Luke chapter 15. It is rare, rare for me to have
some confidence as to what I'm going to be preaching a number
of days in advance. But I knew as soon as I finished
preaching last Sunday morning where I would be taking my text
today. The title of my message today
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. You fear
you may not be welcomed and received and admitted freely into the
Father's house. I'm preaching this message especially
for you. who are lost under the wrath
of God. You'll find my text in Luke 15
and verse 20. And he arose and came to his
father. Now this is the title of my message.
Come on home. I looked again at a message John
Bunyan preached over 300 years ago. I've read it many, many
times. The title of it was Come and
Welcome to Jesus. Somebody asked me, how do you
come? Any way you can get to him. Just come on home. Now coming is not a physical
thing. You can't come to him by moving
your lips. You can't come to him by moving
your feet. You can't come to him about anything
you do. Can't be done. Can't be done.
You just as well go to a confessional booth, confess your sins to a
Roman Catholic priest and say rosaries, say Hail Mary's while
you rub magic rosary beads as come to a Baptist church in front
of an altar and say the sinner's prayer because somebody told
you to. Not a bit of difference in the world. As far as that's
concerned, you just as well go worship a stump in Africa with
a bone running through your nose somewhere, walking around in
a loincloth. as to do either of those things.
That's just as plain as it can be, but I'm telling you, I'm
telling you, we're living in a world where if he can, Satan's
gonna deceive your soul with idolatrous religion. Well, preacher,
how on earth do you come to Christ? On the way you come, with your
heart. That's the only way you can come.
You can't come any other way. You got to come to him by faith.
To come to Christ is to believe Him. I recall years ago, I was
preaching in a meeting up in New York, and a fellow got so
confused about this, and I said, now watch me. Watch real close.
I'm fixing to go visit my wife. Did you see me? And he looked
at me like I had lost my mind. He didn't understand I'd go to
her with my heart right now. And I'm telling you, Jesus Christ
is near you. The word is nigh thee, even the
word of faith which is in your heart and in your mouth. That
thou shalt believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, thou shalt be saved. But it's believing Him, Bill,
not walking down here. It's believing Him, not getting
in the water. It's believing Him, not coming to a morning's
bench or altar or confessional booth. Believing Him. Come on
home. Come to Christ. And he arose
and came to his father, 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. Now hold your Bibles open right
here. Our text begins with a very, very little three-letter conjunction,
and. It's one of those words that's
commonly read without any thought. Passed over without any consideration.
And generally as you read commentators, expositors of scripture, they
pass over these little single syllable conjunctions without
much comment. But this is a very, very important
conjunction. This word and takes us back to
everything that has gone before in the parable. It's a connecting
word. It connects us with everything
in the story of the prodigal son. It connects us with the
very beginning. When the son in his haughty rebellion
demanded of his father that he give him the portion of goods
falling to him. Give me what's mine. As if because
he's a son, he got something coming. Give me what's mine.
It takes us back to the prodigal's riotous living. The time when
he wasted his father's substance in riotous living with harlots.
It takes us to his time that he spent after he had begun to
be in war. when the Lord God sent a city,
a famine in the city where he was and caused a great famine
to spread through the land so that this prodigal being in want
went and joined himself to a man in that land, to a citizen of
that land and spent a good bit of time in the hog pit of self-righteous
legalistic religion. It takes us back to the turning
point that's spoken of in verse 17. And when he came to himself, oh, may God bring you to yourself. Only he can. Only he can. Any of you ever try to talk any
sense into a rebel son or daughter? Got their head made up? Just
go ahead and try to reason with them. Give it a shot. He'll give
it a shot. If you haven't had that experience,
you remember when your dad did it with you. Try to talk some
sense. Have my way. I know what's best.
Give it a little while. He came to himself. I heard a
story years ago. I read it, I can't remember.
A fella, I'm sure some of you've read it, I read it. A fella left
home, upset with his dad and was gone. Packed his bags when
he was 16, 17 years old. Didn't come home. until he was
30 years old. He was married and had a couple
of kids of his own. And he came to visit his father. And they
visited for the weekend, had such a good time. And as they
were leaving the house, the boy talked to his wife and he said,
you know, my dad has matured so much in the last 12 years. That's usually where it is, when
it came to himself. When it came to himself. And
then we see his resolution in verse 18. This man who came to
himself said, I'll arise and go to my father and will say
to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and before thee and am
no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of your hired
servants. Oh, please don't let me die in
this state. Just take me in any way you will. Now in verse 20,
we see this poor, destitute, penniless, dirty, hungry boy. He's a preacher, he was a grown
man, I know that, but he's still his father's boy. This poor,
destitute, hungry, penniless, dirty boy comes home to his father. I think I can see it. I know
exactly what he's going through. His steps, Every one of them
are heavy, heavy, heavy, hesitating steps. He's coming home because
he simply has to. He's embarrassed, but he's got
to come home or die. He's embarrassed, but it's either
home or nowhere. He's embarrassed, but it's either
come home or perish. So he's got to come home. Nowhere
else to go. No one else to turn to. So he
goes along his way in utter humiliation. He went out with his head standing
tall and straight. He's coming back, not quite so
tall, not quite so straight. The nearer he gets home, the
lower his head hangs. He doesn't dare lift his eyes. He dares not rush through the
gates. He dares not run up and grab his father around the neck
and hug him like some boy might who was returning from war where
he'd been wounded and served his country and been in prison
and now he's coming home. Oh no, this boy's coming home,
but he's coming home from bars and brothels. where he wasted
his father's substance with riotous living. He's coming home from
a dungeon, the dungeon of his father's most implacable enemy.
But he preferred going to the dungeon of his father's most
implacable enemy in religious self-righteousness than come
home to his father's palace of mercy and grace. Now he's coming
home. And that's what I see in the
Prodigal. But I talked about him last week. Let's move on. Here's the father. I see him
too. The prodigal's father is our
father, the God of all mercy, love, and grace. And the scripture tells us here
when he was yet a great way off. Now you listen to me. There you
are. I know you're sitting in church,
but you're a great way off. I know you're sitting here listening
to the preaching of the gospel, which few folks will do. You're
still a great way off. You see, no matter how near you
think you are, no matter how near others may think you are,
I hear folks all the time say, I believe, I believe maybe. Doesn't
matter how near others think you are. You're still a great
way off. All your changes of life, All
your noble resolutions, all your questions about things, all your
determinations, all your imaginary steps toward God, all leave you
just as far off as ever you were until you come to Christ. Just
as far off as ever. You see, nothing you do, no step
you make, brings you one step closer to God until God steps
into your life and brings you into his house. Oh, how I want
you to come to God. Oh, my soul, Lindsay, I wish
I could express that like I know it so. I want you to come to
God. I want you to know the living
I'm not the least bit interested. I am not the least bit interested
in building up the church membership, or building up this denomination,
or getting you to come join the church. As God is my witness,
I am not the least bit interested in all those carnal things that
motivate religionists. I want you to know God. I want
you to know God. And because I want you to know
God, I will not deceive you. I want you to know that you cannot
come to God until God comes to you. You will not turn to him
until he turns you by a mighty act of his free, sovereign, irresistible
grace and brings you to himself. And yet you must come. You must
come. When he was yet a great way off,
His father saw him. He saw everything he was. He saw all that he had done. He saw all the filth that was
on him. He saw his degradation. He saw his helplessness. And
he saw what he was about to make of him. He saw him. But when he saw him, he saw him
as his son. And when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him and had compassion. What a word that is. It's a tremendous
expression of God's inexpressible love towards sinners in Christ.
It means co-passion. Now, I know God is a spirit. He doesn't have bodily parts
like men do. He's not touched with anything,
not moved by anything, all that stuff. I understand that. I understand
that. But I understand that God would
have us to understand that in Christ, He is moved. Now you can figure out how that
fits in theology books or you can kiss the theology books goodbye,
I don't care. But I'm telling you, God Almighty
speaks to sinners in such a way as to make us understand he's
not indifferent toward his people. He had compassion. The scripture
in fact goes at great lengths to describe our God like this.
Our God is a God full of compassion. Listen to the scriptures. He
being full of compassion forgave their iniquity and destroyed
them not. That describes us pretty well,
doesn't it, Bobby? He being full of compassion has forgiven our
iniquities and has not destroyed us. But thou, O Lord, art a God
full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering and plenteous
in mercy and in truth. The Lord is gracious and full
of compassion. He is gracious and full of compassion
and righteous. The Lord is gracious and full
of compassion. Therefore, he is slow to anger
and of great mercy. The Lord our God is no longer
angry. He shows himself here having
compassion, meaning that there's no resentment. No hostility,
only love in the father's heart for his returning boy. That's
our God. And reign. I mentioned this to you just
recently, but I can't get over the wonder
of this. I can't get over the wonder of this. The only time in this book God
Almighty is ever pictured as getting in a hurry is when he
runs to greet a sinner coming to him for mercy. Isn't that astonishing? God Almighty,
only time he ever got in a hurry was running to show mercy. He
ran. Oh, blessed be God. That's the
picture. God running to a sinner. Here we see the God of heaven
against whom we have sinned. Rushing, running out to meet
a sinner in mercy. A sinner who deserves nothing
but his wrath. And the scripture says here he
fell on his neck. Fell on his neck. I recall Years ago, this is 1987
or so, 88, Shelby and I were gone for nearly three weeks to
Australia, and mamas and daughters have something special. They
have a special thing. Fathers and daughters do too,
but mamas and daughters have a different kind of special thing.
And we got off the plane at Lexington, walked down the stairs, and It's
hard to tell whether Shelby fell on her neck or she fell on Shelby's
neck, but there they were. Not much to say, just, oh, what
a delightful relief to hold you one more time. That's the picture. He fell on his neck and kissed
him. I looked at that word kissed.
It's a simple word, and yet it has a very complex meaning. It
doesn't just mean he planted a little kiss on his cheek. It
doesn't mean he kissed him like you see in those, where those
Europeans or Asians kiss each other on the cheek, or some of
those Hollywood movie stars, you know, who'd kill each other
for a dollar if they could. That's not it, that's not it. This is
something else altogether. This means he kissed him earnestly,
eagerly, Kissed him ardently, and kissed him continually. He
just kept on kissing him. Just kept on kissing him. I recall the first time I left
home, I was about 14 years old. I'd done something, got in trouble,
and I figured anything out there better than what was at home,
because I knew what was coming when Mama got hold of me. I was
dead sure what was coming. Well, I was gone for a while,
and then I had to come home. I like this boy, he's either
come home or die. Didn't have any money, didn't
have anybody else to turn to. You know, when you're busted, you don't
have many friends and you're a kid. I can picture this prodigal son,
he's not gonna do it. Sorry, prodigal son, we're busy
right now. Just busted, nowhere else to
go. And I came home, and I came home with my tail between my
legs. I came home with my head hanging low. I came home hoping,
hoping, hoping, maybe, maybe, maybe there'd be some mercy.
And Mama ran, but she didn't run to me. She ran to the drawer
and grabbed the belt and worked me over. This is not what happened
here. This prodigal son came home,
and the father ran. and fell on his neck, and kissed
him, and never even mentioned the belt. Never even mentioned
it, just kissed him. Those kisses, oh, those kisses
tell us that when a sinner comes home to God by faith in Christ,
God welcomes that sinner with all the fullness of his infinite
love for Christ's sake. no matter who he is, no matter
where he's been, no matter what he's done. He kissed him. The Father's kisses mean much
love, deeply felt, demonstrably expressed. You remember that
passage in Ephesians 3? Paul says, I want you to know
the love of Christ, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,
that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend
with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height
and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you
might be filled with all the fullness of God. Look at this
prodigal and his father's kisses. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what that prodigal would have
given? on his way up the road to have just conceived in his
mind that his father might smile at him, much less kiss him, that
his father might reach out and hug him. You remember when David
allowed Absalom to come back to the city? He said, all right,
let him in, but don't you let him see my face or I'll kill
him. That was his son. That was his son. That prodigal comes in, and he says, oh, I wonder if my dad
will ever smile at me again. I wonder if he'll ever embrace
me again. As eager, as eager, Jay, as he would have been to
have his father kiss him on the cheek, God Almighty is infinitely
more eager to kiss returning sinners with the kiss of His
love. The length of His love, it's
as long as eternity. The breadth of His love, it encompasses
the world so that God embraces His elect scattered to the four
corners of the earth from which He's driven them in His wrath,
He will gather them according to His good pleasure. The depth
of His love, I can tell you, It reaches down to the very pit
of hell and snatches sinners from the gates of destruction
and lifts them up to the height of the throne of God and sits
them with princes in heaven. Behold the love of Christ for
us. Hereby perceive we the love of
God because he laid down his life for us. In this was manifested
the love of God for us, because God sent his only begotten son
into the world that we might live through him. Here it is
loved, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent
his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Now you try to grasp something
of the free, voluntary love of Christ for us, Merle. He didn't
have to die. Nothing compelling him to die.
We had no claims upon him. There was nothing in us that
could lay hold of him and force him in any way, even to look
our way. There was no appeal on our part
for him to die for us. We didn't have any idea we needed
him. And when he died for us, the Lord Jesus knew that if he
laid down his life for such sinners as we are, he would get no love
in return except he create that love in us. The Son of God died by the hands of men as well as for the sake of men.
Somebody asked me the other day, Skip, said, when the Lord hanging
on the cross and he prayed, Father, forgive them, how do you reckon
that applies? I said, He forgave them. There
were 3,000 folks converted on the day of Pentecost just a little
while later. And there were multitudes of them involved in that hellish
party, nailing Christ to the tree. You were there and I was
too. Our Lord Jesus, when he died,
he died for men who wished that he should be made to die and
counted him worthy of death. In dying for us, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, voluntarily took upon himself the awful Mass
of shame and horrible dishonor which we deserve because of sin. And he took unto himself an infinite,
indescribable, ignominious relation to sin that no man can understand. Scripture says, Bob, he was made
to be sin. and that was by his own will. He took the cup of God's wrath
and with one tremendous draft of love he drank damnation dry. Our Lord Jesus Christ so loved
us and now we love him because he first loved us. These kisses from the Father's
lips mean full forgiveness freely bestowed. As far as the East
is from the West, so far hath he removed our transgressions
from us, and a kiss says so. If we confess our sins, he's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness, and a kiss says so. He says, I, even
I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my sake. and
will not remember thy sins. Now by his warm embrace and his
tender kiss, our Heavenly Father makes us to know that our many
sins are all forgiven forever. With a kiss, Rex, he says, my
sins are gone. He gives another kiss and he
says, I'll never mention it again. I'll remember them no more against
you forever. With another kiss, he assures
me, I see no fault in you, no blemish in you. And with another
kiss, he tells me that he will never deal with me on the basis
of my sin. Nobody in the world can understand
that except somebody who understands the message of this book. You
mean, preacher, God will never, ever deal with us on the basis
of our sin? He will never treat us any the
less graciously because we've sinned? No. No. Never. He dealt with our sin
in a substitute. He doesn't have to deal with
it again. He satisfied justice in our representative. Now He
bestows grace on us because of that representative's obedience.
The Father's repeated kisses mean complete restoration. You who sometimes were far off
are now made nigh by the blood of Jesus Christ. With a kiss,
my father owns me as his son, meets all my needs, answers all
my prayers. He assures me with a kiss that
everything I have lost by my own forfeiture and deliberate
rebellion has been fully restored. These kisses. are tokens of great
abundant joy. The angels of God rejoice because
that boy over whom they've been sent to watch has now come home. The saints of God rejoice because
their lost brother has been found. God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
rejoice because that one whose the object of his love has been
brought home and the prodigal rejoices. Oh, how he rejoices. Surely these kisses and mean
overflowing comfort for the hearts of redeemed sinners. Listen carefully. Let me say nothing more than
this about myself. I acknowledge plainly Christ
came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. As John Newton said to One of
his friends, William J., I believe it was, since the Lord saved
me, I despaired of none. If God Almighty robe me in the
righteousness of His Son, wash me in the blood of His Son, take
me from the dumb heel and set me among princes, He can do it
for you. And he kissed me, and this is
what he says, the past is all forgotten. I can't forget it. I shouldn't
forget it. But buddy, he has forgotten it.
It's all forgotten. The present is all peace. You're accepted in the beloved. The future is all secure. Because I'll never leave you.
And he said, David, I'll fix it so you can't quite leave me. Once in Christ, in Christ forever. Has the Father kissed you? Are
you interested? Let me tell you how you can have
these kisses. Come on home. Just come on home. God help you to come. Let's sing Jesus I Come, number
242.