  The Loving Father  Luke 15:17-24 August 18, 1985 91-2  If you
will, take your Bible and turn to the fifteenth chapter of Luke.
And I confess to you that my heart and mind is overflowing with
things I want to say to you and I'm doing the best that I
possibly can to restrain myself from saying everything to treat
you in a reasonable fashion. But this is such a rich chapter, as
we have come to find out already.  Now as we look at this story,
it demands careful attention. I...I feel like I'm giving you a
lot but cheating you at the same time because I can't get it all
in. This is so rich and so deep. And on the surface a lot of it
is lost to us because we live in the western world two-thousand
years later and this is back in the time of Jesus in a Middle
Eastern village and we don't have the unconscious sensibilities,
the cultural insights and the attitudes that were a part of
everybody's life and didn't need explanation. So if you wonder
why it only takes a little while to read it but so long to
explain it, it