Hannah: A Model of Faith

May 12, 2019                   NOTES NOT EDITED

Hannah:  A Model of Faith

1Samuel 1:1-2:11

SIS—Hannah is just one of many women in the Bible who is a model of great faith for all people of faith—man or woman.

Today is Mother’s Day.  We honor the second-best gift God has ever given to the world.  I’d like for us to take just a moment to recall how much we have learned from our mothers.  Our mother’s taught us:

1. RELIGION. "You'd better pray that will come out of the carpet."
2. TIME TRAVEL. "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"
3. PLANNING. "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."
4.  CONTORTIONISM. "Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"
5.  WEATHER. "This room of yours looks as if a tornado hit it!”
6.  JUSTICE. "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you".
7.  CONFUSION. "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me.

None of us would be here today without our mothers.  Whatever faults they may have had, we still own them for our lives.  One mother in the Bible, and there are many, displays five characteristics every Christian should demonstrate in our lives.

1.  Great Mothers have real PROBLEMS (1:1-8)

Hannah is a Bible hero.  Like all Biblical heroes, she had problems.  The Bible never whitewashes the lives of its heroes.  Noah was a drunk, Moses had anger issues, Rahab was a prostitute, and Hannah was a “barren woman.”  The Bible is the real story of God dealing with real people facing real struggles.  Hannah is one such hero.

Hannah was one of Elkanah’s two wives.  The portrayal of Elkanah in the Bible is that of a “devoutly religious, God-fearing man.”  Many of the characters during the time of the judges, including kings and priests, were moral failures.  Verse 3 says this of Elkanah:

³ This man would go up from his town every year to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts at Shiloh.

Shiloh was the center for Israelite worship before Jerusalem was established as the Holy City years after this time.  Elkanah was a devout, God-fearing man but he was not perfect.  He had two wives.  Hannah is mentioned first so she was probably Elkanah’s first wife.  Polygamy was one of the many sins that plagued Israel in the O.T. It was used to gain an heir when a wife was wife was barren or childless.  But, make no mistake about it—God’s design for marriage from the beginning was “one man, one woman for a lifetime.”  The N.T. unequivocally denounces polygamy (Mt. 19:4-5; 1Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6 to name a few places).  Elkanah had faith but it was not perfect faith by any means.  He tried to “help God out” by taking a second, fertile wife.  This gave him a divided family.  Elkanah is yet another example of a Bible hero that was far from faultless. 

Hannah had a big problem.  Apart from sharing a husband with a a nagging, hurtful second wife, Hannah was childless.  This meant that she was considered, “damaged goods,” and was looked down upon by society as demonstrated by the actions of her “rival wife,” Peninnah.  Verse 6 says,

⁶ Her rival would taunt her severely just to provoke her, because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving.

Motherhood is a highly esteemed and greatly valued station in life, even in our day—though motherhood, gender, and marriage are under attack today.  The fact that we have a special holiday to honor motherhood speaks to the fact of the importance of this experience in life.  Hannah had not experienced the blessing of motherhood.

There are more than a few women that desperately want to bear children but cannot.  I’m sure such women—perhaps you are one such woman here this morning—feel that “Mother’s Day” is a cruel joke.  I’m sure Hannah would have felt that way.  So heavy was this burden upon Hannah that verse 10 says,

¹⁰ Deeply hurt, Hannah prayed to the Lord
and wept with many tears.

When we experience problems, such as Hannah’s bareness or any number of challenges in life, we tend to think that God has forgotten us.  Or worse, we feel that God is punishing, even ridiculing us.  Many atheists assert that with so much evil and suffering and problems in this world there could not possibly be a god—and especially not the All-loving, All-powerful God of the Bible.

Regardless of the theological issues of evil in our world, it is clear to all of us, that all people have problems—Hannah was no different.  So, if you are experiencing great troubles, trials, and problems in life, then you just might be a Bible hero like Hannah.  People of faith have real problems.

2.  Great Mothers pray fervent PRAYERS (1:9-18)

Elkanah did what many of us do when faced with problems—we take action to help God out.  While we must always be looking for ways to put ourselves in a place where God can bless us, acting too quickly without fervent praying always makes things worse.  I have explained this many times over the years—moving forward without first praying to receive God’s direction never works out well.

