Dr. Roger Parrott, Belhaven University Chapel Series

When the light comes on. Parable of the prodigal son, the younger son, we need to say the quiet part out loud and that's this. Sin is fun. Sin is fun.

We don't call it sin because that kind of take the fun out of it. So we relabel it, we clean it up. We don't say to a friend, hey, let's go out Friday night and we'll sin. It'll be fun.

No, we call it something else, but that's what it is. Or let's say sin appears to be fun, but it never ever is in the long run. And that's what the story of the prodigal son tells us, how sin deceives us.

This is a story about two sons and a father. We heard about the younger son, the scripture read so well for us this morning.

The younger son who wanted half of his inheritance, he wanted to go out and have wild living and he took it and went.

The other son stayed home, but the other son was also estranged from his father because he was just trying to follow the rules of his religion or his structure and had no love for the Father. And in his self righteousness over his resentment for his younger brother, he was sinning as well.

So whether it's the sin from taking off in a wild life or the sin of self righteousness, both separate us from God.

We're restored to a holy God when we have corrupted our lives with sin only because of the grace of Christ, who gave the sacrifice on the cross so that we could be clean, we could be forgiven, we could be brought back into fellowship with God. It's not earned, it's not deserved. It's. It's a gift of love from God to us. And so today we're going to look at the younger son.

Two weeks, we're going to look at the older son and his sin and the father's forgiveness. Next week is our global emphasis week. And so we're going to kind of take time out in this story, talk about how our witness shows in the world.

But whether it's the younger son running from God or the older brother living religion without love, or it's the wandering sheep we talked about last week or the lost coin that's just neglecting God, whatever the process, whatever the path, the result of sin is the same. Now the younger brother's story is told in us in great detail because it applies to all the paths of sin, whichever one you pick.

And, and Jesus essentially tells us that what's anticipated to be a great adventure that's what the younger son thought it was going to be.

A great adventure is exposed in the agony of sin to let us see clearly how painful life can become when we follow the path of sin and get caught in that cycle. This story shines a bright light on the examination of sin. And the scripture talks often about the light shown on sin and what it does to sin.

Ephesians 5 reads like this, Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness. Instead, rebuke and expose him. It's shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.

But when the light shines on them, it becomes clear how evil these things are. Jesus tells us the story in detail because he's trying to protect us from the trap that the devil wants to pull us into with sin.

And so today we're going to look at the nine bright lights that are shone on sin. When we get trapped in that cycle, why do we get pulled into it? Why do we sin? And then when we do sin, what happens every single time?

That's what the parable of the prodigal son tells us. Because there's always a commonality to it of why it happens, and there's always a commonality to it of the result.

It's ugly every single time when it's shown in the bright light. So first of all, the scripture says sin always starts with justification.

The younger son told his father, I want my share of your estate now, before you die. Well, in those days, they didn't have a bank account. They had land, they had cattle, they had farms, they had whatever it might be.

So for a son who would take half of that inheritance, if there were two sons, when he died, they'd have to split all that down the middle. Well, that's a complex and difficult thing to do. But the son says, I want my half now before you die. Well, here's the problem.

This father wasn't dying.

You see, he started with the justification, my father's gonna die, so I'm gonna take it anyway, and just twisted that in order to get his handle on a justification for why his sin was okay. And when we wanna sin, we go into overdrive trying to find a justification.

They don't pay me enough on my job, so if I take a little bit extra or I. I don't give them full effort, so what? I deserve it. You know, I'm a person who just gets angry. It's just who I am. It's just the nature.

You don't want me to express myself Authentically, you want me to hold back, huh? I've had hard knocks, tough knocks in life, so if I cut a few corners, what's it matter? I deserve it. I've binge drinking doesn't hurt anybody but me.

So what are you complaining about? I was raised to fight for everything. And if you get hurt in the process, that's too bad. Because you won't get ahead in the world if you don't fight.

And I'm going to show you the way. I talk bad about them because they talk bad about me. I mean, what goes wrong comes around, right?

See, justification is always the foundational platform for sin every single time. So sin starts with the justification we see from the story. Secondly, we see from the story that sin always puts immediate gratification first.

So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his two sons. Again, the father's wealth was not cash. So this was really difficult to do.

And so the immediate gratification of the younger son, everybody has to adjust to his selfishness. The father has to divide up this property and possessions that he's built up over the years, probably that he inherited part of it.

The older brother has to give up part of his. The employees all have to change or many of them get laid off or what it may be. You see, sin always abuses others.

Sin always abuses people that God loves and God created. Probably the most raw example of sin is sexual assault and abuse, cyber bullying. That's raw. It is so pitifully selfish.

Get your happiness for three minutes and put somebody else's life in turmoil forever. And that's what happens. It's the lowest of the low.

So whatever the immediate gratification is, that's kind of what it really comes out to be because people get trampled in the process. Jesus said, what you do to the least of these, you do to me.

And when your gratification and your quest for immediate gratification start to trample on people, it is sin every single time. Well, thirdly, the story tells us that sin always takes root in our emotions.

