THERE S NO PLACE LIKE HOME - RECKLESS GRACE - PART II

Transcription

1 Good morning, Life Fellowship. Do we have any Wizard of Oz fans out here? Some of you will remember when the Wizard of Oz first came out in This was the wonderful movie that depicted young Dorothy who wanted to escape from reality. She wanted to leave home and go somewhere far away, somewhere over the rainbow. We know the story where there was this lady that didn t like Toto, and she wanted Toto to be euthanized. So Dorothy went a little bit nuts and she wished to be able to go to another land over the rainbow. And in the midst of a storm she would find herself tossed around and finally waking up in a place called Oz. She would be told by Glenda, the white witch, to follow the yellow brick road that would lead to the Emerald City. And as the story goes Dorothy wanted to escape, she wanted to get out of Kansas, and she realized when she arrived in Oz she wasn t in Kansas anymore. And then after her escape, after desiring to leave Kansas and ending up in Oz, then she longed to return home. Dorothy would eventually learn that all she had to do was click those ruby red slippers three times and say, There s no place like home, there s no place like home, there s no place like home, and she could be back home. You know when we think of this idea of home we all have this inward longing, this desire for a sense of place where we feel and realize a true inner connection. There is something about us as humans that want to feel like life makes sense, like we understand what we are doing in this world. And Dorothy would go home and have her own homecoming. Often in our own lives we will pursue different adventures and often we are uncertain as we go off looking for home what home really is, and what it is supposed to look like. We may have our own ideas of what home should be and what it should feel like, but we are not quite sure. So what can end up happening is we struggle with these feelings of displacement. And these feelings of displacement can trigger in us desires that cause us to go down the wrong paths, to take the wrong road in our search for this sense of place, in our search for home, in our home where life makes sense and the dots connect. But what can happen to us is we can lose our way, and we can become more discontented, we can become more confused. We can collect addictions along the way, and we can end up with a deep sense of disillusionment. But we all long for that proper dwelling, that safe haven, and as I said, that sense of place. Now as individuals I am not talking about a home like a Japanese tea house or a tiny home or an ocean front property. I am talking about this existential longing that we have, this deep rooted built in desire for something more, this sense that we belong to something great out there. And as believers we would say that we were wired by God for relationship. Page 1 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

2 And so a homecoming then is not arriving at some physical structure; rather the homecoming is highly relational, it is deeply impacting, and it is life transformative. And today we are coming to a passage in Luke Chapter 15 where we are going to see a wonderful homecoming. In fact I invite you to turn to the book of Luke, and as you are turning there, let me go ahead and just familiarize you with where we are. Let s get situated in this passage of Luke Chapter 15. This passage is comprised of three different parables. We learn about the lost sheep, and the lost coin, and then finally the lost son. It is a chapter about lost-ness. It is a passage where we see that the thing that is lost is pursued, whereas the shepherd pursues the sheep and the person pursues the coin. And in today s message we will see how the father pursues the son. When we think about this idea of the prodigal son, we want to understand that it is a parable. And as I said last week, it has been often said that a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. This isn t a historical story that took place; it is a historical illustration that Jesus shared. And the audience in this particular chapter is the Scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus is ministering to people, and the Scribes and the Pharisees are thinking that He hangs out with sinners. See, it was the religious people that struggled with Jesus. Jesus was accused of being a drunkard, of being a glutton, and of hanging out with sinners. It was the religious people that said that, and in this particular parable Jesus shares this story about a younger brother, a compassionate father, and an older brother. Now the younger brother represents the sinners that Jesus hangs out with. The older brother represents the Pharisees, the religious types, the entitled people that reject other people and that always feel better than others. They look down upon others, feeling they are superior. And then the compassionate father is the one who we are to look to. As we talked about last week we can see that the younger brother would represent license. He just goes off and does whatever he wants to do until he ends up in a pigpen. The older brother represents legalism. He too misunderstands the gospel. The gospel isn t an antinomian, with no law, but neither is it just keeping the law, as the elder brother believed, but rather the compassionate father would pave the way. And as we think about this parable we remember how this younger brother went to the father and asked for his inheritance early. We talked about how it would be unthinkable to go to a father in that culture and ask to cash out while the father was still living. To do so would be basically saying, I wish you were dead, because he wanted what his father s hand could provide, but he did not want the father s heart. He was not interested in a relationship; rather he was interested in having his own way. Page 2 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

