Our reading is found in Luke's Gospel, chapter 15, and verse 11. He said, there was a man who had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of property that's coming to me. And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country. There he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate. And no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, how many of my Father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger. I'll arise and go to my Father, and I'll say to Him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before You. I'm no longer worthy to be called Your Son. Treat me as one of Your hired servants, And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe. and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fattened calf, and kill it, and let's eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate. Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to that house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked, what these things meant. And he said to him, your brother's come, and your father's killed the fattened calf because he's received him back sound and sound. But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and treated him. And he answered his father, Look, these many years I've served you and I never disobeyed your command. You never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who's devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. And he said to him, You're always with me, and all that I is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. God bless the reading of his holy and infallible word. Well, it's a great pleasure and an honor for me to speak to you this morning in the providence of God. I've been here now 10 days speaking in various places and a happy occasion at the graduation at December on Thursday. I can't remember when it was I last preached in an OPC congregation. I know I preached in Glenside at Calvary, and I had Cornelis Van Til, and E.J. Young, and Meredith Klein, and Paul Woolley, and Ed Stonehouse, and Arthur Kushke in the congregation. I don't think I was ever afraid again of preaching anywhere when I had such beloved and worthy divines listening to me. So I'm so pleased to identify with you in your work of faith and labor of love for Jesus Christ here in Greenville in Taylors. And I want to speak to you today about this passage that I read in your hearing, Luke 15, the parable I've called it of the running father. It's a portrait of God's redemption. in its own validity and finality. A parable. It's more accurate and more moving and even more profound than a series of straightforward propositions which we are more accustomed to when we read the letters of the apostles. Jesus also made those things very clear in that way. But what He does here is paint a picture This prodigal son, it's very evocative, it's very open-ended. It remains hooked into a memory cell. You heard it first in Sunday school or when Dad read the Bible to you and you've never forgotten. You can't forget it. And we fall back on it. And we'll fall back on it after the three alliterative truths by which I'm finding a way into it to you this morning. I want this picture to live in your minds for the rest of the week. It's of an old man running to hug and kiss his son, fearful that he'll change his mind and not come home. And we want all of you to come home. Come to Jesus Christ. Come to the Heavenly Father who's blessed you and watched over you until this very moment. My first R, the rebellion of the son. He tells of a boy who went to his land-owning father And he said to him, give me. And he didn't say, give me a white stallion or give me a coat of many colors. He said, give me the portion that's legally mine now that I'm a certain age. And I want it now, he said. And he forfeited his right then to his father's land. and all that remained would pass to his older brother. We're not quite sure how it worked out. Probably, two-thirds would go to the older son and then he or the younger son would have a third. And they would estimate the cost of the land per acre and the herds of cattle and sheep and goats and so on and find the estimate and then they would give him a third of what it was worth. The shame of this would be added to the shame that the son had already brought to his father by daring to ask him for his portion. Now, it was equivalent of saying to his father, I wish you were dead. And the father, this remarkable man, just bore it without recrimination. And to this day, there are people in traditional cultures, they can't make head or tail of this. A friend of mine, he labors in the ministry in London. And it's a portion of London where one certain nation has sent a lot of its immigrants. And he meets with the young people, mainly boys, on a Friday night, and they play pool and ping pong. And then he tells them the stories from the Bible. And he told them this story. And he said to them, in your country, what would a father do if a son came to him and asked him as this boy asked his father for the portion of goods that were now his. And they talked among themselves and they came back and they said, he'd kill him. And so there's grace then, even in the response of the father to this boy, that he, without recrimination, gave his son what he asked for. Then he went off with the money. He went and he wasn't returning. He had no pleasure in the conversation of his father at mealtimes. The whole lifestyle, he hated it. And so He would put as many miles between Himself and His Father and the home that it was possible to do. Jesus says it was a far country. A distant country. So it wasn't Moab. He went through Moab perhaps and another country and another country to a place He'd heard of. A distant country. So He was choosing the life