Scripture then says a few days later, this younger son packed all of his belongings. He wasn't going to wait around. I mean, he got the money, he gonna go. So God created us with emotions.

And you see that emotion expressed in this younger son who's ready to go, he's not waiting. Emotions in our lives are barometers. You know, barometer measures air pressure. This weekend I was going nuts with my sinuses.

The air pressure was changing. It measures the air pressure. Emotions do the same Thing, they measure the pressure of our lives. Now, some emotions are happy and some are sad.

And sad emotions are not bad because all emotions have a purpose. You see, Jesus got lonely. Jesus got frustrated. Jesus cried.

So this emotion of the moment in the quest for immediate gratification is what pushed this son to. To make a stupid decision to leave a place of stability and love and comfort and protection and security and just head out into the world.

And that's what he did. Emotions of inadequacy lead to jealousy. And that's what happened in the older brother. We'll see in the story in two weeks.

The jealousy and the rage began to build in him. Emotions of loneliness need to lead to pride. I can do it on my own. I don't need anybody else. I'm strong. I'm going to do this.

I'm going to be determined. Emotions from demands, the weight of responsibility. We got too much. I can't stand it anymore. I've got to do something. Emotions from boredom. I just.

This is too boring. I gotta do something that's more exciting. The sameness of it is too much. They all lead to a loss of control. Those emotions, even if bad.

We'd rather have the control. The younger son would rather have the control of his future, even if it was a bad future compared to what he had.

We're willing to risk everything for control. You see, all these different emotions all get rooted in the sin.

And if we will slow down enough when we're tempted to sin, to stop and understand what emotion is driving that desire right that moment, we can especially do much better dealing with the temptations that come into our lives. Get the emotion out of any decision before you make it.

That's just a good rule of life and a good rule of leadership and a good rule of organization, good rule of family. Get the emotion out before you make it. But especially when it comes to sin, get the emotion out before you move forward.

Because the younger son didn't do that. And he's headed down a tough path. So then we see forth sin always seeks freedom, Scripture says. And then he moved to a distant land.

Now, travel in those days was a huge risk. You didn't just go get on a plane or a bus or whatever like you do now. It was a big deal. It was very dangerous.

And so he not only was going to a place where maybe he didn't speak the language, maybe the culture and the customs were different, but also he was leaving behind stability. He. He was leaving behind the reputation of his family. He was leaving behind his ability to influence his surroundings.

He was willing to go in all that because he was seeking freedom. Leaving God's care is almost always a search for freedom, and there's a huge risk to it. But off we go into the dark to find freedom.

Scripture says this about the dark. Night is the time for sleep and the time when people get drunk.

But let us who live in the light think clearly, protected by the armor of faith and love. Then in John, all who do evil things hate the light and. And refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.

You know, a really good test to see if you're being drawn into sin are the things you'll do at night that you won't do during the day. If so, that's a sign of caution. And be careful and be slow to move that direction. Even though he was headed into the darkness, the Father let him go.

We see in the story. You see, God allows us freedom even when we want to reject his love, because he loves us that much.

Now, can you imagine for a minute today you said to your parents, I'm taking half the money of this family. I'm taking half of this. I'm going to essentially destroy you. But I want my part. I'm going to go do it. I. I'm going out. I'm going to live how I want.

I won't be in touch, and I'm going someplace else. What would they say? A lot of parents would say, well, don't ever come home again. If you make this step, you're done. I'm going to disown you.

I don't want anything to do with you if you're going to reject our family that much. But the father and the prodigal son doesn't end the relationship. The father just waits and watches for him to come home.

You know, periodically, I get calls from parents whose son or daughter is having real trouble, really headed down a bad path of sin. And they want to ask me what to do. And my advice is always the same. No matter what, don't break the relationship.

Doesn't matter what they do, don't break the relationship. If the relationship stays, there's always a chance they'll come home. But if you break it, they won't come back. That's what the father did.

He didn't break the relationship. He let him go. And then we see sin always envisions an idealistic future. And he moved to a distant land and there wasted all his money on wild living.

I'm sure it looked great. There's an anticipation and sin of perfection. This is going to be incredible. I'm going to live on the edge of excitement.

It's going to be an adrenaline rush. You know, people are addicted to adrenaline. If you're one of them, be careful because that's a real thing.

There's assumption we can keep control in our future, and so we have this anticipation. It's all going to work out great. I can handle this. And people headed into sin only look that far at the idealized future.

But there's always, always a shattering of that perfection. When sin gets played out in contests we can't win, sin always wins. Sin never delivers what it promises, ever.

It promises fun, it promises freedom, it promises independence, it promises a bright shiny future. And it never, ever delivers. That's what the prodigal son found out. So sin always has his its consequences. About this time, the money ran out.

Well, the money's always going to run out. Sin will always hurt you, because if that's your bank account, there's a limited supply.

If your bank account is in Christ and in his redemption, his grace, it's an unlimited supply. You see, God's not wanting to restrict us. He's trying to protect us, to keep us from sinning.

And we all get tempted into sin, so nobody's immune from that. Remember when you were growing up, probably at your house, Was at my house, your parents put childproof locks on everything. We had so many.

