Sermon: The Giving Father
Mary Vs. Eve Opener Joke
One week a Sunday school teacher had just finished telling her class the Christmas story, how Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem and how Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger. After telling the story the teacher asked, "Who do you think the most important woman in the Bible is?" Of course, the teacher was expecting one of the kids to say, "Mary." But instead, a little boy raised his hand and said, "Eve." So the teacher asked him why he thought Eve was the most important woman in the Bible.
And the little boy replied, "Well, they named two days of the year after Eve. You know, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve."
As we enter into our Christmas Week, we are reminded about what Christmas is about. It is about…
“….God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son so that all who believe in his name should not perish but have everlasting life.”
….A Father who gave His only begotten Son to mankind, as a ransom for sin, and to establish the church, a new kingdom that would rescue mankind from its preoccupation with self.
….A startling miracle where God would clothe Himself with human flesh, enter into our suffering and pain, and walk where we walk. Where He would show His love not just in commandments but through His own self-sacrifice.
This morning’s sermon is about that kind of love. Our series this month has been about “living for giving” and has focused so far upon our response to God’s love. Today, however, I hope to show you a word picture that Jesus gave us of the Father’s love for you and I, that really demonstrates what Christmas…the incarnation of Christ is all about.
Open your bibles to Luke Chapter 15
11 To illustrate the point further, (the point of why Jesus spent time with the notorious sinners) Jesus told them this story: "A man had two sons. 12 The younger son told his father, ’I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting until you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. 13 "A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living. 14 About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. 15 He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. 16 The boy became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. 17 "When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ’At home even the hired men have food enough to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger! 18 I will go home to my father and say, "Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, 19 and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired man."’ 20 "So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long distance away, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. 21 His son said to him, ’Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. F70 ’ 22 "But his father said to the servants, ’Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger, and sandals for his feet. 23 And kill the calf we have been fattening in the pen. We must celebrate with a feast, 24 for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began. 25 "Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, 26 and he asked one of the servants what was going on. 27 ’Your brother is back,’ he was told, ’and your father has killed the calf we were fattening and has prepared a great feast. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ 28 "The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, 29 but he replied, ’All these years I’ve worked hard for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30 Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the finest calf we have.’ 31 "His father said to him, ’Look, dear son, you and I are very close, and everything I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’"
This story is probably familiar to most of you, it is one of the greatest of all in the New Testament to illustrate the love of our Father in Heaven. It also illustrates the WHY Jesus came to earth.
1. Prodigal
a. The story is often called the story of the PRODIGAL SON.
b. A thesaurus lists these synonyms for the word prodigal: excessive, extravagant, immoderate, wasteful, spendthrift, squanderer, or wastrel. I had to look that last one up: wastrel -- "one who wastes,"
c. Actually, the word prodigal can describe lavish behavior whether it is directed towards oneself (as in the younger son who wasted his inheritance on lavish living) or on the father, who was lavish in his forgiveness and acceptance of the younger son when he returned home. And so we are prompted to ask who is the prodigal in this story?
d. Tradition has assigned the term the prodigal to the son. That is because we are so “its about me” oriented. We can relate to the actions of the son, because that is exactly how we have behaved.
e. But the story tells us something else. It says the squanderer is God, who squanders all He has on us.
2. Explaining the Story:
a. The Son comes to his father and asks for his inheritance. Now that might not be such a bad thing, saying, “I’d like my share now because I want to go out and start living on my own.”
b. But that was not what he was saying.
i. The Son said, “Give me my share of the inheritance now.” In the Jewish culture this was a radical rejection of the father. In essence, he was wishing for his father to be dead. “ I can’t wait for you to die.” It was heartless, cruel and ungrateful, but legally he could make such a request.
1. But sin is more than breaking rules and laws. It is the breaking of a relationship.
2. This son does not break the rules as much as he breaks his father’s heart.
ii. Furthermore, the words used in the story give us an insight into something even deeper:
1. Do you see the word property or wealth there? It appears three times in those two verses. It also appears again in verse 30, where the older son tells his father how the prodigal son devoured his property. Instead of using words that literally mean property, Jesus used words with greater meaning.