Hannah took the right approach to her problem—she prayed.  Perhaps it was motivated by desperation, but she prayed.   Hannah didn’t pray the trivial prayers we so often pray. She prayed fervently.  Fervent prayers are prayers so deep they exceed the capacity of our human language.  Her prayers were more like crying out in anguish, or as the literal translation says, “Vowing a vow,” which the HCSB translates as “pleading.”  The best prayers are often motivated by desperation.

Notice in verse 12 the description of Hannah’s praying,

¹² While she continued praying in the Lord’s presence, Eli watched her lips. ¹³ Hannah was praying silently,  and though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard. Eli thought she was drunk ¹⁴ and scolded her, “How long are you going to be drunk?  Get rid of your wine!” ¹⁵ “No, my lord,” Hannah replied. “I am a woman with a broken heart. I haven’t had any wine or beer; I’ve been pouring out my heart before the Lord.  ¹⁶ Don’t think of me as a wicked woman;  I’ve been praying from the depth of my anguish and resentment.”

People who pray fervently, as Hannah did, go to a place with God that transcends human language and exceeds human understanding.  Many who pray fervently have been accused of “being drunk,” that is, under the influence of alcohol.  When the disciples prayed themselves into the Presence of God at Pentecost, they too were accused of being “drunk.”  (Acts 2)

Fervent praying is Holy Spirit assisted praying.  In fact, being deep into God through the Holy Spirit is compared to being “drunk”:

^{Ephesians 5    18} And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless actions, but be filled by the Spirit.

We all know what it means to be “DUI,” (Driving Under the Influence)  but what we need in the church from people of faith today are those who are “PUI”—PRAYING UNDER THE SPIRIT.”

Hannah is a model for all people of faith because she “prayed fervently.”  What does it take to “express fervent prayers to God.”  Well, as I said, for one it takes “praying under the guidance and control of the Holy Spirit.”  But it takes something else to express fervent prayers.  Vs 15:

 “No, my lord . . .“I am a woman with a broken heart.

Here’s something I learned too late in life:  you will never have a real breakTHROUGH, until you have a total breakDOWN!

Why do we not see Elkanah expressing such deep and powerful prayers?  Because, he was not totally broken by the circumstances of life.  He trusted in his own ingenuity—taking a second wife—instead of trusting in God’s grace.  Hannah, on the other hand, prayed fervently because she was “totally broken by her circumstances.”  God cannot fill us with Himself until we are empty of OUR self.  It is a simple principle of fervent, effectual praying that we must first come to the end of ourselves to experience the fullness of God.

Hannah faced an insurmountable problem.  Instead of letting her circumstances go to her “feet” and send her running away in despair, she let her circumstances drive her to her knees in fervent prayer.

Hannah is a model of Christian faith through her fervent prayers.  Never underestimate the power of a praying woman—or man.

3.  Great Mothers experience God’s PROVISIONS (1:19-20)

¹⁹ The next morning Elkanah and Hannah got up early to bow in worship before the Lord. Afterward, they returned home to Ramah.  Then Elkanah was intimate with his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her.  ²⁰ After some time,  Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel,  because she said, “I requested him from the Lord.”

God will meet your needs.  Provisions are what God provides in response to our faithfulness. God will ALWAYS meet your needs with His provisions.  We are all familiar with the 23^rd Psalm.  It says,

 The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.

God is not good some of the time.  God is good all of the time! Until you understand this principle in Scripture you will never have the sense of the overwhelming satisfaction of God’s innumerable provisions.  The N.T. expresses the “promise of God’s provisions”:

^{Matthew 7    8} For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. ⁹ What man among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

From beginning to end we see God revealing Himself to us as the “One Who Provides.”  In Hebrew He is called, “Yaweh jireh,” God Who Provides.

Do you recall the story of Abraham’s test to take his only son, Isaac, and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah?  Abraham was faithful to God’s command.  But, remember, that an angel from heaven prevented Abraham from carrying out the sacrifice.  Instead, there was heard the bleating of a lamb in the thicket.  Here’s how that story ends:

^{Gen. 22:  14} And Abraham named that place The Lord Will Provide, [Yahweh yireh] so today it is said: “It will be provided on the Lord’s mountain.”

God will ALWAYS provide what you need when you need it in response to your faith and fervent prayer.  Now, that is an absolutely incredible promise and truth of His Word, but one that not many people really understand—or even believe.

