Let us turn to Isaiah 55. We read in Isaiah 55:6-11:
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
This is one of the wonderful chapters of the Bible. It is one of the most beautiful chapters of the Bible, as it starts out in Isaiah 55:1:
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Isaiah 55 goes on to lay out God’s plan of salvation, God’s glorious gift to mankind, God’s wonderful blessing to sinners who would otherwise suffer an enormous penalty of an eternity in Hell forever if God did not develop this plan of salvation. Out of love and mercy and goodness and all things that are good within God, He devised this plan whereby He can justify sinners and make them right in His sight. He can actually wash away their sin and cleanse them from all iniquity. He can purge it away so that there is no more offense to the Law of God or to the Person of God. He can purge it away to the point where an individual—one who has in times past been the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners, the vilest offender, the one who is guilty of ugly sin and all kinds of evil deeds—can find the grace of God and experience salvation. They can then become holy and pure, and they can be clean from all iniquity in God’s sight. God encourages people, He encourages people, and He says this to every human being, “Come. Come to the waters. Come.”
Of course we know that man is aware of the Gospel. Man is aware that there is a Bible in the world. He has heard some of the information in this Book, and yet he does not come. He does not come. He does not respond in the way that God would desire for him to respond. Sometimes he comes halfheartedly. Sometimes man comes changing the Gospel plan, and it is then that he will respond. But when the Gospel is laid out faithfully and truthfully to what God says, man resists. Man does not come to God on these grounds, of himself.
This is what we have here in Isaiah 55:6 where God is laying it out. He is explaining how a sinner can become saved. It begins here in Isaiah 55:6:
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found…
“Seek ye the LORD.” This is true. This is that Biblical principle that we find in Matthew 7. This is the truth that God lays down in Matthew 7:7-8:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
God says in Isaiah 55, “Seek ye the LORD.” Then we read in Matthew 7 that the one who seeks will find God. This is a fact. This is true. If any person seeks God, God will allow him to find Him, and that person will become saved. This is truth because the Bible says it, “Seek ye the LORD” or “Seek, and ye shall find.”
All kinds of people leave it at that. They leave it at that point or that stage. You can read these verses in the Bible, “Seek ye the LORD.” God is encouraging everyone to seek Him. You can read Matthew 7 and other places, “Seek, and ye shall find.” This is very simple. It is very simple, just seek.
So we have hundreds of millions of people who profess to be Christians, many of them convinced that they are true children of God because they sought the Lord. They did something: they were baptized, they partake of the Lord’s Supper, they go to church, they read the Bible, they do this or they do that.
All of this is a part of seeking God. We can not say that it is not; it actually is. It is all related to seeking God. Why else would someone want to go to church on Sunday, or why else would they want to hear from the Bible, and so on? So is God saying that all of these people are saved and that they have found Him?
Actually, when we keep looking in the Bible and we continue to check out this idea of seeking after God, we find in Romans 3:10-11 these words:
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
“There is none that seeketh after God.” We wonder how this could be. How is this possible? Even all of us here, are we not seeking after God? Is this not why we have such an interest? God says to seek Him and that if we do seek Him, we will find Him.
You see, now we have a problem, because Romans 3:11 says that there is no one, “not one” individual, “none that seeketh after God.” So what are we going to do? How are we going to understand this? Well, we keep comparing Scripture with Scripture. We keep searching the Bible, and we try to find out what God is saying.
If we turn to Deuteronomy 4, there is one verse that I think will help us and will explain how God can say that if we seek Him, we will find Him, but then again, He can also say that none do seek Him. In Deuteronomy 4:29, it says:
But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God…
Seek Jehovah. If you seek Him—this is exactly what we are looking at. This is the question that we have in mind.
But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him…
This is what we read in Mathew 7:7-8. It continues in Deuteronomy 4:29:
…if…
“If,” so it is conditional. It is conditional:
…if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
There is the problem. There is the problem. People do seek God. God is commanding us, “Seek Him,” and we are to try to obey this command. We are to try to be obedient to this command. We want to obey God on this point, so we want to read the Bible, and we want to go to God and pray and cry out, “Save me! Have mercy on me!” We want to do whatever God would have us to do.
Yet with all of our seeking after God, we are going to fall far short. If this is the bar, we are not even going to get close. We are going to fall and fail in many, many ways, because the condition is and the way God qualifies it is, “If you seek Me with all your heart and with all your soul, then you will find Me.” This is when you will find Him. You will have discovered that if you seek, you will find. This is true seeking. This is how God defines the command to seek after Him.
If I seek after God halfheartedly—and by the way, this is the best that we can do. If anyone does even half, they are doing a wonderful job, I think. If anyone can drum up enough spiritual desire within themselves to seek after God even half their heart, they would probably standout as a very moral person and one who stands out individually when it comes to spiritual things. But we do not even get close to this.
All of our heart, all of our mind, all of our soul—who gives 10% of their thoughts to God and to the things of God? Or who can obey? Who can keep that kind of commandment? Well, we know. We do not have to wonder, because the Bible tells us, “None seek Him. None. Not one seeks after God.”
This is because no one can do this. We have fallen into sin. We have a heart that is desperately wicked. We do not do things God’s way perfectly, and God’s standard is absolute perfection, so we just can not seek the Lord sufficiently as the Bible requires unto salvation. We can not get ourselves saved by thinking, “Well, I am going to seek after God.”
We do want to seek after God as much as lies within us, as much as possible, especially in the time that we are living in. We know that time is getting short, so we want to place ourselves under the hearing of the Bible. We want to strive to keep God’s commandments, and yet this is not going to save us. This is not going to bring us into Heaven in any way, but it is putting us under the hearing of the Word of God, and if it is God’s good pleasure, if it is His will, then He could save us.
What happens when He saves us? He gives us a new heart and a new spirit. And what is the desire of that heart? That heart is without sin. That heart is not 99% pure. It is a new heart. You are a new creature, a new creation that is perfect and can not sin, according to 1 John, so this heart seeks after God wholeheartedly. We would then find God. We would then find God, because He has found us.
Remember the words of the hymn, “I Sought the Lord.” I jotted them down because I would never remember them:
I sought the Lord,
and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true;
No, I was found of Thee.
This is that beautiful hymn that we hear from time-to-time.
This is what God has in mind. He gives us this commandment and He demands obedience. “Seek ye the Lord. Seek Jehovah,” and we fall short of the glory of God on this point as well as many others. So we have to say that we can not seek Him. Along with everyone else in the human race, none of us seek after Him.
(It smells like the place is burning down. Is that why I see so many people running to the back here? Well, it is always good when you are reading the Bible to have the idea of smoke and fire in your mind. I am serious; it is. God warns us in His Word and uses that picture of eternal damnation and the fire that is never quenched.)
Let us move on in Isaiah 55:6:
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found…
This is an important verse for us. Of course, this has always been an important verse for everyone. But, you see, God’s salvation will not be available forever. For those whom God saves, they will live forever, but in this world and for the people upon the earth, God’s salvation is not available into eternity. There is a limited time. There is a limited time that God has set for this world. We can understand this by thinking about this in two ways.
Number one, Christ is going to return. Very soon, the Lord Jesus is going to return. We have a lot of evidence pointing to 2011, and this is very strong evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ will return.
So what man does out the perverseness of his heart—there is no other way to explain this—what man does when he believes that he has a little bit of a cushion, a little bit of time that he can fall back on even when he can see that the need is great, he thinks, “Yes, the need is great, but there is still some time. There is still some time.”
The young are especially prone to this sinful way of thinking, because it is very deceitful. This is the nature of sin. Sin is extremely deceitful and so it will tell you, “You have plenty of time.” This is especially true for a young person who thinks that they have their whole life in front of them, or even people who are a little bit older and who think, “I have some time still. I have some time, so I can put this off. I am going to continue on right now, because it is just so hard. It is just so difficult to try to do things God’s way. To repent and to turn from sin and to live this kind of a life is not easy. It is not easy, so let me continue on. I will keep thinking about these things and I will keep praying about these things.” And really what they are doing is they are putting it on the backburner and thinking, “I will get to it. I will get to it.” But these are just ways of putting something off, and this is the nature of man. Man puts it off till tomorrow.
I am kind of prone to this when it comes to chores around the house and things like this. “I will do it tomorrow. I will do it next week.” Well, I have already said this about three other things, so when next week comes, my hands are full.
Can you imagine when 2011 comes? You know that the world is not going to stop when January 2011 comes. It is not going to stop. You are still going to have to go to work. You are still going to have to buy groceries. You are still going to have responsibilities that have to be taken care of like paying the bills. Time-consuming things are still going to be in our lives, and they will be taking up time.
It is not a wise idea at all to think, “Well it is 2007, and maybe I will take care of it in 2008.” Then in 2008, “Well, maybe in 2009.” This is the nature of man, and this is the deceitfulness of sin that keeps telling us, “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.” Well, we are running out of tomorrows. We are running out of time extremely fast, and God says, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.” Seek Him now.
It is also the nature of man to desire to do things God’s way after the fact. It was too late for the Israelites after they gave that evil report and God told them that they were going to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. “Now we want to go into the land. Now we want to obey you. Now we will fight the people of the land who we were afraid to fight earlier.” No, no; it was too late. God warned them and warned them. After He made this judgment against them and commanded that they wander in the wilderness, then they wanted to obey. You see, this is how it is. This is extremely sad, but this is our nature.
How many on that day that we read about will say, “Lord, Lord!” What are they doing? They are seeking the Lord. “Lord, Lord! Have we not done these things in Your Name?” They are very diligent at this point. But, no, today; today is the time. “Seek ye the Lord.” Seek Jehovah today and not in the future, in some far distant time that we may not have anyway because we do not know if we are going to live tomorrow. This is why God also says, “While He may be found.”
This has happened how many times to how many people throughout history where they thought, “I am just going to wait. I am going to wait, and then I will get serious. I will get serious at a later point, because I just have too much to do. I have my life to live,” and so forth. But as we read in the Gospel of Luke to the man who tore down his barns to build greater, God says, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” Up until that point, this man had time to go to God, to wrestle with God over the matter of salvation, to seek the Lord and to cry out to God that he might be one of His elect, that he might become saved, but he wasted his time. He wasted his life, seeking not the Lord but seeking after the things of this world: seeking after money, seeking after barns that could be bigger and better and greater, and so forth.
The Lord is extremely wise, and this is the Word of the Lord, “Seek ye the Lord,” and it is a present command. It was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but it is a present command to each one of us. Today, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.”
Isaiah 55:6 continues on to say:
…call ye upon him while he is near:
I used to think about this sometimes. Would it not be wonderful if we lived in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ when He was upon earth and we heard reports that He was healing lepers and making the blind to see and the deaf to hear? He is raising the dead, and He is nearby. He is over in the next town! And we could just pack up a little snack and we could just go to Him.
Would you go? Would you go? I would go! Would you go? Would that not be wonderful, especially if we had some kind of an infirmity? Even if we were someone whom God had taught that our real problem was our sin, that we were desperately wicked in heart and needed a Savior, and then we heard these reports. “He must be the Saviour. The Messiah has come!” And all we would have had to do was to just go to the next town.
Did anyone go to Jesus that you remember in the Bible for healing, for whatever their problem was, and Jesus turned them down? I can not find anywhere where a blind man went to Jesus and Jesus said, “No, I do not have time for that.” Or where a deaf man went to Jesus and Jesus did not heal him. I can not find that.
Again and again and again, someone came to Him and Christ healed them. He gave them sight. He gave them ears. He gave them life. He made the man’s withered hand normal again. He made the man with the palsy to rise up and walk. He healed again and again.
Would we go? Would we go? Quick! Right? Would you not just take off running? The Lord Jesus Christ! There is big crowd around Him, but Jesus even knows that. Remember the woman who had the issue of blood and she just thought in the press of the crowd that if she could just touch His garment that she would be made whole, and she was. She was! She went to Christ and she touched a piece of His garment and her issue of blood stopped, but Jesus knew it and He said, “Who touched Me?” Do you remember this?
Do you see how God is encouraging us? He is encouraging us all through the Gospels, “Come to me. Come!”—like we read in Isaiah 55. There is water! There is drink for a thirsty soul! “Come unto Me all ye that are thirsty and I will give you drink!” And it is free! There is no charge. You do not have to earn it. You do not have to work for it. You do not have to do anything. “Come. Seek ye the Lord.”
We think about all of this and we think that those people were blessed above all people because they had the Lord Jesus Christ in their midst, in their very presence. It would have been so easy to just go to where He was and to go to Christ. But poor us, poor us; we do not have Jesus walking upon the earth in our day. We do not have the Lord Jesus in Philadelphia or in a nearby town where we could go to Him, do we? We are hindered. We are hindered. We do not have that great blessing that they had.
No. Actually, He is the same God, right? “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” He does not change. He is the same merciful God. He is the same God who said to the man with the palsy, “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee,” and they were forgiven right on the spot. He is the same God. “Yes, but He is not available.” Is He? Is He nearby? Is He close to any one of us, to any person in the world?
God is near, is He not? He is even nearer now than when He was upon the earth, because you would have had to travel so many miles to get to Him. But now, He is seated at the right hand of God and God tells us to boldly approach the Throne of Grace. “Come to the Throne of Grace. Come.”
At any point in the day, at any time, anywhere, no matter where you are, you can go to Jesus, you can go directly to Jesus. The same Jesus, the same Person, the same God/man who has power to heal, to save, to grant eternal life, that same God/man who delights in bestowing mercy, who healed everyone who came to Him, is available on the Throne on High, and all we have to do is go to Him. All we have to do is to go to Him and say, “Dear Lord, dear Lord, have mercy. Forgive me. I have sinned. I am guilty. Cleanse me. This is all I want. It would be wonderful if you healed me physically, but if that is not going to happen, and actually I know that it does not mean anything anyway, but my problem is that I am a sinner and I need a Saviour. Dear Lord, have mercy.” Do you see what God is saying? “Seek ye the LORD while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.”
If you remember, in 2 Corinthians 6:2, it says:
(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)
So when does God want us to go? When does He want us to go to Him? “Now!” “Now!” No, “Well, okay. I will think about this next week,” or, “I will try to fit this into my schedule.” This ought to be the most overwhelmingly important thing for every one of us that we should be concerned about. We should desire to go to God that He might have mercy on us, that He might save us, so that we do not spend an eternity in Hell.
Going back to Isaiah 55:7, it says:
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
More encouragement, more encouragement, “Let the wicked forsake his way.” And who is wicked? Who is wicked?
That word today has taken on a bit of a slang meaning. The kids today use it like a substitute for the word “cool,” as in, “That was wicked.” “It was something that was wonderful,” is what is really meant by this.
But the way that the Bible uses this word is that it is someone who has broken the Law of God, who has transgressed His commandments, and who is guilty of sinning against God’s commandments. We are wicked. We are wicked.
Remember back in Genesis 6:5, it says:
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
This is describing the whole human race, every single person.
1 John 5:19 puts it this way:
And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.
So the way that the Bible uses this word “wicked” or “wickedness” is as a word that describes the evil that mankind commits as we break the Law of God, and God is saying in Isaiah 55:7:
Let the wicked forsake his way…
The word “forsake” means “leave.” When Joseph left his garment in the hands of Potiphar’s wife, this is the same word. He just fled out and left his garment behind. He forsook it. He did not care about it. He just got out of there as quickly as he could.
This is a good picture for us because God is telling us, “Forsake your way, the way that you are going, the way of a sinner, the way of a man who is under the wrath of God.” The wrath of God abides upon unsaved man and he is subject to spend an eternity in Hell. Forsake it. Leave it. Leave it. Do not worry about it. Quit fretting over this or that. “What about this or what about that, if I turn? What about this, if I start doing it God’s way? What is the world going to think? What is my family going to think?” Just leave it. Leave it.
Is that not what Lot ultimately had to do when he fled Sodom and Gomorrah? God, of course, helped him. He took him by the hand and he led him out of the city, and Lot left family behind. Lot left daughters behind and sons-in-law. He left property behind. He left his life behind because God warned Lot that Sodom would be destroyed. Forsake it all. Leave it. You do not want to be burned up with the judgment of God.
In Matthew, God talks about the way of the wicked, and we read in Matthew 7:13:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Not every big city has a Broadway. Philadelphia has Broadway Street. New York has a Broadway. It is one of those streets where there are many lanes for traffic—nice, big, wide paths for vehicles to move along in our day. This makes for easy traveling because when you get into some of those narrow streets in the city of Philadelphia, you run into traffic jams and a more difficult path. So God is telling us that this is as easy as anything. It is super easy, especially in our day.
You know, you can be pampered on your way to Hell. You can enjoy the pleasures of sin to the fullest extent—all that you want—on your way to the bottomless pit, into the blackness of darkness forever. You can drink and eat to your fill. You can satisfy the lusts of your eyes to your fill. You can do the most wicked things that are pleasing to you for whatever reason, and you can enjoy the remainder of your time upon earth. But know for certain; know with an absolute certainty that this way is leading to destruction. This way has no other ending. It has no other possible course except down into the flames of Hell. God is saying to us, to mankind, “Forsake! Let the wicked forsake his way.” Forsake it.
If we were rational creatures, if we had our true wits about us, if it were not for our sin, we would certainly go to God and thank Him a thousand times over, “Yes, of course, you are right. You are right! You are right! This is leading me to Hell, and day after day, I am following this path! I am following this course. I keep sinning these ways and I keep getting ever closer, ever closer to the abyss, ever closer to the edge where I will fall.”
God is indicating in Matthew 7:14:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
This is, of course, the Way of the Lord Jesus. It is the Way of eternal life, the only Way, “For there is none other Name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” It is only through the doorway of Christ Himself that we can enter into the Kingdom of God.
Going back to Isaiah 55:7, we read:
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts…
“His thoughts.” You know, in the world, kings and rulers and governments try to control the people with laws. They try to govern through laws, so there are laws on what we can and can not do, laws governing our outward acts. You just can not do anything you want to with your body. There are certain laws, and you have to respect other people’s physical bodies, so the government tries to govern this. The government also could try to govern, and has in times past, the tongue of man, where, “You can not speak that way about the king! You could lose your head for saying something like that about the king!” So kings and rulers and governments have tried to instill or police the people so that they obeyed these types of laws.
But I do not think that there has ever been a government or a ruler that tries to enter into the mind of man and govern what goes on within a human being. There has not been this because it is an impossibility. No one knows what people are thinking. No one knows if you are thinking well of someone or evil of someone. No one knows what is going on deep-down in the soul of a person, in the mind of an individual, except God—except God.
Many times, we read in the Gospel accounts of the New Testament, “Jesus knew their thoughts.” He knew their thoughts, and this is because He is Eternal God. We read in Hebrews 4:12-13:
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
You see, God knows us perfectly. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our inward thoughts, even the thoughts of our heart that we are ignorant of. We do not know what is going on deep-down in our subconscious mind. We are not fully aware of what is truly within us. We know ourselves better than anyone else, and we do know ourselves to some degree, but we do not know everything about ourselves. God does, and what God sees, He is not pleased with. Remember the verse we read in Genesis:
…the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Continually! So God is saying in Isaiah 55:7:
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts…
For man to forsake his thoughts is a big task. Here is a task that causes us to have our hands full, yet God is giving us this commandment because He is a God who demands absolute obedience in every area of our lives. Whether it is in our minds or in our outward actions or in the words that we speak, God demands total perfection, so He commands us to forsake what is going on in our thoughts.
If we turn to Matthew 15:17-20, we read:
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
If it can be said of anyone that they are not fooled, we can say this of God. He is not fooled with outward acts of obedience to Himself. He is not deceived when we praise Him with our lips. You can run into some people, “Praise God this! Praise God that!” But God knows what is going on in the heart of an individual. God can hear what they are saying. There is nothing wrong with what they are saying, except that it is not matching up with the condition of their heart.
So we have to be careful—as God is commanding us to turn from iniquity, to forsake our way, to repent—that we do not forget about the inner being, that we do not forget about our heart. God does command, “Make you a new heart.” He tells us in the Bible, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart.” We read in Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart,” where God creates this new heart and He is telling the sinner who is coming to Him that the problem goes deeper than throwing away the cigarettes and stopping the drinking; the problem goes much deeper than the drugs; it goes far deeper than the swearing and the lying or even breaking into houses.
Whatever it is, all of that sin, God can pay for all of it. The Lord Jesus died for the worst offenders, but sin is also what is going on in the mind, in the innermost being of the person. We could repent of outward things and yet never truly have repented of what is going on within our heart. This is why, again and again, we have to go to God and we have to beseech Him.
We can desire to control what is going on up here in our minds, to some degree. When we start thinking in a wrong way, we can try to turn from this, but we do not know what is really going on deep-down. So we can go to God again and we can say, “God, I can not obey this in my own strength. Give me a new heart and a new spirit and a new soul.” Then, every thought will be brought captive to the Lord Jesus Christ, like we read in 2 Corinthians 10, “to the obedience of Christ.”
Let us go back to Isaiah 55 and we will close with the remainder of verse 7. We read in Isaiah 55:7:
…and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
When I think about this verse, I think about the prodigal son. The prodigal asked his father for his inheritance and went away to a far off land and wasted all of his substance. Let us turn there. We read in Luke 15:12-20:
And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
We can see the story in the parable that the Lord Jesus is giving. Here is someone who is out there in the world. We are all children of God. We were all created by God, yet in the world, people are just spending in a way that God has given them until they come to the point of ruin, to the point of nothing.
What answer does the world have? The soup kitchen where you can maybe find a change of clothes? They will give you a place to sleep and they will try to encourage you to get back on your feet, but this is not what people need.
What is the answer for someone who is broken? What is the answer for someone who is humbled in the world? What is the answer for someone who is cast down in their soul? What is the answer for someone who is sunk as low as they can go? What is the answer for someone whose sins have brought them down to the ground? They are humbled in the world and the world has no answer for them, but God does, “Come to Me. Come to Me again. Return unto Me. Return.”
This prodigal son remembered that in his father’s house, the servants ate much better then he did, so he thinks that he is going to return. He is going to go to his father. You see, this is what God would have us to do. We go, but how far can we get when we seek after God? How close can we actually get to Him? “A great way off.”
We will never get there by our own seeking. We will never get there by our own power or ability. But, you see, God sees this individual, that he has begun with feeble attempts, that he has begun to look at his life and to say, “Now what can I do to forsake my way? What can I do to turn from my sin? What can I do to stop thinking the thoughts that I am thinking? I am going to try. I am going to go to God, my Father, and I am going to pray that He would have mercy on me, that He might save me.” So he begins to go back to the father, and the father sees him “a great way off” and then comes running to him.
The only way that a sinner and God can meet is when God takes that action of going to the sinner. Then God comforts him and has compassion on him. God will “abundantly pardon” His elect people.