Out of Darkness, Lk. 15:11-21

In this sermon, Pastor Aaron Shamp explores the parable of the Prodigal Son, emphasizing the themes of repentance and the nature of sin. He shows how the younger son's journey from wealth to despair illustrates the importance of recognizing one's need for repentance and returning to the Father. Pastor Aaron highlights that true repentance is essential to the Christian life, characterized by an inner conviction that leads to action. He contrasts cultural views on repentance with biblical teachings, asserting that repentance is a sign of strength and a pathway to liberation. Ultimately, the sermon underscores God's joy in welcoming back the repentant and the transformative power of grace.

Takeaways

• Repentance is essential to the Christian life.
• True repentance is a sign of strength, not weakness.
• Repentance is the doorway to liberation from sin.
• The Prodigal Son's story illustrates the journey of repentance.
• Sin is ultimately a failure to love God above all else.
• Repentance involves both inner conviction and outward action.
• True repentance recognizes sin against God first.
• Coming to God requires empty hands and no deals.
• God's joy is found in the return of the repentant.
• Repentance is a gift that brings us closer to God.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Prodigal Son
01:56 The Breakdown of Family Dynamics
04:57 Understanding Sin and Repentance
08:03 The Role of Repentance in the Christian Life
10:55 The Nature of True Repentance
14:07 The Vertical and Horizontal Aspects of Repentance
17:00 God's Terms for Repentance
20:02 The Joy of Repentance
22:53 Conclusion and Call to Action

Creators & Guests

Host

Aaron Shamp

Lead Pastor of Redeemer City Church

What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?

Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.

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series looking at Jesus's parables in Luke chapter 15 and we're

taking several weeks to look at the big parable down at the bottom, one of his most famous, which is the parable of the prodigal son. We're going to be reading about the first half of that parable this morning. So if you want to open your Bible to Luke chapter 15, you can read along with me there. If you don't have your Bible with you or you're having a hard time finding it, we'll have the words on the screens next to me here so you can follow along there. But I'll give you just a moment and then we'll get started in Luke chapter 15. And we're going to be in verse 11 once you get there.

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Okay, well if we're all ready, then we're gonna get started in Luke chapter 15. We're gonna pick up in verse 11 of Luke 15, and I'm gonna be reading through verse 21.

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He also said, a man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me. So he distributed the assets to them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country where he squandered his estate in foolish living. After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country and he had nothing.

Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. He longed to eat his fill from the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one would give him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food? And here I am dying of hunger. I'll get up, go to my father and say to him,

Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired workers." So he got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran through his arms around his neck and kissed him. The son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

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So we're going to pause there because like I said, the next several weeks, last week I gave an overview, but for the next several weeks, we're going to be looking in detail and really fleshing out the richness of this story here. Jesus was a master teacher, one of the best teachers and communicators to have ever walked on this earth. And one of the ways that he often taught was through the use of stories. We call these stories parables, right? Sometimes they're very short, sometimes they're longer like this one, but his parables were these

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that would bring to life some kind of truth that he was teaching his audience here. We remember in the context of this, Jesus was eating and building a community with tax collectors and sinners, with people that were looked at as very irreligious, as very much, you know, far from God. But these people are the ones that Jesus was bringing around himself. And so the Pharisees were grumbling. It was in that context that Jesus told this

story to teach them something about the meaning of what he was doing and what it really means to be a part of God's family and how we enter into that family. Ultimately, what this parable is about is the breakdown and the restoration of a family.

You have this family here, a father with two sons. He's wealthy, but then the family has a crisis. Remember, the younger son tells his father that, you know, I'm not interested in waiting until you die to get my inheritance. I want it now. He puts the family at threat, not only in terms of the family's financial security, because the father surely would have had to liquidate a lot of his estate in order to give his son that inheritance, but also he puts the relational fabric of the family in crisis because his requirements

West is a great insult to his father, but then he takes his inheritance and he leaves. He goes away, right, putting the family at threat. And so ultimately that's what this story is about. It shows us the breakdown of a family, but then also how that family is restored. What we also see is that there were two sons who contributed to that breakdown. The younger one that we read about here, but then after he comes back in the second half of the parable is actually the older brother who had stayed.

who had been faithful to his father that refuses to welcome his younger brother back who contributes to the family crisis. So it's about the breakdown and restoration of a family and the two sons who contribute to it, each in their own way, but in very different ways. One of them, the younger son, does so with very obvious sin. The older one...

