Word of Salvation – September 2024

 

Two Prodigals And A Waiting Father

 

Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D. on Luke 15:11-32

Scripture Readings: Luke 15

Singing:        O come my soul, bless the Lord your Maker (BoW.103a)
Now with joyful exaltation (BoW.095)
I sought the Lord and afterwards I knew (BoW.376)

 

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The story of the two sons must be one of the most well-known and perhaps best loved of the parables of Jesus.

It has been called the crown and pearl of all parables – Charles Dickens said it is the finest short story ever written.  Its characters are so earthy and real to life, the events so easy to identify with – it fits into almost any age and setting.

The danger is of course that we admire the story so much, and get to know it so well that we neglect the message and fail to be instructed by it.

As we read Luke 15 we notice first of all that the parable does not stand on its own.  Rather it is the last panel of a series of three pictures: a shepherd seeking a lost sheep, a woman searching for a lost coin, and a father waiting for his wandering son.  These three form a unity to drive home the message that CHRIST CAME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH IS LOST.  God in his infinite love and grace calls and seeks and waits until the lost is found and returns.

Someone has said that the key to every parable hangs at the front door.  That is also the case here.  In verses 1 and 2 we read that two groups of people gathered around Jesus
– the Pharisees and Scribes and
– the publicans, tax gatherers and other irreligious or non-practicing Jews.

The Pharisees in their self-righteous indignation criticised Jesus: “Look at him, he receives tax gatherers who sponge off the people and prostitutes and drunkies and social outcasts – and he even eats with them.”  Fancy associating with the riff raff of society, can he be a prophet; can he be a man of God?

And in response Jesus turns round and in all his majesty and authority and dignity and love – fully in control of the situation – he says by means of this three-fold parable: “But of course, that’s why I came, those who are well don’t need a doctor – I came for these, the sick, the blind, the alcoholic, the drug addict, the socially despised, the sex pervert, the lonely, the sad, the sinner.  I seek them out like the shepherd his lost sheep, like the woman her lost coin, like the father his wayward son.”  I DD NOT COME TO CALL THE RIGHTEOUS, BUT SINNERS TO REPENTANCE.

And this is the key to the meaning of the parable.
– “Don’t you understand you Pharisees, that I came for the pitiable and poor and lost?
– Don’t you see that I left the glories of heaven because men are estranged from God?
– Don’t you comprehend that I die the death of the cross because men need saving?”
– I rose because you are in bondage to sin.

“Oh you Pharisees are you blind to this fact….!?!”

“Oh church of the twentieth century have you forgotten why I came…?”

“Oh Reformed Church of (___?___) is your desire to see sinners saved as great as mine… is your rejoicing at the conversion of a sinner as jubilant as the rejoicing in heaven….?”

And so all these three pictures are a means to teach the mercy and love of Christ towards sinners – unlike the self-righteous who think they need no salvation.

As such these three parables form a beautiful unity.  So much so that Luke speaks of them as a single parable (verse 3): “And he told them this parable”.

Each contributes its own aspect to the central message.

Charles Spurgeon saw in them the fact that the three persons of the trinity are linked together in the recovery of the lost…
– Christ the good shepherd laying down his life for the sheep
– the woman, an illustration of the Holy Spirit working through his church
– finally God the father seeking his lost child.

Another commentator, J. C. Ryle, sees each parable describing different sinners…
– the lost sheep is the stupid, foolish sinner
– the lost piece of money the ignorant sinner
– the lost son the daring, wilful sinner.

We may not want to go that far but there is nevertheless a tremendous unity in these three illustrations.

Today we’re just going to concentrate for a while on the third picture and we see:
1.  The younger son and his false notion of freedom
2.  The older son and his legalistic conformity
3.  The father and his loving, gracious correction and acceptance of both.

A.  False notion of freedom.

A certain man had two sons.

How often has this story been told – and yet how relevant it still is.  It is so easy to see it in today’s setting.  It’s so easy to identify with the characters.

Okay dad I’m 19 years old and I’m just about fed up with the way you and mum run my life; I’m fed up with this place.  Hang the business – I don’t want anything more to do with it.  Just let me cash my third of the shares and I’ll be off.  I’ll get myself a panel van and head for Surfer’s Paradise.  Off to freedom; off to independence; off to do what I like.

Ah, Jesus knew about the generation gap, Jesus knows the heart of man which craves freedom from all restrictions.  And how prevalent today is this false notion of freedom.  It is the spirit of the age to be uninhibited, free, no responsibilities, to do what I like, when I like, how I like.

And I’ve met them.

