This morning we’ll conclude our nine week journey through some of the parables that Jesus told. Before we began this series I thought I had a pretty good handle on these mostly familiar parables. And there is no doubt that much of my previous understanding of these parables has been reinforced to some extent. But what has really surprised me – in a good way – is that there is so much more to these parables than I had previously seen.
By taking the time to properly understand the context in which Jesus told these parables and by focusing on the particular audience and purpose of each parable, I’ve come to see these parables in a fresh new light. And I pray that is also the case for you.
This morning we end our series with perhaps the most well known and loved parable of all – the one we usually refer to as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. But I’d like to suggest to you that perhaps that’s not really the best title for this parable after all. Let me show you why I think that is the case. Once again, as we should expect by now, context is the key here. So let’s begin at the very beginning of Luke chapter 15, where we find this familiar parable:
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable:
(Luke 15:1-3, ESV)
It is at that point that Jesus actually tells a series of three parables that are all meant to deal with the same issue. All three of these parables have the same basic structure:
• Something (or someone) is lost
• The object (or person) is found
• The person who found what was lost throws a party and invites others to rejoice with him or her
And all three parables are directed to the same audience – the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling because Jesus was hanging out with tax collectors and other sinners. That is an important thing for us to remember if we’re going to draw the appropriate applications from our parable.
The first two parables were short and simple. In the first a man lost one of his one hundred sheep and he left the other ninety-nine to go find the one sheep, which he then carried back home on his shoulders. When he returned home, he gathered his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him that he had found that one sheep.
In the second parable a woman loses one of her ten coins. So she lights a lamp and diligently searches her house until she finds that one coin. Then she also calls together her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her over finding that one coin.
In both cases, Jesus ends the parable by revealing the main point of the parable:
• There is great rejoicing in heaven over even one sinner who repents.
That is certainly a message that the self-righteous Pharisees and scribes needed to hear. As we talked about last week, these devoutly religious men were quite righteous by human standards. But because their religion actually held God at a distance, they failed to understand God’s compassion and His desire for people to humble themselves and repent and seek His mercy. So instead of doing what they should have been doing and sharing God’s love with those who needed it most, they actually avoided having any kind of contact at all with those they considered to be unrighteous sinners.
But Jesus leaves Hs audience with one unanswered question at the end of each of the first two parables. We don’t see how the friends and neighbors respond to the request to come and celebrate the finding of that which was lost. But Jesus has one more parable to tell – one in which He is going to focus on the answer to that question. And, I would suggest, it is a parable that is intended to speak primarily to these self-righteous religious leaders.
Since most of us are familiar with the parable, and we listened as the entire text was read earlier in the service, I’m not going to read the entire parable again. But allow me to quickly review the story.
A father had two sons. The younger son is the prodigal son. The word “prodigal” describes someone whose life is characterized by wasteful, lavish spending, and that is certainly an accurate description of this son. He asks for his share of his father’s inheritance, which his father gives to him, and then he goes and wastes that entire treasure in reckless living. Eventually he remembers how good he had it at his father’s house and returns home. He is prepared to humble himself and beg for his father’s mercy and forgiveness.
His father was watching and waiting for his son to return and when he saw his son in the distance he ran to greet him. He embraced and kissed his son and told his servants to bring new clothes for his son and to prepare a feast to celebrate the fact that his son who had been lost was now found.
Based on my own past experience with this parable as well as my study this week, it seems that most of the time when we look at this parable we tend to focus either the prodigal son or the father. And there is no doubt that we can learn from both of them.
• The prodigal son illustrates the truth that it never too late to return to God, regardless of how far we may have strayed away from Him or what we may have done.
• The father is obviously a picture of how God loves us and how He is not only willing to accept those who return to Him with a humble heart, but that he actually rejoices in those who were lost, but now are found.
But, given the context of the parable, I would suggest to you that the real focus of this parable is the third character in the story – the older son. So let me read just the last part of the parable that focuses on him, beginning in verse 25:
“Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 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 was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”
(Luke 15:25-32, ESV)
There is little doubt in my mind that Jesus intended this older son to picture the religious leaders who refused to associate with those who they considered to be sinners. Like this older son, they were angry and refused to go in to where the tax collectors and sinners were celebrating the fact that God had sent his own Son to minister to them and call them into His kingdom.
And this parable reveals to us the three underlying reasons that the older son failed to celebrate his brother’s return and correspondingly why the religious leaders failed to share in God’s joy over the repentance of a single sinner. And for us, this parable helps us to understand…
Three barriers that keep us from rejoicing in God’s mercy:
• Overestimating the gravity of the sin of others
In the mind of the older son, what his younger brother had done was so wrong that it could not and should not be forgiven by his father. And in an attempt to make himself look so much better by comparison, you’ll notice that he exaggerates the sin of his brother. Here is what he says about his brother’s lifestyle:
But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes…
First of all, you’ll note that he completely disassociates himself from his brother by referring to him as “this son of yours”. He doesn’t even want to acknowledge that this is his brother.
