Steadfast Love
Worship is catching our breath in the busyness of living. It is that moment when we pause and reflect and remember who we are and whose we are. We need selah moments in our lives daily.
Grace in the Stillness: Restoring Relationships
Bible Passage: Lk 15:11–32
1. Pursuing in the Wrong Places
2. Pause and Return Home
3. Practicing Generous Grace
This is sometimes called the Parable of the Two Sons. For while verses 11–24 describe the younger of the two, verses 25–32 deal with the older brother. Also the opening words are: A certain man had two sons. The parable seems to have a twofold purpose: (1) to show that God’s love stands ready to restore the lowest sinner who will repent and return to Father’s house; (2) to picture the Pharisees in their harsh lack of love for repentant sinners
The figure of the Prodigal Son has universal appeal. In all lands and in all ages there have been prodigal sons.
One day the prodigal found himself with an empty purse—and an empty soul
In Jewish thinking, this young prodigal had “hit bottom.” The Talmud has this saying: “Cursed is the man who rears swine, and cursed is the man who teaches his son Greek philosophy.” Another rabbinical saying is this: “When the Israelites are reduced to eating carob-pods, then they repent”; and still another: “When a son (abroad) goes barefoot (through poverty), then he remembers the comfort of his father’s house.” So it was with the prodigal.
While he was still coming—just as God meets the repentant sinner more than half way—the father ran to meet him and gave him the kiss of forgiveness
Besides the best robe, the servants were to put a ring on his hand. This was the sign and symbol of the fact that he was once more in the family. But it indicated more than that. Probably this was the father’s official signet ring, with which he stamped the soft sealing wax on letters and goods he sent. Giving the son the ring may have meant that he was thereby authorized to do business again in his father’s name. If so, nothing could show more dramatically the fact that the son was now fully a member of the family. Here is a picture of the complete, unlimited forgiveness which God gives to every penitent sinner.
But one thing more was necessary—shoes on his feet. The young man was not to sit around the house, where no shoes were worn, but to go to work. One of the surest ways to save new converts from backsliding is to set them to work doing something useful. Work is one of God’s best gifts to man. Without it, almost all men would be ruined. Work has high therapeutic value—physically, mentally, morally, emotionally, and spiritually.
But it is obvious that the elder brother was not the kind who could have enjoyed such festivities. He is a type of those in church circles who live outwardly above reproach, who are faithful in doing their duty, but who endure their religion instead of enjoying it. Their harsh, unloving legalism makes them, as well as those around them, unhappy. The older son, too, was lost—at home.
This is man impatient of divine control, desiring to be independent of God, seeking to be his own master; that “sin of sins, in which all subsequent sins are included as in their germ, for they are but the unfolding of this one” [TRENCH].
he divided, &c.—Thus “God, when His service no longer appears a perfect freedom, and man promises himself something far better elsewhere, allows him to make the trial; and he shall discover, if need be by saddest proof, that to depart from Him is not to throw off the yoke, but to exchange a light yoke for a heavy one, and one gracious Master for a thousand imperious tyrants and lords” [TRENCH].
13. not many days—intoxicated with his new—found resources, and eager for the luxury of using them at Will.
riotous living—(
Je 3:1–15
“He who begins by using the world as a servant, to minister to his pleasure, ends by reversing the relationship” [TRENCH
no man gave … him—not this food, for that he had, but anything better (
His heart being wholly estranged from home and steeped in selfish gratification, his father’s house never came within the range of his vision, or but as another name for bondage and gloom. Now empty, desolate, withered, perishing, home, with all its peace, plenty, freedom, dignity, starts into view, fills all his visions as a warm and living reality, and breaks his heart
but remaining a son to be made “as a servant,” willing to take the lowest place and do the meanest work. Ah! and is it come to this? Once it was, “Any place rather than home.” Now, “Oh, that home! Could I but dare to hope that the door of it would not be closed against me, how gladly would I take any place and do any work, happy only to be there at all.” Well, that is conversion—nothing absolutely new, yet all new; old familiar things seen in a new light and for the first time as realities of overwhelming magnitude and power. How this is brought about the parable says not. (We have that abundantly elsewhere,
our Father recognizes His own child in us, and bounds to meet us—not saying, Let him come to Me and sue for pardon first, but Himself taking the first step.
fell on his neck and kissed him—What! In all his filth? Yes. In all his rags? Yes. In all his haggard, shattered wretchedness? Yes. “Our Father who art in heaven,” is this Thy portraiture? It is even so (
shoes—Slaves went barefoot. Thus, we have here a threefold symbol of freedom and honor, restored, as the fruit of perfect reconciliation.
that I might make merry with my friends—Here lay his misapprehension. It was no entertainment for the gratification of the prodigal: it was a father’s expression of the joy he felt at his recovery.
The lessons are obvious, but how beautiful! (1) The deeper sunk and the longer estranged any sinner is, the more exuberant is the joy which his recovery occasions. (2) Such joy is not the portion of those whose whole lives have been spent in the service of their Father in heaven. (3) Instead of grudging the want of this, they should deem it the highest testimony to their lifelong fidelity, that something better is reserved for them—the deep, abiding complacency of their Father in heaven.
