Coming Home Again: A Thanksgiving to Remember Luke 15:11-22

“‘Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found’” (Lk. 15:23b-24)

A Thanksgiving sermon preached November 22, 2009 at Hebron Baptist Church, Denham Springs by Pastor, Joe Alain.

Scripture Reading: Luke 15:11-24
Thanksgiving is a time of celebration and family and creating special memories. Sometimes those memories involve Thanksgiving disasters. Maybe it was your first Thanksgiving turkey and you left the giblets and the neck in the turkey, or maybe it was the time that you almost burned down the house when you drop kicked your bird in the deep fryer, or you may have had an experience like Sharlene’s daughter who decided to host thanksgiving at her house with all her relatives.

Sharlene writes we were just about to start the day with preparing the turkey. My daughter placed the turkey in the oven and accidentally pushed the self clean button, where the oven locks itself while it cleans the oven at blistering temperatures. No one noticed until we checked on the turkey a few hours later. When we did, we found that we could not get the oven open, nothing seemed to work. The men began to bring out their screw drivers and drills in an attempt to salvage the bird. But in the end when we finally did get it out, the oven was destroyed but we had a very clean turkey!

Thanksgiving is a time to make some memories, hopefully not tragic ones. Thanksgiving is a time to remember and a time to come home again, even if for some of us we can only do that in our minds eye. Coming home again is the theme of the parable of the prodigal son (Lk. 15:11-24). But the story might be more appropriately called the parable of the loving father. Here is a deeply moving story of tragedy and triumph, of guilt and God’s wonderful grace, of heartbreak and homecoming, and of brokenness and thankfulness. It’s a story that tells us of a God with open arms, a God who welcomes us back home into His house.

In the story we are told of a man who had two sons (Lk. 15:11). The youngest hit his dad up for the future college savings fund. It wasn’t long before the money was burning a hole in his pocket and he moved off to the big city (Lk. 15:12). You can sense the ingratitude of this young man when he says to his father, “give me” as if he is owed something. It was in the far country that the son wasted his inheritance with “prodigal (wasteful) living.” He was restless. He had no good reason to go. He had a good family, a loving father, and a faith, but he was ready to cast all that aside. Young and impatient, he had to have it now! The father gave him what he wanted but when he got it, it was not what he wanted. Why did the father give this ungrateful son the inheritance and just let him go?

The father knew he could not make an ungrateful and rebellious son stay home when his heart was already gone. The young man’s restless heart led him down a rebellious path. It is true that where your heart is your body will soon follow. He wanted out of his father’s house – no more rules, no more 10:00 p.m. curfews, no more chores, no more responsibilities. Young, arrogant, loaded with cash, but naive, he was confident that he was not going to stumble and fall. Maybe others would falter but he wouldn’t, so he thought. In the far country the beer was flowing, the dice were rolling, and the people in the far country were pretty friendly, they were the kind of friends that attach themselves like leeches to the inexperienced, the naive, the wealthy. I can imagine that they hung on his every word. He was a star in the far country. But it wasn’t long before the wine, women, and songs were all gone. Before he knew it, he had squandered his inheritance. He blew his 401K in a pleasure – crazed blink of an eye in the Vegas of his day.

Where were his friends now? When the money was gone, they deserted him like he had the plague. They didn’t return his phone calls. He had become “Unfriended.” If you did not already know this little tid bit of useless information, New Oxford American’s Dictionary word of the year for 2009 is “Unfriend.” The verb “unfriend” refers to the act of deleting someone from one’s list of acquaintances on Facebook. In his moral and economic collapse this man was unfriended, deleted out of existence. “If one falls down, his friend can help him up. [Solomon tells us] But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!” (Ecc. 4:10).

On top of his financial collapse and moral failure there was a severe famine in the land (Lk. 15: 14). When it rains it pours. The progression downward had run its full course. What began with a restless heart led to rebellion which brought the young man into ruin. There’s always a price to pay when you go into the far country. He was destitute (Lk. 15:14); Without money, without food, without a home, without any friends. In an act of desperation he joined himself to a citizen of the far country and he found himself in of all unlikely and unJewish places, the pigpen. Trudging along in a hogpen is a vivid picture of sin’s degrading effects (Lk. 15:16). This child of God who is destined for the kingdom is floundering in hog slop.

Proverbs 14:14 reminds us of the awful effects of sin’s sowing: “The backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways . . .” When we live independently from God, we get what we can do. It has been said that “sin will take you farther than you want to go. It will keep you longer than you want to stay. It will cost you more than you want to pay.” This young man never planned on ending up in the hogpen – no one ever does. Sin cost him everything! He lost his family. He lost his inheritance. He lost his friends. And he lost his own dignity. But then something wonderful happened – it was “Amazing Grace!”

There is nothing quite comparable to the beautiful words that were expressed by the son when the Bible says “he came to himself” (v.17) “He came to his senses” (NIV). How wonderful are these words for these are none other than the words of a man who is coming to terms with life as it can only be lived, in humility and in relationship with the creator God. This young man is right where he needs to be because “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). These are the words of a man who knows experientially both the brokenness of sin and the healing that comes through repentance. Perhaps the younger son’s greatest flaw was that he was stubborn and hard-headed. Like a horse that is useless until broken, so the rebellious son was recklessly out of control until broken by God.

What did it mean for the son to come to himself? For one thing it meant that he knew he had blown it – he had sinned, “I have sinned.” He knew that he was an ungrateful rebel. He took personal responsibility for his actions. He came to the place that we must all come to – the end of ourselves so that we can come to our selves. A once popular Christian song says “at the end of broken dreams He’s the open door.” Blessing comes to us in our brokenness. Brokeness is fertile soil for the fruit of repentance. There is a powerful warning in this simple story of ruin and redemption. It’s a warning associated with our free will. Because we are truly free, God will let us go into the far country. He will let you squander your days, weeks, and even years in prodigal living. He will let you go to the hogpen. Why? Because God is punishing you? Because He hates you? No, Because God really does love you.

God the Father knows that He cannot make a rebellious son or daughter stay when his or her heart is already gone. God wants us in His kingdom because of love. He wants us to freely love Him with all our heart, mind, and strength. He’s not assembling subjects to populate a celestial prison, He’s establishing a new kind of world, a world populated by those who have been redeemed by love.

It was tough love that the father demonstrated when he released his son. It would take the far country to cure the son of his basic sinful condition – ingratitude. In the far country, far away from the Father and the comforts of home, he realized for the very first time what he had lost. In the depths of brokenness he realized that his father loved him and that life was pretty good after all. Sometimes loss can jog us out of our discontent, our ingratitude. And if it takes the crushing of the far country to cure us of our ingratitude, then the experience of the far country will do us well. The far country changed the son. We know that because when he came home again he came back not as an ungrateful rebel but as a grateful true son. That is true repentance. In his brokenness he experienced redemption and he discovered the incredible gratitude that comes when one is lost and found.

On his way back to the father’s house he rehearsed his acceptance speech, a speech he would never deliver (Lk. 15:18-20). When the son was still a speck on the distant horizon his father saw him. How many sunrises and sunsets played out while the father still looked for his boy to come home? The father never stopped waiting for his son to return. Every day was “maybe today” day. When he finally saw his boy come home he had compassion and ran and hugged his son. No speech here, just tears of joy – “my son was dead and is alive” (Lk. 15:24). What do you do when the lost son returns home? The son didn’t need a lecture, the Holy Spirit had already done a fine job of that. It’s amazing how God’s voice can be heard so clearly far from the Father’s home, in the mire of a hogpen. What he needed to know and what he discovered was that his father still loved him and would welcome him back.

Did the young son deserve to come back? No. It was the grace and mercy of the father that restored the son. The truth is, none of us deserves salvation. None of us deserves the attention that God gives us. What we deserve is punishment for our foolish trips to the far country – judgement – but what we receive is mercy – forgiveness and a fresh new start. God’s grace (unmerited favor) makes it possible for prodigals to come home. Maybe you need that assurance today, the assurance that God loves you just as you are. He does love you just as you are, but He loves you too much to leave you the way that you are. You belong back in the Father’s house.

If it is difficult for people to come to God and be saved it is only difficult because people cannot comprehend and receive God’s love. The difficulty certainly does not lie with God. He is more than willing to save. There are no impossible cases for God. “He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him [Jesus Christ], since He ever lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25). As more than one preacher has put it, “Jesus can save from the uttermost to the guttermost.”

When the prodigal son came back home it was “A Thanksgiving to Remember!” There is “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” (Lk. 15:7). When prodigals come home heaven throws a party. The son who came home was fully restored by his father. He was given a robe, a ring, a new pair of shoes, and a party (Lk. 15:22-23). When you come to Christ God begins to remove the stain of the hogpen. When you come home to God just as you are He won’t leave you just as you came – He cleans you up and gives you a brand new start. God is the God of the second chance. Jesus Christ restores us, He redeems us, He makes us sons and daughters of the kingdom (Jn. 1:12; Gal. 3:26-29). The prodigal son repented (turned away from) his sin; he was redeemed by the father; and as a result there was great rejoicing.

If you have repented of your sin and been redeemed, every day is a cause for rejoicing. Every day is a day of thanksgiving.

“Grattitude . . . goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.”

– Henri J. M. Nouwen

Every day is a gift from God and an opportunity to live out your life in gratitude to God. Christian service flows from a heart that has been touched by God’s amazing grace. Our life, our service is showing gratitude to the God who loves us and who has saved us.

But perhaps some of you today are like this prodigal son, you are still in the “far country.” Your life is a mess! You made some bad decisions along the way and now the path you have traveled has led you to the hogpen. Maybe you’ve lost your family. You’ve lost your job. You’ve lost your friends. You’ve squandered and you’re mired in debt. You’ve even lost your own dignity. You’re not too far gone. You can come home again! You can come back to the God who welcomes the prodigals back into the father’s house. Your Father waits for you with open arms. You can come home again. Back in the Father’s house there is a feast of salvation awaiting you and “A Thanksgiving To Remember.”

For His Glory!
Pastor Joe