LBC Annual Bible Conference 2024 Session 3

Start flicking the lights or something back there. Start at the back, especially this group.

Well, the Lord has certainly whetted my appetite with the word of God these last two sessions, and Peter's gonna come and bring the word of God to us in this session. Just wanna, just, for some of you don't know, you know, we get so used to everybody knowing what's going on, we take an offering during our Bible conference just to help defray the cost of the conference, so it's no big deal.

But that's why we take the offering, and maybe all of you knew that, maybe most of you knew that, maybe only some of you knew that, but now all of you know it, so that's why we do that. I know that many years ago, many years ago in the talk in the town, there was a big worship service that was planned and we were like kind of saying, well, we don't know if we can do that, and one of the rumors that started in the town was the reason why they don't wanna do it is because Baptists always want money, and we weren't gonna take an offering, so we're not that way, really.

Well, Peter, come and minister the word of God. We're thankful to the Lord for you, and again, thank you for being faithful to the word.

Well, thank you, Tim. And I just wanna share something I'm thankful for is, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, are pickles. So there's something about this place and your pickles that are well above average.

And so is that just like a, is that a LaRue thing? Or no, if I just, like your wife, you, gotcha, they're excellent. Those are fried pickles that I had? They're, yeah, they're on point. And is it only, oh, you have sour pickles there too, right?

The spears are sour? Yeah, I can put away some pickles. I'm always more of a salty guy, like I'm not a sugar guy. Appetite, I can give up dessert, doesn't matter to me. You give me something with salt and vinegar, ooh, that is good.

I'm just glad that we're recording this. Because imagine missing out on this, like how your soul would be hurt. Luke 15, Luke chapter 15. I'd like to, as we start out, we're gonna be focusing on 17 through 24, but I think I'm gonna read from verse 11, recapping what we covered just in the last session and also looking at what we're going to be looking at in this section.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Call to Self-Examination

So Luke 15, beginning in verse 11. If you are physically able, would you please stand in honor of the reading of God's holy word? And follow along silently as I read aloud beginning in verse 11 of Luke chapter 15.

This is what the word of God says. And he, Jesus 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 is 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. And 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 the 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 will arise and go to my father. And I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven.

And before you, I am 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've sinned against heaven. And before you, I'm 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 us eat and celebrate.

For this, my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate. This is the word of the Lord. Father in heaven, we are grateful to be back together, gathered together again as the family of God and grateful for your word.

Would you add your blessing to the reading and the preaching of your word for your glory and for our good, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. And so just to recap, last night we looked at how to interpret parables and how not to interpret parables.

More importantly, we ended the night understanding that our best approach to scripture should be one that enables me to remove logs from my own eyes before I think myself able to remove specks from others.

I'm told there has been an illustration of that point drawn by a young child, which I can't wait to see. I'm told it's me with a telephone pole coming out of my eye. I'm pumped. I wanna see how this was like in his mind.

I'm really looking forward to that. But that's the time that we spent yesterday, how to best interpret parables, how not to interpret parables, and then to let's make sure that we're coming to scripture and living really the whole of life, coming to scripture and looking to first be changed, be formed, be shaped by it.

I struggled whether to do Matthew seven or James chapter one and making that point, but let's just for kicks and giggles, keep your finger in Luke 15, and would you go over to the book of James chapter one.

James one, let's look at verse 22. And so here, James, the brother of our Lord says this in James one, beginning in verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.

For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forget what he looks like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres,.

Being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts,.

He will be blessed in his doing. And so here, God likens the word,.

The law of God's words,.

Anyone who's a hearer of the word and not a doer is like a person who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. And depending on where you're at in your season of life, probably depends on what your experience is like as you look in the mirror.

I remember when I was younger, I would just look just to kind of like real fast as I'm leaving, like make sure I don't look like there's not something out of place. There's not hair out of place. I actually used to have to check if there was a hair out of place.

I rarely do that now. And looking at a mirror was just to kind of like, it was kind of like something you just did. But now as you age, you look at a mirror kind of for damage assessment, right? Like when you get up in the morning, you're like, okay, let's see how last night went.

Not well.

And I've also noticed that when we take, lately with Sarah and I, we're gonna take a selfie with each other. I'm like, hey, hey, come here. Let's take a picture. And we're like, oh gosh. Let's, here, let's turn.

That got us at a weird angle. Let's go this way. And we do it like three times.

And we're like, hey, it is what it is.

