“And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living.”
“Man, earthy of the earth, an-hungered feeds
On earth’s dark poison tree―
Wild gourds and deadly roots, and bitter weeds:
And as his food is he.”
WE need not search the night clubs for prodigals, or go down into the underworld of the great cities to find them, they are everywhere, and the man or woman that stands up and says to God, “I thank Thee I am not as other men,” is a lineal descendant of the Pharisee of Luke 18. It was not the “riotous living” that made this younger son a prodigal, but the heart that was in him, and God looks at the heart. “Father,” he said, “give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” And his father richly endowed him with goods. He gave him enough to enable him to make a great and honorable success in life. But he had other plans, and no sooner had he got possession than he turned his back upon his father and breaking loose from all restraint, traveled far away from home, and lived his life for his own pleasure without any reference to his father’s will.
With what force do the Lord’s words smite the conscience, and what a multitude does He describe in a few words. Here is a man, and most of us know him well, God has endowed him with great riches, He has given him a mind that can think, and hands that can work and a heart that can love, and every other faculty and organ that go to make up a man, and, greatest of all, an immortal soul. So that in all God’s creation there is nothing like him; neither angel nor beast can compare with him,
“Mind that can compass the stars with its span;
Creature of mystery,
Marvelous man!”
What is he doing with his portion of goods, these great gifts? He is spending it all upon himself and without reference to God who gave all to him. He is the prodigal.
He may not be as blatant a prodigal as the rich fool of Luke 12, who talked to his soul, and said, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But he is the prodigal nevertheless if he lives for self and ignores the claims of God. But may not a man do what he likes with his own? ―so thought the prodigal. The answer to that question is in the words of Scripture, and is a solemn and unalterable decree from the mouth of God, “For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, every tongue confess to God. So then everyone of us shall give account of himself to God.” Romans 14:11, 1211For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. 12So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:11‑12)
This young son of his father was as much a prodigal when he decided to leave his father’s house as he was when he shared the swine’s field and food; he had a prodigal heart and, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” As a matter of fact he was morally a better man in the swine field than when he left his father’s house, for when he had come to the utter end of his resources, he began to have right thoughts of his father, and all his thoughts of him had been wrong up to that point.
How restless and restive some men become at the thought of their dependence upon God; independence was what Adam aimed at, “Ye shall be as gods” was the lie with which the devil deceived him, and this desire to be self-sufficing and independent of God has characterized every son of Adam since.
But where does this flight from God carry men? Into the far country; and what is the far country? It is the world; and what is the world? It is the devil’s sphere, where he exercises his subtle wiles to deceive man and make them happy for a while without God that he might finally destroy them; the devil has no pity, no mercy. The Bible says the world is made up of three things―the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life―lust and pride. Men and women are investing their all in it, and they do not know that it is a bankrupt concern that can pay no dividends.
Yet that is not how things appear to the world’s votaries. I listened to an open-air preacher, he was a fluent and forceful speaker, and chiefly because he was speaking out of his own experience. He told the people that the world had almost damned him. He had gone in for it wholeheartedly, and had found that the best it could give was “froth and bubble.” Listening to that same man was a young lady who said she did not agree with the man at all, she spent her time in the social whirl and was enjoying every minute of it. I was asked if I could explain the contradiction. My answer was, Here is a man who has come into a fortune of £10,000 and he sets out to live at the rate of £20,000 a year; what a man of wealth he seems to be and what a life he lives. Yes, for six months, and then bankruptcy! The young lady was living on her capital, and bankruptcy, moral, spiritual and eternal, lay before her and every other prodigal.
It is surely bad enough that great gifts should be squandered without return, but the tragedy is that the soul is risked and lost at the same time. Suppose a man could gain his utmost ambition in the world and lose his soul―what’s the profit in that? Of course they are old words, but they came from the lips of eternal Truth and are eternally true. “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
I was introduced in the North of England to a young Norwegian, a cultured and attractive fellow. He was the son of a successful businessman and had come to England to perfect himself in our language. I said to him, “Wouldn’t it be a splendid thing if you yielded your soul to the great Saviour at the very start of your visit? That would be worth coming to England for.” “No, no,” he said, “I want life, I want pleasure, I get that in England.” “What sort of pleasure are you wanting?” I asked. “Oh, the horses, the races, the theaters! I want horses, theaters,” and his face glowed in anticipation. He had made up his mind, and my warning that these things were sometimes the devil’s soul-traps did not move him, and after a few days he went up to London where he could gratify his tastes to their full bent. A few months passed, three, I believe, when I received through the post a copy of the Daily Telegraph. A paragraph in it was blue-penciled; it told of a young man who had been found dead in the bedroom of a London hotel with a towel twisted round his throat. The verdict of the Coroner’s jury was “felo de se.” He was the young man of my story. He had sold his immortal soul for sinful pleasure and it had slain him. Crowds are doing it; eagerly, willingly they barter their souls to the devil for the excitement of the racecourse, the theater and worse places. Instead of God’s salvation they choose the downward road, the world’s way, that may not in their case run to a suicide’s grave, but most certainly ends in hellfire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
“Heart with a vacancy
Nothing can satisfy,
Filled with some pitiful bauble or toy;
Pleased by variety;
Palled by satiety,
Groping for happiness, yearning for joy;
Steeped in iniquity, folly and pride,
Thrusting its Monarch and Maker aside.
Deity bled for thee!
Pitied thee, pled for thee!
Proffered His treasures eternal in vain.
Bulk of Humanity,
Cursed with insanity,
Trample all offers of Grace with disdain;
Thinking it wiser their God to defy―
Shrouded in dark degradation to die!”
Thank God, not all travel to that terrible end, many are awakened to their danger before it is too late, and the grace of God saves them, and gives them life and peace instead of disappointment and death, and heaven and eternal glory instead of hell and eternal woe.