Amazing Love (Part 4 of 7)

The parable most of us know was the prodigal son tells the story of a young man who wanted to live his life his way. His poor choices lead to some humiliating circumstances that forced him ultimately to return home, but how would his father respond today untruthful like we can Pallister Meg teaches how even our worst decisions can lead us back to the amazing love of the father got a read together from Luke 15 story of fatherhood. Luke chapter 15 in verse 11 Jesus continued there was a man who had two sons, the younger one said to his father. Father give me my 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 their squandered his wealth and while 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 send 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 that I've sinned against heaven and against you.

I'm 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 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 the son said to him, thought, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. 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. Amen.

That's God's help as we study the Bible together.

Father were totally dependent upon your help now to study the Bible, we can either speak nor hear nor understand or respond. Apart from the wonderful convicting convincing moving of your spirit so this causes us to take our eyes away from everyone else except you. And from everything else except your Bible meet as Lord, we pray just where we need to be met for Jesus sake, we ask then if you kept your Bible open. They are at Luke 15. You will notice from the opening verses that Jesus is addressing a crowd that comprises two distinct groups of people. One group is listening to them. The other is really there to criticize him. The good that's listening is made up of tax collectors and those who are referred to as sinners. They are intrigued by the words of this Galilean carpenter. He doesn't sound like the average synagogue sermon and so they are following along because they sense that the things that Jesus is saying are things that they need to hear. You may be here today and that's exactly how you feel, as we anticipate studying the Bible. They are the rest of the group is made up of their religious orthodoxy of the time, Pharisees and religious leaders.

They were not actually there to listen as much as they were there to complain. And the reason for their monitoring is because the one opposed to what Jesus was doing. Jesus was actually welcoming sinners and eating with them and from their perspective. If he really was a rabbi of God. If you really was a holy man that he determined himself to be any clearly wouldn't be doing that – at the wrong end of the stick and some of you may be here today.

You actually have the wrong end of the stick as well getting that Jesus came in order to get together a religious club.

People who were outwardly very interested in religious things who were good, moral, upright people doing their best paying their taxes and attending at least once on a Sunday.

Therefore, you should prepare to be completely overwhelmed by what actually unfolds in this passage Jesus and recognizing the group that has surrounded him determines that he will tell them three stories, all of them about lossless. First, the story of a lost sheep, then the story of a lost coin, and then the story of two lost boy's depression. If you like is building from story to story is making one point and emphasizing it effectively. There is joy when the shepherd comes back with a sheet. There is joy when the lady discovers her coin.

Therefore, he says, you would imagine that there is joy in heaven when the lost sinner repents and is brought back to the fold of God. This third story that we've been looking at has introduced us to these two sons. The first boy has done a bond's departure from his father's house was apparently a planned exit is no indication that he woke up one morning and in a fit of passion determined that he is going to take all rather that he had premeditated the event he had waited for the right moment in order to save his father. I'd like to have what I would normally have. When you die, but I wish you were dead now and I wish you give me what I have what I ought to have when you die because frankly I want to leave you behind. I want to turn my back on you.

I want to do my own thing. Every indication as well is that his departure was not only plan but he was going to view it as being permanent is why Luke is careful to tell is that he got together in verse 13. Everything that he had no he didn't leave anything behind so the builder slipped back for the weekend. We got together everything that he had any God it as far away as he possibly could gathering up all of his possessions and set off for afar and a distant country and he went out with a spring in his step. Apparently, and we're going to discover that he can back dragging is still behind. Invite the story of how his plan ends in disaster is recorded for as they are in verses 14 through 17 and 14 after he is squandered as well in a kind of riotous excess he finds out that he's absolutely helpless. There's a severe famine which falls right in the time that his money is run out and he began to be in need. He was in need of help. He was help less in verse 15. His helplessness led to humiliation at the humiliation of a Jewish boy feeding pigs. Anybody with a job feeding pigs is not Miceli a bad job but it wasn't a good one, even where he'd come from.

As a result of this, he was also hungry because he in verse 16 actually long to eat the pig food but nobody in his hunger came to give them anything at all that in verse 17 we discover that he became homesick and I don't story could be summarized as the young man who were sick of home, who became homesick and who was home fight. You may like this to keep that in your mind is as a framework under which to make this study, the young fellow was sick of home and I we find him homesick. He's lost his wealth.

