Reaching a Lost Son

The case could be made that it is getting more and more difficult to raise children in modern times.  However, we need to be careful that we do not lose sight of the truth that it has always been difficult to raise children.  Sheltering, feeding, and clothing children can be challenging at times, but they represent the "easier" tasks of being a parent.  The more difficult task is teaching and preparing the child to take on the tasks of caring for itself in a way that does not prey on others.

The Bible is filled with the history of parents having trouble raising their children.  It wasn't easy back then either.  Thus we do not have a special case that only we can answer.  Throughout history mankind has wrestled with the issue of how best to raise children.  In the Bible we have the examples of many failures in this regard and yet counsel from God himself on what we could do better.

Before we talk about reaching a lost son, I believe that there is an amazing teaching in the bible in this area.  The Bible makes it abundantly clear that God intends us to make the connection between our difficulties raising our children and the often stormy relationship between God and mankind.  Think about it.  Children are born helpless, in a weakened condition, unable to care for themselves, and unable to interpret the world around them.  If it were not for the "god-like" care and influence of parents then they would die.  Parents as the "gods" of their children care for their every need, help them grow and understand the world around them.  The frictions that happen during this process are both unavoidable and necessary.  We are the lost children God is trying to reach and the passage we look at today is God's attempt to help us see his heart towards mankind.  Today we do not look at the infant and toddler stages, but rather the end of the parenting process where our kids become adults in their own right and in that sense transition into standing beside us as our brothers and sisters.

Setting the Stage

Before we get into the story we need to understand the situation that led to Jesus telling it.  In Luke chapter 15 we are told that the tax collectors and the sinners "drew near" to Jesus in order to hear his teachings.  The point is that they weren't just hanging on the outskirts of the group, but that they were right in next to Jesus as he taught.  The fact that tax collectors are equated with sinners here is not lost on us modern readers.  However, these tax collectors were viewed even worse than in our society because they collected taxes for a foreign, oppressive regime, and often did so excessively so that they could skim profits off the top.  They were seen as opportunistic traitors.  The religious leaders saw that Jesus allowed these obvious sinners to be close to him as he was teaching.  They make the complaint: "This man receives sinners and eats with them."  If he really was God's holy representative than how could he let unholy sinners first come to him and then, even worse, have a meal with them?  It flew in the face of what they understood about God and what they taught Israel about their God.  Jesus gave them three stories to show how they neither understood God's heart nor were in a position to teach about it.  He also wants us to understand the heart of those who are lost.

Jesus primes the pump of their understanding by giving two quick stories about a lost sheep and a lost coin.  He then follows up with a much more involved story about a son who asks for his inheritance early and leaves his father's home.  Jesus' use of the three pictures of a lost sheep, lost coin, and a lost son, are highly illustrative of our lost condition.

• Luke 15:4-7, The Lost Sheep, this is a picture of how we stray from God through our own ignorance and stupidity.  God, as the good shepherd, "goes out after the one" even though he has 99 others.  If you are an animal lover than you will probably think that it is obvious that a shepherd would seek out the one.  But Jesus is showing how it makes obvious sense to the religious leaders when talking about sheep.  But, they don't see it when talking about lost people.  The point of this story is the waywardness of the sheep and its seemingly insignificant value and yet the shepherd's desire to "go out after" it.  God's heart is to go out after us even when we have ignorantly chosen a path that will destroy us.
• Luke 15:8-10, The Lost Coin, Jesus moves to an inanimate object that makes no conscious decision.  It is simply lost.  this is a picture of how we are generally oblivious to our own lost condition and how we got there.  The coin is not valuable to the woman who lost it because of what it does.  It has an inherent value to the woman regardless of its lost state.  So she diligently lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches the house till she finds it.  This is a picture of how God has lit a light in the world through his prophets and particularly Jesus.  He is even now sweeping the world and searching it as he sends out his Church to share the good news with all (to the ends of the earth), yet only some believing in and following Jesus.

• Luke 15:11-32, The Lost Son, here we come to the apex of the teaching where we are brought face to face with the picture of how we willingly estrange and separate ourselves from our heavenly Father, all along not understanding his true heart towards us.  This story is true of all mankind, as we seek to cast off God and go our own way.  Let's look at this story closer.

