Lathem Postell: Praise God. What's some wonderful worship, this morning. It's hard to really follow that up, but, I'll charge through anyway. And then, we'll get to sing another one of those here in a minute. It's again a pleasure to be with you in worship this morning.
As we gather here in August, we are starting a new sermon series. Hopefully, you see that the title of that is return. We're calling it this because this is a time of year where people are doing a lot of returning. Probably you have. Right?
If you are a family with school age kids, you have returned back to school, or I think there's 1 or 2 schools around us that are gonna return back tomorrow, but for the most part, you're back to normal. Right? It means back to normal routines. You've returned. If you live in Carter Grove Plantation, like I do, it's the return of school traffic that comes in the mornings and the afternoons.
Right? This is a time of return. And and so the reason for this sermon series is, I believe as we return to a sense of normalcy in our personal calendars, and even in the church calendar, right, we've got Wednesday night suppers coming back and all of the various things that go on in the life of the church, I think it's important for us to spend a little bit of time, it's perhaps even wise of us, to think about how we might return in our spiritual lives. Because what's true, and has been true from the very beginning. Right?
I talk about it all the time. Go back to Genesis, chapters 12. It doesn't take us until chapter 3 to move away from the heart of God. It's at the very beginning of our story. But oftentimes, we look in our lives, it's built in our DNA.
We look and and we're not near God anymore. Sometimes it happens quickly, like it does in Genesis chapter 3, or other times it's a slow progression, where we don't even notice it. And then all of a sudden, when we take stock of our lives, we look and we see that God is nowhere near us. Well, what's true is that God didn't move. Right?
We did. And so, there's times in our life where we need to just stop and think about returning. How do we return to God? As we do that, I also wanna take just a moment to offer up another way in the life of the church that we can return. If you read the cover letter, or if you opened your bulletin, you can see and we're not gonna spend our whole time on this, but I wanted to to highlight it for this 1st week of our sermon series.
Hopefully, you and being at 9:45, you either had one in your bulletin or you sat on one. You have one of these being Sam Jones service opportunities inserts. We want to offer you opportunity, maybe for the first time, or others for the first time in a long time, to return to service in the life of the church. It takes a lot of people to be able to spread the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ on a Sunday morning, and throughout the week. And I hope that you'll receive my confession and my forgiveness.
What I have realized is over the past 2 years of being your pastor, I have not always done a good job at inviting you to be a part of that work. We're doing some exciting things at Sam Jones, and I haven't always given you the opportunity to be a part of that on a weekly basis. And so for that, I hope that you'll forgive me. And with that, I offer you this. Right?
An opportunity to be a part of what it takes and means to to be in service throughout the week. There's things on here that you've seen before. Ushers and greeters, 9:45. Tech team. SJ Kids.
SJ Youth. That's all Sunday morning. Right? Then we've got SJ Youth on Wednesdays, and other nights, and Wednesday night supper crew. And maybe even if you feel called, I know it's a big one, to leading a Bible study.
We'd love to to be in conversation with you about that. The reason I wanted you to see it like this, is because I did a little math. It's not necessarily my strong suit, but I think I can add up these numbers. It takes 86 people throughout a month, who are faithfully committed to serving once a week, or once a month, I should say. 86 people to make a Sunday morning worship service set happen.
I want you to hear that number for this reason. Right? Because every now and then we'll say, and we've done it in here. Right? Hey.
We need ushers. And I know that the first inclination is to say, okay. Well, they need a few ushers. I'll let I'll let somebody else do that. Right?
What I want you to hear this morning is, don't assume your neighbor's gonna do it, because we need them to do it too, and for you to do it. Right? So 86 people it takes to make Sunday morning happen. Many hands make light work. I also want you to hear that number though, so that it doesn't scare you.
Because I know that at first you look at this and you hear 86 and you go, Oof. That's a lot. Right? It is a lot, but but put it in perspective. Right?
Okay. So we've got generally 4 weeks a month. Start dividing that out. Right? Eighty 6 people a month means 22 a week.
Okay. We're getting a little bit better. 22 a week, though, divided by 3 services. Right? 830, 945, and 11.
That is doable. Right? What are my 7 hands in here that are gonna go upstairs right now? No, I'm just kidding. You don't have to do that.
7 people a week. For perspective, we had a 160 in worship service, in this service last week, and 4 100 of 10 across all services still in the summer. Right? 86 is doable. We just need to offer the opportunity to do it.
And if we have more than 86, great. That's a starting point. There's always things we can do. There's always places we can use more people, if you'll feel called to that service. So going forward, this is going to be a yearly exercise.