of paganism over the life of living in the Promised Land. He was turning his back on the covenant people of God. Like rebellious young people, can't wait to get off to college and they don't have to go to church any longer. They don't have to be with us. And we miss them and we always pray for them. And it's a foolish enterprise they're taking because you can't get away from God. He can wake you up at two o'clock in the morning. He can remind you, put his finger on that girl you hurt, that expletive, those things you watched online, and your fall and your fallings. And he can do that. You can't escape from Almighty God. God's everywhere. In that distant country, this prodigal then made new friends. He learned another language. Picked up new habits, new traditions, new patterns for the week, new patterns for the year. He wore different style clothes. Bought well. Bought luxuriously. I've got away from all that I was. All that I hated. Nobody knows me here. I don't have a father waiting at the door, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, waiting for me to come home, pursed lips, concerned for me, expressing that concern. I can do what I want here without anyone's frown. He answered to no one, and so he gave in to all the forbidden pleasures that had been alien to him so far. I'm not saying he now was able to go to parties. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that now He could go to weddings. We go to parties. We go to weddings. Because Jesus went to weddings. And Jesus went to parties. But He was unrestrained in His sensuality. And His spendthrift extravagance. It's spend, spend, spend, for tomorrow we die. And so, there was a new kid on the block. And oh, like wasps, to a honeypot. They gathered round this fellow. You know, he's got money to spend. And he had many friends. Fair-weather friends. And every appetite was satisfied. He deprived himself of no new sensation. Every itch was scratched. He sold to the flesh. He thought, well, that's what it's all about. Isn't it? That's indulgence now. That's it. He never lacked companionship. And then his money disappeared. And one day he went to the secret place where it was hid and he put his hand in and he had to go right down. And there were coins left where there'd been notes before. And he spent a lot. No more free feasts of roast pork for his cronies. No more hunting expeditions. No free wine, no winning to buy. And he didn't have a penny. And he didn't have family in that place. Everybody in England has got an auntie and an uncle in London. And when there's a show on or when there's a match on, they go up and they stay with their auntie. He had no aunties in this distant country. And all his fair weather friends, once they learned that he'd spent the lot, they left him. And on top of that, there was a recession caused by a fierce drought that went on month after month. No rain, dust everywhere. And people out in the country who were dying came into the city. The boom had become bust. The dream, faded in the blinding light of endless burning sunshine. And he was alone in a groaning world under the curse like many today. But he could still fall further because for the Jew, pigs were unclean and he should have nothing to do with them. But the only man who'd employ him for a pittance was a pig farmer. And could he fall any further? Oh, yes. It's a free fall when you have no God's hand out holding you and keeping you. He was hungry enough to devour the food that the pigs were eating. Bad news. Bad news. Sin is a hard master, friends. He was in bondage to poverty with the pigs. And what began with one thrill after another ended in serfdom. He was like a party drinker who becomes a drunk. He was like a drug user becomes an addict. He was like a promiscuous person who gets a sexually transmitted disease. The party become a prison. That's what sin does. You see the picture here. You understand the depth to which this boy fell off the cliff of containment and comfort. No redeeming feature in this man from the time that he said to his father, gimme, until he went off and landed eventually with the pigs. No redeeming feature at all. You know, men, can allegorize this familiar parable, and they can say, the prodigal is the sinner. You can say he's a type of every sinner who's a long way from God. And before you know it, preachers are addressing people like you. Thoughtful, hardworking, caring people of the utmost decorum and respectability and say, there you are among the pigs. There you are amongst the prostitutes and the drunkards. This is not every man. This boy is not your run of the mill tailor's sinner. This man is how he is described in this parable, he's a rake. He's a fool. He's a waster. He's a drunkard. He's a derelict. He's a heartbreaker, this boy. He doesn't stand in this parable as a symbol of every man, of every sinner. He stands here as a symbol of the sinner in the pits. as far as you can go, as low as you can fall, in the gutter, on the waterfront, on death row. He's the extreme. He's thrown out of low company. If ever there was a son, who a father would open the door, crack and see him, he would shout at him through a closed door, don't bother to come back. If ever there was a sinner, that God would reject. It would be this man, this prodigal. This is the Saul of Tarsus, the torturer, the Jesus hater. This is the Gadarene demoniac. This is the slave trader John Newton. This is the would-be suicide bomber, this bigot, not an ordinary sinner. This man is on the lowest rung of the ladder. This man is in the cesspit and the liquid has reached his jaw. This is who we have here. And the angels are talking, Michael and Gabriel, and they're saying, is he the worst? Have we ever had anyone as bad as this before? Is he worse than Saul? Is he