Through the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus illustrates the journey from rebellion against God to repentance and restoration; the son leaves his father chasing worldly pleasures, hits rock bottom feeding pigs, repents of his sins and unworthiness, and returns home where the loving father joyfully welcomes him back. This story shows that no matter how far we wander from God, if we humbly repent, He will graciously forgive us and restore us as His children. The scribes and Pharisees resent sinners being welcomed into God's kingdom, but God, Christ, and Christians rejoice when the lost are found and saved.

Transcript

Luke chapter 15, and if you will make the effort, if you will take the time to turn there, whether in your own Bible, on a Bible app, or maybe in one of the few Bibles that are provided for you, you'll turn to Luke chapter 15. That's where we're going to be spending the vast majority of our time. That's where we'll take the lesson text this morning.

And if you missed one of the handouts in the racks in the back and you would like one of those for the lesson this morning I have embedded young men in the audience in different places and they've come out to hand out those handouts to any who would like one of those. So Luke chapter 15 if you're there, you're ready to get started this morning.

And we are so grateful for the presence of all, whether you're joining us in person are joining us through the live stream. We're grateful that you're here. It is always, uh, it is always difficult and it is often dangerous to try and put ourselves in the place of God, to try and say, this is what God is like.

This is what God has done. This is who God is. It's always difficult for us to imagine God and who he is. And it is often dangerous for us to try and put ourselves. But, occasionally, from time to time, that is exactly what is demanded of us in the biblical text. What the biblical authors ask us to do is try to imagine ourselves in the place of God.

Sometimes we are asked to stretch our minds and our hearts and our emotions to try and see things the way God sees things. To try and feel the way God feels. And Jesus invites us to do that very thing with the trio of parables that he tells in Luke chapter 15. And the people didn't know it at first, but Jesus is asking them this question.

How would you feel if you were God in this situation? How would you feel? And let me ask all of us this morning to try and do the same thing. Let us stretch our minds, let us stretch our feelings, to imagine how we would feel if we were in the place of God. If you're there in Luke chapter 15, these are three parables that are very familiar to most of us.

The parable of the lost sheep, one of 99. The parable of the lost coin, one of 10. And the parable of the lost son, 1 of 2, or maybe even 2 of 2 if we get down to the end of that parable. But notice what Jesus says in verse 4. He speaks this parable to them, saying, What's Jesus asking there? He's saying, I want you to think of yourself.

Think of the way you feel. Think of the way you act. What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? Well, who is the shepherd in this parable if not God? And so what Jesus is asking them to do is, imagine that you are the shepherd here.

Imagine how you would feel. Imagine what you would do if you lost one of your sheep. Well, that's exactly the way God feels when he loses one. Jesus asked those who hear this to identify with the shepherd, to put themselves in his place. What would you do? How would you feel? And Jesus challenges us in so doing to feel what God feels.

And he does so using an image that every single person, every single person here, I'm not even hesitant to say that, every single person here, young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, has experienced this. Losing something. Every single one of us have lost something and then finding that something... Again, haven't we all done that?

Whether it's our favorite toy, perhaps if we're very young, a family heirloom, something that's really important to us, maybe it's our car keys on the way out the door, or maybe it's a kid in the supermarket. We have, we have all lost something, right? And we can all imagine. We can all think back and feel those feelings again to a certain degree.

We can, we can feel the initial panic, right? Oh no, where is it? I've lost it. We can feel the frustration as we go around everywhere trying to find the thing that was lost. We can feel almost that feeling that we want to give up because we can't find it. Where is it? I've looked and I've looked and I've looked and I've looked almost to despair.

And then we can all remember. The joy that we felt when we finally found the thing that was lost. The fulfillment, the relief in that moment. We've all experienced that. And that is what Jesus is describing here in these three parables. But the most poignant, the most powerful, and maybe the most famous as well of these three parables, is the third, the story.

The prodigal son has been called the pearl and crown of the gospel. The gospel within the gospel and the greatest story of all time. It has come to be known as one of the best known texts of the Bible. And its message and its characters are easy to identify with. Its lessons are practical and timeless.

