Luke 15
11 Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. 13 And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. 14 But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. 15 Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.
17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”’
20 “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring[b] out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; 24 for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.
25 “Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’
28 “But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. 29 So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. 30 But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’
31 “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. 32 It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’”
Hello and happy Father’s day. I hope all you dads got breakfast in bed today and that you were at least offered the chance to not come to church today but to go off fishing or golfing.
On father’s day, Little Eddie came several minutes late to Sunday School, and the teacher asked why he was late. He said, "I wanted to go fishing, but my dad wouldn't let me, so we argued, and that's why I'm late." The teacher said, "Good for your father! Did he explain to you WHY you needed to come to church instead of going fishing on a Sunday morning?" "Yes ma'am," replied the boy. "He said there weren't enough worms for both of us."
Charles Wadsworth wrote that By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
Today’s sermon is not only a little about father’s day, but it is about our Father, the one whose title we men are so privileged to bear. There is one, most holy and loving and he carries Father as one of his descriptive titles, yet, so do we men, we have the distinct and holy honor of being called by the same name. Father.
I’m not going to give you any advice on being a father. When I was young and didn’t have any kids, I preached a sermon entitled, “Rules for raising Children”. After I had three sons, I preached the same sermon again only I changed the title to “Suggestions for Raising Children”. When my sons became teenagers, well I stopped preaching on that subject altogether.
But the truth about fathers, is that there are all kinds. All fathers are not loving, kind, and wise. There are mean ones. There are cruel ones. There are fathers who simply aren’t there and never were. There are fathers who are there but spend little to no time with their children. Many studies have been done on this and though they don’t agree, the average comes out to be less than 15 minutes a day. Back in the 70’s Harry Chapin wrote a song entitled “Cat’s in the Cradle”, remember it? In it, a boy grows up and his father never has any time for him and at the end of the song, the father finally has time, but guess what, the boy, who is now a man, doesn’t.
These things don’t happen because fathers do them on purpose. The important things of Life just generally have a tendency to steal us away from the really important things of life. Work is important. Mowing the lawn needs to be done. Chores need to be done. People get tired. Before you know it, the day, the week, the year are all used up and you haven’t gotten half done what you wanted to get done. And all of a sudden time has slipped away and those little kids are all grown up. Children become men and women in the blink of an eye.
Well, dads, here’s the good and the bad part. We get to bear a title that is the most holy name in the world, Father. We pray to him at least once a week. We give thanks to him at meals. He gave us our world, our lives, everything. Jesus called him the Jewish equivalent of “Daddy” and encouraged us to do so as well. Every time we hear our name, it can be a reminder that God is our Father. That’s the good part. The incredibly responsible and terrible part, is that people form their notion of God, their father by the personality and life of their earthly father. If a father didn’t really seem to care, then that is how his children will see God. Someone who doesn’t really care. If a father is judgemental and critical, then that is how his children will see God, judgmental and critical and difficult to please. You see where this is going, don’t you? Being a father is that important. That’s why it’s important to be a good father, worth looking up to. A Father that looks to the role model of all fathers for his example.
And don’t ever give up being a father either. Being a Father is available to you no matter what age you are. Studies show that people, even grown up ones, continue to need and desire a father in their lives, just in different ways. It may be very difficult and very different from when kids were toddlers but there are always opportunities to be dad.
How do kids view fathers. Well, two kids were walking home from Sunday school talking about that day’s lesson.
‘So do you believe all that stuff about the devil that our teacher was telling us today?” one says to the other.
“Ah, You know how it is,” came the reply. “It’ll be just like Santa Claus and turn out to be our dads all along.”
When dads were asked what they wanted for father’s day, here’s what they came up with for a top ten list:
# 10: Having His Car Professionally Washed, Waxed & Detailed.
# 9: Weekend Trip To Las Vegas, Reno, or Atlantic City!
# 8: A Weekend Away With The Wife without the kids
# 7: A Brand New Set Of "NICE" Golf Clubs.
#6: Fishing, Hunting or Road Trip With His Buddies.
#5: A Full Body Massage.
#4: A Monthly Bacon Club Membership.
