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THE FATHER WHO COULD HAVE SAID NO!!
Luke
15:11-24
Here we have a certain man and two sons. We have
a wonderful home that has all the comforts and all the joys and love
that could go into building a home. This home represents our
heavenly home and the father is the heavenly Father. The two sons
are representatives because the father has more than two sons.
The father and the two sons are out in front of
the house and the younger son does something strange.
He fell out of fellowship with his father, said
he was tired of discipline and needed to spread his wings. So his
father gave him his living, which he didn’t even work for. The
money that he had in his pocket was because of a very generous
father.
Two things to point out about the younger son:
-
He
lost his common sense at this time.
-
He
lost sight of everything else but self.
This young man found out what it was to have what
the world calls “a good time”.
The young man lost all of his money and his fair
weather friends. He enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a season until
he reached into his pocket and there wasn’t anything left. He was
financially broke, the country had a famine, and he did not know
what to do. He was at the bottom of the pit.
**There are Christians living in spiritual
pigpens today because they have left the Father for what seems to be
better at the time.
These sons, like the sons in this story, need to
come to their senses and come back home. The son had his speech all
made up for when he got home.
Shifting the scene back to the heavenly home, the
father has been waiting all this time because he knew the son would
come back home. Why did he know? Because sons don’t have the
nature of pigs; they have the nature of a son; and they won’t be
happy except in the father’s house.
When the son returned home, the father had every
right to say ” NO!! You don’t belong here…”
Under Mosaic Law, a father had a perfect right to
bring a disobedient son before the elders and have him stoned to
death.
But the father did an amazing thing….(Verse 20)
He felt compassion, embraced him.
If you’re a son of “The” Father, there will come
a day when you’re going to say, “I will arise, go to my Father and
confess to Him.”
1John
1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.”
That’s the way a sinning child gets back into the
fellowship of the
Father’s house. The only way back is by
confession… |