The Crowd’s Struggle

Good morning, Salt Church. So glad you're with us today. Isn't it great that we can connect together on Sunday morning through technology? I'm so thankful for our tech team and everybody that has made this possible as we do church a little differently than we usually do it here this month, possibly next month. And I know that there is a lot of uncertainty right now still, but I want to let you know and I want to encourage you.

We're praying for you. Do not fear. The Lord is with you. He's doing great things in this and through this and he's going to continue to do great things. So I want you to trust in the Lord during this time.

Hey, won't you do me a favor? If you're watching, click a watch party on your page. Share it with your friends. Get together. I know some of you are with your families.

I know some of you with your friends. Some of you with your neighbors. Do a watch party and interact during this message. It's a great opportunity to just kind of discuss what we're sharing here today. So I'm just excited to see you this morning.

We are in a series or in the middle of a series called Prodigal. And we've been going and the idea of this series is to look at the many different perspectives of the prodigal son. If you don't know the story of the prodigal son, I think everybody knows the story of the prodigal son. And it's this amazing story that Jesus shared and it was about this son who took his inheritance from his father. And interestingly enough, his father gave him the inheritance.

He went to a far journey, a far away journey and a far away land. And he splurged and spent everything he had. And then a crisis came and he decided he was going to go back to his father because he realized that his father had everything that he needed. All the bread that he needed, all everything that he needed. Here he was at the lowest point in his life and he was thinking about what he had at home.

So he goes home hoping that his father would at least take him back as a slave or a servant in his household. But what does his father do? He receives him with open arms, brings him back in his home and they celebrate together. What a wonderful story. And we've been looking at the different perspectives of the people in this story.

The first week we looked at the believer's perspective. How do we as believers, as followers of Christ, see the prodigal and the prodigal in us? We all have prodigal parts that we need to work on in our lives. You can go back and listen to that message. Last week we looked at the prodigal himself, the lost soul, the lost person.

The outsider looking and searching for God and their perspective. How they see the church, how they see the people, and how they see God. You can go back and listen to that. We covered that last week. But this week I want to take it from another perspective.

What about the crowd? The people on the outside, the ones that were watching. Even outside the story, there were people listening to Jesus as he was sharing this incredible story. This profound story of this lost son. And the people, these people that we're talking about, that we're looking.

There was actually a group of people that were knowledgeable of the law. They knew about the law. They were called the Pharisees. And before you even go into the story of the prodigal son, you have the story of the lost coin. You have the story of the lost sheep.

And there's some context here because when Jesus was telling people and teaching people about the goodness of God, there were those people that were murmuring among themselves about what this man was doing. What this Jesus, what this person who claimed to be God, who claimed to be the Messiah, who people were calling the Messiah. They were murmuring among themselves. They were talking among themselves. And if you go back to Luke 15, the very beginning of the story, shoot away from the prodigal son, back to Luke 15.

We see this. And now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to him to listen. And both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble saying, The man receives sinners and eats with them. The man receives sinners and eats with them. Now let's talk about that for a minute.

So, he begins to tell, this is what leads him to actually talk about this parable. Because this parable was because of what they were saying. And he begins to, in some way, show them the importance in the heart of God for the lost person. Let's talk about the tax collector for a minute. We see the tax collector and the sinner.

The tax collector. A tax collector had no friends. No one liked them. They were dishonest. They would take advantage of you.

They were always looking out for number one. They were price gougers. They were thieves. And when one thought of a tax collector, they would instantly think of someone who was extremely unworthy to be in the presence of anybody. Holy.

Holy. Right? Why was that? Because tax collectors could do what they wanted to. They were hired out by the government to collect taxes and they could lay a fee on anybody, whatever amount they wanted to.

And no one had a choice but to pay them this full fee. So they would take not only the taxes from you that was owed to the Roman government. They could double, triple, quadruple what that worth was and then pocket the rest. So nobody, nobody liked a tax collector. And so we see the tax collectors and the sinners.

And here's Jesus hanging out with these tax collectors and sinners. And then there's these people over on the side. The crowd, the people, the Pharisees. We see the Pharisees and the scribes. The Pharisees were keepers of the tradition.

