Grateful to the Lord for this opportunity of fellowship. It is such a joy to come and share some time together, share the Lord together, enjoy together around the Lord Himself, and lift our spirits and hearts to Him in worship and praise.
I bring you greetings from those in Alabama, from the brothers and sisters there, and invite you, if you come that way, to stop in and see us.
This morning, the portion of Scripture that is in my heart is a very familiar one, but I would like us to turn to Luke 15 and read the entirety of that chapter.
Now all the tax gatherers and sinners were coming near Him to hear Him.
Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.”
And He told them this parable, saying,
“What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?
When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.
When he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’
I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?
When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.’
In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
And He said, “A certain man had two sons.
The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them.
Not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.
Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be in need.
So he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.
He was longing to fill his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving him anything.
“But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger!
I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight.
I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”’
So he got up and came to his father.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet;
and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry;
for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to be merry.
“Now his older son was in the field. When he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.
He summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things might be.
And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.’
But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began entreating him.
“But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you, and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a kid that I might be merry with my friends.
But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with harlots, you killed the fattened calf for him.’
And he said to him, ‘My child, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours.
But we had to be merry and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.’”
Can we pray together, please?
Father, we do want to rejoice again before You this day for the privilege and honor that are ours: to gather in the name of Your Son, to gather around Him and around His table, and just to feast at that table. We bless You for the fellowship that we have with one another in the Lord Jesus Christ. We consider it such a blessing to have the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts and to share that with one another.
And now, as we come to this time when we would turn our hearts to You, that You might speak to us, we want to thank You for Your Word. We thank You that it is a living Word, that it is the Word of life. We trust that the same Holy Spirit Who inspired men to write it will now come and be upon us, that we might hear a clear word in our hearts from our God this day. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This probably is one of the most familiar portions of the Word of God. Probably every one of us, without exception, has heard a number of messages and sermons on this particular portion of the Word of God.
But as we look at this portion of Scripture, we first see the context in which the Lord Jesus shares this parable. The Pharisees and scribes, who were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day among the Hebrew people, began grumbling and complaining because Jesus was having fellowship, or sharing time, with sinners and tax gatherers. This created a real difficulty, I am sure, in the heart of our Lord Jesus. With this kind of context, the Lord Jesus shares this parable.
Very quickly, the parable is only one parable with three dimensions, three aspects to it. First, the Lord Jesus tells about a man who had a hundred sheep. He loses one sheep, and because he loves his sheep so much, he leaves the ninety-nine in the pasture and goes out into the wilderness to find that one lost sheep. When he finds the lost sheep, he puts it on his shoulder rejoicing, comes home, and invites his friends and neighbors to celebrate this wonderful recovery.
Then He tells of a woman who had ten silver coins and lost one. Apparently these coins were precious and needful to her, so she diligently searched and swept the house until she found the lost coin. She also invited her friends and neighbors in, and they had a time of rejoicing.
In these two instances, the Lord Jesus points out that there is such rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.
Now, so often when we think about this portion of Scripture, our focus naturally goes to what we refer to as the prodigal son, the younger of the two sons mentioned by the Lord Jesus. But we need to see this in a larger picture. First of all, I think the primary focus is not so much on either of the sons, but on the father of the two sons.
The younger son comes to his father in a very insulting way and says, “I want my part of the inheritance, and I want it now. I do not want to wait until you die, or until you decide that I should have this inheritance. It is my decision that I would like to have it now.” The father divides his inheritance between his two sons.
The younger son goes out, very unwisely misuses his money, ends up without any money and away from home, and hires himself out as a slave. The thing he is given to do is feed pigs.
Again, we must remember the context in which the Lord Jesus is speaking. For the Hebrew people, probably one of the most insulting things you could give them to do was to take care of swine. He finds himself faced with this job, and apparently he is even jealous of the pigs because they have more to eat than he does.
As he observes all of this, Scripture says he comes to his senses. He comes to himself and begins to think, “At home, even the slaves in my father’s house have it much better than this. I will get up from here and go home.”
You remember the story: when he arrives home, the father had anticipated his coming. He runs, embraces him, and invites him into the home. Then we have the story of the elder son, who refuses to participate in the rejoicing over his brother’s return.
In John 10:10, the Lord Jesus says:
“The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy.”
It really is the heart of the arch-enemy of God to produce loss in the lives of human beings. When we go back to the beginning and look at the whole process of God creating man in His own image, we begin to understand that there was something very precious to God in that act of creation.
It was a magnificent thing for God to create the universe, the animals, and the birds. But when you read that portion of Scripture, it is almost as though all of that fades into the background in comparison with God creating man in His own image. This was something that was so important to God.
God placed the man and woman in the garden and told them that they could eat of all the trees of the garden. He called special attention to the tree of life. God’s intention was that the man and woman whom He created in His own image would partake of that tree of life and receive the very life of God into them. They would be brought into rich fellowship with God Himself.
Certainly, they would live for eternity because His life is eternal. But there is a greater dimension than time. It is the quality of life that God intended for men and women to experience. He did not want us just to live life purely on the human plane. God created us to live life on the same level that He Himself lives life.
When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a work was done that broke the fellowship God intended to have with the man and the woman. In that condition, God would not permit them to have fellowship with Him in the way He intended.
When we look at it from that perspective, brothers and sisters and friends, we need first of all to understand the loss that God Himself experienced on that occasion. What happened in God’s heart when this event took place? We have to be very careful, but from a human standpoint it is almost as though God’s dreams were shattered. The thing He wanted most could not then be realized.
God suffered a great loss on that occasion. But because He is God, He could do something about that lost situation. Even when He was meeting out judgment upon the man, the woman, and the serpent, He said to the serpent:
“He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.”
— Genesis 3:15
Even there, God was beginning to set in motion what was necessary for this loss to be recovered. Ultimately, that was realized when our Lord Jesus Christ died at Calvary. Through His Son, God made it possible for all the losses He had experienced to be recovered.
When we come to Luke 15, being human beings, our attention naturally goes to the younger son. Many of us can identify with him and say, “This is us. This is what happened to me in my life.” But I think the Lord’s focus was different from ours. The primary focus was on the father’s heart, not so much on the sons.
When we think about loss and Jesus saying that the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, we must understand that merely being born into this world means that we will experience loss. It is a part of life because of what has happened on this planet.
The enemy, by default, has become the god of this world. He has been able to set up his own system here, and it is a system determined to undermine the kingdom of God and undo God’s work. We should not be surprised that the focus of Satan in the garden was on the man and woman, because that is where God’s heart was.
When the enemy is allowed to set up his system, it always results in loss. Some of you young people may not really believe that yet, but the enemy always deals in counterfeit money. He does not have anything real to give. Whatever we do in giving ourselves in that direction will always end in loss.
Sometimes the loss we suffer, and God suffers, comes through our own foolishness and sin. Adam and Eve’s sin infected the whole human race with the nature to sin. None of us had to go to school to learn how to sin; it was a natural outgrowth of who we are. We are not only sinners by nature, but sinners by choice and experience.
Whenever we sin, it always produces loss. Sometimes we experience loss because of the sin of other people. We are part of a large humanity, and when others sin, often we experience loss in our own lives. Sometimes we experience loss because we lack knowledge and understanding.
As human beings living on this planet under this system, with Satan being the god of this world, it is rare to find anyone who has lived here without experiencing loss. I have not met any human being who has been able to do that.
But the marvelous thing, brothers and sisters, is that our God acts in the face of those losses to redeem them, recover them, and restore them.
For a few moments this morning, I would like to call our attention to some examples of the kinds of losses that we, as the people of God, can experience. First of all, it is possible for us to lose our sense of purpose and destiny.
Living in this society, in this world system, with all that is going on, all the things that clamor into our lives, and all the hurtful things we sometimes go through, we can somehow lose our sense of purpose and destiny in terms of what God is after in our lives personally and what He is doing corporately.
Sometimes it slips to the back of our minds that God has called us. He initiated this whole process. Your salvation and my salvation were not our idea; they were God’s idea. Our being children of God was born in God’s heart. God decided that He wanted us to be His children.
When we believed in the Lord Jesus, we were brought into relationship with God, and God began a process of forming His Son in each and every one of us. That is our destiny. That is what God is after with you and me.
We will be formed into the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Think about that.
As we go through everyday activities—working in the home, working as housewives and mothers, working in the workplace and in the world—the routine can dull our sense that we are a destined people, called according to God’s purpose. There is purpose in it, but we can lose that awareness if we are not careful.
The world can invade our lives in such a way that we slip more and more into its pattern. Unfortunately, there are those who have been totally lost to the purpose of God because this sense of loss continues: the loss of being caught up in something and having a destiny.
We can also lose the joy of the salvation we have experienced in the Lord Jesus.
From time to time, if we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit, He would take us back and, in a sense, replay for us that moment when we came to know the joy of our salvation. Every time we come to this table, if we are open, I believe the Holy Spirit wants to bring something new and fresh and remind us of the wonderful salvation we have experienced in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We need to be a joyful people—not merely “happy, happy, happy,” but joyful: possessing something deep-seated in the heart that nothing can take away because of what God has wrought in our lives.
It is not because of a lack of failure, because you are going to fail. But your failure is not to affect the reality of the joy God has wrought because you are saved, forgiven, and cleansed. We can often lose the joy of our salvation.
We can also lose our simple devotion to the Lord Jesus.
As human beings, we have a religious nature. We can say what we want, but virtually every human being is religious in one way or another. He has to have a god—one he has created for himself, or somebody else’s god. Sometimes he even sets himself at the top, but nonetheless, he has a god.
Even within Christian circles, brothers and sisters, this whole matter can get in and take over, and we can lose our simple devotion to the Lord Jesus. Remember when you first came to know Him? There was nothing you would not do for Him. You did not have to sit down and work it all out in some complicated way. There was simply a love for Him flowing in your heart that enabled you to give yourself fully to Him.
But as we go on, we become complex. We complicate things. Somehow, the simplicity of a simple love for our Lord begins to slip into the background, and we lose it.
We can also lose the benefit of fellowship in the body of Christ. When we live together as God’s people, a lot of things can happen. Some unfortunate things can happen. Some hurtful things can happen.
If we are not careful, we can allow those experiences to embitter us and close us down inwardly, so that we are not as open as we need to be to the other members of the body of Christ. In doing so, we suffer great loss.
It is amazing how God, in His wonderful wisdom, deposits the very things you need in other brothers and sisters. If you are closed down to them, then you suffer loss in that area because you are unwilling to receive something.
We do not need to be naive, brothers and sisters. We can be deeply hurt by one another. But that hurt should not bring us to a place where we close ourselves down and deprive ourselves of the benefit, joy, and blessing of being members of the body of Christ and members one of another.
I know the brothers and sisters get tired of me saying this wherever I go to minister, but it has been in my heart for the last year or so: God has saved some very funny people—and then put me with them. I know everybody else feels the same way about me.
But it is true. Did God come and ask you if He could save so-and-so and put him in fellowship with you? Absolutely not. What does He say to you? Love them. Receive from them. Give to them. Be in fellowship with them. But do not close out.
There is a real tendency, when these kinds of things happen to us, to keep each other at arm’s length. In doing so, tremendous loss can come into our lives. We need to be careful that we do not experience loss in this matter of fellowship in the body of Christ.
Another thing that can happen to us in terms of loss is that we can lose our compassion for other people.
I am going to speak a little from my own experience this morning. When we moved to Long Island, New York, in 1970, I was just a little country boy from the hills of Pennsylvania. I was not used to a whole lot of people.
The few times I walked the streets of Manhattan, I found something happening inside me. When you are consistently confronted with that mass of humanity, all the problems represented by it, and all the things you see happening to people, you can begin to shut down. I mean, how can you get involved in that many people’s lives?
I remember that, growing up, my father felt strongly about stopping to help people when they were in need. Driving up and down the Long Island Expressway, there were broken-down cars everywhere. I would never have arrived where I was going if I had stopped to help every one of them. What do you do in a case like that?
If we are not careful, something can happen to us, and we can explain away our compassion for people. We can give good reasons why we do not get involved.
But dear brothers and sisters, somehow our Lord Jesus, from the beginning all the way to the end, even though He was bombarded with people with all kinds of problems, was able to maintain His compassion all the way through. We can lose ours if we are not careful.
We need to allow the Holy Spirit to do whatever needs to be done to keep our hearts soft, with no calluses around them. No matter how many times we are hurt or disappointed, no matter how many people come bombarding into our lives, we must learn to receive the grace of God so that our hearts do not become calloused.
Let me mention one other. These are only a few of the many losses we can experience. We can also lose zeal for the house of God.
Dear people of God, in His wonderful mercy, He has involved you and me in the most glorious and wonderful thing going on in the whole universe: building the house of God and creating a body for His Son, so that God can fully manifest the fullness of Himself throughout the universe.
Yet somehow, by being involved in the week-by-week and day-by-day life of living in the body of Christ and being the house of God, we can lose our zeal for that house.
The Lord Jesus said:
“Zeal for Thy house hath eaten Me up.”
— John 2:17
Especially when we are in a place where God consistently ministers a rich word to our hearts, brings vision to us, challenges us, and encourages us richly, we need to be careful. When we look back at the children of Israel, we see that when God richly blessed them, they left Him and went after other gods. We are no different; we are all of the same stock.
When we are richly blessed, we need to take special precautions that smugness and self-righteousness do not settle upon our hearts and cause us to lose our zeal. We may grumble and complain when challenged or encouraged to get involved and give ourselves to the work God is doing in building His house.
What a privilege, brothers and sisters. I have heard our brother Stephen and others share that being part of the body of Christ and participating in the work God is doing is more important than being president of the United States.
You may say that is an overstatement. It is not. With all due respect to this country and to President Reagan and everyone else, presidents come and go. But if we have given ourselves to the work God is doing, it is not going to come and go. It is eternal. He has called you and me to it, and therefore we ought to be zealous about the work to which we have been called.
These are only a few examples of the kinds of loss that we, as the people of God, can experience. But in the face of this loss, the Lord Jesus speaks to us from this parable about God’s redemptive love—God’s recovery love.
There are different aspects of God’s love. We can speak of God’s disciplinary love, but the emphasis in this passage is on God’s redemptive love: God taking that which has been lost and redeeming it, recovering it first of all for Himself.
This is portrayed in the parable through the father and his two sons: how the father responded when the younger son returned home, and how he encouraged the elder son to come and participate in the celebration.
First of all, God’s redemptive love is all-encompassing and unfailing. This love is for everyone. There are no exceptions.
Across the history of the human race, we can think about the most horrible people who have ever lived, and yet God’s love encompassed them. They may not respond to it, but nonetheless God’s love is all-encompassing.
We tend to think that God’s love focuses only upon those who have their lives straightened out. But Jesus makes it clear in this passage that God’s redemptive love is not focused upon those who do not need help, but upon those who do need help.
I remember a few years ago meeting a person—and God forgive me for putting it this way—but I did not believe that God could save him. The reason I did not believe God could save him was because of the way he treated me.
I was trying to be of some help to his wife, who was going through a difficult time. Apparently he misunderstood what was going on. He came to my office one night. There was a six-inch cement wall in that office, and he was a six-foot-three police officer with hands so big that when I shook hands with him, I went all the way to my elbow. He threatened to hit my head against that wall. You can understand why I did not think God could save him.
In a sense, I had placed him outside God’s redemptive love. That was a decision I made in my heart. I never told him that.
But to my chagrin, to God’s glory, and to my joy today, this man testified that a couple of days later, while he was working as a meat cutter, God encountered him. As he was cutting meat, he began to perspire so heavily that people told him he had to get out of the shop.
When he left the shop and was driving home, God encountered him. He got on his knees right there and embraced the Lord. He had a glorious experience. Today, he goes around the prisons on Long Island ministering the Lord Jesus Christ to the inmates.
God’s redemptive love is all-encompassing and unfailing. There is never an end to it. God never comes to an end in His love. We cannot do anything that will cause God to stop loving us. His love may take a different dimension or approach, but it will never cease.
We need to understand this first of all in terms of the people we come in contact with. When we begin to think, “How can God love that person?” we need to stop that kind of thinking.
There may even be some of us in this room who have placed ourselves outside the scope of God’s love. We may think we have done something so awful that not even God could forgive us. I want to tell you, it is not true. His love encompasses you. No matter what you have done or how many times you have done it, it has not stopped God from loving you.
The love of God is hopeful, but not forceful.
The picture we have in this parable is of a father. We are not told how long the younger son was gone, but whatever the period of time, apparently every day the father was looking down the road his son had taken, hoping that perhaps he had changed his mind and decided to come home. He was always hopeful, but not forceful.
We have no record that the father gave his son a long lecture when he was leaving. I think the son, if he had been at all in touch with his father’s heart, would have understood how much hurt was there. But that hurt did not cause the father to try to force the son to stay home.
When the son left, the father did not run after him to force him to come back. But there was always hope. Then, after the son decided to return home, the father saw him a long way off, ran to him, embraced him, had compassion on him, and kissed him repeatedly.
Brothers and sisters, in my estimation, we have reduced God’s love to something far too small at times.
Think about the condition that younger son must have been in. It may have been weeks since he had eaten properly, months since he had changed clothes, and you remember the kind of work he was doing. What do you think he smelled like? The pigs.
When he came home, the father did not say, “Son, get in there and shower, and afterward you and I will have a talk.” Some of us still believe that before God can love us, bring us into fellowship, and recover our losses, we must somehow straighten out our own lives, clean ourselves up, and then come to God. It simply is not true.
He receives us just the way we are, in the midst of our loss, having experienced great loss, because He is the only One who can recover it.
The younger son did not say, “I have made a big mistake. I have offended my father and wasted my inheritance. I need to get three jobs, make enough money, and pay my father back.” He did not do that at all.
He simply came, and the love of God—God’s redemptive love—reached out and embraced him. God’s redemptive love is absolute in its forgiveness. It is not conditional.
It is conditional in the sense that it required the shedding of blood, but that has already been taken care of. God’s love is absolute. He forgives all, and once that forgiveness has been experienced, He never brings it up to us again.
Sometimes our conscience brings it up, and some of our so-called friends do. But the Lord never does. If the Lord reminds us of something, it is only to teach us something, not to condemn us or make us feel small.
You will notice that the father’s redemptive love in action does not focus on the problem, but on the solution. It is wonderful. The father did not have one word to say to his son about how he had spent the money or how unwise he had been. No lectures.
When the son came home, he said, “Father, I have sinned against You and against heaven. I am willing to be one of Your servants.” He got no further than that. It is almost as though the father did not even hear the confession.
The father spoke to his servants: “Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger. Put shoes on his feet.” He fully reinstated him. Then he said, “Kill the fatted calf. We must rejoice, because this son of mine was dead and now he is alive; he was lost and now he is found.”
God’s redemptive love is interested in full recovery.
When God created Adam in His own image, He created a man with no flaws and no weakness. Because of the Lord Jesus Christ, God is interested in fully restoring us—not only to where Adam was, but beyond that, because Adam never ate of the tree of life.
When you and I received the Lord Jesus Christ, God set in motion a process whereby He is fully recovering all that has been lost. If not in this age, then in the age to come. It will be a glorious state.
Because of sin, we cannot help but experience loss as human beings and as God’s children. But please understand that the redemptive love of God is determined to recover that loss and recover it in fullness.
The father gave his son the best robe, put a ring on him, and gave him authority once again. He did not set him as a slave. He put shoes on his feet and made him a son in his household.
For some of us, that is too good to be true. Even though God says we are sons, many of us want to remain merely servants. There is certainly a place for serving God, but that is not the point here. We need to learn to come into our place as sons in His household.
In this parable of the two sons, we have two different ways of approaching and responding to God’s redemptive love.
There is not a human being who has ever lived who could not have experienced this recovery work if he had allowed the redemptive love of God to work in his life. There are no exceptions.
God’s redemptive love is unfailing; it cannot fail. Yet, when we look around us and examine our own lives honestly, we may say, “It has not happened fully in me.” Does that in any way make God’s redemptive love faulty? No. The fault is not on God’s end. If there is fault, it is on our end—in the way we respond to that redemption.
Much of the focus has been on the younger son, whom we call the prodigal son. Certainly he was a prodigal, but I am convinced the older son was a prodigal too. He was a stay-at-home prodigal, because the results were the same.
There is no question that what the younger son did was foolish. But that is our history, is it not? Is there anyone among us who can honestly stand before God and say, “I have never done anything foolish that brought loss to me or to others”? There is none.
But the interesting thing about this younger son is that when he came face to face with reality, when he saw that the pigs were better off than he was, something began to happen in him. Scripture says he came to himself. He came to his senses.
At that moment, his perspective began to change. He regained some insight about how things really were and who he was. During all the time he was away, there is no evidence that he even mentioned his father. But now, all of a sudden, it came back to him who his father was and what things were like in his father’s house.
He said, “Even the slaves in my father’s house are better off than I am. None of them are hungry, yet I am here dying. What am I doing here? It is stupid for me to be here. I will get up and go to my father.”
He worked out his little speech, and it was real with him. It was not phony. He had come to the end of himself. Having come to the end of himself, he went back home. He was willing to take the steps necessary to begin the process, and he was willing to start at the bottom.
In his heart, he knew he had done wrong. He did not defend himself. He simply admitted honestly what he had done: that he had sinned against heaven and against his father. When he admitted that, the process of recovery started.
But I have found something about myself, and I suspect it may be true of some of you as well: some of us are so proud that we would rather live in our loss than humble ourselves and begin at the bottom again.
Do you not recognize that in yourself? We are proud creatures. It is hard for us to bow the knee. Do you know what the hardest words are for us to speak? “I have sinned. I have blown it. I have made a mistake.”
To say those words and really mean them is very difficult. Our old proud flesh does not like to say, “I have sinned.”
But focus on what happened. God’s redemptive love was at work in that young son when he took the radical step of going back home and saying, “Sorry, I blew it. I am willing. I just want to be one of Your servants.”
That was a radical step when you consider all the things that could have gone on in his mind. But the moment he did it, the redemptive love of God came in like a flood and began to restore what had seemed impossible.
He had no dream of ever being reinstated as a son. His inheritance was completely gone. Yet God fully reinstated him.
That is exactly what God has done when you and I come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has fully reinstated us. We are no longer sinners in His eyes; we are His dear children.
When He looks upon us, He sees no sin. To be justified means just as if we had never sinned—not merely sinners who have been forgiven, but as though we had never sinned. We are fully reinstated, as though we had never had a nature to sin and never had an experience of sin. We come into God’s presence, and He never mentions it.
How can we turn our backs? Why are we so slow and hesitant to allow this redemptive love to work in our hearts—not just in terms of our initial experience, but all along the way?
Can I put it this way? The only thing that keeps you and me from being all God wants us to be is our refusal to allow God to love us. If we allow Him to love us the way He wants to love us, the process will go on.
So many of us feel that we need to do it ourselves, that somehow we have to accomplish something. There are things we need to do, but they are very simple things. They are not complicated or complex. It is learning to come consistently to the Father’s house and let God begin the process of recovery in our lives.
When I think about the experience of the Lord Jesus and Simon Peter, it has become something I have thought about a great deal in recent years. Think of the grievousness of what Peter did to his Lord on the night when he denied Him, cursed, and said, “I never knew You.”
Humanly speaking, we would say that would be enough to break a relationship. When something like that happened, there would seem to be no reason for the Lord to pursue Peter.
But when we come to John 21, Peter has decided to go fishing again, and the others follow him. They are out fishing, and Who appears on the seashore and prepares breakfast for the disciples? None other than the Lord Jesus.
I am convinced the primary reason He went there was to recover Peter. After breakfast, Jesus initiated the conversation:
“Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these?”
— John 21:15
“Lovest thou Me? Lovest thou Me?”
What our Lord Jesus did for Peter on that occasion was recover the loss that had happened only weeks before. It is amazing to me that God could use Simon Peter fifty days after his denial, on the Day of Pentecost, to see thousands swept into the kingdom of God.
That was full recovery. It does not mean Peter was perfect, but he had been recovered and made useful in the Lord’s hands. I would have thought that something like that required at least three years under discipline, but not with the Lord. The Lord is in charge of those things.
I am going to take a few moments to look at the elder brother. He usually gets ignored in this whole process.
The elder brother stayed at home. As I understand it, he received two-thirds of the inheritance and the younger brother received one-third. In one sense, the inheritance had already been distributed between the two sons. The father had nothing left.
The elder son stayed home and worked hard on the farm. The picture is of a man working from morning to night. In many ways, we look at that and say, “That is a great thing. That is wonderful. He is diligent and works hard.”
But his real character is revealed when the younger brother comes home. He comes in from the field, hears the celebration, and this seems so foreign to his ears that it gives him problems inside. He calls a servant and asks, “What is going on?”
The servant says, “Your brother has come home. Your father is so elated that he has thrown a party. He killed the fatted calf. You need to get in there and celebrate.” But he refuses to go in.
The father comes out and entreats him, almost as if he is getting on his knees and begging his son to come in and join the celebration.
Then the real character comes out in that one verse. He uses the words I, me, or mine five times in that verse.
“I have stayed here all these years. You never killed the fatted calf for me, that I might be merry with my friends.”
There was such self-centeredness and self-righteousness at work in his heart that he could not be part of the celebration. A glorious thing had happened: his younger brother, his own flesh and blood, had been recovered, the loss had been recovered, and he could not celebrate.
Now let us go back to the context. Why did Jesus tell this parable? Because the scribes and Pharisees were complaining that Jesus was associating with sinners and tax gatherers.
