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Prodigal Wife & Kids, Prodigal Nation (Hos 2:2-13)
42 Plays2 years ago
Sunday Message recorded 22 October 2023
by Pastor Victor Morrison
First Baptist Church -- Columbus TX
1700 Milam St.
Columbus, TX, USA 78934
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Transcript
Introduction and Gratitude
00:00:06
Speaker
Thank you so much, Tim. Appreciate you and the staff and all those who are a part of South Texas Children's Home. And thank you for including us as ministry partners. What a blessing for
Invitation to the Book of Hosea
00:00:17
Speaker
us. I would like to invite you to turn to the Old Testament book of Hosea. It's in the minor prophets over toward the end of the
00:00:27
Speaker
book the Old Testament and so you'll want to try to go to the end and maybe work your way backwards. There are 12 books that are in the minor prophets and maybe you say why are we even doing this? It's just a little bitty book. It's in the Old Testament. Doesn't the Old Testament stand for old school and why are we even looking at it? But I just want to tell you this this incredible book has so much to say right now
00:00:53
Speaker
to each of our lives, a lot to say to our country, to our community, to our world.
Hosea's Significance in the Bible
00:01:00
Speaker
And so I really want to invite you to look at it. We're going to look today at a prodigal wife and kids and a prodigal nation. But I want us to think in terms of why look at a book that is so small.
00:01:12
Speaker
Do you know which book in the Bible is the largest? I mean, if you were to count the words, do you know that Genesis would be the second? You may say, no, Genesis has got to be first. It's so long. It's actually not the longest. Jeremiah is the longest book, followed by Genesis, and then Psalms. Those are the top three in terms of words. But if you were to keep counting the words in each book of the Bible, Hosea would be number 36.
00:01:39
Speaker
And you would think, wow, 36, okay, well, that's important. But then 1 John would even be further down. It's got 41.
00:01:49
Speaker
But you would be mistaken if you assume that this book has
The Metaphor of a Prodigal Nation
00:01:53
Speaker
nothing to say to you, nothing to say to us, nothing to say to those living in 2023. It has a lot to say. It actually is very brief, but it's also very deep, very solid, very profound, very balanced. For example, just like 1 John, it's so short, right? Only five chapters. But you know, 1 John tells us that God is love.
00:02:16
Speaker
But 1 John also tells us that God is light. You see, God's holy as well as merciful and gracious. God is just. There's so much balance that is within the character of who our God is. And so that's why some refer to John, who wrote 1 John. They refer to him as the apostle of love. Well, you could refer to Hosea as the prophet of love.
00:02:43
Speaker
No doubt, but neither one, neither John nor Hosea, neither of these men minimize the holiness of God.
00:02:53
Speaker
They speak about God's love as a holy love. It's not a sentimental feeling that condones sin and pampers the sinner. See, the prophet Hosea was called to speak like Ephesians 4 says, the truth and to speak it in love. Can you do that? Can you speak the truth? But can you also speak it in love?
00:03:17
Speaker
Well, he was speaking the truth and love to a prodigal nation while walking right beside a prodigal wife, prodigal children, all representing as like this metaphor, this analogy, this illustration. All of Hosea's family was representing the northern kingdom of Israel at that time. They were walking away from God.
00:03:43
Speaker
And so that's why in chapter one, we saw last time, verses two through nine, Hosea was called to declare the consequences of sin. Do you know that God can forgive sin, but there are consequences of sin. Then in chapter one, verse 10 through chapter two, verse one, we looked at the promises of hope. It was so exciting to see God move from talking about the consequences of sin to saying, but.
00:04:10
Speaker
There's incredible hope. There's incredible forgiveness with
Hosea's Family and Israel's Infidelity
00:04:14
Speaker
the Lord. So today, once again, as we go into chapter two, and we begin with verse two, and we go down through verse 13, you're going to see raw truth coming at you. But just remember, it's going to be truth that's also spoken with love.