It's depth unmistakable. And what the prodigal son does is he goes on a journey. A journey not just to a far country that we see in the text, but a metaphorical journey from sun to sun. to swine, to servant, to son. And it is the same journey that all those who come to Jesus have and must take if we are to come to Him.

And some sermons just preach themselves. So listen carefully to the words of Jesus in Luke chapter 15, beginning in verse 11, and then we'll go back and make some applications together. Jesus said, A certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.

So, he divided them his livelihood. We come to find out there's two sons. He divides the livelihood between them. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions. with prodigal living. Literally, he wasted his possessions with wasteful living.

He's trying to live it up, and he does live it up for a while, until he wastes everything. Verse 14. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. Then he went, and joined himself to a citizen of that country, And he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate. And no one gave him... But when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger? I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. The tense of this verb is he just kept on kissing him.

And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet, and bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry for.

This, my son was dead and is alive again and he was lost and is found and they began to be merry. Amen. What do we learn? What do we learn from this powerful passage? Well, I want to consider the transitions that this younger son must make in this journey that he was on. Three points of transition in his life that are the same three points of transition that every single one of us must make.

If we're going to come to Jesus on Jesus's turn. And the first transition is found in verses 11 through 16. This transition from son to swine. And we might call this a picture of our rebellion against God, our Father. Among other things, this parable shows us that sin is an insult to God's goodness and God's blessing.

If you notice there in verse 12, the younger son says to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. He's asking for his inheritance. And though a lot has changed from the ancient world until now, some things don't change that much. When, generally, do people get their inheritance?

When the person that they are inheriting from dies or passes away. We have these big skeletons that we put in our yard, 12 foot skeletons. We bought them a few years ago. They're a real pain getting in and out of the box every year, but they're pretty cool once you get them up. And Brooklyn and I were on the golf cart riding around the neighborhood here a few weeks ago when those skeletons were still up.

And Brooklyn looks over to me and she says, Daddy, can I have those two skeletons when you die?

And I said, sure, baby, if you want the skeletons, I mean, you might have to give one to your sister, I don't know, but if you want them, you can have them. You've asked for them first, that's just fine. Well, well, over this past weekend she asked Stephanie the same question. She said, Mama, can I have those skeletons when y'all die?

And Stephanie said, well, baby, I think we're probably going to outlive the skeletons. To which Brooklyn said, Oh man,

well that's not what she meant, right? That's not what she meant, but that's what the younger son meant. If I had a preference, I'd prefer that you were already dead, so that I could have this money that is coming to me. And so, since you're not dead, what I'll ask instead is for you to go ahead and divide the inheritance so that I can get what is coming to me.

Your money is more important to me than you. That's what this young man is saying. And when we sin, isn't that kind of what we're saying to God? All these things that you offer me by having a relationship with you. Can I just have the physical things of this world instead? Can I just have the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life instead?

You're offering me relationship, but instead of you, what I would rather have are things. And again, Jesus is trying to get us to feel what God feels. How would we feel if our children would rather have our stuff than a relationship with us? Well, that's how God feels. When we sin against him. And so what happens, this young man goes to the far country.

And the second thing that we see in this transition from son to swine, in his rebellion... We see that the world, this world, is not where we really belong. Now the text says that he went into a far country. And notice, that is a comparative term, right? You're either far from something or you're near from something.

But in order to be far or near, there has to be a something to compare that to. Far from where? A far country from where for this young man? Well, it was far from home. Far from where he started, far from his father, far from where he was supposed to be. And rebellion only occurs against something else. Our sin is rebellion, but rebellion has to be against something.

And for us, sin is rebellion against God. It is rebellion against our loving Father. But we must know, and I think deep down, I think deep down most of us do, that this rebellion into this world doesn't really fulfill us because this is not, this is not where we're supposed to be. This world, this far country, far from heaven, far from God.

is not really our home. Instead, marking your spot there in Luke chapter 15, we should have the attitude of those heroes of faith that are mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11. Turn over to Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 13, if you would, with me please. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 13, in describing Noah and Abel and Enoch and Abraham and Sarah and others.

Notice what the text says in verse 13. The Hebrew writer says this. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 13. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. Well that's the same concept that we see two different times in this parable, right? These promises from God are not near.

They're afar off. Because we are currently in the far country. So they saw them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed. That they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. That this place is not our home, this is the far country, and heaven is our home. For those who say such things, and may that always include you and me, declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. They could have gone back to the life that they lived before they knew God. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

There is a place where we do belong. And notice in verse 13, they confessed, they acknowledged. And whether it was true, it was true whether they acknowledged it or not, this is the reality that this world is not supposed to be our home. But it is when we acknowledge that reality, that we can embrace the promises that God gives us of another place.

A place of restoration. And so where do we find this young man? Go back to Luke chapter 15 and read with me verses 14 through 16. But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. And then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

In other words, he becomes a hired servant. He becomes a slave to the person who is in this country. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. Apparently, this job, as demeaning as it was, did not pay well, because he still desires to eat the slop that the pigs are eating.

He describes himself, later in the text, as perishing with hunger. He became a hired servant. That's not what he set out to do originally, but that's what he became. And yet we see that, that his relationship with this person he joined himself to, with his friends in this country, all of this, all of this is a parable to us about the world.

If the world and Satan, the one whom we serve, if we are in and of the world, does not really love us and does not want what's best for us. Life outside of his father's house was terrible. He had been sold a bill of goods that the far country was better than where he grew up. But that's not the reality, and that's the way it is with us.

The best the world has to offer doesn't compare to what we have in Christ, but very rarely do we get the best that the world has to offer. Very rarely do we get all of our desires served up to us on a platter. Even if we did, it wouldn't compare. But so often we sell out for far trinkets in comparison.

What this world offers is not clean and bright and good and happy. But so often is dark and dirty and filled with loss and pain. He wanted to eat the pods, the slop that the pigs ate. Anybody in here ever been around pigs? My cousins growing up showed pigs. We never showed pigs. I'm so grateful to my parents that we never showed pigs.

That's not the route we went. But you would drive up. My, my aunt and uncle had a lovely home up on a hill. They had a bunch of acreage. There's not a lot of hills in West Texas, so that's a big thing, right? So I got this house up on this hill. It's just gorgeous. And you drive up at this beautiful place.

And what is the first thing that you smell? You smell the pigs. They had them year round. They raised them. They were very successful with them. But you smell them. And you go down there and it's nasty. And the things that they feed them, they just feed them. Well, I mean, if it's showtime in the months leading up to showtime, they had a very strict, regimented diet.

But the rest of the year, once they've been showed, once they become just pigs to have on the farm, they just fed them whatever was left over. And I think those pigs would have literally eaten anything. And I remember going up and standing on the fence so that my boots didn't get too dirty there around the pig's place and just watching my cousins feed those pigs.

Now, usually I was a big helper. I didn't help with that. I didn't want any part of that. And if you've been around pigs at all, you know how nasty they are as animals. Apparently, I've been told, I've read, that they're very smart. And maybe they are. But nothing is too bad for a pig to eat. And that's what Satan is offering us.

It is not some fine banquet filled with good food. He is offering us the slop of the pigs, and how often we sell out for the slop. And we need to be reminded, like this young man, that the pleasures of this world, though they can be pleasurable in the moment, are temporary. They will not sustain us and will abandon us in our time of need.

The Hebrew writer called it the passing pleasures of sin. And the passing pleasures of sin refer to Moses and the riches of Egypt that he had as a prince. Not the sloth that so often we have to have. And so let's be honest, most of us are not offered the treasures of Egypt for our soul. But even if we were...

It would not be enough. We know what John says in 1 John chapter 2, if you want to turn over there for just a moment. 1 John chapter 2 beginning in verse 15. To drive the point home for us so that we might then make some applications based on this first point. Do not love the world or the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever. The world is passing away.

And covetousness leads us nowhere because uncertain riches can and will leave us and forsake us. Worldly friends can and will turn their backs on us. Health and beauty and power and lust and riches eventually fade away or become hollow. All this happened to this son, and it can and eventually will happen to us if we trust in these things.

