The Prodigal God

Let us pray, Eternal God, how privileged we are to be called your

sons and daughters. We have come on your designated day to worship you,

to ask for your blessings, Lord, so that we will come home.

It's time for us to come home, and it's time for us to go

home. So help us Lord, as we meditate on your great love and

your keen desire to see everyone saved in your kingdom. May that be our

experience. I pray in Jesus' name. Imen Look fifteen has the parables about

the three Lost individuals, animals and coin, the Lost Coin, the Lost

Sheep, and the Lost Sons. The Story of the Lost Sons is a

story in two parts. The first part is the younger brother and the second

part is the older brother. In the story, the younger brother represents the

publicans and the sinners, and the older brother represents the scribes and pharisees.

Part one begins with an unheard of request from the younger son to his father,

give me my share of the state. You can hear the crowd gasp

as Christ mentions this. Normally this division took place after the father's death.

The younger son's request was tantamount to saying to his father, I wish you

were dead. In a culture where the elders were respected and parents were held

in high esteem, this was deeply disrespectful and highly hurtful to the father.

Most fathers during this time, if confronted with the same request, would have

disowned the son on the spot and sent him away from the family with nothing

more than a few well chosen blows to teach this scoundrel a lesson. The

father in our story does nothing of the sort. After hearing the son's request.

His response is even more shocking than the son's request. He agrees to

give the son what he has asked. The crowd cannot believe what they are

hearing, but no one makes so much as a sound lest they may miss

some detail that Jesus, the master storyteller, is telling The father is willing

to suffer ridicule, loss of honor, as well as pain of rejected love.

Despite all of this, the father suffers in silence, but maintains his

love for his son. The crowd notes that there is nothing that the son

can do that will make the father love him less. In that respect,

the father is reflecting God's love to each of us. The fate of the

youngest son is well known to each of us because we have heard his story

previously. The sun takes his wealth, lives it up, He forgets his

upbringing, disregards God's laws lest they keep him from having a good time,

and then the money runs out. On top of that, a famine hits

the land. All too soon, his fair weather friends abandon him, and

he finds himself alone. What is he to do? He never imagined this

scenario. Hunger turns him to seek employment, but all he can find by

way of a job is to feed pigs, which is deeply insulting to him

a jew. When he covets what the pigs are eating, he realizes that

he has hit rock bottom. You can't go any lower than that. He

comes to his senses crazy. He says to himself, here, I'm trying

to eat what I'm feeding the pigs, when the servants in my father's house

have a feast every day compared to what I have. He decides to return

home and perhaps his father will agree to take him back as a servant.

No, he thinks about this plan, and then he realizes that it's not

very good because the servants in his father's estate live on the campus, and

there's no way that his father will allow him to live on the same campus

after what he has done. So he says, scrap that plan. That

plan won't work. Let me go to plan B. Plan B is to

ask his father to take him back as a hired tradesman. Now he knows

that his father hired tradesmen to do work around the estate and they got paid

a daily wage, but the tradesmen lived in the community, they didn't live

on the campus. This way, the Sun reasons he can be hired to

work, he can earn some money and begin to pay his father back for

the money that he squandered. The plan seems sound to him, so he

heads for home, not knowing what to expect. On the long journey,

the son rehearses what he's going to say to the father. He runs various

scenes about meeting his father and imagines all the different possibilities of an outcome.

In all the scenes he imagines, not once does he even come close to

what actually happens in reality. Luke fifteen twenty puts it this way. So

he got up and went to his father. But while he was a long

way off. His father saw him and was filled with compassion for him,

and he ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed

him. Now several things are striking about Luke's account of this reunion. First,

the father was filled with compassion. Sympathetic pity is another word for compassion,

and he was compassionate for the misfortunes of his son. This is not

a natural reaction, but this is the reaction of the father in the story

that we have no hint of anger or disappointment. Secondly, his father runs

to meet his son. Note that Luke tells us that the father ran towards

the son, but there is no mention of the son running towards the father.

Here is why this is so extraordinary. As owner of a large estate,

the normal dress called for our owner was to wear an expensive robe.

The robe reaches down to the feet. A robe restricts movement of his legs,

which is needed to run. The only way he could have run is

if he lifted his robe, bared his legs, and ran. Can you

imagine the headline in the local newspaper the next day. Local owner bears legs

to run to meet his lost son. Scandalous This is also extraordinary because in

that culture, boys run, young people run, women run, but owners

of large estates do not run. Does the father care, absolutely not.

