Coming Home to the Father | Luke 15:1-32

We can keep contending.

We have a familiar parable in front of us today.

The parable of the prodigal son.

It's been called the greatest short story ever told by writers like Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway.

No, that that matters only just because we need to know we are learning from the master teacher today.

We are learning from one who can give us a lesson.

And it lasts for thousands of years without losing any relevance, without losing any truth.

Jesus tells a parable.

Parables are often called an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.

It is a story that is meant to draw us in and to help us learn the truth in the most relatable possible way.

And because of the beauty of this parable, so many people still use it to describe their lives today.

People will talk about how they have a prodigal child of their own and or how they know someone who's like the older brother of the parable, or how they've lived as a prodigal.

The reason why this prodigal son parable is so relatable to us today is because we live it.

We see broken relationships in our lives, broken relationships everywhere in our world today, we see it.

And this parable shows us two sons who have a broken relationship with their father, and it each at different points of the parable.

And so our question for us today is how can we fix our broken relationships?

And we can apply this to relationships with each other, relationships with people in our lives, and most of all, we can apply it to our relationship with our great God who wants us to come home.

So let's see our text.

Luke chapter 15, there are three parables that are told back to back that all have the same point.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

The parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the prodigal son.

And the point is this Jesus wants those who are lost to be found.

And so before we dive into our parable today, I'd like for us to see something all three of these have in common.

How does God respond when a sinner returns to him and repents?

Look at verse six.

When the lost sheep is found, they say to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.

And I tell you that in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Take a look at the end of verse 9.

They found the lost coin.

Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.

In the same way I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

And then in verse 24, the Son has come home.

And the Son of mine was dead and has come to life again.

He was lost and has been found, and they began to celebrate.

Each of these parables leads to the same conclusion.

There is joy when a sinner comes home.

That's where we're heading this morning.

We'll look at the end from the beginning.

Joy when the sinner comes home.

We are starting with how relationships are broken, how someone can be lost, and we're going to see them come home.

Read the first two verses of the chapter with me.

I'd like us to see our setting.

I'd like us to know who Jesus is speaking to, because I think that's essential for us to understand the parable today.

Luke chapter 15, starting in verse 1.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.

Both the Pharisees and the scribes begin to grumble, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them.

The Pharisees and the scribes grumble.

They are upset when they see Jesus in the company of these people.

They saw sinners and they saw tax collectors, people who they said should be kept at an arm's distance, if not longer.

The tax collectors allied themselves with Rome, something they couldn't wrap their minds around.

And the sinners speak for themselves.

Eating with someone said something in their culture.

It's something that we in our culture don't think about quite as strongly as they did.

You know, we can eat at the same table with someone without really having any statement on our relationship with them.

I'm sure you've had uh dinners with coworkers and things that you haven't really thought about.

Okay, I sat down with them.

That says something about our relationship.

Not in the same way that they felt about it.

When they sat at a table together, it said something.

It said something that you belong.

You have a place with this person.

Well, by the way, what a wonderful thought.

We just partook of a meal together.

That God says, you belong, you have a place among these people, among his people.

God is always saying something to us when a meal is being approached, and Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners.

And the Jewish leaders would never share a meal with these kinds of people.

Tax collectors and sinners do not belong in their eyes.

But the fact is, and as Jesus points out many times, the Pharisees are sinners too.

They just had a false righteousness that they like to portray to others.

They had this idea that they could be seen as better than, more important than.

And so Jesus is eating with these outsiders, and he hears the grumbling, and this is what he teaches about.

When I find someone who is lost and can bring them back, it brings me joy.

That's the backdrop of our parable.

It's so important for us to see who these characters are because they're there in the room, and they're in our lives.

Let's read our parable together.

Start in verse 11, the prodigal son.

And Jesus said, A man had two sons.

The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.

So he divided his wealth between them.

And not many days later the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.

Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and it began to be impoverished.

And so he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving him anything to him.

But when he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired men have had more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger?

I will get up and go to my father and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me as one of your hired men.

And so when he got up and came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his slaves, Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet, and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.

For this son of mine was dead and has come to life again.

He was lost and has been found.

And they began to celebrate.

Now, his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house he heard music and dancing, and he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be.

And he said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.

But he became angry and was not willing to go in.

And his father came out and began pleading with him.

But he answered and said to his father, Look, for so many years I have been serving you, and I have never neglected a command of yours, and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.