The Heart of the Lost Son

First we are shown the heart of the wayward son.  We enter the story at a point when the younger of two sons is doing an unthinkable thing.  He is asking for his inheritance before his father dies and is planning to get as far away from his father's house as possible.  In short he is completely rejecting his father.  We are not told what leads up to this point, but any parent can fill in some of the details.  The young man is chaffing under his father's supervision, rules, and overall way of thinking.  He is restricted from what he wants to do by his father and can only think of getting away.  He only sees what the father is keeping him from.  Thus he chooses to leave.  But somewhat hypocritically he wants a portion of his father's estate.  Yes, it naturally would be his at his father's death, but notice he is rejecting his father and wants nothing to do with him, however, still wants the wealth his father has accumulated.  The same mindset that he is rejecting is the mindset that he now expects to benefit him.   His father is merely a means of wealth for him.  This action is a deep wound into the father's heart that says, "you are only a means to an end for me, a stepping stone."  Another issue to see is that the inheritance is merely money to him.  A father hands down to his child far more than money as an inheritance.  However, the young man saw none of that.  The only thing his father had that he wanted was money.  He seeks to get away from his father's presence and supervision along with all its restraints and expectations.

The wayward son then takes the money and goes to a far country.  In this country he "wasted" all that he had in "prodigal" living.  The greek word translated as "wasted" is actually a picture of a farmer who is broadcasting his seed.  It is as if this young man began to throw his possessions to the wind.  Such "investments" generally give no returns.  The second word translated as "prodigal" has the sense of no morals or boundaries.  He plunges himself into immoral  activity without placing boundaries on his actions.   Again his lifestyle and mindset continue a rejection of all that his father is and has modelled to him.  Yes he is blazing his own path, but it is not a new one.  It is a tired, well used, familiar path that many a parent has wept over because it is a path that leads to destruction.

The son ends up in a humiliating condition.  He becomes penniless, but also has the misfortune to be so just as a famine comes upon that country.  Good times economically, militarily, and socially often mask the effects of our own poor decisions.  If there hadn't been a famine, perhaps the young man could have had a better situation by taking a job, but he is not so lucky.  The famine hits.  Everyone else is hurting too.  They either do not have anything left over or are so fearful for themselves that they are not willing to share any extra that they have today.  The only thing he can find to do is to feed the swine of a pig farmer.  This choice is clearly chosen by Jesus in the story to highlight the depths to which this young jewish boy has fallen.  Pigs were an unclean animal and the religious leaders would see it as the bottom of the barrel if not under it.  Yet, this young man is so hungry that he is desirous to eat the pigs food!  The clincher comes in verse 16, "no one gave him anything."

Now remember why this story is being told.  Jesus was letting sinners come and listen to him and he was giving them teaching about God and eating with them.  Giving is a critical part of this story.  The only one in it who truly gives is the rejected father.  Everyone else, the son included, takes and wastes, but does not give.  Now, it is while he is in this humiliating condition that the young man, "comes to himself."  We would probably say that he came to his senses.  It dawns on him that his father's servants have it way better than he does.  This fact then gives rise to a possiblity that he previously could not see and desire.  He could go back to his father apologize for his wrong and beg to be a slave in his house.  It is in the dire situation that he is able to see how good his father's house really is.  The mindset that he before was rejecting, he sees now is a mindset that created a house that was one where even the servants had plenty of bread to eat.  It was a good place and his father was a good man.  When all good is lost from our life, it opens the door for us to see the wisdom of repentance.  In fact we can ask the question, Is true repentance possible without suffering?  All sinners who live a life in rejection of God's ways experience a life of waste and suffering.  Though not all "come to themselves" and desire repentance, some do.  Jesus wants us to see the utter humiliation, lack of grace, and lack of hope in which sinners find themselves.  They are in a desperate situation.  Will you help them?  What would God do, and more importantly what would God want you to do?

