Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 28 – July 1992

 

The Prodigal Father

 

Sermon by Rev. H. Berends on Luke 15:11

 

Brothers and Sisters,

Our text for this afternoon is taken from what must surely be one of the best known and best, loved of all the stories in the Bible.  In fact, it has been called the best, loved short story in all the world, and for good reason.  For this simple story of the prodigal son is a beautiful story, a very moving story.  And one which expresses and brings together all of the richness of the gospel of God’s love for us in Christ.

We are going to have a look at this story of the prodigal son, and I am going to concentrate on the first part only, verses 11-24.  Today we will not look at the older brother.  But we will concentrate on the other two main characters, the younger son (the prodigal), and his father, to see what we can learn from them.

Firstly, let us have a look at the prodigal son, at the young man who took the money and ran, who decided to ask for his share of the inheritance from his father.

And, by the way, he would have received one third of all the father had, according to Jewish custom.  The eldest son was entitled to the other two thirds.  Now of course the father did not have to give it to him.  The inheritance wasn’t his due until his father’s death, but in the story the father decided to hand the boy’s share over.  And so the younger son took off for a far country.

He wanted his father’s money, but not his company or his love.

The prodigal son: Who was this prodigal son, brothers and sisters?  Well, of course I don’t have to tell you that, do I?  In the first place he represented the ‘sinners’ and the ‘tax collectors’ – those people of whom we read in verse 1 of this chapter, those Jewish outcasts who were eagerly gathering round to listen to Christ, and how they too would have lapped up this story.  They knew that Jesus was speaking first of all about them!

But then secondly the application is much wider also.

For the prodigal son stands for all who have turned their backs on God, who have rebelled against their Creator and heavenly Father.  The prodigal son stands for all of us because we are all, without any exceptions, sinners.

God gives us all that we have.  He gave us life itself, he provides us with all our possessions.

And yet we have all gone astray, the Bible teaches.

We all have turned our backs upon God; we all have broken his commandments.  When God made Adam and Eve he did so to have fellowship with them, to walk with them in the garden.

He was their Father, their heavenly Father, they were to be his children.  But they sinned, they rebelled, they separated themselves from God and moved into a far country.  And the same thing is true for all of their descendants.  We too have taken what was his, without gratitude, and used it, without thinking.  We too have squandered our inheritance in wild and self-indulgent living.

The prodigal son is a picture of mankind, brothers and sisters.  Mankind, as a whole, has turned its back upon God and rebelled against him as a whole has left the house and the family of God and grabbed what they could and run off.

Yes, the prodigal son, that’s mankind, that is us; do we realise that, do we admit that?  You know, that’s so hard to realise, that’s so hard to admit for most people, that we are all sinners, that we all in ingratitude have turned our backs upon God if we are not Christians.

And many people will simply not face up to that, they will not admit that.

Do you remember, quite a few years ago now, how that beautiful hymn Amazing Grace became a hit for a while, also in secular circles?  Judy Collins recorded it, and it went to the top of the hit parade, and many groups sang it.  But I remember that very often it was sung with one word altered.  You know how the original goes: ‘Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me’.  But in many versions this word ‘wretch’ was carefully omitted.  Instead some other word was substituted, some word that didn’t sound so harsh.  Because ‘wretch’ is a harsh word, isn’t it?  And many people find it difficult to admit that they are wretched.

Perhaps Christians too, and yet it is so, make no mistake about it.

All men, all women, all children, without Christ, are wretched.  All are but miserable sinners.

We all are like the prodigal son; we all have run away from God and gone into that far country, that country which is under the dominion of Satan.  Oh, many do not know it yet, they will not yet admit it.

They are still living it up, their inheritance is not yet spent, they are still busily feasting- including perhaps some that we know and love.  Pray God that the day may come when they will find their money spent, so that, by his grace, they may come to their senses.

For often it has to come to that.  That’s what happened to the author of Amazing Grace, by the way, the one-time sailor and a slave trader, John Newton.

John Newton too at first lived it up, but then one day he fell sick and he was left behind in Africa as his ship sailed on, and for many weeks he lay near to death, forsaken by all and then when he got better… then he himself was treated as a slave by the blacks amongst whom he had been abandoned.  His inheritance had run out, as it were, he had fallen upon hard times, he was sent to feed the swine, and it was these experiences that God also used to lead John Newton to conversion.  And he wrote that beautiful hymn and later still he became a minister of the gospel.

But first he had to experience his wretchedness.  That often happens.  So often it is only after our human resources are at an end that we come to our senses and turn back to God.

Yes, so often we have to be in want before we realise our need for God.  Sad, isn’t it, brothers and sisters, young people?  That’s how wretched we are, that’s what the prodigal teaches us also.  It was not until his money ran out and he had to take a job feeding pigs, that he began to think of returning to his father.  Feeding pigs, unclean animals, was to the Jew the most utter degradation.

That’s how much it takes for some.  Are there perhaps some here who are still running away from their heavenly Father?

Oh may it be that, by God’s grace, you may come to your senses.  Yes, whatever it takes, before the opportunity is over, may you come to know and to respond to the amazing love of God.

And that brings me to my second point: the father.

Our second character, and also the most important.

You know, so often this story is read and recounted with the emphasis on the son, we see that already in the very title.

We call it the story of the prodigal son.  ‘The parable of the lost son’, reads the heading in our version of the Bible.  But of course these headings are not in the original, and really the emphasis here is just as much, yes, is even more on the father.  In fact this parable could very well be called that of the prodigal father.

Because that’s what he was, the word ‘prodigal’ means, literally, ‘lavish’, ‘generous’, ‘extravagant’, ‘unrestrained’, and isn’t that a most appropriate description?

