and made it warm, just while the guys are waking up, they've got it awake, all right. Let's look to the Lord for a moment in prayer. Father, thank you this morning for the fact that we can know you. We thank you, Father, that we can sing a song like this, that everything in this life, all the things that we held dear, are really worthless compared to knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.
I pray for anybody who's here this morning who doesn't know him, that today they will come to know the Savior, the only Savior of this world. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I was actually planning to continue series in Daniel, Daniel chapter eight, until 10 o'clock Friday night. I read through all my notes and looked at everything and I said, nah, I gotta do something different.
This is one of those times when just the Lord speaks to you and says this is not gonna speak to anybody but you. So Daniel chapter eight was a great chapter for me to study for myself. And maybe I'll share that with you at another time, but today's Father's Day. And happy Father's Day as I already mentioned to all the dads and to all the children who are here call your dad today if he's not here with you and if you're not able to call him.
And those of us who have lost dads, it's a bit of a bittersweet day. We have children who are on us and so on, but it's always sad for me when Father's Day comes around and I walk by the card aisle and I have no reason to stop there. And so young people do that before you get to the point where there's no reason to stop by the card aisle. So I became a dad 28 and a half years ago.
That's me with my first wife there. And a little Benjamin. So then about a year and a half ago, not a year and a half ago, 13 months ago, I became a granddad. Now I don't know, I remember, like it wasn't his first words, but I'd like to think it was, dada.
When I heard those words, man, it was so awesome. But I'm not so sure if I hear granddad come out as a little guy, that might even be just a little bit more on the awesome side. I'm not sure, glad you can tell me. You know, Father, they say is a person who carries pictures where his wallet used to be.
And a grandfather is a person who carries pictures where his wallet used to be and he doesn't care. Or his money used to be, I'd rather. I said, okay, let me stop. A father is a person who carries pictures in his wallet where his money used to be.
But a grandfather is a person who carries pictures in his wallet where his money used to be and he doesn't care. The dads are different today from when they were perhaps when you were growing up and when I was growing up. I mean, here's this poor desperate dad, probably dirty diaper going and has no clue what to do. He's kind of like holding the baby out here and he's on the phone probably to his wife somewhere or his sister or somebody helped me here.
I've got this, what do I do? Then you fast forward to where we are today. And I mean, my dad did not go in to see any of us for being bored in the operating room. And there's this picture of Mark, the millennial with his baby on his chest.
I'm thinking I'm just cause you were laughing there. But you see, it's changed. It's changed the way fathers are from the way they were when my dad was. Didn't grow up with the ideal dad.
He didn't grow up with the ideal son either. So I look at it and think things have changed over the years. Fathers are more involved in the growing up and the nurturing of their children than they used to be. Now there's a funny story from back in, this is a guy you played for the Red Sox and the Angels.
I never heard of him. Ralph, you might have heard of this guy. I'm not sure. Jimmy, Pearson.
So Yogi Berra came to him and said, okay, we've had a baby. What do we do? How do we change the diaper? And he said, we just lay the baby on the diaper like a baseball diamond.
Pretend you're at bat. Then you put the kids bottom on the picture's mount. You pin first base to third base. Then you slide second base into home plate and then you pin them.
But, and those of us who've changed, especially boys diapers, but if it rains, there's no postponement. You just call the game and you started over again. So I thought that was a pretty funny story. In all seriousness, I want to share with you a story today about a father and a son from scriptures.
This is probably one of the best known and the best loved of Jesus parables. This is one that Charles Dickens, who was in my opinion a great writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson both have called this the greatest short story ever written. John Phillips is a commentator. I like he said, this is one of Jesus's deathless parables.
It's a miracle in words. And that's the story of the prodigal son or the lost son as most people call it. I like to look at it as the welcoming or the merciful father. So let's read this account in Luke chapter.
If you have your Bible, you could open it. If not, I put the verses on the wall behind me and Luke chapter 15 and verse 11. This is Jesus speaking and he said, a certain man had two sons and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. So he divided them to them his livelihood.
And not many days after the younger son gathered altogether and journeyed to a far country. And there he wasted his possessions with prodigal living. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land and he began to be at once. Then he went and he joined himself to a citizen of that country and he sent him to the fields to feed his swine.
And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods, the swine ate, but no one gave him anything. So when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have enough bread and despair and I perish with hunger? I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. And I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
Make me like one of your hired servants. And he arose and he came to his father when he was still a great way off his father saw him and that compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, father, I have sinned against heaven in your sight and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hands and sandals on his feet and bring the fatted calf here and kill it and let us eat and be merry.