3 The younger brother was anti-authority, he was rebellious, he was strong willed, and some of the features of this young individual needed to be broken down. So the father gave him what he asked for. And the younger son took the inheritance and went off to a distant land. I shared what it must have felt like for the father to see his son go away, while the son would happily go away thinking he was finally our from under the influence of his father. He thought he would go and just live it up. But what happens? The son parties it up, he spends all his money and before you know it he ends up with nothing. I shared that the word prodigal means reckless. And the son was reckless with his inheritance, he wasted it, he squandered it. As a result when he lost everything he ends up in a pigpen. He had to look for a job. Now it was unthinkable that a Jewish individual would have to take care of pigs, because pigs were considered unclean to the Jews. So he is literally on skid road now. He has bottomed out. He is now at a place where he realizes even the pigs are being fed while he is being treated worse than the pigs. So he makes kind of this inner sermon up for his return to his father. I will go home, and I will say that I have sinned. I am no longer worthy to be called your son, just let me be your servant. And then I will work to pay it all back. Repentance begins to kick in for the son, but it is sort of a misinformed repentance. It is good that he was ready to go back and apologize, but he still doesn t get the gospel. What he wants to do is go from license and just living it up, to trying to become like his older brother, this rule keeper, who just does the right thing. He just wants to become this duty follower who is going to appease his father. But he is going to learn something very powerful. Now with that context in mind, we are ready to jump in and learn about this wonderful homecoming that is about to take place. So let s begin with verse 20 of Luke Chapter 15. And he arose. Now I just love that, and I hope you do too. He is in a pigpen, he is filthy, dirty and a mess. He went away rich, he went away full of pride, he went away unbroken, feeling like he could conquer the world, feeling like he had it all figured out. He went away well dressed and overly assured of himself, but now he will return home broke, humble, and bowed down with shame. He is hungry, filthy, ashamed and even disillusioned. Nevertheless, He arose. Now he has decided not to stay there in that pigpen, he is going to head back home. He was going to go back home and become a servant. And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, the father saw him. You can almost picture the father always on the lookout for the son, hoping he will be back at some point. Hoping he doesn t destroy himself completely. You almost can picture the father with these binoculars just looking out day after day. Page 3 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

4 And the way that these cultures would live is they would live in cities together, really packed in tightly. There would be all these little houses in a community and there would be like a pathway that would lead out from all these houses. Everyone would use this single pathway to make their way out of the village or the community that they lived in. And here this prodigal son is returning home. His heart is restless, he is beat up. Saint Augustine once said, Our hearts are basically restless until they find rest in God. He was saying the heart is restless until it finds its maker. And as long as we try to live apart from our maker, apart from our creator, trying to make sense of life on our own, life will never really make sense, we will never feel complete. There will always be something missing. There will be this deep inner haunting, this what if I missed it kind of sensation. Continuing in verse 20 it says: But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion. So the father first sees him and then he feels compassion. The root word for this particular word compassion literally means a word that means innards. It means that the father felt in his innards, he could feel it in his intestines. Can you imagine the father looking out at his son returning and remembering how the last time he saw his son he only saw his back walking away with his chin in the air, prideful and arrogant. See the son left rejecting the father. The son left after getting his inheritance, rejecting his home and going away. But the father never rejected the son. And now as the son comes back the father is looking out like someone hoping to catch the first sight of a ship returning from sea. And the father sees not the back of his son, but he sees his son coming back not in wealthy clothes, but in rags and in poverty. The son s head is probably hanging down in sorrow. And the father feels compassion in his innards. He has intestinal pain and he agonizes. Maybe some of you as parents know what it feels like to see a child go astray and you can resonate, you can relate with that feeling in your innards in a visceral way as you long to see your child have an ah-ha moment. As you long to see teach-ability, humility, or brokenness being formed in your child. Let s read verse 20 again: But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion. So this is while the son was still a long way off. Maybe you would think the father would just let the son continue to walk on his walk of shame for a while. Maybe you would think the father would be thinking the son got what he deserved. Maybe you would think the father would stick his head out the door and yell, You sure you want to come back here, boy? Is this really the place you want to be? Maybe the father would want to guilt him a little bit longer. No, the father was stirred in his innards, he was broken and he desired to have his son home. He wanted to rescue him from his shame. He wanted to heal him with his Page 4 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

