The Far Country | John Swain

Join John as he explains the importance of understanding three stories and what they tell us about two kingdoms and one campaign. Luke Chapter 15

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I want to share something with you this morning. It's something I spoke about a while ago, and it and it comes from a concern that we haven't really fully grasped what our salvation is all about. Richard bought a word last Sunday and people applauded him for what he bought. But the conversations I've had with various people, not just since last Sunday, but up until that, seems to suggest that people haven't really fully grasped the implications of their salvation. So to help, excuse me, I want to tell you a story you already know. In fact, I want to tell you three stories you already know, and I want to suggest to you this morning that almost every time they're preached, they're only preached about half right. Doesn't mean to say I'm going to get it fully right this morning, but we'll perhaps go a little bit further than normal. So the one story is a shepherd loses one sheep out of a hundred, he leaves the 99, goes searching, finds it, carries it home on his shoulders, and throws a party. That's one of the stories. The second story is a woman loses a coin at one out of ten. She lights a lamp, sweeps the whole house, and searches every corner until she finds it, and then she throws a party. Thank you. And the third story is a young man takes his inheritance early, goes to a far country, wastes everything, ends up feeding pigs, comes to his senses and heads home. His father sees him while he's a long way off, runs to meet him, throws a party. The older brother has been working in the field all day, hears the music, and refuses to come in. Three stories, three parties, three times the same announcement. There will be joy, enormous, disproportionate, irrepressible joy over the one who is lost and is found. Most of us have heard these stories. Many of you, if you've been in church, you've probably heard them since childhood. They're beloved, they're true, they're glorious. And most of the time, when they are preached, the congregation goes home, having heard a beautiful story about God's love for people who make mistakes. That reading is not wrong, but it's incomplete in a way that matters. Because Jesus was not telling three pastoral stories about a loving father, he was telling three dispatches from a cosmic war. He was describing the nature, the dynamics, and the cost of a campaign that was already in progress. When he spoke, that uh that was already in progress when he spoke, that reached its decisive turning point on a Roman cross at Calvary and has not yet been concluded. To read these stories as Jesus intended them, you need to know the world he was operating in. You need to know the world map he was dealing with. And the map is unlike anything most of us were taught in Sunday school. The world of the Bible is not a two-character story. Most of us receive a vision that goes something like this: God, humanity, we made the mess, and God's plan to fix it. That version is not wrong, but it misses a layer of the story that changes everything. The Bible, both Old and New Testament, describes a world populated by a divine council, spiritual beings, sons of God who inhabit the heavenly realm and participate in the governance of creation. Psalm 82 opens. God stands in the divine council, in the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. Job opens with the sons of God presenting themselves before Yahweh. Genesis 1, verse 26 has God speaking in the plural, let us make man. Who's he talking to? Is he talking to himself or is he talking to a council of spirit beings? The New Testament names these spirit beings as rulers, authorities, powers, principalities, and thrones. And these are not metaphors for human institutions, but real governing powers in the unseen realm. At Babel in Genesis 11, something happened that most of us were never taught to see. Yahweh scatters the nations. Do you remember they tried to build a town, make a name for themselves, and God comes down, confuses their language, and scatters them? It's the scattering of the nations. But Deuteronomy gives us a detail that the Genesis account leaves out. It says, When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, that's what happened at Babel, he fixed the borders of the people according to the number of the sons of God. For the Lord's portion in his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. Now some of your Bibles may say he apportioned it according to the sons of Israel. But they found later manuscripts or older manuscripts, sorry, in in the Dead Sea scrolls that actually use this term sons of God. And the Bible that we have has come from translations and texts that where it's been um read as the sons of Israel. But it it the further you go back, the sons of God is the more accurate translation. And this is the translation that Bible translators are now using. So if you've got uh an ESV Bible, uh English Standard Version, you'll see that it says Sons of God. So just in case you look it up and you find it different, that's the reason why. So when the 70 nations were scattered at Babel, Yahweh assigned each one to a member of his divine council, a son of God, a spiritual governor, to administrate on his behalf. He kept Israel as his own direct portion. From that moment forward, the world is divided. Israel under Yahweh's direct governance, other nations under the administration of spiritual beings who were meant to represent the true king. But they didn't. Instead of pointing the nations towards God, they drew worship to themselves. Instead of governing with justice, they oppressed. It says, How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute. This is God speaking to those sons of God at the beginning of the chapter that we read earlier on. And the verdict over these spiritual beings is nevertheless, you shall die like men, you shall fall like any prince. The rebel governor's