And he said, Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours.

But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost, and has been found.

What a beautiful story that Jesus tells.

And we start by seeing ourselves in the story that we were lost.

There were two sons in this parable.

Both are significant for us to see and to learn from and the lessons that we learned from this story.

And we'll start where Jesus does with the younger son.

The younger son shows how lost we can be when we leave God behind, how desperate our situation can become.

The youngest son comes before his father and says, Give me my inheritance.

There is no bigger slap in the face than this that a son can say to his father.

There's a reason you don't see this request come up anywhere else in the Bible.

What the son is saying to his father is, I can't wait for the day for you to die so that I can get your stuff.

It's shameful.

It's dishonorable.

It's surprising.

This kind of thing simply does not happen.

The family is a big deal in their culture, an even bigger deal than it is in our culture today.

There's a reason so many people are introduced in the Bible story by their genealogy or who their father was.

It ties us into who they are based on who they grew up with, who they share blood with.

And what the younger son is doing here is removing himself from his family, saying, I only want the possessions, I don't want the relationship.

And he asks for the inheritance before it is time for him to receive it, and he goes and continues that through his next action.

Because shockingly, the father gives him the inheritance.

The son receives his request, and not many days later, the son takes everything he has and goes to a far country.

The operative word there is far.

A far country.

He has taken himself out of the family and gone far away.

Already the Pharisees in the room listening would be taking pause.

You mean he's leaving his family and going to another country, likely a land of the Gentiles?

This doesn't sound right.

This doesn't sound correct.

He's going to live among sinners.

He has no portion in the land where he is from because he has removed himself from it.

He has no portion in the family that gave him his identity because he has gone to a far country.

Because he has taken it all for himself to a new place to strike out on his own.

And he is going to strike out on his own.

He squandered his property with reckless living.

His older brother accuses him in verse 30 of squandering it all on prostitutes, on loose living.

Because it's a parable, that's what happened.

The younger brother had lived foolishly, he spent all his money, he served only himself, and now he has nothing.

And things continue to get worse.

A famine comes on the land.

Throughout the Bible story, when famines come up, it's more than just a natural phenomenon that there's not enough food.

It's often a describer of a spiritual destitution that has existed in God's people.

God is showing them that they need to repent because there is no food left for them to eat.

And we don't quite relate to famines in our world today.

We live in a land of plenty.

Thanks be to God for that.

We live in a place where I can't imagine what it would be like to go into a grocery store and see it completely completely empty.

They lived in a world where famines happened.

And it was a desperate time.

You can read stories in the Old Testament about how desperate it got, how old how in the Old Testament women were sometimes forced to even cannibalize their own children.

How people were forced to eat unspeakable things just to survive, and how awful a famine was.

At this point, the Pharisees in the room might audibly gasp.

He did what?

He is going to feed the animals that God specifically said are unclean, shameful.

And the younger son didn't just feed them, he was so desperate, in such need that he wanted to eat with them.

Eat with the pigs.

There is no animal with a reputation for filth like a pig.

And when they eat, they aren't any cleaner.

I watched a YouTube video of pigs eating, just to get my mind wrapped around what he was asking, what he wanted.

And I really hope that YouTube doesn't put that in my algorithm and send me more and more videos of pigs eating, because I'll tell you, it's like watching a battle.

They don't just cleanly, neatly eat, they climb over each other with their hubs dirty from the manure and the muck, and they're stepping into the trough that they're eating from, and it is an awful sight.

And he said, I want to eat with them.

We've never known hunger like that.

We've never known desperation like that.

And when he's in this desperate place, verse 16 says it for us so clearly, and no one gave him anything.

He's entirely alone.

A moment of true lowliness.

And we sometimes hit moments of lowliness in our lives.

We come to ourselves, like it says in the text.

We come to our senses.

What have I been doing?

Why what brought me here?

I hope we can be desperate enough to respond like the younger son.

I hope we can see that desperation is an important and necessary first step to mend our relationship with God.

This desperation pushed the younger son to go back and request a place in his father's house, but he knows I don't belong there anymore.

Not as a son.

I've ruined my place.

So he plans to go back and request a place as a servant in his father's house.

His father has a reputation for treating servants well, he feeds them.

They have more than enough.

So he plans to request a lowly positioned so he can come back.

That's our introduction to the younger son.

Let's make some application.

Think about what this means for our lives.

