SEP 28 2025 | “Are You a ‘Paco’?”

Sea Change Church · "Are You a ‘Paco’?" · Elliott Stearns · September 28, 2025
Luke 15:20-24
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Church. I'm Elliot Stearns. teach a class on the Trinity. I'm still inviting people to it if you're
interested. I occasionally preach here for Pastor Adam. The theme of this message is called, you see
the title there, Are You a Paco? We'll get into that in a minute. But in the reading that you just
heard, I was very interested in thinking, I was thinking about the other day about what the father
did there. He ran to his son. He threw away all dignity of old men, and he ran to his prodigal son
returning there, and he embraced him. And then he said, bring forth the best robe and the ring and
the shoes and kill the fatted calf. And I was thinking about those three things, the robe and the
ring and the shoes. And there's a symbolism in that, and there's a good sequence there as well. The
best robe, are we not forgiven by the blood of the Lamb as we sang this morning, and our soul is
cleansed. And so the first thing that the son received was the cleansing of the blood of the Lamb.
You might say symbolically he was forgiven, and we are garmented with the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. Amen? And then he was given the ring. The ring is a symbol of several things, but mainly
it's authority. When Pharaoh appointed Joseph to be ruler of the land of Egypt, he gave him his
ring, and he said this is the representative of your authority. And so what the ring symbolizes
being prepared by God, anointed by the Holy Spirit for the ministry that the Lord has to call us to.
And finally he was given the shoes. The shoes is that which we walk about in. We go places in, and
so we're supposed to have the shoes of the gospel. Paul talks about that in Ephesians, preparation
of the gospel of peace. The Lord told Abraham, and in Genesis 17, I am God Almighty. Walk before me
and be perfect. And the land, I'm going to give you this land. And the shoes of Joshua was told,
wherever the soles of your feet go, that land I'm giving to you. So the shoes bring forth the
territory gain for the Lord. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. We want to go forth and possess the
land for the Lord. Of course, the Lord, the father just ran to his son. He was enthusiastic. He saw
his father, his son coming there. He embraced him. And I was thinking that's also something that we
should think about, that same pattern of the garment and the ring and the shoes every day when we
wake up in the morning. Say, Lord, I just want to, I just want to walk in the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. I'm clothed with you. I want to have that, that ring that represents your preparing me for
the ministry you're calling me to. And I want to have those shoes. And I want to have the direction
I'm supposed to go in to fulfill your will. The thing is, we often think that once the Lord has done
this wonderful thing for us, he's created, he's fallen upon us, he's given us those things. We had
that wonderful born-again experience. We think, well, okay, what about now? And then years later, am
I just part of the furnishings? Do you believe that the Lord comes to you every morning with the
same enthusiasm that he came to the prodigal son at that time? You see? And so it hasn't diminished,
not even a single bit. Sometimes we, sometimes we just wake up in the morning. We think of the
challenges of the day. Say, good Lord, it's morning. What does the Lord want us to say? Good
morning, Lord. We want him to take us by the hand as a child, as his child and lead us through that
day. We want to know that his presence is there. You know, there's a verse you should write down.
The notes today don't go along with the sermon as much as they were last Thursday. Okay? Write down
Hebrews 3, 14. Okay? Hebrews 14 says, we are partakers of Christ. If we hold fast the, and here's
the key word, the beginning of our confidence. What was the beginning of your confidence? You were
so glad. You were embraced by the Father. You were washed in the blood. You were fulfilled. You knew
his glorious love. You exalted in it. So it's no less, it's no less that every day with the Lord
when we wake up. The garment, the ring, and the shoes are all there for you to have, as well as the
fatted calf, right? So he hasn't changed anything there. I like the song we just sang. Take me back
to the garden. Take me back to the time that I first got to know you, Lord Jesus, as my loving
Father. It never deadens. Now, I want to tell you a story. The title of the message is, Are You a
Paco? We'll try to explain that. This is a little story that Ernest Hemingway wrote in a book called
Capital of the World back in the 1930s, 40s or something, and it takes place in Spain. And the story
of Paco here is that Paco and his father were estranged from one another. Maybe Paco was thrown out
of the house. Maybe Paco left. We're not sure, but he was estranged from his father and it was much
hurt on both sides. But after many years, the father, Paco's father, longed for his son. He wanted
to have his son back and reconciled and be at peace with him and love him and reconnect in that
bond. The trouble was, it had been years since he'd seen Paco. They hadn't talked to each other,
communicated at all, and he didn't know where Paco was except that he was probably somewhere in
Madrid. So what he does, the father finally decides he puts an ad in the Madrid newspaper. And the
ad says this, Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana at noon this Tuesday. All is forgiven. Love, Papa.
