Summer Stories - Week 6: The Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32)

0:01 Morning. I want you to have a look at this picture and tell me what you think you see. Guy enjoying the sunshine out for a nice paddle in a canoe. Now have a look at this picture. If you zoom out a little, you get a whole different perspective on what's going on. And we need a wider context, or we could miss something quite important in that picture. This picture, sorry, I can see it up there. That's why I'm pointing that way.

0:35 Well, you likely noticed that we have just been listening to mainly the parable of the prodigal son, but it's not a standalone parable. It's part of one bigger story with the episode of a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, and they flow into each other. And we need to see them all together to really understand what's going on in the story of the prodigal son, which is the story I was given for this morning. But we actually need to get an even wider context to appreciate what's going on when Jesus told this three-part story. They all come from the gospel of Luke. That was Luke chapter 15. But Luke is just one part of a two-part book of Luke and Acts. And it's important that we see both of those together because the main themes of the gospel are played out not just in the book of Luke, the gospel of Luke, but also in the book of Acts in very clear ways.

1:33 The author, Luke, goes to real pains to point out how Jesus is the fulfillment of what God had promised from the Old Testament days. And to a Jewish people who had become focused very much just on their place as the people of God, they had to understand that Jesus came as the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham way back that he would bless all nations in what he was doing. He was also fulfilling the promise that was made through Isaiah, that there was to be good news for the poor. But poor didn't just mean those with no money. It meant those who were on the outside, the sick, the lepers, even those who had made bad life choices and who had earned society's condemnation as a result. And if you read through the gospel of Luke, you will see Jesus reaching out in love to many in those categories, shattering all the expectations that self-righteous religious people had about what God would do. And in the book of In fact, you see Jesus continuing that work only this time through his followers, the apostles and the early church. When we see it all together, we see Jesus offering healing, welcoming sinners, even throwing banquets for sinners, promising restoration and even promising the reversal of their bad choices.

3:05 Each time demonstrating the radical generosity of the grace of God. but his message and his actions would really grate with certain types of people and he met pretty intense resistance and that brings us to this episode in Luke chapter 15 where we read that the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear Jesus but the Pharisees and teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. These leaders were, well, they were just pretty much fed up with what they perceived as Jesus going easy on sin. They were saying, you don't take sin seriously. And Jesus told this three-part story in response to that. And if they listened carefully, it really should have blown their minds. Because when you come to the story of the prodigal son, and we looked at the other two last week, when you come to this story, you can't even begin to overstate the horror of this story to the people in that culture.

4:24 It was absolutely outrageous, this story that Jesus told. And we can't go over all the details, so we just have to sketch them. But what this guy did in their day was beyond horrific. He wanted out of home. And so to facilitate that, he told his dad pretty much, I wish you were dead. I can't wait for you to die to get my inheritance. I want it now. Now, according to those who know that culture well, the reaction should have been the father slapping him across the face with the back of his hand.

5:00 But in this story, the father decides he will let the son have what he believed he wanted. And it's not just about giving him money. He would have to have sold some of the property to get the money, and he gives it to the son. And off he goes, turning his back on his family and his community, knowing that as soon as he walked away, it closed the door to any way back. But, as we saw, things didn't turn out too well. The money dried up, and the fair-weather friends all disappeared. And to compound the horror to a Jewish audience, he ends up looking after pigs, the lowest of the low. And, of course, he realizes that himself, as it dawns on him that even the servants back home have enough to eat.

5:55 And so, and this is important, driven by hunger, not by guilt, he decides to do the walk of shame home. A speech carefully prepared, hoping that his father will give him the opportunity to be re-integrated somehow into the community to get a job as a servant and maybe even pay back what he had taken. Now, back in the day, people had a very particular way of responding to someone who tried to return home to the community in these kinds of circumstances. And it was full of humiliation and shame, even being beaten on the road as they tried to walk home. There was no possibility of reintegration. But that's not how this story of Jesus developed. In a further shock to the listeners, Jesus describes actions that no self-respecting father would have done. The father spies him in the distance, and he goes running.