5 love. See many people have this false view of God, like they picture Him as this great God up in Heaven who is malevolent and He is looking to bust us. They picture Him as sort of a heavenly policeman who is always looking to write out citations. Many almost picture Him sometimes as having a replicated voodoo doll of us with Him delighting in sticking pins in us. They just get this view of Him. But that s not the God we need to see. Let s pause for a moment and understand our context. The son has left the pigpen from the distant country. He is emaciated, he is starving and he is filthy. He smells like manure after hanging out with the pigs. But he is making his way back home. In this particular community there are some things that we need to understand about how Jewish culture would work. It helps us to make a proper interpretation by situating ourselves in the text. When we think about what is taking place, we need to understand these insights that I am going to share with you. These were drawn from Kenneth E. Bailey, who is a great scholar and who has influenced many people as it relates to this particular passage, largely because of his experience of living in the Middle East. He brings incredible, rich insight to this passage. One of the things that he talks about is this ceremony known as the Kezazah Ceremony. It is spelled K-e-z-a-z-a-h. Now what is the Kezazah Ceremony? This would be a ceremony that a community, or a village would have together. When someone was a prodigal, when they rejected the principles of their community, and they left home, and then they would have lost all of their possessions to the Gentiles, here is what would have taken place. When the son would be returning after such waste, the community would see the son and they would have a ceremony known as the Kezazah Ceremony. This ceremony would be to take some pottery and break it into pieces. It symbolized what they were showing to the person returning. They were broken off from the community. They were no longer in community with them. And they would shame the individual trying to return, and they would try to make this person feel utterly and completely empty. And this would take place on the outskirts of the village before the individual could make his way into the housing district. Now with that in mind, picture what is taking place here. The son has lost all of his inheritance to the Gentiles, he is making his way back home, and the father sees him from a distance. And as if to protect his son from going through the Kezazah Ceremony, to protect him, what does the father do? Notice in verse 20 it says the father had compassion and he ran to his son. The father ran to him. Why? It was to beat the community to his son in order to show the son that he was not rejected, to show the son he would heal his shame, to tell the son he could walk back home with him. Page 5 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

6 Isn t that beautiful? So he runs out ahead of the community who would have broken the pottery to symbolize the son was broken off from the community. The father wants his son to know he can come home. Now with that kind of context, what we want to do is look at what the father did. He sees his son a long way off, and feels compassion in his innards. Have you ever known a friend or seen someone that just really looks like they have been through a wringer? When you can see all the pain and anguish that has happened to that individual it sometimes helps us to have compassion for them. And this verse says the father, ran to his son and he embraced him and kissed him. Folks, this is so loaded for a number of reasons. First of all, the father ran. He was the dignitary of his house as the father. And older men in Jewish culture did not run. It is the same way still in the Middle Eastern culture. Why? It is because in order to run they would have to take the long robe that they are wearing and they would have to tie it up in order to run. And the legs would be exposed which would look shameful. And not only that, but it would look totally absurd for an older person to be doing that. So here is this father figure, this royal figure, and he takes his robe and he ties it up, and now you see the father running through the village to the outskirts, exposing the nakedness of his legs. No doubt it would have drawn the attention of the surrounding community. And the way the word would pass in a village, or in a culture, is if you lived at one point someone would say, Hey the father is running. And then the next person would pass it to the next person and the next person. Word would travel very fast in that culture. But here this father exposes himself, and it would have looked shameful for an older person to do this. Try and picture what is happening here. The father was willing to lose his dignity for his son. Can t you see the father running toward the son and the son looking up to see his father coming, and he probably thinks, Uh oh, dad is ticked. His is running at me. But then he probably heard his father shouting, My son, my son, my son, as he ran toward him welcoming him home. Now the words to run is literally referring to racing. It is a technical term for a foot race. So picture this father looking like he is in a foot race, he is running as fast as he can. Now some think this is just a passage on lost-ness, of the son finding his father, but now with an understanding of the Kezazah Ceremony, and with an understanding of the father running, what we see is the father finds the son first. The father seeks the son. The father has been on the lookout for the son. The father pursues the son and it is a beautiful picture. The father embraces his son and he kisses him. Remember the father is the one who was rejected, he knew his son had wished him dead so he could have his inheritance, but now the father becomes the wounded healer. The father in reckless grace embraces Page 6 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