positions are declared forfeit. And the psalm ends with what becomes the entire trajectory of the New Testament. It says, Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations, not just Israel, all of them, every nation that Babel scattered and the rebel powers claimed, Yahweh declares them his inheritance and announces his intention to take them back. What this means is that the world Jesus inhabited has a geography no map can show us. There is territory under Yahweh's direct governance, and there is territory under rebel governance, and under the administration of beings who have gone rogue, who extract from rather than serve the people under them, who are running a counter-kingdom that claims the loyalties of everyone born into it. Paul describes the transfer between these territories with precise words. Writing to the Colossians, he says, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. The Greek word translated transferred is methysteme, to move from one jurisdiction to another. This is not the language just of forgiveness, it's the language of a border crossing, a change of sovereign, a change of which cosmic government you choose to live under. And when Paul names the commission Jesus gave him at his conversion, the risen Christ tells him he's been sent to the Gentiles to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. From darkness to life, from power of Satan to God. This is two kingdom language, not two religions, two kingdoms, two governments, two sovereign powers. And Paul's entire ministry is the operation of drawing people out of the one and into the other. The New Testament uses political and military language for salvation with a consistency that is striking once you notice it. Ransom, buying back a prisoner of war, redemption, the price paid to transfer a slave from one to another. Citizenship, colony, ambassador, soldier. These words do not fit a transaction between a guilty individual and a merciful God. They fit a defection. A person crossing from one kingdom to another, pledging allegiance to a new sovereign, taking up a new identity and a new mission, living in occupied territory. And this is why persecution follows the gospel wherever it goes. Not because people are offended by religion, it's because a threatened regime is losing subjects, and every conversion is a territorial loss. When someone crosses the border, the regime is left, they left, does not treat it as a private matter. It treats it as a standing challenge to the legitimacy of its government. The side you left knows you change sides and responds accordingly. With that map in mind, let's go back to Luke 15 because Jesus is about to describe the same geography, the same war, the same campaign three times in story form. The first two stories establish the pattern before the third one shows us the whole thing from the inside. So Luke 15 opens with a provocation. Tax collectors and sinners are crowding round Jesus. The Pharisees and scribes are grumbling. This man receives sinners and eats with them. This is not merely social commentary. In the first century, eating with someone was a covenantal act. You shared a table only with those who belong to your community, your world, your kingdom. When Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, he's not breaking social rules. He's making a statement about who belongs at the king's table. He's enacting the campaign in real time, and the Pharisees, who consider themselves guardians of Yahweh's people, are furious. Jesus tells three stories, and they build. So Jesus says, first of all, what man of you having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the open country and go after the one that is lost until he finds it. The shepherd leaves the ninety and nine in what Luke calls the Eramos, the wilderness, the open country, the borderland. In Bible cosmology, the wilderness is not merely inconvenient terrain, it's the domain of wandering powers, the habitat of unclean spirits, the territory beyond the shepherd's protected jurisdiction. The lost sheep has not simply wandered off course, it has drifted into rebel administered borderland. And the shepherd doesn't wait. He enters the territory where the lost one is, he searches until he finds it. He does not send a servant, the sovereign enters the occupied borderland himself. And when he finds it, he lays it on his shoulders and carries it home. The sheep can't make the journey, the return journey, in it under its own powers. The transfer from the wilderness back to the fold is accomplished entirely by the one who came looking. And then he calls together his friends and neighbors and says, Rejoice with me, for I found my sheep that was lost. Jesus makes it explicit. So he says, There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Heaven declares, the council celebrates. This is not merely sentiment. Every person extracted from rebel domain is in a territorial loss for the rebel regime. The celebration in heaven is a military report. The campaign is advancing. One more subject has been retrieved. Her dowry, worn as a headband, the visible mark of a household membership, and one is lost. She lights a lamp, sweeps the whole house, and searches carefully until she finds it. The coin is lost in darkness. It's not ceased to exist. It is simply invisible. Presented but unfindable. Valuable but inaccessible, carrying the king's face but out of reach. The Bible is insistent that the image of God, the Tessalem in Hebrew, is stamped on every human being. It's not merely a spiritual quality, it's a royal seal. It's a mark of the true sovereign on every person who has ever lived. However long somebody's been under rebel governance, however thoroughly the far country has shaped them, the king's image cannot be entirely erased. The rebel administration did not make them, it cannot unmake what the true king stamped on them. And here's something even more striking. When that person is found and crosses the border, their body becomes a temple. The intersection of divine presence with physical space, planted