Heavenly Father, You reign in our circumstances, in our lives, in our homes, in our nation, in all over the world, You are God. Our declaration is that there is only one name and that is the name of Jesus, the name above all other names, the name that heals, the name that restores, the name that sustains, the name that delivers, the name that sets free, and that name is here this morning, Father, we thank You.
Thank You for what You’ve done for us in time past, thank You for what You have purposed to do this morning, thank You for every one of us who is here this morning, Father, Lord, please touch each and every one of us in the mighty name of Jesus. I pray oh Lord that Your mercy will locate each and every one of us, Your mercy will set free, Your mercy will give favor in the mighty name of Jesus.
Please Lord speak to us in a way that we all will understand You, and Father, let Your word give us a new beginning, truly new beginning. Thank You my God and my Father, in Jesus wonderful name we prayed. Praise the Lord!
I say good morning to everyone, our daddies and mommies in the house, brothers and sisters, God bless you in the name of Jesus. Happy Sunday to you! It’s the fourth Sunday in the month of March, our month of advancement. Praise the living Jesus! You know already that is our month of advancement because God is doing wonders in our midst; you know what happened here last week Sunday, what happened here yesterday, and by the grace of God, because it’s going to get better and better, God also will show Himself today in the mighty name of Jesus.
I’d like to appreciate our father in the Lord for the privilege I have to minister this morning, he has invitation to minister in one of our provinces in region 11 and that’s why he’s not here today, but I believe that his mind, his spirit is with us through this service, but most importantly, God is here. Hallelujah!
I give thanks to God for the privilege of life, I’m standing before you this morning because I have breath in me and you are here also because there’s breath of God in you. Thank You heavenly Father.
There’ll be prayer chain tomorrow, the topic is Jehovah Jireh; the text is from Genesis 22:14. Praise God!
We have a very long passage to read this morning, I’ll start and maybe we’ll stop somewhere in between and also a bit of a teaching more like this morning. Please follow me, God will minister to us in Jesus mighty name. Luke 15:11 – 32 (NIV), “Jesus continued: there was a man who had two sons. 12The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate”. So he divided his property between them. 13Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth in wild living. (Another translation put it at riotous living).
14After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in the whole in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out (they didn’t hire him, he said I want to work here) to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his field to feed pigs. 16He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. 17”When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to deat!.
18I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants. 20So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. 21”The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. 25Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
28The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened cow for him! 31My son, the father said, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. Praise the living Jesus! May the Lord bless the reading of his word.
The topic this morning is “Mercy Still Remains – Come Back Home”. Brethren, what is mercy? Mercy is the compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or to harm or to deal with. When you show compassion to somebody that you have authority, everything over to deal with them and you say mercy.
Mercy is a kindness that makes you forgive someone, usually someone that you have authority over, so that implies that if somebody who has authority over you and you say ‘I let you go’, is not mercy because you can’t even touch him.
For example, if you’re an accountant in a company and there’s a rule in that company that anyone who does not come maybe x number of days in a week or in a month you deduct xyz salary. If there is one of the clerks who fails to come and perhaps maybe he had family challenges, it’s obvious to everybody that he is struggling, and the person comes and say please don’t deduct my salary, the full salary is not even enough, if you deduct it, it will worsen things for me, see what I’m going through. And the accountant says okay, I have mercy on you, I will not deduct, that’s mercy.
If the (MD) Managing Director of that company does not come to work for one week, will the accountant go to him, I will deduct your salary, can he say I have mercy on you? If care is not taken, he’s the one that will need mercy, you know what I mean because the MD will find another accountant. So mercy is towards people over whom you have authority.
There are various words that you can use to replace mercy – leniency, clemency, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and the opposite words, cruelty, ruthlessness, inhumanity. Spiritually, the opposite word for mercy is judgment; James 2:13, the Bible says, for he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth over judgment; spiritually, if God shows mercy, is because He has saved you from judgment.