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contributes to the family crisis on the basis of his obedience and his goodness. But ultimately what it's telling us about, because Jesus is using the story to tell us about what he's doing, and what God is doing is he's showing us how God's family is restored. And today we're looking at one of the greatest elements and how that happens.

So let's pick up in the story where the younger son has gone off and in verse 13, it says that he took his estate, which, you know, we can assume would have been fairly large. And it doesn't tell us exactly how long, it seems like it's pretty quickly that he squandered it in reckless living or he he squandered it. He lost it all in foolish living. This translation says right here, it's kind of like the idea of if you had a wealthy young son here in Lafayette and he takes his inheritance and

goes off to Vegas and he blows it all and gambling with prostitutes and partying and so on. That's the idea of what happens here. And after doing all that, he's living on the streets in Vegas, barely trying to get by and starting to think to himself, maybe I should go dumpster diving to get some food because I'm starving. That's in the ancient world, kind of the idea of what's happening here. Right. I know some of you college kids have gone dumpster diving and so you can identify with that.

I did it once. Can't believe I did, but yeah. So that's the idea of what's happening here, right? He takes his wealth, he goes and he squanders it away in a reckless living. How did he end up here?

Okay, we can see the very obvious details, right, because he took his money, he went away, he obviously wasn't responsible with it, but why, what is the underlying reasons for why he ended up in this place where he's starting to think to himself, maybe I should just eat the pig's food, right, and he's starving, he's struggling. He ended up here ultimately because he didn't really love his father.

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We see that in the request that he made where he goes to his father and he says, I want my inheritance now. Once again, to say to someone that you want the inheritance that you're going to receive from them now before they are dead is essentially saying to them, you are worth more to me dead than alive. I'm not ready to wait anymore for that day to come. Just give it to me now. And then he further underscores that by taking his wealth and not...

building a parallel business to contribute to the family, to exponentially grow the family's prosperity, but instead he goes away. Ultimately, the reason that he ends up here is because he didn't love his father. He loved his father's things more than he loved his father. This is a picture for us of sin and how sin works. Ultimately, all of our sins underneath the reason that we do them is because we don't love God.

We choose sin, and whatever kind of sin it might be, because we love that more than we love God. We want that more than we want God. Sometimes we can do that in very obvious ways, In committing sin, in reckless and foolish living like this younger son did here. But sometimes we can do that in ways that on the outward look very good, like the older brother, right? We can, just like the older brother, show that we really love

the things we get from God more than God the Father.

through our obedience, because we do so well, because we act so right, because we have served enslaved, we expect that we have, we ought to have these rewards coming to us. Neither one of the sons truly loved their father as much as they loved just the things they could get from the father. That's the reason that at the end of the story, the older brother stays outside of the father's house, not at the table. That's the reason at the beginning of the story that the younger son finds himself here. But what changes?

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it that by the end the obvious rebellious son ends up with his seat back at the father's table and the older brother doesn't? It's because something changes in the son. Something happens. It says that whenever he's feeding the pigs, where is it here? In verse 17, he's feeding the pigs

He's begging, no one would give him anything. And then verse 17, Jesus said, when he came to his senses, that's the moment of change. That's where that younger son, that rebellious son, everything changed for him. His story arc took a curve in the other direction. The storyline started to work upwards rather than downwards for him. Jesus says he came to his senses and that is the point of where everything starts to change for him. What does that mean?

That phrase there that Jesus uses, that he came to his senses, was a Hebrew idiom, you know, that means like a phrase with strong nuance, right? Was a Hebrew idiom for repentance. It's the son displaying in the story what repentance looks like and how it starts. is, he's coming to his senses. It's as though he was in a spell, right? And he snaps out of it and he realizes,

My father loves me. My father loves me and my father is wealthy and surely he loves me enough and he is merciful enough that at the least I can go back and just be like one of his employees, right? But it's when he came to his senses that everything starts to change. It is repentance. The reason that he ends up back in the father's house is because of repentance.