God will never, and I mean never, fail to give you what you need just at the time you need it.  He is absolutely trustworthy to provide for you.  He’s not like Ralph.  A teacher was trying to help Myles with his math with a problem from real life.  The teacher said, “Suppose your friend, Ralph borrows $10 and agrees to pay you back $1 per week. After 7 weeks, how much would you have?”  Myles answered, “Nothing.”  “Nothing?” the teacher repeated somewhat disgusted.  “You sure don’t know very much about math.”  Myles replied, “No, Sir, that’s not it.  You just don’t know very much about Ralph.”  God is not like Ralph.  He can always be trusted to provide.

Hannah is a model for what it means to be a person of faith.  People of faith have problems.  People of faith express fervent prayers.  People of faith experience God’s provisions.

4.  Great Mothers excel in keeping PROMISES (1:21-28)

²⁷ I prayed for this boy, and since the Lord gave me what I asked Him for, ²⁸ I now give the boy to the Lord. For as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.”

Hannah made a promise, and she kept it as difficult as it must have been hard to leave her three-year old son in the Temple to serve God the rest of his life. 

The Bible talks a good deal about “making vows” or promises.  In Psalm 15 the Holy Poet describes a person who can dwell in God’s Presence as one: ⁴ who keeps his word whatever the cost. The Bible also warns about “making promises you don’t intend to keep”: ^{Eccl. 5:5} Better that you do not vow than that you vow and not fulfill it.

Our word is a sacred trust.  Words are powerful which is why “promises are so powerful.”  We live in a nation where a “man’s word means very little.”  We see corporate CEO’s cheating people out of billions, large corporations reneging on debt and seeking government bailouts; we see marriage vows broken at a rate greater than they are made; and of course, every two and four years we are subjected to the “empty promises” of politicians.

We live in a nation where a person’s word means very little.  Now, here’s where it may get a bit personal.  Every person that gets saved has promised to make Jesus Christ the Absolute Lord of Life. Yet, very soon after the blush of the moment of salvation fades and the hair dries from the baptism, people go back to living their own way.

So many people who have promised to make Jesus Lord barely even think about Him much from day to day.  They completely skip out on their promise and vows.  Hannah was a model of Christian faith because she kept her promise.

People of faith have problems.  People of faith express fervent prayers.  People of faith experience God’s provisions.  People of faith excel in keeping promises.  But, just as importantly:

5.  Great Mothers EXPLODE in PRAISE (2:1-11)

Chapter 2, verses 1-10 is called, Hannah’s Song, a beautiful song of praise.  When you live as a person of faith, praise will be the natural expression of your life.  You won’t be able to hold in your praise any more than a stick of dynamite can keep from exploding once its fuse is lit.  Hannah praised God saying,

2:1  My heart rejoices in the Lord; my horn is lifted up by the Lord [proud animal with its head lifted high]. My mouth boasts over my enemies, because I rejoice in Your salvation.² There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides You!

In the next nine verses Hannah explodes with praise to God for not only meeting the needs of the faithful, but for exceeding those needs. I can’t help but think today that if more of us would follow Hannah’s example of faith as a godly mother, then our lives would regularly and enthusiastically explode in praise.

Praise is as powerful as anything else we practice in life.  Praising God brings us into His very Presence.  The Bible tells us (Psa. 22:3):

But thou art holy, O thou that inhabits the praises of Israel.

This verse paints the picture of God sitting on His throne eagerly anticipating the praises of those He has redeemed.  Praise brings us into the very throne room of heaven.  Praise is powerful!

There is so much more we could glean from this passage, but time will not permit.  Let is suffice to say that Hannah is not only a great model of motherhood, but she is also a great model for people of faith—but men and women.  Great Christians, like great mothers, live lives of full and enthusiastic devotion to God, in spite of problems.

Let’s seek to follow Hannah’s example.

Family Matters: Bring the Prodigals Home

May 5, 2019      NOTES NOT EDITED

Family Matters:  Bring the Prodigals Home

Luke 15:11-32

SIS: Prodigal family and friends deserve all of our love and efforts as the Church to bring them back home.

Someone once asked Mark Twain, “Who do you think is the best storyteller every lived?” Mark twain answered, “Jesus Christ.” “Then which story is the greatest story ever told?” He replied, “The Story of the Prodigal Son.” The Prodigal Son tells us the story of a person’s journey from sin’s destruction to Heaven’s celebration.  The first stage of His journey began with the Lure of the World, followed by the Losing Proposition of Sin, to a turning point of Longing for Home, and finally bringing him to a Lavish Love Feast in the Father’s House.

