The Prodigal Son: Hope

So we're in our third week of going through the prodigal son story.

Familiar with this story probably, but we've been talking about the context of three particular topics.

We talked about humility.

Last week we talked about grief, and this week we're going to talk about hope.

So the beginning of the COVID crisis, there mid-March.

I found myself, I don't know about you, checking my phone even more than normal, just checking it all the time, checking the news feed, checking for updates, checking the stock market.

I would Google other churches that I love and look at what you know, what were they saying to their people and what language were they using and how were they structuring?

What were they doing?

How are they adapting?

You know, like all of that.

And I was just constantly searching, checking, googling, checking again, searching again, checking again.

So I looked this week, I was kind of curious about some of this stuff.

And so uh there's this organization called Bank Mysell.

Bank Mysell, that's a resource organization that talks about phone addiction.

It actually has a term, nomophobia is the term for phone addiction.

And you felt it, right?

Because you left your house without your phone and you know the feeling.

And that's just a spiritual adventure, by the way.

If you ever leave your house without your phone, maybe you want to choose to go for that one day, just leave it at home, and just, you know, dependence on the Lord out there in the world without a phone.

Uh it'll eat you up, right?

So we usually check on average a smartphone user.

You check you check your phone about 63 times a day.

Um, and the more you Google it, like you do get a range of these.

Like some people said 50, some people said 90, maybe 63 seemed to be the middle.

86% of us will check our phones, just check it while you're talking to a friend or family member, right?

And you've done that and you felt it when somebody did it to you, and I did it to you when we were at lunch or something.

Like I did, I do it also.

We all tend to do that.

86% of us do it.

So, what is all this constant checking about?

There's a lot of reasons.

For me, I was reading this book this summer by John Eldridge called All Things New, and he he, I think he hit it home in this one paragraph.

We're gonna read this one paragraph by John Eldridge.

He says, What is this obsession?

I know we get a dopamine buzz when we receive a text, but something else is going on here.

After months and months of this obsession, I think I'm beginning to understand.

The thing I'm looking for is good news.

We need to know that good is coming to us.

We need to feel confident that a bright future is going to be given to us and never taken away, not by anyone or anything.

So my hunch is that nails you like it nails me because when I get down to it, that's actually what I'm searching for in that moment.

Like I'm a little anxious or I'm sad about something or I'm angry about something.

It's just like, let me see if I can find some good news buried within this not so good news, and then that doesn't work.

And so, you know, later on, five minutes later, I check again to try to get good news.

I just want some good news, and you know the feeling because you were anxious and you did it, or you were angry and you do that, right?

Or virtual learning is harder than you thought, or parenting and virtual learning is much harder than you thought, or teaching and virtual learning is harder than you thought, or work is hard, or relationships, or the election is just driving you crazy that's coming up, and you don't know what's gonna happen, and all of that.

So you check again and check again and check again.

And we're wired for good news.

We're wired to hope in something.

So let's think about this Luke 15 prodigal son story.

So let me just kind of retell it again.

I know I've told it the last two weeks, and you probably already know it, because it's a pretty well-known story, but I'll just rephrase it super quick.

So there's a family, dad seems to be pretty wealthy, well-off guy.

The younger son, this is in Luke chapter 15, the younger son comes to dad and says, How I'd like my share of the inheritance now.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

Usually you get your inheritance when your dad passes away.

So to go early and ask for all your money, you know, that's a pretty dishonoring to the father, but the father gives it for whatever reason.

It is a parable, so probably for the point of the story, the father gives it.

The father gives it to the son, the son takes it, and he runs off a foreign country, and he is spending and having a great time and partying up, and he's got all these friends, and everything's going so great, right?

And then the money starts to run out, the money runs out, the friends run out, the parties run out, and he finds himself working on a pig farm, longing for the food that the pigs eat, and nobody will give him anything.

And then something changes in him.

He starts to wonder if his dad will take him back.

So there's this little bit of hope, right, in him.

And this is where I'm gonna bounce from this story and let's dig into this word hope, because there's a little bit of hope in him that if I go home, can I have a confident future at home, will my dad take me back?

And he prepares this I'm sorry speech, and we pick up in Luke 15, 17, which is a couple verses before what we've been reading the last two weeks.

Luke 15, 17.

