Pastor Robert Smith
Jacque: Mike, it's so good to have you back. He injured his shoulder and he couldn't play his guitar. We missed you. I even was with some friends from that watch online and they said, Where's that electric guitar guy?'' I miss him." This is kind of different now again. Isn't it fun to just change it up? Here we are behind the pulpit again. That's good because I can hold my notes, just a couple bullet points for us to all consider and remember for our church family together. First of all, let's dismiss the kids. Bye Charlie. Thank you, Cindy and all the people that help Cindy. In fact, she needs more helpers and I'm going to start. When other people speak, I'm going to start popping out and helping with the kids some. I'm so excited because they just bring you joy. Thank you, Cheryl, for helping with the kids today. Thank you.
You know that Easter's coming. If you would like to buy an Easter Lily for the church to decorate for Easter Sunday, this is also an opportunity to dedicate it to somebody that's important to you that maybe has passed or somebody in your life now. We'll have those memories on Easter Sunday to share, but you can buy that. I guess there are clipboards going around for that right now. Perfect. Remember March 27th. Daniel, it's your day. We are going to have a Q and A with Daniel and we are going to get to know him. This is good. It's so good to have mom and dad here too. Very nice. Yeah, the whole family. Anyway, March 27th lunch here. It's on the church; come and enjoy and we will get some more information about all that's ahead. We are excited and we are praying for you.
Next Sunday, we are going to have just an all church communion service. So we'll enjoy the Lord's supper together. Do remember that. Today, after service, Dave and Deb Thompson will be serving communion. I feel like a flight attendant. They'll be serving communion over here. So it's all good. One more thing. Last week, we took an offering for our missionaries in Hungary, the Bonds. If you weren't able to give in that offering, they are at the border helping refugees come out of Ukraine. So if you'd like to give, just give at the kiosk, online or just hand it to one of us and, and it's under special offerings, because we just want to help them all we can. That would be it.
Brian: Good morning, everybody. Good to see you. Thank you for tuning in livestream. Thank you to all of our friends who write to us every week and watch every week. It's such an encouragement to just hear from you all and to see you in, in person. Some of you have been away for a bit. We just pray this snow will leave and then all the snowbirds will come back and we'll get everybody, we'll get the band back together again. Hallelujah. It's so good to be able to sometimes just sit and receive. It's so great to have Pastor Robert on our staff. He does so many things for us. Yesterday we had a funeral here. They weren't part of our church, but they needed a facility. I bet you, there were 430 people here yesterday for a funeral and Pat and Robert and Rosina and so many people just packed this place full of chairs. I'm sure that we weren't social distancing properly yesterday, so pray for us. In these crucial times when people need comfort, you do the right thing. The family was so appreciative of being able to use our facility. Robert did a great job overseeing all of the kitchen with Brenda. We are so thankful for the staff we have. He comes from taking pizzas out of the oven to bringing you the word of God this morning, the bread of life this morning. So let's welcome. Pastor Robert to the staff. God bless you. God bless you. We love you, bro.
Robert: Love you, buddy. Praise Go. Hey, it's all about serving the Lord. Whether it's wiping down tables, bringing pizza out, preaching a word, worshiping. It's all about serving. That's just a product of me loving the Lord and following the Lord and having good parents. Even though they weren't perfect, they were perfect in raising me. Hallelujah. Hi, Hope. I could do it in this capacity too. And all those that are watching from livestream, it's good to be in this space of preaching the word. It's one of the things of coming aboard on staff. I told Pastor Brian I just got one request. I said, "You can have me do the toilets or whatever. I don't care as long as I get to preach the word. I'll clean every toilet in the place. Amen. It's something that I love to do, something I don't take lightly. I thank God for his call upon my life. Say hi to my wife. She is driving back from Indiana. She said she was going to try to stream in, but pay attention to the road, honey. Hallelujah.
It warms my heart to be part of such a great team. Rosina, thank you. Pat, thank you for the word yesterday. Brenda, perfect partners. I'll work with you in the kitchen anytime. You laugh, but that's not an easy place to get along. If you want to know if you can get along with somebody, work with them in the kitchen. Brenda was a perfect partner in the kitchen. I think we were closer to 500 people yesterday for that. Things went very, very smoothly. So praise God for our church and our servants. I forgot to tell the ushers to get the Kleenex ready. So I'm warning you ahead of time that you may want to get the Kleenex ready. Thank you, Linda. It's right there. I have a message today that if I do my job well, it will tug on your heart a little bit. I know it will tug on mine and has tugged on mine. It's dealing with a story in the Bible in the gospels that's probably my favorite of all of the Lord's teaching and has become to be known as the parable of the lost son or the parable of the prodigal son. Just to give you a summary of that parable, I don't want to assume that everybody knows that parable. It's a very popular parable.