2. , the first word translated as property in verse 12 is ousia, which was already a philosophical word used to talk about one’s very substance or Being.
3. The son basically says to his father: "Give me the piece of your Being that will belong to me."
4. ? The second instance of property in verse 12 is the Greek word bios, "life." It should read: "So the father divided his life between them."
iii. The youngest son was asking His father not just for “stuff” but for his life, to tear himself in two and give him his half.
c. Can you fathom a parent’s pain whose child comes to him and essentially says, “I wish you were dead” so I can live my life my way?
i. Yet that is precisely what you and I have done, the world has done to God.
1. We rejected Him and said, “leave us alone and let us live life the way we want to.
2. We want to be lords of our lives.”
ii. The son wanted to be like his father, but on his own terms.
1. He believed that self-gratifying indulgence would make him happy.
iii. And so the father lets him go.
1. He knew that love only possesses what it releases.
2. He loved his son too much to restrain him.
3. You and I can feel the wrenching pain of the father as he lets him go.
4. Every parent can relate to the statement. ’It is hard to watch your children struggle."
iv. Did the son even know he broke his father’s heart?
1. Be careful how you answer that one because it implies a deeper question.
2. Do you know when you break your Heavenly Father’s heart?
a. We do it every time we resist his control, refuse his guidance and renounce his goodness as the source of our lives.
b. Some of us have packed up our share of the inheritance and have left the Father as if never to come back.
d. The son goes off to the “far Country” which is the realm of rebellion.
i. It is a deliberate act of departure.
1. He renounced his dependent sonship.
2. Most of us DRIFT into a similar condition.
3. First it is little things. Then our plans, our money, our deepest relationships, finally our hearts.
4. And we are often too proud to admit that to others or even ourselves.
5. Prayer becomes difficult or hardly exists at all.
6. God’s guidance for our lives seems irrelevant. He seems too far away.
ii. The lost son is all too often interpreted for those who have done horrible things like drugs, crime or moral failure.
1. But the truth is that most of us are not squanderers but wanderers.
2. We wander from our potential when we make choices to do it our way.
iii. The far country will take all we give it, and the question we ask isn’t what to do when the money runs out, but “What can we squeeze into life and acquire before the undertaker arrives?”
e. The son’s money runs out. His hunger amid a famine drives him to become a day laborer, essentially a slave without rights.
i. He had left his home because he wanted to be free to be himself, but attached to his new master, he found out how shallow that was. Starving, willing to even eat the empty corn cobs
1. Isn’t that how it is? How often have you seen a young girl, tired of parental authority, leave home by getting married young, and ending up in a controlling relationship, trading one form of mastery for another?
2. We flee legitimate authority only to become enslaved to illegitimate authority.
f. And at the bottom…he “comes to himself.”
i. This means he saw himself as he truly was.
ii. It isn’t easy to take an honest look at yourself.
iii. We all resist it as long as we can. To face the complicated complex of attitudes, reactions, thought patterns and personality traits which are the real me is hard and frightening.
iv. And to come to ourselves is a strange gift in the far country.
1. We see the destructiveness of our behavior and the selfishness of our actions.
2. We see the independence of our ways and we call it all by its right name: SIN.
v. And that leads to the liberating realization…”Why am I living this way?”
vi. “I will get up and go to my father and will say to him, ‘Father I have sinned against heaven and in your sight!’”
g. Notice that the father did not step in to save his son from reality in the far country.
i. There were no guardians to soften the blows he felt.
ii. The father loved him so much that he allowed him to experience the shame and come to himself.
iii. That’s prodigal love.
h. Sometimes I hear people ask why God sends trials and difficulties.
i. He doesn’t have to. Life offers and sends enough of its own.
ii. We struggle against the difficulty, asking “why, what it the meaning of this?”
iii. God waits until we ask, “What is the meaning in this?” “What am I to learn?”