From a son, we end up worse than the swine. And for the Jews, this was as low as you could possibly go. There was a Jewish saying from this first century that says, May a curse come upon a man who cares for swine. And Jesus is emphasizing to all who would listen, this is your condition away from God. And maybe I've beaten the dead horse, beaten the dead swine, I don't know, with this first point of rebellion.

Because if we don't see this, if we don't see that we've made that transition from being right with God to being made apart from Him, the other two points really don't matter that much. Until we see our sin, As the slop of swine, the next two transitions cannot and will not happen. But, praise God, they happen for this young man.

The second transition is from swine to servant. We might call it a picture of our repentance toward God. This is one of the best definitions of repentance in all the Bible. Verse 17, And when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare? And yet I perished with hunger.

I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. Brothers and sisters, that is repentance from the one who arrogantly said, Give me, give me.

He now contritely asks, Make me. And he came to realize that he's going to be a servant to somebody if he's going to be a servant to this one in the far country. He might as well be a servant to his father who's gonna treat him so much better. And this is a totally different person because he saw things for what they were.

And just like this young man, we must come to ourselves before we can come to God. This was the turning point in his life, as Dan Shipley once wrote. From his pig pen perspective, he can see the vanity of self indulgence and riotous living. That a man's life truly does not consist in the abundance of his possessions, or in the carnal pleasures that can buy.

Now, he despises what he once yearned for, and yearns for what he wants. That's the way it is when men come to themselves. And some would say that the prodigal had lost everything. His money was gone. His friends had abandoned him. His time of wine, women, and song was over. And thus he found himself humiliated and hungry, out there with the pigs, far from home.

But amazingly, because He came to Himself, He comes to the threshold of a greater inheritance, one that is incorruptible and undefiled, one that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for us, as 1 Peter 1 and verse 4 says. He can be right with His Father. He can be right with God. And so what does he do? He practices this little speech where he says, I'm going to acknowledge my sin.

I will arise and go to my Father and say to Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven.

And acknowledging this sin against heaven implies that there is godly sorrow. And we must have this awareness of sin that motivates godly sorrow if we are to really come to ourselves. This is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7 verse 10 is the sorrow that produces repentance leading to salvation. I've been wronged.

It's not, I've been wronged. I have wronged. I've sinned. And yet none of us can return to God without this kind of humble spirit. Blessed are the poor in spirit, Jesus says in Matthew 5 and verse 3. They seek no alibis, no excuses. I did it and I deserve whatever punishment I receive. David is a great example of this.

We remember his sin with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 and 12. If you want to turn over there for just a moment to 2 Samuel chapter 12. It is unbelievable what David did in these two chapters. There's no responsibility, no accountability that he's the king and yet he's hanging out in the palace. We see his lust, and his covetousness, his adultery that causes Bathsheba to commit adultery, and then the deceit, and the lying, and the cover up.

He causes Uriah's drunkenness, he commits murder with Uriah and other men, he makes Joab an accessory of that murder, and Nathan comes to him, appropriately, with a parable, to make him feel what God is feeling with what he has done. And the parable that Nathan tells him in chapter 12 is of this poor man that has one lamb, and yet there's a rich man with many flocks and herds who takes that one lamb away and sacrifices it for the good of someone who's coming.

Makes a banquet out of that one small lamb. And David... In his hypocrisy says, that man, the man who stole this little lamb is deserving of death. And what is it that Nathan says to him in verse 7? You are the man. And yet how does David respond to that? Verse 13, So David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.

And Nathan said to David, the Lord has also put away your sin, you shall not die. We must confess, as David did in Psalm 51 and verse 4, I, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. Lowliness is the beginning of holiness. And when we are contrite, when we see our sin, we see the great need that we have for grace.

