Life is not a series of chances; life is a series of choices.
We serve a God that is more than fair, and even more than just; He is unimaginably gracious. One of those graces is that even in his Omnipotent power he grants us options and the freedom to choose His Kingdom. But even when we make the wrong choices, He reigns omnipotent.
Sunday we will survey the kings. Some chose well, others chose woefully. To many, this section of Scripture is a closed book. It seems a confusing, mystifying mess of names we do not recognize, and events that seem ancient beyond relevance. But in these kings and in their kingdoms we find the Gracious King of kings reaching out to people like us.
There are two ways to live our lives: we can learn from the choices of others or we can take our chances and make uninformed choices that lead to blessings or bondage.
If you want to live freely and drink in life deeply, we must look back and learn from the choices of those who have made this journey before us. Let us choose to lean into a faith-filled life that comes from trusting the King of kings.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
February 10, 2013
Fractured Kingdom: Prodigal Israel
2 Kings 17
If you have your Bibles, open them to 2 Kings, chapter 17. If you don’t have a Bible, raise your hand so we can give you a Bible and you can read it. As you know, we have been going through the One Story, tracking the narrative passages, the story passages, of the Bible from beginning all the way through to Revelation. We’re going to get to Jesus just before Easter. We’ll be celebrating the resurrection on Easter. We’ll talk about the church in the spring.
Right now we are at a chapter of that One Story where I think things begin to fall apart for us a little bit in our minds. You know, I think most of us have a pretty good idea about Genesis and even Exodus, God delivering the people out of slavery. Joshua and Judges hanging together. David, yes. Saul, Solomon. All those things. That’s kind of a rough chronology. Then you start reading 1 and 2 Kings or 1 and 2 Chronicles, or you maybe open up to Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Hosea or Amos or Micah. You start going, “Oh man. How does this all fit together?”
Part of the challenge is you get just like a little paragraph about Ahaziah the king, and you’re kind of going, “Where does he fit? What’s going on here?” So we’re in that section of the fractured kingdom. After Solomon has died, remember the kingdom splits in half. There’s a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. I’ll show you a map in a minute. Jeroboam is in the north; Rehoboam is in the south.
Then they both have these sort of long, several-hundred-year spirals downward into absolute brokenness and exile. It’s frankly quite tragic. The last two weeks, I’ve just been reading these passages. As I read them, it’s discouraging. It’s not exactly the sort of stuff you want to just open up for your uplifting devotional in the morning. So what I’ve tried to do (and don’t worry…we’re not going to walk through this whole thing) is make a little bit of sense of it for you.
So you have two columns on this sheet. Maybe you want to save this as a reference for the next time you feel like reading 1 or 2 Kings or 1 or 2 Chronicles, or you’re trying to find a prophet. So what you have down the center is you have the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel chronologically.
Then in the center columns, you have just some events, what was going on in the kingdom at that time. Then on the outside columns, you have the prophets who were speaking to those kings in those cultures at those times. So you can kind of place them with a little description of what each prophet did.
To tell you the truth, my good, old-fashioned provocative preaching rarely begins with a spreadsheet. It’s not a very good homiletical hook to try to get you to decipher what looks like your tax return. Don’t worry. I left you a small space for notes in the lower right hand corner. We’re going to do this in three parts. It’s very simple. Okay? It’s going to be very simple.
The first part we just remember Israel’s destiny. The second part we’re going to talk about is the people’s demise. Then we’re going to talk about their deliverer. So it will just be three parts. It’s real simple. Destiny, demise, deliverer. When you’re looking at this, without trying to pronounce all the names and get caught up in all the details, what you need to know is this timeline is actually the anatomy of Israel’s wipeout, Israel’s demise.
I mean, they just go so far off the tracks. They end up in exile far from the land God had promised them. Many of them die. It’s a brutal time. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you’ve just really messed up. Maybe not just like one time, but maybe you feel like you’ve made a series of decisions, or you’re caught in a long cycle. Have you ever been in that spot? You don’t have to raise your hand, but just think about in your own life.
Have you ever just drifted? Maybe you haven’t drifted. You’ve been driven off the path. Maybe you’ve just chosen willfully to abandon God. You get to that place, and you go, “Man, I am really messed up. This is really far from what was intended.” That’s what’s going on in this section of the Scripture. Before we look at a few of the details of that, let’s just remember who these people are who are drifting so far from God.