worse than the Gadarene demoniac? This prodigal? And the angels are discussing it and they'll say, well, if there's anyone that God would reject, it's this guy, isn't it? Surely our Lord won't receive him. It means that you and I, we can never save someone as bad as I've been for such a long time. Falling repeatedly into the same sins. I can't be saved. We think we're unique in our past, in our shame, in the girls we've kicked in the teeth. so guilty, so abandoned, so far gone in the addiction to wickedness. We're the most wretched, the most hopeless. He is the chief of sinners. And yet, there's a road from where that man is, and there's a road from where you are this morning. There's a road that will take you to a heavenly Father. and eternal blessedness at God's right hand forevermore, wherever you might be in the depths of your own guilt and shame and abandonness and hypocrisy and intellectual arrogance and the pain you've caused the people who love you the most from wherever you are at this moment. There is a road to God, and that's why I've come this morning, and that's why you were here this morning. To know of that road which I want you to take. I don't want you to leave without starting on this road. That's my first point. The rebellion of the Son. My second point is His repentance. Now that's a theme that runs through this chapter. It is not that God loves sinners. That's not the theme of this chapter. God loves repenting sinners. You see this repentance in verse 7 and again in verse 10. What does it mean? Familiar words in our circles, in our hymns. What is it to repent? And the answer is here, wonderfully, in this picture of the prodigal son. Firstly, three things happened to him. He came to his senses. He came to himself. Verse 17. That's the first thing. That's the first thing. So simple, isn't it? He saw what he'd done. He realized where he was at. where his life was at that moment. He was far from home. He was penniless. He was homeless, hopeless, disgraced, discredited, abandoned. And he came to his senses. Not the typical sinner. The worst sinner. Came to himself. Our return to God. Your return to God always involves that. It's inescapable. The first step. You look at yourself. Come to see yourself. Maybe you have all the hallmarks of perdition and you sink in here and you sit in a corner and you look at the other people and think what holy and good and great they are. Not like you. You don't really belong here. Oh, we're so glad, we are so glad you come. We used to think like that at one time. You'd have thought that this guy would have been always aware of what he was, of his attitude to this wonderful father. that some basic conscience would have convicted him, as he just turned his face to a skull at the words and attitudes of his father. There are some people, you know them, they're in your family, and You think, surely they know the truth about themselves. Surely they do. The alcoholic, he knows. The pedophile, he knows. The drug addict is aware of what he's doing to his health. He realizes what he's doing to his family, to his wife, to his friends, to his kids. Surely he'll come to his senses, but then you come to the Old Testament and there's... This man who wrote Psalm 23. Lord, my shepherd, I'm not being warned. He makes me lie down in green pastures. His wife and another wife and another wife. Power corrupts him. Concubines. Seven wives. And then Bathsheba. And he impregnates her and has her husband killed. And you'd think he couldn't sleep that night, that week. He couldn't. He was distraught. No. The weeks and the months went by and he was content with a new wife. It took a servant of God to come and tell him a story and say, you're the man. You're the man. You are. Thou art the man. That's what required for David to come to himself and pray Psalm 51. That's what was required. Just to know adultery is a sin and murder is a sin. Many men and women, you know some of them. Some of you here, your sin is staring you in the face. And you haven't come to yourself yet. It goes on, doesn't it? Week after week. Year after year. There you are. Just the same. You come out of habit, but not out of heart. And here we are standing in this moral universe. What you sow, you're also going to reap. And there's a day that's coming. It's a day of evaluation. A day of giving an account. all the blessings, all the goodness, all that inward testimony, your conscience, all that it's told you about the greatness of the God who's blessed you and cared for you. Every loving thing, every good gift that's come from heaven that you've had and just taken in your stride and never bowed before Him and given thanks to Him. And so what have you got? You're on the forecourt of eternity like we all are. And all we have are the baubles, and the Gugors, and the toys of our materialism, and the remnants. We've got some money in the bank, and a nice car, and we've paid off our mortgage, and we've got a family and memories. That's it. Is that what it's all about? Is that your chief end? Have you found it? You with a soul. Vanity of vanities. It's all vanity. We have our goals, we have our objectives, and our chief ends, and life goes on. Very rapidly, when I was being 80, seemed an eternity away. It's a moment. And then, the last breath. John Milton. Talks of that moment when the prize then is almost in our grasp. And he says, come the blind furies with their abhorred shears, and they slit the thin spun line. What have we got? I don't want to sentimentalize, but you know some of the great men of the 20th century. Men I've known and followed. Winston Churchill, great Prime Minister, led Britain through the war. And then Ronald Reagan, great President. All their achievements, all their ego-reinforcing attainments of an outward outstanding