7 and kisses his son and welcomes him home. And as Timothy Keller refers to this story it is the story of the prodigal father, because the father is the reckless one. His grace is reckless. He lavishly bestows grace upon someone without making him pay in return. It may seem like a foolish investment, but he graciously and recklessly embraces the son. And it is a beautiful picture of the kind of heart that God has for humanity. We get a beautiful picture of the kind of heart that God has for you and for me, and as it has been said many times before, the great hound of Heaven pursues those whom He has created. The Scriptures contain 1,189 chapters of God pursuing His creation, and ultimately God incarnated Himself in the person of Jesus Christ to die on a cross in our place for our sins. Can t you see the son rejoicing in his father s embrace. If you have ever blown it deeply, if you have ever really just felt dirty and undone, when someone can just embrace you and tell you it s okay, it can go a long way. Because the truth of the matter is, folks, we are all prodigals in ways, we are all broken people, we are all struggling and wrestling with how to live here. We all can get wracked with weird emotions, filled with thoughts that disturb us, but the goal for us all is to learn to be like the compassionate father, loving and gracious. The temptation, if we are not careful, is to live in the extremes, either recklessly living like the younger brother, or walking around self-righteously, feeling entitled, looking down on others like the older brother. Here we see the compassionate father embracing his son and kissing him. And this is still the custom in certain Middle Eastern cultures to see men kiss other men. It is like a welcome or a greeting. Have you ever lost something that was valuable to you and later to find it? Remember the joy you felt in that moment? Years ago Heather and I had a boxer named Preacher. We lost Preacher and we were searching everywhere for him. We were driving around yelling for him, and probably all the people from churches in the area were thinking we really needed a preacher. We looked and we looked and we were sure he had gotten lost never to be found again. And I will never forget the sensation that I felt after driving around to pull back in our driveway and see from a distance there was Preacher. We had been shouting for him everywhere, and now here he was. And Heather and I and Preacher all started running toward each other. And we embraced him. I had compassion for him in my innards, folks. Preacher had been lost and now he was found, so we celebrated. It was quite the moment. Let s look at verse 21 and it says, And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf and kill it, Page 7 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

8 and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to celebrate. So the son gets a party. The father celebrated his return. The father exalts in the fact that his son is back home. And you have to love that. This is something powerful. We need to realize that our reactions to people s shame really matters. When someone acknowledges that they have messed up, be the type that heals, be the type that doesn t want to rub it in, but rather see it rubbed out. A lot of times when someone is admitting their wrong, what we want to do is rub their face in it. If we are honest we often want people to pay a certain price. We often want to raise the standard if someone hurts us. We feel as if they need to recompense, they need to pay. And as we are going to see next week, that certainly is the older brother s mentality. Not so the compassionate father. The compassionate father loves his son. He doesn t shame him, he doesn t reject him. This son thought return meant enslavement, rejection and shame. Instead he gets son-ship acceptance and unconditional love. Not only that, the son had rehearsed his speech back in verses 18 and 19 where he said, I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heave and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. But the son couldn t even finish his speech to his father. The father heard part of his confession, and then he stopped him. He tells his servants to put a robe on him. What robe would this be? Well, scholars believe it would be the father s robe. Can t you picture the servants covering this son in his father s robe? It was the father s way of protection. And the father also said to put some sandals on his feet. Slaves were the ones who had bare feet. Obviously the son came back needing some shoes. The father did not want the son to appear to be a slave, the sandals represented that he was his son. And then the father told the servants to put a ring on his finger. The signet ring would be like a stamp of one s authority. In other words, what the father was doing was restoring the son to the community. He was restoring him to the household. He was giving him a sense of place again as his son, not as a servant, as a person who was graciously given God s grace, not by hard earned effort. This is the kind of father that we serve. This is the kind of God that loves us. And to top everything off, what does the father do? He tells his servants to kill a fatted calf, the kind of calf that was reserved for special occasions. This was a special occasion so the father wanted a fatted calf to eat and for them to celebrate his son s return. And the father says, For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. The son is home, and the father knew that the son had learned his lesson. Page 8 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