00:04:29
Speaker
And so that's why this time and next time you'll see this undercurrent of love and hope. Maybe you're a prodigal. Maybe you would say, you know what? I'm not where I should be. I'm not walking with the Lord like I know I should be. This message is for you. This book is for you. The God's grace is for you. This message of truth is for you.
00:04:53
Speaker
So I want to invite you to stand with me and to listen closely as God speaks to a prodigal nation. Keep in mind that what he's talking about is the nation. It's gonna sound like he's talking about a family and you're gonna say, wait, what's going on? He's using the family as like a metaphor. He's speaking in terms of an object lesson that he knows very well because Hosea's own heart is breaking.
00:05:20
Speaker
because of what he sees in his own family, but also what he sees in the nation. It says in chapter 2, verse 2 of Hosea, plead with your mother. Plead, for she's not my wife and I'm not her husband, that she put away her whoring
Repentance and Spiritual Awakening
00:05:39
Speaker
from her face and her adultery from between her breasts.
00:05:43
Speaker
lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born and make her like a wilderness and make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no mercy because they are children of Hordam.
00:06:03
Speaker
For their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
00:06:21
Speaker
Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. So she shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.
00:06:48
Speaker
And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for bale.
00:07:02
Speaker
Therefore I will take back my grain in its time and my wine in its season. And I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
00:07:23
Speaker
And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which, she said, these are my wages, which my lovers have given me. I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the fields shall devour them.
00:07:45
Speaker
And I will punish her for the feast days of the bales when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord.
00:08:01
Speaker
What haunting words, God says, they forgot me. Let's pray together. Oh Lord, I pray for our nation, I pray for each one of us, because more than likely within our family, we know a prodigal. There's someone that we love very dearly, just like you loved Israel very dearly, and you still do. You see all that's going on in Israel's experience right now.
00:08:27
Speaker
But Lord, you love each one of our families. You love each individual in this room.
00:08:33
Speaker
but also you're holy. We sang about it. We declared it in our praise. And so for you, holiness is real. It's serious. It's not something that we should play games with. And so Lord, help us to realize that sin is a very serious thing. And so help us to deal with it and get it out of our lives. I pray that you would draw us back to the Father. Just like this verse says, it was better for me then
00:09:03
Speaker
than now. Maybe there's a prodigal in our midst and they're saying, my life is in shambles, my life hurts. It's so painful. Lord help them to go back to you. And so speak to us the three points of this message today. Make them so clear that we can't miss what you're saying, not only to us, but to prodigals and to our nation. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated.
00:09:30
Speaker
Warren Worsby says that the prophet Hosea was confronting three sins, idolatry in verses 2 through 5, ingratitude in verses 5 through 9, and insincerity or hypocrisy in verses 10 through 13.
00:09:45
Speaker
But here's what I want to do. I want to look at what God wants every prodigal to know. There's three things. There's three points today. The first one is verses two through five. God wants to give an indictment. God wants us to know that He knows our sin. There's an indictment that He wants us to be aware that He's charging us with unfaithfulness. Maybe not in every area, but in some areas.
00:10:13
Speaker
There's also this desire within the Lord to go to us, to help us to become aware of how serious sin is, to return to the Father rather than staying there in sin and in that pig pen if you were to go with a prodigal son parable.
00:10:30
Speaker
But where it ends is with enlightenment. What is it like? How does God open our eyes so that now we can see so clearly? You'll see it as we go through these verses. You'll see it as we walk through the whole book of Hosea. I think once again, you're gonna see that Romans 5.8 is written all across this whole book. Romans 5.8, God said, he's demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners,
00:10:58
Speaker
Christ died for us. So even while we were in rebellion and sin and maybe that's where you are, maybe somebody that's listening to this on the radio or somebody that's listening on a podcast, someone's in overflow. They're going to understand.
