bit about America. And then he said, pulling himself up to four foot six or thereabouts, Tony, he said, the Queen of England. And I responded as though she'd just been on the phone.

Does she still chop off people's heads? And I said, no. And he looked disappointed, so I said, unless they're American. And he knew I was joking and he said, she's got no more power than the United States of America's president.

So he was somewhat disillusioned with the royal family. Do you ever listen to, ah, go on, some of you are really going to put me out in the categories of the impossible people. Do you ever listen to FM classic radio? Swap your choice occasionally and go across there.

It's really good. 100.3, you'll pick it up. And on a Saturday morning, they always review the top 20, the top 20 classic records, devoured eagerly by people who frequent WH Smith, the classical record store and other shops.

Number six is incredible. I've never heard anything quite so strange or been so absolutely staggered about a piece of music in my life. I'd never heard it until last Saturday.

There's a sort of orchestral background and then there's a man who sounds as though he's about 200 years of age. Obviously a very elderly man with a somewhat croaky voice which makes mine sound even acceptable. And he's singing, and this is when I'm being so serious, about the blood of Jesus.

The blood of Jesus has never failed me yet. He sings it not only once. He must sing it about 50 times.

I'm not exaggerating. In this piece, it is just so moving. You, if you don't want to buy it, you tune in next week because it's still bound to be in the top 20.

And listen, the blood of Jesus has never failed me yet. The blood of Jesus has never failed me yet. They actually call the piece by that particular sentence because that's all that is there.

It's just repeated. Do you know, I have never in all the years that I've been a Christian and like Debbie who we baptised this morning, my conversion experience is so lost in the early years of my life I can't recall a time when I didn't know the Lord Jesus as my saviour. And I can tell you looking back across all those years, I have never, never, never had the reason to suggest that the gospel of Jesus Christ is in any sense a disillusion.

What the gospel, which the Apostle Paul refers to as the blessed gospel, as the everlasting gospel of the blessed God, it is completely able to do what the New Testament tells us it should do. And this you have heard illustrated so graphically on the part of three young men this evening who have told you and what explanation have you got to what you have heard apart from accepting this that there is such a power within the gospel of Jesus Christ, within the love of God the Father, shown to you in our world through the Lord Jesus, there is such a power to transform, radically change the lives of ordinary people. Now our Lord here in this particular parable is actually telling us about his Father.

He does so because, well, there are those who utterly misunderstand the God and Father that he has come to represent. And so he tells three stories. One is of a coin that gets lost and is found after a spring clean.

He prefaces that with another story of a dumb animal, a sheep that goes astray and is found by the shepherd. And then he highlights a further story which is like the first two but significantly different because he homes in on the way in the third story the prodigal son, the son that is lost, the way in which he moved into the lost condition. You'll see in the first two stories you've got a dumb animal and you can't blame a dumb sheep for getting lost, can you? You've got an inanimate coin and you can't blame an inanimate coin for being lost.

But in the third story in which Jesus sees you and me it is the case of a son who is lost as a result of his deliberate folly of his own rebellion against the father figure in his household, in his family. And the story goes on to tell you about the way that he squandered the wealth that his father had, the disrepute, the dishonor that he brought to his family, the way that he got to the end of his tether. And it's from this account of human folly and failure that I want to close up and show you something.

One, about yourself. Two, about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus. And therefore three, about the power that there is in this gospel and the blood of Jesus Christ.

Here is a story that tells you that there is the possibility of a new beginning. There is a possibility of a new beginning. You see the theology in Jesus' day suggested that people who were in his audience really were utterly hopeless.

These were sinners. These were folk who never came into a building like the tabernacle. These were the irreligious people and they listened to what Jesus had to say because he seemed as though he would offer them hope whereas the professional clergy of the day had nothing to say to these people.

And if you took this story from the Jewish context and placed it in the Grecian world you would discover exactly the same. The philosophers have nothing to say to people who have made an utter mess of their lives. And it was the religious people who took Jesus on about the irreligious people and said you have no right to be speaking to them.

If you are who you say you are then why are you keeping company with them? And our Lord was to say this in these three wonderful parables and particularly in the final parable. This is the reason why I came into this world. I represent Father God.

You look at me and you see him. And Father God is the person who says there is no one whose situation is so impossible I cannot deal with it. There is no case too hopeless.

You see our Lord in telling this third story puts it at the lowest most tragic level possible. He speaks of a Jewish young man who insults his father by saying in effect I wish you were dead. I can't wait for the day when you die so I may inherit what is my share of your wealth.

And having delivered that crushing insult for so it would have been assessed in the culture of that time and even today in Semitic countries. He goes off into a Gentile land and he squanders his father's wealth and he thinks lower and lower until you find him who is the son of a Jew reduced to looking after pigs declared unclean in the Old Testament an insulting occupation. If you like a bit of Gentile sick humor that offers a Jew such a job.