So come Tuesday, the father, hoping against hope, makes his way to the Hotel Montana, expecting or
really hoping he can meet with his son Paco. And when he gets to the Hotel Montana, he meets, he
sees 800 young men named Paco. All wanting to be reconciled to their father. What makes this story
especially poignant is that Ernest Hemingway grew up in a similar situation. When he was very young,
he and his father were very, very close. They'd go hunting and fishing and hiking and all these
things, very, very close. But as Hemingway reached, Ernest reached adolescence and all and did
various things, and his father grew more and more legalistic. And you might say it was a religious
home, but it was very strict. And his father entered into health problems and finally financial
problems. And in 1928, his father committed suicide. Now that's, his father committed suicide, but
really what his father did was he committed first degree murder of his son's hope for a father-son
bonding. For the rest of his life, you can see in this story and in others that Hemingway wrote, he
really, he missed, he was wounded very, very deeply. And unfortunately, he never came back to
understand the heavenly father he could have had. The love of the heavenly father. So, so he,
Hemingway himself, committed suicide in 1961. So the theme of this message is fatherhood. What is
fatherhood? How important is it? I still recall when Pastor Adam was first here, very shortly after
he became pastor here, he gave a sermon, and he said that his very most favorite scripture, his very
most favorite verse in the entirety of scripture was John 14, 18. John 14, 18 is a very short verse.
It says this, I will not, this is the King James, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to
you. And the Greek word for comfortless there is orphanos. Orphanos. And yes, we get the word orphan
from that. I'm not going to leave you orphans, he says. I'm going to come to you. And the context
shows is that, is that Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. I'll send another comforter to you.
And, and, and he will be with you forever. I will not leave you orphans. I'm going to come to you in
the person of the Holy Spirit. Never. And you can see why, knowing Pastor Adams, he shared some of
his back, his family background, why that would be such a comforting verse. Earlier in John 14, we
see Philip. Jesus is saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but
by me. And, and then Philip interjects, and he says, Jesus, show us the Father, and it's sufficient.
You know, he wasn't trying to just, Philip wasn't trying to make a little theological point here,
like I'd just like to finesse this. No, he was, Philip had that yearning as well. He was yearning
for the Father. It had been wonderful to be with Jesus and all of that, but, but he really wanted to
see the Father. He wanted to have that Father again. And so what Jesus said, have I been so long
with you, Philip, and you don't know me? He who has seen me, has seen the Father. And the Greek
word, sir, see there, is a very strong word that means you experience, you see something because
you've experienced it. You've experienced me. If you come to really know me, you have known the
Father. For I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. The Father and I are one, Jesus said in
John 10. Hannah Arendt was a Jewish philosopher. She wrote in the mid-20th century. She barely
escaped the Holocaust in Europe, came to America. And she wrote a book later called Totalitarianism.
And she was asking one question. What is it that causes whole populations, whole nations, to embrace
crazy ideologies like Nazism and communism? And so why do people do a thing like that? And she came
up with the answer. She said the one reason is, and she called it loneliness. People are lonely. And
they just have to have something that will substitute for their father. Darwin taught us that we're
all just a product of evolution. Freud taught us that we're just a bunch of, filled with repressed
passions and all. Marx said, you're all victims, therefore you should revolt and start something
new. But nobody has a father. And she said that that's the cause. People yearn for something.