But just to summarize, because I'm going to focus on a latter part of the parable that doesn't get a lot of attention, but when it gets a lot of attention, there has been so many different teachings and hopefully I will open up your minds and your hearts to see the heart of God through this new message. But just to summarize the parable of the prodigal son, as it's called, it's about a father who has two sons. One of them leaves, and he actually asks his father for all of his inheritance, which if you really understand about inherit tense and inheritance, usually isn't left until the parents die. But the father was obviously still alive and so the son did a very taboo thing in asking his father for his inheritance. He asks his father for his inheritance. The father didn't deny him, but he goes away and wastes all of his inheritance.
Actually, the word prodigal means extravagantly wasteful. That's what prodigal means: extra extravagantly, wasteful. I would encourage you to go and read this parable. Like I said, I'm not going to deal with the first half. So you can find it in the gospel of Luke in chapter 15, but he goes away and he later returns seeking forgiveness from his father. Actually, he really didn't know if his father was going to forgive him or not, but he pretty much said being back in his father's house, even if he was mistreated was better than what he had left and found himself in. But the father joyfully embraces this lost son and celebrates to return. And then the father had another son. The older son becomes frustrated at the celebration, um, of this, of his brother and the older son was focusing on his own obedience to his father and making a big deal out of his brother's blatant sinful living as he left home. That's the summary of what this parable is about. And like I said, this morning, I'm going to focus on the latter half of this parable starting in the gospel of Luke chapter 15, starting in verse 25.
It says, meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working, when he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house and he asked one of the servants, what was going on? Your brother is back, he was told, and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return. The older brother was angry and wouldn't go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, "All these years, I've slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And all that time, you never gave me one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf." His father said to him, "Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day for your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, but now he is found."
I want to talk to you today about how the father loved both sons equally. The father loved both sons equally. I don't know if you've ever found yourself not rejoicing at the return of a prodigal. You don't have to raise your hands this morning. I'll raise my hand. There are several ways that this parable has so many layers. I don't even know if we can get to all the layers to find all the rich meaning that's in this teaching of the Lord. There are so many analogies and metaphors that we can come up with concerning our own personal lives, our lives in the church, our lives with the walk of the Lord. I like to think of those that have been on their walk with the Lord for a long time, or so-called been in the church for a long time as an older brother. How many times have the older brothers in the church not rejoiced at someone who has been wayward. Now you follow where I'm going?
When I was in seminary, I read a book that out of the hundreds of books that I read in the three-year period this book that I read stood out the most to me, and it was called the Prodigal by Henry Newan. It's a great book. I see Daniel nodding. He is a Bethel grad, so I know he has read that book. It's a tremendous book. It opened up my eyes a lot personally, as in the book, the author presents three perspectives in this story: his perspective of the father, his perspective of the younger son and also the older son. And so it's that perspective from the older son that we are meditating on today. It really hits home when we think about the idea of a returned prodigal and how our reception can be if we are not careful to look at it through the eyes of God.
I often have wondered if the church really understands how they have treated those that have gone astray, how they have treated them upon their return. I looked at Newan's book again, and, and there are a couple of excerpts that I'm going to read and intertwined this message in a story based upon this section. If you look at verse 28, we read in Luke, it says the older brother was angry and wouldn't go in and his father came out and, and begged him to go in. In Newan's book, he writes, "He did his duty." He is talking about the oldest son. He did his duty, worked hard every day and fulfilled all his obligations, but became increasingly unhappy and unfree. It's talking about the eldest son.
Again, like I said, we can, as the church who has been in the church for a long time, we can be considered an elder son, but I've taken it a little bit further as I reflect upon my own life. I'm the eldest son in my family. You couldn't tell me back then, but I was not the perfect son. I was for the most part, an obedient son. I was an obedient child. I honored my parents. As a matter of fact, my life scripture is to honor your mother and your father so that your days upon the earth would be long. That's my life scripture before I even knew what life scriptures were about. That was something that was instilled in me at a very early age. I honor my parents, both my biological parents and my stepparents. I didn't make any differentiation or distinguish between the two. They were all my parents. I honored all of them.