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'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 beautiful point of the arc of this story is not the degree of sorrow of the son, but the lavish welcome and acceptance of that love of the father for the son.

And then we see it in the father as the father says, Hey, go and sacrifice the fattest calf I have, like the prize calf.

Let's sacrifice that calf and let's throw a party for my son is home.

And that image for us of that calf being sacrificed, like I've mentioned in the past weeks, that image is the image of God dying for our sin and the work of Christ on the cross.

So we might know the party of secure relationship with Him.

The calf enabled and created the party, and Christ enables through His work for us to have the party of relationship with God that is secure.

Point number one is this our hope does not rest in our condition.

Praise God, right?

Anybody's gonna say, like, that's great.

And that's the first part of it, but that's good news right there.

Our hope does not rest in our condition, but in the inexhaustible love of God to us.

Now that point should never get old to you.

That's the point that we just keep coming back to over and over and over again.

That's what we hope in.

Twenty years ago, I was in college.

My uncle who lives up in Seattle, that side of the family, he went to a Youth for Christ auction, like fundraiser, where they auction off different stuff.

And they were auctioning off two weeks a condo on Maui in Hawaii.

And so he he he like lowballed a bid, you know, like maybe we'll get it, maybe we won't.

So he and he got it.

He got two weeks, you know, condo on Maui.

And so he calls us out in Atlanta.

He says, hey, I have this condo, the first week's gonna be us, like our side of the family.

But if if y'all want to come out and stay that second week, just all you have to do is cover the flight, but the condo's here, it's you know, it's waiting for you.

You can come.

So my mom and I, we got tickets and we flew out there and we get out there, and first day, my uncle says, Hey, while we're out here, uh, you pick one activity.

I mean, this is kind of uncle you want, right?

Like he says, you pick one activity, I got it, let's just go do it.

So we go down to the marina, we get on a boat, we go out, I put on that harness, it's cabled into this huge coil, cable there, the back of the boat, and that driver starts to hit the gas, and I start going up and there, that chute fills, right?

Like behind the boat, that parachute fills, and you're connected to the back of the boat, and I'm going up and up.

At first, you're just a little bit over the water, and you get a little nervous.

But the boat gets going, the wind's hitting that parachute, and you're going up and up.

40 stories high.

At first, you could hear all the boat, you could hear you know, waves, you could hear the ocean, and then eventually you get you get so high up, it's just it's perfectly quiet.

If you've ever done that behind a boat, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It's perfectly quiet up there.

You just look out, and I get up there 40 stories high, and I am tight-gripping, death gripping, like where my harness goes up to the chute.

I'm death grouping these ropes.

Like, right, like as if my hold mattered at this point.

Like it mattered at all at this point.

And slowly you just sort of like settle in.

Right?

You trust the harness, trust the rope, trust the chute, trust the cable, trust the boat, trust the boat bolts that hold the thing to the boat.

You know, you trust in a lot of them, but holding on like that, that death script, it's not really doing anything.

And slowly you trust in the integrity and the faithfulness of all of that that's holding you.

And that's our image this morning when it comes to hope.

Because we have secure hope.

It's not hope like maybe I can hold on tight enough long enough.

It's secure hope because it's in the inexhaustible love of God to us and the finished work of Christ for us, and all that's secure and given to us no matter our condition, so we can settle into that.

Right?

We can live surrendered, like open-handed into that.

And that's how we have hope that we are already beloved, hope we are already righteous, hope that we're always forgiven.

What great things for us to settle into a freedom of knowing.

St.

Paul goes to an incredible extent about the greatness of hope in Romans 5, 3 through 5.

Let's read this.

We rejoice in our sufferings.

Okay.

Like, all right, let's see how this works out.

Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Now there's a lot in there.

I'm not going to be able to cover all of it.

In another letter, Paul says, 1 Corinthians 13, 13, right?

We put on the coffee mugs and t-shirts.

Only three things will last forever: faith, hope, and love.

Hope is this word in both those passages.

Hope is this Greek word that comes from El Pis.

And here's what it means: it means confident expectation of good.

And the key in there is confident.

It's not questionable, it's not like can I hold on tight enough and maybe I'm gonna get tired.

No, it's confident expectation of good.

Confident expectation of joy and eternal salvation.

One of my favorite quotes from my wife, and she told me this, and I quote her, I quote you right there.

