"LIKE THE PRODIGAL!"

Written and preached by David P. Nolte







LUKE 15:11-24
 


Some folk don't like the story Jesus told. "The father was way too soft on the runaway," they claim. But what they forget is that the story illustrates the great, indescribable desire of the Heavenly Father to receive all who repent and turn their hearts to home. Philip Yancey also tells a wonderful story about a girl and her father. The girl grew up on a cherry orchard in Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, in her mind, were a bit old-fashioned. They tended to criticize her music, her makeup, and the length of her skirts. They grounded her a few times, and she seethed inside. "I hate you!" she screamed at her father after an argument, and that night she acted on a plan she had mentally rehearsed scores of times. She ran away. Because her parents knew about the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concluded that it would be the last place they would look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit. Like the son in the text, she packed her bags and left home. The story touches us at points of our life, too.
  1. LIKE THE PRODIGAL, WE WANT TO GO OUR OWN WAY: VV12-13:
    1. See the "let me go and do my own thing" attitude of the younger son. He is just like all of the rest of us.
    2. When God created man in His image, He gave man the power of willing and choosing. But since the fall of man that power has been twisted and misused for personal, selfish, and altogether egocentric purposes. That is, we want what we want when we want it and in just the shape, size, color and flavor we want it.
    3. It is a human characteristic to cast off restraints, to push against the parameters, and to chart our own course.
      1. In the days of the Judges, a man named Micah set up his own religious system with its own priesthood in violation of God's Law. The times were characterized in these terms: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes." Judges 17:6. Not unlike our days.
      2. Isaiah characterized humanity's penchant for going their own way, saying, "All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him." Isaiah 53:6.
      3. Concerning Israel, God said, "But this is what I commanded them, saying, 'Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.' Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward. " Jeremiah 7:23-24.
      4. Modern philosophy is:
        1. "Be a law unto yourself." Set your own boundaries, or no boundaries at all if you wish.
        2. "If it feels good, do it." Pleasure, comfort, and ease are the criterion for choice.
        3. "I gotta be me. " Do whatever it takes to fulfill self and self expression.
        4. "Look out for number one!" Self and self gratification ahead of all else,
      5. Solomon reminds us that "There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25.
The girl decided to go her own way. Her second day in Detroit she met a man who drove an expensive car. He offered her a ride, bought her lunch, arranged a place for her to stay. He gave her some pills that make her feel better than she'd ever felt before. The pampered life continued for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car, she called him "Boss," taught her a few things that men like. Since she was underage, men paid a premium for her. She lived in a penthouse, and ordered room service whenever she wanted. After a year the first signs of illness appeared, and it amazed her how fast the boss turned mean. "These days, we can't mess around," he growled, and before she knew it she was out on the street without a penny to her name. She still earned a little by selling her body, but all the money went to support her habit. When winter came she found herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores but she only half-slept because a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circled her eyes. Her cough worsened. One night as she lay awake listening for footsteps, she no longer felt like a woman of the world. She felt like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She began to whimper. Her pockets were empty and she was hungry. She wanted a fix. She pulled her legs tight underneath her and shivered under the newspapers she used for covers. Something jolted a spark of memory and a single image filled her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball. "God, why did I leave?" she said to herself, and pain stabbed at her heart. "My dog back home eats better than I do now." She sobbed, and she knew in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wanted to go home. Have you ever felt like that? What you planned as an ideal turns out to be an ordeal? What you started you'd end if it were in your power. The prodigal son regretted the day he'd left home. The story parallels ours at this point, too.
  1. LIKE THE PRODIGAL, WE EXPERIENCE DISILLUSIONMENT: VV14-17:
    1. As long as the cash held out and the parties took place and the booze flowed he was Mr. Popularity. But let the resources run out and so did the so called friends. When party time ended, despondency set in. The boy was subjected to a harsh dose of Reality Therapy.
    2. Consider your own situation; think about your own life for a moment:
      1. Have you entered into a forbidden relationship only to realize how tawdry, degrading and shameful it is?
