The Ones You Didn't Hear

Had some fun this past Sunday with the message but also made me realize the ones I didn't get to teach on would make for some good blog leftovers!  So enjoy!

Thoughts on the prodigal son:

Amazing, isn’t it?  The Father could have said “you are dead to me as I was to you” and disowned him.  He could have punished him and made him work his way back to his good graces.  But instead the father does the imaginable- he runs to greet the son!  He puts his finest robe on him, bestows high symbols of honor on him by giving him a ring and a robe, and kills the choicest animal to start off a party of all parties!  There’s no one in the audience hearing Jesus tell this story who would have expected this outcome.  No one.  To accept back the son was a surprise in and of itself, but to see the father go all out in his love and acceptance would truly have been scandalous.  Unexpected and undeserved.

And yet, that is exactly how God’s love works- it is scandalous, it is unexpected, and it is underserved.  In God’s eyes, it matters not what we have done- what matters is that we come back.  When you are searching for something or someone that is lost, you do not care about the reason it is lost.  You simply care about finding it.  For those of us here this morning who perhaps would say that you are not close to God, I want to assure you it does not matter what you have done, it does not matter why you decided to walk away from God.  God could give a rip about the reasons you’ve turned away.  What matters most is that he wants you to come back, and if you do, what you’ll discover is celebration- not condemnation.