1.  The Lure of the World (11-13a)

¹¹ He also said: “A man had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.’ So he distributed the assets  to them. ¹³ Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country

This young man wanted to “spread his wings and fly.”  He wanted to “sow his wild oats,” as the saying goes. The familiar surroundings of his childhood had grown stale.  The young man longed for something new, adventurous beyond the end of his homestead’s driveway.  This sounds innocent enough. Many of us have felt the lure of wanderlust pull upon the strings of our heart.  The danger is, this is often a “trick of the Devil,” his bait, his lure to catch us with temptation and draw us into his boat.  This man’s lust for the world was the very lure that the Devil would use to hook him and draw him into a boat of total despair.

Despair always begin with a nod toward sin and a leaning toward worldly lust.  We fall over the edge into a black, bottomless pit when we make a conscious decision to move away from the Heavenly Father.  The son heard the siren call of sin luring him into the darkness and destruction of a “distant land.”

The “distance” of the country of sin is not measured geographically, but spiritually.  Sin doesn’t take us away from a place, but it takes us away from a person.  It would be appropriate to ask, “Didn’t the father recognize that giving his son such and inheritance when the son was not ready to manage it was a recipe for disaster?” Certainly, many a son or daughter has been destroyed, “not by having too little as a child, but by having too much!”  But, this father was legally and socially obligated to give the son his portion of the inheritance if the son asked.  That was the culture of the day.

So many of us have allowed the Devil to draw us into the pigsty of his pit of despair, because we have chased our desires rather than our devotion to the father.  Nothing could be more deadly oftentimes than for us to receive what we “want” instead of being blessed by what the Father has given us.  The lure of sin will drag us into the dark deep of despair if we take the bait of temptation      

ILLUS:  This is how sin has always worked.  We hear the sweet sound of Satan’s subtle voice in our hearts, cast our gaze on the tempting fruit, and before long, we are  in a “distant country.”  Consider Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:6):

⁶ Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Here we see the downward spiral of sin as we allow it to tempt us into the Devil’s waters.  Sin enters our mind, descends to our heart, and traps our souls in the gnarly grip of Satan’s claws.  Sin tastes so sweet but in the end it becomes like rotting meat. Proverbs tells us:

Satan never shows the end of the path of sin, only the beginning that looks sweet and enticing.  The never shows someone a “broken man or woman on skid row, smelling of drink and urine, wrapped in the tattered garments of what once was a nice business suit.  No, the Devil is too smart for that.  He shows men and women drinking and having a party at some exciting disco joint.  The Bible calls sin, “sweet for a season.” (Prov. 20:17).

A man and his wife bought an old farmhouse and moved to the idyllic woods outside of town.  The house was old with many cracks and crevices—doorways for all kinds of critters from ants to mice.  Still, they loved “old house living in the country.”  Then they had a little girl.  One day, as the little baby was eating in her high chair, the man turned away to do some dishes.  When he turned back, to his horror, the baby and the high chair was swarming with ants. The ants were not attracted to the messy baby, but to the banquet of messy sweetness the baby had created. They loved sweets and would come en masse to take it back to their home.  The Dad, horrified of course, washed up the baby and decided the ants had to be dealt with.  So, he researched the Internet and  discovered a remedy.  It involved a mixture of Borax, sugar, and water on a plate as a passive poison trap.  The idea is using what the ants are attracted to, sweetness, against them.  No need to stomp each one by hand.  I just left the toxic ant stew out for them and waited.  Their inborn urges to consume sweetness would lead them to ingest poison.  They don’t realize that these are fatal desires due to the Borax.  They are ingesting and being covered by the Borax.  Borax kills ants.  They even carry it back to their home and kill their family. (Internet).

Just like ants are lured to the “sweetness of the sugarcoated poison,” man is lured to the “sweetness of the first bites of sin.”  Like Borax kills the ants, sin kills the soul.  This leads to the next stage in a Prodigals journey.

2.  The Losing Proposition of Sin (13b-16)

As surely as the Lure of Sin will hook us, the Losing Propostion of Sin will bring us to utter, and left unforgiven, eternal despair.

He squandered  his estate in foolish living.  ¹⁴ After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he had nothing.  ¹⁵ Then he went to work for  one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.  ¹⁶ He longed to eat his fill from  the carob pods  the pigs were eating, but no one would give him any.

Years ago I read a description of sin that has stuck with me over the years.  Someone said, “Sin will always take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you planned to stay, and cost you more than you want to spend.”  Another man said, “Beware, the Devil always pays in counterfeit blessings.”