Now from the passage we read, let’s quickly dimension that passage and then hone into the lessons for this morning. Let’s start from what is known; from that passage, I could identify three visible actors and one invisible one, so let’s quickly look through, the first visible key factor in that passage is the father.
From the account that we have, the father is wealthy, he has two sons, he has workers, people work for him, he has flocks – raiments, gold, silver; he can take instruction and say go and kill that cow, go and bring clothes, go and do this, he has authority, he has influence. Psalm 24:1, the Bible tells us, the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein; Haggai 2:8, the Bible says, the silver is mine and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. Hallelujah!
So for all intents and purposes, the father in this scripture refers to our God Almighty, who is described in Psalm 24:1. That’s that father in that story. Then the second key actor, now two of them jointly, the two sons; they were both comfortable living with the father in the father’s house, they had everything they could ever wish for. Philippians 4:19, the Bible says but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory through Christ Jesus, because their father had everything, whatever they needed they could get.
Psalm 2: 8 & 9, ask of me and I shall give you the hidden for inheritance, ask anything I’ll give it to you, so they lacked nothing. Psalm 34:10, the Bible says, the young lions do lack and they suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. Psalm 37:25 says, I have been young, now I am old. I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed beg for bread; this is the testimony of those two boys, but one day, one of the sons was enticed by the invisible character, (which we’ll talk about later) and with the allure of the world.
So he demanded for what belonged to him and the father divided all that he had and gave to his two sons, he gave one, he gave the other. Apparently after he took it he was packing, saying so you people don’t even know what I have in mind, then he set out; he set out into a place called a far country (we’ll come there), but the other son remained and continued to work but apparently he was grumbling – all these work left for me alone, that one has gone now and he has taken everything that belonged to him, even my own I can’t even take it out, it’s just in trust with the father, he had unanswered questions, he didn’t voice it out until much later.
In Romans 8:15-17, the Bible says, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we say, Abba, Father, and that verse goes further in verse 17 it says that, and then we become heirs of the Father and joint heirs to God, that’s the position of that second son but he didn’t know it. The two sons are a representation of the people in the world.
The Bible tells us in the book of Matthew 25:31-34, there are two sets of people, there are goats and their sheep; the one that collected his belonging and left is a similitude for the goat, and the one that stayed back and continued to obey his father in all instructions is the sheep.
The third category of key player here, the far country and its inhabitants. Now, where is the far country? The far country is not a physical situation/location, it’s a state of being. There’s no place called a far country, that’s why it doesn’t have a name – far country, it’s a state of being, it’s a state when you are removed from the cover and the presence of the Father.
Isaiah 59: 1-3, the hand of the Lord is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquity has separated you, created a gulf between you and the Father. The inhabitants of the far country can’t hear God’s instructions because their hearts are already seared with iron, Romans 1:28, the Bible says God has given them up onto a reprobate mind.
You know in Yoruba parlance, there is a saying that says aja to ma sonu, ko ni gbo feere olode, they cannot hear God’s instructions anymore because their hearts are seared, God has given them up to a reprobate, so even when you bang from today to tomorrow they will not hear except there’s a divine intervention. So they live in lack, they live in want, they live under abject conditions, insufficiency.
The other is filth, because the pig that we see there represents filth, in that far country it’s a dog-eat-dog situation. For example, he came from a home where he was trained but when he got there, gradually every spiritual resource that he had including the physical and material resource that he came with gradually drained. They taught him how to pray, they taught him how to study, they taught him how to respect God, but gradually it faded because that’s what happens in that far country.
Luke 15: 13, that passage we read from, the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:33 that evil communication corrupts good manners, so that’s what happened to the boy, so he started from spiritual hotness and then gradually became cold, Psalm 1:1.
I remember in my first year in the university, I was 16; I had other friends who were 16, so we were children in the university. After attending classes, in the evening once it’s about 7:00 p.m., that’s when we started wandering the university from one hall to the other instead of reading, and then we now got to another level, once it’s almost like 9:00 p.m., then we went to female hostel because the closing time was 9:00, so you must enter before 9, then you can come back later in the night and then we’ll come back late in the dead of the night and then go and sleep. No studies, if you don’t attend classes in university nobody will tell you, but we all came from Christian homes.