And then his description of what his brother had done seems to go well beyond the facts that Jesus had shared earlier in the story. Jesus merely said that the younger brother had squandered his property in reckless living. But his brother claims that he had devoured, not just squandered, the inheritance. And he also makes the claim that his brother had done that by spending his money on prostitutes, a claim that is not supported by anything else in the story.
This is exactly what the Jewish religious leaders were doing. In order to make themselves look better, they spent all their time condemning the sins of others. And it’s not too hard to imagine that as part of that process they were exaggerating those sins because that made them look even better in comparison.
But before we’re too quick to condemn either the older brother or the religious leaders, we need to first consider how we do the very same thing. As I mentioned last week during the “Connections” time, we have a tendency to consider the sins of others that we don’t particularly struggle with to somehow be more serious than our own sins.
Most of us are familiar with all the controversy surrounding some remarks made by Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame in an interview with GQ Magazine late last year. During that interview, Phil made this observation about our American culture:
Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong. Sin becomes fine.”
The reporter then asked this question in response to those remarks:
What, in your mind, is sinful?
That’s a question Jesus, could have just as easily posed to the scribes and Pharisees. And unfortunately, at least in my opinion, Phil answered that question just like a modern day Pharisee, with the words that ended up causing quite a controversy. I’m going to edit his words to make sure that what I share with you is appropriate for a family audience:
Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there…sleeping around with this woman and that woman and those men…
Phil then went on to paraphrase 1 Corinthians 6 in order to support his comments. First, let me just say that it is true that it is absolutely true that the Bible clearly reveals that sexual immorality of any kind, including homosexual behavior, is a sin.
But it is quite instructive that when he asked a very broad question about what is sinful, that is the very first thing Phil mentions. My guess is that is probably not a sin that Phil struggles with, so when he was asked to define sin, the easiest thing to do was to focus on one that isn’t a particularly tempting sin to him personally.
I’m not sharing this to condemn Phil Robertson. I certainly don’t know Phil, but from everything I know about him, I think he genuinely loves Jesus and wants to boldly proclaim Him the very best he knows how.
And I think that if we’re totally honest, those of us here this morning who genuinely love Jesus might react in much the same way if we were asked to define sin or to give a list of sins. Our list would probably be different than Phil’s because the sins we struggle with most are likely different than his. But my guess is that our list would include some of the “big sins” like murder and adultery, but we’d probably leave off things like lust, lying or a lack of patience.
The problem with overestimating the gravity of the sins of others is that we can become just like those Jewish religious leaders and come to the wrong conclusion that there are some people who are just too sinful to ever receive God’s grace. And as a result, we’ll just write them off and fail to tell them of God’s love for them and let them know that His grace is available to all, regardless of their past.
This first barrier of overestimating the gravity of the sins of others naturally leads to the second barrier we see in this parable…
• Underestimating the gravity of my own sin
The very first words that come from the mouth of the older son in response to his father are:
Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command…
Now there are really only two possibilities here. Either this son is the only perfect son in the history of mankind and he really has obeyed and served his father perfectly all his life, or he’s lying. I’m going to go with the second option here. Perhaps the son really did think he had served his father perfectly. In that case he was certainly deceived because it just isn’t possible for anyone to have done that. Or it’s also possible that he knew that he wasn’t perfect, but he just didn’t want to admit that to his father. But in either case, he certainly underestimated how far he had fallen short of the perfection he claimed and just how devastating that was.
It seems pretty clear that Jesus is using this older son to illustrate to these religious leaders that, just like him, they too have failed to recognize the sin in their own lives. In a sense, they were just like those who Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount who were telling others to get the speck out of their eyes when they still had a log in their own eyes.
In their own eyes, the Pharisees and scribes thought that their rigid adherence to a bunch of rules, many of which they had developed themselves, made them righteous in the eyes of God. So they were blinded to the fact that they, too, needed God’s mercy, just like all these other sinners who had gathered to listen to Jesus.
If we’re not careful, we can fall into that very same trap in our lives as well. It’s pretty easy to begin to look around at others and conclude that compared to them, we’re pretty righteous and that therefore we don’t need God’s mercy. But as we saw last week, if we fix our gaze on a holy God instead of on how well we’re keeping some set of rules, then we can’t help but see how far we fall short of his perfect holiness and just how much we need his mercy.
Earlier I talked about how Phil Robertson demonstrated some Pharisaical tendencies. But we also need to give him credit where credit is due. There did come a time in his life when God led Phil to see gravity of his own sin and to ask for God’s mercy. I’ll let Phil tell you about that in his own words.
