Text: Luke 15:11-32
Introduction
1. ILLUS: I preached a revival at Second Baptist Church of Ashland, KY some years ago. I went alone and I traveled by plane. I started in Tallahassee, FL, flew to Atlanta International and then to Huntington, WV. The airport in Huntington is a frightening one. They built it by scooping off the top of one of the Appalachian Mountains and then they built the airport on top of the mountain. On November 14, 1970, the Marshall University football team was returning from a game they played in North Carolina, and in drizzling rain, the plane was flown by pilots who had never before landed at the Huntington airport. And at 7:36 PM, the pilot believing he was coming in too high was actually flying far too low and the plane clipped trees and then flew into the side of the mountain, killing everyone on board instantly. The town nearly died with the victims of the crash. Nearly the entire Herd was aboard, nearly all coaches and many prominent people. Huntington lost so many of its sons that day, and still today there is somewhat of a dark cloud over Huntington. I have recorded albums there and I cannot explain it, but the town has never completely recovered from the decades old tragedy. They made a movie about it: “We are Marshall.” So great was the town’s loss, they have never recovered from the grief.
2. As the heart of a city was broken, so is the heart of God broken over the plight of lost sinners. Read vv 11-32
3. The parable we are studying today is unlike any other parable. It is the most intimate parable Jesus ever taught.
4. There are three parables in this chapter, all given at once by Jesus. Some say all three combined are simply three acts of one parable.
5. But there is a theological issue we must set straight first, or else we are going to miss the whole point of the story.
6. This parable has often been used by preachers and Bible teachers for a lesson about the backsliding Christian.
7. But, notice the context in vv 1-2. So what Jesus is about to say He says to the Pharisees who were judging Him for being in the company of sinners.
8. This is not a lesson about backsliding: It is a lesson on the broken heart of God seeking the lost!
9. Notice the two parables that come before this parable: vv 3-10
10. There is the lost sheep, the lost silver and the lost son.
11. The missing sheep
12. The misplaced silver
13. The miserable son
These all show the Triune Godhead at work in salvation. First, the Son is the good shepherd who gives His life for the sheep. John 10:27-28, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
ILLUS: The Middle Eastern imagery of sheep herding.
Then, there is the parable of the lost silver. This pictures the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation. He works on the inside of the house, and sheds light into the heart in order to turn the lost sinner toward God.
Then the parable of the prodigal son is a picture of the Heavenly Father’s seeking heart.
14. The emphasis in this entire triplet is on the heart of the seeking God and the resounding joy in Heaven when a lost sinner is found.
15. Today we are going to look at this tender, touching and true picture of the heart of God toward sinners. Jesus is telling these lost religious teachers what the character of the Father is all about. We are going to see God’s heart for lost souls, and learn how we can see the lost through Jesus’ eyes. Notice three things from this Parable of the Father’s Heart toward Sinners:
I. The rebellion of a wayward son: vv 12-16
A. His selfish demand
1. vv 12, And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.
2. Here is a wealthy man with two sons. He has great riches of money, land, he owns slaves, and he has two sons.
3. This father is a picture of the Heavenly Father. Jesus is saying, This is what my Father is like.
4. Here is the cast of characters in the story:
a. The father represents the Heavenly Father. He is immensely wealthy, wise, righteous,
and forgiving.
b. The prodigal represents a lost and spiritually dead sinner. Some ask, “Then why is he called a son?” He is a son in the sense of election only. That is, God has infinite knowledge and knows who will be saved in the future, and those whom He foreknows are the elect. God has elected them to salvation because He foresees that they will put their faith in Jesus.
c. Notice to whom Jesus is addressing this parable in vv 1-2. He is addressing the Pharisees who are accusing Jesus because He is seen in the company of sinners.
d.Why would Jesus be giving a lesson in backsliding to a bunch of lost, hypocritical and hellish Pharisees?
e. No! The prodigal son is not a backslidden Christian: He is a lost and dying sinner! Notice vv 24; 32. Does that sound like a description of a backslidden Christian to you?
f. The elder brother pictures the Pharisees.
5. And this son makes a selfish, wicked demand upon his loving father. He wants his inheritance and freedom to travel wheresoever he may choose, and he wants it right now.
a. Now understand the magnitude of this. It’s as if he has said to his father, “I wish you were dead!”
b. This was an act of defiant rebellion! He is abandoning his father and everything he stands for; he is forsaking his family, his responsibilities at home, his father’s rules and his place in his father’s family.
c. He essentially disowns his dad. And this boy owns nothing to demand.