life. Enormously influential with all the plaudits and accolades that they received from the nations they'd led. In the end, what did they have? That woman who came and sat in the bed and talked to them. They didn't know it was their wife. All the great achievements. They'd forgotten it all. It speaks of the unsubstantial nature of human attainments. Because they had attained so much, and in the end, they never knew it. So, repentance begins with the sinner coming to his senses. Looking at his life in the light of eternity. In the light of Almighty God. And he has now some self-understanding. He has some self-evaluation. You see, men and women, the gospel isn't a summons to fantasy. They're not fairy tales that we talk about. This is not Narnia that we are talking about. We're talking about the one who was born under Pontius Pilate in this world, to breathe this air, held down by gravity, eaten, drunk, and washed, defecated, all the things we do, he did. He was the incarnate God. This is Jehovah Jesus we are talking about. The preacher of the Sermon on the Mount we are talking about. The great challenge for you is what is greater? Is it the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount, or is it death? What's the most important? What is the greatest? What is the most powerful? The third day he rose from the dead. There we are, the storm rolled away, the many appearances, six weeks, there he is, talking with one, with a woman, with two on the road, with his brother. with Peter, recharging, reconfirming, recommissioning, with the 11, with seven, eating fish that he'd cooked with them, with 500 and they never forgot it. The great day when, on the mountain there, they saw him. People said, you sure it wasn't a ghost? Come on, we touched him. He slapped me on the back, he said, keep going brother, keep going. They love to tell that Jesus is the ultimate, not death. So that's the first thing, he faced up to himself. Secondly, he remembered his father. Now this word father, it occurs Just once in the parable so far, but from the sixth verse onwards it occurs seven times. This is the father. This is his father. This boy had a father. The Shorter Catechism, you know, it tells us that repentance begins with the apprehension of the mercy of God. That's where it begins. It begins with a beam of hope coming into your life. You've been proud and defensive and you wanted to do it my way, as Sinatra sings. And then you saw the folly and emptiness of it all. and that God could be merciful to a wretched, proud guy like you. You know, a man will never repent unless he has the impetus of hope. It may be a glimmer, it just may be, but an encouragement. You come now. You come. Not your brother, not your sister, but you. You come. Coming to Christ is a movement of your heart when the Holy Spirit takes the Word that you're listening to now, and He applies it to you. And you respond. You brush aside the vain justification for living without your God. Here I am, Lord, you say. You have a hope that He will listen to you. Jesus says, He that comes unto Me, I will in no wise cast out. No way I'll cast them out. No way I'll slam the door. But I've been so bad, I won't close the door. Jesus says. Sinners, Jesus will receive. Sound the word of grace to all who the heavenly pathway leads. All who linger, all who fall, sing it. O'er and o'er again Christ receiveth sinful men. Sinful men. Don't care who you are. Don't care where you spent last night. It doesn't matter. If you come to Him in repentance, then you won't be cast out. That's your hope. That's the glimmer that he gives. But what do you think caused this boy to think of his father? What caused him there? Somewhere in this prodigal's upbringing there had been planted indelibly in his mind a consciousness that whenever things went wrong, he could come home. He must always come home. He was never told, if you bring disgrace on the family, don't bother to come back. He wasn't told that. If you let us down, don't bother to come back. If you bring shame on our name, stay away. He wasn't ever told that. He'd been told, However low you go, however deep the degradation, however appalling, you must always remember, son, this is your home. You must come back. And I want to beg and plead with you parents here this morning that you give your children this absolute, this unconditional security that you're Sons and daughters know if they enter the ultimate in tragedy, they can still come home. If they are drunkards, they can come home. If they marry the wrong people, they can still come home. If they get sexually transmitted disease, they can come home. If they get pregnant, they can come home. If they have an abortion, they can come home. If they end up in jail, you'll be there with a car waiting the day of their release to bring them home. They need that assurance. This is one of the principles of Christian education. This is one of the principles of the divine pedagogy. That's how God trains us and that's how we train our children. He wants fathers to exemplify His own fatherhood. This boy came to his senses and he thought, this Father, so kind, so patient, so sweet, so understanding, so forgiving. This is the Father I'm speaking about for you. This is who God is. if you come to Him. And thirdly, He came with an imperfect faith. You understand that? He came with an imperfect repentance. You understand that? We don't say to you, if your faith is great and strong and powerful, you can come. It's not that. If your repentance is deep and grand you can come. We're not saying that. If your faith is as thin as a spider's thread and it goes from your heart to the heart of Jesus Christ, it is like a horse that ties a battleship to the dock. He can't be broken in the terrible burst of storms. That