6:56 And this is shocking, because for you to run in those days, you had to gather up your cloak and risk exposing what you shouldn't, and then running to embrace this sinful son before the community could exact the justice that would have been expected. And so this father sacrifices his own honor to shower love and mercy on his son. And whilst the son wanted food and a job, The actions of the father in calling for a robe and a ring and sandals bestow way more. Restoration, respect, and forgiveness. And he finds himself receiving way more than he ever could have imagined. But, of course, the story doesn't stop there. And we have this intriguing second part with the other son. Now, I don't know about you, but it's pretty hard to like this guy.

8:05 And if you played the story out, you've got to be thinking, well, no wonder the younger brother wanted to get out of home if he had a brother like that. But as Jesus told this part of the story, this is where the Pharisees should have started to get really uncomfortable. Because here you had someone who was so like them. And his words betray him. He was a rule keeper. He worked hard to do all that he thought was expected of him. But he wasn't motivated by any sense of love for his father. He even complained that all this time he'd been pretty much a slave, not a son.

8:51 And yet, ironically, his behavior actually mirrored that of the younger brother that he so despised. because he too decided in response to what was happening that he also would publicly humiliate his father by refusing to come into the house and be part of the celebration. He stayed outside. And back in the day, this was just as bad as the younger brother's behavior. And all eyes would have been on the situation now to see how the father would react. And just as he did with the younger son, the father goes to the older one. Once again, he takes the shame on himself and reaches out in love to the one who showed himself so undeserving. Indeed, he actually went even further.

9:47 And we don't get this too well in English translations of the Bible because each time in this story when the word son is used, it's a Greek word, huios. Except for this one time when the father goes to the older son, and it's the word technon, which doesn't just mean son, it means my dear child. It's an even deeper level of affection and intimacy. And as the father does that, the story is left hanging. And we don't know whether the older son gets it or not. So most of us growing up have come across this story many times. We know it as the story of the prodigal son. And yet, that's probably not a really helpful title for this story.

10:41 Because the story is actually the story of God as our Father. And the three parts of it tell us that. It's about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, or two lost sons. And it's about the sheer sense of celebration by the shepherd, the woman, and the father. Those are the common threads in this three-part story. This is the centerpiece of what Jesus was teaching us. And even in the story of the father and the sons, it's not just about a prodigal son. It's about two sons who both get it wrong.

11:17 The first one comes home driven initially by hunger, by a desire to get out of trouble and the hope of a job with no thought of being restored as a son and no appreciation of the depth of his father's love. Whilst the older one, Despite thinking he was such a good boy, well, his words betray the fact that for him too, there was no love. He behaved and obeyed merely out of duty and even referred to himself as his father's slave. He too had no appreciation of the depth of his father's love, hence his unwillingness to join the party. And he totally missed the point. Look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him.

12:21 And he was so wrong. Because if you take these stories together, you realize the father didn't kill the calf for his wayward son. He killed the calf for himself. He was throwing the biggest party he could imagine because he wanted to celebrate himself that his lost son had come home. He could not have been happier. Sometimes when these three parables or three parts of the parable are presented, the first two are presented as a contrast to the last one. You know, the sheep and the coin couldn't do anything to find themselves, but the son made the decision to go back. I think that's a false conclusion.

13:09 Because this son wasn't coming back out of any sense of having broken his father's heart. He was coming back because he was hungry. Initially, this wasn't him repenting. It was him finding that real repentance is much more to do with the attitude of the father. And it was the welcome and love of his father that led him to repentance. It started with the love of the father and his desire to restore this son who was lost. Paul actually would make this point when he wrote to Roman Christians many years later. when he wrote this, do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience?

14:02 And this is the key bit, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance. It's not our repentance that earns God's kindness. It's the other way around. It's when we realize God's kindness and God's love that we're brought to repentance. A guy called Ken Bailey, very famous biblical scholar, especially writing about parables. He lived for 40 years in the Middle East, learning the culture and putting it into words around the parables and helping us understand them. He wrote this, repentance is much more about our willingness to be found in the light of God's love than anything that starts within us. It's our response to the realization of the extent of God's love for us, even when we have gone so far astray.