For this son, or for this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found and they began to be merry and we'll stop right there. You see, this is not really about how to bring up wayward children or how to deal with wayward children. This story, this is a story that is not really about the son.
This is really a story about the father. Now how many of you here, put your hand up and please don't be shy, have heard this before. This story, okay, everybody, except Chelsea. So everybody has heard this story before.
Everybody has heard it at some point in time whether it was in Sunday school or from a pulpit or from whatever it might have been. But everybody is familiar with this. The thing is, you have to look at what Jesus is doing here. It's not so much about the nature of the son, but it is about the nature of the father.
First of all, what, you have to look at the context here. We'll look at that in a second. Jesus is teaching here that God is willing to forgive repentant sinners. That's the message, right here.
The corn message is that God the father is willing to forgive those who have offended him. Those who have just like the son thrown it up in his face. So I'm gonna rename this the parable of the merciful father. Now let's look at the context.
You have to go back to, in your Bible, I don't have these verses up here, but if you look back to verse one of 15, it says, then all the tax collectors, how many of the tax collectors? All of them, didn't notice that until I read that again today. It wasn't just a few tax collectors, it was all of the tax collectors. And the sinners drew near to him to hear him.
And the Pharisees and the scribes complained, saying, this man received sinners and eats with them. And he spoke this parable to them. And he actually spoke three parables. The first one was about a man who went on the hills looking after sheep, he had 100 sheep.
And one of those poor dumb sheep wandered off and was in danger and gone. 1% of the flock disappeared. 1% of the flock was in danger. 1% of the flock rebelled.
And what did this shepherd do? He went out and he looked everywhere he could and he reached down somewhere, probably have found this poor sheep in danger, rescued it, put it on his shoulders and brought it back. And everybody rejoiced because this 1%, this one sheep, was found. The Pharisees could relate to that.
They saw shepherds all the time, didn't care for them, but they saw them and they knew what they did. And the second story he tells about this lady who has 10 coins, probably on an necklace, and it was probably part of a dowry from her father. Very, very valuable. And at some point in time she was busy, and one of the coins rolled off and went behind the fridge or something.
It was gone. And I made the fridge part up because there were no fridges. So John kind of was like, whoa. So I knew someone was listening.
So this one coin disappeared. 10% loss. A 10% loss is, that's a fairly significant loss. First one was 1%.
And this coin is gone and she sweeps the whole house desperate to find this one coin. And when she finds it she throws a party and rejoices. And then Jesus says, likewise there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repents. Now think of this world of seven billion people, seven billion people live in this world.
One sinner repents and heaven lights up to rejoice. That's amazing. And then he tells this third story, well, concentrate on this today. A father loses his son.
He has two and one is lost. That's a 50% loss. I don't care who you are. But if you take a 50% financial loss, you don't recover from that for many, many, many, many years.
If you have a loss in your home of one child, I don't mean loss to death. I mean, they just go wayward and they leave and they rebel and you don't hear from them again. That's a greater loss than a financial loss. That's a huge loss.
And if God is excited about one sinner out of seven billion people, think of how a father's heart goes to lose one son in rebellion. And think of the joy when that son comes back. A lost son. There are some laws about lost things.
Mary Ann's law. You can always find what you're looking for. Sorry. You can always find what you're not looking for.
That's the first law. You can always find what you're not looking for. Wake up with this one. Here's the law of the search.
The first place to look for anything is the last place you'd expect to find it. That's from sources unknown. In Miller's Corollary, which I like, objects are lost because people look where they're not, where they are not, instead of where they are. So you state it the obvious.
But this whole story of things that are lost, lost sheep, lost coins, and a lost son. When you lose something, it's grievous. It's difficult. It's hard.
And this story that we're going to look at this morning, it happened somewhere in the Middle East. It can happen in the Middle East. It can happen in Dartmouth. It can happen on your street.
It can happen in your own home. This story is something that every one of us can relate to. This is something that is non-instruction to parents of wayward children. But it's an answer to the grumbling Pharisees.
If Pharisees cared too much about lost things that were material and didn't care enough about lost souls, we need to care about lost souls. God cares about lost souls. That's what this story is telling us. There's two scenes, the Far Country and the Father's House.
And we're going to look at these. It says in verse 11 to 13, it says, and a certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, give me the portion of the goods that fall to me. And he divided it to them his livelihood.
And not many days later, or not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and journey to a Far Country where he wasted his possessions, living and prodigal living. Now the word prodigal is here. The word prodigal is here speaks of wasteful, self-centered, spent-thrift, a guy who just has no desire for looking after what he's got. He's just going to spend it.
