The Prodigal

Broken and beat down.

It was the outcasts that were coming to Christ.

It were those who were weary and heavy laden who needed rest.

It were the ones who were sinners in the eyes of others, who were unclean.

They were the lowest of the low, the dredges of society, the scum of the earth, the tax collectors, that were the traitors, that were working with the enemy, so to speak, against their own people.

And these were the ones that were coming to Jesus, that were drawn to Jesus.

These were the ones that Jesus was fellowshipping with and dining with.

And then it says in verse 2, and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled.

It was the religious leaders of Jesus' day, those who were in charge of keeping God's word, those who were the keepers of orthodoxy, the ones who gave all of the minutiae of scripture, and the ones who were the righteous ones, the holy ones, the set apart ones, the ones who were the most fastidious in all of the religious activities.

And here they look at Jesus and they look down at him.

And they see this as a mark of proof that he can't be from God because of the people that he associates with and the people that were drawn to him.

And so that's the context that Jesus gives these three parables to reveal the heart of God.

Well, let me give some guidelines as we look at parables.

How do we interpret or understand parables?

And we need to understand it in context, and that's why I draw our attention to verses one and two, because everything in this chapter is really governed by that when we understand who is in view here.

And so we we need to look in the context of what we need to have a balance in our understanding.

Parables are given to it make, to make at least one main point.

It may have more than one point, but there is at least one main point that a parable is giving.

We need to be careful that we don't stretch it beyond its intended meaning and try to find meaning in all of the minutiae of detail.

And yet we see at times Jesus does use a parable and applies it in multiple ways, or there are multiple truths that are coming out.

And so it's important for us to see in a parable that there's at least one main truth that Jesus is trying to communicate.

There may be more.

And I believe in this in this uh parable of the prodigal, there is uh more uh to it than oftentimes we recognize.

But we also have to understand that no one passage teaches everything on a topic.

Uh there are some who look at the story of the prodigal and uh they they go in some directions that the rest of the Bible doesn't bear out.

And so when we come to any text of scripture, we need to realize that scripture interprets scripture.

It's what uh is called the analogy of scripture, that the full understanding of a doctrine comes when we look at all of the relevant text on a topic.

And so we need to be careful not to uh look at a passage and think that the totality of what the Bible says is found in just one passage of Scripture.

Uh also there's the reality of progressive revelation that God, as we go through the pages of New Testament, the Bible, God is unfolding more and more of who he is and what is the outworking of his plan of redemption and how that is unfolding.

And so uh we can go to Scripture uh and later as we go through in Scripture in the New Testament now, we have the fullness of revelation, as we have in addition to the Gospels, Acts, and and uh Paul's epistles and the general epistles in Revelation, that we have the fullness of our understanding.

And so it's important for us to uh look at the rest of Scripture to understand uh what a doctrine is saying.

And the reason why I say this is somebody can come to this passage of the prodigal and misapply it.

And let me give you just two examples of that.

Some people come to this passage that was read, and they say, Well, you see, a man can come to God unaided by the Holy Spirit and just in his own volition turn to Christ without the aid and the working and the enabling of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit isn't mentioned here.

Now, uh again, my point would be that not everything that the Bible says and how God works in the human heart is given in one passage, and and and especially we see that here.

Um, for instance, uh there is no mention of the cross here.

There is no mention of uh Christ's death or sacrificial uh suffering, uh, there is no mention of substitution here, and somebody might mistakenly say, Well, you see, the Father can just forgive sins uh without any uh without any cost, without any payment, and they they might misapply this passage, and so uh we need to, when we come to a passage of scripture, realize that God has spoken elsewhere, and we need to take uh those other passages and bring them to bear uh to understand the fullness of what God is saying.

And so I just I highlight that as we go to this uh text so we see the parameters of interpreting scripture and understanding, particularly parables, which uh may be a little bit more uh complicated in some ways.

But we notice that verses one and two here really give us an understanding of what Jesus is trying to communicate, uh what Jesus is saying, and hoping that his hearers will have ears to hear.

Remember, that's what he said at the end of chapter 14.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

So as we come to this parable, let me submit to you that I believe that the younger son here represents the tax collectors and sinners that are coming to Christ in faith.

That this is uh a parable talking about those who are coming to Christ, and the analogy that is being drawn is that the younger son is representative of uh those who are in their sin, um, people who have uh the human race who has left God is alienated from God, and that individuals now who are coming to Christ in faith and forgiveness, and that the older brother is representative, and we're going to take another week to look at this aspect of it next week, but that the older brother is representative of the Pharisees, of the attitude of the scribes and the Pharisees.

And truly, this is a story of two lost sons, not one.

As we study this, we're going to see that it really is two sons that are lost, not just one.

One is lost in his flagrant sin and rebellion, but the older son is equally lost in his self-righteousness.