The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death”(Rom. 6:23). Anything sin touches, sin destroys.  In every sweet sip from the bottle of worldly pleasure lurks the sour sickness and decay , of skid row.  Sin always pays its wages.

The meaning of “riotuous living” is illustrated by the young man’s condition.  His sin left him wretched and wrecked, reeking of the gut-wrenching stench of a pigsty.  Most of all, this young man was “lost,” utterly without “hope.”  He was, in a word, “lost!”

The word translated “riotous living” is found in the writings of Aristotle and it was associated with an “incurable condition.”  In other words, absolute destruction, and eventual death. The original classical understanding of “riotous living” (asotia) refers to a particularly vile behavior as opposed to behavior that might be considerd “typical, or average.”  The prodigal’s sin was “sin on steroids!” He scraped the bottom of the barrel of human depravity in his indulgences.  He lost any sense of what it means to be truly human.  Even animals would not participate in such debauchery as this lad.  This is a picture of not only this prodigal, but every one of us.  We have all “sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

This once, fine-looking young man from a respectable Jewish household was now working with pigs—the very symbol of “uncleaness” in Jewish life.  And, worse yet, we get the picture of him walking through pig waste and mud while fishing with his hands into the hogs’ slop bucket for something to eat. I’ve been to a “pig farm.” You can literally smell it from miles away.  But, the young man’s situation gets even worse than workingwith pigs—he begins eating with them!  He begins to swish his hands in the slop buckets o to find, perhaps, some “carob pods” so tough he could barely chew them.  In total, hopeless despair, I see him collapsing in a heap and sinking into pig waist while crying—no, deeply sobbing—tears of utter disappointment and despair.  Sin had sucked the very life out of this young man.  He had lost everything—even his very soul.

Sin is ALWAYS a losing proposition.  Today, sin has a a death grip on the souls of our families, especially our youth, and it is literally squeezing the life out of them like a python squeezing its prey before devouring it whole. This brings him to a

3.  Longing for Home (17-18a)

The Bible says,  ¹⁷ When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger!  ¹⁸ I’ll get up, go to my father.

The words translated in “came to his senses” literally say, “came to himself.”  The man was not only “out of His Father’s house, sin now had him out of his mind!” Sin will make you stupid, and after a while it will even rob you of our very “self.”  Remember, the Devil is a “thief and a destroyer.”

I remember when I returned to W.Va. in 2004 and to serve at my little brother’s funeral.  He was ** years old.  He had battled alcoholism for over 30 years.  I had not seen him for over ** years.  When I looked down into that casket, my little brother that was two years younger, looked older than our father.  Sin had completely destroyed his life—all that remained was a shell, a broken shell.  Thank God, like the prodigal in this story, my brother had “come to his senses” a nearly a year earlier, returning to his Heavenly Father love, and now was enjoying a place in the Father’s eternal home.

When sin controls us, we are at the mercy of a Devil that hates us and wants to destroy us.  The Bible says the Devil is a “Thief that comes to steal and destroy”  (Jn 10:10a)  John in Revelation describes the Devil, especially as he will be unleashed in the Last Days.  The Devil is a flesh destroying, soul devouring plague:   

⁷ The appearance of the locusts was like horses equipped for battle.  Something like gold crowns was on their heads; their faces were like men’s faces; ⁸ they had hair like women’s hair; their teeth were like lions’ teeth;  ⁹ they had chests like iron breastplates; the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses rushing into battle; ¹⁰ and they had tails with stingers like scorpions, so that with their tails they had the power  to harm people for five months. ¹¹ They had as their king  the angel of the abyss; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon,  ^eand in Greek he has the name Apollyon (Destroyer).

As God’s Ambassadors seeking to reconcile sinners to Him, we do not have the power to overcome the sin that has a grip on another’s life.  We cannot “bring the prodigals home,” until they first long for what lost by moving away from God.  All we can do is remind lost souls that the Lord is looking for them, and ready to receive them back home.  Until a person has a “longing for Heaven,” we will never be able to “bring them home.” It’s been said, “The Lost Man has a God-shaped vacuum in His Heart.”  Missionaries refer to lost tribes as having “Eternity in the Heart.” Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God.”  We are called to the “salt of the earth” creating a thirst for the Father’s Home, and the “light of the world” illuminating the path of repentance that leads back to the Father’s House.  This is the final stage in the “Prodigal’s Journey.