He's going to just lose it all. The Father has a rebellious son. He's probably a teenager. Why do I say he's probably a teenager?
Well, he's single. He's not married. He goes off on his own. But he's probably a beige.
So he's in his late teens. By your late teens, you're just about ready to get married in that culture in that day. So a rebellious teenager. None of them.
I'm going to tell that story. So here we have a father with a rebellious son. And this whole thing about the inheritance. When you came as the youngest son and asked, Dad, give me my inheritance.
Give me what's coming to me. You're insulting the dad, first of all. So Sam came to me today when we're having lunch together. And he says, Dad, you know what?
I know you're going to die someday. So why don't you just like today? Give me what's coming to me. OK?
Can somebody pass me another piece of cake? Really? That's not what a dad wants to hear. In other words, you're saying, Dad, I wish you were dead.
I wish you were dead so I could just have what's coming to me. And in that culture, the oldest son got 50%. And the younger son got the balance. So not 50%.
The oldest son got a double portion. Two thirds and the younger son got a third. So 33.33% of what the dad had was going to go to the youngest son. The response to that type of rebellion, and if you read what happens to a rebellion son in the Old Testament law, it's not good.
He's taken out and he's really basically put to death by the end of it. First of all, he would get a slap and face from the dad. That's what would happen in that culture, in that day, for this kind of thing. Then there's the public scorn.
Everybody knows he's been put out of the house and they know why. And then the family would hold a funeral service for that son because he is no longer part of the family. He is gone. He is dead.
And that would be what would be coming to this. But I look at this father and I think this father was so gracious. He said, son, you want your 33.33%. I'll give it to you.
Here you go. And he gave him what he asked for. And now it says in verse 13, it says, not many days after after he received his inheritance, the young son gathered together, gathered it all together, and went on a journey to the fire country. And they're wasted his possessions with prodigal living.
Here he is, he wanders off, prodigal living. The Derby translation calls it living in debauchery. Squandered his way as wealth with wild living, it says in the NIV. So how far away is the fire country?
We don't know. Is it measured in miles? Is it measured in morals? We don't know.
But it's a long way from the father. He had wandered a long way from the father. Maybe it wasn't a lot of miles. Maybe it was.
Maybe he went to Egypt. Maybe he went a long, long way into Palestine. Maybe he left Palestine. I'm going to know it into some of the nations.
We don't know. But he wandered a distance. But what we do know is when you measure it in morals, he went a long, long way. He went a long way and the long way was down.
He left his mark. He left his mark on mothers who had their daughters swept away by his wild living. He left his mark on other fathers who saw their sons sucked into this vortex of drug abuse and alcohol and wild living. He left the mark there.
And so what the prodigal had figured before he had done all this, he thought, I'm so tired of these rules at home. I'm so tired of the Bible being read at my table. I'm so tired of all of this stuff. I just want to get away from it all.
And you know what he did? He bought into the biggest lie of the devil. You leave. You'll be free.
You walk away from this. You're going to be free. What did Satan tell Eve in the garden? Eat that fruit.
You'll be wiser than God. Eat that fruit. Look how good it is. You'll be free.
And the same for this boy. He believed the biggest lie of the devil. Here's what he forgot. He forgot that sin will always take you further than you want to go.
Sin will always keep you longer than you want to stay. And your sin will always cost you more than you intended to pay. And here he ended up, I don't know who said that. I've heard it from K.
Arthur, John Haggie. I've heard it from Steve Ferrer. I've heard it from all kinds of people. I don't know who said that, but that is so close to almost inspiration, those three points.
Because it's so true. It's fulfilled always in sin. You will find yourself. You're going further than you want to go with it.
I'm just going to do this once. No, you're not going to do it once. You're going to keep doing it. And it's going to keep you longer than you want to stay.
Well, I didn't intend to find myself here, but here I am. And then when it all comes crashing down, it costs way, way more than you want it to pay. It doesn't have to be a person on the street. It doesn't have to be somebody who's just out there living in wretched sin all the time.
It's obvious in front of me. It could be in my own heart. It could be in this church. It could be people who are here.
If you decide you're going to just follow your heart, follow the lies of the devil and think you're going to be free without God. You will find yourself here with this boy who was. So what did he find? It says he spent all that he had.
He said, there was a severe famine in the land, and he began to be in want. All his friends that were just fair, while their friends they disappeared. He found a ferocious famine. Thirteen famines are mentioned in the Bible, but this in the King James is called a mighty famine.