And the reason I say that is because I know exactly what you're thinking. 8:30 bust into tears laughing, cause it was what they were thinking when I said this last service. Because sometimes when when a pastor or somebody in the church comes to you and asks for you to serve in a various way, it turns into a life sentence. Right? What happens is, it means you get on the usher rotation or you get on the kids' rotation, you get on the youth rotation, and it means, we really just kind of assume you're gonna be there until your funeral comes.
Right? What I want you to hear from this is, this is a yearly exercise, and it will be going forward. Every year around the time when we're returning back to schedules in school, you're kind of returning from vacations and summer. Right? We're gonna offer the opportunity for you to serve.
I hope that you will serve year, after year, after year, after year. But circumstances in life change. We know that. You know that. What you can do this year, you may not be able to do next year.
Sometimes those are personal circumstances that change. Sometimes those are the circumstances of family around you that you need to care for and be with. This is not a life sentence. This is a request and an invitation to be in the life of the church and serving. I hope that you'll take that up and consider it.
So we're gonna talk about this every week, this series. Again, this is kind of the biggest meat of how we'll talk about it. I won't spend this much time the rest of them. I'm gonna update you as we go through, you know, what our numbers are at. We we need 86.
Right? So please don't make me by week 4, beg for 60 more people. Again, take this home. If you haven't already filled it out, we're gonna give you the opportunity every week to fill this out, and if you want to place it in the offering plate, this is an act of of giving of our time to God. If you wanna go ahead and fill it out today, and come and leave it here on the altar, that's okay too.
But but we're gonna just continue to to call into mind this invitation, this calling to serve God. And I hope that you'll do that. You can sign up for for any or all of these. My goal, what I'll tell every service, is here's the vision I have, is that everyone serves in one area, once a month. I'm not asking you to fill all 86.
One place, once a month. As doable as possible. And the reason I'm asking that, and I'll leave you with this, and and I should've said, fill out 1 per person. Right? I know that I can already see you fighting over it, because you you want to be the one that fills out the one in your bulletin.
Y'all have the benefit of some in your seat, but if you need more, there's some on the tables, but fill out 1 per person. Couples. Families. That way we know, you know, spouses may want to serve together, or you may not want to. And that's okay too.
We'll take you wherever you want to. So fill out 1 per person. And I'll leave you with this, and it's really the heart behind why I'm asking this and bringing it to you. Is we have a mission here to tell people about Jesus. And sure, it's my role as pastor to stand up here and to preach the gospel.
It's the band's job to come up here and sing the gospel and proclaim it in a real way. What I hope is that we are prepared every Sunday for the folks in our community who don't know Jesus. We don't know when they're coming, but they're coming. We want to be prepared every Sunday, that when they walk in the doors, they receive the good news of the gospel from the very moment they walk in, to the very moment they leave. That means we need people at the door, ready to greet them and smile and share with them the love of Jesus.
It means we need people upstairs that can share the gospel with their children. We need you to do this work. It's impossible to do it without you. In fact, it's the calling of the church. So please prayerfully consider it.
And if you have any questions, obviously, come and find us. We will train you in this. So that's the other part. Don't think that you're gonna be left out on an island. You fill this out, and next week, we call you and tell you to go lead a kid's bible study.
Okay? That's not how this works. Somebody on staff will reach out, coordinate times to train you, all of the necessary things, work with a schedule. Don't worry. But step out in faith and consider serving the church.
So thank you. Thank you for that. There's no really good way to, continue on, so I will. Oh, I did wanna say this, trying to go through all the things in my brain. If you happen to wanna work in the tech team here, 9:45, Woody, raise your hand for us.
Everybody stare at Woody. He loves it. There's Woody Earwood. He came on board with us this past week. He's our new AV director.
So he's gonna do wonderful things helping us out here. He he is back there, and so he's who you'll be working with. Him and Alex. And so, if you, Woody's a really cool guy. So if you really just wanna serve with him, 12 people have the opportunity to do that.
So please please please, go and see him. But let us get to our scripture this morning, while we're here. If you've got your Bibles with you, I know it'll be on our screen as well. We're gonna read from Luke chapter 15. Now I focused us a little bit.
If you look in the bulletin, it says verses 11 through 32. That's the full parable, but but I want to focus us just this morning on the first part of that, verses 11 through 24. So so let us hear now this word of God, this parable from Luke chapter 15, which tells us this. Jesus continued. There was a man who had 2 sons.
The younger one said to his father, father, give me my share of the estate. So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth and wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have food to spare? And here I am, starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
Make me like one of your hired servants. So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. The son said to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Quick. Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate.
For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Will you pray with me? Loving and gracious God, Lord, we thank you for the gift of your scriptures, for the stories of your son, Jesus, and the parables that he shared with us.