He's lost his freedom. He's lost his self-respect and the fact that he recognizes his circumstances to be significantly worse than that of a day laborer serves as a barometer of the depths to which the young man has sunk sitting in his predicament and the pigsty he figures out the people that his father hires on his estate. On a day by day basis, not people were on the salaried positions of the folks who were there as hourly workers, but people who just came by and stood outside the estate on a daily basis in the hope of the foreman would come out and say I'll take you you you and you these individuals, he said, are far better off than I am today in this dreadful and sorry circumstance in his soliloquy, which is they are in verse 17 and following. He repeats the word father three times, you realize that this is a description of them sitting there talking to himself. He speaks to himself and he says this is ridiculous. How many of my father's hired men who through despair.

I starve to death.

I want to set out and go back to my father and then I went to see father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

The prodigal determines to go back to his father, not primarily because he is tormented by a guilty conscience because he is driven by the prospect of mercy. He could have lived with a guilty conscience. He could've sought to absorb it in a number of ways. It would be impossible for him to admit the fact that he made a hash of things it would be possible for them then to live out the rest of his life saying you know I once lived in a wonderful place I once lived in a lovely relationship with my father. I turned my back on my father. I went off in my own way and that's why you can see I am where I am today. That's why I'm in the story. Predicament makes one thing doesn't. What if there had not been a father to whom he could return or what if the father to whom he could return was a father who would simply treat his boy as his sins deserve after all it was no one to blame but the boy himself. Nobody can come to the story of these two sons and explain it as is often explained in terms of the poor background and the difficulties that he faced the circumstances that he had to endure and as a result of all of this. This is why the fellow down here in the pigsty is a victim now what we have in the pigsty is a boy who made bad choices who decided to set out on his own, who made friendships with the kind of people that really weren't friends are tall and found himself eventually flat on his tail in a circumstance that was so different from that which he had known in his father's house. What a tragedy would be if that were the end of the story that he lived helpless and hopeless and humiliated and then he just died.

What if the consequences of sin were in removable what if Satan was sitting forever.

What if there were no solution to sin.

What if there were no heavenly father to whom the prodigal boy the prodigal girl may return what possible comfort could there be for this boy. And lastly has a waiting, watching, seeking, loving father, is there any comfort in the story of sinners. If the sinner is unable to come home if he finds no reception. If he is unhealed, unrestored and unforgiven.

You wonder why it is that men and women in contemporary society find themselves with such an experience. And thanks, worried, perplexed, overwhelmed, unable to fill the guard shaped void within their lives. It is in the simplicity of the words of the little song where the sparrow sings to the Robin the robins is the sparrow why do you think human beings are like this why you think they're so crazy why getting the runaround and worry about everything the sparrow replies in the Robin, he said, well, presumably because they don't have a heavenly father. So just cares for you and me. The Robin in this matter.

Realize that God provides for their needs. By the look on humanity in the sea. Look at these frantic and frenetic individuals in their assessment as well. Presumably they have no heavenly father. You see, the real breakdown in this story and we need to be careful so that we don't miss this is not the breakdown in this young man's circumstances is not even the potential breakdown in the young men's health is not in the young man's hopes and dreams have been shattered.

It is not that the relationships that is, he established have actually been fractured and are no almost forgot to the real breakdown in the story is the fact that his relationship with his father has been severed as a result of him turning his back upon is that one of the customary errors of our day is to listen to men and women, sociologists and psychologists on those who apparently no explain the predicament of life on a peculiarly horizontal plane was the reason that I am the way, I am is because of something that happened to me in relationship to him or to her the reason that I am the way, I am is because I have unfulfilled hopes and dreams that are yet to be realized in my existence. The reason that I am not yet what I might be is because of all of these horizontal factors. What the Bible says is no that while these horizontal issues are real issues. The foundation of all of our dilemma on this plane is on account of a broken relationship on the vertical plane that we have lost the stabilizing influence of our lives.

As a result of sin. What is happened in our life, says the Bible is that our relationship with the God who is made as our father in heaven has been severed and so the man's expedience now everything is fractured as a result find picture in your mind's eye.

Jesus is telling a story describing the circumstances.

Here is a young man and is in a pigsty and he longs to eat pig food lives of the people going Bigfoot who need pig food will presumably as possible to get so hungry that we might consider his physical loneliness with his money gone and his friends gone and his brutal circumstances merely serves to confront him with his existential aloneness because his real aloneness is not the aloneness of the pigsty. It's not the aloneness of the absence of friends.

It's not the aloneness. As a result of circumstances, turning sour is aloneness is an aloneness that is deposited on the fact that he told his father that he could keep it, could keep his house could keep his love could keep his care could keep his advice could keep his interest and he would go it on his own.

If we got a chance to interview them as seven or 10 days prior to this. If we had caught him in the corner of one of his parties as he played the host to all of these friends that he managed to put together if you're being honest. He would've told us then you know actually it's a strange thing, but I feel alone here tonight.

I'm surrounded by all of this and by all of the scanty, but I feel alone, but maybe it's just this party is not a very good party.

Tomorrow's party will be a better and as he walks home in the early hours of the morning. He send himself I don't know why I feel the way I feel. Why do I feel as though a blanket is down over my head.

After all, we did everything we wanted to do whatever we wanted to do it with. We did it as many times as we want, and nobody interfered and certainly not my father. This was supposed to be fantastic. See maybe marijuana is not good enough now moving onto good ecstasy, maybe ecstasy won't fill them in regard to article K, because you see the devil story is always there is always one better fix. There is always one better party.

There is always one more buck to be made. There is always one more rung on the ladder.

They says to you, the reason you feel is you feel miss the reason you feel is you feel sure is because you have not made it there if you will go there now, you will discover that it is over here that the answer to that sense of lawlessness is to be found and that is contemporary wisdom well some of your here this morning and frankly your circumstances are just a thin disguise for the fact that you're living in a cul-de-sac you're living on a dead-end street surrounded by your family and your friends and your alone in the world. Nobody knows the sense of ruination. The sense of waste that you feel sometimes you are amazing yourself the kind of things that you even contemplate driving your car so fast through these country roads because somewhere in the back of your mind. You said maybe I'll just drive it right off the road on such a lovely car. I don't care means nothing to me such a lovely relationship. It is irrelevant to me such a super opportunity. It means zero. To me, because like the boy in the story we closed the door in our father's house. We walked out we said stick you can keep using the predicament is in this story is quite a story. You can imagine that the Pharisees are going I don't know where this one is going to end the sinners are hanging on his every word is a beauty one procedures as the other. I don't know what happens this kid, but there's maybe there's maybe something in this world you know that there may be an end to this one that we are really going to like all is stop listening now, we will the Pharisees Palouse Clover prophetic story.

I hate the story you said don't worry about that. Let me just get on here because the disaster this futile plan is more than met by the discovery of his father's love. We saw last time the when he came to his senses when he came to himself.

We talked about how we meet men and women who are apparently looking for themselves looking for themselves in all the wrong places looking for love in all the wrong places. When he came to his senses, he realized that he been away from his father's house, but he had been away from his father's heart and soul. Verse 20 and I love the phrase he got up and went to his father so he got up and went to this is the second time were told that he gone up and gone.

Initially he got up and went away from his father's house, and his request. On that occasion was give me. Now he's getting up again and he's going back to his father's house, and his request on this occasion is make me was all the difference in the world and the request give me gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme you exist to give me, give me the particular garage they give me to God. God is a cosmic principle god was a figment of my imagination. God is a provider of health, wealth and happiness. God is whatever I conceive them to be and I go to God regular and I say give me Rivera come to God and said make me you can imagine that as he rehearses his speech going back up the road.

He has only a mind that is full of questions. Probably his eyes down rather than his eyes.

Then look at us. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, we might anticipate that the father would seize the opportunity to give them the I told you so speech to make his son stand in his tattered smelly outfit while he let them know that this is the kind of thing happens to a boy who does this, but none of that is there rights look at this story while he was still a long way off, but we have presented here by Jesus is the father's wonderful readiness to forgive son could never have dreamt. What a surprising reception was waiting for. Indeed, the verbs help is only an editor's 20 but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him shot. How did he see him because he was looking for. Why was he looking for him because he wanted to find its elementary my dear Watson. It is a wonderful picture. What a great story and encouraging story about a father whose ready to forgive your listing to Alistair Begg Truth for Life weekend with a message titled amazing love.

When you listen to Truth for Life. You can hear God's word caught with clarity and relevance. We know that the lessons from Scripture are as meaningful today as they were when they were first written, and Alister helps us connect the dots as he teaches us. Verse by verse so we can apply the Bible's instruction to our everyday lives today story about the lost son is a perfect picture of God's forgiveness and as we move closer to Easter and think about the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross, we come face-to-face with its cost. But did you know that forgiveness is just one of the outcomes of the cross.

That's a topic that is explored in the book we are recommending today. The book is called the cross in four words, and it explores all that God accomplished through the death of Christ at Calvary because of the cross we can enjoy freedom justification and purpose along with forgiveness. All these things can be traced back through the key stories we read in the Old Testament. This book is quick, it's easy to read and yet at the same time it's exceptionally insightful.

You can find out more about the book when you visit Truth for Life.about looking thanks for listing today.

Next weekend is Palm Sunday to take a break from our series in order to hear a special message from Alister on Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem, I hope you'll join us. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life Learning is for Living