All of them were serious, but this one is called mighty. And then he had even lower to go. Here's how far he fell. It says then he joined himself to a citizen of that country.
And he sent him into the fields to feed swine, and he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods, the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. You know what that means? Not even the pigs would give him something to eat. That's how low the sinner had gone.
Not even the pigs would share their food with him. Here he is. He's in the fair country. He's not welcome there.
He's forced into slavery. He joined himself. Now the word joined himself is interesting because it's exactly the same word that's used in Genesis when it talks about a husband and a wife. It means to cleave or be glued to.
He was so fast into this man. He had nothing else. But here's this Jewish boy now with a gentile overlord sending him into a field to feed pigs. He's not going to be testable to a Jew.
He's testable to be near a pig farm, let alone out there feeding them out of slot. It says he desired the scraps from their slot bucket, but there were no scraps. There wasn't even pig food left for him. And then Jesus says these words.
He came to himself. He came to himself. What does that mean? He came to himself.
It means that he understood that sin had taken him further than he wanted to go. That sin had kept him longer than he wanted to say and sin cost him more than he wanted to pay. That's what he realized. And here he is.
He's out there eating pig food or trying to eat pig food. And they wouldn't even share it with him. He stuck. And so he says when he came to himself, how many of my father's hired servants have enough bread to spare and to spare rather?
And I perish in hunger. That tells you the wealth of the father. You see most men who had slaves and servants gave them just enough food to get by and can work the next day. This man's servants had more than enough and then they had some left over and to spare it says.
Even the servants in that home. And he says here I am, I perish with hunger. I will arise and go to my father and say to him father, I've sinned against heaven and before you and I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.
He's hopeless. He's hungry. He's humiliated. He recognizes his needs.
And he recognizes that his sin was not just against his father but first and foremost it was against heaven. I have sinned against heaven and before you. He saw he was unworthy in his state and he makes the decision. I'm going home.
Now he knew he had to face the father. He knew he had to walk home. He hoped that he could be just a lowly slave and hoped for a little bit of the leftover bread maybe that the slaves had for him. You know in all of this Jesus does not minimize the seriousness of the sin.
You know what he says but it was okay. He doesn't say that anywhere does he? Jesus speaks. Quite frankly about the sin.
He points out that this man had gone a long, long way down and he came to a point and this is the point where he says I need to repent. Now what do I mean by repent? And that's the whole point that I wanted to talk about this morning. He came to a point where he knew he needed to repent.
He needed to come to a point where he would agree with his father about his sin. He would say you know you're right. God's not in the position where he looks down at us and says, I told you so. He doesn't do that.
God wants us to come to him and say, yeah you told me and I agree. It's exactly what you said it was. So he's in this state now. He wants to come and he's going to turn and come back and he recognizes that he agrees with God about his sin.
That's what we need to do. We need to agree with God. He's the one that's offended. We don't claim any rights.
We don't ask for anything but mercy. We come and say God I've got nothing. I've got nothing to give you. I've got this mountain of debt of sin that I've built up.
I'm hungry. I'm lost. I have nothing. I'm not even worthy to be called the child of God.
Will you forgive me? That's what God wants. That's what repentance is. He doesn't claim any rights.
He only asks for mercy. And I think of how humiliated he must have been as he walks back through the community. Everybody knows the story. Everybody knows he disappears.
I'm sure the story's buzzed back and they all knew here's this boy that just remembers reputation. Wine, women and song. He just wasted it all. And I see him walk back and I know he didn't even have sandals on his feet because his father offers him sandals in the end.
And he walks back barefoot in regs covered with pig urine and people laughing at him as he walks through the town. And then it says he comes to his father and says when he was a great way off versus verse 20, he rose back to his father and verse 20 says when he was a great way off, the father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight and I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. And he didn't even get the words out.
Make me as one of your hired slaves. Before he could get those words out, the father said to his servants, bring out the best robe. He didn't even get to the point of finishing his rehearsed speech of repentance. He was forgiven at that moment.
What a gracious father. What a merciful father. The repentance touched the heart of the father. He didn't even complete the confession.
He was restored immediately as a son. Bring, bring, bring the best robe. Put it on a ring on his hand. Put sandals on his feet.
And bring the fat of calf. Let's have a celebration. The son of mine is home. He met a gracious father.
They had a glorious feast. And he had a great forgiveness and great freedom. Here's the son now able to do what a son should do in his home. Here he is forgiven of all of his sins.
The father didn't bring it up. I'm sure every day. Hey, remember. Hey, buckle.
You're the guy who took off. No. It was forgiven at that moment. It was all behind him.