15:08 For the Pharisees, who thought that Jesus was easy on sin, this story was a total eye-opener because Jesus painted the attitude and behavior of the younger son in all its horror. He was almost saying, you think I don't take sin seriously? Well, let me give it to you in graphic detail. Don't ever think I don't know how bad sin is. But by adding the older son to the story, Jesus was pointing out to the Pharisees that they too were just as guilty of sin in their pride and attitude to God. He was asking them if they were ready to see the truth, that their attitudes and behavior driven by duty and rules were just as much in need of change as the sinners they despised. They had turned their relationship with God basically into mere rule keeping so that they could justify themselves and tick the boxes and say they were good. And consequently, they'd actually turned their relationship with God to slavery instead of the affection that God held out.

16:34 And the question was, would they get it? Well, if the answer was left hanging in the parable itself, sadly, subsequent events would show that the Pharisees pretty much refused to accept it. Their self-righteousness was too ingrained, and they didn't see that they too needed to be willing to be found. And so for them, repentance didn't even come into the equation. It wasn't necessary. They were too good for that. And holding out grace and mercy to sinners was way more than they were prepared to do. If you read on in Luke's gospel, you see how the story reaches its fulfillment in Jerusalem.

17:25 When the promised Messiah would take the role of the suffering king himself. The king who comes to take our shame. Who takes our place. The one, in the words of Jesus, who came to seek and to save. And Jesus shows us the Father who takes the shame on himself. Coming to reach out to those who have got it so wrong. He shows us the heart of the Christian gospel. The God who comes to find us.

18:09 who is so driven by his love for the lost that he will suffer the very worst to welcome us to him with joy. See, long before us coming to God, God comes to us. Our repentance is only a result of God's initiative, not ours. It's what we do when our eyes are opened to the depth of his love. I've had this story playing around in my mind for the last few months, ever since I was asked to speak on it today. And I've kept asking myself where each of us might fit into the story, because that's how I like to see the Bible. Where do I fit in here? Of course, I always like to fit myself in with the heroes of the Bible.

19:05 I don't tend to like it when the truth comes closer to home, but where do we fit into the story? And I think it's not too difficult to see the two boys in the story represented in our own experience of faith and how so often we don't always grasp the depth of the love of God for us and the intimacy that he craves with us. Because you see, if you think of the younger son, he came home to get out of trouble. It might not be true that for some of us, we came to faith to get out of trouble. We grew up, some of us, with a gospel preached that was very often just limited to this. You come to Jesus or you get saved or whatever language you want to choose, because if you don't, you go to hell. That was dangled over us. And I know I'm oversimplifying it, but maybe not by very much for some of us, because that's certainly a lot of the memories I had growing up.

20:11 And yet, despite the truth that there might be in that oversimplification, that is nowhere near the full message that Jesus came to share. And it's not the message that he gave his disciples to share. Jesus came first and foremost to reveal God's love. to offer forgiveness and hope and restoration of the relationship with God that we were created for and had lost. Jesus came to show us a father desperate to have his children back, a God who wants to live with his people. And the very stunted version of the gospel that sometimes is presented does God a serious disservice. When we reduce the gospel to getting out of trouble, we've totally missed the point. And so it's quite possible that some of us have been in church for years, and yet we still don't have a grasp of how much God loves us.

21:20 We're hard on ourselves. Our songs have been so beautifully chosen by Emma today, and I've painted so many of these pictures. we're hard on ourselves we're burdened by our failures we're living at a distance from God instead of up close we we believe some truth and we think we're going to heaven but we don't have much of a relationship with God I mean what sort of a human relationship is it with someone that you never speak to or never listen to that's that's not a relationship and yet maybe for some of us that's the truth of our relationship with God we we don't really ever listen to him and we don't speak to him. Because you see, you can't reduce the gospel Jesus came to share to just saying you believe some things. That just leaves you empty. And it's just possible that for some of us, a limited grasp of the gospel has left us with very little of a living relationship with God. It has never even crossed our minds that God loves us so much that he would to throw a party for us. It never crossed the younger son's mind that his father would throw a party for his return.

22:34 He was just happy to be out of trouble and ready to be a slave, but the father's love wanted so much more, hence the party. Do you know some of you in here, you really need to hear this. God loves you so much he would throw a party for you. Really? You may come across these words from Max Licato. I came across them years ago, and they're no harm repeating. If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it.