They were keepers of the oral tradition. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. And then there were the scribes, the interpreters and teachers of the law. They were like the lawyers in that day. So you had the Pharisees and the scribes.

And you could call them, if you want to, the church people of that day. Obviously the church hadn't started yet. It wasn't launched yet. But they were the religious people in that day. They were the people who held the law and held the rules of the law.

And they understood the traditions. They understood the laws. So these were the crowds. This was the crowd that was looking at Jesus and talking among themselves about him. But there was something that Jesus saw in their hearts.

It wasn't necessarily that the law was a bad thing. The law was a good thing. In fact, Jesus said, I didn't come to abolish the law, but I came to fulfill the law. So there was nothing wrong with the law. He saw something in these people's hearts, in the Pharisees and the scribes' hearts, that they came with an outward appearance, but internally they were far from God.

Internally they were thinking about themselves. And they were thinking that they are the ones, and they are the good ones, and they are the ones compared to the sinners, and compared to the tax collectors, and compared to the prostitutes. We are the holy ones. We are the worthy ones. And there was no heart for the people.

There was no heart. No, they didn't share the heart that God had for the people. And Jesus saw this, and he was not a friend of Pharisees, and he was not a friend of the scribes for this very reason. And they weren't interested. See, here's the thing.

They weren't interested in being holy. They were interested in others seeing them as holy. And this is common. And we see this even today in the church, in the church world. We can look like we have it all together.

We can have our clothes pressed perfectly. We can have our leather-bound Bibles. And we can do all these things. We can show up, and we can look the part. But internally we can be in a lot of chaos.

We can be in a lot of, in a position that could be far from God. I want you to just think about this just for a second. When you go to church on Sunday morning, I realize you're not going to church today because we're obeying the CDC and the President and all that stuff. But think about this just for a second. When you get ready for church in the morning, when you're getting ready to go to church, how much time do you spend?

How much time do you spend? How much time do you spend? Preparing your image, or how you look, instead of preparing your heart. How much time do you spend preparing your heart, as opposed to preparing yourself for church? Putting on your makeup, getting your hair together, putting on the perfect outfit, the suit.

Just think about that for a minute. Your outward appearance, or your inward appearance. What God sees, the inward. So from the prodigal view, let me just say this. From a prodigal view, church is a very loaded term.

And when we say the word church, that can mean a lot of things. Right? When you hear the word church, depending on where you come from, or what your experience about church, it could be one of four things that I've listed here. Firstly, it could be sadly institutional. Or it could be overly political.

Usually hypocritical. Horribly judgmental. Or horribly judgmental. That's sadly institutional. Overly political.

Usually hypocritical. Horribly judgmental. And at times, the church has been all of these things. Not all the time, but sometimes. The church has been all of these things.

In history, the church has been these things from time to time. And even currently, from time to time, we have been all of these things. And as a pastor, for those of you who have been unchurched and de-churched, maybe because of institutional, political, hypocritical, and judgmental reasons, let me just apologize for just a minute. Just apologize to you. But today, I don't want you to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Or if you'll just kind of lean in and take an opportunity to just hear this, perhaps something different will happen. Perhaps God will help you see a different perspective here. So let's just talk about the church for a minute. There's this thing in biblical interpretation called the law of first mention. Anytime anything is mentioned the first time in Scripture, it's important to take note of that specific word or that specific phrase or that event or that thing that you're studying.

And when we look at the church, the first time we ever see the church in Scripture is found in Matthew 16, 8, when Jesus says, Upon this rock, upon this rock, I will build my church. Now, let's just sit on that rock for a minute. Let's just talk about the rock. Upon this rock, what does that mean? Well, Jesus, let's just go back just for a second.

Right before he made that statement when he was with his disciples, he asked them an important question as they were sitting in this beautiful garden in Caesarea Philippi. He says, Who do the people say that I am? And they began to throw out different names. Some of them said, Oh, you're Abraham. You're one of the prophets.

You're Moses. You're this or that. That's what they say that you are. And then Jesus turns the question to them. He says, Who do you say that I am?