This is it. This is just a losing battle with time and gravity. And we are who we are by the grace of God. And so looking at oneself in a mirror, here, it's a great, it's a great illustration that James, James says the person who's a hero of God's work, but not a doer, it's like someone who looks at themself in a mirror and goes, oh gosh, and does nothing about it, right?

They are aware of how they look.

They're aware that something's out of place. They're aware that adjustments need to be made. And those adjustments can be slight or they can require a major, whatever, I don't know, Agent Orange, Black Flag, or whatever chemicals and stuff that people use on their faces and hair and all this other stuff.

I'm not really, I'm not familiar with it.

But if you look at yourself in the mirror.

And do nothing about it, that is the person who looks into the word of God and is a hero of the word and not a doer. Why even look at yourself in a mirror if you're not gonna make an adjustment? Why even look at God's word if it's not, if you're not doing so with the objective to change, to grow, to make adjustments?

So similarly to the point that we made last night with Matthew 7, why look to God's word if we're not gonna first seek to remove the logs from our own eyes before we go around and remove the specks from others?

And so that is an approach that we would all do well to take as we look to God's word together. Then closely related to that fact is that what we looked at just before, that we need to understand that we're in the best position to apply the parable of the prodigal son if we see ourselves first and foremost as the prodigal, as the prodigal.

All we like sheep have gone astray, each to his own way. There's not one of us that was only a little lost versus the people out there who are a lot lost. There's no such thing as loster. We're born with a sinful nature and so we'll make sinful choices.

We're held out and we're held deserving. But God, who is rich in mercy, sets his mercy upon us and grants his faith and trust in him and we then respond of our own volition because God has changed what we want.

That's always important, particularly for people who embrace a reformed soteriology, for people who say that those of us who are embracing the doctrines of grace and excited about that, that we are not robots.

We always do what we want. It's just that God has changed what I want.

Amen?

That God has changed my wanter. So nobody gets dragged into the kingdom of having to quit kicking and screaming.

There's nobody who's like, I just want to walk with the world,.

But instead I love Christ. That's not how people relate to you. God has literally changed what we want. He's literally changed what we want.

He's changed what gives us joy.

He's changed what we want to pursue. We always do what we want and God has changed what we want. He's given us a new heart.

He's given us a new mind.

And so we are good when we are, it is good for us to see ourselves as the prodigal first and foremost. It is good for us to make sure that as we read through scripture, that we see ourselves as the one who has received grace and mercy.

Probably another example is, I'm getting a little low on the map and I want to share it anyway. John chapter eight, when we're looking at Jesus, who is the, Jesus who is confronted with the situation with the adulterous woman, which is another situation where John, where Jesus tried to be, they're trying to trick him.

And oftentimes, you know, we know the way that that account ends. Jesus says, he among you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone. And we're thinking to ourselves like, wow, would we, that's true, we should always remember that none of us are without sin.

It's true, but we should also remember that we're all the adulterous woman, right? We're all deserving of death. We're all deserving of justice. We're all deserving of punishment. And we've all received mercy that Jesus granted her as well.

And so I would encourage you to look, as you look throughout scripture, to always look at the person who's receiving mercy, who's the one who deserves it the least, the one who gives the wow factor that we can't believe that that person was, we can't believe Lazarus was raised from the dead.

We can't believe that the paralytic was healed. And don't look at yourself and say, would I believe if I was in the crowd, but look at yourself and say, I was once dead and I have been made alive. Because that's the way for us to humbly approach the word of God.

And so similarly, coming back to our text today, we are reminded that the prodigal son is symbolic of us. Let's ask ourselves this question. If the Pharisees who are hearing this story, the Pharisees and the scribes that we read about in the beginning of Luke 15, they're listening, question, what do the Pharisees hope happen next in the story?

Okay, so where we left off was that this prodigal son.

Said to himself, self, I'm gonna go home.

And I'm gonna tell my father I've sinned against him and ask him to hire me as one of his servants, which is essentially him saying, this is the best case scenario that I could hope for, that I would perhaps be treated in a way that I would not be stoned to death or I would not be judged.

If you would, take a look at Deuteronomy 28. Keep your finger in Matthew, not Matthew, Luke 15 and look at Deuteronomy 28. Look specifically at verse 15. Says this, but if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God, or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.

Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.

Cursed shall you be when you come in and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and frustration in all that you undertake to do until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me.

The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. I lost count of how many times I said cursed in that short reading.

