Come On Home
Luke
15:20
This brief message 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!
Grace Baptist Church of Danville - Grace For
Today Radio Message #728
2734 Old Stanford Road -
Danville, Kentucky 40422-9438
Donald S. Fortner, Pastor -Telephone 606-236-8235 - Email grace@mis.net