– For example, Rod the surfie who dropped in our Beach Mission.  He considered becoming a Christian but gave up because it meant he couldn’t have sex with his girl-friend.  He came in with a different girl each night.  Well,  if this is freedom where is love, and caring and consideration and security, where has the beauty of this aspect of God’s creation disappeared to?  Must it all be sacrificed to freedom?

– Or there was Geoff.  He hadn’t had a job for three months, but dole money gave him freedom, the surf, enough to run a car, cook his tin of baked beans on the beach – bother the rest of the world.

Examples could be multiplied.  You people leaving home, flatting, wanting  independence…!  But the heartache it causes and the anxiety.

But why stay with young people?  This false notion of freedom pervades every facet of society today:

– we see it in an education system which virtually allows the child to do what he likes
– we notice it in legislation which eliminates all moral rules and categories
– we’re bombarded by it from an entertainment and media industry
which plays havoc with our emotions and dulls our sensitivities
– we’re carried along by its tide when we buck at God’s ‘you shall!’ and ‘you shall not!’

I wonder how much the prodigal’s concept of freedom influences our lives – I know that inwardly it influences mine:
– my money to spend as I like
– my house to entertain the friends I choose
– my time to use as I plan.

There is one thing that the prodigal overlooks – everything he has came from the father in the first place.  When it is used without taking him into account when the father’s guidance is rejected the character of things changes:
– the use of money turns to greed and selfishness
– the gift of sex becomes meaningless passion
– the house and car I own becomes ends in themselves
on which I lavish all my time and attention
instead of using them for the benefit of others in the service of God
– the earths resources are exploited
– culture, music, talent, creativity become depraved…!

For as the parable indicates the use of the fathers gifts without the fathers guidelines leads to the pig sty.’

How the Pharisees must have shuddered in revulsion to hear Jesus use that example – fancy a Jew looking after pigs… those impure, unclean creatures… and then for a Gentile….?

But that is where a false notion of freedom leads.

How important it is that the church gets that across to the prodigals of this world today.

And so, in the words of the theologian Helmut Thielicke, we can almost hear the father reply to the son – –

“My dear child do you really think you have no freedom living with me, at home.  But you are a child in the home, everything I have is yours to use and enjoy, you can come to me at any time, you can tell me everything that troubles you, I love you and I give you everything you need and yet you complain that you are not free.”

The son replies, “No Father!  For me freedom means to be able to do what I want to do.”

The Father quietly answers “and for me freedom means that you should become what you ought to be – not a servant of your desires; not a slave to your ambitions, to your need for recognition, to your love of money, to your intellectual abilities.  That is why I forbid so many things – not to limit your freedom but so that you may become worthy of your origin, so that you may be truly free for sonship, so that you may really be a King’s son.  Don’t you understand that there is love behind my bidding and forbidding….?

Freedom, true freedom is never ‘to do what we like’ but rather it is ‘living and being what God designed us to be’ – children. dependent on him, conformed to his image, drawing life and strength from him.

Freedom which separates itself from the father and does what it likes is like a person who rebels against his dependence on air and then holds his breath to assert his freedom.

That is the lesson the prodigal son finally learnt when he was pushed to the limit and came to his senses.

He had gone away (vs.12) with the demand – “GIVE ME”
give me my share of the estate,
give me independence,
give me freedom…!

He came back humbled (vs.19) with the request “MAKE ME”
make me a part of your household again.
make me as one of your hired men.

It is a lesson all men have to learn, it is a lesson we have to learn again and again:
make me what you intend me to be,
show me Lord what it means to be a son of yours,
make me measure up to the image, the full stature of Christ your perfect son
mould me, form me, make me
for you are the potter and I, I am only the clay.

How do we learn this lesson?

For the son of the parable it meant first of all that he came to himself, he came to his senses, he came to a true evaluation of his condition and his situation.

How we constantly need that Spirit-given grace which enables us to see ourselves as we really are before God, to come to a right understanding of our sinful nature.

And second, it meant a turning back, turning back to the father, back to true freedom and a cry for forgiveness.

Brothers and sisters if we see ourselves in the younger son then let us turn back as he did and rejoice in the fact that the father accepts us, reinstates us – no, not as a second class citizen, not as a hired servant, but as a full son.

B.  Self-righteousness and legalistic conformity.

There is also a second son in the parable.  Usually we’d prefer to forget him.  He’s a bit of a sour prune in the whole affair.  Sort of spoils the nice ending.

Apparently some of the modern scholars and commentators think so too as several feel that the section about him did not really belong to the original and should be left out.