thread of faith will take you over the bottomless pit. It will take you over the lake of fire. It will present you faultless before Him with great joy. We're not saved by great faith. We're saved by faith in a great Savior. We're not saved by great pure repentance you see this boy he didn't have that this boy had an inadequate view of his father you understand that so what will i say now if i go home what will i say um father i i've sinned against heaven yes i'll say that father i've sinned against heaven and in your sight of course father i've sinned against heaven and in your sight I'm not worthy to be called your son. I'll say that to him. I'm not worthy of such a father. Father, I have sinned against heaven in your sight. I'm not worthy to be called your son. Then I'll say, make me as one of your hired servants so that in harvest time when the foreman comes down and the men are standing in the market square, and he calls on certain men to come and work for a day's wages, and my hand will be there. I know the farm. I know every field. I know every hedge, every stone. Employ me. Please, can I work for you again as a hired servant? Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and I'm not worthy to be called your child. Make me His one. That's what I'll say. And so he began his walk home. It was so unworthy of this Father This wonderful, loving father. And he's making up a little speech. And he's talking about that he could be employed as a labourer by him. This boy who so excitedly had gone back. I've gone off to the distant country with his bag of money. Gonna spend and spend, spend. Comes back slowly the same way. Slowly, slowly rehearsing the speech. Going to the father he had hurt so terribly. He couldn't comprehend what mighty grace his father had. How God had taught him to love. To love his enemies. to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile, to overcome evil with good. And that's how his father had learned to live. And that's how we Christians are. That's how we parents are who love the Lord Jesus. That's how we are. In other words, you see, start now Now, start now to talk to God. Not out loud, but in your heart. I want you to start talking to Him. Every one of you. I want you to start talking about yourself and how it's been. Not been a good relationship with God and you want it to be different. I want you to tell God about yourself and why you've been so long before you've come to Him. I want you to do that now. Every one of you. To talk to Him. You want to say, I never appreciated you, Lord. I'm so sorry. I've made a mess of things. I'm so sorry. Just begin to talk. Keep talking to Him He talks back to you. You have an inward witness. That's becoming a Christian. It's a relationship that you have with this God who is love. This God who is lovely. This God who is gracious and merciful. A God who delights to pardon, we're told by one of the prophets. Give God that delight. in pardoning you. Go to Him. Go to Him. You see, it doesn't matter what you say. You don't have to get your prayers 100% correct. You don't have to. I've never had a sad or sinless prayer. Only Jesus prays sinlessly. But we don't. But we pray in the name of Jesus, through Jesus. He's our advocate, our intercessor. He descends our prayers and offers them to God. You talking to Him. Please now start talking to Him. Lastly, the return of the boy. That's R, you could say. There are lots of R's here. Reconciliation, of course. Renewal. Return. He walks back and one day he's up the lane and he's looking down. And there it is, the White House. Little house where he was born, where he grew up. And he stands and he looks at it. Every day his father would pull the curtain aside and he'd look up. His wife never asked him because she knew. She knew what he was doing and who he was looking for. Every day, five, six times. That day. There's a man on the road. He's not walking. He's standing still. He's still there. I think I'll go out and help him. So he gets out of his chair and he goes through the farm door and across the farmyard, opens the gate and he stands and he looks up. He sees this figure. And he starts to walk towards him and the nearer he gets, he thinks, it's the boy. And he gets nearer and the boy moves and he knows the strut and the silhouette and now he hastens his pace and the boy's not moving he doesn't want him to go back and he starts to run and run old man be careful brittle bones old man they don't run but he runs lest he change his mind he runs right up to him and sees his dirt and his wrinkles and the smell and he wraps his arms around him and he hugs him and he crushes him. My boy, he says, and he weeps. I'll never let you go again, my boy. And three breathless servants come running up and looks at this scene and he says to the one, go to the wardrobe upstairs. In the bedroom there, there's a robe there, and there are sandals there on the floor of the wardrobe. The robe of sonship, you bring it here. And the second one, he says, in the chest of drawers in the living room, the second drawer down, there's a little black box, there's a ring there. Ring of sonship, you bring it here. And then the third one, he says, well, we know why we fattened the calf, don't we? Yeah. Tell the men they got a day off today. Tell the wives to get ready and we're gonna have a party. Tell the musicians to bring out their banjos and their bagpipes. My son is home again. He was dead and he's alive. He was lost and he's found and he's home. My boys come home. And they walk arm in arm down to the farm. Maybe the mother's standing at the gate looking up in tears. The son says, Father, I'm so sorry. Not now. Father, I've sinned against heaven and before You. I'm not worthy to be called Your son. Not now. Not now. When we come to God, He