4. The Lavishness of God’s Love

The Lure of Sin leads to the Losing Proposition of Sin, which can lead to repentance and the Longing for the Father’s home, and at last forgiveness “Brings the Prodigal Into the Lavishness of Yahweh’s Love.”  Notice the Prodigal’s longing for his father’s blessings:

18 ‘I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight;       19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”

The Prodigal was truly sorry.  His repentance was more than a regret he had been caught, but a true remorse that his sin had hurt, not only his earthly father, but more so, his Father “in heaven.”  The young man was not looking for God’s favors, but God’s forgiveness!

But, I want you to notice something else that is very important in regard to “Bringing Prodigal Home.”  Verse 20 says—don’t miss this:  ²⁰ So he got up and went to his father.

It’s not enough to simply realize sin is bad; or even, God is good.  It is not enough to know about God’s forgiveness.  It is not enough to intellectually agree that sin is bad and God is good.  Forgiveness requires true repentance—a completely change in your mind and heart—but also, a definitive action of your will.  No prodigal will every make it home simply by remembering the address, but a prodigal must, “get up and go to the Father!”  Salvation requires we “DO SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT JESUS HAS ALREADY DONE FOR US.”  Paul tells us that salvation comes when we:

confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,”  and believe in your heart  that God raised Him from the dead,  you will be saved. ¹⁰ One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation. (Rom. 10:9-10).

Repentance “turns us around 180 degrees” and sets us on a path to regaining what sin has taken—physically, mentally, and spiritually.  This happens the moment we honestly admit “Father, I have sinned!” (v18), turn around 180 degrees and, “get up and go to Father”(v20).

The son did return home.  He found his father waiting.  The Bible says that the father saw the son “while he was a long way off” (v20).  How many days had the father stood looking down the long road home, hoping to see his son?  What a reunion that was.  The Bible says (Lk 15:20-24),

He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. ²¹ The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²² “But the father told his slaves, ‘Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³ Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and let’s celebrate with a feast, ²⁴ because this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ So they began to celebrate. 

What a celebration it was!  The father lavishly laid upon his son a robe, but a huge ring upon his finger, shoeson his feet and a put a roastin the oven.  There was going to be a lavish celebration and no expense was going to be spared. The son who became a slave to sin was a son again!  Slaves did not wear robes.  Slaves did not wear rings.  Slaves did not wear shoes.  Slaves did not dine on the fatted calves.  Nothing was too good for the Prodigal Son who had returned.

Guiding prodigals to a heart-felt repentance activates the mercy of God and appropriates the grace of God unto salvation.

Parables reflect real life situations of real life people.  In our families, we all know real-life prodigal sons and daughters, prodigal moms and dads, uncles and aunts, cousins, and friends.  The Bible is a practical book of wisdom for facing practical situations in life.  I read this week about just such a real-life prodigal that was brought home.

A few years ago, there was a story in the LA Times entitled “A Mother’s Search for Russell Love.” It told of a woman in Houston named Beverly Elliott. She had not seen her son, Russell Love, for four years and had not heard from him in two years; but she knew he was homeless somewhere in Los Angeles County. The FBI and L.A. Police said they could not help her. Longing for her son to come home, she ran a personal ad in the Times for twelve days. It read, “Russell L. Love from Houston or anyone knowing where he lives, please call his mother collect: 713-447-5968. Russell, your mother will never forget you. She loves you!”She desperately hoped someone would get in touch with her. A man named Ralph Campbell, who had spent twenty five years living on the street, had once given some extra sandwiches to a friend. He remembered that this friend had turned to another homeless man and said, Russ, do you want a sandwich?” Campbell phoned the newspaper. He led a reporter to some shipping containers in a parking lot. There were some bedrolls there just where he thought this Russ might be sleeping. The next morning the reporter returned and saw a young, blond man asleep, rolled up in a bright yellow blanket. When he awoke, he lay there and smoked a cigarette. The reporter asked if he was Russell Love. He said he was. “Your mother wants you to call her,” said the reporter. On Friday he did so. They talked three more times over the next week and after she sent him some money Russell flew home. Upon his return they “grabbed each other and hugged and hugged.” Said Russell, “It feels great to be home.”  Today, we as God’s people, have the opportunity to rededicate our lives to “Bringing The Prodigals Home To the Loving Embrace of the Father.” 

But today, you yourself may be a prodigal. You have the opportunity to come home, to return to your Father. He has not forgotten you and He never will. He will always love you. Jesus is waiting for you, to take you there. All He needs is you. You are, after all, the one He came for in the first place. COME HOME.