Something to take the place of a father when the world is all secularized as it was in those
nations. And so, there's a scripture, Proverbs 12, 11, that is in your notes that says this, the
tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Whenever we try to find something that substitutes for the
father, it's always going to be a cruel end that comes to us. We have to know our heavenly father
like Philip wanted to know as well there. The solution is the father love that we were talking about
there when we read these scriptures. Jesus himself always walked with, in fellowship with his
father. And twice in the book of John, he says, I am not alone, but I'm not alone. Yet I'm not
alone. Yes, it's true. The Pharisees were attacking. He says, Yes, it's true. I judge, but I don't
judge by myself because the father, I'm not alone. The father is with me. He says later, John 16, he
says, Yes, you're all going to desert me and you're going to forsake me. You're going to leave me
alone, but I'm not alone. I'm with the father. And so that was the one thing that he needed to say
and not just for their sake, but for his own. He wanted people to know that if you know him, you're
going to know the father's love as well. And so I started to think about that in terms of my own
experiences all. And I've got to start repeating it again and again. Instead of getting upset,
going, Oh, I forgot my keys the third time. You know, or something like that. Or sometimes I use an
expression from a novel by P.G. Wodehouse where this man said, Always think, Spode. And I always
tell myself, Always think, Spode. Okay. Always think, Elliot, next time. Whatever it might be. And I
said, I've got to stop that. And I've got to start saying, But I'm not alone. Let's say that
together. Ready? But I'm not alone. Say it again. But I'm not alone. And so, situation comes, the
husband says, I can't find my keys. My wife's in labor. I need to go to the hospital. But I'm not
alone. Lord, help me. The car breaks down on the freeway. This looks pretty serious. But I'm not
alone. I've got to preach a sermon to 300 people this morning. But I'm not alone. So, we have to
have that again because you're loved by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. John 3.16 For
God, the Father, so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. John 13.1 Jesus, when the
Passover was coming, Jesus, knowing it was time for Him to depart from the earth, having loved His
own, He loved them unto the end. And you say, well, where does it tell me that the Holy Spirit loves
me? John, go to James 4.5. And this is a very difficult verse to translate, but I'm just going to
read off some of the translations that have been made of this verse. It says, The Holy Spirit whom
God has placed within us watches over us with tender jealousy. The Holy Spirit is a fiercely jealous
lover. The Spirit that God breathed into our hearts is a jealous lover who intensely desires to have
more and more of us. So, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, they all co-inhere as they use the
theological term they love us passionately. passionately. In fact, in Ephesians, Paul says this, he
says, he says that all fatherhood, all the families of the earth have fathers and that, all the
fathers are in the pattern of the heavenly Father. All fatherhood is named after the Father in
heaven. That fatherhood is that important for us. And so, when we have situations, we've been
reading about Elijah and Elijah says, how long will you halt or leap between two opinions? We've got
to accept that. Wherever I am, whatever has happened, however serious it looks, I am not alone. I
have the Father with me. Now, I've been thinking about this. In the Lord's Prayer, I pray the Lord's
Prayer a lot and you've heard me teach on the Lord's Prayer a lot. Let's go back. It says this, Abba
Father, it starts with the one thing, you are my Father and you love me just like you loved the
father-go-son when he came home. You're running to me, you're embracing me. Abba Father, hallowed
become thy name. That's what the Greek says, not just his name is holy, but make your name holy. And
then I think about what his name is. And I've taught this before as well, forgive me if I'm
repeating myself, but you know in Isaiah 9, 6 it says this, Unto us a child is born, unto us a son
is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, skipping a little, and his name shall be
called what? Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting what? Father, Prince of Peace. Jesus. And
what I really saw there was this was not the names, this is not the name of Jesus that the Father
gave him, it's the names of Jesus that people gave him when they saw Jesus in his ministry on earth.
He shall be called by those people Jesus ministered to, Wonderful Counselor. Look at the Sermon on
the Mount, Mighty God, look at his miracles. But most of all, what? Everlasting Father, with the
result that you dwell in him under the Prince of Peace. So I pray, Lord, wonderfully counsel me
today. Mighty God, prepare me for the ministry you have for me. But when I come to the fact that
he's an everlasting father, I say, Lord, everlasting father, just let me know the father's heart. I
want to lean on your bosom just like John did. I want to know what it means to be a father. I used
to think the highest calling that you could ever be given as far as the exalted ministries was
apostle. I just want to be an apostle. God's man of faith and power. I'm going to go and I'll do all
those things that Paul did. But there's a higher calling. The higher calling is to be a father. To
learn to be a father, to your heartbeat, to the father's heartbeat, to care for people like the
heavenly father does. Paul said this to the Corinthians that he had the father's heart. He said, you
have 10,000 teachers, Corinthians, but you have very few fathers. John, the apostle, he wrote to, in
1 John, the second chapter, he says, I write to you, and he gives three groups there. He says, I
write to you, little children. I write to you, young men. Finally, I write to you, fathers. And he
repeats that twice there. So, what God is yearning for is to have people who are really fathers that
really can, we use the term, mentor, to raise up younger disciples to know the father as the fathers
know the father. Paul says this to Onesimus, the epistle Philemon. He writes to Onesimus, he says, I
want you to receive Philemon here, whom I have begotten in the gospel, in my bonds. Going back to
the one about the 10,000 teachers and few fathers, he says, but I have begotten you through the
gospel. So, this idea of being a father and knowing the father's heart, that's the deep, that's the
depths of God. That's what he wants you to come into more than anything else. Now, I don't know of
anybody that Paul had as a father, but he did have a mother. This is very interesting and I just,
you think about it. He writes at the end of the epistle of Romans and he says, he greets all these
people that know him and he's known and helped and he says, greet Rufus. Greet his mother. She's my
mother also. And I think that's very heartwarming, isn't it? That Paul had someone that just cared
for him like a mother, you know, in his ministry. So, this coming into that same degree of loving,
of the father's love that we've had before. Someone wrote this many years ago and it's always meant
something to me. I just want to read a short passage here from a writing from long ago. He said,
Fatherhood is the fullness and the ultimate of God's being. Nothing has nor ever shall approach unto
its terrifying importance nor ever touch the shadow of its sacredness. It bears all and gives to the
totality of itself for its offspring. Fatherhood is the very glory of God. One is not worthy of
fatherhood until he is prepared to see to the full maturity of his offspring. Such sacrifice is the
price we pay for the joy of seeing our offspring come to the fullness of their calling in God. So,
fatherhood is a very sacred responsibility and the Lord has taken it very seriously and that's why
he died to redeem us. I want to take a three minute time, three and a half minutes of a video here
just by Brendan Manning back in 2007 I think it was. Just listen to this and then I want to close.