There are four words in this story found in verse 24 that's on the whole thing up. For my son was dead, verse 24. 15 verse 24. This is my son was dead.
And as alive again, he was lost and is found. And they began to make merry. And I think of those four words dead, alive. You know the Bible tells us that in our sins we are dead.
We are dead. Absolutely dead as a doornail. But we can be made alive in the forgiveness that Jesus Christ offers. If you're dead today, you can be alive.
The other thing that says my son who was lost has been found. And as I started off saying, this is a story about a lost boy in Palestine. But this could be a lost boy or a lost girl or a lost man or a lost woman in Dartmouth or Halifax, Nova Scotia. It could be a lost boy or lost girl in your home.
It could be a lost dad. It could be a lost mom. But you can be found. It says that this father was a long way off looking, waiting every day.
Please. I hope my son comes back. But he's got to come back. It has to be him.
He needs to turn. He needs to repent. And he did. And the son came back.
You know, if you're here this morning and I don't know where you are in your life. But if you've wandered off like a lost sheep, I want you to know one thing this morning. You have a father who pities you. We have a God in heaven who values you.
We have a God who wants to see you as his son, as his daughter. People out in the fair country thought the boy was worthless, but he had worth to the father. You know, sometimes we go by people on the street and think, wow, why don't you? Do something worthy.
You know what? Every sinner is the same. We are worthless. We are lost.
We are with without hope and without God in this world. But you know what? Here's the great hope. God the father.
This whole story that I told you this morning portrays what God the father is like. The moment that we turn and say, I agree with you, my sin is great. It's hideous and I can't do anything about it. Please.
Just can you take me just as I am? And you know what? He will. He will at that very moment.
And it's just like this boy. Kill the fatter calf. Come, let's have a feast. You know, we came this morning for a feast.
That's why I put the cup in the bread up there. We came for a feast. And the whole purpose of us coming for that feast is as we look on that table and see that bread and see that cup. Little cups of grape juice.
Body and blood. It reminds us that we have been forgiven of great, great sin. All our death has been removed. We have been cleansed from our sin.
And now we walk with Christ. With all the privileges of a son of God, all the honors that a son would have. The wandering off is forgotten. Now we're forgiven.
And we walk with him. You can have the exact same thing. Jesus Christ. If you know and you know in your heart, there's two people that know your heart.
You and God. I look out at all these faces here and I think I know a lot of you. But I've discovered, unfortunately, that I don't really know people's hearts. Sometimes even my own heart deceives me and I don't know it.
But God knows it. And if you know that you are not right with God, if you know that you are one of those who has wandered off and have never had a relationship with God, today, Father's Day, you can have a heavenly Father. You might have had the worst Father on earth. You might be the worst Father on earth.
But today, you can be forgiven and have a heavenly Father. It's a year ago, last week, this week, two days ago, I think it was, I got a text or an email from my brother here. My company has just let me go from my job. I thought, oh, I can't believe this.
I was in a meeting room, a great big ballroom with a couple hundred people there and I thought I got a call and I found a little private place and I called him and I said, how are you doing? He said, oh, I'm okay. I'm a child of God. I don't know if you remember saying that, but you did.
And I thought that carried you through all of this. If you are not a child of God, I would implore you today to repent of your sin. He can forgive and he will instantly, the moment you confess that I am not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired slaves.
He won't make you a slave. He will make you a king. He will treat you like a king. He will treat you like a queen.
But God of heaven is in the business of forgiving sins and may you turn to him today. Father, thank you this morning. As we look at this account that we have everybody in the room, I think put their hand up saying that they've heard of it before. And sometimes we look at these stories in the scriptures and think, yeah, I know this one.
But Father, the whole point of scriptures do we know this for ourselves. Have we taken this in for ourselves? I pray for anybody who's here this morning who does not know Jesus Christ as their Savior, who has never come to that point of repenting of their sins, of turning to him that they would do so just as this son did and came back to his Father. We know the moment we repent, the moment we come and recognize that Jesus Christ is the only Savior.
He died to take away all of our sins, all of our sorrows, all of our pain, all of our suffering that is brought on by our sin. Father, we pray if there's anyone here this morning who has not that they would trust him. I pray for anybody who is here who is a believer and has just wandered off and is like that lost sheep out on the countryside but in danger, in great danger with a heavenly Father calling them back, looking for them. May they be willing to be picked up and brought back.
We thank you for your great salvation. We thank you for the great love of God the Father. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. I pray that that is realized this morning in Jesus' name.
Amen. Thank you for listening. Have a good day.