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The sermon interprets the prodigal’s return as a picture of sinners awakened to their guilt and longing to come back to God. Spurgeon stresses that God sees the first movement of repentance, pities the sinner, and welcomes those who turn to Him. He rejects both self-righteousness and the idea that people can remain comfortably in sin while claiming salvation. The congregation is urged to seek Christ immediately and to avoid influences that may destroy present conviction.
Theological center: God’s sovereign grace and compassionate mercy meet repentant sinners in Christ, assuring them that their return is not rejected.
Applications: Return to God in repentance · Seek Christ without delay · Reject false ideas about God · Consider God’s compassion
Primary texts: Luke 15:20 · Isaiah 1:18
“But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Luke 15:20 ALL persons engaged in education will tell you that they find it far more difficult to make the mind unlearn its errors than to make it receive truth. If we could suppose a man totally ignorant of anything, we should have a fairer chance of instructing him quickly and effectually than we would have had if his mind had been previously stored with falsehood. I have no doubt you, each of you, find it harder to unlearn than to learn. To get rid of old prejudices and preconceived notions is a very hard struggle indeed. It has been well said that those few words, “I am mistaken,” are the hardest in all the English language to pronounce, and certainly it takes very much force to compel us to pronounce them. And after having done so, it is even then difficult to wipe away the slime which an old serpentine error has left upon the heart. Better for us not to have known at all than to have known the wrong thing. Now, I am sure that this truth is never more true than when it applies to God. If I had been let alone to form my notion of God, entirely from Holy Scripture, I feel, that with the assistance of His Holy Spirit it would have been far more easy for me to understand what He is, and how He governs the world, than to learn even the truths of His own Word, after the mind had become perverted by the opinions of others. Why, brethren, who is it that gives a fair representation of God? The Arminian slanders God by accusing Him (not in his own intention, but really so) of unfaithfulness, for he teaches that God may promise what He never performs, that He may give eternal life, and promise that those who have it shall never perish, and yet they may perish after all. He speaks of God as if He were a mutable being, for he talks of His loving men one day, and hating them the next, of His writing their names in the Book of Life one hour, and then erasing their names in the next. And the influence of such an error as that is very baneful. Many children of God, who have imbibed these errors in early youth, have had to drag along their poor wearied and broken frames for many a day, whereas they might have walked joyfully to heaven if they had known the truth from the beginning. On the other hand, those who hear the Calvinistic preacher are very apt to misinterpret God. Although we trust we would never speak of God in any other sense than that in which we find Him represented in sacred Scripture, yet are we well aware that many of our hear…