00:11:14
Speaker
that God is speaking to me about my sin. And so I want you to know that God loves you while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. So think about all that he's doing, but the three things I want you to know that God's going to do for every prodigal is number one, he's going to convict of the rebellion of the sin. Number two, he's going to convict us of repentance. We're going to be aware of our sin, but then we're also going to be aware that God's saying, come home.
00:11:44
Speaker
Come home. And then he's going to convince us enough to get up and go back toward him. So let's look at God's charge. What was that nation guilty of? What is our nation? Is our nation flawless? Is our nation blameless? Or is there something that God, if he were to say, come in court, come into the heavenly courts and let me tell you what I think about the way that you're living America.
00:12:09
Speaker
Well, the first charge he gives is to be guilty of apostasy. You know, apostasy is unfaithfulness. And in verse 2, he says twice, plead. The word there means charge. Make it clear what the charges are. And the charge, the indictment clearly was northern kingdom.
00:12:29
Speaker
You've been unfaithful to me. You've been unfaithful to me. He compares their unfaithfulness to marital infidelity. God's saying, that's how it feels like for me to see you walk away toward other idols like Baal
Critique of the Nation's Spiritual Condition
00:12:45
Speaker
and so forth. And so he's urging the faithful individuals within the northern kingdom to confront the sin that they see in their nation.
00:12:55
Speaker
How serious was the sin? Well, it's so serious. I'll give you the descriptions that I saw in verse five. I believe it was deliberate. It was deliberate because it was continuous. It hadn't stopped. It was chronic.
00:13:11
Speaker
And so maybe there's someone here and the sin hasn't stopped. It's just chronic. It's deliberate. It's intentional. You know, look at what it says.
00:13:26
Speaker
lovers, plural. There was more than one idol. There were many things that they were giving their hearts to rather than their heart to God. And so God is saying, I see this deliberate unfaithfulness. I'm not number one in your life. I'm not the center of your life. All of these other things are the center of your life. And God was saying, I see it and it's dishonorable. It's dishonorable. Look at what he says that they had acted shamefully.
00:13:54
Speaker
It was disgraceful. It was dishonorable. It was distasteful. And if we can only see the way God sees sin, God doesn't see sin as something fun. God doesn't see sin as something pleasant. God sees the ugliness of it. And he says, why are you eating out of the dumpster of sin? Get out of there. I've got something way better for you. And notice how defiant it was when she says, I will go after my lovers. I will.
00:14:23
Speaker
Do you use your will to go in the direction of God or to go away from Him?
00:14:30
Speaker
You know, the fatal flaw of persistent sin is the spiritual blindness that it brings to the consequences of the rebellion, especially to relationships. When I was looking through these verses two through five, I noticed, oh my goodness, look there are the consequences. The ripples, when I was a kid, sometimes my cousins and I would go and throw rocks into the pond. We didn't know how to fish, so we thought, well, at least we can cause some trouble. So we would throw rocks in that pond and we would see ripples go out
00:15:00
Speaker
all the way across to the edge of the pond. You know what? That's what our sin does. Our sin causes ripples, but look at the ripples it causes. What does it impact? Do you know that your sin impacts your spiritual fellowship with God? That's what he's trying to tell the Northern Kingdom when he's saying, you're not acting like my wife. You're not, I'm not acting, you're not treating me like I am your husband. And so there's this fracture in their fellowship.
00:15:28
Speaker
But there's also the personal well-being in life. Do you think that we can belong to
Conclusion and Call to Reflection
00:15:34
Speaker
the Lord and walk willfully in the direction of sin and not impact our well-being? You think we'll be happy? You think we'll be healthy? You think all will go well in all of our relationships?
00:15:46
Speaker
God is trying to tell us, no, you know what I'm going to do? God says, I'm going to make you like a wilderness. I'm going to make it so like a desert, like a parched land. That's what it's going to be like inside of you. So many times people are looking to try to feel it in some other way, but only God can feel our lives.
