The prodigal son Luke 15:1-24
Two American tourists were driving through Nova Scotia and as they were approaching Amherst they started arguing about the proper way to pronounce the name of the town. They argued back and forth until they finally stopped for lunch. And as they stood at the counter, one tourist asked the employee, "Before we order, could you please settle an argument for us? Would you please pronounce where we are...very slowly?" The girl behind the counter leaned over and said,
"Burrrrrrrr, gerrrrrrr, Kiiiiiiiing."
You can never escape criticism. Anyone who ever stands up and does something will be criticized. And you’ll be criticized both fairly and unfairly. And if you try to get away from the criticism and rest up you’ll end up being criticized for doing nothing. Criticism is something you can’t escape but it also has a way of bringing out either the best or the worst in us.
I like the quote by Theodore Roosevelt who said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who actually strives to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least knows he failed while daring greatly and his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
And so, when we’re criticized and we will be, we have to evaluate the criticism by what was said, where it comes from and the reason it came. In criticism there is either something to be learned or maybe there’s someone to stay away from. I always remember the words of Benjamin Disraeli who said, "The worst wheel of a cart makes the most noise." And if a critic doesn’t have an audience, they’ll soon move on and find one somewhere else.
If you study through the pages of the New Testament you’ll see that Jesus was constantly the victim of criticism and His worst critics were the religious crowd and these people professed to believe in the same God and the same Bible as He did. And yet, Jesus was always conscious of the fact that their intention was to derail His ministry and to eliminate His influence on the people. At times He rebukes them and other times He tries to teach them and what’s happening in this passage is a combination of the two. And here He responds to these attacks with three of the most wonderful parables in the Bible and His intention is both to expose their ruthless attitude and to give them the opportunity to turn from their sinful ways and to get their hearts right with God. And these parables are the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. And in all three of these parables we get remarkable insight into the very nature of God.
And it tells us in the first two verses who was listening, when it says, “Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, this man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” And it seems like the greatest difficulty this religious crowd had was that Jesus didn’t just tolerate or put up with the lowlife people of His day but He actually welcomed and ate with them. I mean, He really went out of His way to make people feel comfortable and these were people who had experienced nothing but rejection from every other religious figure.
You see, the problem these Pharisees and scribes had was they considered all these people to be unclean and in their minds to associate with them would make them unclean. They actually followed a Rabbinical teaching that said, "Let not a man associate with the wicked, not even to bring him to the law." And so, they found themselves in a kind of a mess because in order to hear Jesus so they could condemn Him, they had to actually sit around this despicable crowd that they couldn’t stand to look at.
I just want to say a word about the tax gatherers to help us understand who they were. The taxation systems of the antique world were very elaborate and complicated and if you do your own taxes you’ll probably say, “Well, the more things change, the more they’ll stay the same.” The Romans would conquer a country and then rather than get involved in taxing the people they “farmed out” the tax collecting to local contractors and then these contractors hired local individuals to collect the taxes. And rather than just taking what they knew was the government rate, they always took a little extra for themselves. You see, the average person didn’t know what was or wasn’t taxable and so everyone was at the mercy of these tax collectors. And these publicans as they were called were what’s known as the bottom level tax people and they were all hated by the Jews.
William Barclay describes this tax system by saying, “There was a purchase tax on all that was bought and sold. There was bridge money to be paid when a bridge was crossed; road money to be paid when main roads were used; harbor dues to be paid when a harbor was entered; market money to be paid when a market was used and town dues to be paid when the traveler entered a walled town. If a man was traveling on a road, he might have to pay a tax for using the road, a tax on his cart, on its wheels, on its axle and on the beast which drew the cart. There was a tax on crossing rivers, on ships, on the use of harbors, on dams and there were certain licenses which had to be paid for to engage in certain trades.” So, needless to say, there was a tax on everything but tax. (I guess they weren’t as shrewd as the Canadian government who taxes us on our tax every time we pay for gas.)
So, everybody hated the tax man and these publicans as they were called were so hated and distrusted that they weren’t even allowed to testify in a court of law. Banks didn’t want their business and even their charitable gifts were refused. As a matter of fact, it was considered to be ethical by Jews to resort to any sort of tax evasion including outright lying. They considered these publicans to be “sell-outs” to their enemies. And because these people had frequent contact with Gentiles, they were also considered to be ceremonially unclean. The rabbis viewed the tax collectors as being on the same level as “highwaymen and murderers.” And the rest of the crowd that were gathered there were labeled by the Pharisees as sinners and they might have been the women of the streets who were thought of as the riff-raff of town.