The Heart of the Rejected Father

At this point where the son's mind turns back to his father, so does the point of now showing the father's heart.  But before we do that let's think back to the father's actions already and think about what his heart must be feeling and thinking.  I mentioned that the son's actions would be very hurtful and were quite impertinent.  Instead of rebuking him and refusing to divide the inheritance, the father gives his son much wealth and lets him go.  When children are young we often rebuke them and refuse to let them have everything they want, but at some point the spankings and punishments fall away.  The father's heart is not to force his son to be like a slave that has to obey his every command.  He realizes that he has to let his son go or he will forever lose his heart.  The father also lets him take what he neither earned nor deserved simply because he loved his son.  But on top of this the father suffers the public shame of a son who would do such a thing.  Many a parent fails at this juncture.  We are unwilling to bear the public weight of our children's sins.  But this father carries the shame of a foolish son without flinching.  Later, as the prodigal son approaches home, vs. 20 tells us that "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 fact that the father saw the son while he was still a great way off implies that the father was watching for the boy.  His head knew he couldn't go out and force the boy to come home, but his heart was on the horizon looking for any sign of a changed heart.  At the first sign he quickly embraced the wayward, grievous son who had caused so much suffering to his heart and he did so with "great joy."  Instead of lording the son's failures over him, he rather completely restored him to son status.  "Are you kidding, you are not going to be a slave in my house, you are my son...!"  The father dresses the son in a fine robe and prepares a feast and calls all around to celebrate with him that his son had come home.  This is the heart of God towards sinners who have gone astray.  Yes he has been hurt and has carried the sorrow and heaviness of our rejection.  But he longingly looks for any change of heart that he might receive us back into his "house," not as a slave, but as a son.

The Other Son

Here Jesus inserts a question in the story.  For you see there was an older brother who had always been faithful to his father and had never disobeyed.  He was, in a sense, the perfect son.  But was he?  What makes a "perfect" son?  It is interesting that in the Scripture "perfect" carries the sense of matured or completed.  Was this son really completed?  Had he really become like his father?  It is at this point that we find the heart of the elder son.  The elder son is offended and angry at his father's actions and refuses to come into the celebration.  The father tries to reason with the elder son by reassuring him of his place in the father's house and that everything that was his belongs to the elder son.  He also speaks to the morality of the situation.  It is only right to rejoice when the brother who was as good as dead has come back to life.  You see this is the other thread throughout the stories.  The joy that breaks forth when the lost thing is found.  The shepherd calls his friends to rejoice with him.  The woman likewise entreats her friends to rejoice with her.  The father celebrates and throws a feast for his son along with music and dancing.  This is the heart of God.  He longs for our repentance and rejoices with great joy when we turn to him.  He is quick to embrace and restore.  This was not the heart of the religious leaders.  They were so proud in their obedience to God that they became offended when God had mercy on sinners.  Here is the question.  Jesus doesn't question their obedience, which he could have (we all like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way).  Instead he questions whether they were really like God and was God really as they thought.  They claimed to represent him and speak on his behalf, but in the end their heart is diametrically opposed to God's.

John MacArthur gives an interesting twist on this story.  Although the parable ends here, we might ask the question, "if the elder brother represents the religious leaders of the day then how might the parable continue?"  MacArthur says that the story would continue this way.  The elder brother becomes so enraged that the father intends to drag the family name through the mud by embracing the wayward son and because his own service seems to be slighted in the circumstances, that he picks up a staff and clubs his father to death.  When the true essence of his father was displayed he then rejected his father's heart and killed him.

The real question is not how obedient we have been to God, but is this.  When the true nature of God's heart is displayed do you reject it or do you embrace it?  Only the proud, self confident, and self righteous who refuse to see their own sin reject God's heart.  But those who have suffered and been humiliated because of their own sin rejoice and are amazed at the heart of God displayed at the cross.  God is all powerful.  But he does not use that power to wipe out those who dare disobey him.  Instead he uses that power to carry the weight of their sin and provide a way for them to be restored to him.  Yes, there will be a day of judgment because there is a real rejection of God, but is is not always seen by the outward appearance.  Many who are sinners will be restored to sonship and many who appear to be great religious leaders will be cast out of his house in that day.  Which heart is yours?