Monday PM Nov. 7, 2011

Introduction

Well, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. If I were to take all the time that I’d like to take to say something good about the people that I know in this audience tonight, we would not have time for the procedures for which we’re come together, but I will forego that because it would be hard to hard to do and take a long time. There are people in this audience that are very special to me and have been for many years. I have to tell you that I heard Chuck preach when he was nine years old. I used to go up to Herford when I was still in broadcasting and preach, and his grandfather was a great and godly man. And he used to have me in his home, and Chuck would we’d go back over to the building and he’d preach to me a little bit, about nine years old.

He’s really a wonderful preacher. There are a lot of preachers in the audience tonight. In fact, I was in a meeting up in the north, and there was a young preacher who hadn’t didn’t have a whole lot of experience, but he was making announcements at the beginning of the service, and he said, We have a lot of preachers here. Said there are twelve or fifteen preachers here. In fact, I believe there are more preachers here than there are Christians. And then I don’t know whether you’d ever notice, but when a preacher is preaching, and his wife, after you’ve been preaching about five, ten, fifteen minutes, she leans over and says something to him. She’s not telling him she loves him. What she’s saying is, you can do it better than he can.

And I’m aware of that, guys, so I’m aware of that as we begin. Turn in your Bibles, please, if you’d like. If not, I’d like you to listen very carefully, as we read from Luke the 15th chapter. Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them. And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you having an hundred sheep? If he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it. And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.

I say unto you that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle and sweep the house and seek diligently till she find it. And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and neighbors together, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the peace which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is join the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. And he said, A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.

And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough in despair, and I perish with hunger? I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.

Make me one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was great way off, his father saw him, had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and done no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to be merry.

Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing, and he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed a fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. He was angry and would not go in. Therefore came his father out and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee. Neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment, and yet thou never gavest me a kid that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this I son was come, which hath devoured his living with harlots, thou’st killed for him the fatted calf.

And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meat that we should make merry and be glad, for this my brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found. A triptych, spelling T R I P T Y C H, was a hinged writing instrument consisting of three leaves that was used in Rome, ancient Rome. We talk about a triptych today, and usually we’re looking at an art piece. I saw at the art museum in Chicago one time, a wonderful triptych. It had the Levite on this side and the priest on this side, and in the middle was the prodigal, or was the Good Samaritan. And it was a beautiful painting.

That’s a triptych. What we have in Luke the 15th chapter is a parabolical triptych. It intends to say the same thing. All three of these messages have one thematic. And that thematic is a very simple one. And there’s some incidental truths about which we will speak as we go along tonight, that are peculiar to each of these parables. But I have to tell you that the central thematic that he’s trying to get across in each of these parables is this. I came to seek and save the lost. That’s what he’s trying to say. We don’t want to lose sight of that as we look at these parables. The first of these parables show a lost sheep. And that indicates a loss of safety. You see, when the shepherd was gone, the sheep was in dire straits.

Sheep had to be watched carefully. They knew their shepherd’s voice. And they would go and leave, and he would take a rock sling and sling a rock, and it would land right in front of his face, and he would bring it back. But the sheep were always under his control. And he left the 99 in a good place, and he went and found the one that was lost because he had lost his safety. In the second parable, we have a lady who has lost the usefulness of a coin. It may be that this was something that was indicative of her marital status. I’m not sure about that, nor are the commentators. Or it may be that it was just something that you was useful for buying goods and services in her life.

But be it what whichever it was, she lost it. And she went diligently to find it. In the third, we have the loss of fellowship. The son had fellowship in the family. He had joint participation with those who loved him, and he loved them. And he lost all of that. In all three of these parables, we have this wonderful kind of ending for each other. Each has a wonderful ending. Do you like good endings? When I was a kid, we used to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. And we saw the same movie every Saturday afternoon, the whole time I was little. Every movie was the same story. It just had a little bit different twist to it. One week it’d be the cowboys against the Indians, and the next week it would be the cowboys against the outlaws.