What we need to know is we can always come back.

Now you don't have to wait until your lowest moment where you're eating with the pigs to decide to come back.

You can come back anywhere along the way, but even at our most desperate, at the farthest moments, we can always come back.

We often keep thinking, I could just push things off.

You know, someday I'll fix it myself.

I'll pull myself through.

If I could be patient, I'll figure it out.

Repentance is not a sign of weakness.

Repentance is a courageous step towards healing, towards growth, towards being back with the Father.

And so let's listen to the call to repent and experience the overwhelming joy of God's forgiveness and the peace that comes with being reconciled with Him.

All of us have been prodigals.

All of us have been lost.

All of us have been wasteful, which is what prodigal means.

Misused our opportunities, misused our lives, and been found ourselves in sin.

And those who have been saved, those who have been baptized in Jesus Christ, have made that decision.

I want to come back.

And I pray that we can remember the times of our lives where we were most desperate, where we were with the pigs, and say, I'm thankful for the lessons I've learned there because it keeps me coming back to the Father.

You can always come back.

But do you see why the younger son decided to come back in the text?

It isn't because someone came along and preached the greatest sermon you'd ever heard.

And sermons are great, they're helpful, they're useful, but that's not what brought this younger son back.

At the end of the day, example is what brought him back.

He thought about what his father did.

Parents teaching their children is the primary reason they grow up to love the Lord.

Friends who love the Lord encourage others to keep going in faith.

Brothers and sisters in Christ are reminders that we should stay with God.

The gospel lived is why prodigals can come back.

The gospel lived out in our lives and puts an importance on how we treat each other.

In our moments of weakness, we can always think to someone who has shown kindness to us, who has been there for us, who has been forgiving, who has been merciful, who has been patient.

And even if all that fails, we have a Lord who is perfect in his forgiveness and his mercy and his patience towards us in long suffering.

Jesus shows us that we can always come back.

He has shown kindness beyond all measure.

He teaches us how we can repent and reconcile our relationship with him.

As we begin this parable, we need to see ourselves alongside the younger son.

We are lost and desperate, in need of a savior, needing reconciliation.

But how does the father receive him?

How does the father bring him home?

And that's where we take it to the next step.

We are loved.

While the father sees him coming home from a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced and kissed him.

Remember, the younger son planned to come in to knowing he doesn't belong.

He wanted to offer to take a low lease spot.

He wanted to earn his way back through minimum wage.

You remember the parable of the unpayable debt in Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

That was how they thought about these things in their world.

You pay back every dime of what you owe.

You work, you sell yourself into that debt.

You know, before the king there was an unpayable debt.

He didn't come in expecting it to go away.

It was shocking that it went away.

They sold themselves with their debt and had to pay it off no matter the cost.

The younger son was ready to make it right, and the father hardly lets him finish speaking.

Can you imagine the Pharisee's face at this point in the parable?

You are doing it all wrong.

He's supposed to pay.

He is supposed to earn his way back through the shame and the bad decisions he's made.

But the younger son comes back.

Stinking like pigs, a foul sinner with nothing to his name, he comes back.

He might have expected rebuke, scorn, mockery, misery.

But the story takes an amazing turn.

First, notice the son was a long way off.

I love this.

The younger son took his his sins took him away to a far country.

The father's love sees him while he is a long way off.

I'm reminded of Psalm 103, verses 11 through 13.

Psalms 103:11–13

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

And as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

God exceeds our expectations vertically, horizontally, and relationally.

All the love we can find, we find through him.

The love of God is so great, it does not matter how far we have gone, he can bring us back.

It doesn't matter how badly we've hurt him, he wants us to repent.

He will forgive.

And so the Father sees him from a long way off and runs to him.

We need to know Middle Eastern noblemen, even today, but then too, did not run.

It was undignified, dishonorable.

The word here is also more like sprint.

He ran to his son.

It is not dignified what it has done.

He is not honoring himself in what he is doing.

The father comes running from his home to a son who he sees a long way off, likely running through a town of people who knew him and respected him and expected him to react to his son a specific way.

He runs to meet his sinful, stinking son.

There isn't any grudge held by the father.

He doesn't think about how he has been disrespected by his son.

He just wants him back as quickly as possible.

And he gets there, what does he do?

He hugs and he kisses him.

Can you imagine hugging and kissing a pig-smelling sinner?

I'll tell you what, the Pharisees couldn't imagine it.

