“The Prodigal Father”
Luke 15:11-32

Of all the parables that Jesus Christ told, this parable is perhaps the most widely known both by Christians, but also to the larger world and even across cultures.  It has been captured in song, poetry, and art, such as this classic painting by Rembrandt.  What drives this popularity is this truth.  It is the deepest cry of every heart to encounter someone, especially a God, who will see past our failure and sin, and embrace us with unconditional love and desperately needed grace!

And indeed, this is a central message of this parable.  Jesus Christ reveals that the almighty God who is the only creator, sustainer, judge, and redeemer of all humanity is just such a merciful, Father God!  But we can discover much more about the Father’s heart, about real repentance, and about how we can experience right now the full measure of God’s kingdom joy and blessings by examining each of the characters in this parable.

Let’s start with the younger son, whom we have come to know as the “Prodigal Son.”

We know this story well.  A father has two sons.  The younger one goes to his rich father and demands his share of the inheritance.  This was permitted under the law they were under, but certainly not a kind act.  It was equivalent of the son saying to his dad, “I wish you were dead!”  

The father divides the inheritance, and the son goes off to a far way country, and spends the money getting drunk, gambling, and hiring prostitutes.  Then the money runs out.  Then this good Jewish boy finds himself is the lowest of all possible situations, working on a pig farm, something that would be as shameful to a Jew as you or I working in the pornography industry.  He was so hungry he longed to eat the food he was feeding to the pigs.  He had hit rock bottom.

Some of you can easily relate well to this story as you too had to hit rock bottom before you either came to Christ in the first place, or reached a place were you recommitted your life, or finally surrendered some deeply held sin fully over to Christ.  This is what it took for me to come to Christ some 20 years ago at around age 26.  I was the prodigal son who had tired to find purpose and pleasure in the whole partying world, and tried to find truth through the occult, world religions, and philosophy.  And it wasn’t until I, and those of you who have had similar prodigal experiences, “came to our senses” that we repented and ran to Christ.  

Some of you are praying for loved ones who have not yet given their life to Christ, and it may very well be that for your prayers to be answered God will have to first allow that person to hit rock bottom until they “come to their senses.”

But the truth in this parable of the need to “come to our senses” and run into the Father’s forgiving, restoring embrace, is not meant to just apply to those caught up in major rebellion or gross sin.  In fact, Christ was telling this parable to the Pharisees who were far more obedient to God’s Law as to outward observance than any of us will ever be!  

This invitation to heartfelt, desperate repentance is extended to each of us every day!  Indeed, to live is such a perpetual posture of repentance is the only life that experiences the fullness of God’s kingdom power and joy right now!  Last week’s sermon emphasized the kingdom truth that the kingdom banquet, the power and blessings of the kingdom, belong to the hungry and thirsty.  This parable is further demonstrating  this truth.  The Bible tells us elsewhere that those who are forgiven most love most.  

You see, the joy of our salvation is discovered when we live in this place of being continually aware of how utterly wicked we are both in our behavior and our hearts when measured by God’s standards.  It is only when we live in this awareness that we then are driven to continually, daily, run to our Heavenly Father who always meets us on the road, wraps us with the robe of Christ’s righteousness, and calls us His son and daughter!  

This is the place of brokenness.  This is the place of abiding in Christ that we are called to enter and stay as Christians.  This is the place of utter dependence.  This is the place of absolute surrender.  And this is the only place where our hearts overflow with gratitude for grace and so live in perpetual worship!  This place of brokenness is the only place of power, joy, peace, and fruitfulness in Christ!  

So we all need to come to our senses everyday and recognize that we are the perpetual prodigal.  We also need to come to our senses and recognize how often we act like the older son in this parable as well.   

Rembrandt captures this scene so well.  Here is this intense, passionate, tender encounter of a lost son embraced in the arms of a loving father.  And off to the side is the eldest son, stand offish, bitter and jealous.  Our Bible passage describes him as being full of rage over the grace of his father.  Can you imagine being upset that someone has returned to God and found salvation?  

David Berkowitz, aka the Son of Sam, a man that brutally murdered six beautiful, innocent young people claims to have become a Bible- believing Born again Christian.  Other serial killers and child rapist/ murders who make this claim include, Charles 'Tex' Watson, Susan Atkins, Mark David Chapman, and Jeffrey Dahmer.   

How do you react when you hear of such testimonies?  “They’re just saying that to get parole?”  That doesn’t hold up because most of these people have no option of parole.  And when you read their testimonies and the accounts of those who lead them to faith and disciplined them, it sounds like legitimate conversions.  

