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This week we are continuing our study of Luke Chapter 15. Please read verses 11 to 24 every day this week and, if possible, use a different translation each day, asking God to open your eyes to fresh revelation from His Word.
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Luke 15:13-16 (NLT)
‘“A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.’
I have read quite a few biographies of famous people and while their stories are very different, there is a common theme throughout most of them. Each person has generally started their lives with very little, found fame and fortune, experienced some kind of ‘loss’ or dip in popularity and then found their way back to the top.
Many of them talk about what happens when they first have a lot of money to spend. Almost all of them say that they attract ‘friends’ in abundance while they have the money, but as soon as the money dries up, the so-called friends leave as quickly as they had arrived. While it is possible to ‘splash the cash’, you’re never alone.
While I’m sure that the younger son in our parable would have experienced the same thing as modern day superstars in that his new found ‘wealth’ would attract people, firstly I want you to note that the son had moved ‘to a distant land’. It seems that he wasn’t content to just leave home, he wanted to get a long, long way away from his father. That is incredibly sad to read and yet, we know that in today’s culture there are thousands upon thousands of people who leave their parents and travel huge distances just to get away. I think that we should make it a matter of prayer that the young people of Oasis Community Church are prevented from making these kind of poor decisions. Pray that God grants them wisdom in their young lives.
The next thing to note is that he packed everything he had and then spent all he had ‘in wild living’. The fact that he’d taken all of his belongings indicates that he had absolutely no plan to return home. He was leaving and he was never coming back. After arriving at the distant land, in one translation it says that he ‘squandered his wealth by living extravagantly’. I remember going on holiday once with a number of friends and family. One day while out walking in the British sunshine, the rain started and in fact began to absolutely pour down. We had left the hotel in shorts and t-shirts and now we were getting soaked. One of our number was quite wealthy and went into a shop and bought a really expensive coat. I couldn’t believe what he’d done and found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have so much money that you could afford to just buy a coat when there was a perfectly good one back at the hotel. I thought that it was an extravagant waste of money. This son did way more than that and I can imagine him buying gifts for everyone and spending money like it was going out of fashion. Very soon, he finds himself without any money, hungry and humiliated. And no-one gave him anything.
Some people find the Lord while they have plenty, others have to be brought to nothing in order to ‘see clearly’. May God continue to speak to both kinds of people and draw all men to Himself.
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