1. Their destiny. We saw all the way back in the beginning when God created the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, a people for himself who were going to display his image outward and extend his rule, his beautiful, excellent rule over the whole earth, of course they rebelled. So God called on Abram, and he was going to reinitiate that plan of establishing his perfect image and rule over all the earth through a special people in Abraham.
So we follow that promise of Abraham as he grows and has new generations. Isaac, Jacob. The nation multiplies. We know the story. As his people, Israel, grow into, indeed, a great nation in Egypt, they’re delivered after the 10 plagues. They come to the foot of Mount Sinai, and there God says, “You guys are going to be my royal priesthood. You’re going to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
This is what we have to remember. This is their destiny. They weren’t just drafted. They weren’t just like, “Oh yeah. You’re good folks or God’s friends” or anything like that. They were God’s covenant people. We’ve talked about that in here, how that idea of covenant is like an unbreakable bond. God made promises to Abraham. “Hey, you’re going to be my covenant people. Circumcision is going to be a sign of that covenant and my faithfulness to you. I’m going to bless you so all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”
We have, with Moses and the Law coming down… They make a covenant with God to obey the Law. Of course they break it almost immediately. The people stray from God and worship the golden calf. Even by the time they’re in the land… We looked at this a couple of weeks ago. God makes this amazing covenant promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 that through him and through his line, there would be a kingdom established that would bring justice to the entire earth.
So this is Israel’s destiny. They very much are a people of destiny. They feel this “chosenness,” this unique relationship to God. We look geographically. Where God put them is an amazing place for them to fulfill this destiny. Remember the book of Isaiah 42, and it also says it in Isaiah 49. It talks about Israel is called to be a light to the nations. Let’s show that first slide of the two kingdoms if we can. Here what you have is the split kingdom. Judah is the blue thing that looks like a kidney on the bottom. Then the red area is Israel.
So this is the divided kingdom, but as you look at this, what you see is Israel and Judah are placed right at the crossroads between Egypt and up to the north, Europe and Turkey. Off to the east you have India and Persia and Assyria. All the great empires of the world. Africa, Asia, and Europe all have their sort of crossroads right here.
We have a kind of long, rectangular living room. We have a lamp in the middle of that living room. If you turn on that lamp, it gives light to the whole room. This is what God did with Israel when he chose the place for them. He said, “This is the place where I want my name to dwell.” He was putting the lamp, the light to the nations, right in the middle of the living room so it could be giving light to everybody as they passed through. That’s going to be the fulfillment of what God said to Abraham. “Hey, you’re going to be a blessing for all nations.”
So this is their destiny. It’s strong. It’s powerful. They feel it deep down. The problem is rather than being the lamp, they drift from God, and they find themselves not illuminating the other nations but almost like caught in the crushing grindstone between the millstones of empires: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia. Aram on this map is Syria. Edom, Moab. They just get ground up in there, and they’re constantly trying to work out.
So here’s what happens actually. They are a people of destiny, but they continually forsake God. What happens is their hearts, rather than being for God, chase after all sorts of other stuff. It leads to their demise. Rather than influencing the nations around them, they’re influenced by the nations around them. As we read through 1 and 2 Kings especially, what we see is how the idolatry of other nations works its way in. As early as Jeroboam, they’re worshiping the golden calf, right?
Remember we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but Jeroboam was afraid the people in the northern kingdom were going to go down to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom and love it there so much that they were going to rebel against him. So he said, “Well, let’s just get a whole new worship system, set up golden calves borrowed from Egypt.” They took their worship. Then as we go farther forward through the timeline of the kings, Ahab is particularly wicked. He marries Jezebel.
Jezebel is from Phoenicia, that yellow strip up there. She brings with her this worship of Baal that is absolutely terrible. The whole idea behind Baal worship is if you sacrifice the right things, you can get god to do whatever you want from him. The people bought into it completely. There was all sorts of atrocious stuff connected to Baal worship. Idolatry went rampant. The Word of God was literally lost from the land.
It wasn’t until Josiah in the southern kingdom (way down at the bottom of your timeline) discovers it during this season of reform that they come back to the Word of God for a short period of time. You even see they begin to buy into deep materialism. A lot of the prophets come into this. As both kingdoms (both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom) drift farther and farther from God, they foster this insane injustice.
The inequality between rich and poor keeps getting greater and greater and greater. The rich keep getting richer; the poor keep getting poorer. Amos is one of the great prophets prophesying to the northern kingdom as it drifts off its course. One of the things Amos says in Amos, chapter 4, is, “Woe to you, you cows of Bashan.” That was a region in that area where they knew the fattest cows would eat the best grass and everything else.