And we'll examine that as well.

There's also something missing here that I want to point out, and again, we'll cover it more next week, but just to highlight it here.

If you remember last week when we were studying and we saw the lost sheep, and as Jesus gives this parable, there is the shepherd who leaves the 99 and he goes and he searches high and low, he searches the hedges, he searches the open fields, he searches the cracks and the crevices, looking to find the lost sheep.

And then you get to the second parable, the parable of the lost coin, and you have the woman.

And the woman is there, and she loses a coin and she searches high and low.

She sweeps the dusty, straw-covered floor in the darkness and uh just the the uh the darkness of the of the room, and and she's searching and sweeping to try to hear as she sweeps over to find this coin, diligently seeking after the coin.

Now we get to this third story, and we would expect, if uh as after the first two, we would expect, who is going after the son?

We heard the story, the the son leaves home.

With the sheep, the shepherd goes, with the coin, the woman goes, with the son.

Who goes?

We're gonna find that Jesus is is really making two points here regarding that the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the that were to be the shepherds of that day, they the the the older son, knowing the heart of the father, knowing the heart of the father, ought to have said, Father, I will go and find my lost brother, I will go and find your lost son.

But we don't find that.

It's conspicuously absent as we look through this parable.

It's not there.

We would have expected it to be there, it's not there.

But what we see when we take a step back and think in the context of verse one and two, the older brother, the religious people of Jesus' day, they don't go to look for the younger brother.

They are not going for the sinners, for the broken and the battered and the beat down, for the hurting and the helpless and the hopeless.

They're not going for them, but the true older brother, Jesus Christ, is seeking and saving the lost.

And so let's walk through this parable now.

The parable of the two lost sons.

Tim Keller in his book on this passage uh titles it The Prodigal God.

It's a phenomenal book.

Uh it's a very short read.

I'd encourage you to uh uh to purchase it, to read it.

Uh, just a phenomenal book and a really a great uh and enriching study as I was preparing for this passage.

And in that book, he he notes this.

We call this the prodigal son, and when we hear the word prodigal, we think the word means wayward.

We think the word prodigal means uh uh this uh this profligate, this sinner that's lost in his sin.

But the word prodigal, uh Keller notes this in his book.

He says, and uh we think it means wayward, but actually according to Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, uh, the word prodigal means reckless spendthrift.

It means suspend, and this is what it's common.

He says, it means suspend until you have nothing left.

The term is therefore as appropriate for describing the father in the story as his younger son.

The father's welcome to the repented son was literally reckless because he refused to reckon or count his sin against him or demand repayment.

And so he says that we should look at this as the prodigal God.

Well, let's walk through this passage and then I want to see some points of application to the lost and to us.

First of all, as we're going through this, we see that the a man has two sons.

Jesus begins his story very straightforwardly in an economy of words.

And the younger son says to the father, Father, give me the share of property that's coming to me.

Give me my inheritance.

This is what the younger son says.

There's two sons there.

Uh the older son, this was an offensive request, and we see the hasty departure of the son.

This was an offensive request.

What he is saying is, Father, I want my inheritance.

I want my inheritance and I want it now.

And this would have been a high offense to the father because an inheritance, just like today, an inheritance is typically given after the person has died.

In our day, the will would be read, and then what was left to people would be distributed accordingly, uh, would have been very similar in that day.

Well, this son, he demands the inheritance early.

And in essence, what he's saying is, Father, in my eyes, as far as I'm concerned, you're dead.

I care so little about you.

All I want is the things I'm going to get from you after you die.

And so give them to me now.

Now, the older brother would have gotten two-thirds of the estate, the younger brother, he would have gotten a double portion, the younger brother would have gotten a third of the estate.

Um, this would have been a high offense, and it would have been offensive, and it wouldn't have just been private.

Because most of the father's money would have been locked up in property.

And so, for the father to fulfill this, he would have had to have sold large tracts of land, which would have made it obvious to all of the people in the community what was going on.

So everyone would have known it would have been a public shame to the father in addition to uh the private reality of what was happening.

And so the whole community would have been a buzz of what was going on.

And this son had no care for the heart of the father or for the reputation of the father.

He just wanted his things that he said were his.

And the father obliges and lets him go his way.

Amazingly, the father grants the request and gives the boy uh his inheritance.

One commentator quoting some old uh Jewish sources of the day and actually talking about something like this, said the only thing the father would have given him in Jewish culture was a beating and would have exiled him from the family.

And so we see here the father granting the request.

Notice the son, verse 13.

Not many days later, as quickly as the son could gather his things, he began to gather his things.

He says, uh, the younger son gathered all that he had.

This son was leaving nothing behind.

There was not going to be a shred of evidence that he was ever a part of this family.