He is just thrilled that his son is back. The third thing that is

striking is that in welcoming his son, the son is unable to respond in

the same manner that the father responds. Now, you would think that typically

if somebody saw somebody running towards them, they would do the same thing and

run towards them and meet somewhere in the middle. But that's not what the

story tells us. The reason the son is like a statue is because he's

just faberglass glass blasted. He is unable to interpret what is happening. Why

is his father running towards him? Is his father running towards him in anger

to hurt him? Or what is the reason? He never expected to see

his father running towards him, So that is why the son is like a

statue. He's completely speechless. He has imagined a thousand scenes of how the

meeting with his father would go, but never in his wildest imagination did he

imagine that his son would run to him and give him the welcome that he

did. This father does not give his son a chance to give the speech

that he has reserved rehearsed a thousand times. The father orders robes for his

son and orders that the fatted calf be killed for a banquet. So ends

the part one of this story. This is a picture of the Prodigal God.

The title of my sermon is taken from the title of a book by

Timothy Keller called The Prodigal God. The definition of prodigal is reckless, extravagant,

having spent everything. And that's exactly what God the Father and God the

Son did in the Plan of Salvation. They gave everything there was nothing more

to give, and that is why he's called the prodigal God. Now,

more recently, the word prodigal has taken on a negative connotation, and to

be called a prodigal son is not paying anyone a compliment. But the sense

of prodigal means to give without any limit. Now, Part two of the

story deals with the older brother who represents scribes and Pharisees. Early in Luke

fifteen we note that the scribes and Pharisees murmured because Jesus welcomed publicans and sinners.

This man receiveth sinners. They complained in their book only they were entitled

to meet with Jesus because they kept the law. They followed the precepts laid

out in the scriptures. How dare Jesus show favor to tax collectors and sinners,

even though Jesus made it very clear when he said that he was sent

to those who were in need of healing, not to the healthy. The

rest of the story is for the scribes and Pharaoh. The older brother was

not a witness to the younger brother's reconciliation. He was in the fields working

as a dutiful son. He hears music and is told by servants about what

has happened, and he is furious it is now his stern to disrespect and

insult his father. He refuses to join the party or welcome his lost brother.

The father does not expect this reaction and pleads with his son to come

and make the restoration complete. The older son refuses the father's invitation. Not

only does the father the older brother refuse to come and welcome his brother,

but he accuses his brother of wasting and squandering his father's money, and he

complains that his brother gets the fatted calf. Despite his faithful service, he

does not even get a kid goat to celebrate with his friends. The oldest

older brother's actions say that because he has been the model's son, in his

words, he now deserves to tell his father how his father is wrong,

and what he's doing to restore the younger son to the family is just not

correct. This misses the point of the first two parables in Luke fifteen.

In the story of the lost coin, the coin is an inanimate object,

does not know that it is lost, but when it is found, there

is rejoicing for the lost coin that is found in the cave of the lost

sheep. The lost sheep is aware that it is lost, but the lost

sheep cannot find its way home, so it needs the shepherd to find it

and bring it home. Now, in the case of the lost son,

the younger brother there deserves to be more joy when he comes home when he

is found and restored. The older brother was not such a model son,

after all. God made it clear after what happened between Cain and Abel,

that we are our brother's keeper. We have an obligation to look out for

one another. A true older brother would have seen his father's agony over his

lost younger son, and the older brother would have gone out and tried to

find the younger brother and restore him to his family. How different was the

action of our older brother Jesus to each one of us who were lost.

He came to seek and to find and to restore us to the family of

God. I'm sure the crowd was eagerly waiting for the conclusion of what happens

to the older brother, but Jesus does not provide an ending. Christ object

Lessons provides a reason why Jesus did not provide an ending to this parable.

For the Parable. In Christ's object Lessons we a page two or nine we

read for the Parable was still enacting, and it rested with his hearers to

depend what the outcome should be. In other words, they controlled the outcome.

It was in their hands, and whatever they chose will determine what the

outcome was. The paradox of our church today is that we do not attract

the kinds of people that were attracted to Jesus, the publicans and the tax

collectors. Why do you think this is? I think it is because the

church is made up of more older brothers or scribes and Pharisees than younger brothers

or more publicans and sinners. If this is true, then we must see

what Jesus' answer is to the problems of the scribes and the Pharisees. In

no certain terms, the Savior had pointed out the problems that the scribes and

Pharisees had. It was their self righteousness, they focus on works to grain

favor and hypocrisy that kept them from being restored to the family of God.