“But this isn’t fair,” is what I think.  “Why should they get to go to heaven!  If God knew he was going to save them, why didn’t he save theme before they committed their horrific crimes!  And how is that fair to the ones who lost loved ones, many of whom are Christians, by the hands these killers, and now they have to spend eternity with the one who murdered their child!”  

Now Christ was telling this parable to the Pharisees who also were full of rage over Christ’s message of God’s grace being lavishly offered to all.  Here was this Christ going around forgiving prostitutes and sinners, even Gentiles, and here they were flawless in obeying the letter of the Law, and Christ was harshly criticizing them.  

And as I ponder the eldest son, I am confronted with just how often I am more like he that I would like to admit.

We become like the eldest son when we are resentful that God’s grace is extended to those we deem unworthy of salvation.  But here’s the wonderful, infuriating truth: if we do not celebrate a grace that can forgive a serial killer, or the one who wounded us deeply, than we do not really embrace God’s all-forgiving grace!  

When we do this, we become like those in another parable about the same reward being given to those who work an hour in the fields as those who labored since sunrise.

The father was so thrilled that his son had come home he threw a lavish party.  The older brother was so resentful he refused to attend.  

We are like the eldest son when we:
  •    Are jealous or resentful when new converts seem to have more joy or are used by God in powerful ways than we are who consider ourselves mature in the faith
  •    Are jealous or resentful when new members to our congregation take on ministries that we think we should have be chosen for, or and do things differently
  •    In any way live in pride and arrogance that feels we are superior to unbelievers, or those trapped in deep habitual sin, or those who don’t embrace a theology we insist is the right one, or just don’t seem to have in all together like we think we do!
  •    Allow a legalistic Christianity to keep us from entering in the wild freedom and exuberant joy that should describe life in the kingdom feasting at God’s banquet table

Now we come to the main character in our parable: the merciful father.  I entitled this sermon, “The Prodigal Father.”  The word “prodigal” means extravagant or lavish.  In reference to the younger son, he is called “prodigal” because the word “squandered” in verse 13, in the Greek, means that the son was “lavish” or “extravagant” in his spending.  

In the same manner, the father in the parable is extravagant in his grace toward his son.  The father spends countless hours for many months, perhaps years, at the window, looking for his son to return.  When he finally sees him coming he hikes up his robe and exposing his legs, which in that culture for a dignified man to do so would have been shameful, and to add to his shameful, scandalous behavior, he runs to meet his son, and respectable men did not run like this.  

The son should have been stoned to death for disgracing the family name.  Instead, the father wraps his arms around his dirty, smelling-of-stench son, and before the son could get his lame, half-hearted prayer of confession out, the father wraps him in his royal festive robe, places sandals on his feet to set him apart from the servants, and places the ring of sonship and inheritance on his finger!  He then throws a prodigal, a lavish banquet for his son!

This is how our heavenly Father responds to us every time we run to Him in our sin and sorrow!  Our heavenly Father is lavish and extravagant in his grace toward us!  

Many don’t believe this.  Perhaps some of you struggle with really believing deep down inside that not only does God forgive you enough to get you into heaven, but that God’s grace makes you enjoyable to the Father!  

So many have this view of God, even Christians, that God is really not all that pleased with them.  God tolerates them, loves them, forgives them, but most of the time God’s view of them is that they just don’t measure up.  Their life of faith far more resembles the eldest son in Rembrandt’s painting…standing in the shadows of grace, on the outside looking in, while others are being deeply enjoyed by the Father!

But the invitation to live life as the perpetual prodigal is the open invitation of our Lord to each of us!  This is the posture and the place (that of the prodigal son in Rembrandt’s painting) where our Father God longs for us to be, always aware of our desire to wish God dead so that we don’t have to give an account of ourselves or live up to the calling our glory demands, always aware of the parts in our fallenness that delight more in the pleasures of this world than in the presence of God, always aware of how our indulgences leave us filthy, full of shame, and smelling like a pig farm.  Because only when we are always aware of our brokenness will we stay in this place of the prodigal.  

This is the place where our heavenly Father continually runs to us, embraces us, places the royal robe of Christ’s righteousness, of God’s delight, of the kingdom party upon us.  

This is the place where we remain aware that on our finger is the ring that marks as one of God’s family, coheirs with Christ, present and future partakers of all the rich inheritance of God’s eternal kingdom!

This is the place where we are continually reminded that we are not barefoot like the servants of the evil one, but we have on our feet the sandals that mark us as sons and daughters of the King, and so our spirits perpetually cry our Abba, Father!  

Will you accept our Lord’s invitation to live out your life in the place of the prodigal forever embraced in the arms of the Father?