Come On Home

Luke 15:20

This brief article is intended specifically to tug at the hearts of you who are yet without Christ, especially you who have sinned so grievously and hardened your hearts so obstinately that you fear you may not be welcome at the throne of grace, that you may not be admitted into the Father’s house. Read the story of the prodigal son one more time (Luke 15:11-24), asking God the Holy Spirit to speak to you by it. In the twentieth verse of Luke 15, we see how the father in the parable received his wayward son when he came home.

This text in Holy Scripture stands out to me like a neon sign over the gates of glory to poor, needy sinners, weary, heavy laden souls, saying to all who need mercy, “Come on home!”

            The verse begins with a very little word, a three letter conjunction – “And.” It one of those words that is often passed over lightly by readers and seldom commented upon by expositors. But this little, three letter word is very important. This word, “And,” at the beginning of this verse takes us back to all that has gone before. It is a connecting word, connecting this event with everything else in the story.

It relates this event to the prodigal’s rebellion, his riotous living, and his time in the hog pin of religious legalism. He connects his coming to himself and his resolution to return to his father in humble repentance, with his actual home coming. The fact is, all that went before was necessary to the scene now before us.

            “He arose, and came to his father.” – Here is a poor, destitute, penniless, dirty, hungry boy (A grown man, yes, but still his father’s boy!) coming home. I can almost see him. I know what is going through his mind. His steps are, everyone of them, heavy, heavy steps, hesitating. He is coming home, because he simply has to. He’s got no where else to go, no one else to turn to. He goes along the way in utter humiliation. The nearer he gets home, the lower his head hangs. He dares not lift his eyes. He dares not rush through the gate. He dares not run up and grab his father around the neck, like a boy might who was returning from war. This boy was returning from the bars and brothels of the world, where he had wasted everything his father had given him. He is returning from the house of his father’s most implacable enemy, whose dungeons of legality he chose in preference to his father’s palace of mercy in his state of pride and rebellion.

            That is what I see in the prodigal. But the text speaks of his father, too. There I see him, the prodigal’s father, our Father, the God of all mercy, rushing from his great and glorious throne, to receive the poor sinner! "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Will you hear the lesson of the parable? -- Sinners are always welcome at the throne of grace. Come on home. Come and welcome

Don Fortner