And because the Pharisees hated the tax collectors and sinners, they thought that Jesus should too, and the fact that Jesus sat and ate with what they considered to be the dregs of society, well, that was a disgraceful act that the Pharisees couldn’t understand. And so, in this passage, you have to understand that Jesus is reaching out, not only to the tax collectors and sinners but He’s also trying to communicate the love of God to these Pharisees.
And if you stand back and look at these three parables you’ll see how the tension is building as Jesus zeros in on the self-righteous attitudes of everyone who’s listening.
In the first parable He’s talking about a lost sheep which the shepherd goes looking for and it says when he finds it he throws a party. It says, “And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. (And then Jesus says) I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.”
Now, this is a story that everyone could understand because everyone had sheep back then, even the scribes and Pharisees. And they would all know what it felt like to lose one. I mean, there was not only the cost of replacing it but then there was the loss of what it would produce in terms of wool, milk and even meat. And if you had a very small flock you might even treat your sheep like we do our pets. I mean, they would be like your cat or your dog.
Back in 2 Samuel 12 the prophet Nathan tells King David the story of “a poor man who had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him." And let’s face it, animals become more than animals when we treat them like members of our family.
Did you know there are all kinds of pet cemeteries all over the world? And there are even a few in Canada. And they not only have caskets and memorial headstones but some of them actually have their own chaplains.
I read an article on a pet chaplain. It said, “Rob Gierka is a new breed of chaplain. Originally he was trained to provide pastoral care at hospitals but now he consoles North Carolina pet owners whose animals are sick or dying. Gierka grew up in a houseful of animals and experienced a deep sadness with each one’s passing but no one ever acknowledged his feelings or seemed to care about his pets’ deaths. Today the Baptist chaplain provides clients at a local animal rehabilitation center with what he didn’t have as a child, a shoulder to cry on.
The soft-spoken chaplain also oversees private memorial services where he plays guitar and recites a few prayers. And he provides emotional support for owners during euthanasia procedures. Gierka says he’s careful not to impose any religious views on the owners he counsels. In the future he says he would like to see an army of trained pet chaplains around the country.”
I also read that Leona Helmsley who was known as the Queen of Mean lived up to her reputation even after her death because in her will she left $12 million to her white Maltese dog called Trouble and she also left nothing to her grandchildren. Trouble was left in the care of her brother who only got $10 million. So, people really do treat their animals better than people.
In this parable, the farmer is probably counting his herd at evening and he find that one is missing. And then he leaves the ninety-nine with a helper and goes looking for the lost sheep until he finds it. And the point Jesus was making was, when someone goes looking for something that’s lost and finds it, then he wants to celebrate its discovery.
And then He tells us that the angels in heaven rejoice, whenever a sinner repents! In other words, there is a celebration for every victory, for every person who was ever lost in sin and redeemed. You see, redemption is not mass salvation, but it’s a one-by-one and person-by-person process. As someone once told me, “If you were the only sinner in the world, then Jesus would have come and died because He loves the individual that much.”
And then the second story He tells us, is about a woman who has ten silver coins and somehow she loses one. We’re told that these coins would have been worth about ten days wages so it wasn’t necessarily the monetary value that bothered her but these represented her dowry or what she would have either given her husband on her wedding day or worn in her hair at the ceremony. So, these coins were very significant and they were typically mounted on a head band that was worn as a demonstration of her moral purity. In that culture, the loss of a coin could represent unfaithfulness and this would be a real shame and a disgrace to her family and her new husband.
So to search diligently, she would light a lamp and sweep the floor searching high and low until she found it. And when she found it, she was so excited she called all her friends and neighbors to come and celebrate the fact that she had found this lost coin. This parable shares a principle with the previous one. The one who is seeking the lost doesn’t stop until they’ve restored or found that which was lost.
Notice who’s rejoicing in these parables? In verse 10 it says, "Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." In both the shepherd’s finding of his sheep and the woman’s finding the coin, it says the angels are rejoicing but they’re not rejoicing over the animal or the ring but they’re rejoicing over what these represent which is the sinner who repents. And we also notice that they’re not rejoicing over those that weren’t lost because that crowd either doesn’t know or wouldn’t face the fact that they were lost and so they can never be found.