But it was the same thing. But the happy endings were just wonderful things. I remember seeing one where this caravan was going out across the prairie, probably in Kansas or somewhere, headed for California, and there was a banjo plucking on the back of the thing, and they were going along, and all of a sudden the Indians came, screaming and hollering as it looked like a flood. 467,212 of them came over the top of this hill and were going down to the wagon train, and the fellow said, Circle the wagons, and just as they were about to lose, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Here came the cavalry. There’s always something good about a happy ending. God’s word promises happy endings. And there are happy endings here. The father has looked for the return of the son.

The shepherd has looked for the sheep. The woman has sought the coin. Now, in all of these parables, the sheep is returned to safety. The coin is returned to usefulness or to its rightful place. And of course, the son is returned to the fellowship of his family. It is the third of these parables, though, that have some incidental truths in it that are very powerful about which I want to speak tonight. In the parable of the prodigal, and it is pronounced prodigal, not prodigal, it’s the prodigal. And when I first moved to Southside, the preacher that was there before me didn’t preach a lot of meetings. So every time I’d come back from a meeting, Jim Henson or one of them would say, Here comes the prodigal.

And they thought that was just somebody that left and came back, you know. What they were saying, here comes the one who’s been useless the whole last week, who’s wasted his time. So that’s what the prodigal son is. It’s someone who went away and wasted his substance and then came back to the Lord. Prodigality means wastefulness. So then we want to talk about the prodigal. There are three things in the pro in the story of the prodigal that I want you to get. First of all, it tells us what sin is. It tells us what sin is. Secondly, it tells us what sin does. And thirdly, it gives us the remedy for sin. All three of those are there. I ask that you look at them carefully with me.

1. It Tells Us What Sin Is

First of all, I want to give you a bit of a description of this young fellow. I just have a notion that he was a virile, bright young fellow with a beautiful head of hair. And I think he’s right in the prime of his youth as he goes to his father and says, I need my stuff, I’m going to take off. And here he is. He’s a bright young fellow. He’s got everything in the world going for him at home. He can’t stand it. He’s he’s bedazzled by the lights of the far country. I have a picture of him sitting on the roof of the house one afternoon or one evening, looking out way across the prairies toward the mountains, and he can see a barely twinkle of the lights of the far country.

And he’s bedazzled by all of that. And the old peddler man that comes through once a year, comes through and tells him about when he gets through peddling his wares. He goes down by the creek and tells him some stories about what kind of wonderful parties and all kinds of things that they have in the far country. And then once or twice a year, a caravan will come by. And when the caravan comes by, they behast him down to the creek, too. One fella sells him some pornography down there, shows him some pictures of how things are over in the far country. And he’s bedazzled by all of that. The lights of the far country have just mesmerized him. And he just has to go and find out for himself what life is all about.

So he goes to his father and he gets what is coming to him. He goes and starts to the far country. I have a picture of him in my mind. I think that he went to the very first town that he got to, and he went into the haberdasher and bought him a beautiful long robe. A purple one. A purple one, and he had a gold clasp on it. And then he went to the stable and he bought him a beautiful white steed and all the accouterments and saddlery that he needed for a little beautiful chariot. One that had a padded facade in the front of it and was dotted with silver penetrations. And then he bought he got a little thing to put on the horse’s head, and it bedazzled like that.

So off he goes to the far country. He gets there, he gets there, and the first thing that happens, you know what it would be? Groupies. Everybody in town that’s partyistic wants to be with him. And so they all come and they say, Let’s have a party. And he says, Let’s go. And they say, Where do you want to go? And he says, I want to go over here. And they say, That’s just where we wanted to go. And then he says, That’s not, I changed my mind. I wanted to go over here. Well, we wanted to go over there. We’ll just go where you go. So he goes and has this wonderful party. Let me tell you something. Sin is very clever. Sin is very clever.

Selfishness is the predicate for all sin. Sin is not a thing in the world but a selfish choice of one’s own person in preference to God. That’s all it is. It’s a horrible thing. It’s a willful decision to do something against the command of God. God says, I want you to do something, you say, I don’t want to do that. God says, I want you not to do that, and you say, I want to do that. You don’t do it when he says do it, and you do it when he says don’t do it, and you become a sinner. That’s what sin is all about. And every sin follows the same order. You decide of your own will to do something that is in contradistinction to the laws of God.