I hope it is not true in anyone else’s heart this morning, but I have found that something can happen in the hearts of some of us after we have experienced God’s blessing. If we are not overly careful and do not allow the Holy Spirit to deal radically with things in our lives, we can become like this elder brother and be unable to rejoice when something wonderful takes place.
Because of our self-righteousness and self-centeredness, we can become angry and jealous. All of these things can be in us.
The saddest thing is what the father said to the son:
“My child, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is thine.”
— Luke 15:31
The elder son had lived there all those years and did not enjoy fellowship with his father. Do you think that is possible for Christian people—born-again, forgiven people—to live in the Father’s house and not enjoy fellowship?
I think it is possible, brothers and sisters, unfortunately. I think it has to do with the fact that many of us do not understand that there is a disciplining work of the Holy Spirit that must be done in our lives in these areas of our hearts.
A couple of years ago, I went to Webster’s dictionary and looked up the word self. I think there were six pages: self-this and self-that. Brothers and sisters, we need to understand that unless we yield consistently to the disciplining work of the Holy Spirit, this thing will grow in us and choke us up until we become like the elder brother.
Then we will not be able to rejoice when something wonderful takes place. I speak the truth. I do not want to tell you the story because I am embarrassed to tell it, but I speak what I know. It can happen to us.
From the story, apparently the elder brother never did humble himself and come to the place where he could fully enjoy all the father had for him. For the father to say, “All that I have is yours,” is remarkable. The younger son was a good receiver, but the elder brother said, “No. I will handle it on my own. I have done all right up until now. I will make it.”
What we do in that attitude is a horrible thing.
Time is already gone, and it seems to me that we have not yet gotten to the real point of the whole parable.
Jesus said concerning the lost sheep and the lost coin that there is more rejoicing in heaven and among the angels of God when one sinner repents than over the ninety-nine who need no repentance.
When God is able, by His redemptive love, to invade people’s lives and recover losses, do you know what happens in the heavenly realm? Do you know what it does to the Father’s heart? It brings tremendous joy.
Even the elder brother could not dampen the joy in the father’s heart because the younger son came home. “We had to be merry and celebrate.” His heart was overflowing with joy, and nothing could dampen it.
We need to understand that God is a God of redemption. It brings great delight and joy to His heart when things that have been lost are recovered and something is restored.
Certainly this is true for the sinner who repents. But I am convinced it is also true when we have lost something through our own foolishness, neglect, or sin. When something has been lost in our lives, and we humble ourselves, start at the bottom again, come to the Father’s house, and allow Him to begin the process again, something registers in the heavenly realm that causes the heart of God to rejoice in a wonderful way.
I do not think we understand how much we mean to the Father, how dear we are to Him. It grieves Him to the depths of His being when you and I go on living our lives without allowing Him to be part of them—whether we stay at home or go out and waste our living in loss.
Do not be deceived. It may be that you are a good person this morning. Praise the Lord for that; we have enough of the other kind in the world. But being a good person does not mean that you are enjoying the fellowship God has planned for you through His Son.
My heart is especially burdened this morning for some among God’s people who have been brought into the family and into the Father’s house, but because of something they got involved in—whether through their own doing, foolishness, or something else they allowed into their lives—loss was produced.
They are living in their loss rather than going back to the Father’s house and letting Him begin the redemptive process of making them what He wants them to be.
Please understand: God does not get frustrated. He does not get angry. He does not give up when you and I make mistakes. That is not to say He will not discipline us, because He loves us. But from the vantage point of God’s redemptive love, joy is registered in the heart of God when you and I come back to the Father’s house and let Him begin the project of restoring.
To anyone here this morning who has never come to the Father’s house: perhaps you are like the younger son, and in a sense you have wasted your life. You may be very young, but you already have this sense of waste and loss. There is no delight in your heart in the way you are living.
You can get up. You can come to yourself. You can see how foolish what you are doing is. You can face the reality of the whole thing, come to your senses, come back to the Father’s house, and experience His welcoming arms.
Something will happen inside you that is indescribable: a peace, a sense of wholeness, that begins to be produced in you, and there is nothing to compare with it.
And for the rest of us, I do not care what it is: our Father is in the business of restoring and redeeming. He has set His love upon us, and the only thing that hinders it from happening and working in your life and mine is us—nothing else.
I want to plead with us and appeal to us that we humble ourselves consistently, come back to the Father’s house, and let Him bring us into the fullness of what He wants us to be in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
May the Lord bless us and be merciful to us.