Tag: Prodigal Son

Learning Valuable Lessons From An Unpleasant Action

Neal Pollard

Fifteen months after a dear Christian was withdrawn from for a sin addressed in 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, that one came back home and was restored to fellowship last Wednesday. Both decisions, the withdrawal and restoration, were accompanied by a lot of emotions. But when repentance was publicly demonstrated, tears filled many eyes and smiles adorned many happy and relieved faces. Much that occurred in that moment is truly hard to put into words. With one young person making such a humble, courageous decision, we saw so many powerful things happen at the same time.

  • God’s plan works when we work His plan.
  • Godly elders acting with love and courage should be commended, not condemned.
  • Such elders did what they did out of deep love for a wayward soul. 
  • Discipline, done right, is loving. 
  • Sometimes we are asked by God to do things that make no earthly sense to us, but submission is required whether or not we understand or agree with them. 
  • Christians, especially friends of the fallen, who submit to a righteous decision from the leadership help bring a soul back home.
  • A good heart, touched by the power of the gospel and by exhorting friends, can be softened and led back home.
  • While there is time, there is opportunity.
  • Seeing people’s faith in God’s Word confirmed is exciting and encouraging.
  • The more invested people were in retrieving the fallen, the more joy and relief seemed evident. 
  • If there is an “older brother” in our congregation, “he” is yet to be identified. 
  • Satan cannot be happy, and we must help guard this precious soul from him.
  • Our task is to reaffirm our love for this one, to provide needed comfort and to put this permanently behind us all. 
  • It is hoped that we never have to go through with this here again, but if we do we should refer back to this situation. 
  • It is not our prerogative to pick and choose what truths to accept and reject. 

The specific passages were not cited with each of those bullet points, but one can gain insight from such vital passages as Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, 2 Corinthians 2:6-11, Galatians 6:1, James 5:19-20, Hebrews 12:5-17, and 2 Thessalonians 3:11-15. They help us understand what God would have us do, how He would have us do it, and why He would have us do it. We cannot outthink Him or devise a better plan. Not every wayward soul comes back home, tragically. But when such matters are handled in the right way with the right spirit, we are doing the most extreme thing we can do “so that his (or her) spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor. 5:5). May these lessons learned not be soon forgotten.

A NEW WAY TO HANDLE PRODIGAL SONS

Neal Pollard

Deuteronomy was apparently a favored Old Testament book for our Lord.  It was this last book of the Pentateuch Jesus quotes each time He is tempted by the Devil in the wilderness (Mt. 4:4,7,10).  His writing on discipline (Mt. 18:16) and divorce (Mt. 5:31; 19:7) draw on Moses’ writings in that book, too.  It is interesting, considering Christ’s propensity to reflect upon the book of Deuteronomy, to see the instructions given under the old law in dealing with prodigal sons:

If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father
or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,
then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders
of his city at the gateway of his hometown.  “They shall say to the elders of
his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he
is a glutton and a drunkard.’ “Then all the men of his city shall stone him to
death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear
of it and fear (Deut. 21:18-21).

Interestingly, these statements are found in the context of meting out inheritances to sons.  Notice, however, the way God chose to deal with profligate (i.e., wasteful and immoral) sons under the first covenant.  There seems to have been a perceived tie between rebellion toward parents and rebellion against God.  The worst case scenario for such a child was the death penalty, the men of the city hurling the rocks.

How shocking Jesus’ story might have been, seen in the context and in contrast to the law under which the Jews still served at the time!  As He so often did, Jesus points to a new way of divine dealing with mankind.  The Prodigal (i.e., wasteful) Son in Luke 15:11ff was certainly stubborn and rebellious, wanting free from the rule of his father.  Yet, the father allowed the son to depart.  The son lived in total dissipation and then longed to come home.  The homecoming he received from his father was totally unexpected.  He was joyfully, lovingly welcomed.  In fact, the hard-hearted, begrudging brother is depicted as having greater spiritual problems since he refused to follow the father’s lead.

We are all sinners (Rom. 3:23).  We all are in need of the Father’s grace and forgiveness.  We also are instructed, by the Father’s perfect example and the older brother’s wrongheaded response, about how to receive our prodigal brothers and sisters who want to come home!  Thank God that because of Christ, we have a new way to handle prodigals and to be handled as prodigals who come back to the Father!

774px-albert_anker_-_der_verlorene_sohn

AFTER 31 YEARS, MURDER VICTIM IS FOUND ALIVE

Neal Pollard

There was a disappearance and a murder confession.  So, the last thing police expected when they stopped at “Mrs. Schneider’s” apartment in Dusseldorf, Germany, was to find the 1984 murder victim, Petra Pazsitka, talking to them.  Thus began the unraveling of an elaborate plot by Ms. Pazskitka to disappear and reemerge with a new identity.  She was successful for 31 years, living in several West German cities without a passport, driver’s license, and social security card. She supported herself by “living off illicit cash-in-hand work” (via uk.news.yahoo.com). Why did the college student who had just completed her thesis on computer languages leave the grid and go into hiding? So far, there has been no explanation given. Perhaps there will eventually be more details and insight into this bizarre situation, but for now a grief-stricken family can take some measure of comfort in knowing their loved one they thought was dead is alive.

Spiritually, we are surrounded by the living dead.  It is the result of choices they’ve made.  This is even true for some who have abandoned God’s family and reemerged in the world having cast off the privileges and position of that honorable name they took on when they were baptized into Christ.

Paul says, “The mind set on the flesh is death” (Rom. 8:6). He tells Timothy, “But she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives” (1 Tim. 5:6). God diagnosed an entire church, Sardis, “having a reputation of being alive” as being dead (Rev. 3:1). Of course, nothing illustrates the point better than Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son.  The younger son was off in the “far country,” and through that lifestyle he reached the point of desperation and despair. He repented and came home, where his father declared “my son was dead and is alive again” (Luke 15:24).

Sometimes, it makes no sense to us why a brother or sister leaves God’s family, abandoning spiritual life, hope, and heaven for spiritual death, hopelessness, and hell.  Yet, we must continue to search for them.  Let us pray that we can find those long since declared dead and encourage them so that we “save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins” (Jas. 5:20). Search for them. Appeal to them. Help them reclaim the blessed identity they had when they had “life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).