Welcome to Waymaker Church! We are so excited to have you join us today! We exist to Encounter, Live for, and Advance the Kingdom of God!

Life Update:
A few months ago one of our dogs, actually the first dog Robin and I got together died. It was really sad for our whole family, it was our kids first experience losing something that they loved. There was lots of tears and it took awhile for us to recover from it.‌

After a few months we decided that we were ready for a new dog, so we started looking at a dog that we could get from a rescue or a shelter. We found a couple that we thought were really cute and would be good for smaller kids. So after about a week process we adopted Rex through the humane society. If you are listening to this on the podcast you can’t see him, but he is a german shepherd basset hound mix. He is the cutest and funniest looking dog. He has fur like a german shepherd, but with the coloring of a basset hound. He has the face of a shepherd but the body of a basset hound. He has 2 sets of different legs. One set of legs looks like a basset hound and the other looks like a set of german shepherd legs. He wants to run around like a german shepherd but kinda runs like a basset hound.‌

Other than his constant chewing on everything and ripping my kids stuffed animals he has been a pretty great dog. Now there has been a couple of downside to this. We also have another dog who is like a Rotweiller beagle mix. We apparently have a thing for funny looking dogs. We call her our sausage, because she will eat anything at any time and yeah she is pretty hefty as you can see from the photo, but we love our scarlet.‌

Scarlet has always dealt with extreme anxiety issues especially from fireworks or loud noises so July 4th is extremely fun. We also added a new dog into the mix which doesn’t help because she feels like she is being replaced. so she somehow keeps wiggling herself through a gap in the gate and fence that is about a 1/4 the size of her.‌

Has anybody ever had a dog get out before? You’re texting all of your friends pictures and telling them “hey if you see a dog that looks like this get posted anywhere, please let me know. You’re posting on Facebook. You’re letting everyone know that you just lost your dog and can’t find it. It always feels like it is at the most inconvenient time too. A couple of weeks ago, we got a pretty heavy shower and Robin was in Albuquerque for a pastor's wives retreat, so I had to load up the kids in the truck and we went driving around for what felt like an hour looking for our dog. Thankfully we turned a corner and saw her walking down the street. So I loaded her in the back of the truck and I am texting Robin so happy that I found our dog. The kids are smiling and so thankful that we found our dog, Scarlet is smiling and wagging her tail as I am drying her off in the entryway of our house. It happened again Wednesday after youth service; someone was popping off fireworks, and so with my sleep-deprived kids after 9:30, we loaded up, and we looked for Scarlet, I probably freaked some people out with this tactical flashlight that I have that can focus the beam of light in and out, we looked in what felt like every nook and cranny of the surrounding neighborhoods.

We finally got a call that someone found her and we were all so happy. If you have ever lost an animal you know that feeling, when you finally find it and you are texting people and they get excited it is like a little party.

What person among us wouldn’t leave everything behind to go and look for our lost animal, and when we find it, put it in our vehicle, and text all of our friends or post on social media that we found the dog, and we would be so excited and there would be rejoicing.

We are the sheep here. Like it or not, the bible calls us sheep on multiple occasions. Here is the interesting thing about sheep, I believe I said this before the last time I preached. They have no homing skills. Once they are lost, they can’t find their way back to the flock. So they just wander aimlessly. If we are being honest, humans are much the same way. In human rebellion, we lose our way and spiritually, on our own power, and knowledge; we have no homing skills. So without the Holy Spirit, we wander aimlessly trying to fill that God space with whatever we can find.

In the same way, we would go look for our animals and rejoice when we find them, God does the same. If that didn’t stick, he goes on to talk about the second of three parables

Most agree that this woman was probably poor and the ten coins she had were 10 days worth of wages. I am just old enough to remember my mom teaching me how to balance a checkbook. She helped me open my first bank account and would sit down with me and show me how to, on paper by the way, track all of my expenses and do all the adding and subtracting.

Now I use an app for all of that, but how many are like me? When there is a quarter missing, you will go back through all of your transactions, and if you’re like me, you use a spreadsheet, and you comb through that thing, and make sure that everything is everything.

This woman lights a lamp and looks everywhere. Like when you dropped a coin from your piggy bank as a kid and you made sure you found that thing. She brings out the broom and sweeps everywhere. She made sure she found this because it was a matter of eating or not eating; it is that important. Yes, she had 9 other coins, but that 10th one could make the difference.

When she finds it, she texts her friends and neighbors, saying I can eat next week and afford rent. It was lost now it is found.

Can I note something here? I love this particular part of the 3 parables because it doesn’t necessarily say that heaven is rejoicing, it says that there is rejoicing in the presence of God’s angels. Can I tell you something? Even if you have a busted relationship with your father or no father, there is a heavenly father who is waiting on the edge of his seat for you to give your life to him.