9 Talk about a homecoming; undoubtedly his one was marked by music and dancing. I think about Bill Lord who recently came on our elder team. He had spent time in Vietnam. And we all know how horrific that experience would have been for those young men to come back from war, often to be greeted with just harshness by many people. Bill shared that he left honorably, he returned honorably, but when he landed back in the United States one of the first things that happened was someone spit in his face. And this was after risking death fighting for his country in Vietnam. He went through rejection by many of his own people. Unlike that spit in the face that happened to Bill, in this story the son left dishonorably, returned disillusioned and the father, far from spitting in his face, he kisses his face. The father was compassionate to his son. A book that has influenced me big time, folks, is called The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen. And I highly recommend this book if you ever need counseling. I don t think you have to wait until your heart s messed up. I would rather spend one day a year with a counselor than go to a conference every year, because that counselor can personalize some heart coaching and help us to understand some weaknesses or some things that are getting shady in our hearts. To help us to understand where we can grow, and help us with some of the areas that we may struggle with. I can tell you now that this book was critical because one of my big weaknesses in life is I struggle with rejection issues. I have struggled with it my whole life. It is one of those things that the counselor detected and he asked me why I struggled with rejection. Every person has insecurities. I remember Chip Ingram showing up at Dallas Seminary when he was going to teach this preaching class. He started off by saying, I just want you all to know that I am incredibly insecure. What he was trying to do was to set the pattern for vulnerability. He went on to say, But so are you. And the thing is it is an umbrella term and each of our insecurities show up in different ways. Mine shows up with a fear of rejection. Why? It is because I was the prodigal and that is the way that I lived. I always felt like people were putting a standard on me and that I had to do this and I had to do that and I had to perform this way. And I can still sense that standard sometimes being put upon me and it makes me close up. I will isolate because I might not know how to deal with that kind of situation in my life. What ends up happening is the older brother and the younger brother can sometimes struggle together because the older brother wants the person to pay, the younger brother is just a disaster and a mess and that sort of combo can be hard. But the truth is there are things they can learn from each other. And there are beautiful things that can be taught when everybody keeps their eye on the compassionate father. When I went to the counselor years ago this guy had me read Henri Nouwen s book. Nouwen was a Harvard professor until he left Harvard to begin taking care of elderly people that were sick and at the last of their life. And he would love on them. Page 9 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

10 Nouwen was moved by a painting by Rembrandt on the prodigal son s return. He spent time in the museum just staring at this painting. The counselor wanted me to read the book and then familiarize myself with Rembrandt s painting. And as I looked at this painting, I would find myself trying to figure out what it means to be welcomed home by a father. And to make sure that I realized that my true identity is in the father, not in what the older brother thinks of me, not in what these servants think of me, but learning to find that inner sense of healing. Because if we are not careful what we do is we go through life trying to prove ourself to others. And some of the times we will try to prove ourselves to people that will never love us with the unexplainable love of God. Or we will try to find that sense of acceptance, that sense of place. And Nouwen beautifully walks in this book through some of the observations that he discovered. For example in Rembrandt s painting, notice the boy returns and his head is shaved. It is as if he has just been humbled, he no longer has his hair. Notice he is no longer in robes of royalty; rather he is in rags. And notice his feet. One of his sandals is completely worn out, the other foot is barefoot. He is coming back utterly impoverished. And notice the broken heart of the compassionate father as he embraces his son ever so sweetly and ever so softly. Notice the son resting his heart against the chest of the father, the father who loves him, the father who cares about him. Page 10 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

