Theme: Book of Luke
Purpose: Celebrating grace means making room!
During a conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated, what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith.
The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room.
“What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions.
Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”
The people at the conference had to agree.
The idea of God’s love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct we have. The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and Muslim code of law---all of these offer a way to earn approval. Only Christianity shows us that God’s love is unconditional!
We live in a world of ungrace. God’s grace is often hard for us to fathom, and so Jesus talked to us about it often. Author Phillip Yancey puts it very well in his book: What’s So Amazing About Grace?:
“I have meditated enough on Jesus’ stories of grace to let their meaning filter through,” writes Yancey.
“Still each time I confront their astonishing message I realize how thickly the veil of ungrace obscures my view of God.
A housewife jumping up and down in glee over the discovery of a lost coin is not what naturally comes to mind when I think of God. Yet that is the image Jesus insisted upon.
The story of the Prodigal Son, after all, appears in a string of three stories by Jesus—the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son—all of which seem to make the same point. Each underscores the loser’s sense of loss, tells of the thrill of discovery, and ends with a scene of jubilation.
Jesus says in effect, ‘Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of those two-legged humans pays attention to Me, it feels like I just reclaimed My most valuable possession, which I had given up for lost.’”
In Luke, right before the parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus says in verse 10: “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
And the church should be a place of rejoicing as well.
Let’s keep that in mind as we take a look at this parable this morning.
Chapter 15 begins with this: “Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
This is what prompts Jesus to tell three parables that highlight God’s extreme grace--the Pharisees’ extreme ungrace. In essence, Jesus is saying, “You think you know God, but you do not. God doesn’t play by your rules. Here is what God is all about.” In the parable, the father represents God the Father.
And this father had two sons.
One of these boys is called the ‘older’ and the other is called the ‘younger’.
The boys grow up living in a very nice home, a home in which there is everything in the world that the heart of humankind could want—love, joy, fellowship, comforts—but this younger boy does a strange thing. He decides that he no longer wants to be a part of this home—he thinks the grass is greener somewhere else. So the father allows him to exercise his freedom of choice/his freewill.
The father divides up his estate, and the boy leaves with his pockets full of money—which he did not earn. Every bit of it came from his father. And so the boy heads out for the far country.
And this boy found out what it was to have what the world calls a good time. He went to all the nightclubs; he went to all the parties.
And when you have money, you can get fair-weather friends.
So, for a while he lived it up.
But there came a day when he reached in his pocket and there wasn’t anything left.
Not only was he broke, but he found that the country where he had thought the grass was greener…well…the grass was drying up.
“…there was a severe famine in that whole country...”
The young son doesn’t know what to do.
He shouldn’t have been afraid to go home, but he was.
Was he embarrassed?
Did he think that his father would not accept him?
Was he so steeped in the world of ungrace that he could not imagine any alternative?
Remember, God doesn’t play by our rules. Who do we know who might feel too embarrassed to come back home…to return to church?
We, the Church, are the Body of Christ on this earth.
We are to represent God to the world. We are to play by God’s rules, not our own.
The church should be the place where people aren’t afraid to come back.
We should be the place of celebration. Are we?
I heard of an incident that happened at a church that he once served.
And in this church there was a very strong Christian, someone we might call a ‘pillar of the church’.
She was someone who the rest of the congregation strived to imitate.
She knew her Bible. She lived an exemplary life.
A member of the church, a young man, contracted AIDS.
He was able to hide it from his fellow church members for quite a while until, one day, he had to go to the hospital. In the hospital he fell into a coma. When he awoke, this woman, this ‘pillar of the church’ was holding his hand.
“I can’t go back to church,” the young man told the woman.
“I’m too embarrassed, they wouldn’t accept me.”
The woman just smiled and said, “Oh yes you can come back, and when you come back you sit right next to me.”
One writer has said: “God has an ongoing love affair with sinners. He throws a party of rich food and drink to get their attention.
He invites the undeserving.
Dances with the never-do-wells.
and Slips a ring on their finger.”
In our parable we see that the younger son “began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.”
What had happened to his fair weather friends?
Fair weather friends tend to say to us: “I’m sorry. You say you’ve lost all your money? Well, I’m through with you. I’m not interested in you anymore.”
So the younger son quickly finds out that he has no real friends in this far country.
And as he worked feeding the pigs “He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. And when Jesus says this, every Israelite, both Pharisees and tax collectors listening to Him that day had to wince because a Hebrew couldn’t go any lower than that.
Jewish persons weren’t supposed to have anything to do with pigs, and then to stoop to the place where he would go down and live with them and even envy them…was horrifying!
This kid had definitely hit rock bottom!
Starting in verse 17 we get to see a real turning point in this parable.
“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’
So he got up and went to his father.”
He came to his senses.
Temptation and sin does an awful thing to us.
It causes us to see the world incorrectly.
We lose our sense of reality.
We see ourselves and others in the wrong light.
We see the pleasures of the world in the wrong perspective.
We just can’t see clearly when we are entangled by sin.
But the son came to his senses!
So the boy returns to the house where he grew up, but he has been so blinded by the world of ungrace that he does not expect to be welcomed.
In verse 20 we see a beautiful picture of God.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
“…this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.”
This is the Love that God has for each and every one of us.
What does the father in the parable mean when he says, “this son of mine was dead…”?
Weren’t all of us dead at one time?
In this parable, death does not mean physical death.
Look at what Paul says to the Christians in Ephesians Chapter 2: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world…All of us also lived among them at one time…But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead…it is by grace you have been saved.”
Our God is like a Lovesick Father, Who does not hold our sins against us, but throws a party when we come to Him for salvation and forgiveness!
And while we are still a long way off, he runs to us!
“Now the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were all gathering around to hear [Jesus]. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So Jesus told them this parable in order to let them know what God is really about.
But did the Pharisees and the teachers of the law get it?
Do we get it?
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law are represented by the older son in this parable who “became angry and refused to go in” to the party.
They didn’t like the fact that God doesn’t play by their rules.
They didn’t like the fact that God rejoices and welcomes ‘sinners’.
The parable leaves the older brother fuming outside the party.
What will he do?
Well, the rest of the Gospel of Jesus Christ provides us with the ending of the parable.
Far from rejoicing at the return of Israel’s “lost sheep” who have gathered around Jesus, the Pharisees and teachers of the law conspired to have Jesus killed.
But, like the prodigal, Jesus Who was dead came to life again; and those He came to save have found new life in God’s loving presence.
So where are we in this parable?
Are we inside the party celebrating?
Or are we standing outside with our arms folded, refusing to come in because God doesn’t play by our rules?
Who is the real prodigal in this parable?
It’s not the one with the shady past.
It’s the one who stays outside.
The one who couldn’t bring himself to forgive.
The dead one, the lost one, is the one who stubbornly chooses to remain outside the Father’s party.
“…we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
