The Prodigal Heart and Watchful Father

The Prodigal Heart and Watchful Father
Luke 15:11

Read Text: 15:1-2,11-32

Jesus was an amazingly skillful teacher. He was a master at the art of story-telling which he employed to express deep truths. That’s because people recall and relate more to stories then they do to propositions- any educator will tell you that.

Jesus used parables a lot because in them he was able to take weighty philosophical and theological truths and wrap them up in every day things and people and places so that even the most profound and lofty truth could be grasped by the most simple of people- people like his disciples… people like me.

The Prodigal Son is just such a parable. To simply read it as just story about a loving father and his two sons- one a reckless and the other hardhearted- would be to miss the point completely and to diminish this most insightful truth about the economy of God into a simple moral fable.

Jesus is delivering this parable as a retort to the grumbling self righteous religious leaders who were criticizing Jesus because he associated with the dregs of society: tax collectors and the homeless and prostitutes and other sinners.

The brothers are representative of the two types of people; the people to whom Jesus was speaking when he delivered this parable:

The decadent, extravagant, prodigal is characteristic of the tax collectors and sinners. And then the diligent and devoted, but legalistic and intolerant son, he characterizes the priests and the religious establishment- kind of the way that many people perceive the church today.

Actually these two brothers remind of another parable the Jesus taught about two brothers, perhaps they are even the same two brothers. Turn to Matthew 21:28-31 (Read Passage).

Now the two sons represent more than just two groups of people, they represent Law and Grace: Humanity’s painstaking efforts to reach God through religion versus God’s act of reaching out to His elect.

The older brother is the religion of man: works religion; mankind’s effort to save himself, to ascend to the throne of God and say- “Move over, now there are two of us”. The younger brother is grace; the redemption of man through God’s work, not ours.

Do you know that “a man is not justified by works of the Law, but by faith in Jesus Christ”? “The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 2:16; John 1:17).

Notice how, at the end of the Parable of the Prodigal, the older son complains that the Father never sacrificed a goat for him.
What did he want the goat for? He assumed that it should be his reward… his wage because he earned it. And all he wanted it for was to party it up with his friends. Maybe to indulge in the same kind of debauchery his brother had committed.

But the celebration and the slaughtering of the lamb was not a wage, it was a free gift. That’s a picture of the gospel: the Bible says that you are saved by grace, and that is not of yourselves, it is a gift from God.

You see, the religious man thinks salvation is his reward and so he never achieves it. But the one who recognizes his total depravity and inability is sustained by Jesus and his ability to do for us what we could never accomplish.

That’s why I am never surprised when a non Christian tells me some anecdote about some Christian he knew who was a hypocrite or failed in some moral way. Some times I just fell like saying, “Of course the Christian’s not perfect, that’s why he’s a Christian.”

One day while Jesus was alone, some priests brought him a woman who had been caught in adultery. Since they knew Jesus associated with sinners, they were hoping to trap him. So they asked Jesus what they should do with the woman, seeing that the Law commanded that she be stoned to death.

Quietly Jesus knelt over and wrote in the sand. Then he looked up at them and said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” And one by one, their conviction get the best of them and they walked away.

Another time, when Jesus was caught eating with sinners, the priests criticized him again. Jesus responded and said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the (Self) righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

You see, each one of us is spiritually sick. Because of Adam’s rebellion against God, we have become captives to sin and death. There’s a God shaped hole in our heart and nothing else can fill it- Why try to fill it with other things, physical enjoyment, power, possessions, but nothing works. It’s killing us and we need a doctor.

“Oh God, you have made us for yourself,” St. Augustine once wrote, “and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”

It’s like in the movie the Matrix where Morpheus says to Neo, “Let me tell you why you are here. It’s because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. There’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is. But it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad.”

Now, I must not forget, there’s a third person in this parable; he is really the most important person in the story: the Father. He represents God. You see the parable of the prodigal isn’t so much a story about prodigals or about brothers- it’s a story about the character of God and His disposition and irresistible grace towards sinners.
In verse 17, the prodigal has sold himself into slavery to feed pigs. For a kosher Jew, the only thing more degrading than eating a pig would be having to serve one. And these pigs are even eating better than the son.

Oh how our unruly and foolish hearts constrain us into such chaos and calamity. If only we would come to ourselves and realize that we have a heavenly father and he is sitting out day after day- watching for us.

Are you prodigal? Maybe your not feeding pigs, maybe your not squandering your inheritance on wine woman and song, but you’ve wandered away from God nevertheless. Your joy comes from things that rust and fade away rather than from things that are eternal. You have no concern for the things of God… Jesus means nothing to you.

Turn your heart toward heaven. Don’t you know that you are a heart beat away from eternity. That’s all that it takes. You could walk out the door this morning and breathe your last breath never having ‘come to yourself.’

Look… look to Jesus, look to the cross. Don’t try to do it your own way, not when you can’t do it even if you had a million of being religious. It’s been done. All you have to do is believe, put your faith in Jesus.

Consider the prodigal. He knew that it was better to be a servant in His father’s house than to be a son of perdition.

See yourself as the son, running to meet your heavenly Father only to have him run to you. No one can come to the Son unless the Father draws him.
Is he drawing you right now? Don’t resist- it’s useless and fo0lhardy. Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any man will open the door I will come in and eat with him.” Won’t you let him in to your heart?

Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus.