SERMON OUTLINE

The Compassionate Father and His Two Sons (1)   Luke 15.1-2, 11-24

Introduction

Jesus is answering the grumbling Scribes and Pharisees because he receives and eats with tax collectors and sinners. He answers with three parables on lost things. The first two focus on God seeking sinners, the third on the compassion of God for lost sinners.

The Compassionate Father – The Prodigal God

-His magnanimous response to dividing the property and the son going to a far country.

-His continuing love when the son wastes his property.

-His patient love when the son is in his greatest need.

-His loving reception of his son back into the family.

The Message to the Scribes and Pharisees

1) God seeks sinners to come to Him

2) God has compassion for lost sinners

3) God enthusiastically receives repentant sinners.

Zephaniah 3.17

4) God sends His people on mission to rescue sinners.

Conclusion

1) God will judge all sin but wants to judge your sin on the back of Jesus Christ and not on your back. Come to Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life.

2) As Christians we can only give thanks and then offer ourselves to God for missional service.

SERMON NOTES

The Compassionate Father and His Two Sons               Luke 15.1-2, 11-24

The parable of the prodigal son is one of the two most well known and loved parables that Jesus told, the other being the parable of the Good Samaritan. This parable has been the basis for numerous paintings, books, plays, and sermons. It is a wonderful story and Jesus told it with compelling drama considering the context in which it was told. Many lessons and applications can be taken from this story but my task this morning is to teach you why Jesus told this parable, and what Jesus intended to teach from this parable.

Jesus is teaching the people with parables. Many people are drawing near to hear what Jesus is saying. Some of those who are drawing near are tax collectors and sinners. In the crowd are the super-righteous Scribes and Pharisees. They refuse to have any contact with anyone who does not live and believe as they do, and especially the despised tax collectors and sinners. The Scribes and Pharisees are grumbling against Jesus because Jesus is willing to receive tax collectors and sinners, to teach them, and even eat with them. In response to the grumbling of the Scribes and Pharisees Jesus tells three parables about lost things. In the first two parables the lost things are diligently searched for and found, and a joyful celebration follows. The parables teach that God diligently seeks out lost sinners and when sinners repent, God and the angels in heaven rejoice. These parables were both a rebuke to the Scribes and Pharisees and an appeal for them to change their view of God and their response to sinners. In these two parables Jesus is also telling the Scribes and Pharisees why he is eating with tax collectors and sinners and calling them to repentance and promising them forgiveness and eternal life. Because God seeks to bring sinners back into relationship through repentance and forgiveness, Jesus is receiving sinners and eating with them to call them to repentance and forgiveness and relationship with God.

In this last parable the focus is on the loving and merciful heart of God and the restoration of a relationship with God through repentance and forgiveness. The traditional title of this parable is the parable of the prodigal son. I hope to show you over the next two weeks that the parable is not only about the son who went into the far country but also about the son who stayed home. Notice that the parable begins by saying that a man had two sons and both sons are important to what Jesus wants to teach the Scribes and Pharisees in this parable.

Even more important than the circumstances of the two sons is how Jesus describes the attitude and actions of the father of the two sons. The attitude and actions of the father, which represent the attitudes and actions of God, is the most important reason why Jesus is telling this parable.

One sermon I read on this parable had the title “The Prodigal God”. The writer asked that I look up the definition of prodigal in the dictionary, so I did. Prodigal can mean “exceedingly or recklessly wasteful”. But it also has the meaning “extremely generous, lavish, abundant, a spendthrift”. The prodigal God is lavish in love, mercy, forgiveness, and restoration as described in this parable. The Scribes and Pharisees needed their distorted picture of God to be corrected and Jesus does that in this parable. To the Scribes and Pharisees, God was ready to destroy sinners and would have nothing to do with sinners unless they first reformed themselves by perfectly keeping all the rules and regulations taught by the Scribes and Pharisees. To Jesus, God was loving and merciful and seeking to bring sinners to repentance so He could forgive them and restore them into a father-son relationship. Jesus taught that God celebrated the restoration of sinners to Himself, and that God’s people are to befriend sinners to make that restoration a reality. The overall reason why Jesus told these three parables was to give the Scribes and Pharisees a true understanding of God. So my title for this parable is “The Compassionate Father and His Two Sons”.

The parable begins with the younger son asking his father for his share of the property with the intention of leaving home with his inheritance in order to make his own way in the world. Not only do we see pictured here the willful independence of the younger son but also the magnanimous heart of God. God is pictured here as willing to overlook the insult and heartbreak of his son’s selfish request. The father continues to respond to his son with a heart full of love and desire for his good. The father does not disown or despise his son but desires the best for him even while the son does not choose the best for himself, and even while the son has no concern for the father. In the parable Jesus presents to us the loving heart of God even though we are a rebellious and self-serving people.

The son leaves home and goes into a far country to distance himself from his father and proceeds to waste his property in reckless living. All that the father had generously given to him is wasted on his own pleasures. In the distant country the younger son wastes what the father has so graciously given to him, in wild living. One person has said, “Sin consists in this, that a man monopolizes the things with which God endows him in nature and makes them serve his own selfish desires. From this arises the godlessness of his thoughts and will; he is absorbed in the natural order”. The waste of God’s gifts is not always practiced in reckless living but is also practiced in self-righteous and respectful living that does not give glory to God but worships Self. Even in this wasting of all that the father had given the son we see no sign that the father turns his heart away from his lost son.