      2. Have you selfishly indulged some passion, fulfilled some appetite only to find a lingering hunger and emptiness?
      3. Have you pursued all the kicks of life only to discover to your dismay that there is always a kick-back?
      4. Have you invested your time, effort and substance in the acquisition of some material thing only to find it is a piece of junk?
    3. Solomon experienced that: he wrote, "I said to myself, "Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself." And behold, it too was futility." Ecclesiastes 2:1. Then he concluded, "And all that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun." Ecclesiastes 2:10-11
The young girl learned that the life of her dreams was a living nightmare. She phoned to see if the doors of home were open to her. Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hung up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she said, "Dad, Mom, it's me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I'm catching a bus up your way, and it'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada." It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realized the flaws in her plan. What if her parents were out of town and missed the message? Shouldn't she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they were home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. Her thoughts bounced back and forth between those worries and the speech she was preparing for her father. "Dad, I'm sorry. I know I was wrong. It's not your fault; it's all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She said the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearsed them. But she had made her choice. All of us from time to time are faced with the same situation.
  1. LIKE THE PRODIGAL, WE HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE: VV18, 19:
    1. It took a personal choice to get him into this mess and it would take a personal choice to get him out of it.
    2. Again, take a good look at your own life. What choices have you made that you regret? What choices do you need to make to turn things around? 
      1. If you have chosen an immoral life, you can choose to continue in it and suffer the consequences, or you can choose to repent and forsake it.
      2. If you have chosen an illegal, unethical approach to matters, you can choose to continue in it and regret it later, or you can choose to repent and forsake it.
      3. If you have chosen the way of anger, vengeance and retaliation, you can choose to continue in it and be consumed by your wrath, or you can choose to repent and forsake it.
      4. If you have chosen to serve a lesser god than Jehovah, you can choose to continue in that idolatry and die in your sin, or you can choose to repent and forsake it.
    3. God spoke to ancient Israel saying, "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." Deuteronomy 30:19-20. God still sets the same choice before us today.
The girl had a choice to make, so she got on the bus and headed home. Every so often she spied a sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. When the bus finally rolled into the station, the driver announced "Fifteen minutes, folks." Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checked herself in a compact mirror, smoothed her hair, and licked the lipstick off her teeth. She looked at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wondered if her parents would notice. If they were even there. She had come a long way from Traverse City to Detroit and full circle back. Just like the prodigal, Just like you and me from time to time. There is another great truth to recognize:
  1. LIKE THE PRODIGAL, WE CAN COME HOME: VV20-24:
    1. The father in the parable did not put a lock on the door, but he did keep the latch string out. Before the repentant boy ever got a word in to reveal his change of heart, the father ran to embrace him. He came home.
    2. Where are you today? Are you far from home and the Father? 
      1. Are you in the latches of loose living?
      2. Are you in the badlands of bad choices?
      3. Are you in the slums of sin?
    3. Come to your senses. Recognize that though you can't go back and undo your decisions, and though you may still bear the scars and though you may still suffer some of the consequences, you can come home. There's a Father waiting.
The girl tentatively walked into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind could have prepared her for what she saw. There, in that bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stood a group of forty: brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother. They were all wearing party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal was a banner that read "Welcome home!" Out of the crowd of well-wishers broke her Mom and Dad. She stared out through the tears quivering in her eyes and began the memorized speech, "Dad, I'm sorry. I, know...." He interrupted her. "Hush, child. We've got no time for that. No time for apologies. You'll be late for the party. A banquet's waiting for you at home." Not many would love like that. But you can be sure that a father does. And you can know for certain that a Heavenly Father does. If you are still far away, separated in sin, caught up in some destructive lifestyle, in bondage to evil, and full of regret and remorse, the door's open, the Father is waiting, and you can come.
 


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