And in these two parables the tax collectors and sinners might have looked at each other and thought, we’re good enough and we don’t need to be saved and the scribes and Pharisees probably thought they same.
I mean, when the standard of being good is your next door neighbor then we can all look pretty good. And if you’re the one that makes all of your neighbors look good then you had better think about moving and find a whole new crowd of sinners to compare yourself to.
At the same time, we also notice that the message the Pharisees heard would have been a contradiction to their beliefs. I mean, the second parable speaks of a woman as a main character and it also speaks of God who is seeking the lost and the lost are the very ones the Pharisees are so busy trying to avoid. So, the Pharisees have a real problem because the God whom they think they’re so close to is acting in a way that’s totally contrary to their beliefs.
In the Parable of the Lost Coin, God is portrayed as one who is tireless when it comes to pursuing the lost and the emphasis is on the carefulness of the search. Many people today are like the Pharisee’s and they’ll tell you that God is prepared to accept you if you clean up your act and make yourself presentable but the Scripture says that God commends or shows His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And it’s also while we are yet sinners that the Holy Spirit convicts, draws and calls us. And here Jesus was eating with these sinners because they needed to repent and He was spending time with them in the hope that they’d see their need and come to Him for the forgiveness and cleansing that only He could give.
Let’s face it, none of us are saved because we’ve cleaned up our act but we’ve cleaned up our act because we were saved. And I’m not just playing with words here but the Bible says that no flesh can ever be justified except by grace and grace is the free gift to anyone who will receive it. And since we’ve been saved by grace and not by works, then we can never look down on those who are still lost. I mean, what have you got to brag about that God didn’t give you?
Now, there’s something else important here, listen, a lost sheep is just a sheep, a sheep is silly and foolish and it couldn’t find its way home if it wanted to. And then we see the lost coin and everybody knows that coins are not responsible for their own condition, are they? But when we turn to the lost son we see something altogether different because he has been inexcusably wicked and he only got what he deserved. So, what’s happening here is Jesus is causing them all to look beyond their animals and their money and to focus on people.
So, here’s the story about the prodigal and the word prodigal simply means wasteful. We don’t know any personal details about him like his age or his interests but his whole approach to life is summed up in the title prodigal. In other words, things meant nothing to him. As far as he was concerned money was meant to be spent and enjoyed. Money was made round to go round. His motto would have been, “We’re not here for a long time but we’re here for a good time.”
I think he was the type who only did what he had to and that was usually as little as possible. He would spend more time getting out of work than actually working. His older brother probably said, “He’s like a blister on your thumb. He always shows up when the work is all done.” He’d probably volunteer to run errands into town and then he’d find any excuse in the world to spend the rest of the day there. And when he was working he’d only stay at the task at hand until the dinner bell rang and when it did no matter what he was doing he’d walk away, and if he happened to be holding a rope for his brother he’d just let go and leave. He’d probably have a saying like, “The farm is here for us and not us for the farm.” And he looked forward to the day when he could leave it all behind.
And it seems like his whole life revolved around short term satisfaction. He wanted what he wanted and he wanted it all right now. I mean, he couldn’t wait for his father to die to get his inheritance and when he got it he blew it like there were truckloads coming in the very next day.
When I was a youth pastor in Guelph we had a young couple who came to the church looking for financial help and they said they needed two hundred dollars to pay their gas bill. It was winter time and they had a six month old baby and so for the baby’s sake we paid their bill. They owned an old house they had bought with some insurance money the girl’s mother had left her when she died and the guy just worked whenever the spirit moved and that wasn’t very often.
Then something bizarre happened that changed everything. The real estate market went crazy in Guelph and people were buying houses for 105% of market value. So, if you were selling your house several people might be bidding on it and anyone could really make a bundle fast. And this couple who couldn’t pay their heat one week sold their house the next and made $35,000 more than they owed. I mean, one day they couldn’t pay their hydro and the next they had $35,000 in their pockets.
Well, the first thing they did was to call in a second hand furniture dealer and they sold everything they had including the babies crib. I went to see them the day after the dealer left and they had all slept on the floor the night before. And then he told me that he had to go for a driver’s test because he needed a license so he could drive the brand new car he bought and he said he needed that to pull his brand new camper trailer. The only way to describe this couple was they were dizzy with excitement. After all, one day they couldn’t pay their hydro and the next day they had money to burn. And let me tell you, burn it they did, because they went through the $35,000 in six months.