What he is talking about as you read the passage is he is speaking to the women of the northern kingdom who are terrible spenders. All they’re doing is consuming. “I want this thing. I want that thing. I want that thing. I want that thing. I want that thing.” Their consumption fuels injustice. The more they buy, the more the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. It’s amazing.
Amos goes on, and he tells the people, the businessmen, “You guys are going crazy to make a buck. You’re trampling the Sabbath. You’re just saying, ‘Man, when is this Sabbath going to be over so I can start selling more stuff so I can get more money?'” Materialism works its way through. Just crazy perspectives on sexuality work their way through. As you read through, you can just see idolatry works its way through.
So what really happens is by the year 772 BC… This is on your right-hand column. The people have had wars with Syria. Syria eventually is completely wiped out by Assyria. So Syria and Assyria are different. That’s part of the reason why this section gets a little confusing. So Syria is known as Aram sometimes, but then Assyria develops. Assyria is like the hungry, hungry hippo of empires. I don’t know if you guys ever played that game where the hippo is going like that trying to grab all of the marbles.
That’s what Assyria is basically like. I mean, they are awful. If you read the accounts of the way they conquered places, it’s absolutely brutal. They are terrible, terrible guys. What they did is just devoured their way all the way to the west, all the way down to Egypt, all the way to the east and the Persian Gulf. Against Assyria, Israel (the northern kingdom) was nothing. I mean, they just got wiped out by Assyria.
The capital of the northern kingdom, Samaria, was under siege for three years by the Assyrians. If you read those accounts in 2 Kings, some of the worst stuff in the whole Bible happens there. It’s just brutal as people are trying to survive this siege. As we read through the prophets, it says Assyria is actually in some ways an instrument of God to bring judgment upon this northern kingdom who keeps running farther and farther from God.
Of all the kings (and there are a lot of them listed on your sheet), none of the northern kingdom kings are godly. So by 722 BC, Samaria is crushed and destroyed. Those 10 tribes that made up the northern kingdom are carried off. If you look at that map, you can just see how insignificant and small that little region north of the yellow circle for Judah is. I mean, they just got wiped off the map.
The southern kingdom held on a bit longer. Assyria came down and tried to attack Jerusalem. Hezekiah was the king at the time. Hundreds of thousands Assyrian soldiers were surrounding Jerusalem. Hezekiah cried out to God, and God miraculously wiped out about 190,000 Assyrian troops. So Judah held on a little bit longer. They had a handful of godly and righteous kings, but they too went the same way as Israel. Wiped out.
Jerusalem under siege, this time not by the Assyrians. So out of Assyria, then came Babylon. Babylon basically took over the whole Assyrian empire. The thing about Assyria is they were so hungry and vicious and cruel. They treated the people they conquered so poorly they couldn’t hold on to an empire for very much time. So after a few generations of the dynasty of the Assyrian Empire, they basically just burned out.
Babylon arose. The Babylonians were the next ones who came through. They were the ones who eventually laid waste to Jerusalem. They first conquered in 597 BC. They carried off a wave of exile. Then in 586 BC, once and for all, they laid siege to Jerusalem. The Jews resisted. The city was crushed. The temple was completely destroyed. The people were carried off into exile (those who had survived). Only a handful of the very poorest of the poor were left to inhabit this wasteland that was now Judah.
2. The demise. So this was the downward spiral. This is the demise, and it’s a real bummer. In 2 Kings 17, just listen to this. This is the sort of summary of what happens. This is specifically about the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel. Again, the names can be confusing, because you’re like, “Wait. The people of Israel, the kingdom of Israel…how does this all work?”
The northern kingdom in this section of the Bible is specifically called Israel. Sometimes they call it Ephraim, who was Joseph’s son, because they had a large portion of that land. Sometimes it’s called Jacob. Sometimes it’s called Samaria. It’s all referring to the northern kingdom. If it’s talking about the southern kingdom, it’s talking about Judah. So this passage (2 Kings 17) is specifically about the northern kingdom. It says this occurred (the fall of Israel, the northern kingdom)… This is 2 Kings 17, verse 7.
“And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared others gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.” (2 Kings 17:7-9)
A high place is where they would go up onto the hilltop because they felt like they were closer to the false gods they were worshiping. That’s where they would make their sacrifices. That’s where they would worship. Verse 10: “They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, and they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, ‘You shall not do this.’
Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.’ But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.