We had locks on everything. I put pads under the dining room table so they wouldn't hit their head when they crawled under there and all this stuff.

We protected everything, but we weren't trying to keep them out of stock stuff. We're trying to keep them out of things they were curious about. We're trying to protect them from things we knew would hurt them.

Parents can see the consequences. God can see the consequences of the sin we think is going to be ideal and wonderful. Because there are arbitrary laws in the design of the world.

And God designed it certain ways. And when those laws are broken, it doesn't matter what your opinion is. There are consequences to that. Take the law of gravity. You may like it.

It doesn't change anything. Jump out of that balcony, you're going to break a leg. It's going to happen because of gravity. You can't stop that.

Well, there are also laws of God's spiritual design, and there are always consequences when those are broken as well. Now, God will always forgive, but the damage of sin remains even in forgiveness. And the damage of sin can absolutely be horrible.

As the story tells us now, the Bible doesn't list every possible sin, doesn't have cyberbullying in there. That's a horrible one, lots of others, doesn't have any, doesn't list every sin, but it does list a bunch of them.

So Galatians says the sins of the flesh are obvious, which is kind of an interesting way to put it. Are obvious.

Sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasures, idolatry, demonic activities, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, division, rebellion, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other kind kinds of sins. Scripture is not bashful to call out sin because God knows there will always be a crash when we sin. Sin is fun, right? Until the consequences show up.

And the consequences always show up.

Now, whether your sin is wandering like the lost sheep last week, or it's neglecting God like the lost coin parable, or it's self righteousness like the older brother, or it's sins of the flesh like the younger brother, they always have consequences, every single time. But we don't see that part. We only see that idealized future of what it's going to be.

Well, the story goes on that sin always intensifies life's challenges. About this time, his money ran out. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land and he began to starve. Hard knocks of life.

Come famines come, jobs get lost, stock markets crash, houses catch on fire, medical trauma comes, family members die. And in the hard knocks of life, if you're living in a life of sin, your options get narrowed. That intensifies the hard knocks.

Let's say you're 40 years old, got a couple teenagers, wonderful family, everything's good.

Father, mother, die in a car crash, you get the news, you're devastated, you go home, you're overwhelmed, and you forgot to hide your second phone like you normally hide it from your spouse and she found it and saw the affair you're having. At that moment, you need family more than anything. And at that moment, you just destroyed your own.

You see, the younger son painted himself into a corner where he didn't have many options. That's the nature of sin. It limits life.

It doesn't expand life as it promises that it will, because sin then always convinces us, even at that point, that we can fix it on our own. Scripture says he persuaded a local farmer to hire him and the man sent him to the fields to feed the pigs.

The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked Good to him. A big part of sinful nature is never wanting to admit we were wrong. And so we come up with another plan. Okay, I'll feed the pigs.

Now, feeding the pigs in those days was the lowest of the low. Jobs. Pigs were unclean. It was a horrible thing. But he had plan B. Plan B doesn't work. This is like plan A. It starts with justification.

It's built on emotion. Okay, this is going to be great. I'm going to keep my freedom. It envisions an idealized future, and it never, ever works.

I have seen so many people in my life spend their whole life spinning from plan A to plan B to plan C all the way through the Alphabet, looking for anything other than doing it God's way. And their life is wasted in a cycle of sin that continues to deceive them to believe that the next alternative is finally gonna fix it.

And no, it's not, because that's not how God designed the world. Sin always convinces us we can fix it on our own. But then the scripture tells us last sin always makes us face reality.

And when he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, at home, even the hired servants have food enough to spare. And here I am dying of hungry. I will go home to my Father.

It is sad, sad, sad that so many people have to hit bottom before they're willing to admit they were wrong and head back up. If we create a life of sinfulness, we will eventually face reality, the hard choice between our way and God's way.

We can try another plan on our own, but it's not going to work better than the last five plans on our own. Or we can go home. Go home, say, I'm sorry. Repentance, restore the relationship, come back into fellowship with the Father.

If the Son knew how it would end, he never would have started. And that's why Jesus tells the story in such detail, so we will see how it ends every single time.

Pastor Adrian Rogers used to have some wonderful ways of summarizing big ideas. And he said this, which has often been quoted, I love it says, sin will take you farther than you want to go.

It will keep you there longer than you want to stay, and it will cost you more than you want to pay. That's why Jesus tells this story, to show us how it ends.

Because sin will take you farther than you want to go, and it's going to keep you there longer than you wanted to stay. And it's going to cost you a whole lot more than you were expecting to pay. So he tells this story for us to see that.

And he also tells the story to see how great the Father's love is. And in two weeks, when we look at the second part of the story, that's what we're going to see.

You see, the story of the prodigal son is really a love letter to us from Jesus. He's saying, please trust me and don't go there, because I know what's there. And I don't want to see your life crushed under the weight of sin.

But here's the good news, the bottom line good news going home is easier than every sinner thinks it will be. Every time. Let's say together our benediction. No eye is seen, no ear is heard, no mind is conceived. What God has prepared to those who love him.

God bless.