Then one day after the first semester exam they brought our results and I saw my result, I was looking and said is this me? Mine was even good, some of my friends failed and all that, then something told me what my parents used to tell me, ‘remember the son of whom you are’, and then I took a turn around, and from then on I went on and left some record in that school.
In that far country, the Bible says they have riotus living, they do whatever they like in that country just like my friends and I were doing, nobody will hold us, sinful living, immorality was the way of life. Pigs are dirty, eventually he had to go and live with pigs, things got so bad for him that he could no longer hear again – the father. Brethren, the messages he used to hear, he couldn’t hear, so, not only was he being drained, he was not being refilled, he eventually became spiritually and morally bankrupt in addition to losing all his resources.
Anything that takes you away from God, brethren, is going to take God’s glory upon your life. I pray for you this morning that nothing will take you away from God. Romans 8:35-39, what shall separate me from the love of Christ? And Apostle Paul summarized by saying, nothing. I pray that nothing will be able to separate you from the love of Christ in the mighty name of Jesus.
When things got so bad for this boy, he was looking for food, nobody gave him, they enjoyed and finished his own money, but when he was in want, they slammed the door on him. That’s what happens in the far country in the world out there, so he looked at it and said let me go and start living with pigs, he was good for nothing but with pigs, and he wanted to eat pigs food, but they would not even allow him.
How many of us have seen where pigs live? Very dirty, extremely dirt. If you bath a pig right now, you’ll be wondering why you did that because the next minute is dirty, they enjoy dirt, filth, and they do everything in the open. That’s what that boy was reduced to, he could not behave normally anymore having lived with pigs. Praise the living Jesus! They deserted him.
So when things are going good for you, please brethren let’s be wise, when people are saying ‘my friend, my friend’, is because of what you are holding, the day you are not holding it again you’ll find that you don’t have friends, what was your friend actually was the influence and the positioning and the blessings that you have. Praise the living Jesus!
Now we’ve done all of that – the far country represents the sinful world, and the inhabitants of that far country are the people living in it, sinners, the wicked people. Praise the living Jesus!
So having said that, what is the way forward? If that boy continued that way, he will end up in that wretchedness, but then God has a restoration plan. Say to somebody next to you, God has a restoration plan for you, for me.
So what is this restoration plan? Mercy. Remember I said that in that far country they had seared hearts, God had given them up to a reprobate mind, there was no way they could hear any again. Even if they bring a loudspeaker and be banging to them, they could not understand it, but the mercy of God located this boy, and the Bible tells us that one day, Luke 15:17, when he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare?”
He came to his senses, God’s mercy made him to hear out of a situation where he could ordinarily not hear again. Imagine somebody who is in a ditch, every time he wants to come out, what happens? If it’s slippery, he goes back in there, Psalm 40:1-3, out of a miry clay, but God can bring one out of the miry clay. I pray as many people who are today in a ditch, in a miry clay that Lord Almighty will bring you out, His mercy will locate you in the mighty name of Jesus.
Even if the people around him could help him, they were not interested in helping him because they are seeking people to make the numbers more. But then like I said, one day God’s mercy located him and the mercy started bringing him out, he was able to think right and said how many of my father’s servants? Then he was able to take a decision to go back, I have to go back home, he did not only take that decision, he decided that he will go and ask for forgiveness.
I will ask that I have sinned against the heaven and against my father, and then he was ready to start again. He said I don’t want to go back as a prince, as a son of the father, I want to go back as one of the servants, he was ready to go back again, Luke 8:15-19.
Brethren, the people in the far country, they are under satanic oppression, they cannot set themselves free, only God can set them free, so that divine help came for this boy. Ephesians 2:4-5, God is rich in mercy and in love and that’s what He used to set him free; the devil deployed all sorts of means to keep him as he’s doing, as he’s done for many people, but the mercy of God will come and break the hold of the Satan.