Lord, we ask this day that you open our hearts and minds to hear from you. Speak your message of life and of grace that in hearing it, we might come to look more like you. For it's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen. It would be better for me if you were dead.
That is, in essence, what the younger son is saying to his father. He's not saying it in those exact words, but in essence, he's saying, it would be better for me if you were dead. In the parable of the prodigal son, this young son comes and asks his father for his share of the inheritance. Now, you gotta know a little bit about how that society and culture work to understand what he's asking here. Right?
According to the law of Moses, according to Deuteronomy, this younger son is entitled to 1 third of the estate of his father. Now, there's some caveats to that, right? 1 third doesn't just mean 1 third of his liquid assets, like we might say in today's world. Right? No, it's a third of everything.
A third of his cash, a third of his property, a third of his, servants, a third of his cows and livestock. All of these things. Right? He's entitled to a third of it. But, he's only entitled to it once the father is dead.
Until then, it is the father's to do with as he likes. Presumably, hopefully, like most good parents, right? He's wanting to manage this property and this estate well, so that there's more for his children when he dies, than what he received. But the son isn't willing to wait. He comes to the father and says, I want my blessing now.
So the father acquiesces. He blesses his son and grants him the request. Here's your inheritance. Go and be free. Now, you know the rest of the story.
We don't need to spend too long on it. It's a pretty common parable. Right? The son does this. He takes the inheritance, and Scripture says he goes out and spends it on wild living.
That doesn't describe for us what wild living is, but we might begin to fill in the blanks of some of the things that he got himself involved in. It's wild living. He goes and spends and squanders all of it. He takes this great blessing, all that was owed to him, all that was due to him at some point in time in the future, and loses it. A famine comes and it says he has to find a job trying to feed pigs.
He's on the farm one day, presumably he maybe picks this because he has a little experience working with his dad, working on the farm. And he looks out and he sees that the pigs are living better than he does. They're eating better than he does. And he thinks, this is it. I have reached rock bottom.
I'm gonna go back to my dad. I'm gonna go back and live with him. The servants that he hired, I still remember him. They lived better than I do now. I'll go back and I'll ask for his forgiveness, and maybe he'll bring me on to work on the farm.
So he does this. Right? He swallows his pride, going back to the Father. And here is the part of the parable I want you to hear. It's the part that has stood out to me this week.
It's beautiful. It's what it says in verse 20. It says, But while he was a long way off Think about that for a minute. But while he was a long way off Scripture doesn't tell us how long the prodigal son had been gone. Right?
But it gives us a pretty good image of a father, and an estate, and a family that are pretty well off. I think it's reasonable to assume that a third of this estate was a considerable amount of money. It would have taken him some time to squander it. It would have taken him some time to find a job working with the pigs, for the famine to take place. We all know it would have taken some time for him to finally swallow his pride and crawl back to his dad, saying that he was wrong.
Some time has passed. But the scripture says, while he was still a long way off. That's when the Father sees the son. What that tells me is this, it's why this is such a beautiful passage of scripture. What it tells me is that the father was looking for the son.
Years had gone by. But maybe night after night after night, when the work was finally done, the cows were put in the pen, everybody had gone home, the father went to the road, Hoping beyond hope that he would look out, and as the sun was setting, might see his son walking down the path. Faithfulness to check. Night after night after night, maybe he will come to his senses and come home. You see, it says, the father saw him while he was still a long way off.
The son's return didn't surprise the father. He didn't have to come back to the farm looking for his dad. He didn't have to come knocking on the door, asking if he was there. He didn't have to go around to the servants, trying to see where his father might be. No.
It says his father was waiting. He was looking. He was longing for his son to return. And as he looked out that day, as he looked down the road, as he had done maybe a 100 times, if not a 1000 times before that, he saw a figure that night that looked a little bit like his son. Love and compassion, we see this in the parable, swelled up within him that he almost took off running.
I don't know the point in time where he was able to recognize fully that it was his son. But the scripture says that when he got there, he threw his arms around him. The Greek actually implies a stronger emotion there. If you go look at the Greek word, it implies that the father tackled the son out of love, and kissed him in excitement. The son had come home.
Now the son had rehearsed those lines. Do you remember that part of the scripture? He he said to himself, here's what I'm gonna say to dad. He probably looked in the mirror. I'm sorry.
I've sinned against heaven and against you. I know that I've done you wrong. Please receive me as a hired hand on your farm. He'd probably rehearsed that a couple times. So as they're embracing, maybe wrestling around on the ground, right?
He begins to say these lines that he's rehearsed, and the father doesn't even let him finish. He gets about halfway through, before the father just begins to shout out to servants, My son is home, go get the family robes. You know what size he wears? Go get the sandals. Go get the family ring.