They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them.” (2 Kings 17:10-15) It goes on and just talks, outlining basically the same story I told a few minutes ago.
Do you see what that phrase is in verse 15? “They went after false idols and became false…” (2 Kings 17:15) You know, it’s a law of human nature that we become like that which we worship. The things we devote our thinking to, our attention to, our time to naturally rub off on us. When we open up our hearts to real adoration or worship or admiration, all these things, we slowly become like those very things.
Here’s the real problem. What happened to the northern kingdom? What happened to the southern kingdom? They went after false things, and they became false. Do you ever wake up in the morning, and you just feel empty, or you feel like you’re faking it? There’s nothing behind the sort of veneer. You wake up after 6 or 12 months, and you kind of go, “What am I doing? I am not being myself. I am far from the destiny God designed me for.”
That’s the situation of Israel right here. For hundreds of years, they had been worshiping false idols, and they literally became false. They were so far from whom God made them to be that they were false. I can identify with that. That phrase just rings in my ear. It says God sent prophets. If you look, it’s amazing how in the grace of God, the number of prophets… As you go down that sheet on both sides, as the people go farther and farther from God, God keeps sending more and more powerful prophets to wake them up, warn them.
Sometimes you read those prophets, like the later parts of Hosea or Amos or Micah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel. You go, “Man! This is harsh. Gosh! This is so harsh.” The tone of the prophetic voice had to keep getting stronger and stronger and warn them more and more strongly because they just kept walking farther and farther away. So there is some real harsh part of the prophetic books as you read those.
At the same time, this is where the promise or the hope of redemption begins to shine brightest. It’s actually interesting. As the timeline goes on and things get worse and worse and darker and darker, the promises about Jesus who is to come, the Messiah who is to come, keep getting brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter. So God is saying, “Wake up” and, at the same time, “I am going to save you in such a powerful way. It’s just going to be amazing.”
So that’s what’s going on. That’s a snapshot of Israel’s demise. Here’s the big question: How should we think about all this? How do we interpret all of this? What kind of God is this who makes all these promises to these people, walks with them, delivers them, and at this point, allows the northern kingdom to be completely destroyed by the southern kingdom, to be carried off into exile for 70 years before a remnant will return?
What kind of God is this? How should we interpret this? What does this tell us about God? Because if we read the Bible, we believe the Bible, this God of this story is the same God who we worship today. He is unchanging from beginning to end. What do we make of this? How should we interpret this tragic story of brokenness? The people keep wandering away. Idolatry. Becoming false. How should we interpret this?
The wonderful thing (if you go to Luke, chapter 15) is Jesus actually does interpret this whole story for us. We’re not left on our own to figure out how to interpret this story of the fractured kingdom and the exile. Jesus does it for us. Frankly, if Jesus is interpreting a story, I’ll follow his interpretation. I feel like he has some good insight on this matter.
So Luke chapter 15, verse 1. It says, “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to [Jesus].” (Luke 15:1) It’s hard to change gears like this. We’re so into that Judah and Israel. It’s like, “Whoa, man! We’re just jumping like a thousand years. My brain is stretching 500 hundred years.” Just track with me for a moment, because Jesus is going to show us how to interpret this story.
“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable.” (Luke 15:1-3) He told the parable of the lost sheep. Then he told the parable of the lost coin. Then he gets to verse 11, the parable of the prodigal son. Now with everything we’ve just heard about, I want you to listen to this parable maybe with fresh ears. Maybe you never thought of it this way before.
Luke 15, verse 11. “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 his fields to feed pigs.
And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I 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 have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let 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. Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in.
His father came out and entreated him [begged him], but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'” (Luke 15:11-32)
In Exodus, chapter 4, God tells Moses, “I want you to go down to Egypt, and I want you to lead my people out of slavery. My people Israel, my son, my beloved son.” Here Jesus is telling a parable about a son who essentially looked his father in the face and said, “I wish you were dead. I wish you didn’t exist.” That’s what it means. When he said, “Hey, can I have my inheritance,” he was going to his father, and he was saying, “I wish you were dead so I could have all your stuff right now without any of the relationship.”
Then the son went off to a far land where he served Gentiles who raised pigs. He had nothing. In that far land, he came to himself, and he remembered he actually had a good father who provided for people. So he made his way back to where his father lived, thinking, “He is going to reject me, but at least when I come back, maybe he’ll have me as a servant. I won’t have to keep living in this far land and this broken place.”