now in the location where they live, and work and breathe. The rebel powers do not miss this. A defector who carries the king's image and now houses the king's spirit is not merely a lost sheep returned. They're a beachhead, a point of the true kingdom's presence established in territory the rebel powers still claim to own. The woman lights a lamp. She doesn't wait for the morning. She doesn't hope the coin will turn up on its own. She introduces light into the darkness and searches every corner. This is the gospel as active illumination in rebel administrative administered territory until what was lost becomes visible and the sovereign's image catches the light. And again, the celebration. There is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Before the angels. The divine council is watching. The council marks the loss to the rebel regime. The coin with the king's face has been found and it's back in circulation. Two stories, one pattern. The sovereign enters the territory where the lost one is, searches actively, retrieves what the rebel dominion has claimed, and the whole council celebrates. Because this is what the campaign was designed to produce. Now Jesus tells the third story, and this time we hear it from the inside. And he divided the property between them. A first century Jewish audience would have felt this like a blow. Asking for your inheritance while your father is still alive is not impatience. It's a declaration that the relationship between the two is over. You are worth more to me as a corpse, is what the some must say than as a father. The inheritance is what you received when the head of the household is gone. To demand it now is to dissolve that bond. And the father complies. He doesn't argue, doesn't withhold, he divides the estate and lets the son go. And this is not weakness, this is the posture of a sovereign who honours the freedom of the image bearers, even when that image bearer is about to walk into catastrophe. The true king does not imprison his people in safety, he watches the road. Not many days later, the younger son gathers all he had and took a journey into the far country. Let's just stop on those words. With the map we have drawn, this is not merely a long journey. For a first century Jewish hero, a far country was Gentile territory, the domain of the nations, the land assigned to the rebel powers at Babylon, the jurisdiction under the administration of beings who had declared themselves independent of the true king. Going to a far country was a border crossing. The son is leaving the territory under the father's direct governance and placing himself under a different sovereign. He doesn't know what he's doing, but the parable knows, Jesus knows, and the geography is precise. It's not a metaphor for bad behavior, it's a description of a jurisdictional transfer from one kingdom to another, from one sovereign's governance to another. And there he squanders his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his field to feed the pigs. The pig detail is not incidental. Pigs are quintessentially unclean in Jewish law, associated with Gentile territory, with the nations, with the domain outside of Yahweh's governance. A Jewish boy feeding pigs, merely poverty, but maximum degradation. He is serving the system of the far country on its own terms, working for the lords of that territory, and receiving nothing. He longed to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. No one gave him anything. That is the precise theological statement about the nature of rebel governance. The powers of the far country do not feed their subjects, they consume them. The domain of darkness is not a shepherd, it's a predator. It takes, it extracts, it depletes, and then it leaves you hungry and empty, working for a system that will never give back what it takes. When he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's servants have more than enough bread? But I perish here with hunger. He came to himself. From the image that had been stamped on him before the far country ever got hold of him. And now he turns, and I want to be precise about what to call this, because the words matter more than you might think. It's not a journey. It's not a decision. It's not a new beginning for this young man. It's a defection. When someone defects, five specific things happen simultaneously. First, they abandon a previous loyalty. Second, they incur the hostility of the regime they have left. Third, they accept the protection and authority of the regime they are joining. And fourth, they take on a new identity and new obligations. And fifth, and this is the one nobody talks about, in the eyes of their former regime, they have become traitors. A person whose value as a subject is permanently lost and whose presence in the former territory now constitutes a threat. You know, that's what you are as believers. You are traitors from the kingdom of darkness, and you've been transferred into the kingdom of light. That's why the kingdom of darkness is so against Christians in general. You're a threat to them. Every single one of these elements is present in what the Son does when he comes to himself. He abandons his previous loyalty to the far country and its way of life. He incurs the risk of the return journey. He does not know what waits for him on the other side of the border, and he's placing himself at the mercy of a sovereign he abandoned. He will take on a new identity, though he doesn't know it yet. It will be sonship restored, and in the eyes of the rebel domain, he is a traitor, a subject walking away, taking himself out of the regime's territory permanently beyond its claims. And the son rehearses his speech. Treat me as one of your hard servants. He's planning defection, but his imagination of the king he is defecting to has been so thoroughly shaped by the rebel domain that the best he can conceive is of a better class of servitude. He can't think of anything else. He can be a servant to his father. It's because he doesn't really know the father that he's going back to