6. His dad grants his request for his inheritance.
a. In no way was the father bound to do this. But he honored the boy’s request and gave him his freedom. His inheritance represents his soul.
b. This is a picture of God giving man a free will. God allows man to choose whether or not he will be saved, how he will live his life, and if he wants to do it without God, God says, “By all means!”
c. You say, Well that doesn’t sound like a loving God! O yes it does. Forced love is not love at all. God does not force Himself on anyone.
B. His sinful debauchery
1. vv 13, Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.
a. The word that is translated “reckless living” here is a path of self-destruction; no self-control; no moral constraints.
b. Here Jesus is emphasizing the sinner’s distance from God and his wicked lifestyle.
c. He has gone into a far country- a desolate land far away from God.
d. I don’t care how moral, how religious, how proper and how philanthropic a man may be, if he isn’t saved by God’s grace and washed in Jesus’ blood, he is a vile, broken, lost and dying sinner far away from God, in this far distant land!
e. This land is reached by traveling the broad way- the common way, on which everyone travels who is unsaved and apart from Jesus Christ. Isaiah 53:6, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – everyone- to his own way (the far country). We all once lived in this far country- this land of darkness and ultimate despair.
f. Ephesians 2:1-3, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body[a] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
2. This young man’s entire life is based upon fulfilling the lusts of the flesh!
a. He is living the “good” life: partying; drinking liquor; running with prostitutes; doing everything and anything he wants.
b. He is the guy you see on the beer and wine commercials on television. He is young, handsome, carefree and happy.
c. He is a Hedonist!
d. ILLUS: John Newton’s experience and conversion who became a slave to slaves.
e. When your desires and cravings master you, you are the lowest form of a slave, and you have a taskmaster who is never satisfied!
C. His sad disappointment
1. vv 14
a. Now the fun is over because the money is gone.
b. ILLUS: I knew a woman who inherited a fortune. And she wasted that fortune and began selling the furniture from her mc mansion.
c. But there is a far greater waste that this story speaks of. Remember, his inheritance is a picture of his soul. This is not a story about wasting money, but about a man wasting his own soul!
d. Finally, he is brought to the end of himself when the money is gone; when rebellion is no longer fun, and when a famine overtakes the land that was plentiful, and now it becomes a dry, parched, chaffed land- a place of hunger and want.
2. This is what happens in every case.
a. ILLUS: Have you ever been hungry and so you get a snack…a piece of fruit, a sandwich, a piece of pie or cake…and you eat it but then realize it did not really satisfy the hunger? And you just can’t pin it down and determine what it is. Is it a vitamin deficiency, or some craving, but nothing you eat satisfies that deep hunger?
b. Isaiah 55:1-2, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money,
Come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.
2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
And your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourselves in rich food.
b. This world may offer many things, but it will never, never, never satisfy the longing of the human soul! Only Jesus can do that. God designed us that way.
3. And now here is this young man, who left a mansion and loving father behind, and the far country is a Gentile land. Here is how we know this:
a. vv 15-16
b. Here is this wealthy Jewish boy, and now he is reduced to feeding hogs- unclean animals.
c. And he is so desperately hungry that he is eating slop with the hogs.
d. This young man sowed his wild oats and reaped a crop of shame.
II. The redemption of a wasted sinner vv 17-24
A. The prodigal’s repentance
1. vv 17, But when he came to himself he said, How many of my Father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!
a. The NIV translates this, “When he came to his senses”.
b. Did you know that unbelief is insanity?
c. Think about it: Here this stupid boy left a mansion, a loving father, servants, and he walked away from all of this to go to a poor far country where eventually he is so hungry and poor he is eating with the hogs he is feeding!
d. Wouldn’t you call that insanity?
e. And so it is with all unbelievers: Here they are, living in rebellion against the God of Heaven, eating with the swine when they could be a child of the King, an heir of God!
2. Now, what this phrase actually means is that he began to repent.
a. Repentance is a change of mind. It means to change your mind and turn around.
b. Repentance is turning around in the opposite direction.
c. And here is how it happened: He recognizes his great sin; he realizes there is nothing he can do to help himself; he realized where he was and how far he had fallen; he realizes how much more his father has to offer.
d. The greatest need of most people is simply to see their need.
3. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, deals with the will, the nous.
a. Repentance is a change in thinking and a change of the will.
b. God is sovereign, the saved are elected by God to receive the gift of salvation, and yet man is free.
c. How does someone repent? They change their mind about Jesus Christ, and something like this happens in the mind: “Here I am a poor sinner! I have tried to fulfill my heart’s deepest desires, and yet I am empty and hungry for something that is real. I have lived a life of sin, and I have wasted my life. But I now realize that Jesus is who I have been seeking all along.”
d. Friend that is repentance. Everyone who is saved had that moment where, in their mind, they turned from their sin and turned to Jesus.
4. ILLUS: Imagine a great cotton plantation that would have been in this area 170 years ago. This plantation is worked by slaves, and the owner is more demanding than anyone else in the business- that’s how he has amassed such great wealth and the huge antebellum mansion. His slaves are given an enormous work load, and when they fail to meet his high standards, his slave master is unmerciful. They are beaten with a whip.
Then suppose one day the wealthiest man in the south comes to the plantation and offers such a high price for a slave named John that he cannot resist, and he sells him to a new master. Now John is told he has been sold, and is sent away with his new master.
He expects his new master to be even worse if that is even possible, but to his dismay his new master says, “I am a very wealthy man, and I have taken it upon myself to buy certain slaves in order to set them free! You are now free to go as you please!”
But now, where John had longed his life for freedom, he only wants to be a good servant to his new, kind and loving master!
a. When Paul called himself a servant of Jesus, this is what he meant. The word dulous literally means a slave who has been set free but chooses to stay and serve his master because he loves him! That is how the prodigal in the story returns to his father!
B. The prodigal’s return.
1. vv 18.
a. At this point, this young man is brought to a realization that leads to an admission.
b. He finally sees himself as God sees him- as a wicked, dirty, defiled and wasted sinner.
c. If you’ve never had that realization, you need to be saved!
d. This comes when the lost sinner is made to see his need and his sin by the light of the Spirit.
e. There are always those who cannot see their need. They aren’t even able to see their sin.
f. ILLUS: This is the person who says, Well I don’t have this problem. I am not a prodigal. I don’t live in the pig pen. I live a good clean life. I attend church! I am in the choir! I hold an office in the church!
g. This person is far deeper in the hog pen than the prodigal.
h. Matthew 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
i. The person in the greatest darkness is not the heathen from a tribe in Africa who worships the sun in the sky, it is the religious unbeliever who sees himself as righteous; who sees himself as enlightened, and he is without Jesus. How great is that darkness!
C. The prodigal’s reception
1. vv 20
a. Now get this and don’t miss it: The father pictures the heavenly Father, and as the prodigal’s father received him back from the hog pen and embraced him- this is exactly how God the Father will receive you when you come to Him through Jesus!
b. While the boy was still at a great distance, the father saw him. This is because the father was brokenhearted and was seeking him. He looked and longed for his son’s return
c. We do not seek God- God seeks us!
d. Romans 3:11-12, no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
e. Friend, if you will come through Jesus, God will accept you as His long lost child. He has been seeking you since before the earth was spun on its axis with a heart of love. He has given up His dear Son to die to provide the acceptable payment for your sins.
f. Imagine how this lad smelled coming out of a pig farm! He had lice and parasites he picked up when he was living in the filth, the muck and the mire, and yet his father embraced him with unconditional love.
What a wonderful picture of God’s grace!
D. The prodigal’s redemption
1. vv 21-24
Notice the gifts his father gave him:
a. His father gives him a robe- this is a picture of Jesus’ righteousness.
b. Jesus’ righteousness is the basis upon which we stand before God. He makes us worthy to have sweet fellowship with a holy and righteous God!
c. When a sinner trusts in Jesus, then God puts Jesus’ perfect holiness on his account, and as he stands before God, that sinner is now perfectly holy and righteous.
2. Then he puts a ring on his finger.
a. This is a picture of royalty. The father is saying, “I’m not receiving you as a slave; I’m receiving you as a son!”
ILLUS: Pharaoh gave Joseph a ring as a symbol of his authority and royalty.
b. When a person is saved, they are given the red, royal, rich blood of Jesus, and we become royalty.
c. The Bible says that we, the children of God, are a royal priesthood.
d. And God freely gives us the treasure of His grace- eternal life, a place in God’s family, a royal heritage and a role to play in His plan of redemption.