As soon as his father spied him on the horizon, the father sprinted to him. Remember in that culture and in that time (it’s still this way in the Middle East), if you’re a father or a leader of a family, you never run. You never run in your robes. I mean, it’s like a complete social faux pas. I mean it would be like if Scott Gottschang was sitting right there, and he stood up and just took his shirt off right now. We would all go, “What? You can’t do that.” It’s just undignified. Nobody would do that.
I mean, we would be kind of scandalized. I would definitely tell that story at staff meeting, you know? I would be like, “Man, you won’t believe… The 5:15 is rockin’ and rollin’, but gee whiz. This guy just stood up and took his shirt off. It was crazy. We should maybe… Yeah. Connection Card. Connect on that.” The father ran to his son, completely undignified. He threw his dignity to the wind because he was so happy to see the son coming back to him.
3. The exile. This is the story of the exile. Jesus is telling all those gathered (the Pharisees, the tax collectors, and the sinners), “Hey, we have this big thing back here in our history where the people ran away from God. They disobeyed God. It was so horrible. The northern kingdom was destroyed, and the southern kingdom was carried off by the Babylonians to a far land where they had to serve Gentile masters, and they had nothing. This is the story of the exile.”
The son who left is just like Israel, who looked at God and said, “I wish you were dead. I want this land you gave me. I want to make as much money I can. I want to have as much fun as I can. I want to do whatever I want, but I don’t want you.” It resulted in exile. As Buddy often says, exile is when God allows you to go physically where you already are spiritually. That’s what happened to the people of God here.
They went wayward in their hearts long before they were carried off and destroyed. That’s what happened. Yet the moment they turn, at the moment that son comes back, the father has been waiting. The father has been looking. He has been yearning for the return of the son. How do we interpret the exile? How do we put the pieces together? How do we look at this demise and understand God? Here’s what Jesus is telling us, and we cannot miss this point.
Jesus is telling us, “Listen. God the Father is just like this parable.” He loves his people Israel the entire time. He loves the Jews so much. He loves his people. Even when they are at their worst and way off in the distance spending all the money on prostitutes, he is looking on the horizon, waiting for the return. The moment he sees them, he runs. He throws his dignity to the wind, and he says, “I’m so glad you’re back.”
In the Old Testament actually after the exiles are in Babylon for 70 years, God makes a way through Ezra and Nehemiah for the people to return. It’s very interesting because when the people get back (in the book of Nehemiah, we’ll see this in a couple of weeks), the few poor Jews who had stayed hated him. They said, “You bailed. You left us. What are you trying to do? Rebuild the temple? This is awful. Were you trying to recapture the former glory? This is awful.” Just like the older brother in our parable.
The parable of the prodigal son is certainly a parable about the heart of God, but it is also Jesus’ commentary on the exile. Why does this matter for us? Have you ever just felt like you’re way off track? I’ll take that as heavenly affirmation. Have you ever felt like you’re way off track? Do you feel like you have enemies on every side pressing in? Do you feel like you’ve become false?
Do you ever feel like you just messed up to the point where you might even deserve exile, maybe you even don’t want to turn back to God because you feel like you’re better off dying facedown among the pigs, yearning to eat the slop that overflows from their troughs? Have you ever felt that way? Maybe not even that serious. Maybe you just feel like, “Man, I’m just kind of distant from God. My heart has gone a little bit astray. I’m not that warm toward him.”
Here’s what Jesus wants us to know about God the Father. He wants us to know the moment we turn back, the moment we turn to him, he runs to us. He loves us. He yearns for our hearts to be turned toward him. He mobilizes people. You know, the story of the Bible is the story of the God who runs. He creates Adam and Eve. He puts them in this garden. It’s an amazing place. They disobey him. So what does he do? He pursues them. “Adam, where are you?” “Walking in the garden.”
He has this people, Israel. He wants to come live among them at the tabernacle and the temple. You get to the New Testament. Things have gotten so bad, he literally takes on flesh and walks among us. He runs to us. He comes to us. The new heaven and the new earth is a picture. Our eternity destiny is heaven crashing into earth, renewing everything, removing all evil when Jesus returns. God is the God who runs to us the moment our hearts turn to him.
The father of one of my friends actually got into some really crazy spiritual sort of demonic stuff. He was into Satanism. His basement had been all set up for whatever sort of séances. I don’t understand all of this, but he would go down and interact with dark, spiritual things. One night something happened that really freaked him out. This guy’s dad was down there, and he felt like he was always kind of in control, but then all of a sudden this time, whatever happened. The demon didn’t do what he wanted him to do, and it terrified him.