You cannot get any lower than that. And our Savior pitches the story at this sub-ground level because he wants you to realize that he is talking about his father and the attitude that his father has towards people like you and me perhaps who acknowledge the fact that as far as life is concerned we are utter failures. That if there was a record of all that we have done in this last week or this last month if we had the misfortune that Prince Charles had of someone tapping in not just to our phone calls but to the very intimate recesses of our lives and placarding that across the front page of Worthing Gazette or Herald we would be utterly ashamed.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Father Heart of God is prepared to take on people in that situation and still relate to them. There is the possibility of a new beginning the story teaches. No case is too hopeless.

Now when you see this young fellow so distant from the sort of life in which he had been brought up so removed from his father you find that he does come at the end of his tether to a realization that there is actually no hope for him whatsoever at the human level. In fact we are told in the 16th verse of this chapter no one gave him anything. Nobody was able to minister to his deepest need.

And I want to tell you this that if you identify with this story if you see tragedy in your own life if you are prepared to admit that you are not what you should be then there is within your grasp almost the same sort of realization that this young fellow came to that at the human level there is no one who can help you not to finally resolve the conflict. You may have friends who will come along and maybe they are sincere and perhaps they will boost you a little but the wrong that you have done the things you are ashamed of there is no one. Take a psychiatrist or a psychologist put your senses together there is no one who can lift you out of that sense of shame.

No one ministered to him. You couldn't blame the community in which he found himself because no one has the ability to deal with a man in these sort of circumstances. And so we are told he came to his senses and he highlights for us this truth there is only one person to whom you can go.

How many of my father's hired men have food to spare. I will set out and go back to father. The beginning of wisdom the essence of common sense is when you return to this father, creator, god on whom you are utterly dependent for all that you have ever received and for any recovery that you might have.

He sets off from the country into which he should never have journeyed and returns back to the only one who can help him. The reason why he is so stimulated well you see he is living at a subhuman level. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating.

He longed to get satisfaction even in those things which would never give him final relief. I wonder think this one through carefully not literally but work it through in the parable in the metaphor. How many of you feed on the husks of swine.

How many people allow to go through their minds to become part and part of their lifestyle that which dehumanizes them. Do you know how long the average British person is spending in front of their television set during the whole of their lives according to a recent survey. Eight years.

Work it through. Three hours or so per night. Multiply it by seven days.

Multiply it by four weeks. Multiply it by twelve months. Multiply it by a life span.

How much of what you see of what you read how much away from television of what you involve yourself in is really helpful to you as a human being made in the image of God or how much of that really is equivalent to feeding yourself with swine's food. Maybe acceptable to pigs but never intended as human fare. In revulsion against this at the end of his tether this man makes his way back to the father's house to the one person to whom he alone could turn.

And as you see him shuffling his way you come to a realization that when ultimately he stands before his father there is absolutely nothing that he can do in terms of meriting his father's favor. And if you're going to benefit from the gospel of Christ you have to realize there's not a half penny worth of good that you can contribute. You have to realize your wretchedness.

You have to realize your rottenness. But listen to me it's on the basis of your penury it's on the basis of your spiritual poverty that father will have something to do with you. You see for this reason Jesus came into the world.

He didn't come for those who felt that they were okay. He didn't come for those who felt they were spiritually healthy. He came for those who needed him.

The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. The one thing and the one thing alone that you can contribute towards your salvation is a sense of your lostness. And this clearly the man had.

So he determines to leave the far country. And he has one conviction that increasingly glows as you read through the final verses of this story. And that is he can trust the Father.

And I want to tell you this. The one doctrine that I want you to take away from this church and to think on you can trust the Father. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You can believe that he will not reject you. You will have no reason whatsoever to be disillusioned about him. When the prodigal at the beginning of the tragedy stood before his father he said give.

Give me my inheritance. Now the vocabulary is changed. He says make.

Make me. And the way to approach God the Father when you recognize that all things are awry in your life is Father make me. Make me what you alone can make me.

Make me to be once again fit to enter into your family circle. I come from the north of England. We're a proud bunch of people up there.

It's not easy to be humble. It's not easy to apologize. I was brought up in the county of Yorkshire where the philosophy is perhaps depicted sometimes in that little couplet that talks about me, my wife, our two sons, us four no more.

And it's not easy sometimes to get alongside someone and say I'm sorry for the things that I have done. Repentance is a difficult thing whether you come from the north or from the south. But when you recognize the enormity of the crimes that you have committed against this great Father then what you are to do is to make your way back into his presence and discover that repentance is not as difficult a thing to go through as you anticipated.

Let me give you the picture. This is the Father par excellence. This is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is waiting.

Who is waiting for boys and girls to listen to what he has to say. Young men and young women waiting for the prodigal to return. The pig waiting prodigal makes his way up the hill.

But Father doesn't let him sweat it out does he? Father rushes down the hill to shorten the pain and flings his arms round about him. He doesn't say first of all go and have a shower. First of all be bathed.