3. He put sandals on his feet.
This is a picture of salvation allowing us to walk- to live out life down here- in safety and protection. It speaks of the eternal security of all believers.
a. And he threw a celebration!
b. He killed the fatted calf. The finest filet minion in his herd he killed and prepared for a great celebratory meal where no expense is spared.
III. The reaction of a wicked sibling vv 25-32
A. He was angry
1. vv 25-28a
a. Now, the elder brother represents the Pharisees to whom Jesus is speaking.
b. The Pharisees were the sect of Judaism that had become nothing more than legalism, hypocrisy, arrogance, power, prestige, and most of all self-righteousness.
c. These were the guys who thought they were doing God some wild favor, believing that they were earning their way to heaven through the keeping of the Law.
d. No one has ever been saved on those terms! They were ego-maniacs strutting to hell.
2. When the elder brother heard the celebration, he asked one of the servants what was going on, and he informs him of his brother’s return.
a. Immediately you notice on thing: He was not happy about his brother’s return. In fact, he believes that his brother was guilty of an unpardonable sin and should never have been received back into the family.
3. There are many Pharisees today in the church.
a. They don’t rejoice when someone gives their life to Jesus! They get angry.
b. They say things like, “Well, that’s just a pretense. Old Bob didn’t really give his heart to Jesus. He’s just trying to get into the church.”
c. That is Phariseeism!
d. Pharisees are the angry people in churches. They believe that their calling from God is to be a critic of everything that goes on.
3. This hypocritical nature comes out of the old sinful nature.
b. ILLUS: One of Aesop’s fables deals with this kind of moral and spiritual hypocrisy.
An old man and his young son were bringing a donkey to market. Passing people along the way, they heard this remark. “Look at that silly pair, walking when they could be riding the donkey!”
The old man thought that maybe they were right, so he and the boy mounted the little donkey. Soon they passed another group of people and they heard, “Look at that lazy pair! They’re breaking the back of that poor little donkey!”
Now the old man slid off and began walking again, but he soon heard this criticism, “What a terrible thing! The young boy gets to ride while the poor old man has to walk!”
With that, they changed places. The old man rode while the boy walked, but soon they heard, “What a terrible thing! The old man riding the donkey and making that poor little boy walk!”
These are the most negative people you will ever meet in a church!
B. He was arrogant.
1. vv 29
a. He is literally saying, I have been slaving for you all of these years.
b. And that statement is the key to their attitude. They don’t have a relationship with God based upon grace, but they think they are serving God by their works.
c. He said, “You’re treating him better than you treat me, and I never rebelled. I’ve always been here!”
d. All the while, all of those years, without ever leaving home in open rebellion, this Pharisee had been in rebellion in his heart all the time!
2. Do you know the Pharisee’s real problem?
a. He does not understand the Father’s heart.
b. He doesn’t understand God’s tool for redeeming sinners- His grace!
c. Pharisees are legalizers.
d. ILLUS: The Pharisees who infiltrated the Galatian churches, whom Paul rebuked.
C. He was accusing.
1. vv 30
a. Obviously the prodigal had rebelled against the father and gone out to live a sinful lifestyle.
b. We are not told that he spent his money on prostitutes necessarily.
c. But he accuses him of this specifically.
2. Pharisees are accusers!
a. Notice that he doesn’t call him his brother, but “this son of yours!”
b. They accused the woman caught in adultery; they accused the publicans and the common people.
c. This is because of the Pharisee’s legalistic concept.
d. In order to feel justified himself, he does so by comparing himself to others that he is “better than!”
e. Don’t lie down in the gutter alongside a hypocrite and say “I’m longer than he is!” Jesus Christ is the standard.
f. Romans 3:20, For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
D. He was artificial.
1. vv 33-32
a. Now the father explains to him why he is rejoicing.
b. The Pharisee just doesn’t get it.
c. ILLUS: The two women meeting in the grocery store talking about their churches. One said her church was wonderful; the other said her church was in a poor state of affairs; one had a great pastor; the other said her pastor was not a good preacher…
Then they asked each other what church they attended… the same church!
d. The Pharisee’s real problem is…they need Jesus!
Conclusion
But there is good news in all of this: Any prodigal can be wonderfully saved and welcomed by Jesus with open arms, if you will simply turn from your sin and to Jesus.
And even a Pharisee can be saved, if he becomes wiling to stop trying to earn what cannot be earned, and buying that which cannot be bought.
ILLUS: Nicodemus was a Pharisee who put faith in Jesus and was saved.