Just as the son was spending the last of his property a famine came upon the land and the son began to be in need. So he hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him in the fields to feed the pigs. The Greek word translated as “hired himself or joined himself” is kallao and means to glue or glue together. Essentially this son became a slave to the citizen of a far country because of his need. The son has fallen so low that he is longing to eat some of the carob-tree pods that the pigs are eating. Before we came to Christ we were slaves to our desires, slaves to Satan, and slaves to this world.

Had Jesus given us a picture of the father at this point in the story I do not believe we would see a father saying to the son, “I told you so”, “serves you right”, and “how are you going to get yourself out this mess”? Nor do we see a father coming to the rescue of his son with food and money and clothes to help him in his physical need. We see a father in anguish and pain over the circumstances of his son, and yet with a patient love willing to wait for conviction of sin and repentance to find a place in the son’s heart, a repentance that will bring the son back to the father with a humble request for restoration of the relationship.

We are told that in the desperate circumstances of the son in the far country “he came to himself”. That means the son saw himself as he was and was willing to admit it. When commenting on his father’s “hired servants” in verses 17 and 19, the son uses a word for the lowest class of servant in that culture. In his new understanding of himself this son is willing to take the lowest place in the father’s household. He is ready to serve the father as a hired day laborer.

The son realizes he has sinned toward God and his father and begins his journey out of the far country and back to his father ready to confess his sin. Notice how Jesus phrases the parable. Jesus does not say that the son “arose and went to his home” but “arose and went to his father”. Remember Jesus is telling this parable to the Pharisees about the compassionate heart of God and the repentance of sinners coming to God for forgiveness.

In verse 20 we see pictured the father, who represents God, unchanged in his love for his son and willing to forgive. By now I hope you realize that the younger son represents the tax collectors and sinners that are rejected by the Scribes and Pharisees but who are loved and received by God when they repent. God does not receive them when they become perfect in their behavior but simply when they repent and ask God to forgive them. I hope you see yourself in this lost son.

“While the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him”. You cannot help but weep and be filled with gratitude when reading this when you realize this is God’s love for you when you were a lost sinner. As a son of God that love is greater still.

This part of the parable would have filled the Scribes and Pharisees with anger and would have brought the word blasphemy to their lips. They would have been shocked at such a picture of God. 1) That God would be seeking for sinners to come to him even as this father was longing for his son’s return. The Scribes and Pharisees wanted God to judge and destroy sinners, not seek them. 2) That God would feel compassion for sinners. A word describing deep emotional pity is used here to express the love of God for repentant sinners. The Scribes and Pharisees could not conceive of God having such love for sinners. The death of Christ on the cross for sinners is evidence of God’s deep love for sinners. 3) That God would enthusiastically receive sinners. For a landowner to run was undignified. In this parable the father’s love and joy at receiving back his son puts ceremony and dignity to one side. A picture of God running to receive sinners would fly directly in the face of the Scribes and Pharisees. Here is the prodigal God extremely generous in love and mercy, lavish in pity, abundant in forgiveness, giving His all to reconcile his creation to Himself. The Scribes and Pharisees must have overlooked Zephaniah 3.17, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exalt over you with singing”.

The son confesses to his father that he has sinned against God and against him and that he is no longer worthy to be called his son. But the son is not given the chance by the father to ask to become a hired servant. With joy the father immediately reinstates him to the family calling for the best robe to be put on him, a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. The father also calls for a celebration, because “my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and is found”.

What a worthy picture of the love and compassion of God who is willing to forgive sins when we come to him sorry for our sins and confessing our sins. We must never forget that God will judge all sin. God will not overlook the smallest sin but will certainly judge all sin. But God wants to judge your sin at the cross on the back of Jesus Christ and not on your own back. If you are determined to keep your sin or to say that you have no sin, or that you are all right with God and will find your own way to heaven, you can be sure that you will be judged for all eternity for your sin. But if you see this morning a God of love who is willing to forgive your sin in Jesus Christ, who wants to receive you back into His family as a son, then confess your sins to God and ask him to receive you as one of His children. God will give you a ring, and a robe and sandals on your feet by filling you with His Holy Spirit. You will know for certain that you are in the family of God.

As Christians all we can do is give thanks to God for His love and mercy and grace to us in Jesus Christ. All we can do is give our lives completely to God for Him to use us as He pleases. We came to a loving Father as repentant sinners and offered ourselves to Him as servants, and God treats us as sons.

The God who reveals Himself in the Bible is a God who wants all sinners to come to Him for forgiveness and relationship, a relationship that God wants to last forever. Let us give ourselves completely to this God who loves us and let us grow in our love for Him.

Not only did Jesus tell these parables to the Scribes and Pharisees to correct their distorted and one-sided view of God, but he also told them these parables to explain why he received tax collectors and sinners. Jesus was God’s instrument to call tax collectors and sinners to repent and return to the family of God. In these parables Jesus was challenging the Scribes and Pharisees to the same missional activity toward sinners as he and God had. Not only do these parables call us to see the compassionate heart of God but they also call us to show compassion toward sinners so that they too might be reconciled to God. Let us pray for the lost people we know. Let us love them. And let us take the opportunities God gives us to share Jesus with them and invite them into the family of God.