doesn't make it difficult. He doesn't say, what about that sin? What about her? What about the pain you caused your family? He doesn't say those things. He welcomes us. He welcomes us into His presence. Everything forgotten in the joy of a repentant sinner. of a restored sinner. It's resurrection day on the farm. Alright, that's the picture. You know it. How wonderful it is. Jesus told it. This is the love of God for you. He brought me here to explain it to you today. He brought you here to open your ears. You've understood it. It's not complicated at all. It's telling us how God delights to pardon. The great welcome that God gives when we come to Him. The wonderful things God does. The change of status immediately that happens. We become His sons. We become His heirs. Heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus. The same love with which He loves Jesus Christ, He loves us. Think of it. joint heirs with the inheritance that He has. We have where He is, we will be. We are seated in the heavenlies as He is. That He begins to work all things together for our good, everything. That He supplies all our needs from this moment on. I can't understand how you can hear about such a salvation, such a future for you and you remain unpersuaded. What have you got? If you don't have my Saviour, what have you got? And you're making some excuses to justify going on with cold hearts and unbelief to death. God doesn't hurl our past at us. He freely forgives. We're cleaned up. We're like white snow. As clean as that. As white as that. It's not that He brings the boy back and He says you have to live for five years in the apartment above the barn. And then we'll have a family powwow in five years time to decide whether we can make you a child, a son of us again. He doesn't do any of those things. A feast of delight, joy in heaven over a sinner who repents. So I end what, What did that boy do? How did it all happen? What did he do? Well, he came to himself. That was the first thing. He saw himself. He realized, is this going to be my future? Just like this? Just this rut I'm in? And then he made a decision. I will set out and go to my father. No one ever became a Christian without making a decision. I want you to make a decision today that you're going to come just as you are to Him just as He is. Loving, forgiving, mighty to save. Make up your mind now to do that. I'm going to my father. And many men have come to themselves for a while. Many people have made the decision that they're going to turn over a new leaf and they're going to be better people. But not yet. but he got up and went to his father. So where are you now on that spectrum? Have you come to yourself? Have you made a decision? Have you come? Have you moved? Have you done that? All the knowledge of the Bible. All the knowledge of the Catechism. All your attendance at church, my friends. You must make a bundle of it all. And all your sin, make a bundle of it all. And you must go to Jesus. And you must be hidden in His wounded side. And when God says to you one day, why should I let you into My heaven? Then you will say, Because of Jesus. Because of Jesus. If you ask me what saved this boy, I would say the extraordinary abundant love of the Father saved him. If you ask me what saved this boy, I would say he made a decision and went home. And that's what we want for you. You know, Mondays, and you're in the open plan office with the other girls, and you open your bags, and you pick up the free newspaper, and you go to the column that tells you of your stars, and you giggle with one another, and you say, ooh, Irene, you're a Taurus, aren't you? You're going to meet a tall, dark stranger today. You say, oh, well, Libra, oh, look, you're going to make some money today. And you giggle and laugh, because you don't have any standards to live by. And you notice there's a girl there. And she smiles, but she never reads her stars out. And one day you say to her, you have a nice weekend? And you say, oh yes, she said, in church on Sunday, we had a Welshman preaching to us. Wow, we had such a blessing there. Oh, you thought, so she's a Christian. And then often there was a longing. And you talk to her often, you have a nice weekend in church yesterday? And she would say, you didn't know she was praying for you. You didn't know she had five friends, and you prayed for one another. You were on all their lists. And they were all praying for you to come home, come home today. And one day she said to you, you know, we've got a special meeting. We've got special speakers coming. I said, would you like to come to church? You were longing for her to ask you. And when she came home and sat there and sung and listened, she was coming home. Come home. Come home now, all of you. Every one of you, you come home. Don't stay away. Yes. many homes that Jesus is preparing just for you. Your name is on it. You come now, just as you are. Here I am, Lord. Sorry I've been so long. You start to speak to him. You keep speaking to him. Never stop. When he starts speaking back to you, then say, thank you. Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for your kindness. You pray. You pray. Our Heavenly Father, bless your word to us now, we pray. Give it saving power in the lives of everyone here. Give us a much mightier, grander view of your wonderful love, your kindness, your patience with us. Thank you that you've gathered us here. Oh, mighty God, do bless us each one. Grant that not one shall be lost, that all will come home. Please, in your great kindness, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, lift up your heads and your hearts and receive the Lord's blessing. And may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, he who calls you is faithful, who also will do it. Amen.