If you could. In the 48 years since I was first ambushed by Jesus in a little chapel in the
Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania and in literally the thousands of hours of prayer,
meditation, silence, and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that on judgment day
the Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question. Did you believe that I
loved you? That I desired you? That I waited for you day after day? That I longed to hear the sound
of your voice? The real believers there will answer yes Jesus. I believe in your love and I tried to
shape my life as a response to it. But many of us who are so faithful in our ministry, in our
practice, in our church going, are going to have to reply, well frankly no sir. I mean I never
really believed it. I mean I heard a lot of wonderful sermons and teachings about it. In fact I gave
quite a few myself. But I always thought that was just a way of speaking, a kindly lie, some
Christians pious pat on the back to cheer me on. And there's the difference between the real
believers and the nominal Christians that abandon our churches across the land. No one can measure
like a believer the depth and the intensity of God's love but at the same time no one can measure
like a believer the effectiveness of our gloom, pessimism, low self-esteem, self-hatred, and despair
that block God's way to us. Do you see why it is so important to lay hold of this basic truth of our
faith? Because you're only going to be as big as your own concept of God. Remember the famous line
of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal? God made man in his own image and man returned the
compliment? We often made God in our own image and he won't have to be as fussy, rude, narrow-
minded, legalistic, judgmental, unforgiving, unloving as we are. In the past couple of three years I
have preached the gospel to the financial community in Wall Street, New York City, the airman and
woman at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, a thousand physicians in Nairobi, I've been in
churches in Bangor, Maine, Miami, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, San Diego and honest, the God of so
many Christians I meet is a God who is too small for me because he is not the God of the word, he is
not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ who this moment comes right to your seat and says, I
have a word for you. I know your whole life story, I know every skeleton in your closet, I know
every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I
know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship and my word is
this, I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are and not as you should be because you're
never going to be as you should be. You can quibble about this or that but the point was do you
really believe that I love you? Are you still under a legalistic pow? Am I doing, can I be
acceptable to him? He invites you to say, good morning Lord and I know you're coming to me just like
the father did to the prodigal. Every morning with the same enthusiasm, the same joy, the same
embrace. So I'll just reach out and believe that. I'd like the prayer team to come up, stand next to
me if you would right now. What I want to say is I want you to, when I give the benediction, I'm
going to give the benediction in a minute and ask you to stand up and so on but after I give the
benediction if you're coming up for prayer, come up for prayer as Pastor Adam always asks whatever
needs you have. But there may be a few here that feel that God has spoken to you through these
words. I'm not sure. Am I a Paco? Or have I been wounded? Or do I, do I, do I really, really, really
believe God loves me? And I need help to appreciate that. If there's anybody that comes up to you,
members of the prayer team, I want you to minister to that. And just as a sort of a mini
dramatization of the prodigal son's father coming, just give them a hug. Tell them how much God
loves them as you pray for them. Okay? So if you'd all stand, I'll give a benediction. This is the
last verse of 2 Corinthians 13. A very well-known benediction. Let me elaborate slightly in it. May
the grace, love, forgiveness, kindness, and enthusiastic love of grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and
the love of the Heavenly Father, God, and the communion, the intimacy, the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit be with you all. In the name of Jesus Christ, I say, Amen. Amen. Lord bless you. Thank you.