And this man named Peter, you all know Peter. He always got it wrong. Every time he spoke, he did something wrong. All of us can relate to Peter in some way because he was always getting it wrong. But in this instant, Peter got it right.

And he immediately responded to Jesus. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus responds right away. You are right to say this, Peter. And upon this rock, I will build my church.

He says, Upon this rock. What did he mean by that rock? That he claimed to be God. This is not a small rock. When we go to certain traditions, we see a lot of people think maybe Peter, you know, the succession of Peter, that he was speaking upon Peter.

He builds his church. But if we look at the Greek, original Greek terms, the Greek words in this, we see Peter, little rock. Peter, little rock. But upon this large mound, upon this large mountain, upon this strong fortress, I will build my church. Jesus was proclaiming his name.

He was proclaiming that this church would be built upon him. That his claim, he pulled off something that no one else could pull off. He was claiming that he could do that. And he did that. He gave his life.

He gave his life for our sin. And he died on a cross. And not only did he do that, he rose from the dead on the third day, proving that he was God. So he could stake his claim on being God based on that very statement. Upon this rock, upon the one who died and rose again.

And if we call on the name of the Lord, we can be saved. Under no other name can we be saved but under the name of Jesus. And he staked that claim. And then he said, upon this rock, I build my church. The first time we hear church.

The word for church in the original Greek language is ekklesia. And ekklesia was anything that was considered a gathering or an assembly around an idea or a movement. And this was a very common phrase in that day. People knew what an ekklesia was. There were all kinds of ekklesias.

There were political ekklesias. There were social ekklesias. There were other religious ekklesias. People assembling around an idea. But he took a common phraseology and used it exclusively.

And he says, I will build my church upon me. So here's a statement I want to make. Here's what the church of Jesus Christ is all about. The assembly of people who recognize the identity of Jesus. The rock, the foundation, the identity of Jesus.

They repent of their sins and are forgiven. And they now assemble around Jesus. Let me say it this way. The assembly of forgiven people around Jesus. Saved people gathering around Jesus.

So it's not a building. It's not an institution. It's not an exclusive club. It's not candles. It's not pulpits.

It's not radical worship experiences and lights and all those things. They're good things. They're ways that we can leverage things to communicate the gospel. But that's not what it's about. They just aren't the church.

The church is the gathering. It's the gathering around the exclusivity of Jesus and his gospel to save mankind. So the church has always been about reaching the lost. That's been the first priority from the beginning. And every teacher of the church in the New Testament.

And everything we see is maturing, discipling, correcting, equipping. Whether they're doing it in one way, shape, or form in the church. It's all about the equipping of the saints for the salvation of mankind for the glory of Jesus Christ. A gathering around the idea of Jesus, the Savior of the world, and his heart for his people. But there's always been, listen to this, there's always been a tendency to drift away from that.

There's always been that tendency. And after Jesus' resurrection, if we fast forward to the New Testament a little bit. Away from Jesus' teaching here of the prodigal. And we want to look at it from another perspective. We see after the resurrection, the people were being saved.

Revival was breaking out. Lots of people were coming to Christ. Remember the upper room, the Acts 2, the fire falls. They get empowered to go out to preach the gospel. And in one day 5,000 people come and embrace the notion of this man named Jesus.

And this was very unsettling for what was going on in that day. The delicate balance of power between the leaders of the temple and of Rome was disturbed. And there was a resistance. And the disciples were arrested and flogged. And then Stephen was martyred.

And full scale persecution broke out across the whole church. And the Jesus people, this thing called the way. There wasn't even Christianity tied to it yet. They just called it the way. And all the Jesus people began to scatter.

And they took it. Their message with them. And it raged for three years. And then one of the leaders of this persecution, Saul of Tarsus, come to be converted and to know Jesus. And 14 years later, he took off and began to plant churches.

And fast forward even further, 20 years after Jesus' resurrection, we have this issue in Jerusalem. And it was the very first controversy ever in the church. And that controversy would continue over and over and over and resurface over and over and over again throughout history. Namely, how good does a person have to be in order to be a part of the church? Who is the church for?

And Paul was running around inviting all these non-Jews to be a part of the church. And they came in and they had all all these things. And it was very disruptive because that many of the Jews assumed that because of Jesus and because he followed he was a fulfillment of prophecy and he followed the law that that these Christians had to become Jews. And and and here's my hunch. Here's what I'm thinking.

If you aren't in church today or maybe you're not in church because your mother and father decided not to come to church anymore. So they took you out of church or maybe you went with your your grandmother grandfather and something happened in church. I think this is probably one of the key issues why you haven't been back to church is because because of this controversy. How good do you have to be to be a part of the church? Church.

And if you are a Christian for more than 10 years, you wrestle with this too, right? Because after all, the Bible has a moral code, you know, and and we're accountable to it. And in the church, we often have this collision of grace and truth and grace and truth. But here's the deal. And I can't even begin to understand this, but this is what I find in scripture.

And this is just this just makes a lot of of unclear sense, if that makes sense. I think that was a play on words there, right? But in Jesus, and this is what John says, he was full of grace and truth. We often use it like the balance of grace and truth. We got to balance out grace and truth.

But it says in Jesus, it was a fullness of grace and truth, full of grace and truth. So the church, if we're not careful, will drift towards what is familiar and what is comfortable and what is manageable. And this is such an interesting story in this scripture here, because this controversy that took place in Acts 15, all of us are prone to think about, think like that. And, you know, it's funny if you're not a believer in the Bible and you're like, it's just a bunch of blah, blah, blah. Look, you can't just make stuff up like this.

This is real stuff. So follow along with me. This church is only 20 years old. It's Jerusalem Council is what we call this. They deal with this controversy.

It happened in 48, 50 A.D. And if you'll turn with me to Acts 15, it says, certain individuals came down to Judea and Antioch and were teaching the believers. Unless you were circumcised according to the customs taught by Moses, you can't be saved. So you're going to, wait a minute here, you know, I'm sure they were like, wait, what?

What? You got to be circumcised? You got to, like, that's surgery? You have to have surgery to become a Christian? Like saved by surgery?

Well, I don't know. I thought kind of interesting that, that, uh, I bet the new members class was really interesting, right? The men were going like, ah, you know, honey, you can take the kids, go on in, you know, but I love Jesus and all. But, but surgery? Circumcision?

I don't know about that. You have to join the Moses Club before you join the Jesus Club? I bet that was a very interesting new members class. And in verse 2, it says this, this brought Paul and Barnabas into dispute and debate with them because Paul was going around teaching salvation, came by faith in Jesus Christ alone, and all these people were coming in, and, and they had all this baggage and all these things, and, and now, now they were hearing other things about what you had to do, and there was all this debate going on. So it says, and continuing on, so Paul and Barnabas were appointed along with the other believers to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the elders.

They were the leaders of the church for this question. And then in verse 4, it says, and when they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, the ecclesia, gathering around Jesus, right? And the apostles and the elders to whom they reported everything God had done through them. And in verse 5, it says, then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses. Let me just explain that just for a second.

Law of Moses. Now some of you are thinking the Ten Commandments, the big ten, you know, yeah, lie, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, this and that. But let me tell you this, there were 613 plus laws in the Old Testament. How long would it take somebody to learn 613 laws? I mean, that would take a lifetime.

You would die before you even became a Christian. Could you imagine the new members class? I mean, it would take forever. I mean, some class, right? But this is what they were teaching.

And some of the Gentiles were like, and some of you who are Gentiles are like, that's absolutely absurd. Why would anybody do that? Why would anybody put that much requirement on somebody to come into the church? But before you get all open-minded, and before you judge them harshly, if you've been a Christian more than 10 years, you have this tendency too. We have a tendency to settle into a version of Christianity, and once in a while, you know, you come into a situation, whether you visit another church, or say your daughter brings home a friend.

And he's a Christian. And you look at him, and you're like, doesn't look like a Christian to me. I mean, look what he's wearing. Look what he's doing. What is that?

And what is going on here? And we become a little pharisaic, and we become a little judgmental. And suddenly, we have our own standards for Christianity, right? Verse 7 says this, and after much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them. And I love Peter.