And so the first thing that I want to learn today from this story is this, is that repentance is essential to the Christian life. Repentance is essential to the Christian life.

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the great reformer Martin Luther, whenever he wrote his 99 theses and he nailed them to the wall of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, in October 31st, 1517, so the anniversary is coming up here at the end of the month, right? On the very first of his theses said this, when our Lord and master Jesus Christ said, repent, he meant the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.

He's underscoring here how essential, how crucial, how central repentance is to the Christian life. It's not something that we just do once to enter, but it's something that we do over and over and over again. We drift away, as Come Thou Fount says, our hearts are prone to wonder, right? And so over and over again, we come to our senses and we repent. For the Christian, repentance is something that we do daily. It's something that we do hourly, from moment to moment,

prone to wonder, we come to our senses and we turn back to the Father. It is essential to the Christian life. If repentance is not a strong virtue in your life, if it is not always present in your life, then you are not living out a fully Christian life. If it is completely absent from your life, then you are not living the Christian life at all. You're living something else. Consider Jesus.

Read the gospels and over and over and over again in his sermons when he would approach a new crowd. His first word in almost all cases was repent and enter the kingdom of heaven. Repent for the kingdom of heaven has arrived. Repent, repent, repent. He said it over and over and over again. All of his invitations begin with this, repent. So for us, for our story arc to change like the younger sons, it's going to have to happen with the same dynamic, which is repent.

Now here's the problem. Do we like repentance? No, we don't. Personally, I think we don't. We're often afraid of it. We often try to act as if our sin had just never happened and move on, right? Sometimes we nurse.

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and cherish little sins and idols in our life and think that it's okay to just have a few on the side as long they don't cause too many big problems. Sometimes we don't like repentance because particularly in our culture it's seen as just a bad thing. Maybe it's bad for us psychologically. Maybe it's bad for us emotionally, for our self-esteem. It's seen maybe as even weakness. The romantic poet Lord Byron said, the weak alone repent.

The weak alone repent. I think that sums up the way that our culture views it very well. Is he right that only the weak repent? Should we be afraid of repentance? Should the church come up to speed with modern times and drop the message of repentance and agree with the rest of the culture that it's only for the weak or that it's actually enslaving and hurting? No.

Here's two defenses I want to give for why we still need repentance. First of all, Byron was wrong. Repentance is not for the weak. In fact, repentance is a sign of strength. Repentance is a sign of strength. You all know, we all know people who cannot admit that they are wrong. It's impossible. It's difficult. They can't do it. They can't bring themselves to admit that they are wrong. Why is that? Well, we know it's because of deep insecurities.

Only the insecure can never admit that they are wrong, can never admit that they did something that was off, that they made the wrong judgment, or that they committed something that was a moral wrong or a sin, right? Because to admit that wrongness, to admit that false idea, that lie, or whatever else, it threatens their self-image or it threatens where their security and identity really is. But if your identity and security

is secure, right? And if it's not in your performance, but in something else, then you can admit when you're wrong. You can say, you can admit your faults, right? So repentance is a sign of strength rather than being a sign of weakness. Secondly, our culture

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fears and looks down upon the idea of repentance because it's seen as something where it's limiting and hampering our freedom, right? Like my desire is to do X, Y, or Z. My desire is to live how I want to. So to confess the wrongness of it, to confess that it is sin and to turn away from it, well, isn't that limiting my freedom?

Here's the thing that we need to see. Through the eyes of scripture, if we can take off the blinders and the lies of culture and see clearly, which would be through the lens of scripture, then we recognize that true enslavement is living underneath the power of idols.

is living under the power of sin. Scripture shows us many times over through its stories, through the Psalms and Proverbs, through teachings in the New Testament, that sin always leads to slavery. The greatest and one of the most ultimate pictures of this in the Bible is the story of the Exodus. The story of the Exodus was more than just an historical event, you'll certainly know less, but it was more than that in that it became central to the identity

of the people of Israel and also to Christians of showing us how God redeems us or he gives us liberty out of our enslavement to sin and death. So repentance is in fact the road to freedom. Repentance is the doorway to liberation away from the sins and the idols that will enslave us. So repentance is not something that we should drop and leave behind.