I was an A student. I was a favorite guy. I hardly ever had to be disciplined. If I may confess later, it's because I was good at being sneaky unlike my other three brothers. They didn't get that gift. So there was a bit of pride that I grew up with that most likely helped me succeed in life, but also kept me from dealing with some inner struggles and some that I really couldn't reconcile in my life. I didn't know how to reconcile the voids that were in my life. How can you be favored and, and a star student and all these things, but still have some struggles and voids? As Newan puts it in his book, he said, "As the eldest son in my own family, I know well what it feels like to have to be a model son. I often wonder if it's not, especially the eldest sons who want to live up to the expectations of their parents and be considered obedient and dutiful."
The things that the author shared about the elder son experience really hit home for me and caused me to really take an honest look inwardly and tap into regions in my life that I would rather not face, but I have to admit that I did feel the pressure of trying to please everyone and trying to get it right all the time. That's what happens to us in the church, in this religious system that we've come up to. We've been taught that we have to be this model citizen, this model son, and get it right all the time, that we have to be perfect all the time. So when those that are, so-called less perfect than us, we take on this judgmental attitude and this religious attitude that we are better than you are and how could you, and I would never, and all those things that we use to criticize those that make mistakes, because we didn't make any mistakes. We were the perfect son. We did everything right.
I can relate to the elder son in the parable as he expresses anguish over the fact that there is a celebration of all things. There is a celebration of his younger brother returning from a life of waste and desolation. I've been there many times as an older son; I’ve brought home perfect grades all the time, which seemed expected to me, that was just expected, something Robert should do while my brothers brought home average grades and Cs were celebrated with them. There would be this great praise. I'm looking like I'm the one that's bringing these straight As all the time. As the eldest son, where is my recognition? Where is my praise for doing, being by your side, being obedient?
I remember looking at my parents like, they would kill me if I brought home a C. Why was the expectation different? That's the struggle that Newan brings out about this older brother from his statement to his father. Notice the wording we have in a New Living Translation. He said, "I've been here slaving for you all the time and you have never even given me a small calf, let alone the fattened calf. You have never done anything to celebrate faithful obedience to you." If any of us have ever had that attitude, what I've come to understand is that in one perspective, we really have engaged what it is to value a lost soul how the father values a lost soul.
I want to read to you a couple of scriptures from 2nd Peter: 2nd Peter 3:9 and 2nd Peter 3:15. The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise as some people think. Know he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. Verse 15, and remember our Lord's patience gives people time to be saved. Self-righteous spirit looks at someone who has done wrong or even wrong them and we want immediate retribution and payback done to that person. When are they going to get theirs? Why won't the Lord just strike them down? I do everything right and it seems that everything is going wrong for me, but them—
The Lord's patient is our salvation. The Lord doesn't want anybody to perish outside of him, and so he is patient. He sees what we see, but he doesn't see the way we see. There's a difference. And so he is patient and gives everybody an opportunity to turn around. In this parable, what this younger son did was a very atrocious thing that he did. He blatantly went up to his father while he was still alive and asked him to give all of his inheritance as if he didn't care whether his father was dead or not. All he said was give me what's mine and I'm out of here. He went out to a far off land, a distant land. We can use the distant land as a metaphor that he went to a place that he is never gone before, in a state of darkness.
The father in the parable was sorrowful, but he waited. He didn't go chasing after his son. But I can imagine that he had in the back of his mind, just a hope, whether it was just a small glimmer of hope, that one day he would see that son return. Unlike the religious at heart, he was preparing his heart for the son's return. Instead of heartening his heart with his son, he kept his heart clean and pure so that there would be a good reception when he returned. That's a message to parents today, too.
When your children go wayward, be careful not to build up resentment in your heart while they are strayed, but use that time, instead, to prepare your heart, to receive them when they return. For us, as a church, not to condemn our brother and sister as they go astray, but to prepare our heart so that we can be right when they return so that when they return, they can return into the open embrace and loving arms of a Christ-like family. We don't slam the door in their face and cause them to go back out because of rejection. Just like the older sons, sometimes we have to be careful not to prop up and stand up on our high moral ground.