00:16:06
Speaker
But then I also noticed not only at the spiritual fellowship impact in our personal well-being, look at social connections. You know, the social connections with loved ones. You know, he says here that even the children are going to be impacted.
00:16:22
Speaker
Do you know, dad, do you know, mom, that whenever we do things, our kids are watching. They see, and there's a fallout that impacts them whenever they see us, you know, disobeying the Lord. No wonder there was a 17th century English author named John Dunn, who wrote a poem and he said, no, man,
00:16:42
Speaker
He could say, no woman, no boy, no girl, no teenager, is an island entire of itself. Any man's death diminishes me. There's something about our humanity. We're connected. And when you sin, when I sin, it affects the church family. It affects the community. It affects the world. It affects our family and it affects kids and spouses and so forth.
00:17:07
Speaker
So there's something about sin that makes us think, I'm in this by myself. This is all about me. I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to have a great life. But what we forget is all the while, it's like we have this chain around us and it's just causing such trouble and havoc all around us.
00:17:28
Speaker
So before we leave verses two through five, we must ask the big question. There's a question that must be asked. What is God's purpose in the warning? What is God's purpose in the discipline? I think the purpose is in verse two. Look at verse two. Plead with your mother. Plead for she is not my wife and I'm not her husband. That
00:17:51
Speaker
She put away her whoring from her face, put away her adultery from between her breasts. You see, the answer is right there. It's a call to repentance, a call for the Northern Kingdom to stop putting all of these other things before God. Do you think our nation is putting God first? Or do you think our nation is putting other things first?
00:18:13
Speaker
What about you? What about your family? What about your kids? What about your spouse? Are we putting God first? Are there other things? This is the first call to repentance in the whole book of Hosea, but I can guarantee you it will not be the last.
00:18:29
Speaker
If you wanted to see what it looks like whenever someone takes a call to repentance seriously, read Psalm 32. If you're a note taker, write it down. Psalm 32. David had committed adultery. That's the context that we're looking at here because Hosea's wife Gomer, she had committed adultery. She had had children outside of the marriage covenant. And so now all the things are just, it's just wreck, train wreck everywhere.
00:18:58
Speaker
But David commits adultery and you can see him in Psalm 32 as he begins to pray and ask God for forgiveness and so forth. But it wasn't immediate. And so that's what I wanted you to see in Psalm 32. What if there's instead of repentance,
00:19:16
Speaker
What if there's resistance? I think that's what David is describing in Psalm 32 verse 3 and 4. Let me read them to you. Psalm 32 verse 3 says, for when I kept silent, my bones wasted away.
00:19:30
Speaker
through my groaning all day long. Why are you groaning David? You're the king. Why would you groan? He said, for day and night your hand, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. What is it? Why is your life running out of steam and out of strength, out of joy, out of love?
00:19:54
Speaker
He could be. God's heavy hand is there and he's drying it all up and that's why in verse five you'll see David crack. He says, I acknowledge my sin to you. I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
00:20:12
Speaker
You see, when God's confronting us about our sin and our rebellion, he's really just saying, are you taking this seriously or are you just playing a game? Are you just trying to be deceptive? Are you just trying to hide stuff? Or is it real? You know, it's interesting how in verse nine, it's almost like David in Psalm 32.9 said, I want to leave a legacy so that those who come after me will know. And he said, be not like a horse or a mule without understanding.
00:20:41
Speaker
which must be curved with a bit and a bridle or it will not stay near you. You ever seen that happen before? Of course, of course you have. See, that leads us to the second point when we say, what's God going to do about it? Well, I'll tell you what God will do about it. If we want to resist
00:21:02
Speaker
then God says, I do have a goad. Do you know what a goad is? Some call it a cattle prod. It was like a long stick, maybe 10 feet long, had a pointed end on it. When I was in Alberta, I would help them in in the community pasture and there would be cattle they were trying to get through the shoot and they would just sort of stop. They were stubborn. They just stopped. And so we had to get those cattle on through there. And we tried talking to them, come on, nice cow.