And over and over in Luke's Gospel, we see this contrast between those who know their need for grace and those who fail to see it. Which will we be? Will we be like the Pharisees and the scribes who cry out and say, I thank you, God, that I am not as other people are? Or will we be like the tax collectors and sinners who beat our breast and say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

If we are the second, then we can make the final transition from servant to son, which is a picture of our restoration. I'm amazed in this parable that it says in the second half of verse 20, but when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

God is looking for us, but we must return. Have you ever noticed how long in the earlier parables, how long did the shepherd and the woman look for the sheep and for the coin? Well, if you look in verse 4 and again in verse 8, they both look and search carefully until they find it. And God is looking for us just as the Father is looking in this last parable as well.

And he saw the prodigal when he was still a great way off because he was looking for him. But what makes this parable different from the first two is that the father did not go into the far country to try and find him. The son had to return to his father. And the Father was ready and willing to forgive and bless, but the Son had to come back.

And this perfectly represents our condition in our sin. If we, if we are willing to come back, God is willing to accept us again. And if it were just up to God, if it were just up to God's working and there was nothing that depended on us at all, everyone would be saved. Because God would look until we were found.

And to me, this is the greatest failing of that false doctrine of Calvinism. The idea that God arbitrarily ordained for certain specific individual people to be lost from before the foundation of the world is not the character of the God of the Bible. He desires everyone to be saved, but we are not sheep in this sense.

We are not coins in this sense. We are free will moral agents like the Son. And God has given us the free will to choose to accept His salvation or to reject it. To come to Him. Or to stay with the swine. Again, we see this concept over and over in Luke's Gospel. In Luke chapter 13 and verse 34, Jesus laments over Jerusalem and says, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.

How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. This was God's desire. This was Christ's desire. But you were not willing. We must be willing. We must return. 2 Peter 3 and verse 9 says, God is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish.

But that all comes to repentance. God wants us to come. And when we do, God is not just stoically giving us a lecture. He's not waiting for us to come to say, See, I told you so. Wasn't so good without me, was it? No, what does the Father do on this occasion? He runs to the Son. In the ancient world, great men did not run.

But the greatest of all runs to us. If we are willing to take the steps necessary to come back to Him. And God is always willing to forgive the poor in spirit, no matter how far they've wandered. He saw him when he was a great way off, because he was looking longingly down the road where he had last seen his son.

Hoping, maybe against hope, that His Son would come back. And we speak often, I speak often, in my sermons, rightly, of God's wrath and the judgment to come. And make no mistake that God is righteous. And if we make Him punish us, He will be faithful to His will and do so. But that is not God's desire. His desire is to forgive and to bless.

That's what we, He wants. That's what He desires. And no matter how far we have wandered away, He is willing to forgive. And God is the one who decides what we will be to Him and what we must do to be right with Him. The Son practices His little speech. And I'm sure you've seen before. Father cuts him off.

That's enough. That's good enough. And he calls all to celebrate with him. For this, my son, was lost and is found, was dead and is alive again. If we humble ourselves before God as servants, he will make us sons and heirs. And maybe, maybe for the first time, if we put ourselves in the place of God here as this father.

I'm a father. There is nothing I wouldn't do to save my children. And no party grand enough to celebrate when they're saved. And maybe if we put ourselves in the place of this Father, we can fulfill what Jesus is asking us to do. And feel, and know, get a glimpse, of how much God really loves.

And if you've not yet come in total surrender to be made a servant, So that he can make you a son know that we don't have a bunch of people here who don't want you to be saved We're gonna crash the party and mess things up for us Ironically, we spent all this time together and we haven't even really gotten to Jesus's point in verses 25 through 32 That's that's intentional this morning Jesus point was that these scribes and Pharisees didn't want sinners to be saved.

If, if you're a sinner here this morning, no, you're in a room full of people who want you to be saved. Who will rejoice with God and the angels in heaven if you are. You are surrounded by those who are rooting for you. Who are desiring your salvation. You're surrounded by people who have been where you sit.

Who have been already on this journey. Who know what it is to go from son to swine, to servant to son again. To be made a child of God. Don't doubt how much God loves you and wants you to be saved. Don't doubt how much these people desire it. Don't doubt how much I desire it. And the Father calls you. He calls you home.

Won't you turn? and take the step toward him so that he can come running with his grace. And if you're subject to the gospel call, even this morning, won't you come now where together we stand and while we say.