I used to have these, "I would nevers". I had this long list of "I would never". Well, that list is very small. When I was studying the life of Peter in his exchange with our Lord, I came across an understanding that all of us have a breaking point. Peter said, "Lord, I would never deny you." I believe with all my heart, that Peter believed that with everything that he had. I would never deny you. But Peter hadn't met his breaking point because he loved the Lord with— he would kill for the Lord if he had to, but he didn't know that his life would be shattered when he would see his Lord that he loved with all of his heart and seen him tell a away to be beaten, to be crucified, to be shackled. That shattered him. That was at his breaking point. You and I have breaking points that— Don’t be so high and mighty to think that you won’t break.
We don't know what goes on in people's lives, what struggles they face. We don't know the challenges that some people have just to even wake up, to get out of the bed in the morning. Before they even leave the church, the fact that they even have the guts to make it, we should rejoice in that instead of turning our nose up and condemning. How could they? How could they? Well, walk in their shoes and see how you do. Many of the women, you were blessed to hear my wife's testimony. How would you turn out if you walked in her shoes? I still tell her, you are an amazing woman. I don't know if I could have made it. I've had a few guys over the years come up to me, Pastor, I want to be just like you or I want to walk in your anointing. No, you don't. You couldn't walk one day in my shoes. Trust me. It's only by the grace of God that I'm able to come through what I've been able to come through. None of us are perfect. None of us have perfect lives. We all have gone through some things just because we don't pick up certain vices like other people, we do have our own coping mechanisms that aren't so holy.
We need to get over ourselves. Pardon my French. We need to get over ourselves. We can always point the finger and say, I would never do that, or how could they do that? It wasn't that bad. But you have your own coping mechanisms that aren't so healthy either. We can miss something when we stand on this high moral ground. Verse 29, it says, but he replied, "All these years I've slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me, and in all that time, you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends." When we, in this self righteous spirit, think that we are the perfect person and all this, we act like God owes us something. God doesn't owe you a thing. He created you for his glory.
God doesn't owe you anything. One of the tragedies that I've seen in this, in the church for the last 20 something years, especially in us so-called spirit-filled churches, we've come with this notion that God owes us something. My ears are appalled sometimes at the language that we have demanding things of God. Who are you? Maybe you should go back and read Job and see God's responses to Job and everybody who had something to say about Job's circumstance. If you didn't understand the sovereignty of God, then I encourage you to go read those passages. You'll understand the sovereignty of God. God definitely does. Understand who he is. God doesn't owe us anything, but God does love us. God does love us.
When we don't put things in the right perspective, we don't check our hearts, the only logical thing to come up with is condemnation and judgment. Verse 30 says yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf. The brother missed out on the fact that the son came back, he was more focused on what the son did wrong, and you should pay for it. You should be disciplined for it. There should be some type of punishment, not a celebration. We need to be careful about taking inventory of the wrongs of others. If you read your Bible, that's the very opposite of love, because love doesn't take inventory of the wrongs.
Instead, I think James' letter speaks to how we should deal with someone who has gone astray. James 5 verses 19 and 20 says my dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins. Love covers a multitude of sins. It doesn't take inventory of wrongdoing. It doesn't look for condemnation and judgment. It looks to restore. It looks to forgive. It looks to welcome back. It looks to praise and prompt up, to celebrate the return, to celebrate someone repenting, to celebrate someone coming back, because as the father said, this son was lost. Now he is found. He has come back. That's worthy of celebration. In versus 31 to 32, his father said to him, "Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this day, for your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, but now is found."
The father didn't miss the fact that the older son always stayed by him. If you really look at that statement of what the father is saying, everything that I have is yours. Everything that I have is yours. When you are in Christ, when you are in fellowship with God, all the promises of God are yours. I think that's far greater than a fattened calf. What the oldest son had was far greater than a fattened calf. It was greater than a celebration. It was greater than a party. It was greater than a robe. It was greater than the ring he had. Everything that God has is yours when you are in fellowship with him.
The youngest son fell out of fellowship with his father, so he didn't have anything. So when he comes back, the father is saying we had to celebrate because now I have both of you, not just one son, but I have both of you. I'm not celebrating that he left. I'm not celebrating that he wandered off and lived a sinful life. I'm celebrating the fact that I have both of my sons again, because the father loved both of his sons equally. He wasn't complete with just having one son with him. He wanted to embrace and love his other son.
The author, Henry Newan, poses a question of what had happened to the elder son. Did he ever come inside and celebrate over his brother's return? This is an important question and I would hope that the answer is yes. But it's sad to know that a lot of people in this scenario would walk away and live a life, carrying chains of anger, resentment, and jealousy, that would keep them bound and prevent them from receiving the father's love. Hopefully, and like I said, I can relate to this parable, I can relate to this book in so many ways, hopefully people who have been in this scenario and I'm encouraging today.