They didn't understand the father or his motives.

The motive of all of this is compassion.

The father wants a relationship with his son, he wants to forgive, he wants to bring him close again.

The father wants to honor his son and bring him home in celebration.

Bring the best robe, the ring, the shoes, the fattened calf, and let's have a feast to celebrate.

The father's literally giving him symbols of his own honor.

My robe, my ring.

My things, place in my house.

And so there is a celebration so great that the sounds of the celebration were reaching the fields.

Let's ask the question Who does this celebration honor?

Who gets the glory for what is happening here for the transformation of young?

Son.

It isn't the Son.

The honor all goes to the Father.

The celebration in heaven isn't in honor of the sinner, it's in honor of the Savior.

So, how do we apply this section of the parable?

How do we put ourselves here?

We see the Father is God and He is Jesus, welcoming back sinners who don't belong, welcoming back the tax collector in the sinner there, sitting there eating with him.

He's repairing a broken relationship with us.

And this is where the parable challenges challenges us beyond all belief.

Because we are called to imitate the Father.

Each New Testament writer gives us this.

Paul says in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 13, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

John writes in 1 John chapter 4 and verse 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

And Luke said it earlier when Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6, verse 36, be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Luke 6:36

The gospel story is not one for us to simply observe in amazement.

It's one for us to imitate.

Have you ever been hurt by someone?

Hurt by someone to the point where they've been a prodigal to you.

Now you know how you need to respond.

This illustration, this parable shows us just how far forgiveness goes.

It is the Father giving up dignity and welcoming back a son who is ungrateful, unrighteous, and foolish.

And so as we read this parable, we need to take it past seeing ourselves as the prodigal son who was forgiven, who was brought back, and see ourselves as one trying to imitate the Father, to welcome back those in our lives.

This is a beautiful parable.

And I wish it stopped at verse 24.

Because this is the ending that I would love to stop at.

But it doesn't.

It's not such a wonderful story for those who deny the grace that the Father gives.

Those that think salvation needs to be earned see grace as a distasteful thing.

And that's where the parable goes next.

Where we need to trust in God's salvation.

I put this last point as a positive.

Because I'd like to for us to think about it positively and just looking at how the older brother misused this.

This is where the older brother goes wrong.

He doesn't see his own need for salvation.

He hasn't felt just how hungry and desperate one can be.

He saw salvation for his brother and it caused him to be bitter.

He might have wanted his younger brother to give restitution for everything he learned.

When he had worked as a servant's wage for many years and earned back what he had lost, maybe, maybe then he could come back.

That's the Pharisees in this story, isn't it?

Grumbling that Jesus is eating with people who are sinners.

The older brother resembles the disgruntled person who doesn't want someone else to be saved.

But let me ask, where was the older brother when the younger brother made the request for his father's inheritance?

Where was he when he was leaving to go to a far country?

He didn't care that his brother left.

He just doesn't want him to come back.

Both of these brothers struggled with arrogance.

The younger brother arrogantly thought he could be okay without his father.

He thought he deserved to go his own way.

And the older brother arrogantly thought he was the better son, and that the younger son didn't deserve grace.

He thought he knew better than his father.

There is only one son, though, who is thankful for his relationship with his father.

Only one who wants his father's will to be done.

Only one who understands and appreciates mercy that has been offered to him.

And it isn't the righteous son who stayed home that is saved.

It's the desperate, pig-smelling sinner that is bringing about joy.

Luke focuses on this theme so much throughout his gospel.

He wants us to see that the outcast can be brought in, or the religious lose themselves in self-righteousness.

Those who see their need for Jesus are more capable to find Jesus.

And still, this section once again shows us the goodness of the Father.

You know, he doesn't say, Let my older son stew outside.

I don't care.

I'm inside celebrating.

My son is back.

He goes out to him.

I hope you see the repetition there.

He goes out to bring his younger son home.

He goes out to bring his older son in.

The father wants all to be saved.

But there is too much bitterness.

The fattened calf was supposed to be for me.

That was going to be my robe, my ring.

How could you do this to me?

Can you see the problem?

He's thought about himself and only himself.

And so the question we need to ask this morning is do we have the older brother in us today?

And I think we do.

There's a temptation that we can have to think we're okay.

We're good enough.

And we're joined by the Pharisees in that temptation.

And as long as there are sinful people who we think are worse than us, we can keep on thinking that.

But this parable starts to make us uncomfortable.

It puts something in our way where we have to think about it.

What happens when someone who is worse than us repents?

What happens when they come back to the Lord?

We've lost our way of justifying ourselves, where we've created this ranking in our minds of who is good and who is not.

And no matter what ranking we've created, it is wrong, and if it is not God's ranking.

And his ranking is this: we are all equally needy people who cannot save ourselves and are equally loved enough that we can be saved.

We have a hard time accepting that.

Perhaps you've got a little bit of the older brother in you.

And you are angry at someone and waiting for someone to repent to you.

Maybe you need to go and repent to them.

Maybe you've been holding grace from them until they meet your desires.

We can't hold grace back from others because we desperately need grace just like they do.

We need to trust in salvation, both for us and for others.

It's the only way that we see the relationship with God restored.

Do you know how this parable ends?

It feels a little bit jarring where it ends.

The father tells the older son, your brother is back, we're celebrating.

Where's the older brother's response?

Hebrew stories are often told symmetrically.

There were a verbal culture that were told the stories and they heard them, they didn't often have them written down.

And so if there were eight lines for the beginning, there should be eight lines for the end.

But in this story, there's eight lines for the younger son and seven for the older.

Not quite symmetrical.

There's something missing.

You know, to put this in our world, we gotta know that some things have a rhythm.

Like a knock-knock joke has a punchline.

And if you were to tell a knock-knock joke and not tell the punchline, we would know something is missing.

If you were to give a musical scale and stop on the seventh note, you would think, oh, we are we're almost there, but we're not quite there.

That's how the Hebrews would feel hearing this story.

There's not an ending.

There is no resolution.

What happened to the older brother?

How about we think of a couple possibilities of what happened to the older brother?

One possibility.

Seeing the compassion of his father, he repented of his hypocrisy, embraced his father, and he joyously accepted what the father said and joined him to walk in to celebrate his brother's return.

I like that ending.

It sounds nice.

It's gonna be a wonderful ending to a parable.

Unfortunately, it's not the ending.

The ending has already been written.

The older son heard what the father said and grew enraged.

He took his father and beat him and put him to death.

In just a few short months, the Pharisees will take Jesus and beat him and put him on a cross.

And they would congratulate themselves that with that act they had protected the honor of their nation, of their people, of their religion from the one who had come to shame it.

They took the Son of God and beat him and mocked him and killed him on the cross because he offered grace to sinners.

And when we struggle to forgive each other, to struggle to forgive those who have wronged us in our lives, this is what that looks like.

This is the result when we live a life where we feel entitled to a relationship with God.

We see the grace of God and we say, not good enough.

This is the result.

When we look down on others and see them as undeserving of the love of God, we are shouting, crucify him, because his grace hasn't lined up with what we want.

What we need is reconciliation.

We need to have our relationship with God mended.

We broke that relationship and God sent his son to mend it and bring us back.

Listen to this, Paul says in Romans, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.

In Colossians.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in the body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

How do we fix a broken relationship with God without our Christ?

Jesus has repaired our relationship and has invited us to come back, and I hope that we have the faith to return to a God that will invite us into a relationship with Him despite where we've been, despite what we've done, He just asks us to come home.

Will you pray with me?

Our loving Father, we know where we've been, we know what we've done.

And God, we know what we deserve.

We deserve to be left far off without a relationship with you, and yet you sent us your Son, who would die for us, who would take our place, who would forgive us at cost that he paid, a great cost on the cross for us.

So God, I pray that you change our hearts so that we can be people who desperately seek you, who know our need for you, and that we can be people who desperately want to forgive those around us.

Help us, O God, to stay with you until the end.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

If you have a need this morning, this is the day to make it known.

Make it known by coming to the front because we're going to sing a song to glorify the great God who ran to us to bring us home, who allowed us to change, to transform our lives, to put to death the old man, and to bring to life the new.

We were lost, and now we are found.

Thanks be to God.

Maybe you've uh been away from God for a long time.

Maybe you've forgotten the things that you've been taught, forgotten the things that you knew that Jesus could do for you.

Today is a day to make that right.

We can pray for you, we can help you.

Maybe you've never known the Lord.

And today is the day where you can be baptized into Him, confessing your faith because He is the Son of God who is faithful to Satan.

Whatever your need may be, we ask that you make it known by coming to the front as we stand and sing.