So the Pharisees know the word of God. The Pharisees would think that this is the result of the result of sinning, the result of rebellion would be a curse, that he would be cursed by God and how that would play out in his life would be, we'd have to see how that comes in the days and the weeks and the months and the years ahead.

And so the best case scenario that could happen, like, okay, well, what's gonna probably happen.

At the end of this story?

The Pharisees would think the younger son would be allowed to live as a pariah of sorts on the outskirts of his father's land, trying in futility to repay his father for the rest of his life. That would be a best case scenario, best case because it doesn't involve.

Stones hitting his skull.

So that's the best case scenario is that he would get to come back and be hired, which is essentially what he is hoping for, to be hired as somebody who would work on the outside of his land and live as a pariah.

Another possibility would be that the younger son would have to sit outside the city gate in public view for several days in shame. And so where he would be spat upon, where he would likely be derided, where he would sit out in shame outside the city for what he had done.

This would be a way of him being punished and also a way of the father's honor being upheld. And so the father would basically be saying, okay, well, since he has done this, I should do this for both his sake and my sake.

Another possibility is what we find in, if you're in Deuteronomy already, you can just go to Deuteronomy 21 and verse 21. Deuteronomy 21, we can actually start in verse 18. 21 and verse 18 says, "'If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son "'who will not obey the voice of his father "'or the voice of his mother, "'and though they discipline him will not listen to them, "'then his father and mother shall take hold of him "'and bring him out to the elders of the city at the gate "'or the place of the place where he lives.

"'And they shall say to the elders of the city, "'This our son is stubborn and rebellious. "'He will not obey our voice. "'He is a glutton and a drunkard.'". Verse 21 says, "'Then all the men of the city shall stone him "'to death with stones.

"'So you shall purge the evil from your midst "'and all Israel shall hear and fear.'". So that would be another perfectly legitimate response to what the younger brother did, this son did, would be that he would be stoned to death because of his rebellion.

Verse 20 of Luke 15, let's go back to our text today, which shows what the younger father, younger brother, excuse me, did. So verse 20 says, "'And he arose and came to his father.'". Now, let's just remind ourselves where he has been.

He has been off in a far country, both literally and metaphorically speaking. He has squandered, we don't know this yet, but we know the end. He has spent his money in all sorts of reckless living, which we know is including, but is not limited to sexual exploits.

And so he's been with prostitutes. He then moved from there to the outer parts, probably of the city where there is farmland, and then hired himself to this man to feed the pigs. And so he's been wallowing with pigs.

And then he says, I know what I will do. The Bible says he came to himself, literally he came to his senses,.

And he said, I think I'll go home and talk to my dad.

Nowhere in that text is I should probably shower first. Nowhere in that text is will I pass a target, right? So he is looking and feeling and smelling like he has been doing all of those things. And so verse 20 says, when he arose and came to his father, understand that he looks completely disheveled, understand he smells like all sorts of fecal matter and disgusting food and everything that he would have filled up on him, that he would have been surrounded by and involved with, he smells like how he's been living.

And he arose and came to his father. And then we still, we see this comment here in verse 20, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His father saw him. That's an important part of the text to focus on, because it's not just like me standing from here, I can see somebody walk by.

If they're walking down the hallway.

I can look over here at this section and in my periphery, I can't see who,.

But if somebody were to walk by,.

I could see them walk by. Does that make sense? Like he would just get my attention and they'll probably pass before I can look to see who they are, but I wouldn't be able to see who it was. It's interesting that Jesus specifically says, while he was still a long way off.

Like if you took out that portion of that sentence, that sentence still makes sense. If he said, and he arose and came to his father, his father saw him and felt compassion. That would have been a legitimate way to write this account.

But Jesus specifically says, while he was still a long way off. And you can't see somebody far away by accident. And so his father was looking for him. His father had his eyes fixed towards the horizon.

His father was looking for his son. He didn't see him by accident, he just happened to catch his attention. His father was looking.

I don't know if that means that his father.

Would have been at the top of his house looking. I don't know if he would have been standing outside looking. I don't know if while he's doing whatever he's doing in life, he just happens to look up and think of his son and get back to what he was doing.

But the bottom line is the father was looking for the son because he saw him while he was a long way off.

And the fact that he saw him.

And then we're told what else in verse 20, while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion. He saw him and felt compassion. That's the Greek word that is splagnitumai. Splagnitumai meaning he literally felt it in his gut.

In his gut.

