Two Lost Sons
Luke 15:11-32
Do you know what the worst feeling is? It’s not the Saints losing twice in Seattle ending their playoff run. The worst feel is being lost. When I was six, my parents took me to a carnival. It was a kid’s dream: games, rides, cotton candy, hotdogs, and clowns. I remember standing in the middle of the carnival just taking in all the sights and sounds and deciding which game I wanted to start with. It was crowded and people were everywhere. My parents were right beside me when I stopped and went over to watch a target rifle game. I turned to my parents to get some money and they were nowhere in sight. Suddenly a sinking feeling became panic as I realized that I was lost. Tears started to stream down my face as I called out for my parents. For the very first time in my life, I was frightened, all alone and lost.
We’ve all been there at some point in our lives, frozen by fear, not knowing where to go or what decisions to make and you realize you’re totally lost. There’s no worse feeling. This is true in every area of your life. I've worked with individuals and families who are lost financially. They’re so far in debt that they can’t even imagine getting out of it. This happens in people’s careers, especially in the last few years when people find themselves unemployed and unable to find work in the field of their training. And they’re faced with completely changing career paths and feel lost. I see it in mid life crises where people question who they are, what they’ve done and where they’re headed. This happens in relationships, where a couple starts off in love, they walk down the isle with great hopes and expectations. They begin a family and as the kids grow older and get more involved in extracurricular activities, careers get more demanding and there’s very little time left for the marriage. And before you know it, they’re two ships passing in the night. Romance dwindles, communication is almost non-existant and feelings of love have subsided and they feel that the relationship is lost. And it happens spiritually. People feel like they’re alienated or distanced from God. Try as they might, they can’t draw close to him, feel his presence or hear his voice. It’s usually a result of sin in their life or by being very good and thinking your obedience has earned you the right to be accepted by God.
We're going to spend the next 3 weeks on the parable of the Prodigal Son. It’s the story of a father who had 2 sons. Most people think of this story as the story of the prodigal son but it's really the story of the prodigal sons because both are alienated from their father and lost. They simply chose different paths to get that way. The Good News is this: helping lost people is Jesus' specialty. It’s why He came, “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:10
One of the first questions to ask of parables is “Why did Jesus tell it?” Jesus never just tells a story for the heck of it. It’s always in response to something someone says or a situation he’s in or an encounter he has. So why did Jesus tell this story of two lost sons? To answer that question, let’s look at the very first verses of our Scripture today: “Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, “This Man receives sinners and eats with them.” So He spoke this parable to them, saying...” (Luke 19:10) Now you have to understand that Jesus’ ministry lasted 3 years. The first year he was building his following and increasing in popularity. ,By his third year, Jesus is speaking tougher messages challenging the people and confronting the religious leadership until he is betrayed, arrested and crucified. When Jesus teaches this parable, he is at the pinnacle of his popularity. Everywhere he goes, multitudes of people are coming to hear Him, lepers are being healed, the sick are being made well, multitudes are being fed, the dead are being raised and lives are being transformed. But in the midst of all this, there’s the religious leaders who hated what Jesus was doing. Why? Because Jesus threatened their leadership, their power and their livelihood. Jesus exposed them for their hypocrisy and this infuriated them. So they’d show up wherever Jesus was and ask questions to trap him and challenge his credibility. In our Scripture today, they were upset that Jesus was associating Himself with sinners, people who are lost, in other words, people who need... Jesus. And so Jesus’ answer to their indictment of Him is to tell them this story. But just as Jesus was speaking to the religious Pharisees, so he was also speaking to the people in the crowd, as he is to us.
So what do we learn about being lost? First, when you’re lost, you aren’t thinking clearly. When we’re lost, we made poor choices. We get caught up in the moment and circumstances. Jesus opens the story with a scandalous statement: He says a younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance. That would have been earth shattering to those who heard him for 2 reasons. First, culturally the older brother got the double portion of the inheritance first and the younger brother got 1/3 as an inheritance. So by asking to get his inheritance first, he was disrespecting his brother and the traditions of his family. But that wasn’t the worst of it. When do you usually get an inheritance? After someone dies! So for the younger brother to ask his father for his inheritance was the equivalent of him saying to to his dad, “I wish you were dead.” Why did he say this? This son wasn’t in his right mind, because when you’re lost, you’re not thinking clearly. Have you ever seen a guy have a midlife crisis and leave his family to marry a woman half his age? Why do guys do that? Because they’re lost and aren’t thinking clearly. They think they’re going to find something that’s missing, but they never do.
So how can we make sure we think clearly? Be found in the presence and the will of God by pursuing God’s will for your life. Make sure you are always striving for God. Paul writes, “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.” (Philippians 3:14-15) But if you’re lost and disconnected from God, you’re wide open to making all kinds of crazy decisions that can ruin your life and hurt those you love the most. Draw close to God. Seek him!