[Phil Robertson testimony video]
Finally, in this parable we see the underlying reason that the older brother, and these religious leaders, had both overestimated the gravity of the sins of others and underestimated the gravity of their own sin. The third barrier that keeps us from rejoicing in God’s mercy is…
• Misunderstanding the heart of the Father
This final barrier is revealed in the second part of the son’s response to his father:
…yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friend. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!
Not that we really need it, but here is one more example of what happens when we draw conclusions about God based on our own observations, especially those of other people.
Even though he had lived with his father all his life, his words reveal that he really didn’t know the heart of his father at all. He saw how his brother had wasted everything the father had given to him and yet his father welcomed him back with open arms and even threw a big party for him. And yet his father had never even given him a young goat so that he could party with his friend.
But what he failed to see, or at least what he ignored is the fact that he was going to receive much more from his father than his younger brother had ever received. Because he was the older brother, he was entitled to receive twice the inheritance his younger brother would receive. And since his younger brother had already received his share, everything that his father had left would one day be his. That is exactly what his father indicated with these words:
Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
But, as those words also reveal, the older son had something far more valuable than just the material goods he would one day inherit. He had experienced what his younger brother had missed out on the entire time he was away from home – just getting to be in the presence of his father and to work alongside him each day.
The scribes and Pharisees had the very same problem. They were so caught up in running around trying to keep all their rules and trying to impress others that they missed out on the joy of having a personal relationship with their heavenly Father. And because of their lack of a relationship with God, they really had no sense of His heart at all. They didn’t see Him as He really is – a compassionate God who delights in extending His mercy to those who are humble enough to ask for it. He delights in that so much that He throws a party and invites the rest of His family and friends to join in.
It’s interesting to me that this parable doesn’t have one of those Hallmark Channel movie endings – you know the ones where all the loose ends are tied up and everyone lives happily ever after. The parable ends with the invitation to his older son to join the party, but we don’t really know whether that son accepted the invitation or not. I think that Jesus did that on purpose so that those religious leaders who were listening to the parable would realize that their book was still open, so to speak. They still had the opportunity to accept the invitation and join the celebration for those who had repented and received God’s mercy. And not only that, it still wasn’t too late for them to join those people by humbling themselves and receiving that mercy for themselves.
Unfortunately, we know that these religious leaders were so caught up in their religion that they refused to accept God’s grace. So a short time later, they would seek to crucify the instrument of that grace, Jesus.
Jesus extends that same invitation to all of us here today. The ending of our stories hasn’t been written yet either. We still have the opportunity to receive God’s grace and to join in the party and celebrate those who have repented and entered into the kingdom of God. As we close our time this morning, I’m confident that God is extending one or more of the following invitations to each one of us:
1. He is inviting all of us to know the heart of the Father better.
If we want to get to know the heart of God better, we obviously have to spend time with Him. And the primary means that God has given us to do that is His Word, where He reveals Himself to us. We also have the privilege of spending time with Him through prayer. But, as we saw with the older son, just spending time with the Father is not enough. Even though he spent a lot of time with his father, he still didn’t know his heart.
That is why what we do with that time is so crucial. If I just read the Bible for information or even if I just read it to glean some life principles, I’ll miss out on the joy of really getting to know God. That’s why, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m really trying to focus on discerning the heart of God in my Bible reading. That is also why it’s so important to read all of God’s Word – Old and New Testament, so that we get a complete picture of who God is.
2. He is inviting all of us to share His heart with others regardless of how serious their sin might look to us.
This is a principle that we’ve seen frequently in the parables. Regardless of how it might appear to us, there is no one whose sin is so bad that it is beyond the reach of God’s mercy and grace. We must not, like the older brother and like the religious leaders, look at the sin of others and make judgments about the severity of that sin, or assume that because others are not at the same level of spiritual maturity we are, that they are not worth sharing God’s love and mercy.
For each of us who have been blessed with the gift of God’s mercy and grace in our lives, our task is merely to share that with others and just leave the results up to God.
3. He is inviting some to recognize the gravity or your own sin and seek His mercy.
Finally, maybe you are one of those people who up until now hasn’t recognized that the sin in your life has separated you from God. But as you’ve seen this morning, the good news is that it’s not too late to accept the forgiveness and new life that God wants to give to you today. In just a moment, we’re going to give you the opportunity to do that.
[Have people bow their heads and close their eyes and ask them to raise their hands for each of the three invitations and then have the elders pray for them:
• Don – pray for those who desire to know the heart of the Father better
• Paul – pray for those who desire to share the heart of the Father with others
• Steve – pray for any who want to accept God’s mercy (If no one raises their hand, pray that if there is anyone else that needs to make that decision that God would put that on their heart]