#3: .[I’ll have to skip number three because it’s not appropriate for this setting.]
#2: New England Patriot’s season tickets
#1: Tickets To The World Series.
Today’s scripture is about a father. Today’s scripture answers the question: What do you give God, Our Father, for father’s day? That’s probably a question you haven’t considered but still, what do you get our father, on father’s day? He’s got everything. The universe and all this is in it is His.
Except for one thing. There is one thing that God refuses to simply claim as his and today’s story beautifully illustrates his dilemma. It is the dilemma of being a Father. This story is told as the third and completing parable, illustrating how God views people who are outside of the kingdom walls. No matter how you read the scriptures, you have to deal with the language it uses to tell us that there are people who are lost. Jesus language could not be any plainer that there are people that God is seeking out because they are not part of the family, they are lost sheep, they are coins that have fallen through the floor boards. These three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son make it very clear what God’s attitude is towards these people: God loves them and wants them to be found. But, even though He will look for them, he will search high and low for them, he will wait with a longing, loving heart, the one thing God will not do, is force them to be a part of his kingdom.
In this story, God is the loving Father, the permissive and generous Father who gives to His son what he requests in order to go and make his way off the farm. The younger son is tired of being on the farm. He’s tired of the dirt and the toil and he’s pretty certain there’s a better way. I think we can assume that he is tired of having to deal with his older brother. Like a lot of young men, he wants to go off and experience life. He knows there are other places to see, people to meet, and so he goes to his father and demands his inheritance in order to fund these experiences. Here’s where Jesus adds something quite new and different: the father gives him his inheritance. There’s nothing cultural here. If you are surprised by this, you should be. Usually one only gets an inheritance when someone dies and ancient Jewish culture was no different. To be given the inheritance early was outrageous. It was a step way outside of the norm but still, it is what the Father does. It is totally a picture of what God does with us. He gives us everything we need to go and do what we want. He gives us cars, he gives us food, he gives us homes. All the wealth we need to live whatever kind of life we want. All the tools and the resources and the skills we need to get ourselves into some serious trouble. He gave us the energy of the atom and we can kill and destroy with it or we can light our homes with it. He gave us money and material wealth and we can do good with it, helping our friends and neighbors or we can be greedy with it and hoard it or we can spend it on sinful things. He gave us alcohol that can enhance our social times or leave us addicted and vomiting in the gutter. It’s almost as if God says, “You want to live outside of my house and in a faraway place, you can. I won’t stop you. You are free to live apart from me. You are free to choose your own way. Oh, and you can use all the resources of the world, my world, to live this life that you have chosen. I will not force you to live your life with me.” He lets us go and then he waits.
God waits. But you know he does more than wait. He waits and he watches. He’s constantly looking down that very same road that we used to walk away from Him. We think we have left him behind and that we have moved on to bigger and better things. But these things will not answer. They will not satisfy. They work for a season but then they wear out. All these things will eventually leave us wanting. Now you may say to yourself, “I’m not like that. That kid went off the deep end and I never have.” But I say to you, we do not have to be total degenerates. Finding ourselves in a foreign land, far from God our Father can easily happen through simple neglect. The important things of life have a tendency to tear us away from the really important things of life. However, it happens, I believe that we all end up in a place where we realize that we are as far away from God as we could possibly be. A place where our pride is gone, eaten away by excess and neglect, when we are at the end of our resources, when we have used up what was given to us, and there is nowhere else for us to go. When we have reached that place where we know for real and for certain that God has no reason to want us in His kingdom, never mind consider us as one of his children. It is there and only there that we can come to even a partial understanding of the love that the Father has for us. Because He still loves us and wants us to return home. What does God want this Father’s Day? He wants you. He wants the gift of us. He’s got all the neckties he will ever need. He wants to look up and see you from where he is watching. And when he sees you from a long way off coming up that road and God can see a long way, the most surprising thing in the world is going to happen. He’s going to drop whatever he’s doing and He’s going to run to meet you. His heart will be so full with joy that he will not be able to contain himself and He will run.
[Play Song, “When God Ran]
