John Steinbeck, the celebrated author, wrote the book Travels with Charlie. He said he had lost track of America, so he put his dog Charlie in the seat next to him and started out to drive across America. The first thing he did was to go to a little white, rural church in Maine. He sat on the back pew, and he heard a traditional, old style, dark-suited, long-faced, growling minister preach. He said, "That minister knew every sin in the congregation, and almost named the people that went with them. He didn't leave a sin unnamed."

So he went to church the next Sunday somewhere else, and he heard pablum. The following Sunday the minister gave cotton candy. He drove on across America, and he said, "The only minister I heard all across America who loved his people enough to call sin sin was in that church in Maine. Everybody else was afraid of it." We need to understand that it tears up our families, it rips apart our fellowship, and it destroys relationships between people, all in the name of I did it because I could.

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I read in the National Geographic about a major swamp in Africa, a natural habitat for flamingos. The swamp is fed by streams. The writer said, "You see thousands upon thousands of beautiful flamingos out there, but there was a problem with that flamingo habitat -- chalky waters coming from the stream had collected there. The ecology had been disturbed because there had been some mining upstream, and minerals were in the swamp. The flamingos living and feeding there collected calcium on their feet and ankles. When predators came, the flamingos would try to fly but they couldn't because of the calcium buildup on their ankles."

Sin is the same way with us. I see our people doing things because they can, because they have the freedom to do it. There is a slow sin buildup on their ankles, then after a while, they can't move at all and they become captive to it. I did it because I could destroys and separates.

You know the parable in the Bible about the prodigal son, the boy that went to his father and demanded his part in the inheritance. To make the story brief, he went into the Far Country (I think Far Country should be spelled as a proper noun), and he spent his inheritance in riotous living. He ended up broke, without friends, eating the food of pigs on a Gentile farm, which is about as far away from home as a Jewish boy could be.

"Then he came to himself," the Bible said. The boy said, "The servants on the old home place eat better than this. I'm going home and ask just to be a servant." His father met him halfway, threw his arms around him, and gave him the royal robe, the ring, and the sandals to celebrate, and said, "Kill the fatted calf. My son who was lost and wandered away has been found and is home."

The elder brother, working in the field, heard the singing and dancing, and he asked, "Why are they celebrating?" Someone answered, "Your brother who was lost has come home." And he said, "You know, I've served my father all these years, and he's never thrown me a party."