I tried to talk him into using some common sense with his money but he just said, “There’s a lot more where that came from.” And I often wondered where he thought it came from. And yet, I learned a valuable lesson from him, people who never have to work for anything never seem to appreciate it when things come their way.
Someone told me they ran into them out in Vancouver and I asked how they were doing and he said, both the car and the trailer broke down and they were depending on a church to help them get started again.
It’s been said, “There are those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” And there seems to be two extremes in life when it comes to material possessions. The first group are the gatherers. These are the people who spend their entire lives working and accumulating but they never seem to enjoy the things they have. They get a sense of security out of owning things. Some are like this because of their background and maybe they had very little when they were young and now they feel as though their bank accounts and possessions insulate them from the pain of the past. And then there are others who have a self-image problem and they feel as though they’ve got it all together as long as they have more than the guy next door. In either case, these are people who are victims of what they own. I guess we could say, that what they own soon owns them.
I have a book on eccentric people and one of these people was called the “Witch of wall street.” This lady lived back in the twenties and she was one of the wealthiest people of her day. As a matter of fact, she was so wealthy that she actually lent money to the city of New York during the depression. They called her a witch because she always wore the same ragged black clothes and even though she looked so poor she always carried $50,000 in negotiable bonds.
She and her son only bought day old bread and could often be seen rooting through the garbage cans looking for food. Her son had some kind of infection in his leg but he ended up dying from it because she couldn’t find a free clinic to treat him. She had millions of dollars but no sense whatsoever. She was very much like the prodigal.
Well, there came a point where this prodigal son decided he was going to leave and when he did he had no intention of ever coming back. We know this because he asked for his inheritance. And it seems to me like he was demanding something that he probably didn’t deserve. You see, he wanted in cash a portion of the family business but I don’t think he contributed all that much to it. Now, the father’s estate was something that logic tells you would only be dispersed when the father died but it was like he was saying, “I want my money and as far as I’m concerned you’re already dead so don’t expect me to come back for the funeral.”
And by taking his money and leaving the prodigal totally turned his back on his upbringing and that meant his family, his nationality, his religious training, his culture, his social connections and everything else he could rely on to be an anchor for his soul. And as far as I can see he had no redeeming qualities. He was demanding, arrogant, full of himself, hateful toward those who cared for him and generally the type of person you would gladly give him anything just to see him go away.
Well, how do you react to someone like that? What do you do when your own son says, I want your money but I don’t want anything to do with you? Here’s the strange part, the father just gave him what he figured was his share and let him go. And it seems like an unusual approach but it’s like his father was saying, you mean more to me than my money and when his son walked out, I think the father might have closed the door behind him but he certainly didn’t lock it.
I’ve seen people treat their prodigal children a lot different. Some just wrote them off because they had rejected their faith. And there are some children who left the family home and got involved in homosexuality, some were divorced, others got involved in drugs or drinking and a few even went to jail. And these are the prodigals of our day.
Well, this guy got his money and went as far away as possible so he’d never have to think about the home he left behind. And everything he couldn’t do at home he did in spades as soon as he hit the streets. He was taught that sex was only made for marriage but he was going to prove that one wrong right away. And later on, his older brother would say that he had squandered all his money on prostitutes so he must have had such a terrible reputation for immorality that everyone back home was talking about him.
No doubt he also hung around the gambling crowd and they’d convince him to give lady luck a chance. After all, they say, it’s so easy to make the big money fast. We see this in our world today with all the lotteries, casinos and bingo.
And then there was the booze and since he never saw any of this stuff at home he probably assumed it was one of those things he was warned about that no one had even tried, but he certainly did. And little did he know it but the conscience God gave to warn him when he did wrong soon became dull from being ignored.
I remember when I first started playing guitar my fingers would ache after playing for five or ten minutes but after the calluses developed on my fingers I could play for a couple of hours and not even notice it. And the same thing happens with our heart. The first couple of times we do something that we know is wrong we feel a sense of conviction but after we do it a few more times we don’t feel anything at all.
Mark Twain tells this story. “When I was a boy I was walking along a street and I happened to spy a cart load of watermelons. I was fond of watermelon, so I sneaked quietly up to the cart and snitched one. Then I ran to a nearby alley and sank my teeth into the melon. No sooner had I done so, however, than a strange feeling came over me. Without a moment’s hesitation, I made my decision. I walked back to the cart, replaced the melon – and took a ripe one.” His conscience had been violated so many times he was only concerned with getting what he wanted and so was the prodigal.