I don’t know if you have ever experienced this, but it is like when your child scores a goal or catches the pass, or gets the out in baseball. Elijah, our oldest, plays soccer, and I will never forget his first goal. We promised to get him a treat at a local paleta place, and I had never seen a fire lit under him like that. He took the opening kickoff and ran past everyone and scored a goal, but the whole time I am like “OUR SON IS GOING TO SCORE.” and when that ball went in I was freaking out, Robin was freaking out, we were texting our family. There was rejoicing, and we were on the edge of our seats. God is ready to celebrate this morning, but I have the last parable of the 3 parables here.

In this time any inheritance was split, with the older son getting a double portion, and then the rest was given to the remaining siblings in equal portions. So the younger son is telling the Father, you are as good as dead to me. I want what I have coming to me, and I want to go do whatever I want. I don’t want to be in the Father’s will, I want to do my will. This reminds me ofRomans 1, where it says that people are without excuse because they know that God exists through his creation, but they suppress the truth and so God gives them over to whatever they desire. That is what is happening here. He is allowing the son to do whatever he wants, which results in him wasting every last dime he had on foolish living. How many of us have been there or are there right now? Maybe it was in that young adult season where you thought you had it all figured out, and you thought your parents were just dumb and didn’t know what they were talking about, and maybe some in here are dealing with the guilt of that season even a decade or 2 later.

When it rains, it pours. Not only did he waste everything, then a famine struck. Jesus is helping paint a picture for us, I am convinced that Jesus would have been an amazing film writer and director in our day. That is what the parables are, word pictures that are telling a kingdom truth. Not only is this about as bad as it could get, it just gets worse. Not only does he not have anything, he is now a laborer in a distant country, making himself unclean in Jewish terms by feeding the pigs.

Those that were in attendance that day, would have been like wow, this son is in a terrible spot.

Then he finally hits rock bottom and comes to his senses, and some of us in this room are coming to our senses. I remember this moment for me, I was at a party and was so far gone that the only sober moment I had was when I went to the bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror and I remember asking myself, “who have you become?” I pushed that thought down and went about my business, but it wasn’t long after that I gave my life to him.

The son has this moment where he is like wait, I could go back to my Father and work for him because I am here starving, and I remember our workers ate pretty good.

The son makes this speech up in his head. We have all done this; we think about what we are going to say, maybe recite it in our head a few times. He doesn’t even have a chance to say it because the Father was looking and waiting for his son to come home.

Here is the best part, it doesn’t say that the Father was filled with anger or frustration. It doesn’t say that he poured out his wrath on the son when he came home. It says that he was filled with compassion.

God, when he sees someone is ready to come home, is filled with compassion.

Jesus uses extreme imagery here, he says the Father ran, hugged him, and kissed him. Jewish men didn’t do that, it was seen as shameful, and it would have probably gotten a gasp or two from those in attendance. Can I be honest, not a lot of dads do that today, but our heavenly Father, filled with compassion, runs after you, hugs you, and kisses you when you come home.

The son finally gets his repentance speech off.

The Father and everyone rejoiced because the younger brother was dead but is alive again. He was lost and is now found.

The attitude of the older son is very strategic here in the storytelling.

You see, we skipped a couple of verses at the beginning ofLuke 15 that prompted Jesus to tell these parables. He was teaching something about the Kingdom in a very strategic way. He had two main audiences. The lost and the religious.

We look at this and think to ourselves wow, those Pharisees had some pretty poor attitudes, but I would challenge you that there may be some in the room this morning who have a Pharisee spirit. I do not like this song; why do we keep playing it in worship, meanwhile someone across the auditorium or watching online is encountering God for the first time. Maybe someone walks into the church or works with us, or you see someone at the grocery store and they are cussing up a storm and wearing something that can barely be called clothing and instead of realizing that is someone created in the image of God who Jesus left the fold to go looking for and died for, or swept the house for because it was a lost treasure, or the father is waiting for, we judge them instead. We think wow I wouldn’t wear something like that to church.

All the while, the ones who are lost, broken, and to the end of themselves are the ones who Jesus came for. He said that “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So here is what we can do if we find ourselves with a Pharisee attitude because it happens to all of us. We can pray for the One, seek the One, and don’t give up on the One because Jesus didn’t give up on us when we were the One.

Jesus takes sinners, and when they turn and run back and repent, he doesn’t rebuild them. Jesus redefines who you are. He takes what's broken and makes it whole. He gives you a new name, he puts you on his shoulders, and all of heaven rejoices.

The Bible says that all have fallen short of the glory of God. we have all missed the mark of his glorious standard.

We did a Q&A with the youth this week, and it was myself and a panel of students answering the questions that were written on index cards. We got a question that said, “who was the man that put Jesus on the cross?”

I answered the question this way “me” I am the reason Jesus went to the cross. You are the reason Jesus was nailed to the cross because he left the 99 for the 1. God wants all to come to repentance, so he made a way so that you and I could be bought back into his family, into his kingdom, and into his loving arms.

When he was nailed on the cross, he knew the mess we were going to be in. Romans 5:8 “8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The key word there is while we were still sinners.

Jesus is the shepherd who goes after the one, the holy spirit is the one who lights the path, and the Father is waiting for the lost to come into his arms and to come home.