00:21:28
Speaker
Come on baby, come on, work with me on this. You know what, they didn't do a thing. But buddy, you get that little stick and you start hitting them on the back. I mean, they start moving. Or you get the tail. I don't want to get too graphic here, but you get that tail and you just wrench it. Buddy, they start moving on. You know why God knows how to deal with a prodigal?
00:21:48
Speaker
There was a man named Saul who was a prodigal. He wasn't going in God's direction. He was going away from God. He was working against Christ and Christians and Christianity. Maybe there's somebody listening and you would say, what does God do with someone like that? Well, I'll tell
00:22:03
Speaker
what he did with Saul. He met him on the road to Damascus. The light was so bright he couldn't see where he was going. He lost his sight. He had to get off of his horse. He's in the dust. And when he was in the dust, listen to what the Lord Jesus Christ said to him.
00:22:20
Speaker
He said, it's hard for you to kick against the goads. It's hard for you to kick against the goads. I saw some of those cows sometimes try to kick, you know, when I would hit them on the back and they would try to kick, but they couldn't make me stop.
00:22:36
Speaker
Neither can we. So what will God do if we go back to Hosea 2, then we're going to see in verses 5 through about 13, a few of the things that he does to Godus. Let me tell you what he does. One thing he may put offense in the way.
00:22:54
Speaker
You're trying to go in the way of disobedience and God's just got a fence. He's got a hedge of thorns. He's got a wall. Man, he's saying, not that way. I want you to come this way. So God will just shut the doors and you won't be able to go that way. Another thing that happens is frustrations along the way. Can you see the frustration that would be involved in the Northern kingdom when he says, she shall pursue her lovers
00:23:21
Speaker
But not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. I wonder sometimes if some teenagers are a lot like me. When I was in school, I wanted so badly to be accepted by the popular crowd. And it's like they just kept on going and they wouldn't let me be a part of their circle.
00:23:39
Speaker
You know, is that you? Is that who you want to be accepted by? A certain group in the community? A certain group at work? A certain group in the country or whatever? You want to be approved by all of them? Or would you say, I don't care about them. I would rather be right with God. Because you know what? Trying to chase the crowd, it's going to lead to frustration in the end. Proverbs 13, 5 says, good understanding gains favor, but the way of the unfaithful
00:24:09
Speaker
is hard. It's hard for you, isn't it? Going away from God. It's going to be much better if you start going to God, at least you've got the Lord helping you with all you're going to face. I'm not saying I'm being rosy and pleasant because everybody may turn against you, but you'll at least say, I'm so much
00:24:27
Speaker
better in this place than I was trying to please everybody else. You know, Proverbs 14, 14, the very next chapter says, the backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways.
00:24:39
Speaker
I'll just cut straight with you. You know who the most unhappy people in the whole world are? Prodigals. The prodigal is hurt the way. The prodigal is seen the way. They seem to love. And the prodigal just walks away after the world. And I'm telling you, it's not happy. It'll lead to unhappiness and that's why they get into substance abuse and so many things. But what's underneath it all? Forgetfulness. Forgetfulness in the way.
00:25:07
Speaker
See, when the Lord goads us, he's trying to help us remember. He's trying to jog your memory and he's saying, are you gonna sleep at the wheel? Remember me telling you that one of my dad's friends said one time, will you go up with me, James, to Detroit?
00:25:22
Speaker
We're going to go up and pick up a new car. I don't want to go by myself. I'm just going to go straight up there and straight back, nonstop. He said, that way we'll have to just have one guy sleeping in the back and one guy awake. My dad had just taken his turn. And so his friend said, OK, you get in the back, James, and I'll drive. He said he felt the car kind of weaving, kind of swerving. So my dad said he thought, are you OK? So he woke up and said, hey, Johnny, are you OK?
00:25:49
Speaker
And he said, Johnny was sound asleep at the wheel. He was just going down the road like this, you know. And he said, Johnny, Johnny, don't overreact, you know. And he grabbed that wheel. Thankfully, they were safe. But not every prodigal story is safe, is it?
00:26:04
Speaker
But there was forgetfulness, they were asleep at the wheel. You know how we know? Well, you can look at verse five. The Northern Kingdom was unaware of the provisions of her blessings. It says, I'll go after my lovers who give me my bread, my water, my food, my wool, my flax, my oil, and my drink.
00:26:24
Speaker
Here was a nation that thought that the world gave them what they had. They forgot that everything they had came from God. And then you keep on reading, you say, oh, I see what's happening. They're also unaware of the purpose for their resources.
00:26:42
Speaker
What did they do with their resources? And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, who lavished on her silver and gold. And did they offer it back to God? No. Which they used for bail. They turned right around and used it for things that were against God. And I'm thinking, uh-oh, man, do we have a problem. So that's why in verse nine, it says therefore,
00:27:11
Speaker
Therefore, it's like a hinge in the whole, I don't know if you noticed it when we were reading through it, but therefore in verse nine, from that point on, seven times God says, this is what I'm gonna do. He says, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. And a successful nation, a prosperous nation, Israel at that time had been so prosperous, but you know what happened? They started failing. Failures were everywhere.
00:27:36
Speaker
You know what God can take away when He takes it away? He can take away all of it. Verse 9, He can take away your food. Verse 9, He can take away your fabric. Verse 10, He can take away your friends. Verse 11, He can take away all the parties, all the festivals, and all the feasts. He can take away the fruit in verse 12. He can take away the forests in verse 12. He can take away all the fashions in verse 13.
00:28:01
Speaker
I think what he's trying to say to the Northern Kingdom is, I can take it all away. Because I'm the one who gave it all to you. And so all we've got to do is say, well, what in the world is the purpose? Because God has rebuked them for the rebellion. He's tried to rouse them toward repentance. But now one last thing, and I close with this. He's trying to remind them to return, to return. Look at verse seven.
00:28:28
Speaker
says, then she shall say, I will go and return to my husband, for it was better for me then than now. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them, and she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, yeah, something's happening. You know what's happening? That's called spiritual awakening. That's called a spiritual awakening, and our nation desperately needs a spiritual awakening right now.
00:28:55
Speaker
So I got to thinking about it and I thought, what are the stages of spiritual awakening? And I thought, this is it, it's right here. It's all in verse seven. First, we have to have the demoralization with the ways of the world. We have to get sick and tired of it. We have to say, you know what? I am so sick of this. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. Pretty soon, sin gets real empty.
00:29:21
Speaker
And it won't, it just won't do. And so you began to say, you know, demoralization, you know what it means, right? Demoralization means that someone has caused you to lose confidence. Someone has caused you to lose enthusiasm. Someone has caused you to lose hope. You're demoralized. What's the purpose of it all?
00:29:40
Speaker
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Whenever we're sick and tired of it, the second thing is the realization of the truth of the Word all along. All along, the Bibles told us the truth. And so here it is at the end, for it was better for me then than it is now. It was so much better when Christ was at the center. It was so much better when He was our greatest treasure.
00:30:03
Speaker
And so they're saying, wait a minute, I realize now it's way better over there. Motivation by the work of the Spirit. Who is it that helps us through that whole process? Then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband.
00:30:20
Speaker
Who is it that's going to draw people to Christ all across America? I'll tell you who it is. It's the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is going to draw people to Christ. And as we are filled with God's Spirit, as we're yielded to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God is going to fill us, and He's going to use us to be catalysts for other people.
