In the picture that's up there it's a picture of the encounter of the Prodigal Son with his father and it's when he's come back to the household and you can see the father there, you can see the son his knees before the father. You can see the older brother on the right and you can see the servants in the background. This shows - firstly you see the Prodigal Son and there he is, he's broken. His life is damaged. He smells. There's nothing loveable or attractive. He's got no friends, but there is one person who loved him and loved him passionately and that was the father. So you see if you look at the father, he's bending over his son. His heart is very tender towards his son. The Bible tells us that when he saw his son he was moved with compassion and ran to him and hugged him and kissed him. You see the father there and his hands are over the son's shoulders and he's bending over him and there's compassion and there's joy. He's welcoming his son back. He's opening his heart to him.
That's what Jesus wanted to convey and Rembrandt has tried to convey that. Hundreds of years old the painting, but nevertheless you can catch the feeling on it when you look close in the face of the father. You can see the emotion on his face, and on the side there you can see the older brother. He had no revelation of the heart of God, and so there was pride in his heart and resentment in his heart, and he looked down and he judged his brother. If you don't have a revelation of the heart of God, you tend to despise others who are weaker than you, and he despised the younger brother, looked down on him. He probably despised his father and judged his father. He was angry with his father and despised his brother. Finally he left the scene altogether, and this man represented the religious people of the day, who had no understanding of how much God loves people. They were supposed to represent the love of God to people, instead they just condemned them, judged them and put burdens on them.
So you see the son proud, standing on the right looking down on the brother, and this painting illustrates something of that story. In the background you can see the servants and they are amazed. They're like the angels in heaven who watch the love that God has for us and sending His Son and are amazed, what is there about humans that God would love them so deeply? So there's the story. Well that painting's worth millions, and that's the painting. How much more must the reality be worth, the reality of God's love, the reality of God's compassion, the reality of His heart to reach out and put His hands around you no matter what you've done? You need to keep that in your mind all the time, otherwise you'll suddenly slip, that if I just am good enough God will like me or love me or I can get a blessing from God, whereas God has a heart that's abounding and generous. He immediately transferred sonship rights and responsibilities back to this young man and restored him. What an amazing God we have.
We love Him because He first loved us. We love Him because He first loved us. If any of you have experienced God loving you and putting His arms around you when you've failed, then you've felt His love and forgiveness and gentleness and grace, then you love Him. The Bible tells us very clearly we love Him because we've experienced His love, so if we're going to walk with God we have to continue to experience Him. Meetings aren't enough. I must meet with God. I must feel His presence, encounter His presence and I must learn how to respond. Have you ever noticed in a relationship and you can look at human relationships, that when in a human relationship a person does not make any response, then very often the other one stops reaching out. Well God will never stop reaching out, but He wants us to respond to Him, and so we want to talk today not so much about the passionate love God has for us, but we want to talk about whole-hearted loving Him back in response.