They felt no need of the blessings of Jesus. They were shown so that

their good works would earn them enough favor in the sight of Heaven. One

of the reasons that Jesus did not finish the story of the Older Brother is

because he had spoken about it many times before to the scribes and Pharisees.

They knew what Jesus had said, and they knew what one should do to

get to Heaven. I would like to close with a story that Philip Yancey

includes in his book What Is Amazing About Grace? I call it the Parable

of the Prodigal Daughter. A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just

above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents a bit old fashioned, tend to

overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length

of her skirts. They ground her few times and she seats inside. I

hate you, she screams to her father when he knocks on the door of

her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan that

she has mentally rehearsed scores of time. She runs away. She has visited

Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to

watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Travis City report in lurid detail the

gangs, the drugs, the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that this

is probably the last place on Earth her parents will look for her. California,

maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit. Her second day, she

meets a man who drives the biggest car she has ever seen. He offers

her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay.

He gives her some pills that makes her feel better than she's ever felt

before. She was right all along, She decides her parents were keeping her

from all the fun and the good life. The good life continues for a

month, two months, a year, the man with the big car she

calls Boss, teaches her a few things that men like she's Since she's under

age, men pay a premium for her. She leaves, lives in a

penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks

back home, but their lives now seem so boring that she can hardly believe

she grew up there. She has a brief scare when she sees her picture

printed on the back of a milk carton with the heading have you seen this

child? But by now she has blonde hair, and with all the makeup

and body piercing and all the jewelry, she wears nobody would mistake her for

a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals

in Detroit. After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear,

and it amazes her how fast the Boss turns mean these days. We can't

mess around, he growls, and before she knows it, she's out on

the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of

tricks a night, but they don't pay much, and all the money goes

to support her drug habit. When winter blows in, she finds herself sleeping

on metal grates outside the big department stores. Sleeping is the wrong word.

A teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark

bands of dark band circle eyes. Her cough worsens. One night as she

lays awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden, everything about her life

looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She

feels like a little girl lost in a cold, frightening city. She begins

to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she's hungry. She needs a fix.

She pulls her leg legs tight under her and shivers under the newspapers she

s pile on top of her coat. Something jolts a synapse of a memory,

and a single image fills her mind of me in Traverse City, where

a million cherry stream trees bloom all at once, with her golden retriever dashing

through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chasing or chasing a tennis ball.

O. God, why did I leave, she says to herself,

and pain stabs at her heart. My dog at home eats better than I

do now. She's sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than

anything in the world, she wants to go home. Three straight phone connections

with the answering machine, she hangs up without leaving a message the first two

times, but on the third time she says, Dad, Mom, it's

me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I'm catching a bus up

your way and i'll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you are not there,

well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between

Detroit and Travis City, and during the time, she realizes the flaws in

her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the messages.

Shouldn't she have waited another day so she can actually talk to them.

Even if they're home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago.

She should have given them some time to overcome the shock. Her thoughts bounce

back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father.

Dad, I'm sorry I was wrong. It's not your fault. It's

all my fault. Dad. Can you forgive me? She says the words

over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn't

apologized to anyone in years. The bus is driving with lights on since Bay

City. Tiny snowflakes hit the road and the asphalt steams. She's regartten how

dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road,

and the bus swerves, and every so often a billboard a sign posting the

mileage to Traverse City. Oh god. When the bus finally rolls into the

station, it's air breaks, hissing in protest. The driver announces in a

crackly voice over the microphone, fifteen minutes, folks, that's all we have.

Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror,

smooths her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks

at the tobacco stains on her fingertips and wonders if her parents will notice if

they are there. She walks into the terminal, not knowing what to expect,

and not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind

prepare her for what she sees there in the concrete walls and plastic chairs.

Bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty members,

brothers, sisters, great aunts and uncles and cousins and grandma's and great and

a great grandma to Bud. They all are wearing ridiculous looking party hats,

blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer

generated banner that reads welcome home. Out of the crowd of well wishers breaks

her Dad. She looks through tears and begins the memorized speech, Dad,

I'm sorry, I know, he interrupts her. Hush child, We've got

no time for that, no time for apologies. You're you'll be late for

the party. A banquet is waiting for you at home. We too are

late for a banquet. It's called called the marriage Supper of the Lamb.

And all those are in who are in Christ Jesus have a standing appointment to

meet him at this banquet. Father, it is time for us to come

to our senses also and make the journey begin to you. Lord. We

are homesick for heaven. It is time to go home. May every member

resolved to make that journey, beginning today, and give us strength for the

journey lord in Jesus' name.