He stands up. He says, brothers, you know that some time ago, God made a choice among the Gentile, among you, that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. And this is key right here in verse 8. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them. God that knows the heart, underline that if you're following your Bible, showed that he accepted them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did with us.

Give them the Holy Spirit? Know their heart? You mean to tell me if they can be accepted into church even before they are pure? I don't know their heart, but I know what they wear. I don't know their heart, but I know what music they listen to.

I don't know their heart, but I know their behavior. But he says, God knows their heart. And then in verse 9, he says, he did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by works. No. You got to work harder?

You got to go through the members class? You got to get all the dots on the I's and the crosses on the T's? No. He said by faith. He knew their hearts by faith.

He purified their hearts by faith. Is that possible? Well, Peter thought. And Peter was adamant about it. They have purified hearts but they have some bad and offensive ways.

They have Gentile habits. They don't eat right. They don't dress right. They're offensive and that's where we tend to go with that. But God said in Himself He sees their hearts.

Peter believed it. Jesus spent time with sinners and tax collectors and He knew it. And God sees their hearts. Verse 10 says, Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the Gentiles the yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? And it probably went something like this.

Hey Bob, you know, Bob, you're a good Jewish boy, right? You're a good Jewish boy. Have you ever sinned? No, well, I saw you giving sacrifices the other day. Have you sinned?

Well, yeah, of course I've sinned. I mean, I've done it here and there. Well, how about you, Jim? You know, have you sinned? Have you broke one of the Ten Commandments?

Have you? Have you? And yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. So why are you making it hard for the Gentile who's just come to the knowledge of the gospel of Christ?

And you're throwing all this heaviness and this weight on them. So why would you expect a believer who's never heard of the law to do the same? Let's not be hypocrites here is basically what he was saying. And then shoot down to verse 11. He says, no, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are because God knows the heart.

That's the gospel. That's the message of the church. Unmerited favor. See, here's the deal. God can purify heart before you can purify your life.

God can purify heart before you purify your life. He can do it before you can drop those nasty habits. He can purify your heart before you can fix your marriage. He can purify your heart even before you face the fact that you have insecurities that drive you to participate in behaviors that you're just ashamed of. If you can do if he could do that for you, he could do that for prodigal grace and truth.

And then James chimes in the brother of Jesus. And if you don't you know, this is probably the best argument for God or Jesus being God. If you can convince your brother. That you're God. You got to be God.

And here's James standing up. He's one of the leaders of the church and he he says this down in verse 19. He says, it is my judgment, therefore, that we should. And this is so important. And this is the biggest statement, I think, of the scripture.

And I think one of the biggest statements in the Bible. It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead of 613 laws. And he brings it down to just three. Look at this in verse 20.

He says, instead, we should write to them telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols from sexual immorality and from the meat of strangled animals and their blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest time and is read in synagogues on every Sabbath. So what did he do? He took 613 laws. 613 laws.

He reduced it down to abstain from food polluted by idols, sexual immorality, and meat of strangled animals. Really, it's two. Abstain from sexual immorality and don't offend the Jews. Abstain from sexual immorality and please don't offend. Well, what about lying and cheating?

Oh, we're not going to worry about that right now because it's just too much for them. We're going to deal with those as they come right now. We're not going to make it hard for them to come in the church. So, down in verse 30, they say, so they were sent off and went down to Antioch where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. And the people read it and were glad for it and they were encouraged by the message, especially the men.

The church dodged the first potential split and it was really over moral imperatives to do the right thing and grace. So, I want to quickly and in closing make three statements here. Three statements. Because all of us have the potential to drift. No matter what denomination, whatever background, whatever type of church, whatever gathering, whatever group, there's always the potential to drift, to drift to be, to make Christianity the way we think Christianity should be rather than God.

So, the first one is this. There's always a drift. Let's try to avoid the drift towards insiders and away from outsiders. Every local church drifts towards being insider focused at some point. The Jewish believers did.

They were comfortable around the people. And we do the same. I do it. You do it. We like people that are like us.

