“The Prodigal Son”
Luke 15:11:32
Pastor Allan Kircher Shell Point Baptist Church
23 Jan 2011
“God’s Joy and Sorrow”
The term “Blood is thicker than water” is an old proverb referring to the strong ties which bind families together.
Persons who have known the joy of strong family bonds are in a favorable position to understand God’s joy in recovering his people and their joy in being restored to God’s family.
This is what the gospel is about.
It is the story of God’s sorrow and God’s joy.
It is a story of broken and restored relationships.
God’s joy of saving those who repent and God’s sorrow of losing those who refuse his love are experienced together in the work of redemption.
The writer of Hebrews captured this blending of elements when he pictured Jesus as one “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…(Heb. 12:2).
This is the story Luke’s Gospel tells.
Luke 15 is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible.
In my preparation and prayer I believe it would have been and is especially misleading to isolate “the parable of the prodigal son” from its setting without examining the entire chapter.
The story of the prodigal actually begins all the way at the beginning of chapter 15 when the Pharisees criticized Jesus for receiving sinners and eating with them.
Look at verses 1-2
These verses give us the setting for the understanding of the three parables which follow.
To ignore the setting is to miss the meaning in the parables.
Jesus answered this criticism with these parables.
You see, if the Pharisees and scribes had known God’s sorrow in the loss of even one person and his joy over one sinner’s repentance, they would not have censured Jesus for eating with publicans and sinners.
{PP} The Pharisees fancied they were not lost; they professed to be among the righteous.
They were more particular of keeping the traditions of the elders than they were about obeying the commandments of God.
They trusted in their own righteousness, and they did not realize how far short they came.
Oh, how I pray we never collapse our thoughts in the reality of this fallen world and take this mindset.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was always interested in sinners.
He came down from the glory of His Father’s house to save sinners.
But these legalists could not possible understand this.
If these words come before any of you who have been in doubt as to whether or not the Lord Jesus Christ will accept you, oh, let me tell you.
{PP} This is a faithful saying, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners!”
He is interested in you; He is interested in me.
I came as a sinner, and He did not turn me away.
He received me and saved me, and He will do the same for you if you will come to Him.
Today, we need not to think of these as three separate parables.
It is a story of the grace of God pictured in three ways.
Please turn to Luke chapter 15 verses 3-7 as we read God’s word.
{PP} The first parable focuses on the shepherd’s concern for one lost sheep, his diligence in seeking it, and his joy in finding it.
Jesus taught that these are God’s attitude and actions toward sinners.
This is the whole point of Jesus’ life and death.
He said, “The Son of man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
He is seeking you today all who are lost and fallen.
All who have come to know they are wretched, blind, poor and naked.
Jesus said, “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep.”
Jesus doesn’t say 99 safe in the fold, in safety, but “in the open country.” “in the wilderness”
“and go after that which is lost until he find it?”
Perhaps the ninety-nine were like the legalists who imagined they were righteous.
{PP} Those perhaps sitting here this morning considering that they are not lost, and think they don’t need to be sought and found.
But the lost sheep is the poor sinner soul who knows he is lost, who knows he needs a Savior.
So, the Shepherd leaves the ninety and nine in the wilderness, in their self-complacency, and goes out for that which is lost, and does not give up until He finds it.
The statement that God rejoices more over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine “righteous persons who need no repentance”
Is not to be taken out of context.
God is pleased with obedience, but not with proud self-righteousness. Stubbornness, and denial to His name.
Repentant sinners gave Jesus more joy than the proud Pharisees who thought they needed no repentance.
The Pharisees needed to learn that one cannot understand what God’s righteousness is until he first knows himself to be broken and lost.
Hey, how many times do we have to fall on our faces before we look up and see Jesus is the only way, the only source, the only hope?
The evangelical understanding of the Scriptures is that all of us are lost sheep until we are found by the good Shepherd. Amen.
So let’s continue in this chapter in verses 8-11.
{PP} Jesus sometimes used twin parables that teach essentially the same thing.
This is true here.
The woman was concerned over the loss of one coin, diligently sought it, and rejoiced when she found it.
You see, it was necessary that she be active in order to discover the coin.
Obviously, it could not find its way back to her.
In this, we see the activity of the Spirit of God working through His people.
We all have our part in seeking for the lost.
{PP} The lost coin may be a family member, a McDonald’s employee, or a homeless soul in our path.
It is the light of the Word that reveals their true condition and enables us to find them.
Search for those coins Christians, search for them with diligence and fervor as if it were yours.
{PP} The Lord Jesus said, “Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents.”
“Joy in the presence of the angels.”
The heavens rejoice over the discovery of the lost coins in your life.
Now you don’t have to answer, the Almighty already knows your answer.
How many coins have you found since you’ve become a Child of God?
If few or none, perhaps that light in your room to find that lost coin needs to be a bit brighter, stronger.
Or maybe you just need to look more intently seeking the nooks and crannies of society, searching under bridges and ally ways, instead of just glancing before your feet.
{PP} Let’s now look at our final parable in this beautiful chapter, let’s read verses 11-32.
In this third part we have perhaps the tenderest story that our Lord Jesus ever related while here on earth.
It is a story we all know well, and yet it never seems to lose its sweetness and preciousness.
In the first parabel one sheep was lost; the next, one coin was lost; and now, a son is lost!”
Here we see two sons typical of all mankind.
The story of the prodigal (the younger) represent’s God’s reception of sinners.
The story of the elder brother represents the attitude of the self-righteous Pharisees, who were critical of Jesus’ attitude toward sinners.
The father of the two sons typifies God who yearns for the recovery of publicans and Pharisees, “sinners” and scribes.
This parable first and foremost represents God as a common Father to all mankind, to the whole family of Adam.
We see this in the genealogy of our Lord in the third chapter of this gospel.
We are all His offspring.
He is our Father, for He has the educating and portioning of us, and will put us in his testimony,
or leave us out accordingly to our choices as his dutiful children.
{PP} Now the younger son demanded his part of the family estate.
Ordinarily a father did not give an inheritance before his death, but occasionally it was done.
But the father yielded to him and counted out to him that which was to be his.
{PP} So the younger son gathered it all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.
There he could live as he liked, in independence of his father’s will.
I wonder if we ever have that intent in our lives today.
Do we ever just want to do what we want to do?
Never contemplating the consequences of our actions.
The prodigal squandered his wealth in wild living, parties, bright lights, loving the things this world offers, blinding his eyes to the eternal.
So this son had his “fling” as we say, until all was gone.
Verse 14 says, “After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.”
I am sure that every repentant soul can say, “I too have wandered away from God, and I too have squandered the good things which He has bestowed upon me.
I have lived in the far country, and I know all that is involved in these experiences.”
Now Please understand, it is not the amount of sin one commits that makes him a prodigal.
This young man was just as truly a sinner against his father’s love the moment he crossed the threshold of the door as when he was in the far country.
He did not want to be subject to his father:
{PP} He desired to get away where he could live as he pleased.
Now note that the father did not follow him.
He did not insist that the son return, but allowed him to go and learn some lessons which he never could learn in any other way.
Do we see that in our day and age today?
In our church family we see that all the time….
Congregants who take a long leaves of absence for one reason or another.
Sometimes this is done to experience those things of the world.
To get sucked into society and it’s deceiving practices.
And when they see God has been place second in their life. They come back…better prepared. More humble.
And we welcome them back just as our Father would.
So that day came when the prodigal spent everything and found himself in dire distress.
{PP} The friends he had made—where were they?
They were his friends only as long as he had money.
Then at last everything was gone, when his fortune was spent, these fair-weather friends were not to be found;
They left him in his deep need, and no one gave unto him.
In his distress, in order to keep from starvation, he was obliged to do something which to a Jew of ordinary good breeding or conscience would be most revolting.
{PP} Verse 15 says, “So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.”
It was there among these unclean beasts, himself unclean, that he began to realize his folly and ingratitude.
The same wicked life that before was represented by riotous living is now represented by servile living.
The devil is the citizen of that country; for he is both in city and country.
Sinners join themselves to him; hire themselves into his service, to do his work, to be at his beck and call, and to depend upon him for maintenance and portion.
How did this young gentleman debase and disparage himself, when he hired himself into such a service and under such a master as this!
Sin is a terrible thing; it is insanity.
This young man had been suffering from a mental aberration.
{PP} Then verse 17 says, “He came to his senses.”
What a significant expression!
Now he regained his right mind.
He began to realize for the first time the fool he had been in turning away from the father’s house, in trying to find satisfaction in the far country.
Does this not sound oh so familiar?
He finally began to recognize things as they really were.
He saw how CRAZY his actions had been. He realized that he had been behaving like someone who didn’t have “both oars in the water.”
Anyone would be crazy to give up a relationship with God for the pleasures of this world.
We would be foolish to give what we cannot LOSE to gain what we cannot KEEP!
But, many times in life we become demented enough to forget this.
We delude ourselves into believing that sin is good—that disobeying God will lead us to experience some joy we are missing—
and that is what had happened to this prodigal.
This young man came to himself; he began to think
If you can get people to think then something will happen. Amen.
The devil is doing his best to keep people from thinking.
Now some people wonder why we as Christians object to worldly amusements.