at that point. He doesn't know that the father has been watching the road all the time he's been gone. While he was still a great way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. He was still a great way off. He has not crossed the threshold of the estate, he's not completed his speech, he's not yet demonstrated that the defection is genuine. He's still on the border road, and the father runs to him. To understand the weight of this, you need to understand what running meant for a patriarch in ancient Near East. A head of a household ran for no one. Running required lifting your robe and exposing your legs. So the the he would have to reach down, grab the hem from behind, pull it through up in his legs, and tuck it into his belt so he could run. A very undignified sight. It was scandalous. People of honor move slowly and let others come to them. The patriarch's stillness was itself a statement of authority. But the father lifts his robe and runs. He moves towards the sun before the sun has crossed the threshold, before the speech, before the repayment of any debt, before any evidence of trustworthiness, while the sun is still a long way off. In the divine council framework that we've been talking about, this is the cosmic sovereign doing what no earthly sovereign does. Personally descending to meet the one coming out of the rebel domain. The king lowers himself, not as weakness, but as a logic of his own character. The character that is most fully expressed when he bears the cost of reclaiming the one who was lost. Now I want to take you somewhere just briefly that will permanently change how you read this story and read this scene. Because what the father is doing is not only a father's love, he is acting as a Goel, a kinsman redeemer. And to understand what that means, we need to go briefly back to the book of Ruth. Naomi and her family leave Bethlehem and go to the land of Moab, outside of Israel territory, because there's a famine in the land where they are. And while they're there in Moab, her two sons marry, and during that time her husband and her two sons die. Naomi hears that the famine has ended, and so chooses to return back to her hometown of Beth. She wants to go with her, and uh she tries to persuade them not to go, and Orpah, the one daughter-in-law, goes back to her family in Moab. Ruth, the other daughter-in-law, is insistent and says, Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people, your God will be my God. So she's changing allegiance, even in that statement. And when they get back home, they're destitute, got nothing. Ruth goes out to glean in the field while the harvest is on, gleaning, just going around picking up the bits that are left behind. And um her their land has been sold and they've got nothing. And Boaz, who is a relative of Naomi's husband, wants to redeem both the land and Ruth and to buy back what was lost, to restore it to the family, and to bring a foreign woman from outside Israel into the covenant lineage. But there's a closer kinsman who has the legal right of first refusal. In front of the city elders, Boaz approaches this uh closer relative, and the closer relative initially agrees to redeem the land until he hears that he's got to marry Ruth in the process, and uh he refuses to do that, and so he enacts an ancient custom, and it says, Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging. To confirm a transaction, one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other. It was the manner of attesting in Israel. The closer kinsman removes his sandal and gives it to Boaz. So what's happening here? The closer kinsman is enacting a transfer of position. He is stepping down, he's removing from his foot the symbol of his right to walk the land, to claim the territory, to occupy the position of primary redeemer. And he is placing it in Boaz's hands. So one goes lower and Boaz goes higher. The sandal is the symbol of the elevated position. Whoever wears it is the one who holds the right. Boaz then redeems the land, takes Ruth as his wife, and brings a foreign woman, a woman from outside the covenant, from a nation assigned to other powers at Babel, into the lineage that will produce David, King David, and through David the Messiah. The Goal act of stepping up reverses the loss and restores what should never have been lost. So keep that in mind because we now go back to Luke 15 and watch what happens when the father greets his son on the road. The son begins his speech, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, and I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father cuts right into the speech at that point and interrupts him, and before he can say another word, the father says, Make a servant. He says, Um, the father calls to the servants and says, Quickly, bring the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatty calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive, he was lost and is found, and they began to celebrate. Three gifts, each one is rest is a restoration of identity and status, and together they are the Goals declaration that this belongs to my household. The robe is the covering of honor, the garment of the household replacing the degraded clothing of a man who'd been feeding pigs in a far country. And the moment it goes on, you cannot tell from looking at him that he was in rebel territory an hour ago. He looks like a son of the house, he looks like he belongs there. And this robe represents the robe of righteousness that Jesus clothes us with, and through which the Father sees us, and our sin is covered. The ring is a signet ring, not jewelry, but legitimate authority. In the ancient world, the signet ring was the seal of the household. The one who carried it has the right to conduct the master's business, to speak in the master's name, to act on behalf of the household in this world. Are you getting this? This is you. Yeah? He's not reinstating his sorry, he's reinstating his legal standing as a member and representative of the household. And then the sandals. Remember what we just