It's not something that we should be afraid of. Without repentance, that younger son would have remained in the pigsty. Without repentance, you and I remain in the pigsties of our idolatry. We remain in the slavery to our working to achieve the rewards that we think are due to us, the enslavement of various sins and so on, and we'll remain trapped in our sin as well.

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So what is repentance then? What does it mean? Like I said, Jesus is using story to bring truth to life. And so the younger son gives us in a picture what repentance looks like, and he shows us what true repentance looks like. So here's the second point I want us to see. And then I'm going to flesh this out. Second, repentance is an inner conviction followed by forsaking of sin.

It's an inner conviction followed by forsaking sin.

It's important for us to flesh this out because the Bible tells us, Paul tells us that there's such a thing as true and false repentance. The younger son shows us what true repentance looks like. So first of all, it's this inner conviction. Remember that idiom that Jesus uses, that he came to his senses. When he came to his senses, he came to his senses, it's like being, as I said before, as if he was awoken from a spell that he was underneath and now he can see clearly. It's as though he was in darkness and now he is

brought out of darkness. Repentance is being brought out of the darkness. It is that inner conviction, awareness of, goodness, look, look at my life, look at what my sin has done, look at where my idolatry has brought me. Have you ever had a moment of awakening like that before? Usually at the beginning of your Christian life, it's great. It's a great moment of awakening. It's powerful. It's transformative. It changes the whole course and direction of your life.

And then as we walk with Christ over our life, we continue to have small moments like that, where perhaps you start to recognize that there's something going on in your heart, right, that just seems off and you ask yourself, what's going on here?

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And maybe you pray about it, you read scripture and then God reveals to you, maybe it's pride, right? Pride has been operating in my heart. And that's why I've been so insecure around people because my pride is driving me to make sure that they see me as I wanna be seen. Has God ever done something like that with you? Where he brings you out of the spell, you come to your senses, he pulls you out of the darkness and in to the light.

In Acts chapter two, Peter preaches the first Christian sermon on the day of Pentecost. And it comes to this point to where he's explaining the gospel to them and he's explaining through the Old Testament, look, the Messiah, the Christ that you have been looking forward to has come. He has achieved salvation for Israel, for the church. And he says, but you crucified him. He is literally speaking.

to the same crowds, the same people who had in a matter of just a couple of weeks before that sermon been the ones to chant, crucify him. Whenever Peter preaches that, the text Luke writes that they were pricked in their hearts. Right? They had been the ones to yell, crucify him. But in that moment,

They came to their senses, the light turned on, they were brought out of darkness, out of the spell, they were pricked to the heart, that conviction was there. Have you ever experienced that? Do you feel that even now? Is the Lord pricking your heart? Have you been brought to your senses? Here is the difference between true and false repentance. Not just feeling the conviction, but what do you do there?

The younger son doesn't come to his senses and then stay there.

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There is a conviction that leads to life and there's a conviction that leads to death. If you feel that sting, if you feel the pricking of the heart, if you're brought to your senses and then you stay there in your sin, in the pigsty, in under the power of that idol, that is conviction that leads to death.

Because true conviction begins with that inner awakening, that inner convicting, pricking of the heart coming to your senses. But then it moves. It moves outward to forsaking sin. And that is the simplest definition of what repentance is. It's turning your back on. The son comes to his senses and he leaves, he gets up and he goes. He literally was facing the pigsty, right? Which kind of becomes the...

the motif of his whole decision in life. He's facing it considering what his hunger is driving him to possibly do. But after he comes to his senses, his back turns to the pig's thighs and towards the father. That's repentance.

That's repentance, guys. It does not matter how bad you feel about something that you did, something that you thought, something that you said. It does not matter how bad you feel if you stay there. That doesn't change anything. You have to turn your back on that idol. You have to turn your back on that pigsty. Perhaps it is a whole lifestyle.

Perhaps it is sometimes a whole identity that you have to turn your back on and face the Father. That is the conviction that leads to life. And that's what the Son does. So he comes to his senses, there's an awakening. The forsaking of sin, there's two dynamics here that I wanna show you. The first one is this, that repentance is first. In forsaking the sin, whenever we turn away from it, there's first a vertical dimension.