We want to be around people that think like us and act like us and dress like us. And we always have the potential when we have to fight that urge and that drift. And it's natural to cater to the paying customer. I never get a complaint from somebody outside the church about our music or about our kids program or about anything, you know. And we've got to be intentional about not being insider focused.

Insider focused. And this is what I would say. Pray for boldness. A healthy church is a growing church, right? Big church is nothing, but a growing church means everything.

And we want to be a growing church. A growing church. So we pray that we will be people used by God, equipped for his glory, to reach those in every way, in every method possible. As long as it reaches people for the glory of Jesus Christ. Number two, we want to try to avoid the drift towards law and away from grace.

And theologically, we know that we don't treat people bad. We shouldn't treat people bad. But practically, we get this wrong all the time because we always have a tendency to drift towards policies and a lot of categories. Policies and categories. Policies and categories.

For the Jews, it was categories. The Gentiles are out and the Jews are in. Let's put the Gentiles over in a category and put them over here because they have to do this and this and this before they come in. And then they created policies around it. This is how they're going to get in.

So here's my statement. Fewer policies and more conversations. We need to have fewer policies. Stop creating policies and have more conversations. And this gets messy.

But remember, God knows the heart. God knows the heart of the people. And God responds to the heart of the Gentiles before they change all their bad habits. And I'm sure he did the same for you. And thirdly, we need to avoid the drift towards preserving rather than advancing.

Preserving. We always have a tendency to preserve. If you're a business owner and you've grown to a middle, to a large corporation, you know this because when you started, you had nothing and everything was risky. So you threw it all on the table because you didn't have anything anyway. But as you grew, you became an institution and you had staff to pay for.

You had all this stuff going on. You put a lot of things in place and you became less risky. And then your organization became less vision driven and more preserve what we have driven. And everybody has a tendency and it doesn't make a lot of sense. But as we grow as a church, as we grow as Salt Church, we want to do everything we can to take risks.

The larger we grow, wherever level we're at, we always want to be that church to take risks for the glory of the kingdom of God. Because God has not called us to preserve anything. This is about impacting a generation of people past us. A next generation of leaders. So in conclusion, let me just make a few statements.

So we have to swim against the current. It's a hard drift. And we have to work hard not to be a church where grace and truth are in conflict, but grace and truth coexist. So here's three commitments. Let's be more concerned with who we are reaching rather than who we are keeping.

Let's always err on the side of grace. And let's remain open-handed. Because James was right, we should not make it difficult for those who are turning to God. And by His grace, when people are with us, perhaps they will experience both. Both the grace and truth of a Savior.

If you're out there, and maybe you've been a Christian for more than ten years, maybe this is a time where you need to rethink your message of ministry. And how your heart is for those who are outsiders. If you're an outsider, can I tell you, the fullness of grace and truth is waiting for you. He's reaching out for you. And He wants a personal relationship with you.

If your heart is drawn towards Him today, if you've heard something, maybe you heard something in this message and it just sparked you. Maybe you heard something in the music today and it sparked you. It had done something, it pulled you, you were being drawn towards something bigger than yourself. That's the Holy Spirit seeking you, a God, a Father. You may be a prodigal, but there is a Father waiting at home for you.

And He's waiting by the house, welcoming you back home. He wants you to come home to Him. Maybe that's you today. And the Bible says, He who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. He died on the cross for that very reason.

He rose again the third day, proving that He was God. He did something that nobody else could do and He wants a relationship with you. If you'd make that decision today with me, by praying with me, by believing with me. Father, in the name of Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God. That you died on the cross for my sin.

I believe that you rose again. And I believe that you paid the ultimate price to have a relationship with me. So come into my heart, come into my life. Be a part of me, Lord Jesus. Be a part of everything that I am.

Be a part of, come in and make your place with me. Change me from the inside out. Thank you so much for being with us today. Just stay tuned for some things coming up. We're going to be online a lot lately.

We're talking about virtual small groups and a lot of other things. If you gave your life to Christ, please do that. Also this, if you're new with us, if you're a first time guest. If you would just write in the comment section. If you give your name, address.

We want to send you a Wawa gift card in the mail. We'd love to connect with you. So God bless you. Have a great week. We'll see you back next week for part four of our series, Prodigal.