Second, when you’re lost, you are still loved! What does the Father do when he sees his son far off in the distance? “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…. the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.” Now one of the things you need to understand is that it was undignified for an elderly Jewish man to run in public. Jesus’ audience is listening to this story and thinking, “Hold on, the dad did what?” But he does something else - he doesn’t let the younger son finish his rehearsed speech asking for forgiveness. Instead, he stops his son mid-sentence to tell him the words his son couldn’t possibly imaginehearing, that the relationship between him and his father has been restored. When you are lost, you’re still loved. In fact, the father showers him with love. The best robe in the house belonged to the father and was a symbol of authority. The ring would’ve been the family signet ring, a symbol of honor and reinstatement. And lastly, he was given sandals signifying that he would not serve his father as a servant but now is once again, a son.
You think your arrival will be met with hostility and that keeps you away. But all it takes is a moment of clarity to come to your senses and decide home is better than where you are. And you know what you find when you arrive home? You’re received with love. And yet, the son who knows that not all will feel this way. Why? Because he knows his older brother will not receive him with grace but with scorn, anger and jealousy. How easy it is to slip into the older brother mentality toward those who strayed from God and how much does that keep people from wanting to come home. We need to be more like the father than the older brother and have compassion on those seeking to come home. We need to be a place of love and acceptance. Just as the Father received his wayward son, so we need to receive those who have fallen away from church or from God. We need to be a place of grace and forgiveness.
All of us know what it means to be lost and then to be found by Jesus. That love and grace you have received, you need to pass on. Why? Because found people find lost people. Put another way, disciples make disciples. When you’re found, you want others to receive and experience the transformation you received in your life, That’s the way it’s supposed to work. And you have the best opportunity of the year in a few weeks on Easter to find people and help them find Jesus. That’s what we do, what we are to be about and my prayer is that is what we will always be about. Jesus put it this way: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” (1 John 3:1) Many people don’t know how loved by God they really are because all they’ve been doing is running away from him. We need to help them come home because it’s only here that we experience the Father’s love.
Third, when you’re lost, you need to admit it. That may be the most difficult things to admit, especially us men when we are behind the wheel. The older brother is just as lost as the younger but he refuses to admit it. The sin of the older son wasn’t that he was bad - his sin is that he was good and had obeyed all the rules and thought his dad owed him something. If you’re been a Christian awhile, you’re in danger of becoming the older brother. Why? Because we can think that our obedience to God makes God indebted to us in some way. This is the sin of the older brother. We look at the younger brother and how his sinful actions separated him from his father. The younger brother rebelled to get what he wanted from his father but the older’s brother used obedience to get what he wanted from his father. Truth be told, the older brother was just as far from his father because he saw his father like a vending machine. If we do the right thing, then God owes us what we want. “Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends.” (Luke 15:29) The literal meaning of the word serve that the son uses means slaving. “Lo, these many years I have been slaving…” He sees his service to his father as slavery and then says, “I can’t believe you won’t give me what I want.” Listen very carefully, we don’t serve God or obey God to get things from God. We serve and obey God because it’s the best way to live AND because we owe Him everything. He sent His Son to die for us. He’s given us forgiveness and eternal life and the only natural response to this gift of love and sacrifice is to obey Him.
You can be rebellious and lost or you can be religious and lost. This is what the older brother forgot: everything we receive from God is a gift of grace. It’s not about our performance - it’s about Jesus’ finished work. This is why many Christians are judgmental and arrogant. They think keeping the rules is what makes God love them - it’s not. We think God loves us because we kept the rules. Guess what? God loved you even before you knew there were rules to keep or even cared about obeying him. Paul put it this way: “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” (Romans 5:8)
Today maybe you’re more like the brother in this story where you feel like you have to earn God’s love. God loves you, not because you keep the rules or do a lot of good things for Him. God loves you, period. You didn’t simply need God’s grace when you got saved, you need God’s grace today and tomorrow and the next day just as much as you needed his grace before He saved you. Your standing before God and doing His work is meant to be done in response to the love and grace you have received. He’s the one who paid the price for you. Today might be the day for you to repent of trying to be your own savior. Let today be the day that you stop trying to earn God’s grace through your deeds but instead receive God’s free gift of grace and then live your life in response to that. God wants to set you free from the idea that God is only going to love if you do the right thing. God is going to love you regardless and that’s why we obey him.
Maybe today, you’re the younger brother. You’ve been out there trying to find meaning and purpose and love in all of the wrong places, in your career or relationships or your accomplishments. You’ve come up empty and now you’re wondering, what would happen if I turned around headed back home. This is where the Prodigal son was so wise. He turned and headed home and found what he never dreamed of: grace. This may be where you are. Do you keep searching for something, hoping it will satisfy or do you come home, fall at God’s feet and ask for God’s for grace, knowing this: that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. There is nothing you can do which will keep God’s love from you. There is nothing you’ve done that will cause God to say, I can’t accept you. Instead, you can come home and really receive grace and love and peace and forgiveness and hope. Jesus gave his life for you so that you can come before God as one of his children whom he so loves. He gave His life so you could be reconciled to God. That being the case, today is the day to come home and ask God to forgive you. I want to give you that opportunity as I pray for you.
