So if the father's the first to see the younger son,
you'd have to ask yourself this question, why?
If there's 40 people, it's a two and a half percent chance
you're the first one to see the younger son.
Why is it he would see his younger son first?
Okay, and as I said, I'm gonna give you my opinion
about this, and I'm gonna use this chair as an example.
And I grew up in a mountain state,
so the way I picture this story,
I picture a son walking up over a mountain,
and you kind of see him over the horizon,
kind of slowly coming.
That's my opinion.
I grew up in a mountain state.
But here's what I would say a normal father would do
if his child got into sin and left the family,
which I would say for over a year is my opinion.
Doesn't tell us, so you can kind of give whatever timeframe.
But fathers are not the best at expressing
their love for their kids.
Oftentimes for fathers, they have trouble saying,
I love you.
But what I would say is all fathers,
they feel that love on the inside,
even if they're not the best at expressing it.
You know what a normal father would do
if his son just ran away from home and got into sin?
Well, I mean, during those days,
you work from basically 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sun up to sun down, right?
You get as much work as you can get done during the day.
And what a normal father would do,
and this is a father who's at least,
I would say in his 40s because he's got two sons,
maybe in his 50s, and of course at this point,
since he has a lot of hired servants,
he's kind of more of a manager, right?
He's not the one doing the manual labor as much.
What I would imagine is as the son is basically setting,
he gets done working and he sits outside
and he's just looking in a distance,
waiting for his son to come back, right?
And the son leaves on a Monday morning
and he's sitting outside on Monday, 6 p.m.,
it's getting dark, he's just sitting and sitting
and sitting and waiting.
His son doesn't come.
Monday rolls into Tuesday.
And of course, he doesn't get much sleep
because if you've got a son living in sin,
you're gonna probably have nightmares
of what could have happened, right?
You're gonna be miserable, you're gonna be tired,
you're gonna be exhausted.
Tuesday night, into the workday, what's he doing?
He's just sitting, just waiting for his son to return.
Tuesday rolls into Wednesday.
Wednesday rolls into Thursday.
Thursday rolls into Friday.
Friday rolls into Saturday.
Saturday rolls into Sunday.
One week rolls into the next month.
January rolls into February.
February to March.
March to April.
I mean, think of this story.
If your son did this, are you gonna sleep well at night?
I was gonna be 10 o'clock at night
and no matter how hard you work,
you're gonna be sitting there just thinking
of all the possible things that could have happened.
You're probably gonna wake up
in the middle of the night sometimes
just having a nightmare
of what could have happened to your son.
You're gonna be miserable.
You're not gonna get sleep week after week after week,
month after month after month after month,
just waiting and waiting and waiting
and waiting for your son to return, right?
When I put myself in this story, I think of my son Zeph.
I can just imagine if I was this man
and I had all these hired servants.
I'm sitting out here for months and months
and then someone comes and he says,
Sir, Mr. Stuckey, I'm not trying to be rude,
but it's been a long time.
Maybe you wanna come in and get some sleep.
We can help you.
I mean, I imagine you'd have servants that would come
and say, hey, you know what?
Maybe you should come in.
I'm sure there's a lot of nights
he just fell asleep outside in the chair just waiting,
waking up in the middle of the night
from the noise of some animal
and then all of a sudden he's just like, man,
and it's like already midnight or whatever, right?
This is realistically what would take place
if your son lived a licentious and sinful life
and you never heard from him.
You didn't know what happened.
You would literally sit outside, right?
Does that know what fathers would do?
And look, maybe us in this room,
you that are kids and you have fathers with you,
maybe you don't realize this,
but that is what your dad would do.
I mean, you would sit up waiting and waiting and waiting
and waiting for you to return.
And then after 12 months, 16 months or whatever,
all of a sudden he sees his son coming back.
Now, what do you think his son's gonna look like
after living in sin for over a year?
He's probably gonna have holes in his shirts and his pants.
He's probably gonna look like a mess.
I mean, he hasn't been eating much.
So he's probably lost a lot of weight.
He's probably very dirty.
It'd be like a homeless person stumbling in
after being gone for a year from the family.
Isn't that what would take place?
I mean, literally, I mean,
he probably doesn't even recognize him very well.
He's like, is that my son?
Right, and eventually he realizes
a great way off is father saw him
and he waits for his son to apologize.
Is that what takes place?
No.
He has compassion and runs
and falls on his neck and kisses him.