We make a lot of talk of the seat of the emotions being the heart, right? Oh, my heart was broken or all this other stuff. But if you think about it, when somebody walks into a room that you find attractive and you notice you have butterflies in your what? Stomach, right?

When you're stressed out, you have a knot in your stomach. And so we don't speak like that, but the Israelites and the Greeks, that made sense. It still makes sense to us. I've tried to tell Sarah that when I see her,.

My bowels move, but she's just not,.

That doesn't flatter her at all.

It's not of the effect I thought it would have. But here, splagnitumai means he was moved with compassion.

Moved with compassion.

Not like, oh, wow, what's up with him?

He looks like he needs help. It's this, oh, this gut punch of seeing somebody.

And just being like, oh, my gosh.

I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like that.

I don't know that I've ever been in a situation like that where I just saw something that was so outrageous, so horrible that I was just, oh, just moved that I had to do something. That's what's happening here.

His father saw him while he was still a long way off and felt compassion.

And what was he moved to do?

It says his father saw him and felt compassion and ran.

Ran.

Didn't run from him, but ran to him. The first thing that he was moved to do was to not just see his son, but to see his son quickly. And when he realized, he goes, that's him. He could not help but run and go and make himself, like he couldn't get there fast enough.

He couldn't get there soon enough.

No doubt he wanted to get there before other people could get there because other people had a good idea.

Of what they wanted to do to him. And so he is running because he had compassion. He's running because what he was looking for, he had seen. But there's something else. There's two aspects of the running.

That I think is so key to understand.

And that is this, that Arab men don't run. Arab men don't run. That's not what people do who live over in the, they don't run.

They don't run.

They don't go off for jobs.

They don't run.

It's not, it's thought of as a shameful thing to run. In fact, there are Arabic versions of this parable that omit the fact that the father ran. It's wrong to do that. They're adjusting, but they, they're like, surely this isn't, surely this isn't happening.

So let me read to you a quote, not really a big quote guy. This is kind of long.

Try to follow along.

But it says this, the reluctance on the part of the Arabic versions to let the father run is amazing. For a thousand years, a wide range of such graces were employed, almost as if there was a conspiracy.

To avoid the humiliating truth of the text.

That the father ran. The explanation for all of this is simple. The tradition identified the father with God and running in public is too humiliating to attribute to a person who symbolizes God. Not until 1860 does the father appear running in Arabic versions of the Bible.

1860.

The worksheets of the translators are available even in the great version of the first rendition of the Greek was he hurried.

So it's not like they're saying he walked,.

Like they're not lying, but just let's not say, can we not say road?

Can we say speed walked?

Can we say he was in a rush?

But not he ran.

Like let's just get that idea across in a different way. And only in the second round of the translation process does the word mean, that was the word he ran appear. The Hebrew of Proverbs 19 in verse two reads, he that hastens with his feet sins.

That's a paraphrase. The father represents God. How could he run? And so running was not something people of any nobility or any notoriety did.

They'll get there when they get there.

I'm on my way.

They saunter, they walk with great ease and they're not in a rush.

They're not going to run.

The fact that the father ran is mind blowing because Arab men don't run. People who lived in that section of the world at that time in that culture don't run.

But let me add to it something else.

If he ran in what he was wearing, the Bible doesn't say what he was wearing, but I can like, he's for sure not wearing joggers, right? So if he ran in what he was wearing, which is likely a robe of some sort,.

He would have to lift up his robe.

Or he'd trip over himself. Like you can't take big strides if you're hitting a rope. So he'd have to lift up his robe, which would expose his legs. I don't know if you ever noticed him, but when we're in Albabia, which is, they were under the Ottoman Empire for so long,.

Men don't wear shorts.

Men don't wear shorts.

They wear pants.

They wear breathable pants in the summertime, but men, boys, little boys wear shorts. But the men don't wear shorts to show your legs are shaped.

So I, like, I didn't get that email.

And so I'm in Albania and it's really hot and I've got several pairs of shorts. And it's fine, like, because I'm obviously not Albanian, but I stood out. I was, I'm walking around and I don't feel really, I didn't feel really weird.

I was there several days and I'm like, wow, no, like, I don't see many people wearing shorts. And I was like, that's incorrect. I don't see any people wearing shorts.

Many implies there's someone.

I literally see zero.

They don't wear shorts.

It's customary in Middle Eastern culture to not show your legs. And so this is why I think the father, some people say the father represents God, the pursuing love of God. I couldn't agree more, but I would get more specific and say this, the father represents Jesus.