saw in Ruth? The one who removes his sandals is stepping down, the one who receives the sandals is being elevated. The closer kinsman steps back so that Boaz can step up. The sandals mark the higher position, the right to walk the land, to claim the territory, to occupy the role of primary redeemer. Now look at what happens in Luke 15. The father has already lowered himself publicly, scandalously, culturally, shockingly, by running. A patriarch who lifts up his robe and runs to meet someone on a road is in the language of Ruth removing his sandal. He's lowering himself. He's stepping down from the dignity of his position. He's made himself lower so that someone, something, can happen. And now he gives the sandals to the sun. Servants in the ancient world went barefoot. Barefoot was a visible mark of the lowest position. Not merely poor, but unfree. The son arrives from the far country in the condition of a barefoot servant of the rebel administration, hoping to negotiate a place among the household's hired help. The father puts sandals on his feet, lifts him off the ground, off the ground from the far country, regular domain to the in the household, himself by running, and he elevates the son by giving him the sandals. So this is the Goel transaction. The kinsman redeemer pays the cost himself and gives the elevation to the one who has no right to it. The father absorbs the shame of the run, so the son can wear the sandals. When Paul writes in Philippians that Jesus did not count equality with God, something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, he humbled himself, and then God highly exalted him, he's describing the same movement. The sovereign lowers himself so that those under rebel governance, that's you and me, can be raised. The run in the parable is the incarnation in miniature. The sandals given to the Son are the elevation that Ephesians 2 describes. That we've been raised up with him and seated with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Bring the fatty calf and kill it, and let's eat and celebrate. For this, my son was dead and is alive, he was lost and is found. Dead and alive, lost and found. These are not hyperboles. To live in the far country under rebel governance is a kind of death. Existence under a power that extracts rather than gives, that blinds rather than illuminates, that consumes rather than nourishes. The return from that territory is genuine resurrection. A real crossing from death to life, a methysteme, the transfer that Paul describes in Colossians 1:13, completed in the life of one boy on a road in the ancient world. And the feast they celebrate is not merely a party, it's a covenant meal. The son now sits at a different table, he belongs to a different household, he drinks from a different cup. Paul's warning in 1 Corinthians 10, you cannot drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons, is not about spiritual contamination, but about divided table allegiances between rival kings. The son who has eaten pods with the pigs now sits at the Father's table. The table declares, This one has changed sides. This one is now ours. And every time church we gather at the Lord's Supper, it's enacting this same declaration that we belong to the Father's table, that the cup we drink announces whose kingdom we are in. Now, briefly, the oldest son in the field, and he came and drew near the house and heard the music. The elder son had been working, he'd been faithful, he'd stayed in the right territory, he'd kept the right rules, and when he hears the celebration, he's furious and will not go in. The father comes out to him, he moves towards both sons, he's always moving towards those who are on the outside. Look, these many years I've served you and never disobeyed you, yet you never gave me a goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, when this son of yours came, the elder son has been in the father's house for 40 years and has completely misunderstood what kind of house it is. He has related to the father in entirely transactional terms. Years of service in exchange for reward, obedience in exchange for recognition. He has the law, but he has never learned the Lordgiver's heart. He has stayed in the right territory, but he has never become a beachhead in it. You know, the church is a colony, not a ghetto that withdraws from the world, but a beachhead embedded within it, demonstrating by the way it lives that the different governments is possible. The elder son is in the father's house, but living as though he were in the far country's economy of merit transaction. He's not been shaped by the household he inhabits, he's been shaped by a theology of deserving. And when he hears that someone from the nation, someone who has been under rebel governance, feeding pigs amongst the Gentiles, has been welcomed back and given a signet ring and sandals and a robe, he's not relieved, he's offended. The Great Commission offended him. The table open to all nations offended him. The father running to meet people coming out of the domain of darkness offended him. For those with ears to hear in this room, this is the portrait of the Jewish religious establishment reaction to everything Jesus was doing. Eating with tax collectors, healing on the Sabbath, going to Samaria, touching lepers, receiving sinners. The elder son's theology cannot accommodate a father who runs. The father's response is the gentlest devastation in the New Testament. He says, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. Everything is already yours. You've been in the richest household in the universe and been too focused on what others have received to notice what you yourself already have. It was necessary to celebrate. For this, your brother was dead and has come to life. He was lost and is found. Your brother, the father refuses to let the older son forget that the one who has returned is his brother and asks him to come in. Yeah. Three times in Luke 15, Jesus says it. The shepherd celebrates, the woman celebrates, the father celebrates. And each time Jesus