00:30:42
Speaker
You know, the Northern Kingdom, we're gonna see as we go through here, did they wake like we're thinking? Did they wake up? Or did they simply, like I do sometimes some mornings, even this morning, turn off that alarm clock and just roll back over? Hey, not a good idea. What will they do? I'm not gonna interrupt it for us. Not gonna spoil the ending. But I wanna close by reminding you
00:31:10
Speaker
2 Peter 3.9 says, the Lord's not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but He's patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
00:31:23
Speaker
The whole thing about falling asleep at the wheel, it reminds me of a song. I kept thinking, I've heard that song somewhere before. It was a Beatles song from the 1969 by Paul McCartney. But it's called Golden Slumbers. It's based on a ballad written 400 years ago by Thomas Decker. But here's what it says. It says, once there was a way to get back homeward. Once there was a way to get back home.
00:31:54
Speaker
They're still away. They're still away. It's the way of repentance and returning to the Lord. Jesus' parable of the prodigal son rehearses the same truths that we just saw in Hosea chapter 2 verses 2 through 13, especially chapter 2 verse 7. Let me read them to you so it comes off the page. But when he came to himself,
00:32:19
Speaker
He said, how many of my father's higher servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger. He's in a pig's pen. I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, father, I've sinned against you. I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
00:32:42
Speaker
Treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But while he was a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion. And he ran, and he embraced him, and he kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son." Wow.
00:33:06
Speaker
We know that it doesn't always end like that, does it? Not every prodigal comes home. Sometimes they just keep running. I'm so glad I chose to come home. My mom prayed for me many years, but when I was in my first year of university, I said, that's it. I'm so tired of the world. I'm going back home. And I meant going back to the Lord.
00:33:26
Speaker
And so, man, did everything begin to change. But we know from Matthew's gospel in chapter 11 that sometimes it's not just individuals. It's not just families. Sometimes it's cities, cities that refuse to repent. Jesus said in Matthew 11, 20 to 24, woe do you Corazon and Bethsaida and Capernaum. God did a lot. Jesus did a lot of things in those places, especially Capernaum and Bethsaida. Some of his men came from there.
00:33:56
Speaker
But Matthew also indicates there was another young man. He was a wealthy man. But Jesus said, come follow me, but I want you to get rid of all that that's distracting you. All those riches. But he went away, said. He refused in Matthew 19, 16 to 30. Jesus in Matthew 23, 37 to 39 looks on a city, the city of Jerusalem. He said, how often would I have gathered your children together
00:34:25
Speaker
You are not willing. He wanted to gather them, but they were not willing. What about you? Are you willing? Are you willing to come back home to return to the Lord today?
00:34:36
Speaker
You know, he's waiting, just like the father. As a matter of fact, the father ran once he saw the son coming back. You know, God will meet you if you'll return to him. I want to ask you to stand, I want to pray, and then let's have a time of invitation when we extend an opportunity to those who may be here and maybe they're a prodigal. Maybe they'd say, I need to go back home. I probably told you one time that my brother was a prodigal as well.
00:35:04
Speaker
And my brother, when God convinced him, you know what he said he did? I wasn't there that Sunday. He said, I ran. He said, I ran down the aisle. He said, I ran down the aisle and took the pastor by the hand because he was so moved with conviction of his sin, but also this awareness that God was waiting on him.
00:35:24
Speaker
Would you come as we sing this song? Do you know that Jesus died as a substitute in your place? Do you know that they placed Him in a grave? And three days later, the Father said, He doesn't deserve death. He deserves life. So He raised Jesus from the dead. He ascended back to the Father, and someday He's coming back.
00:35:43
Speaker
And we want you to be ready. And so this is a first step for some to go back to Him. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, thank You so much that You will forgive us of our sins, but You're certainly not going to coddle sin.
00:35:58
Speaker
You want us to be done with it, to walk away from it, to forsake it, and to surrender to the Lordship of Christ. So Lord, let that happen today. You really have the plan for our lives. All we've been looking for, and we've been looking at the wrong places, but Lord, you're the right place. So help us to turn to Christ for salvation today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
00:36:28
Speaker
This is a ministry of First Baptist Church, located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas.