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Lansing SDA Church

Wes Peppers

Posh Pigs and Precious Prodigals

Well, this morning I have a message that goes similarly with the messages that will be presented this week.

And the title is, Posh Pigs and Precious Prodigals.

If you can say that 3 times fast, you'll be doing well, right?

And so we'll see what that's about here in just a moment Before we dive into our message this morning.

We're gonna invite you to bow your heads wherever you are And I'm gonna kneel this morning.

We'll ask the Lord's presence to be this 1 more time Father in heaven We just thank you so much for this opportunity to gather here together to worship you.

And now, Lord, as we open the pages of scripture, may they speak to us words of life.

May your spirit come just now, settle upon our hearts, open our minds, open our eyes, and open our hearts, Lord, to the truth that you have for us this morning and may we have a picture of our father's love and we have an understanding of just how much you care about us and we ask for your blessing now in Jesus precious name amen I remember when I was just a teenager, my uncle, who was a very un-Christian man, he was a, always go to the drag races every Friday and Saturday night.

He would, he could, the phrase you say, he could cuss like a sailor.

And he was just a rude, tootin', nasty man.

And 1 day he got a flyer in the mail for an Amazing Facts prophecy seminar.

A gentleman named Jack DeBoss, some of you may know him, was coming to the little town of Guntersville, Alabama to do a prophecy seminar.

My uncle thought that all Christians were hypocrites.

And so he he he bought that Christianity.

He would make fun of Christians and laugh at them and scorn them.

But he was very interested in history and he was very interested in events that were in the future.

He used to watch a lot of Nostradamus programs and things like that.

So he got this flyer in the mail with all these beasts and he thought, wow, this looks fairly interesting.

So he went to the prophecy seminar, he and my other uncle, And he went every night.

And my aunt, who had been a part of another denomination, she was so excited that my uncle was finally going to church.

And so she thought to herself, man, this is an answer to my prayers for many years.

And so then he came home 1 night, and he started telling her all the things that he was learning, and he said, you know, he said, all the other Christians, he said, they have it all wrong.

He said, we're supposed to go to church on Saturday, not Sunday, And she thought, oh no, what is he getting himself into?

She said, I better go with him to the Amazing Facts seminar and see what he, make sure he's not getting himself into a, that's C word, right?

So she went with him And she went through the rest of the series.

And at the end of that series, both of them were baptized into the Lord and into his church.

That was the first Seventh-day Adventist in my family.

And I was about, at that age, I was about 14.

And my whole family began to talk about what a strange religion my uncle had got himself into.

And he began to invite me to go to church with them.

And I went to church a few times with them.

And I remember that there were these 2 little old ladies.

They would always come up to me and almost just reach out and pinch my cheek, but not quite that bad.

And they would come up to me and talk to me about about Jesus.

And they would always smile and they'd always give me literature and books.

And they were just always so kind to me, so loving.

It wasn't long, I went to church for a few months with them, and it wasn't long that I got into sports and I got into my football career.

Then I ended up leaving any concept of God altogether.

I went into atheism and very much hated Christians, hated the Bible, hated any concept of God.

And after my mother tried to commit suicide and my dad found her there and left her to die because they were in the midst of a divorce.

And I told you that story several months ago.

And I had no desire to follow God, no desire to know God.

And but always in my mind, I remembered those 2 ladies and the 1 lady every year from the first time I came to church until I was baptized, every year she would send me a birthday card.

And she would say, thinking of you, praying for you, Bertha Phillips, she would write other things, but that touched my heart every year.

Why would this lady send me a birthday card?

I hate God, I've denounced God, I've gone away from the church.

And I remember 1 day I ran into the other lady at 1 of the grocery stores in town.

I thought, why would these people even care?

As we began to study the Bible and the process I remember those 2 ladies and what they had done for me.

And the 1 I just passed a few months ago, when I happened to be in Alabama at the time, had the opportunity to go and speak at her funeral and give a testimony of her faithfulness to God and reaching out to the lost around her.

And since that day that Jesus came into my life and I've never been the same since.

And the many souls that God has given me the privilege to share the gospel with and they accepted and they came into the church.

I believe today that the jewels and the jewels that will go in a crown will be her crown.

Because she helped lead me back to the Lord Jesus.

We never know what impact we're going to have, amen?

And there is always somebody looking out for us.

There's always somebody when we've wandered out of the way, when we've strayed away from Christ, when we've moved away from Him, there's always somebody there that's praying that we will come home, amen?

And if there's nobody else on this earth, the Bible tells us in the book of Hebrews that we have a great high priest who ever lives to make intercession for us.

And so today we can have the confidence, we can have the assurance to know that even if there's no 1 else on this earth that's praying for us, we have a great savior in heaven who is.

And there is a story in the book of Luke chapter 15.

If you'll turn with me there, Luke chapter 15, the Bible tells a beautiful parable about a young man who strayed away from home and somebody who was watching out for him.

Somebody who was waiting for him to come home.

Somebody who was always watching and looking for even a glimpse of hope for him to come back.

Luke chapter 15, 1 of my favorite parables of scripture because it so closely relates to my own life.

Luke chapter 15, in verse 11, give it just a minute to turn there.

All right, Luke chapter 15, verse 11, the Bible says, Then he says, speaking of Jesus, he said, A certain man had 2 sons and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.

So he divided them to them his livelihood.

And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living." Now, in the Old Testament, it's a very common understanding that if a young person went to his, when a person died, when the father would die or the head of the household, they would naturally leave their inheritance to who?

So when this young man went to his father and he said, Father, give me the inheritance that's due me, essentially what he was saying was, Father, I want you to be what?

The Bible doesn't tell us the conflict or the or the the difficulty or the strife that went on between the father and his son that led up to this point.

But we can be clear that the young man was assinated to his father.

He said, I want you to give me what is mine.

And so the father didn't hesitate, but he gave it over to his son.

And so I can just imagine that the young man he was thinking to himself man I want to be out of my father's house how many of you remember having that experience as a teenager I remember when I was an early on teenager my my mom did something and she said no to me about something I wanted to do or whatever and so I said well I'm just gonna I'm just gonna run away So I packed my bags and my mom was in the kitchen.

She said I'm packing you a lunch if you want to go you can go and so she gave me that lunch and I got walking down the street and started to get dark and I still you know it wasn't quite dark yet so I still felt kind of tough and I kept walking and the more I walked the darker it got I thought you know there's not a hotel around if there was I didn't have any money I was 12 years old and there's nowhere to stay what am I going to do?

I said well I'll just sleep in the woods.

So I tried to do that for a few hours and it wasn't going very well.

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Posh Pigs and Precious Prodigals

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