i. And so the son begins his long journey home, reciting over and over his speech that he will make to his father, hoping to earn the right to reenter his household as a hired servant.
j. The great Scottish preacher John McNeill told that during his childhood he had to walk a long distance home every evening, and his route led through a forest with a large ravine. Reports said that wild animals and gangs of robbers were often seen in that area. Great fear would seize his heart as he made his way past the spooky looking trees. He recalled, "One night it was especially dark, but I was aware that something or someone was moving slowly and quietly toward me. I was sure it was a robber. When a voice called out, its eerie tone struck my heart with fear. I thought I was finished. Then came a second call. This time I could hear the voice saying, ’John, is that you?’ It was my father. He had known of my fear and had come out to meet me."
k. It was a word from John Mcneill’s father that brought peace to his fearful heart that night. What we fearful humans need is a word from our Father. A word from Him who is able to expel our fears and eliminate our worries. We have such a word before us this morning as we come home to God.
3. Because the father is waiting and watching.
a. The father is the only one who does not do what is expected. Let’s look at the Father for a moment:
b. Rather than lecturing the returning son or rejecting his plea outright, the father joyfully receives the son without commenting on his sin.
c. In fact, when the son was "yet a great way off," the father ran to meet him and kiss him.
d. Before the kisses of love were given, this young man was on his way to his father; but he would not have reached him unless his father had come the major part of the way.
i. When you give God and inch, He will give you an mile.
1. If you come a little way to Him, when you are "yet a great way off" He will run to meet you.
2. I do not know that the prodigal saw his father, but his father saw him.
3. The eyes of mercy are quicker than the eyes of repentance.
4. Even the eyes of our faith is dim compared with the eye of God’s love.
5. He sees a sinner long before a sinner sees Him.
ii. Slow are the steps of repentance, but swift are the feet of forgiveness
iii. The father "saw" his son. There is a great deal in that word, "saw."
1. He saw who it was; saw where he had come from; saw the swineherd’s dress; saw the filth upon his hands and feet; saw his rags; saw his penitent look; saw what he had been; saw what he was; and saw what he would soon be. "His father saw him."
2. God has a way of seeing men and women that you and I cannot understand.
3. He sees right through us at a glance, as if we were made of glass; He sees all our past, present and future.
e. if we had read that the father had kicked his prodigal son, we should not have been very much astonished.
i. But still, his son deserved all the rough treatment that some heartless men might have given; and had the story been that of a selfish human father only, it might have been written that "as he was coming near, his father ran at him, and kicked him."
ii. There are such fathers in the world, who seem as if they cannot forgive. If he had kicked him, it would have been no more than he had deserved.
iii. But no, what is written in the Book stands true for all time, and for every sinner,—"He fell on his neck, and kissed him";
f. In the near eastern culture it was beneath the dignity of a father to run. T
i. hat this father behaved in a most appalling manner illustrates that the grace of God does not operate as we think it should
g. All God wants is for us to come home and receive forgiveness.
i. We’ve all “left home” in some ways.
1. Whenever we have looked away from God to get our deepest needs met, we’ve strayed from “home”.
2. We leave home when materialism becomes our God,
ii. In this parable it seems that once the son left home and went to the distant land, his father was out of the picture.
1. It seems that his father just stayed home and worried.
2. It is important to realize that this is written from the viewpoint of the son:
3. When we turn from God it seems as if He is distant from us; that’s how it feels to us.
iii. But from the Lord’s perspective, He never leaves us.
h. And there is no restitution, no earning of this father’s love.
i. As the son gives his speech, the father never lets him finish. He won’t be turned by words, he doesn’t need our speeches. Our Father in heaven is waiting for you and I to return home. To turn to Him.
ii. And a ring – the symbol of the bonds no failure could break. It was the father’s way of saying, “you have been and always will be my son and recipient of my love.
i. And then there is a celebration.
j.