11 But then notice the older brother feeling entitled. We are going to learn about this individual next week. In the painting he is standing there looking disturbed. Why is my brother getting this kind of treatment? Look at all that I have done. And the older brother s mentality is he doesn t know how to celebrate the younger brother. He feels entitled, that he is the one who is worthy of being celebrated, and he just looks down at the younger brother with disdain. Just look at him, and I m the one who has done all the hard work. I have faithfully served, and he goes and wastes his all, and now he gets a party? And you can see some of the people faintly in the background which would have been some of the servants of the household. We are going to spend some more time with this painting, folks, but I want us to stop for a moment and just look at this painting. And as we look at it I want us to ask ourselves where we see ourselves in this painting. Are we the prodigal that is returning home needing to go to God and confess to Him? Because that is the kind of God we have who welcomes us. He reaches out to us. He loves us. He leans into us. Are we broken? Have we come to the end of ourself? Or are we not even in the painting? Are we still out in a distant country living it up? Maybe we are like that older brother sitting around in the church being rule keepers, being judgmental, overly harsh, unforgiving, having a spirit of entitlement. Ultimately, folks, where we want to arrive, and we are going to develop this more next week, we should want to be like the compassionate father in the way that we treat others. Imagine what that would do for our relationships with people, in our marriages, in our relationship with our children and our parents, if we could realize that God wants us to learn to become like Him. You see we can never forgive in life if we have never been hurt. And we can t be like Jesus unless we learn to forgive. We can t forgive without being hurt, so God allows us to hurt sometimes so that we can become like Him, and so that we can learn how to deal with rejection issues and shame issues. So in consideration then of this passage we have been discussing, let me just draw out a few applications as we close. First of all if you have been hurt by someone s reckless words or actions, will you ask God to help you model the compassion, grace and love as depicted by the compassionate father in this parable? Ask God to help you. And the way that we do that is we see everyone before a cross. We realize that we are all just broken, fallen, fleshly, messed up, tweaked people that desperately need Jesus. I know that I do, and I am pretty sure we all do. Right? Secondly, as long as our idea of God is one who is harsh and petty and eager to judge, lacking in forgiveness and fuming at us all the time, we will struggle to experience true spiritual intimacy with Him. And worse yet, we will grow to resent God. See many Page 11 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

12 people have this idea that God just sits up there with checks and balances, who just does constant record keeping on us. This isn t to say that there won t be judgment, this isn t to say that God doesn t hold things in account, but it is to say that in Jesus our sins are forgiven, that He paid for our sins, that we look to Him for righteousness. And so I would say when we think about God, and have this vision of Him, what we should want to do is experience the fact that God is a gracious God, that He is a compassionate father. It could be possible that one of the reasons that you might feel alienated from God is because you have a warped picture of Him. We have to be careful as parents sometimes that we don t paint a picture of a legalistic God. I know with our kids there have been times when I told them we are going to show grace right now, because this is what grace looks like, and then there s other times when they are busted, because this is want it looks like to see consequences for their actions. So it can be a confusing kind of relationship at times. But we are just flawed and we need to look to God. Finally, no matter how much of a mess you have made of your life, you can count on this: There is no place beyond the reach of God s reckless grace, folks, and that is so beautiful. There is no place, no matter how far off in a distant country you are, you are not too far out of reach from God. God came on a rescue mission in the person of Jesus Christ to save us from ourselves. Henri Nouwen said these wonderful statements in his book: Although claiming my identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about His love as conditional, and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will truly be welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my son-ship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, grace is always greater. Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the Son. Ladies and gentlemen, I have to say, like the compassionate father who kept an eye out and ran out to the edge of the city, leaving his place of comfort, shaming himself by exposing himself, so too we see in this parable a picture of the gospel where Jesus Christ left His place of comfort. He ran to meet us in this world that we live in. He exposed himself and He took upon Himself our shame on a cross for us. And our sins, our debt, was laid upon Him, and He became the substitute for us. What happens to us when we place our faith in Him, believing that He died in our place, we don t get a long flowing robe; rather we get the robe of His perfect righteousness. We are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus because He took upon Himself our sin on a cross. And when we Page 12 of 13 pages 12/11/2016

13 believe upon Him we get the robe of righteousness. When God sees us He sees us as white as snow. God doesn t shame us, He doesn t guilt us; rather He covers us with grace. That is the good news of the gospel. We are loved with an ineffable love b a God who pursues us. So folks, the way home is not by means of the yellow brick road, nor is it by means of clicking together those ruby red slippers three times. The way home is relational through Jesus who said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Let s pray. Father, thank you for another opportunity to teach your word. I pray that these words will mean something deep to all of us. May we all return home. If anyone here today has never met you may they in the quietness of their heart say: Jesus, forgive me for my sins. Thank you for loving me and caring for me. I ask you to be my Lord and Savior. In Jesus name. Amen. The preceding transcript was completed using raw audio recordings. As much as possible, it includes the actual words of the message with minor grammatical changes and editorial clarifications to provide context. Hebrew and Greek words are spelled using Google Translator and the actual spelling may be different in some cases. Page 13 of 13 pages 12/11/2016