Father's Day Sermon - Part 2: The Point

I love this story because it is more than just a good story. This story is the story of the Bible. It is the story of our heavenly father and His relationship with His children. It is an example of how earthly fathers should deal with their own children. It is not just a nice story. It is our story.

And I think we can learn 2 important things about ourselves and about our heavenly Father through this story whose themes pervade the Bible. First, it is the story of God seeking to redeem his creation despite our tendency to stray from his set boundaries. He redeems us by adopting us as His sons and daughters. Listen to parts of the Galatians passage again: “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of children. You are no longer a slave, but a child; God has made you an heir.” We were slaves to sin, but God came down to earth to find us, to redeem us, and to make us his children and heirs. Early on God set the boundaries. He told us to stay within the walls for our own good. God gave the laws as clear boundary markers to show us what was good and what we should stay away from. But we chose to go outside the walls. We chose to ignore God’s design for our life. We went through the hole in the wall.

We need to understand something about God—He desperately wants to keep us from harm. He has done everything he can short of putting us in a padded room completely sealed off from the world. But he also knows what tough love is. He knows that we have to make the choice to stay within the confines of his will for us. He will not put us in a padded room, but will allow us to make our own decisions. God has set the boundaries, but he is willing to let us cross those boundaries because he desires children who love Him because they want to, not because they have to or know no differently.

I think that is the hardest part about being a parent—showing tough love. We long to protect our kids at all costs. Having a baby has made me realize how treacherous our house is. There are sharp corners at every turn. Live electrical sockets on every wall. Dog bones and bone chips under every table. And I can do all I can to keep the temptation out of Elijah’s reach, but all that seems to do is to spur him on to exploring even further. We must set boundaries for our kids, but we can’t force them to abide by those boundaries. We can protect our children from outside influences, but we can’t protect our children from themselves. It is a tough balance between setting up boundaries for right living, and then letting them ignore those boundaries if they so choose. But we have to allow them to make their own choices and as a result their own mistakes. Tough love means that we, as fathers or parents have to allow our children to make their own free choices. And that is what God has done for us. He loves us and calls us his own. We are His kids. He has set the boundaries and leaves it up to us to decide whether we will abide by them or not. And though this freedom goes against our natural instinct to protect our children, we have to let our children make decisions and love them anyway.

That leads to the second thing we learn about God—nothing can separate us from His love. No matter what we do, and no matter how far we go outside the walls God has set up, he still loves us and comes to find us. This story displays the stark contrast of God’s clear boundaries with his unending grace. It would have been the right thing if God made the wall, allowed us to go through the hole, and then never let us back in; never came out to find us. After all, he told us in advance that leaving the safety of the walled village would make us lost and we might never get back in. But God’s grace and love could not allow that. The love of a father drives him out to find the prodigal child. Not even a wall could separate the love of the father from the child. And not even the wall of sin could separate God’s love from His creation. The Romans passage read earlier reminds us of this fact.

Will trouble separate us from God’s love? Will hard times? Will danger? Will war? Will death? Will the present circumstances? Will the future events? Will distance? Will anything we have done? Will anything else in all creation be able to separate us from the love of God?

That’s right—nothing can separate us from His love. That is the graceful nature of God. No circumstances can change God’s love for us. He loves us no matter what we do and no matter what is done to us. He seeks to redeem us and make us whole again. That is what it means to be a father—that you love your kids no matter how they turn out. If we let our children make their own decisions, we will have to help them through the consequences. I see so many fathers who set boundaries and then when the child crosses them, they turn their backs on their children as though keeping the boundaries is what makes them special and worth loving. But that is not the case. They are worth loving because they are yours. And God loves us because we are His.

There is no doubt that fathers have a difficult task. Somehow they must balance love and discipline, boundaries and grace, holiness and forgiveness. And in a world where good fathers are few and far between; where many have suffered abuse from fathers, abandonment from fathers, a lack of love from fathers, or worse—it seems impossible for them to believe in a heavenly father that loves unconditionally. But that is the God who has left the warm village and ventured over the walls in search of us. He is the one who has come down to redeem you. He is the God who is faithful.