He blew out all the candles, and he ran upstairs. This is a guy who has been doing this for years and years and years in his life. He hated the name of Jesus. His kids had come to faith and had tried to share the gospel with them. He was like, “No. I have my way, and this is the way of darkness. I’m embracing this.” This night when everything happened, it terrified him. He blew out everything. He ran upstairs, jumped on his bed, went under the covers, and was like just pretty geeked out by this whole thing.
Whatever it was, the spirit, the demon, followed him into the room and jumped on top of him. He could feel it. He describes it. He said, “I could feel it physically suffocating me.” He was lying there, and in the back of his mind, he thought, “I need to call on the name of Jesus.” As the breath was just suffocated out of him, and all this stuff, he just… It was just one word. He said, “Jesus.” Immediately the demon was gone. He came to faith.
He was telling that story to his kids, and he said, “Hey, I want to show you something.” He took them upstairs, showed them his bed. The slats under the bed were all cracked from the force. It’s crazy sometimes how the spiritual world can invade the physical. He said, “Here I am. My entire life I have been blaspheming and scorning the name of Jesus. The very moment I need him and I turn to him even just the smallest amount, he is there. He runs to me.”
That’s powerful. This is the God we serve. We mess up. We go off track. We go off the reservation. We do all sorts of stuff. We let our hearts be drawn in the wrong directions. The moment we turn back to him… There’s not like a waiting period where it’s like, “Man, it’s been a rough few weeks. I just have to earn my way back to God.”
There’s not like this sort of trial period where it’s like, “Oh yeah. Well Lord, I’d like to love you again,” and God is like, “That’s good. Let’s just watch your behavior for about a month and see if you stick to it. Oh sure. Now you feel really low, but then tomorrow you’re going to do the same thing.” That’s not who God is. God knows our hearts. The moment your heart turns to him, he is outside and is looking. He sees the son on the horizon turn to him. He runs to him because he loves him. He throws a party. He slays the fatted calf.
This is Jesus’ commentary on the exile. As we read through these passages (1 and 2 Kings), we need to keep this in mind. This is the heart of God, the unchanging heart of God: love and grace for his people, yearning that they would turn to him, wanting to welcome them, wanting not to invite them into some boring life of legalism but to throw them a mighty party. Here’s what I want to do. I’m going to read that parable of the prodigal son one more time, but I want us to sort of read it imaginatively.
So I’ll read it kind of slowly. Just close your eyes. Maybe you’ve thought about this from the point of view of the son. What I want us to do is actually imagine ourselves in the position of the father in this story, okay? So just imagine. Maybe just think about what the setting would have been. Let your imagination just sort of fill in some of the gaps of this story, but just put yourself in the father’s shoes for this parable. Just imagine you’re standing there as the father.
“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 his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I 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 the was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let 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.” (Luke 15:11-24)
This is the heart of God, not just for his chosen people but every one of us. He crafted us together. He knit us together in our mother’s womb, each person in here. He calls us to a mighty destiny. Each one of us…all of us…have sinned. All like sheep we’ve gone astray. We’ve pursued the path of our own demise. Here’s the heart of the Father, looking, waiting, watching, yearning for the moment when our hearts turn to him.
When we appear on that horizon, in that moment our Deliverer runs to us, and he celebrates. He loves us. He doesn’t lecture us, cut us down, rip on us. “I can’t believe you took the inheritance. You spent it all where?” No, he doesn’t do that. “Where’s my best robe? Where’s my ring? Let me welcome you in.”
I just want to pray the heart of the father… Maybe as we were reading, you just had that sense for the father’s heart. I just pray God would open up our hearts and our minds that we might understand that heart he has toward us and that we might turn our hearts toward him. So let’s just pray.
God, we ask right now… Thank you for your Word. Thank you for your faithfulness even to Israel in her brokenness. Thank you, God, for so many things. We pray through the power of your Spirit, you would turn our hearts, Lord, you would minister to us. Lord, that we’d feel just the way you feel about us, your embrace.
Lord, we thank you the way you reveal yourself to us is through Jesus, that you not only run to us in the parable, but you, while we are yet sinners (your enemies apart from you), go to a cross and die on our behalf. You embrace us through the greatest sacrifice of all time. Lord, I pray that grace released through the cross, Lord, our hearts would be turned to you right now, and we’d experience that grace, and we would know the love of the Father for us. Lord, I pray for some of us who feel like we’ve drifted, maybe even drifted toward our demise. Lord, deliver us now.