23:07 He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Face it, friend. He is crazy about you. Go home today and think about what that means, that God would throw a party for me. Then there's the other son. Not a pretty picture. And yet, this is where I don't want to be seen like this guy, and yet I know sometimes I am. And we wriggle uncomfortably in our seats because we've got similar tendencies, some of us, to this guy.

23:42 We're maybe the types of people who have always been pretty straight. We never get into trouble. We attend all the meetings. We do our duties. We maybe even serve in some position in church. And yet if we're honest, sometimes we do it all with no real sense of joy, not much intimacy in our relationship with God, and certainly not much intimacy in our relationship with other people. We live by a set of rules and we expect others to do exactly the same. And in truth, it's just a different type of slavery.

24:24 And we're also very easily tempted to take that brother's attitude to those who aren't like us. We're angry that they don't live by the same rules. And we maybe even call into question whether or not they can truly be part of God's family. We certainly struggle to see them as brothers and sisters because we just don't approve of them. Don't you find it intriguing how the older brother refers to the younger one? He says, this son of yours. He doesn't say, this brother of mine. There's no way he was calling him that.

25:05 And yet for those of us who are easily tempted to fall into the older brother Pharisee trap, we also need to hear the tenderness in God's voice for us. Remember I said the father actually used a stronger, more intimate term than son to get through to him. He needed to hear the affection of my dearest child. Because intimacy and affection don't come quickly to those of us who find it easier to live by rules. We need to hear God saying to us, my dearest child, everything I have is yours. You get it all. Two brothers making the same mistake, neither of them realizing the depth of love that the father had for them and how easily we miss it too.

26:14 Just one other thing to mention before we leave them. Once it dawns on us that God would actually throw a party for us, We need to remember that he'd do it for everybody else around us too. And that should change how we view each other. We don't have room for what the older brother said. This son of yours. We need to use the language of this sister of mine. This brother of mine. And I've been asking myself this difficult question.

26:54 How would things be different if I started seeing other people, especially the people who annoy me, as someone for whom God would throw a party? I think it would make a really big difference in how we get on with each other and how we'd even see the world outside. I need to finish, but before I do, I also wonder if I might broaden out the challenge of this story to maybe someone here or someone who's watching online who thinks they've sunk too low to have any hope of a relationship with God. Maybe you've walked away because you think you've made too many bad choices and there's no hope. Or quite differently, maybe you're someone who isn't opposed to Christianity, but you don't see what the big deal is. And strangely, I think the message for both of you is the same. The Christian gospel is so unique.

28:04 And even if those of us who are Christians haven't always portrayed the message or taught the message as well as we might, that doesn't change the truth of the message. And the truth is this. The love that God has for you is unlike anything else you have ever heard of. Other faiths might be driven by a fear of a God that you have to pacify, or might be driven by so-called enlightenment, whatever that is, or they might offer you a discipline or a reason to live by, or they might encourage you just to be good. But not one other religion and no other faith offers you this, the truth of a God who loves you more than you can put into words and who desperately wants a relationship with you. A God who would come looking for you, taking all the shame and dishonor on himself, dying a criminal's death to show you that your life has meaning, that your failure doesn't define you and isn't final, and that you are worth more than you could ever imagine. And what's more, a God who can't wait to throw a party when you surrender to his love.

29:39 let's pray Lord I'm conscious that we can never ever ever do justice to the message of the greatness of your love so somehow today Lord but wherever we're standing would you just open our minds a little bit and by your work, the work of your spirit, help all of us to understand just a little bit more of how huge your love is. For those of us whose faith has just been, well, we've just been looking to get out of trouble or to escape hellfire, help us to see the extent of your love and your desire for an intimate relationship with us. Father, for those of us who have slipped into a relationship, a Christianity, a religion that's more duty and rule keeping and maybe a bit better, Father, help us to hear the tenderness in your voice that you would come to us and say, my dearest child, it's all yours. Free us from slavery to rule keeping. And open our eyes to the intimacy you have for us. And then Lord help us to share that with others. Father for those of us who have been tempted to think we have just gone too far.

31:07 Help us to see the picture of a God who takes our shame on himself. And is ready to throw a party when we return to you. and for those of us who haven't really thought about it much Lord help us to see how unique the gospel is the love of a God that is unlike anything we have ever known so for all of us Lord today would you open our eyes just a little bit more about how much you love us. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.