The father too was prodigal, much more importantly so than the son, and that is the main point of the parable, that is the emphasis of Jesus.  The prodigal father, who lavished his unrestrained love on his undeserving son.

Yes, that’s where the emphasis lies, on the action of the prodigal father.  On the father’s forgiving love, and, you know, that was something which even the son himself never expected!  Oh yes, he goes home when he finally comes to his senses.  But the most he is hoping for is to be taken in as a hired servant as a slave, in fact something lower than a slave.  In a sense even a slave was part of the family, but a hired servant was not.  He had no job security whatsoever.  He was taken on a daily basis, if there was need, and that’s what the son expected.  And rightly so, for wasn’t that all he could expect, humanly speaking?  Perhaps not even that, hope for, would be a better term, after all he had done to his father.

It’s interesting, you know, I read somewhere that in Buddhist literature there is quite a close parallel to this story.  There is also a tale of a son who left home, and this son too falls on difficult times, it seems, and so he too goes back to his father.

So far the stories are the same, but then a vital distinction emerges.

In the Buddhist tale the father’s reaction to the return of his son is quite different.  There the father hides himself in the home and then he asks others to go and have a talk with his son, so that he can first find out what are the son’s expectations and intentions.

That father is cautious, and wouldn’t that be very much in accordance with human nature?

Once bitten twice shy.  How different the reaction of this father in the parable of Jesus!  He isn’t cautious; he does not hide himself when he sees the son coming!

No, just the opposite!  Evidently he has been waiting and looking all the time, hoping for the son’s return, and when the son is still a long way off the father sees him and runs to him and throws his arms around him and kisses him, because he has compassion on him.

This father runs to meet his returning son.  The son begins his rehearsed little speech, but he never even gets to that bit about being a hired servant.  The father cuts him short.  There is no need.  All is forgiven and forgotten.

‘Quick bring the best robe and put it on him!

Bring sandals for his feet; bring a ring for his finger!”

The robe, the sandals, the ring, all are symbols and tokens of sonship.

‘Get these things, quickly, and put them on him!  For you are reinstated as my son!’

Yes, ‘reinstated as my son’.  That is the reaction of the father.  And that is the message of the parable, brothers and sisters.  And, of course, that is also the message and the glory of the gospel.  For that father represents God, and his reaction to the son is God’s reaction to repentant sinners.

We are like the son; we are not worthy any more to be God’s children.  We have spoiled it by going our own way against the will of God, of walking out on him in our rebellion.  Mankind has run away from God ever since the days of Adam.  But God, our heavenly Father, is still waiting.  And when we come to our senses and return, he is still willing to receive us.

Why?  Because, despite it all, he loves us, with a pardoning and everlasting love.  The father in the parable is God, and the message of the story is the message of the gospel, do you see that, brothers and sisters?  You know, that’s something which we also remember in a special way again during this season of Lent, as we are coming closer to Good Friday and Easter.  During this time we think especially of the suffering and the death of Jesus.

The parable, of course, doesn’t mention that.  In that sense it’s too simple, it is incomplete.  In the parable all the father had to do was simply to forgive and accept the repentant sinner.  We know that God had to do more, much more than that, that it wasn’t quite that easy.

We know that, in order to set us free, God had to let go of another Son, of his one and only Son, of Jesus.

God had to send him out into a distant country, to die on a cross, so that the penalty could be paid for our sin, that penalty which his justice demanded.

We know that the robe of sonship which the prodigal receives is not just any robe, no, it is the robe of the righteousness of Jesus.

God’s love does not come cheap, no, it is very costly.

It cost him the life of his Son to set us free.

Yes, Jesus had to die, so that we could come to God, like the prodigal son, as repentant sinners.

But because Jesus died, our heavenly Father too will now receive us – just as the father received the son in the story.

That is the message of the parable; that is the wonderful news of the gospel.

Do you know it, have you experienced the love of God in Jesus?

Have you too experienced that amazing grace of the One who stands and waits to receive us?

Yes, who does more than that, who seeks until he finds, who takes the prisoners of Satan, and sets them free?

Amazing grace, amazing love of God for the repentant sinner.

There is a modern story which makes very much the same point as this parable of Jesus.

It comes from the United States.  It’s about a certain man who was travelling by train through the hill country of West Virginia.

And as the train travels on, the man becomes more and more tense and ill at ease.  You see, he is an ex-convict.

He has spent the past ten years of his life in a penitentiary and now he has just been released and he is on his way home, but neither he nor his family can write very well and so there had been but little communication.

He knows that he had brought disgrace on his family, he isn’t at all sure that they would still accept him.

So a week before he had gotten someone to write a letter to them.

In it he has said that he can understand if they do not want him back, but that if they do, if they should have it in their hearts to forgive him, they should tie a white ribbon around a branch of the last apple tree in the orchard.

He knows he will be able to see the tree from the train.  If there is no ribbon he will travel on to the next town and they will never hear from him again.

That is the situation, and so as the train draws nearer and nearer the ex-convict hardly dares to look, he is so nervous.

As the train rounds the last curve, there is the orchard.  And there is the tree.  Can he see a ribbon?

No, what he sees is hundreds of ribbons.  The whole tree is blazing with ribbons.

That’s the story of the love of God for us in Jesus.

The whole tree is blazing with ribbons; the father saw him and ran to his son and threw his arms around him and kissed him.

‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.’

He was lost and is found.  Have we too been found, brothers and sisters, young people?

Have we too experienced that wonderful love of God in Jesus?

Then let us rejoice, also during this period of Lent, as we remember again the amazing grace of our prodigal, generous, bountiful, wonderful Lord.

AMEN