Running Away

MP3 File: 

20110703 Sermon.mp3

Luke 15:11-24 (CEV)

Last week we began a series of messages on Jesus’ story of two sons—one who was rebellious (a picture of us when we run from God) and one who was religious (in the sense of being good and working for the father’s favor).

We saw that both sons misunderstood their father. Both sons wanted their father’s things more than they wanted their father. And both sons needed to return home to the father—one from the pig pen and the other from the fields where he worked.

Today we’re looking at “Running Away”—how people want to run their own lives and chafe under their misconceptions of God. But when they run from God’s authority they also run away from God’s love.

This is pictured by what happened with the younger brother. So today we’re focusing on his issues; next week we’ll look at the older brother’s issues.

When the younger brother finds himself broke, starving, and surrounded by the mud and manure of a pig pen, something profound occurs. His troubles and problems actually accomplish something good! When he crashes and hits bottom, he is forced to rethink his choices in life and where they have brought him.

This often happens to us as well. Troubles are often the means God uses to teach us something.

So as the younger brother considers his options, he “comes to his senses.” This suggests that previously he had “taken leave of his senses.”

“Coming to our senses” is the first thing that must happen for repentance to occur! In fact, there are several key steps included in repentance; “coming to our senses” means returning to our right mind.

1. Repentance is returning to our right mind. Repentance comes when we finally see the truth—when we finally see the destructive results of our own behavior. Repentance is when we finally “come to our senses.” We gain a new perspective—a new understanding.

“Repent” (in 15:7 and 9) is “metanoéō” which comes from two Greek words literally meaning: “to think differently or afterwards, i.e. to reconsider…to change one’s mind or purpose.” But repentance is not only about having a different attitude; it’s also about taking different action!

It’s not only our understanding that is adjusted during repentance. We can also say that we “come to our senses” when we perceive things differently. For instance, the Bible says that unbelievers cannot see the light—their spiritual sense of sight is gone. They are spiritually blind. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor 4:4).

But God uses the destructive results of our own choices to “turn on the light!” In the chaos and confusion of our lives, God says, “Let light shine out of darkness,” and he makes “his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).

This is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit—bringing us to a place where we can see so we can repent. God uses our physical senses to awaken our spiritual senses. The younger brother’s five senses told him he was in trouble: he felt hunger pains; he saw pigs and mud; he heard the squeals and grunting of the swine; he smelled the barnyard smells; and he could (almost) taste the pig food.

So the younger brother begins to see things differently than he did before. He sees how he has disrespected his father, how he has shamed him. He sees how he has wasted the family inheritance. He sees how he alone is responsible for his actions. He changes his mind—he begins to think in a whole new way.

2. Repentance means taking action. It’s turning around—to stop going the way you’re going. It’s making 180^o turn in the opposite direction (the right direction). It’s to stop doing the things you’re doing.

The younger brother knows he cannot continue the way he has been going. There is nothing for him down that road except complete destruction. He will die—physically and spiritually—if he does not turn around.

Some people define “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Do you see that once your thinking is straightened out, once you’ve come to your senses, once you’ve become sane, then you must stop doing the same thing over and over again?

When we act crazy, we keep going down the wrong path, keep doing destructive things…and hoping something good will happen. If you’re sowing wild oats, you can’t pray for crop failure! If you sow wild oats, you’re going to reap what you sow!

Repentance means we regain our sanity and stop being crazy. It means we will make a change. We will do something different! And that’s what it meant for the younger brother. He knew he had to make a change.

But he couldn’t just go back, could he? If he went back home only for a bailout—only to get some help, he would have missed a key component of repentance. You see, when he left home, he left with a major attitude. He was rebellious and disrespectful. He cut his ties to his father and his home. He burned his bridges.

So if he wanted help, he needed to deal with his attitude. He needed to destroy his pride. He had only viable course of action—he needed to humble himself (which is a primary characteristic of repentance) and return home to his father.

3. Repentance is humbling ourselves. When we fall spiritually, the solution is to fall before God. We must humble ourselves. Falling short of the glory of God, is cured by falling on our face before God.

You cannot repent if you refuse to humble yourself. You cannot repent if you remain stubbornly independent or proud. Repentance requires humility—falling before God in shame and remorse for who you are and what you’ve done.

Repentance (humbling ourselves) is admitting our wrongs and our shortcomings. It’s saying we are flawed creatures who sin. It’s admitting (confessing) who we are and what we’ve done.

The younger brother, finally grasping the enormity of his problem and accepting responsibility for his actions, even rehearses the speech he needs to make. Notice what he plans to say:

I’ve sinned against heaven and you.

The younger brother knows he has rebelled against his father—essentially dismissing his father and cutting him out of his life. Sinning against heaven is a sin against God, against God’s order, against God’s kingdom.

“Sin” is “hamartia,” literally, “missing the mark”; it’s taking aim at the target and finding ourselves unable to hit it—or it’s refusing to even take aim because we reject the target. Either way, we miss.

The younger brother says, “I’ve missed it! I’ve missed God’s plan by rebelling against my father.”

Someone might ask, “Is it always a sin to rebel? You don’t know my father! My father wasn’t loving and decent like the father in this story! My father was abusive and destructive. He failed me in more ways than I can count. Rebelling against my father wasn’t like rebelling against a kind and loving God—it was like rebelling against the devil.”

It is unfortunate that we must use physical examples to understand spiritual truths, because natural illustrations are always limited. We use human language—the English language—which has a limited number of words to try to describe an infinite, limitless, boundless God! But it is impossible, using only natural things, to adequately express the supernatural.

So the Bible speaks of our “heavenly Father,” and yet we know that this analogy can only go so far. For many of you, the analogy works fairly well, because, even though your father was not perfect, he was pretty good. He did his best to love you and care for you and you have a genuine sense of affection toward him.

For others, however, the analogy doesn’t work so well. Some of you may have been abandoned by your natural father. Others perhaps grew up in dysfunctional homes where harsh, demeaning words were common—completely destroying your sense of well-being. You couldn’t feel safe when your father was around. Maybe the dysfunction was fueled by his addictions, his anger issues, his abusive behavior—or a number of other things. Whatever the cause, now you find it impossible to compare a “heavenly Father” with your earthly father.

Let me encourage you: you can still benefit from the analogy—not in seeing how a “heavenly” Father is similar to an “earthly” father, but by seeing how different they are. Instead of comparing, you can contrast the two. Wherever your natural father failed you, your heavenly Father is perfect. He will never fail you!

The people who heard Jesus’ story also had a problem with the analogy. They were completely mystified by the behavior of the father. According to their Jewish culture, they would have expected the father to turn the rebellious son out without a dime. He would have been within his rights to deny a rebel any part of the inheritance. He could have renounced him as his son—and cut him off from the family.

In the OT law, a rebel son could be judged by the community and stoned to death. (Deut 21:18-21) He wasn’t just excommunicated; he was executed.

Even today in Orthodox Jewish homes, if a young adult decides to leave the family’s heritage to follow Christ, he may be cut off from the family—as if he were dead. He’s not welcome in their home; they no longer see him; they no longer speak of him; he is dead to them.

It’s intriguing that the father in Jesus’ story—while he loves his son and shows compassion for him—nevertheless had considered him to be dead: “this son of mine was dead and is alive again” (v 24).

But the father did not choose this! It was his son who, by demanding the inheritance had said in essence, “I wish you were dead.” The son was the one who chose to kill the relationship.

We learn an amazing thing here: Our heavenly Father does not want to sentence sinners; they choose death for themselves.

The father extended grace. He gave his son the inheritance. He gave the rebel what he did not deserve. But the father could not circumvent consequences: “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

Death is the natural consequence for sin and rebellion. God doesn’t choose death for us. The Bible says that God is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Pet 3:9). But when we sin and rebel and go against God, death finds us—because we have chosen it for ourselves.

I don’t deserve to be called your son.

I wanted your things more than you. Because the younger brother wanted his father’s things more than he cared about his father, he knows he doesn’t deserve to be in the family. He wanted things more than a relationship so he knows he cannot go back. He knows there is no hope for him to restore the relationship he threw away.

I wasted what you gave. The younger brother knows he doesn’t deserve anything more from his father—he’s already wasted everything his father gave him. He no longer deserves to bear the family name. He cannot return to his place or status as a son, as a member of the family.

I destroyed the family; I killed the relationship. He had demanded the inheritance before his father was even dead—saying in essence, “I wish you were dead.” Ironically, his rebellious desire to be separated from his father actually did lead to a death of sorts—not his father’s death, but his own!

The younger brother is utterly and completely broken! He is at the end, deeply remorseful, completely despairing over his condition—what he had done and what he had become. In fact, it was his brokenness that led to his repentance—where he humbly admitted his sin and his desperate need.

Such brokenness isn’t very common these days. Our society has become desensitized to sin. Calloused. Sin no longer scares us like it used to. Society says we should be “enlightened” about sin. Some things may be “inappropriate” at certain times, but if you’re an adult, society says, well then, you can handle it. So we’ll rate it PG or PG17 or R to keep it away from younger, more sensitive, people, but when you’re an adult, well then, X-rated is just fine.

Society says we should be “tolerant” of the behavior of others because, after all, there are no real “absolutes.” Everything is “relative.” You can’t say something is “right” or “wrong” because, well, it all depends. What is wrong for you may not be wrong for me. If it’s “true” for you, that doesn’t mean it’s “true” for me.

This perspective has become so ingrained in the fabric of our societal thinking that many people never really come to the point of despair over their sin as the younger brother did. People never really feel all that convicted about sin, because, well, after all, is it really all that bad? Is it really sin? Or is that just some sort of guilt and manipulation by preachers and moralists?

It seems to me that the ones who most often escape this cultural rationalization are those who, like the younger brother, crash and hit bottom. When they finally face the terrible consequences of their own behavior and realize they are dying because of their choices and addictions, then they realize there is such a thing called sin. They “come to their senses” and see that there is a right way and a wrong way.

OTOH, if you accept the premise from our culture that there are no absolutes, no real truth, then you will be desensitized to the idea of sin. The Bible speaks of teachings in the later days that “come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (1 Tim 4:2).

When a conscience is “seared,” it can’t feel anything anymore. It is desensitized. It can’t feel the pain of sin. It can’t feel the remorse and regret of doing wrong. It cannot feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit! (Also see Eph 4:17-19: “…having lost all sensitivity.”)

In an overly tolerant and indulgent society where nothing is absolute, the ones who are most capable of experiencing God’s grace are the broken ones, the ones who have crashed, the ones who have hit bottom, the ones who are confronted with their own ruin and destruction. It’s the younger brothers who are most capable of discovering grace.

“Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you’” (Matt 21:31)

As long as we are desensitized to sin, we cannot feel—we cannot sense the pain and guilt. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to bring conviction in our troubles so we can “come to our senses.” Then, finally, deeply pained by guilt and sin, we can repent.

It’s only when we are broken before God, confessing our sin, remorseful and repentant, that we can truly experience God’s love and grace. When we become so broken that we can say with the younger brother in the pig pen, “I no longer deserve to be called his son,” then it becomes possible for us to find our way home to the Father.

Let me be a servant—working to pay you back. I can’t expect to have a relationship with you. I know I can’t be your son, but can I at least be your servant?

The younger brother knows he can’t be welcomed back home—not after all he’s done against his father and against the family. He took everything the family had to give and threw it all away. He knows he can’t get that back. It’s gone! He knows he can’t have his old room back. He knows he can’t eat with his family at the table. There is no place left for him at home because he recklessly threw it all away.

So he wanted to be a servant, to work for what he’d lost. He didn’t realize that working to make things right cannot fix a spiritual problem.

Many people come to God that way. They think somehow that they can work out their own salvation. They think, If I can only be good enough… If I can only do enough… If I can somehow tip the balance in my favor—outweighing my bad deeds with good deeds—then God will take me back.

The problem is we can never be good enough for God to take us back. We can never do enough. All our best efforts, all our good works of righteousness, nothing we can do will ever be able to outweigh the consequences of our sin and rebellion.

When you rely on good works, you have religion—people trying to please God, people trying to negotiate with God, people trying to gain God’s favor through human effort. But as we said last week, we don’t need religion; we need a relationship.

We cannot work our way back home to the Father. We cannot earn salvation by being a servant. (Notice that once we have received God’s grace and salvation, then we can serve! But it doesn’t work the other way around: we serve because we’re saved; we are not saved because we serve.)

This is why we need the love of the Father! “…it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9).

What about you? Have you, like the younger brother, hit bottom? Have you come to your senses? Have you repented, turned around, headed for home?

Your heavenly Father is waiting. His love is strong and has never wavered. You may have wandered far away. You may be covered with the mud and manure of this world’s worst pig pens, but none of that matters to your Father in heaven.

He is looking down that road, watching and waiting for you to humble yourself, to confess your sin, to repent. He wants to come running to you—to embrace you and welcome you home.

Will you come?