Tell somebody to go get the fattened calf. Kill it. We're gonna have a feast. My son is back. He's not gonna be welcomed in as a hired hand.
No. He's gonna be welcomed in as he is, which is a member of my family. This is the story that Jesus offers us of what it means to return. What I hope you'll realize is that every single one of us have been blessed like the prodigal son. You may not realize it, but you have received an inheritance even greater than what he received that day.
Humans and philosophers have always really asked the same question since the beginning of time. Any great kind of thought or question or or worldview has come from the position of trying to answer this question. Why is there something rather than nothing? Right? Why do we exist?
Why is there something rather than nothing? This question highlights that the greatest mystery, and then subsequently the greatest blessing, is that we are. That we exist. The first miracle in the Bible. Genesis chapter 1.
The first miracle in the Bible is the very fact that God chose to create the heavens and the earth. He didn't have to, but he did. The first miracle is that he created humans. He created you and me in his image. The first blessing is He breathed into us the breath of life.
He didn't just give us breath, He gave us His breath. You have been blessed just from the very fact that you exist. But how many of us go through our lives wasting the very breath that God put in our lungs? How many of us go around in life wasting our inheritance on wild living. Maybe not the same kind of wild living as the prodigal son, or perhaps it is.
Whatever it is, we waste what God has given us. Here's a sobering truth that sometimes is not fun to remember. Today is the least number of breaths that you'll ever have. Even more sobering than that, tomorrow you'll have fewer. What I mean by that is, we live every day as if this blessing of life is something we have in abundance.
Our days are numbered. Our inheritance will run out if we are not careful. My prayer for you is then, that you will be like the prodigal son, and as he's there squandering around with the pigs, he comes to his senses. I hope that you'll come to yours. That wherever you have been, whatever you have done, God still wants to see you walking down that road.
That, yes. God is inviting you to return. Our fear is always and it's a normal, natural fear, because it's how the world reacts. Our natural fear is that we have gone too far, we've been gone too long, we've done too much for God to receive us. What the scripture is telling us is that none of that is true.
God is inviting you, maybe for the first time, maybe for the millionth time, to come back home. And the image Jesus shares with us is an image of compassion. Of surprising compassion. Of a God that is waiting. So return.
Swallow your pride. That may be the hardest part of it. Swallow your pride like the prodigal son and run back. Return today to the Father's presence. If you are worried about how he'll receive you, what we just talked about.
Right? If that is your worry, know that you haven't been gone too long. And instead, hear the words of Jesus this morning, rather than the enemy. Don't hear the words of evil. Hear the words of God, who says, while you were still a long way off.
God has not forgotten you. Every night, God has gone to the road, waiting to see if you would come back. So come back. The robe of righteousness is ready. The ring of the Father is prepared.
The heavenly feast is hot and ready. Come and see. Come and see. Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, Lord, we come today with full hearts.
Full of your abundant blessings. Lord, we know that the very fact that we are here, the very fact that we have breath in our lungs is a blessing. It is your inheritance. It is your gift to all creation that we are rather than are not. But God, we also recognize that we fail way too often to recognize that.
We take life for granted. We look around and focus on the things that have gone wrong rather than just the simple blessing that is. And so, God, we ask that in the spirit of that, in the spirit of recognizing all that we have squandered, Lord, did you call us home? If we're honest And if the people in this room will be honest in this moment, Lord, look at our hearts and what you'll find are people that are scared. The scariest thing about returning to you, the scariest thing about coming home is the fear that when we do, you might not be there.
That you might reject us. That you might turn us away. That you might see the list of things we've done while we're gone and say that's too much. Lord, may the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, may the good news of the parable of the prodigal son ring true in our hearts this day. 1, Lord, that as You went to the cross, everything we've done was before You and yet You still died for us.
But 2, God, as we return back to Your heart, You see us while we are still a long way off. We don't have to be afraid of you not being there. In fact, you've been there the whole time, waiting and hoping that we would see the goodness of you. So God, I ask that you help us to see it. Create in us a new heart.
Create in us a heart of repentance. Let us turn away from all that binds us. Instead, may our hearts turn to you. We thank you, God, that you invite us back, that you invite us to your presence, and that when we return, you tackle us with your love and compassion, and that you call us to your feast. May we be a people now and always, however many times it takes, to always return to our Father.
For it is in Your name, the name of Your Son, Jesus the Christ, that we offer this prayer. Amen. Amen. As we sing our final song, I'll remind you, as always, that the altar is always open. If this is a time where you need to return to God, you can certainly do that in your seats.
But maybe today, He's calling you to walk down the road, to meet Him at the altar, and feel that warm embrace. Let us stand and sing our last song together. Will you stand and worship?