The Parable of the Prodigal part 2

Last week we started looking at the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

As we look this week we are looking at the first person in the story the younger son.

Here in Luke 15 the story of the younger son unfolds in 3 stages: Request, Rebellion, and Repentance.

The Request (vv 11-12)

The story opens by introducing a man who had two sons.

The common title of this story, the parable of the prodigal son, implies that it is primarily about the younger son.

Such is not the case, however.

Though he does not appear until the end, it is actually the older brother who is the main focus of the parable.

The younger son’s actions at the beginning set in motion the chain of events that led to his brother’s sinful reaction and the indictment of Jesus’ listeners.

“Prodigal” is an archaic term that describes a spendthrift; an extravagantly self-indulgent or recklessly wasteful person.

It accurately describes the younger son, as his actions reveal.

This young man made a startling request to his father and said to him, “Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.”

The scribes and Pharisees listening to this story would have been surprised and shocked by his brazen demand.

This was an outrageous, unheard of request for a son to make to his father.

It was disrespectful, and expressed an extreme lack of love and gratitude to the one who had provided everything for him.

The scribes and Pharisees would have considered it shameful, reprehensible, unacceptable behavior, a flagrant violation of the fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother”

For a son to say such a thing to his father in that culture was tantamount to saying that he wished that his father was dead, since he was not entitled to his share of the inheritance (one-third of the estate, since his brother was the firstborn [Gen. 25:31–34; Deut. 21:17]) while his father was still alive.

Since his father retained control and oversight of the estate as long as he lived (cf. v. 31), he stood in the way of his son’s plans.

He wanted his freedom to leave the family and gratify his own selfish desires.

Normally a son who shamed himself by making such a request would have been publicly shamed by his father, perhaps disinherited, or possibly even dismissed from the family and considered dead.

Ousias refers to property or material possessions, and its use suggests that he was unwilling to take the responsibility that came with his share of the estate.

He evidently was not interested in managing his share for the family’s future good, as those before him had done, but selfishly wanted to liquidate it to use it only for his own pleasure.

The Lord is making the Spiritual point here that God gives sinners the freedom to choose their own path.

The Rebellion (vv 13-16)

The younger son turned everything that his father gave him into cash.

Although he could not take possession of his inheritance until his father died, he was permitted to sell his share (necessarily at a discounted price) to a buyer willing to wait to take possession until the father died.

Not only is he selling off his family land he is doing so at a great sum less than what it is worth.

He wanted to sin beyond the range of all accountability, far away from his father and the villagers, who scorned him for his disgraceful behavior.

His action symbolizes the foolishness of the sinner trying to flee from God, to whom he does not want to be accountable.

He made no bones about what he was going to do with the money, he told his father that he was going to go and spend it on things that were not right or good.

The younger son’s behavior exemplifies the sinner’s wretched desires and his predicament graphically illustrates the sinner’s desperate plight.

To sin against God is to rebel against His fatherhood, disdain His honor and respect, spurn His love, and reject His will.

Unrepentant sinners shun all responsibility and accountability to God.

They deny Him his place, hate Him, wish He did not exist, refuse to love Him, and dishonor Him.

They take the gifts He has given them and squander them in a life of self-indulgence, dissipation, and unrestrained lust.

As a result they find themselves spiritually bankrupt, empty, destitute, with no one to help, nowhere to turn, and facing eternal death.

And when all the self-help strategies fail, the sinner hits rock bottom.

There is only one solution for those who, like this young man, find themselves in such a situation, which the next scene in the parable reveals.

Repentance (vv 17-19)

At the end of the fun when he was feeding animals that were unclean in the eyes of his people he remembered the gracious, and compassionate nature of his father.

He knew that no matter how bad things had gotten his father would be there to help.

When he went back he did not ask to be treated as a son but as a hired hand.

Hired men were day laborers who were generally unskilled and poor, living day to day on the temporary jobs they could find at whatever wages they were offered.

Recognizing the reality that such people would be part of society, the Old Testament law protected them and required their wages to be paid in a timely manner.

Leviticus 19:13 ESV

“You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.

Deuteronomy 24:14–15 ESV

“You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.

Repentance is the sinner’s part in the process of being restored to God, and there is no true gospel apart from it.

The call for sinners to repent is at the heart of all biblical evangelism.

Assuming that he would have to work to make restitution, the younger son did not expect to be welcomed back immediately into the family as a son, or even as one of the household servants.

He only hoped that his father would be willing to accept him as one of his hired men.

His empty lifestyle had filled him with remorse for the past, pain in the present, and the bleak prospect of even more suffering in the future as he worked the rest of his life to earn acceptance.

But as it turned out, he drastically underestimated his father.