From Hog Pen to Home

20 Apr

The Gospel Gift He Wants You to Possess

Luke 15:11-31

Sean Nolan

The Dinner That Changed Everything

"I don't want to know what God has done in the past. I want to know what God is doing now and I want to be aligned to it."

Archbishop Glenn Davies made this comment years ago, and I never forgot it. Because while the gospel never changes, God is always wanting to do new things.

Eight years previously, a few streets down from that office, I was having dinner in an Italian restaurant. The dinner was memorable for two reasons: the conversation and the food wasn't very good.

But the conversation was incredible.

I was in my 30s, quietly sitting at the end of a table while three of Dr. Billy Graham's crusade directors had an impromptu catch-up. They hadn't seen each other in years. They were telling old stories from when they served with Dr. Billy Graham, some of which seemed almost impossible to believe:

Stadiums full of 80,000 people every night
Prayer being answered in radical, incredible ways
People getting saved in some of the most incredible situations

I sat there quietly, eating my poor-quality Italian food, listening.

Driving home, I had a really honest, private thought (one of those inner thoughts you have):

"They serve a different God than my God."

Their God is powerful. Mighty. Able to save, to fill stadiums with hundreds of thousands of people, night after night, year after year, decade after decade.

My God is not that.

Same God, Two Different Walks

I realised: It wasn't that they served two different Gods.

It was the same God. But the difference was two people walking in two very, very different ways.

They were fully committed. I was partial.

My question is: What if God wants to take you to a new place with Him this year?

Maybe He wants to take you somewhere deeper. Get closer. Maybe He wants to use you in a new way, call you to a new ministry, do something new.

N.T. Wright called the gospel "the in-breaking of the dawn light." When the gospel comes to us, it's like watching the sunrise. The sun comes up over the horizon, the light breaks into the darkness.

Two Ways to Be Lost

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the father’s son was lost in his own sin. Once he realised that sinful life wasn't worth living, he got lost in another place: not believing the Father would forgive him.

Do you resonate with either category? Maybe there's sin you know shouldn't be there. Or maybe you've repented and confessed, but you're struggling to believe God could actually forgive you.

There's a reason God had the apostle Paul build so much of the early church. God took someone doing something so vile and used him not just to sit in church but to build the church. Paul was murdering members of the early church, so God uses him to make a statement: There is nothing you can do that God can't forgive.

Maybe you've done something and think, "God can't forgive me for that."

God can forgive you. And He already has at the cross.

The Coffee Token Gospel

My wife and I go to a cafe every Saturday morning. One morning they got the order wrong, so the café gave us free coffee tokens.

These tokens say "complimentary drink". They are a coffee. They're 100% a coffee. But they're also not a coffee.

When you hand the token over they'll give you a coffee. It is a coffee, but it's not a coffee until it's possessed. You've got to possess the gift.

It is the same with the Christian life. We've been offered the free gift of the gospel, but we have to possess it by walking in it.

Joshua 3:5 says "Get your provisions ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan to take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you."

God says "I'm giving you this land," but also "you've got to possess it." Which is it? Gift or possession?

The truth: It's both. It is a free gift, but it has to be possessed.

The Old Testament Exodus was about moving from one land to another. But the New Testament is a new Exodus—not about assuming different land, but a spiritual exodus from sin, from separation from God, from purposeless living, to possessing the fullness of a relationship with God.

Looking back at having dinner in that Italian restaurant: I realised I'd been given the gift, but I wasn't really walking in it and possessing it.

You don't know what God wants to do with your life. You don't know where He wants to place you. But if you trust Him and approach in faith, He will do great and mighty things.

The Gift of Death

Death in so many ways is a gift. Counseling, psychology, the pharmaceutical industry, they are all predicated on trying to put to death a past hurt or pain or struggle.

But God offers, if we just come to Him (Galatians 2:20), He puts to death old sins and old habits.

God can gift you the death of an old thing in your life.

My dad was a tough guy. He abused me, my family, my sister, my mum his whole life. There were up to 10 police officers at our house on regular occasions. Then I had to care for him for 15 years while he was dying.

When you've got these things in your mind, it's very hard to get rid of. But through the gospel, the Lord can take away the pain and gift us a new day.

John 12:24: "Unless a grain of wheat falls and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit."

From Hog Pen to Home

The Prodigal Son went from a hog pen, an unimaginably low for a Jewish man, to a place of loving provision in his father's house.

The father ran toward shim. A Jewish elderly man would never run in public. But just as he does with Paul, God is making a point: "I run toward my children when they're hurting and turn to me. I don't care what society says."

The son doesn't just get made a servant, he is reinstated as a son.

So often we are tempted to think that God is more like the older brother, unwilling to forgive, or offering millstone forgiveness: "I'm forgiving you but you've got to earn it back, work your way up, and I'll remind you about it."

We can feel like we're going from hog pen to another version of a hog pen.

But that's not the gospel. We're going from hog pen to loving provision and forgiveness.

How's Your Walk?

If we want God to do fruitful and fantastic things in our lives, we need to get the basics of walking with Him right.

God is saying, all I want is for you to walk with me:

Walk with His Word (be regular in the Word)
Prayer
Spiritual community

These are the basics. If we walk in these well and completely, God can do new, fantastic, amazing things.

37 Years of Light, 300 Years of Legacy, 200,000 Years: Eternal Life

Right now, the star Arcturus is releasing light that will take 37 years to reach this planet.

On my 37th birthday, I looked at this star. With the light hit my eyes, I thought: "I'm literally touching something from another place."

That light had been traveling for the entirety of my life on earth.

I wondered, what would happen if I used this as a marker? For the next 37 years, I'm going to walk with the Lord. Live by faith. Be regular in His Word.

Billy Graham was asked once: "Why such a powerful ministry?" He said, "Because I never miss a day in the Word."

Imagine what your life would be like in 37 years if you never missed a day in the Word.

The star Canopus. In 300 years, the light it's releasing now will land here.

None of us will be alive in 300 years. But imagine what your grandkids and great-grandchildren could be living under because of the legacy you build into your family.

I wear my grandfather's signet ring. He's been with the Lord a long time, he was a great man of God and now all of my cousins are walking with the Lord. That’s around 30, 40 grandkids and great-grandkids, largely because of his example.

Imagine the seed you could put into your family line.

Light from the Large Magellanic Cloud takes 200,000 years to reach us.

In the early church, they lived far shorter lives. Eternal life was richer and much more real for them.

God is offering us eternal life. Something so beautiful, so incredible, we often don't process it.

What Ordinary Thing Have You Been Given?

Church history tells us about a woman described in Romans by the name of Phoebe. Paul gives her something to take on the months long sailing trip to Rome.

It was the original manuscript of Romans. Bible colleges, institutions, societies have been built off this letter alone.

She had no idea what she'd been given.

What ordinary thing have you been given? If you say yes to the Lord, what amazing purpose could He bring out of it?

Like Phoebe. How many people could be touched by your life?

The challenge: Choose to say yes to the Lord as He calls you to walk with Him in a new way.