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And the son shows us this. Whenever he comes to his senses and he's thinking in verse 18, he says he's going to go to his father and say, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. Notice that he first says, I have sinned against heaven. He recognizes that all that he had done to his family ultimately was not just an issue with his family and a wrong that he had done against them, but a wrong that he had done against God.

Because he didn't truly love God the Father, it led him to not love his father and to not love his family. His idolatry captured all of his affection, all of his desire and pulled him in that direction. So he recognizes first and foremost that he sinned against God.

True repentance will always happen this way. If you recognize sin that you have done to a spouse, a sibling, coworker, and whatever else, and you do not bring it first to God and recognize, sinned against them because I didn't love you, it's partial. It's not full repentance. You have to first say, I sinned against heaven. That's just a way of saying he sinned against God.

In Psalm 51, which is David's Psalm that he wrote after he had been caught in his affair with Bathsheba and murdering her husband and Nathan the prophet came to him, he had a moment of coming to his senses. You read that story, right? And then we read in Psalm 51, which is his repentance Psalm. In that Psalm, he says, I have sinned against you and you alone. Now that's hyperbolic because obviously he sinned against Bathsheba's husband and against Bathsheba. He sinned against

the people who trusted him as their king. It's hyperbolic, but he's making a statement of how his sin was ultimately against God, and then it led to the horrible actions against the people that God made. So first, repentance is vertical. Let me just explain this in a little bit more practical way before I move on to the next point. Whenever you're criticized,

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someone brings something to you that they say, you did this wrong. Now that's never a fun conversation to have. Or they say, I think that you have this weakness in your life. That's always a hard word to hear. Are they or wrong?

Sometimes, often I think, we immediately throw up defenses and we say, this is all the reason that you're wrong, you got it off and so on. Maybe some of us were a little more of a people pleaser and so we might just automatically give in and give a thousand sorries and so on. Right. But in that case where someone has said you have sin in your life, how do you respond to that? What you need to do first is bring that to God.

You see, if you recognize that sin is always and ultimately against God before the people, then what you do is you bring that criticism and you bring it to the Lord first and you say, Lord, is this true? Have I sinned against you? Because if it is true, you need to repent to him first anyway.

You won't be able to give an authentic repentance, apology, and true change to that person anyway unless you bring it before God the Father. Whenever someone criticizes me, I know that I cannot change and do better with my spouse, with my kids, unless I am first forgiven by God. If I'm forgiven by God, then I am freed from

however else that person responds to me. Maybe it's a person in ministry or church that brings it to me. And if I don't receive that forgiveness first from God, then I'm going to be needing their approval, right?

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But if I receive that forgiveness from God, I know that I am standing right with him, his blood is washed away in my sin, then I can give an authentic apology, confession to that person. Sometimes we all know those people decide to hold on to bitterness instead of giving forgiveness. In that case, because I know I'm forgiven by God, it's sad, but I'll be okay. There's the vertical dimension, but then there's the horizontal.

The younger son says, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. In other words, and against you and the family. He confesses it and what he has done to his family as well and brings it to his father so that he can be reconciled with his father as well. Once again, your repentance will be incomplete if you do not bring it to God, but then also to the people that you harmed, that you hurt, right? Repentance has to be vertical and horizontal every time.

He's preparing a speech to go home and we see how he's preparing it. He says these things that are very true that we can learn from where he says, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. All these things are true.

And then he says, he's got this idea in mind. He's going to make an offer. He's got a deal that he's going to offer to his father. Make me like one of your hired servants. He's understanding. I don't deserve to be your son anymore, to be welcomed back into the family. Just let me be your employee so that I can eat, so that I can survive. He doesn't expect to be back in the father's household. So he comes to him with this offer, with this deal that he has in mind. You he's got this pitch.

And so in here, we see true repentance, but we also see a small false assumption of what repentance is that we need to identify because it's...

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a crucial piece in making sure that we get this right. He's got this pitch ready for his father. He goes, it says the father is filled with compassion and he runs out and he meets him and he embraces him on the road. And the son starts his pitch. He says exactly what he had planned. He says, I've sent against heaven in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Then there's a stop. The father interrupts him there. The father is not going to accept his deal.

The son is welcomed back into the family, something that he didn't even think could be possible. Didn't even think that his father's grace would be that powerful, right? But the son is welcomed back home. He's welcomed back because he's welcomed back on the father's terms and not his. He brought this offer in his hands, but the father says, I'll have none of it. And that shows us true repentance.