And I think this guy was really having fun but he was about to learn a very important lesson in life. And it’s this, the pleasure of sin is short. There is pleasure in sin, but it doesn’t last very long because his money ran out and so did all his friends.
And the Bible says that a famine swept through the land and he became a victim of his lifestyle. He had spent all he had and then prices started to climb and he ended up feeding pigs and wishing he could eat their food. As I was studying this, I wondered why he didn’t just help himself but you see, the problem was pig food isn’t eatable to humans. They feed the pigs the pods off carob seeds and people can’t digest them. So, here he was a Jewish kid wishing he could eat a pig’s lunch. And listen, you don’t get much lower than that.
And depending where you’re at in life, not having a lot will affect different people in different ways. My grandmother told me that during the depression everyone had food stamps and you could only buy so much sugar or other things every week. I remember I said to her, “Did you have to do without a lot of things?” And she just laughed and said, “They gave you food stamps but no one gave you any money, so the stamps were useless.”
And then one summer I worked on a private island for a multi-millionaire and he told me what life was like for his family during the depression. He said, “Things were so bad they had to take the servants car off the road because they couldn’t buy tires for it.” It wasn’t because they couldn’t afford the tires but there was none to buy. You see, the depression affected everyone but it affected them all differently.
In the case of the prodigal he had come from a well to do home and no doubt he could have had anything he wanted to eat whenever he wanted it but now he was in a pig sty wishing he could share their garbage.
I don’t think this kind of work would consume a lot of mental energy, so he had plenty of time to think about how good he had had it back when he thought that everything was so bad. And after a while both his hunger and the stink of the pigs woke him up to the fact that his father had servants who were treated better than he was. So, he decided to go back and throw himself on his father’s mercy.
And then there’s an unbelievable turn in the story, it says, “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. 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.’ And when he said that everybody who was listening to this story got the surprise of their life because the father not only accepted and forgave him but he treated him as though he had never left in the first place.
I like the way he rejoiced over his son’s arrival because the father said to his servants, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.” And I think I would have added, and don’t forget to give him a bath, after all, he might still have the pig smell on him. But what he was saying was, don’t treat him like he deserves, but treat him like my son. You see, justice would have given him what he deserved but mercy triumphs over justice.
And there were four gifts mentioned. First he said, “Put sandals on his feet." And sandals portray freedom. Slaves were always barefoot and the father wanted everyone to see that this was his son. And then he said, “Put a ring on his finger." And a ring was a symbol of power and authority. He wanted people to know that his son carried the weight of the family name. And then he said, “Bring him the best robe" and giving him this gift wasn’t just a sign of honor but it also was a reflection of his love and concern for his son. After all, this was the robe he would have worn for special occasions and he wanted everyone to respect his son the way they respected him. And then he told them to set up a great feast or a celebration because the joy of his son’s return had to be announced and shared with everyone.
This is a real picture of what repentance is all about. It’s us coming to God on His terms. Realizing that all of our pain is our fault and then accepting the responsibility for our sin and asking to be accepted on his terms rather than our own. It’s admitting we were wrong.
That’s why I like baptisms because they not only communicate that the one who’s being baptized is saved but they also describe what’s happening as the person goes under the water because during this process there’s a point of identification with Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. The person being baptized is the prodigal going under but they’re a son coming up.
As we read this account, we see a simple story for simple people because Jesus didn’t take His message just to the high and mighty but He preached it to everyone, everywhere. He preached it to the tax collectors, to the common sinners and even to the religious crowd. In other words, we’re all there.
Conclusion
So, everyone had sheep and they all took good care of them and if they were lost they went to find them no matter what time it was or what the weather was like. I mean, wouldn’t you do this if it was your cat or dog? And then, everyone had jewelry that’s either been a gift from someone we love or that signifies something special to us and we’d all do anything we could to find it if it was lost. I mean, we’d not only search the house but we might even put an ad in the paper. And just like these people, animals and jewelry are important to us. And just like these people God is telling us, there’s something more important than an animal or a fashion statement because there is people who are lost all around you and they don’t even know it. We are all surrounded by prodigal children who need to hear that there’s a God who loves them and we have to keep in mind that they’re more important to God than our animals or jewelry.