What you know and understand to be right, you just violate. That’s the way sin works. Let no man say when he is tempted. I’m tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil. Neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And lust, when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Now listen to me. That’s the process the devil uses for sin. He bedazzles you. He dangles Bobbles and bangles and beads in front of you in an effort to draw you away. The lights of the far country are what drew the kid away. Don’t tell me he didn’t know anything about it. He knew where he was going when he left.

He was ready to enter that. He had made up his mind that he was going there. And what that is the temptation. The devil was tempting him to sin, and all sin works that way. You ever go fishing? All you have to do when you go fishing is go out here to the lake and drop a hook in the water, and a fish will come along, and he’ll say, Well, old Bowman’s fishing. I believe I’ll go get a bite. And he jumps on the hook and you put it. You know better than that, don’t you? But I’ll tell you what you can do. You can take a piece of plastic about that long, paint it green and yellow, put a propeller on the end of it, two strands of plastic behind it, and a feather right under it, and put a hook right there.

You throw that thing in the water and begin to jiggle it a little bit, and a fish will come along and he’ll say, Look at that thing there. And I don’t know if a fish is, if fishes ever have their mouths water or not, but he sees that. He sees that, and all of a sudden the sun is in the propeller and it just mesmerized him. He says, if I can get a little closer to that, I’m going to take a good look at that thing there. And the first thing you know, you jiggle it, and all of that comes together, and the feather wiggles and the little strands of leather or plastic are going in the water and the propellers going around refracting the sun’s rays, and all of a sudden he says, I’m gonna have me a bite of that, and he jumps in it, and you got him hook, line, and sinker.

That’s what James says. That’s exactly what he’s talking about. He says, This is the way sin is going to get. And this young man was bedazzled by the lights of the far country. He just had to go over there and find out what it was all about. Sin is a selfish choice of one’s own person in preference to God. We minimize sin in our age. It’s terrible. Sin is a horrible, despicable thing. Sin is a distiller of hate. Sin is a breeder of crime. Sin is a bar to heaven. It’s a divider of families. It’s a despicable kind of insult against God Almighty. But we don’t talk about it. How long has it been since you saw the word sin in the newspaper or heard it on the radio?

And yet sin is the eternal malady of man. It’s everywhere. And you want to know what our problem is in this country? I’ll tell you what our problem is in this country. It’s not job problems and it’s not money problems, it’s sin. Get rid of sin and you get rid of everything that you’re talking about. Sin just get it impairs everything it touches. It’s a heinous, cancerous kind of crime. And it ought not to be.

2. It Tells Us What Sin Does: Sin Separates

They’re having their parties and they’re having a big time. And it was a really big time until there was a drought that came along. And the first thing you know, he had to sell his chariot. He kept his horse for a little while and he kept partying, and the first thing you know he had to sell the saddle. So he was riding bare back for a little while. And he went along a little bit further, and all of a sudden he had to sell the horse. And I don’t know, ladies and gentlemen, that this was a Jewish boy. I’m assuming a little bit, maybe, but the fact of the matter is, I think it probably was. But can you imagine what a despicable thing it was for a young Jewish boy to feed fit to feed pigs?

Can you imagine that? A pig was an unclean animal. It split the hoof, it did not chew the could. It was Jews didn’t have anything to do with that kind of here. He is feeding these pigs. And he’s not only feeding them, he’s come to the point where only has all he has is just the scant, the scantest amount of clothing, and he’s he’s ready to eat the millet that he’s feeding the pigs. That’s to what extent he has come to. And there’s the saddest thing in this whole thing to me is what is said about him when he gets to the to the problem, and the and the scripture says he began to be in want, and no man gave to him. Where are the groupies?

What happened to them? They’re all gone. The money’s gone, so they’re gone. He’s there by himself. He is in despicable, horrible shape. He has nothing. Don’t you know he stinks? Don’t you know what he’s doing in that pig pen? There he is. He had all of these things over across the other way. Oh, he can’t see back home, but he has in his vision what was back over there. He knows what was there. He just can’t, he can’t get it in his mind. And all of a sudden, the scripture says something really important to me. He came to himself. Do you know what sin does? Sin separates. It separates everybody from God. It separated this boy from everything that he had. He is here in this pig pen because he separated from all the good that he had.