Repentance is going to Jesus with empty hands. If you're going to be reconciled to God the Father, if you're going to be following Christ, if you're gonna be saved, if your sins are going to be washed away, and you're gonna enter the community of the church, if you're gonna enter the community of the citizens of the kingdom of heaven, if you're gonna have a seat at the Father's table, it will not be done on your terms. It will be done on God's terms.

We often assume that just like the younger son, that we feel bad, we wanna turn back to God, we want God. And so we think, okay, here's some things that I can do better so that I can be walking back. But that is not God's terms. God's terms is that we come to him empty handed. No deals, no offers.

Nothing that we try to give him to say, here is how I can be welcomed back. We will only be welcomed back on his terms. And what are his terms? That I said that we have empty hands, that we are welcomed back into his household on the basis of what Jesus did. When we repent, we don't make a deal with him. We go to him empty handed and we receive blessing. How is that possible? It's only possible because Jesus paid the price for our sin.

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We often assume here are the ways that I can make it up and I can do better, but God the Father will have none of that.

His way of doing it is that the price is fully paid by Jesus Christ, by Jesus' shedding of his blood and dying on the cross. That pays it all. It pays for our sin in full. And he not only paid for our sin, but through his death and the resurrection, purchased that blessing for us to be received back into the Father's family, having a seat at the Father's table by no work and offering and deal-making

of our own, but only on the basis of what Jesus has done. By no accomplishments of our own, but by what Jesus has accomplished. That is coming to him on the Father's terms. And that is the only way that you will be welcomed at the Father's table. So guys, let go of your works.

Let go of the deals that you have in mind. Let go of all the reasons and pedigrees that you fall back onto of here's why God can love me. Here's why I can know that I do have a relationship with him, that I'm saved. Every Christian struggles with that. We all have those assumptions bubbling beneath the surface of our heart and mind. Let them go.

You are welcomed back at the table by the work of Christ alone and not by our work because he purchased our seat at the Father's table.

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All three of these parables have a consistent message. And the strongest, foremost consistent message of all three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and then the sons, the consistent message is this, is that God loves repentance. Our sinful flesh makes us think that God is threatening the repentant.

that he is foreboding, that he is dark and angry and wrathful towards the repentant. And it makes us afraid to go to him. But these parables, if you will hear and believe, right, if you accept what Jesus says, it will blow away that assumption that we have, that fearfulness that we have towards repentance.

those dynamics of our flesh that hold us back from going before the Lord, bearing all and empty handed. It will blow that fear away whenever we see there's a lost sheep, wherever it's found, there is joy. There's a lost coin, wherever it's found, there is joy. There's a lost son, wherever he repents and comes home, there is joy. There is a party that is thrown in the Father's house. God loves the repentant.

Repentance brings God the Father joy. Friends, do you wanna bring joy to the heart of God the Father this morning? It is not by showing him how good you are, it's by opening up what you're hiding. It's by opening up those crevices, the dark places, coming out of the darkness and going before him empty-handed to receive the blessing.

the gift that is offered to you based on the work of Jesus alone. Sin separates us, but repentance reconciles us. So don't hold back from the Father. Let's pray.

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Lord, we praise you that though our flesh wants to hold us back from you, though the world tells us repentance is to be avoided, is to be dropped, it's not good for us. Father, that we have the authoritative word of your Son. We have the final word of the Lord of the universe who says no.

Repentance is a gift, repentance is beautiful. It is not to be feared, it is to be embraced, it is to be a virtue which is cultivated because repentance brings joy to the heart of God. So Father, let us bring joy to you this morning as we open our hearts and souls to you, that we come to our senses out of the darkness and back to you because we know that you,

are to an infinite degree what the Father in this story shows us smally. You are filled with compassion. You are filled with love. And that you rejoice in welcoming us back with a seat at your table. Let us rejoice in this as well, knowing that we experience this blessing based on the work of Christ alone. And in his name we pray, amen. Let me invite you guys to stand with us this morning and let us respond.

to this gospel message with repentant hearts, with open hearts and empty hands as we praise, worship and adore God the Father.