Russ, sometimes the only reason I wake up in the morning is knowing I can have a nap in the afternoon.

Right?

So confidence in something good comes.

The only reason I'm even gonna wake up out of sleep is knowing I can go back to sleep later.

Like that's how good sleep is.

So confidence in something later can affect right now.

And napping is powerful.

Amen.

We love that.

That's a grace of God to us.

And hope is powerful because hope, expectation of good in the future.

Hope can affect us now.

Verse 5, it says that the power of hope it actually shows up into our shame.

It can speak something to our shame.

And shame is that feeling that we aren't enough.

Shame says, um, shame says to us, you're not a worthy person who messes up.

You are a mess up.

Shame says, if people really knew me, like if you really knew it, other than my pretending and performance and if you really knew me, you wouldn't love me.

And verse 5 says, hope does not put us to shame.

Hope doesn't do that.

Hope doesn't have those voices.

Point number two is this.

Our hope is in secure love.

And I capitalize that because that means God in Jesus for us.

Our hope is in secure love who fully accepts us and begins to heal us of our shame.

The work of God for us speaks to our sin and speaks to our shame.

And this verse tells us we don't have a shaming God.

That's not what we have.

Maybe you came from a church or a place that that's what they did and how they motivated you is by using shame.

But that's that's not what we have here because what it says here is that hope actually shows up to speak against your shame and heal you from your shame.

That's what the love of God to us does inside of us by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Because God in you, the Holy Spirit knows you, knows all of you.

Like the Father knew this rebellious son coming home.

He says, I you're home.

I love you.

I know, I know, yeah, I know you've been rebelling, and I still welcome you.

And the Holy Spirit is inside of us to counsel us, convict us, guide us, speak to us.

But it's not going to be voices of shame.

It's gonna be speaking us to greater places of holiness and freedom for our hearts.

Last point.

And this last point usually doesn't mean much, I'll be honest.

It doesn't usually mean much to most of us unless uh you've been in touch with the valley.

And what I mean by that is like unless you almost died, or your loved one almost died, you've been really sick, or you've had incredible depression, or life hasn't been good, or you lost the job, or you went bankrupt.

I mean, until you hit that point, this point doesn't mean a lot.

Point number three is this in the gospel party, we have confidence in the coming joy-filled heaven.

I was reading Eldridge's book, All Things New, while I was in the mountains this summer and I was hiking and I was fishing every day.

And so that's my heaven.

I'm gonna be honest, like that's it.

Like, there's nothing better than every day you wake up and the only decision you make is what hike, how long, let's pack the bag and the camel back and the snacks, or where we're gonna fish, and how long we're gonna fish and what flies we're gonna use.

That is heaven.

And then every afternoon, late afternoon, get back to home base, get back to that condo.

And I'd be reading this Eldridge book, and the back half of the book's about heaven.

And at first I'm going, ah, you know, like, you know, that's so far off.

Ah, that feels so abstract.

And he's just laying it out there more and more and more.

And not just the physicality of it, but like the experience that we'll have, where joy is actually complete, where all the shoulds and the should-ofs are gone.

And sadness and hurt is restored, and we live in immaculate and perpetual and perfect joy.

I mean, that sounds too good to be true.

It's ultimate relief, is what it is.

I mean, that's something we have in front of us at some point, maybe later today, or maybe 20 or 50 years from now, but it is there waiting for us, and it can speak to us now.

We have confident expectation of a joy-filled heaven.

And we have hope in that.

I close with reading Revelation 21, 3 through 5 from the message Bible.

So this is John writing visionary language of heaven.

I heard a voice thunder from the throne.

Look, look, God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women.

They're his people.

He's their God.

He'll wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death is gone for good.

Tears, gone.

Crying, gone, pain, gone.

All the first order of things gone.

The enthroned continued.

Look, I'm making everything new.

Write it all down.

Each word dependable and accurate.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that your word to us is dependable and accurate, both your Bible and Jesus.

Your word to us, your promised word to us, that in Him we have confident, confident, fully confident hope that we are enough before you, fully forgiven, fully righteous, and we are headed to a place where all the fear will be gone, all the tears will be wiped away, and all of our sadness and hurt will be restored.

Would you help our lives today be affected by the hope that we have in who you call us and the place that you will take us in Jesus' name?

Amen.