So I like the song, ‘there is only one name that can set free and that’s the name of Jesus’. I pray that the mercy of God will locate you today.
But there is something that makes mercy to be functional; it is called the love of God. God is an embodiment of love, John 3:16 we know that, 1 John 4:8, the Bible says God is love, God is an embodiment of love, He loves us even in sin. God loves sinners, He does not love sin, and that is why He says that He does not want any sinner to go to hell but sinners should come to repentance. He loves sinners, He does not love sin, 2 Peter 3:9.
So the love of God that He has for everyone including sinners was the bedrock on which the mercy stood, if there was no love of God, mercy could not operate. God loves you brethren, and His mercy will avail for you in the mighty name of Jesus.
So the love of God which brought the mercy that brought this boy out of the ditch was also waiting for him when he got back home. Contrary to what happened in the far country where they finished his goods and turned their backs on him, the love of God was waiting, arms open, saying ‘come, I’m waiting for you,’ like He’s waiting for many people this morning.
When he was in want, nobody helped him, but in his father’s house, when he went back, he saw real love. While he was very far away, the father ran towards him, that’s love. Somebody who took away what belonged to you, he went to squander it, he came back empty, in tattered cloths; the father would have said this is not my son, many of us would have said I disown you, but the father did not disown him.
Many of us would have given that boy a cold shoulder and say where are you coming from? What do you think you are doing here? We’ve been working all this while and then you are coming from where? But what did father do? He led the race, he opened his arms, go and kill the best calf, the best, the number one, go and kill it for him, give him cloth, give him shoes. Apparently he was not wearing good clothes, he was walking on bare feet but that’s love. That’s the love the Father has for all of us. Hallelujah!
And why does the Father have that love for us? For as many people who have gone astray like the boy into a far country, the Father’s love is singing only one tune, ‘come back home’, He’s saying come back home. Revelation 3:20 says God is at the door of your heart, He’s knocking, and every time He knocks, when He knocks the door of your heart, what His message is sending to you is that come back home, I’m waiting for you.
And the same thing that God does for that boy, He will do for everyone who is in a far country right now in the mighty name of Jesus. I pray you will hear Him, your heart will be tuned to Him in the mighty name of Jesus.
Now I want to quickly talk about the fourth character who was an invisible character in all of this setup. There was something that inspired that boy to say ‘father I’m done here, I want to go,’ where you are living under comfort, you want to go into the unknown, there’s a spirit behind it. When he got to that place, when he went into riotous living, somebody who was well brought up and then began to do night crawling, there was something that led him there.
When he got to a point where he could not hear anymore, there was a spirit behind it. The way they live in the far country where they had no respect for God, there was a spirit behind it; his elder brother who was left in the house, who was grumbling but was still pretending to be working, there’s a spirit behind it. Like many of us, we come to church, we are here every Sunday singing holy, holy, but we have ill feelings for some people, there’s a spirit behind it.
The Bible tells us about that spirit in John 14:30, the Bible refers to that spirit as the prince of this world; in Ephesians 2: 1 & 2, the Bible refers to that spirit as the ruler of the kingdom of the air. You all know by now who that fourth personality is, he’s no one but the devil. Every time somebody is with the Father, where you have abundance, you have everything working for you and you choose to go elsewhere, there’s a spirit leading you, so anytime you have that feeling again, say to that spirit, get the behind me, Satan. That spirit is the devil.
2 Corinthians 4:4 says, “The God of this age,” that’s another name for that spirit, (it says) he blinded the minds so that people will not be able to hear what God wants to say. However, because of God’s love that triggered His mercy, that boy was brought out of the miry clay.
Except God intervenes, it is difficult for anyone to come off the hold of this person, and that’s why I’m appealing to as many people here this morning, when the altar call is made and you know that you are like the people in that far country that we described who have no regard for the things of God, please come and give your life to Jesus.
But very quickly let us look at some attributes of mercy, I will only be able to take two. One, the mercy of God is unlimited. He has mercy over all His works, nothing is spared, Psalm 145:9, and He has mercy over all people including sinners, Romans 11:30-32, then the mercy of God does not fail, it is potent. 1 Corinthians 13:8, it says charity, in that place love which is mercy does not fail; the mercy of God does not fade, the Bible tells us that in Lamentation 3:22, they are new every morning, it does not fade every day, is new every day.
You can’t say mercy is old, the mercy of God does not fade and the mercy of God sustains life, it is by the mercy of God that we are not consumed, and one that I want us to know, the mercy of God activates favor. Psalm 102:13, thou shall arise and have mercy upon Zion for the set time is come.
And finally, one thing about the mercy of God which we must all know, as good as the mercy of God is, there’s something about it that is a limitation, it is time bound. If mercy is availeth today and you don’t take it, mercy can expire, the mercy of God is time bound. Praise the living Jesus!
In Luke 10:46 – 52, blind Bartimaeus had just one opportunity and mercy was available, what was his cry? Lord Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me, and he received mercy. And guess what? That was the last time Jesus Christ passed through Jericho. If he had not cried for mercy that day, Jesus Christ would have passed and say He will come back, mercy is limited by time. That’s one limitation for mercy.
So if mercy of God is available as it is right now, brethren, please avail yourself of the mercy of God. Praise the living Jesus! What then should be our response to mercy? You don’t harden your heart, don’t struggle with it, Hebrews 3:15 – 19. Don’t struggle with the mercy of God. Praise the living Jesus!
And then don’t abuse the mercy, don’t frustrate it. Daddy GO told us a story, (I don’t have time for that) about a man who did money ritual, when it was about time for him to die, they brought him to church, they prayed for him, he was delivered, he continued to live. After some time they stopped seeing him in church and then they went visiting and said bro, we’ve not been seeing you, he said ah, they told me that I (he) swallowed that thing wrongly before.
What does that mean? He has gone to swallow another one, so this time around money came properly, then when it was about time they told him, he said ah there’s money now. So he got on a plane, he was traveling abroad that the witches and those people in Nigeria won’t find him, he died on the plane. You cannot abuse the mercy of God.
In conclusion, there are two sides to our existence in the world, are you a goat or are you a sheep? There are no inbetweens. Reality is that there are people in the far country even in our midst here, it’s not a location, it’s a state of being. If you are outside the presence of God, you are in a far country; if you are in God’s presence, you are with the Father. But the Father’s mercy is always there, ever ready to receive anyone who is already in the far country, Father is waiting and He’s singing only one song, ‘come back home’.
So I want to give opportunity to people here this morning, you are here, you know that you are in a far country outside the presence of God, outside the influence of God, come back home. Like that boy, he surrendered his life to Jesus and then everything became new and he was restored, the glory of God that was upon him which the devil had taken away, God recovered it. They give him clothes, that’s glory; they give him shoes, that’s glory.
[Altar call]
Let us rise up while we are waiting that they will come, let us begin to give thanks to God. Father, I thank You, thank You Lord for Your word that You’ve sent to me, Father I thank You. Thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we have given thanks.
I want us to pray two prayer points: Father please let Your mercy locate me. If any part of my life is like being in that far country, Father let Your mercy locate me and bring me back home. Let Your mercy locate me and bring me back home in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank You heavenly Father, in Jesus mighty name we prayed.
When blind Bartimaeus was called out when mercy located him, people shouted him down and say it’s not you, it’s not your type that He came for, but then he shouted the more and went to Jesus Christ. Every voice that wants to silence the response of mercy to your life, God will silence them in the name of Jesus.
So we are going to pray and say Father, every voice that wants to silence the mercy of God upon my life, Father please silence them, silence every voice that wants to silence Your response to call for mercy in my life in the mighty name of Jesus.