4. Have you ever felt like the prodigal son? You really “screwed up” something at home or at work.
a. As you return home you rehearse what you are going to say, just as the young man does in the parable.
b. Perhaps you are working on excuses.
i. Notice that the prodigal son makes no excuses for himself.
ii. The consequences of his foolish behavior have brought him to his knees and he is ready to repent.
c. Admitting sinfulness is not easy. We tend to minimize what we did, we feel shame, embarrassment.
5. Perhaps you are like the older son, the one who has never wandered from home…at least not with his feet.
a. We should note that the older son is, like his brother, unexceptional. He does what would be expected of a brother in such a case.
i. He says, "Dad, it’s not fair."
ii. Again, this puts the spotlight on the father, the one character in the story who does not act as expected
b. These are, of course, questions about us, older sons and prodigals that we are.
i. Will we maintain our cries of "Unfair!" as we see God’s love and grace poured out on the unworthy?
ii. Or will we come to realize that no one, ourselves included, deserves God’s grace
c. Or is He is resentful because his brother got to have his father’s love; but also resentful because he had stayed behind, obediently, and didn’t do the junk his brother did, and was now somewhat jealous because he really “wanted to” do what his brother had done.
i. He hadn’t lived sinfully in his actions, but it is apparent through his resentment that he had in his heart.
ii. And he hadn’t done it because he didn’t want to lose his father’s favor and love?
iii. Yet his brother does these things and still has the father’s love?
1. What fairness is there in that?
2. That a person could live righteously and another live in rebellion; and yet on his deathbed repent and get the same reward as I?
d. Now in the attitude of this elder son we see a temptation which can very well befall Christian people. T
i. hey may not even know it is happening to them.
ii. "What do those people think they are doing coming to this church?"
iii. "What does he think he is doing here after those terrible things he did?" "Who does she think she is joining us after living such a scandalous life?"
iv. People can get very self-righteous and self-important. I
v. t is tragically the case that they can also feel more important by putting others down.
vi. Rather than rejoicing with the angels in heaven over one sinner who repents as our Lord says with certainty, it is often easier to grumble and complain.
vii. The older son often has lots of company in many churches.
e. “Lo these many years I have slaved for you,” the older brother sneers to the old man (and his choice of words tells you all you need to know about how he viewed his own relationship with his father – as nothing but a slave; working, not out of love, but out of obligation; feeling like a slave; unable to live in relationship as a son) . He will not even acknowledge his brother as a brother.
f. Instead of saying, “my brother” he says, “this son of his.”
i. By doing so, he too wants out of his relationship with his father. He wants to stand on his own and define who he is apart from his relationship with his Father, just as the younger son wanted to define who he was by asking to become the father’s servant.
ii. “All these years I have slaved for you,” he says, “turning your turnip business around, putting the books into the black (he’s big on bookkeeping, this older brother) and you never gave me a party.”
iii. And the Father says, “Come on in, Ernest. So what, you’re the biggest turnip grower in the province. Your brother (notice how the father will still use relationship language – “your brother”) was as good as dead to me, and now he is back home. Come on in. Let’s party.”
g. But that raises another dilemma for we could honestly ask "Which son was truly lost?"
i. Someone has said "you can travel around the world and not move an inch", but it is also true that you can not move an inch, and yet be in a distant land as regards relationships.
Which brother are you? Have you wandered away from the giving Father who has given you His all? Have you moved slowly away and now the Christmas season is upon us, and you are reminded of God’s gift and yet you feel numb? You aren’t excited by the treasure of Christ, incarnate God with us? You may be the wanderer…the waster of God’s great gift. Won’t you turn back to him today before you end up a slave to someone else?
)Or perhaps you never have received the Father’s love and never knew how great it was? To receive it you only need to say, “Yes!” To become a Child of God, you only need to acknowledge your sin (rejection of God) and ask Jesus to forgive you your sin, believe in Him, trust Him to become your savior and your life. If you will do that today, your life will be turned right-side up.
You can do that now…you can slip out from your seat during our time of invitation and ask me to pray with you. Or if you have walked away from God, you can turn back to Him. He is waiting to run to you, waiting for you to simply turn around!