After I had my own coming to and deliverance, I liked in the parable when the youngest son was out, it said he came to himself. I love that. He came to himself. We all have to come to ourselves, come back to our right minds. As I looked over my life and the life that I've lived in the life of my siblings, and instead of, being resentful, I come into a greater appreciation of the uniqueness of each and every one of my siblings and how in that uniqueness, on the natural level, our parents love us unconditionally and on a higher plane, how God loves us unconditionally, that the father's heart is that he doesn't want any of his children to be lost, and that the father has a heart to wait for our return.
Us as the church, as the older brothers of the church, I'm exhorting you today to make room, to make way for the prodigals. Make way for the prodigals. We are not going to talk about what they've done. We are not going to talk about where they've been. We are going to rejoice in the fact that they return in the church, in your families, in your lives, that you are going to make way for the prodigal. When they return, you are going to have the biggest celebration. The church is going to have the biggest celebration to welcome them home with no conditions, no limitations, with no rules, but help to restore them with the father's love.
I believe that many prodigals, if that's what we call them, are afraid to return home because they fear that they won't have a warm reception. Come on, family, let's change their perception of the church. Are we that cruel? Are we that unloving? Are we that unkind? Let's help change that perception so that we are not the reason that they don't return. Let's allow them to return in our lives so that the relationship can be restored. Let us pray.
Heavenly father, we thank you that when we turn to you, you didn't turn us away. Father, I pray that You would forgive us for having a "better than you" attitude. Show us the heart of the father, so that we can love our brother. I pray for each and every one of you in this sanctuary and those that are online that have prodigals in your life. I prophesy that it's for them to come home. I pray that you would get your house in order for them to come home, to prepare your heart to see them as the father sees them and to welcome them back unconditionally. Father, I pray that you remove every disappointment, every hurt, all bitterness, all resentment, all pride, all unforgiveness, that you remove it from our hearts and give us a heart that beats freely, that's forgiving, that's loving, that's healing and that's restoring.
I pray, Lord, for the restoration of broken relationships, that you repair the breach. I pray for anyone that's here or watching this program; if you felt or feel that you are too far away from God for you to understand this, that's a lie. God is waiting for you Because the fact is, if you are not walking with God, you are lost whether you've been with him before or not. Your right for home, as he has created you, is to be with him. So I pray that today would be your day of return, because the God that we serve is not going to condemn you. He is not going to treat you less than. Just like the father in the parable did not treat the younger less than. We are all the same in the eyes of God.
So I pray that no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, that you are able to be at peace to surrender to the father's love. We will rejoice with the father. The angels will rejoice with the father and he will be glorified in that return, in Jesus name. Amen.
Brian: Thank you, Pastor Robert. Just stay here, bud. I had a conversation with Robert just maybe a week or two ago, and I felt like the Lord had given me a picture of what the new season in Hope was going to be like. We've heard the expression "David's mighty men". That was a term that was used throughout the description of David and the men that began to follow him. And yet David's mighty men were pretty much all rejects from Saul. They were the castaways, the people that didn't measure up. The scriptures in second Samuel began to say, "And David's kingdom grew stronger and stronger and Saul's grew weaker and weaker." I don't want to compare us to anybody else or anything else, but I do believe that the future of Hope Community Church is to be a place where people who have struggled to try to belong somewhere and not be received, maybe because of failures in their past, maybe because of whatever
Rejection is a huge issue in our culture today. The church has contributed dramatically to it. God's heart for Hope Community is that this will be a place for all people to belong. As they have a sense of belonging, they will hear the word of God like they heard this morning. As they hear the word of God, they will begin to believe in Jesus Christ. As they begin to believe in Jesus Christ, Jesus will take care of their behavior. We don't need to take care of that. We just need to love them like Jesus would.
I just wanted to paint this picture for you that the season that is in front of us is going to be a season where Hope needs to be a place that welcomes those who have never felt as though they ever fit someplace else and will get a whole host and a church full of mighty men and women that will come together under the banner of the love of Christ. Let's just see what God does here. Let's just see what God does here. Do you want to sign up for that? I do. I want to sign up for that. Let's raise our hands. Let's stand together, raise our hands together and let me bless you here.
Now, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you, and may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may we know the love of the father, whether we were in a distant country or we stayed home. May we know that love. This, we pray in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Hope to see you soon.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 3-13-22. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.