names the audience for the celebration. Heaven, the angels, the divine counsel. Not sentimental rejoicing, a military report. A campaign is working, another subject extracted from the rebel regime, another person transferred from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of the sun. And then the Father says something that I don't want you to miss. It was necessary that we celebrate and be glad. For this, your brother was dead and has come to life. He was lost and is found. It was necessary. The Greek word is a day. The same word used when Jesus says the Son of Man must suffer. When the disciples are told these things must come to pass. When the risen Christ explains that it was necessary for the Messiah to die and rise, this is the language of divine compulsion. Not preference, not sentiment, necessity. Why necessity? Because the celebration is the council's response to the completion of the campaign's objective. Every time the shepherd comes home with a sheep on his shoulders, every time the lamp finds the coin in the dark, every time one person comes out of the far country and the father runs and the sandals go on the bare feet, the whole household marks it because this is the entire point of everything the father has been doing in history since the Babylonian assignment was declared forfeit. The ministry of Jesus, the feasts, the healings, the confrontation with rebel powers, the exorcisms that Jesus carried out, which were really evictions, the cross that the rebel administration was publicly stripped of its legal claim and its authority declared forfeit. All of it was aimed at this one moment. One person, still a long way off, the father running to meet them. There's one more image I want to give you before we close. We saw that the sandals raised the son off the ground of the far country. They lifted him from the position of a barefoot servant of the rebel administration to standing of a free son in the father's household. The elevation began the moment he crossed the border. He continues every day to live as a citizen of the New Kingdom, and it deepens every time he sits at the Father's table. But the sandals are not the last word on elevation. Hebrews 2 identifies that the fear of death as the rebel regime's ultimate instrument of control. The mechanism through which it holds human beings in lifelong slavery. Jesus destroyed this mechanism by walking into death and coming back through the other side. The resurrection is not only the vindication of Christ, it is the demonstration that death does not have the final word over anyone who belongs to the rival king. For a defector living in occupied territory, death is not the end, it's the final border crossing, the last departure from the regime's territory, the one crossing after which the rebel powers have no jurisdiction and no claim whatsoever. Paul says simply, to die is gain. This is not Pravado, it's the logical conclusion of what happened the day the sandals went on. The king has already been through the death ahead of his people, come back and shown them the way out. The elevation that began when the father ran and the sandals were given. That elevation ends nowhere short of seated with him in heavenly places. It was necessary to celebrate and it still is. It will be necessary until the last coin is found, until the last sheep is carried home, until the last person comes out of the far country, and the last border crossing is complete and the last rebel plough has fallen. As Psalm 82 declares to the world. So, where are you in this story? Maybe you're one of those that's uh still in the far country, still uh under rebel administration, still finding yourself a slave. In the squalor of a regime that has no care for you whatsoever, but just wants to see you ground into the ground. Wants to see you robbed of your rightful inheritance as a child of God. Mentioned it again, Colossians 1.13. Says that we have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son. That's what actually happens to those of us who've accepted Jesus and chosen to follow him. We've chosen to go from the dominion of darkness and to the dominion of his son. And the consequences of that, the consequences of stepping across the border is that our sins are covered, we are given authority, and we are elevated as his sons. So the invitation to anybody who's not made that step is simple. Step across the border from the regime of darkness into the kingdom of God's Son to the light and life that he offers. And know as you make that transition, sins forgiven. And an immediate. You get upset when somebody younger than you in the faith gets elevated to a position because you've lived on this idea of uh uh merit. The kingdom of God is not a meritocracy, it's a household. And the father of the household has been running towards people coming out of the far country for 2,000 years now. So come in and join the celebration and don't linger outside feeling angry and passed over. So, closing words, three story, one campaign. The shepherd entered the wilderness and carried the lost one home on his shoulder. The woman lights a lamp and finds a coin with the king's face on it in the dark. And the father, who's been watching the road since the day his son walked away, sees him while he's still a great way off. He lifts his robe and runs. He's the Goel, the kinsman redeemer, who absorbs the shame of the run so the barefoot servant of the far country can wear the sandals. He lowered himself so that we who were lost could be raised. He crossed the threshold as the defector can completely so the defector can complete the crossing. And for one day, for each person who has crossed that border, the elevation will be complete. There will be one final crossing out of the contested territory, out of the reach of the rebel powers forever, into the kingdom's king's own domain, where there's no more frontiers to cross, no more enemies to claim anything. And then the celebration will be necessary just as it's necessary today, as the kingdom claims another one for its own. Let's pray.