God, the son. Because Jesus took on and died as a, took on my shame, right? We don't see God, the father, God, the Holy Spirit taking on shame, but God, the son, Jesus Christ took on the shame, took on the reproach to show me compassion.

He died on the cross as if he were a criminal. He died a horrible, horrible death that was the shame of all of society at that time. And so I think, and it might be, you know, people sometimes say potato, potato.

I don't say potato, potato.

There's God, the father, God, the son,.

God, the Holy Spirit. I think the father represents Jesus because the pursuing love that he has is also mixed in with this element of shame, of reproach. All in that he ran. His father saw him when he was a long way off.

Oh, instantly felt compassion. The compassion didn't mean that he was disgusted with him. The compassion didn't say, oh, wow, he's never going to be able to get his life together. It drove him to run.

He didn't care what other people thought. He didn't care how he would have been talked about. He saw his son that he was looking for and he ran. And then verse 20 says, he ran and what? Embraced him and kissed him.

Technically speaking, somebody could see him running to the son and think he's fighting bad.

He's going to deck him.

He's going to get there and just follow him with the arm.

He is going to just take him out.

He's that angry.

That would have made sense. And so you can see him running like, wow, that's a little weird that he's running, but I bet he's that ticked off. But that's not what he does. He attacks him with love. He embraces him.

He kisses him.

In some traditions, in order for the son to regain even just the respect of the father, the son would get on his knees and would have his face touch the ground and would kiss the feet of his father. This is the opposite where the father is running to the son in all his squalor, in all his smell,.

And he is embracing him. He is kissing him.

In my mind, I can't even see the son hugging back because I think the son's just like shocked. Like, I'm alive.

He didn't take me out.

Just kind of like, okay, wow, this is, okay. Just shocked that his father is treating him with this love and this compassion. He embraced him and he kissed him. It shows the uninhibited, shameless love that the father had for his son.

The title of the sermon is Lost, Found, Parted. That's the common theme you see in Luke 15. Someone who loses a sheep, the sheep is lost. Diligently looks for the sheep, the sheep is found.

And then what does he say?

Rejoice with me, I found my sheep. I had a hundred sheep, I had a hundred-ish sheep. I'm now back to having a hundred sheep.

Every sheep matters. 99 is not enough.

Lost, found, parted. A woman who loses a coin and can't find it. That's a valuable piece for her. She looks around for it. She's worried, she's scared.

It's lost.

She finds it.

She tells her friends, rejoice with me. I found my coin. Lost, found, parted. And finally, in the parable of the prodigal son, where Luke dedicates the most of his ink, where there's the most amount of detail, we see one who is lost, just like you and me.

We see one who is found by the grace of God, just like you and me. And we see somebody who is worth celebrating, just like you and me. Point number one, nobody is too far for Christ to see, to reach, and to save.

I emphasized pretty strongly yesterday and today the importance of seeing ourselves in the story. I'm not chucking that aside. Having seen ourselves in the story, if we are believers, we do well to be reminded that nobody is too far for Christ to see and to reach and to save.

Again, verse 20 says, while he was still a long way off his father saw him. Nobody's too far for Christ to see, to reach, and to save. My dad, Laura, but my parents are divorced. My dad is a self-proclaimed atheist.

God saved my mom, and God used her greatly in our life to preach the gospel to us. God, in his kindness and his mercy, saved myself and my sister. My dad has remarried, and my dad is, he's an atheist.

He's an okay guy, you'd probably get along with him, but he is an atheist. And I believe that the Lord saved me in 1989. My dad has never been, he likes what I do, he's kind to me, he's proud of me. He thinks I'm a do-gooder.

You know, like, look at him, look at him.

He loves the kids.

He doesn't make a connection between what we do and Christ. Does that make sense? It's just like, oh, he really serves kids. That's kind, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. I've shared the gospel with him on a number of occasions, but I believe I've been a Christian since 1989.

Today is Saturday, March 23rd, 2024. So that's 35 years. It's not trending well. It doesn't seem to be moving in a positive direction. And so to my shame, I want to let you know, I pray for him less now, because I'm pretty sure it's just not going to happen.

And so it's kind of falling off my radar. Does that make sense? I'm not saying you agree with that, but do you understand what I'm saying? Because I start to think like, surely if God's going to save him,.

He would have done that by now.

He's not getting any younger. Surely if God was going to use me to be a witness to him,.