He’s wallowing now in a pit of putridity. He’s just in as bad a shape as you can possibly get. And sin is the cause of it. It brought him to that place. And so here he is, and no man came to him. No man gave to him. Sin has completely separated. You can become so separated that nobody will have anything to do with you. That’s what sin will do to you. And that’s where this young fella is. But if that’s the saddest thing in the entire parable about the separation of sin, the most beautiful part of the parable is he came to himself. That’s interesting to me. He came to himself. Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. If any man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he’s like unto a man who beholdeth his natural face in the glass.

For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man that he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. We had a wonderful meal tonight with Sister Everett. She had some of the best cornbread I’ve eaten in a long time. I ate four pieces and no dessert. It was wonderful. She buttered it. Now I want you to think what’s going to happen if I get butter on my face. I get a big blob of butter right there on my cheek. And we start at the door, and Tony comes to me and says, Brother Bowman, you got you got a big blob of butter on your cheek.

And I said, Yeah, I was in the bathroom a while ago and saw that. Isn’t that something? Now I just walk on and come into the building, and Chuck comes up to me and said, Brother Bowman, come here just a minute. You got a big blob of country butter right there on your cheek. I saw, I saw that. That’s really something, isn’t it? Isn’t that foolish? Isn’t that foolish? Absolutely foolish. And yet we do that. You whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty and sees a representation of himself, and he sees that he’s in a sinful condition, and he sees that his condition is wrong, he’s got a big blob on his character, and does nothing about it. He’s like a man who beholds his natural face in the glass with a blob on his cheek and walks away and does nothing about it.

Don’t you see that? That’s the illustration that James is making by the afflatus of the Holy Spirit. He is telling us that you can’t walk away from the reflection. And let me say to you, this mirror for the soul is a very accurate one. Not only is it accurate, but it gives you not only, I would like to have a mirror like this, actually. Because it tells you’re not only out of shape, but here’s what you need to do. One, two, three. Here’s how you get your visage back to where you want it. And so this young fella looked in the mirror and he saw what it was. It says he came to himself. I love how the scripture says that. He came to himself.

I had a friend that just passed away. I preached his funeral this year. Good friends with Chuck, too. His name was Van Cash. Several years ago, Van had a tonsolectomy after he was a grown man. And that’s kind of a bad surgery for a guy after he gets grown. So I was in the hospital, and the nurse knew that I was in and out of there quite a bit. And so she said, Brother Bowman, would you mind to watch him and hold his arm right here so that he doesn’t pull that out of his out of his that IV out of his arm? And I said, Yes, ma’am, I will. Well, he kept tugging on it, and I said, Van, you’re gonna pull that out.

He was about half awake. And all of a sudden he raised up and he tried to pull it, and I said, Don’t do that, Van. You’re gonna pull that out, that IV out. He raised up and he said, Bowman, if you don’t turn loose of my arm, I’m gonna knock your head off. Now, I didn’t get mad at him because he was not at himself. He was not at himself. The scripture says here, we say it this way, he came too. Just as you come to consciousness, you can come to conscience. Our conscience is that part that tells us something’s wrong in our lives and we need to do something about it. It’s something that we know to do, and we understand that we’re being hurt by it if we don’t do something about it.

3. The Remedy for Sin: Go Home to the Father

He came to himself and he looked at himself and he did not like what he saw. He has been separated from his father by sin. He’s been separated from his brother by sin. He’s been separated from everything that was good in his family by sin. Now he’s come to himself and he sees himself for what he really is. He said, Here I am, I have nothing. In my father’s house, there are all kinds of things that I can have. And he said, I’m going to do something about it. I’m going home to my father. What is the remedy for sin? Go home to the Father. What sin is a selfish choice of one’s own person in preference to God. What sin does is separate you from all that’s good and proper and leaves you in an evil state.

What you do about that separation is you return to the Father from which he left. You go back home to God. This Father is absolutely fascinating to me. I just have a picture of him in mind. Do you mind? I think he went down by the creek when he got ready to gather the eggs every night. And I think he looked down that long, lonesome road toward the far country. And I think he said over and over and over again, God, help my boy. And I think when he sat on the roof of the house in the evening, as the people were wont to do in that Oriental economy, and looked out across, and once in a while, just when the lights were just right, he could see them twinkling over there.

And I think he turned his mind and said, God, please help my boy. And I think one day when he was going down by the creek, all of a sudden he saw something coming down the road, and he said to himself, could that be my boy? And a little deer jumped out and went to the other side. He stopped, looked down at the ground, and said, God, help my boy. He did that several times. Until it got to the point it was the old pedlar man one time when he heard him twinkling, heard these utensils twinkling on the old donkey. And the next time it was the caravan. And it went on and on and on, and over and over and over and over. He said, God help my boy.

One day, he was going down that road, and he looked up and he said, That is no deer. That’s my boy. And he started running toward him, and the boy started running toward him. He’s going home, no shoes on, barely covered his nakedness with some kind of loincloth. He’s headed back, he’s pitiful. He’s horrible. The Father sees him. He had pictures of him flashing in his mind as to how he was when he left, young and virile and strong and muscular. Now he’s dank looking. His hair is disheveled and covered, he’s covered with pig stink. And he’s running toward him and running toward the Father. He sees signs of the Father. And the Father’s got his arms outstretched, and they meet one another, and all of a sudden they both fall to their knees, and the Father smothers him with kisses through all of that dank, good for nothing filth that he’s gotten himself in.

Listen to me. That’s God. That’s what he does. He looks at the filthy people and he says, if you’ll do what I tell you to do, we’ll wash all that off. We’ll get rid of all that. Listen to me. The God of the Bible is not some Thor-like character that sits on a big old thundercloud and throws lightning bolts in front of you so that you misstep, and then when you miss a step and fall off in the ditch, he says, That’s twice, one more time, and you’re out. That is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible that was wanting you, and he’s wanting you, and he’s wanting you, and you, and you, and you, and every one of us. And he will take us as we are if we will truly repent and come to him.

Conclusion

We can have everything that he has promised. What a glorious, wonderful thought that is. Bring shoes and put them on his feet. Bring a robe and cover his nakedness. Bring a ring. And let me declare his familial association. My boy has come home. We have not time to look at the last part of the story. It’s not very pretty. What it says is that there can be evil in the midst of very religious surroundings. But I must say to you that this story of the prodigal is the story of mankind. It tells us what sin is. It tells us what sin does, and it tells us the remedy for sin. And I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how dark your life. I don’t care how many terrible secrets you have that are sinful and ungodly and wretched, if you come home to the Father, He will accept you and take care of you.

He will forgive you of your sins. He will wash you white as snow. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Know ye not that so many of us as we’re baptized into Christ, we’re baptized into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so the glory of the Father, that we should rise to walk in newness of life. Newness of life. Do you hear that? Newness of life. Everything washed away, everything taken care of. And let me say something else. There are people in this audience that are harboring little things in their lives that you need to get rid of. And you need to do it right now. You need to do it tonight.

You need to make up your mind that you’re going to the Father and ask him to take you back. And if those sins are public in nature, you need to do something about that tonight. You don’t need to wait about it. If people here know that you’ve been in a sinful state and you’ve not been living like you ought to live, you need to make your life right. You need to come. I want to say something, folks. It doesn’t make any difference what you accomplish in life. If you become a rich person because you’re wealthy, the stock market moves at your behest. I don’t care if you become a person that is so well known and highly reputed that everybody knows your visage everywhere. No matter where your picture’s displayed, everybody can point and say, I know who that is.

And I don’t care if you become the most powerful person in the world so that at your behest, armies and navies march. I don’t care about that. I want to tell you one thing. If you miss heaven, you’ve just missed all there is.

Those of us that are faithful, we need to rededicate our faithfulness. We need to make sure that we come to ourselves frequently, that we examine ourselves honestly, that we maintain our spiritual integrity with God, that we maintain our constancy in prayer and thanksgiving. We need to do that tonight. Everybody needs to do something about his life tonight. While we stand and sing, will you come if you owe him a duty?