First of all go and put some deodorant on your body. No he identifies his son and all the squalid conditions in which the son has been in. Do not prevent this father from acknowledging who he is and he shouts out this my son was lost but is found.

He was dead but he is alive again. And in order to show the son that he has been received back into the father's family he calls his servants and has a cloak put around his shoulder and he puts his own insignia his ring on the son's finger and he shards his feet with shoes and he reveals to all that the son is back not on the basis of being a slave or a servant. He is received back into the family circle because within the father heart of God there is a love for the repentant sinner.

And do you know something? When the oldest son comes into the proximity of the father's house he asks the servant what is happening? And the servant says your brother has returned and is back home with the father. How does the servant know? Because the father has equipped him with a robe and with a ring and with the shoes. When the father receives the sinner back to himself he gives evidence which is obvious even to the worldly spirit that this man, this woman has been repatriated with the father.

He's back on the basis of being a son. And this you've heard so eloquently testified to in these testimonies which were rehearsed just a few moments ago from this pulpit. You see the father sent his son into the world to recover such people as Steve and Chris and Russell.

He came to make a man, so to speak out of mice. He came to deal with those who have been rejected by others and to show them that there is no way that he will reject them. When our Lord Jesus shed his blood on the cross of Calvary it was so that the squandering and the folly of your rebellion might be atoned for and the possibility, nay the certainty is released that if you come back to father on the basis not of what you can do but on the basis of what he longs to do for you he will receive you and cleanse you and make you his child.

Young Leif was disillusioned. The Queen of England. She doesn't chop off people's heads anymore.

But there is no reason for Leif nor for you to be disillusioned with this gospel. To be disillusioned with this God and Father of our Lord Jesus. The worst possible condition he is prepared to remedy.

The lowest depths to which a human being can sink is not out of his sovereignty to be able to take you and to lift you and to make you a new creature. What he did for Steve what he did for Chris, what he did for Russell what he did for Debbie what he did for Tim what he's done for me he can do for you. The blood has not lost its power and there is no reason for you at all to feel that this God and Father would ever let you down.

Let's bow our heads in prayer and let's come to him and ask him for the forgiveness that is needed on the behalf of all who are prodigals. You say, how do I become a Christian? You do so by acknowledging your need Lord Jesus I am a sinner. How do you become a Christian? By acknowledging who Jesus Christ is.

God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. Lord I believe the death of your Son on the cross has met the penalty of my sin. How do you become a Christian? By receiving the infilling of the Spirit as God embraces you and tells you that he loves you and wants to set you on a higher plane and release you into a more wonderful way of living.

Did you understand? Have you responded? Just a moment for you to do so. Lord God we come to you to disclose who you are through your Father heart. Thank you for our beloved Lord.

He did not defend the gospel, he declared it. It was right that sinners were in his company for such he came. Lord deliver anyone here from thinking that this congregation is a community of middle-class people middle-class respectable successful people.

We're nothing of the sort. We're a bunch of failures and you've dealt with us by your infinite incredible grace. Lord help us all to embrace that old rugged cross and to accept the forgiveness which you so remarkably offer in and through the Saviour and all the people of God's end.

Amen. Oh Father of the fatherless in whom all families are blessed I love the way you father me You gave me life forgave the past now in your arms I'm safe at last I love the way you father me Father me forever you'll father me and in your embrace I'll be forever secure I love the way you father me When bruised and broken I draw near you hold me close and dry my tear I love the way you father me At last my fearful heart is still surrendered to your perfect will I love the way you father me Father me forever you'll father me and in your embrace I'll be forever secure I love the way you father me If in my foolishness I stray returning empty and ashamed I love the way you father me Exchanging for my wretchedness your aid and robes of righteousness I love the way you father me Father me forever you'll father me and in your embrace I'll be forever secure I love the way you father me And when into your eyes from deep within my spirit cries I love the way you father me Before such love I stand amazed and ever will through endless days I love the way you father me Father me forever you'll father me and in your embrace I'll be forever secure Father we're grateful for today a day in your house better than a thousand amongst the ungodly we pray that you'll send us out into a new week and as far as our Lord Jesus is concerned to see him more clearly to love him more dearly and to follow him more nearly Lord we just ask for your blessings to rest upon all these people and may salvation have visited this house in the name of the Savior Amen I give you all the honor and praise that to your name for you are the king of glory the creator of all things and worship you I give my life to you I fall down on my knees yes I worship you I give my life to you I fall on my knees as your spirit moves upon me now you meet my deepest need and I lift my hands up to your throne your mercy I receive and I worship you I give my life to you I fall down on my knees yes I worship you I give my life to you I fall on my knees you have broken chains that bound me you set me set me free I will lift my voice to praise your name through all eternity and I worship you I give my life to you I fall on my knees yes I worship you I give my life to you I fall down on my knees and worship you