And yet in one way he is the real point of the whole parable.  It is through the picture of this self-righteous, self-satisfied, unfeeling, uncaring son that Jesus intends to teach the Pharisees a lesson about themselves.

We notice immediately that he too has an entirely mistaken notion of his relationship with the father.

“…I’ve served you for so many years…. I’ve never neglected any of your commands… you’ve never given me a kid so that I can have a party…!”

The picture of a man who sees service to God as slavery, coldly legalistic in his obedience, a man who sees the Christian life as a drudgery of dos and don’ts and who has missed altogether the dynamic of sonship, missed altogether the joy of being a child of God and being creatively involved in all that God gives his children.

There’s been no free, spontaneous, exciting, joyful relationship, he doesn’t know what sonship is – in fact he’s always been no more than a servant.

Of course it was a perfect picture of the Pharisees.  They killed all love and joy and spontaneity by their legalism, their cold religiosity and their hundreds of restrictive rules.

But it’s also a picture which the world, which the lost son sometimes has of the church.  Perhaps it’s the picture we convey to our non-Christian friends – and nothing does so much damage as when we give people that impression.  When we convey to people that the service of God is a cold, heartless affair…. when it is just a series of do’s and don’ts.

– We rightly condemn a lot of the entertainment that society dishes up these days but then where is the music and the films and the T.V. programmes which show the world how to be creatively involved in the father’s world?

– We correctly reject the blatant materialism of the non-Christian world around us but how important it is then that our own lifestyles illustrate how a son of God uses the resources God gives?

– We frown with horror at the sexual freedom propagated by a post Christian society but how important it becomes then that each Christian marriage, and each Christian family becomes a vital illustration of the love and beauty of relationship which a right use of sex conveys.

In a world which has largely ceased to listen we will have to illustrate  the joy and vitality of being a Christian.  There is absolutely no room for the older son syndrome.

Secondly we notice that he has a mistaken notion of his relationship with the younger brother.

“This son of yours,” he says (indicating that he refuses to be his brother…!) “has devoured your wealth with harlots”, which may have been true but isn’t indicated in the rest of the story, and so he slanders his name.

No joy at his return…!  No gladness that the lost is found…!  Instead, filled with self-righteous satisfaction and aloofness.

Again of course Jesus is primarily referring to the Pharisees who refused to have anything to do with tax gatherers and publicans, and perhaps in a national sense he was criticising the Jews in their attitude to the Gentiles.

But how much of the elders brothers attitude is present in the church today?  What sort of a setting is the Reformed church of (_________) for a returning prodigal?  Will he feel at home.  Will he be shown the joy for a sinner who has returned?

And furthermore: are we as concerned about the lost as the waiting father?  (And going on a beach mission and participating in a Theos coffee shop makes one realise again just how many such people there are – people with no concept of God; just wandering prodigals..!

Is our life in community vital and throbbing with joy – a wonderful place to come to?  How will the returning son fit in?

C.  The waiting father.

Finally there is that often forgotten figure: the waiting father.  Isn’t it strange that we refer to these parables as the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son?  And so we focus attention on ourselves, on man.  Rather let us see them as the seeking shepherd, the searching woman, the waiting, running father.

What a beautiful picture they present of the electing, calling, seeking, searching love of God in Christ.

If we want a dramatic description of the grace of God then here it is.

If we want a summary of the gospel then these parables are perfect.

Against all other religions in which men strive to find God we can proclaim a Gospel in which God takes the initiative, he seeks and finds.

And even in this last parable of the sons which seems to stress the human responsibility to repent, and turn and seek forgiveness the father is waiting and running and embracing.  He comes far more than half way.

As that anonymous hymn puts it so beautifully:
I sought the Lord, and afterwards I knew…
He moved my soul to seek him seeking me
It was not I that found o Saviour true
No I was found of thee…
‘Twas not so much that I on thee took hold
As thou dear Lord on me….!

And notice that this grace and love extends equally to the elder as to the younger son – yes even the self-righteous, legalistic Pharisee; the hard-hearted, uncaring, unaccepting church member: “My child you have always been with me and all that I have is yours” – only you too must come to learn what true sonship is.

One of the most beautiful touches of the parable is that it really has no conclusion.  We are not told whether the older brother went in to join the party, or whether the younger brother persevered in his return.

And so Jesus drives home the message –
those identified with the older brother
come in and learn what it is to have a living communion with the father,
those who are identified with the younger
come for the father waits, a glorious welcome awaits every repentant sinner.

The conclusion of the parable is told by the response and the lives of the hearers: you and I.

“He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Amen.