They think we are very narrow and bigoted because we disapprove of them.
Well, we know they are designed of Satan to keep men and women from facing the realities of life and recognizing their true condition before God.
He wants to keep people from thinking, to forget they are lost sinners going on to destruction.
When men begin to think they are well on their way to salvation.
This young man came to that place.
He said practically, “What a fool I have been, leaving my father’s house and my home.”
He says in verse 17b-19, “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.
Oh, if any who read these lines are unsaved, with God you might come to the same decision, that you might say with the same purpose of heart.
{PP} “I will arise; I will go to my Father. I will go back to God, and I will tell Him I have sinned.”
Job 33:27-28 says, “Then He comes to men and says, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver your soul from going down to the pit, and your life shall see the light.”
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That young man, feeling his unworthiness, had determined in his heart all he was going to say.
He was going to tell his father he was unworthy to be called a son, and ask him to make him as one of his hired servants.
But you will note when he reached his father he had to leave out a lot of that.
{PP} The father did not wait to hear it. “He arose and came to his father.”
He did not wait for the boy to get to the doorstep; he did not wait for him to reach the house, but he saw him coming down the road, and he said, “There is my boy!
I have been waiting for him all these months.
Have we ever experienced this with our love ones?
A wife may say, “there is my husband!
“there is my son-in-law” “there is my friend”
He expressed kindness before his son expressed repentance.
For God presents us with the blessings of his goodness.
Even before we call he answers, for he knows what’s in our hearts.
The poor boy began to speak out. “I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and I am no more worthy to be called thy son…..”
That is as far as he got; he did not say anymore.
He didn’t ask to become as one of the hired servants.
The father had servants enough.
It was a son he was welcoming home.
{PP} He cried out in his joy, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him”—for us that robe is Christ’s perfection.
“Put a ring on his hand” – the ring tells of undying affection.
“And bring here a fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again.
He was lost, and is found.
{PP} And they began to be merry.
And that merriment had never ended.
Oh, in that home, of course, the time came when the feast was finished.
But when the Father wins a poor sinner to Himself and says, “My son was lost and is found,”
And they enter into communion together; the merriment which begins goes on for all eternity.
{PP} And now for the rest of the story,
There is an added and jarring note.
His elder brother was in the field.
He is just a Pharisee, who would not dare say he was saved but did not imagine he was lost.
In his heart there is no more real love for the father than there had been in the heart of the younger boy.
The Bible says that the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.” So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on.
The servant said, “Your brother has come, and your father had killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.
Now this brother, instead of rejoicing and saying, “Oh, let me meet him; let me have part in that merriment,”
I have praying for him for so long.”
No he was angry, and would not go in.
The elder brother was like those scribes and Pharisees who said, “this man receives sinners, and eats with them.”
You see, he considered that his father was degrading himself in treating this prodigal boy like that:
One who had misbehaved as he had done!
But the father came and pleaded with him but the elder boy said,” Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.
I wonder if we ever said, “Look! All these years I’ve been coming to church and never disobeyed your orders.
You see this is the same spirit that had led the younger son to leave the house and go into the far country.
But this son remained at home and was more respectful, but he was no better than the younger.
He actually unbraided the father for his kindness.
But the father said to him, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”
The father had to remind the elder brother of what he overlooked.
Are we overlooking the Father’s grace today?
The elder brother didn’t understand the grace of God.
It is utterly foreign to him.
Oh how I pray we never fail to understand and appreciate the grace of God, as this poor disgruntled elder brother did!
Jesus left the story open-ended.
The curtain falls without hearing the elder son’s response to his father’s entreaty.
This probably was deliberate.
{PP} Jesus perhaps hoped some of the Pharisees would yet respond to the Father’s entreaty, but the choice was theirs.
In many ways the Pharisees were not far from the kingdom.
In many ways the people in the pews are not far from the kingdom.
They know the Scriptures, they want to be pleasing to God, and they take their moral responsibilities seriously.
In other ways, however, they are much farther from the kingdom than the out-and-out sinner or irreligious person.
Ironically, the Pharisees were separated from God by their “goodness”
Jesus never gives the option of receiving him apart from receiving his people.
To accept him requires that we accept them.
To reject them is to reject him.
After hearing this familiar world-changing story, perhaps you’ve seen that you are like the prodigal.
You have rebelled against God and you see your need to return.
Maybe this parable has shown you your need to be less like the Elder brother and reach out in compassion to the lost of the world. .
Let me assure you today, Jesus is here.
He's not only here for a free hand of compassion,
but He's there to share with you a life free from the sin you live in today.
He's there to lift you off the dirty floor, look your accusers in the eye, defend your dignity as a child of God, and let you go...FREE!