He was gathering everything up and he was leaving, and he was doing so because he had no intention of ever coming back.

He this was a one-way trip.

He was leaving never to return.

He gathered every belonging that he had, every shred of evidence that he was ever a part of that house, and he was leaving.

And he says he's taking a journey to a far country, and there's something about this passage, and we'll see it again next week, about spatial distance in this passage that uh becomes illustrative of the spiritual distance.

And we're going to see this here, and he's in a far, far country, he's far, far away, and and even later next week when we when we see the two sons, when the sun returns, and the one that was outside is inside, and the one that is inside is outside.

And so there's this spatial reality that's communicated in this, and he says he took a journey into a far country.

He made a hasty departure.

This young man was self-centered, callous, uncaring, selfish, self-serving, self-indulgent.

He didn't care about his father, he didn't care about his father's reputation, he didn't care about his father's heart.

And he left.

And so, secondly, we see the downward spiral of reckless living.

And notice what it says.

It says, in there he squandered his property in reckless living.

Initially, things seemed to go up with this man.

Things seem to go up.

Uh, he is having the time of his life.

He he is taking all of that money, and he is withholding nothing from his eyes.

Everything his heart desires, he fulfills.

The Bible tells us that sin is pleasurable for a season.

There is this initial rust that you think it is giving you, and it's a lie.

You think it is fulfilling your desires, and initially it seems to, but it is an empty lie.

But this young man, as he was spending recklessly, extravagantly, carelessly, the word picture here for squandered is a picture that's used elsewhere of scattering seed.

It's like throwing seed out everywhere.

He's throwing his money away.

He was the life of the party.

It reminds me of, and this dates me, there's an 80s song by the rock group Sticks, Too Much Time in My Hands.

Some of you may remember the song, and then some of you are too spiritual to listen to secular music in the 80s.

But um, for those of us sinners, there's a line in the song that says this.

It says, uh, he says, uh, now I'm a and some of this is just poetic nonsense, and it's not poetry either.

Now I'm a jet fuel genius, I can solve the world's problems without even trying.

But then this is the line that struck me.

I have dozens of friends, and the fun never ends.

That is, as long as I'm buying.

Is it any wonder I'm not the president?

Is it any wonder I'm null and void?

He was recklessly living here.

He was spending, and eventually there's a downward spiral.

Uh unless you're the federal government, you cannot spend indefinitely more than you earned.

He had spent everything.

This is what it says.

And when he had spent everything, he came to his savings, he went to his to to the account, and there was nothing left.

He had spent everything.

And it was self-inflicted.

It was self-inflicted that that this occurred because of the foolishness of his waywardness and his recklessness in spending on everything that his heart desired.

And eventually there comes a day of reckoning, there comes a day of accounting in every life of waywardness and sin.

And this man, it came to him, it came to the end, he had nothing left, and that part of it was his fault.

But then there were circumstances beyond his control, and Jesus puts those in there as well.

It says, and a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.

In addition to the situation of his own doing, there were circumstances outside of his control, the economy had gone into recession, there was a famine in the land, there was inflation, the price of food had gone up, and he had nothing, he had no money, he had no resources.

Not only was it his own creation, but the circumstances now began to pile on his plight.

And he began to be in need.

And his life began to spiral down further and further and further away.

And it says, and when he had spent everything, he began to be in need, and so he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.

This would not have been lost on Jesus' ears.

Pigs were unclean animals.

They were not to be eaten.

A Jewish man would never raise pigs, would never own pigs, would never tend pigs.

They were unclean.

This was symbolic of the depths that he had gone in his life.

There was nothing left.

He had hit rock bottom.

His life was as lost as could possibly be.

And he was so desperate, it says he longed to be fed with the carob pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

He looked at these unclean animals that he never should have been around, never should have been in contact with, and he was envious of the food that the pigs were eating.

He was so bad off, he said, if I could just have that food that the swine are eating.

Jesus wants us to see that this man could have gone down no further.

What's the worst situation in life you can imagine?

What's the worst sin that somebody could get caught up in?

That somebody's life could be overrun with and inundated with by their own choices and the circumstances of others.

What is the worst situation that you can think of?

That's what this man was in.

Drugs, alcohol, sexual immorality, homosexuality, you name it, prostitutes.

In the eyes of the Jews, this man had gone as far as he could go.

He had hit the dead.

Depths of depravity and lostness.

But then something began to stir.

Verse 17.

We see the repentant return of a remorseful sinner.

It says, But when he came to himself, when he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger?

There's something beautiful about these words.

His eyes had been opened.

He began to see the reality of his situation, that he had no hope in himself.

There was a desperation, and he began to remember the goodness of the Father.

That even the hired men had bread, and they had bread to spare.

And so he thinks of the goodness of the Father.

He begins this stirring in his heart and his mind.

And he says, I perish here with hunger.

There's nothing that he can do to affect the change in his situation, but he remembers the goodness of the Father as his mind and his heart is stirred.

And he devises a plan.

Verse 18.

I will arise and go to my father.

And he says, I will confess.

I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

In heaven, there is a reference to God.

He recognizes he had sinned against God and sinned against his father.

And he realizes where he is.

He says, I am not worthy.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Treat me as one of your hired hands.

This is his heart.

This is where he is.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Treat me as one of your hired hands.

And then the narrative takes a beautiful turn.

He says, and he arose.

And he came to his father.

We we see here a picture of the lavish love of a generous father.

I have to be honest with you, I just share a story, and I typically try to translate the passages from Greek into English each week just so I can see everything that might be there.

And I had something that happened to me that has never happened translating Greek before.

As I was reading this passage and just looking over every word individually, and seeing in just the simplicity of this kind of abrupt staccato speech in verse 20 of the heart of the father.

I just began to weep, realizing the picture of the Father here.

Look at what it says.

It says, but while he was still a long way off, and in the original, it actually uses two words, and it's like, far, far away, he was distant.

It's this idea that he was so far away that he was just on the edge of the horizon.

That as he was looking, he looked out and he saw, and there was something, there was something that he knew in his heart, it was his son, maybe it was his gait, maybe it was his look, but he looked and he knew who it was.

And no father in Middle Eastern culture, he was the patriarch of the family, that he would be so undignified as to run.

He would stand there and wait, and the son should come to him, but that isn't what the father did.

It says he sees, he sees his son far, far away.

And not only is he far, far away on the horizon, he sees his son spiritually.

He knows the depths of what his son has been doing.

He's no fool, he understands the sinful well.

And then it says, and having compassion.

That's the heart of the Father towards a sinner.

Having compassion.

God the Father, as He sees a sinner in His plight, he looks with love and compassion on that one who is coming.

His heart was open wide and he breaks over the sin that is in our lives.

It doesn't say in anger and wrath and judgment as his son is coming.

He sees the sin and he has compassion.

That is the heart of the Father.

And then it says he ran.

He would be undignified because his love had motivated not for his son to come to him, but for him to go to his son.

And so he runs to his son.

And then it says, and he embraced him.

And literally what the text says is as he fell upon the neck of his son.

Now I want you to picture this.

His son had been in the dredges of another culture.

His son would not have had time to clean up.

His son would have been, having been out in the pig's field, would have been covered with the muck and the mire and the dung of that pig.

He would have been dirty, disgusting, smelling to high heaven.

He would have stunk.

He would have been filthy, dirty, and there would have been no way for him to clean himself up.

And it says that his son, his the father, ran to the sun and embraced him and fell upon his neck and buried his face in the neck of his son.

Stench in all.

Dirt in all, filth in all.

And then it says, and he kissed him.

And the word again there is an emphatic word for this tender, affectionate kiss of love.

And the son tries to give his speech.

His son in verse 21, his son says him, Father, he begins this rehearsed speech that he had been working on for so long.

Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

And because of the father's heart, he doesn't even listen to the rest of the speech.

And it says in verse 22, but the father said to his servants, quick, grab the best robe.

Grab the first robe, the robe of prominence, the robe that would indicate the dignity that this is my son, and I'm going to clothe him with it.

Grab the best robe and clothe him with it.

He is in the exalted status as my son with all of the rights and privileges of being my child.

And put a ring on his hand, a signet ring that would signify the authority of the Father.

That not only did he come in just to the base level, he came in with all the rights and privileges of his sonship.

And then he says, Bring shoes and put them on his feet.

Slaves were barefoot, but this is no slave.

This is no hired servant.

This is my son.

Put shoes on his feet.

And then his heart just bursts out.

He says, Bring the fatted calf and kill it.

And not every meal.

They didn't have meat with every meal.

This would have been a fatted calf that they were, they would have been fattening up and saving it for the highest of occasions, the most grand of celebrations.

And he says, Bring the fatted calf.

Let us eat and celebrate.

And then he says, Why?

For this son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

And they began to celebrate.

This is the heart of the father.

This is the heart of the father.

It does not matter where you've been.

How disgusting others might feel because of your sin.

This is the heart of the Father.

When you come to him.

And no matter where you've been, no matter where you've gone, no matter what you've done, no matter what you've seen, this is the heart of the Father.

That Jesus wants us to see.

He wants us to never forget.

This is the heart of your Father.

This is the heart of God.

And so come to Him.

Fly to Him.

And you will realize that He has already run to you.

And has embraced you.

And has clothed you.

And has given you the status of His son or daughter.

And is celebrating.

Because you are His child in Christ.

Let us pray.

Father, this morning I pray that we will see your heart.