Related #1: Father

Series Intro:

In so many ways your life breaks down into relationships.

There is your relationship with your Creator.

Your relationship with your family

Your relationship with your friends

Your relationship with your coworkers

Your relationship with people you meet at the grocery store

Your relationship with your neighbors

The gospel impacts each one of these relationships, and we’re going to spend this series looking at how that is.

First up, we’re going to consider your relationship to your Creator. But we’re not going to take one message to cover this one, we’re going to take 3. God is triune, yes? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? And as the triune God, you relate to Him in distinct ways. First up, God the Father.

Intro:

What comes to mind when you think of a father?

Protector

Provider

Teacher

Disciplinarian

Love

Care

Concern

Fun

Sacrifice

Good

Family

It’s interesting, whether you have had a great father or a not-so-great father, God intentionally chose to reveal Himself to us as our Father, and that definitely impacts our relationship to Him.

Body:

Luke 15:11–32 (ESV) — 11 And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. 13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. 14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. 17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” ’ 20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. 25 “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ 28 But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, 29 but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ 31 And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’ ”

This parable begins with the unthinkable.

“And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’”

This was the equivalent to you going to your parents or grandparents right now and demanding your inheritance. It was in essence, this son declaring his father to be dead to him.

Some of you may have troubled relationships with your father.

He’s not the good, kind, loving, protecting, providing, caring, teaching man that he should be.

You’ve grown up wishing you had someone else’s father.

You’ve grown up with a fantasy about a father that you don’t have.

I want you to picture that father right now; for some of you, the one you wish you had. Picture your ideal father and imagine going to him and saying, “You’re as good as dead to me. Can I have my portion of the inheritance?”

This son was severing his relationship to his father, a man who, by all appearances, had provided for him well up until that point.

What would you do as the father in this instance?

Disown the son?

Deny the request?

Become enraged at such insolence?

Walk away without a word?

But the father in the parable does none of this. He grants his request and lets him walk away.

You’ve probably figured it out by now, but who is the father in this parable? God, the Father. Right, and we are the son. Our wandering hearts that are led around by the leash of our fleshly lusts often draw God’s patience in response. But it isn’t a passive patience or a purposeless patience. It has intent. It has a goal. This father didn’t just let his son go without a hope that he would return. The difference with God is that he knows whether or not we will return, but the point is the same. Our heavenly Father is often patient in response to our wandering hearts, but we need to do well to understand the point of this patience.

P1: Recognize the Intent of the Father’s Patience (vv. 11-16)

Illustrate: You can eat all of that candy, but you’re not going to like the results.

Romans 2:4–5 (ESV) — 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

God will sometimes allow his children to wander in order that they might be brought to the place of recognizing how much better He is than anything else this world might provide.

Look back in the passage:

Luke 15:13–16 (ESV) — 13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. 14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

Man if this isn’t the experience so many have with this world. This son goes and lives the high life and enjoys all the pleasures the world has to offer and his bank account can afford.

“squandered”

From a word meaning “scatter, disperse”

Came to mean “waste”

“reckless living”

“wastefully”

Redundant in the Greek: He “wasted his property in wasteful living”

In the moment the pleasures of this world seem to be satisfying, and that’s why we so often return to them again and again paying the price of our dignity, our sanctification, our joy, our satisfaction in Christ, our intimacy with God.

Your entire life is a stewardship from your heavenly Father. How much of it have you “squandered…in reckless living?”

Luke 15:14–16 (ESV) — 14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

These were dire and desperate circumstances that this man found himself facing.

Famine is hard enough; famine without resources is even harder

Feeding pigs for a Jew would have been unthinkable

Degrading

Defiling

He even wishes he could eat these pods the pigs eat. How far he had descended in his depravity!

In verse 16, the word “no one” is in the emphatic position in the Greek stressing the isolation of the son. He had left family, and left love, and left provision. He had bet on himself, and now, when he had wasted everything, he himself was all he had left.

The world will abandon you as quickly as it will woo you. God’s patience toward us sometimes results in our misery and despair, and when that happens it is by His design.

Ecclesiastes 1:13 (ESV) — 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

Sometimes the Father’s patience is meant to lead you to rock bottom so that you recognize your need for Him.

2 Peter 3:9 (ESV) — 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Have you been missing the point of God’s patience in your life? Have you been thinking He must not care, or maybe He’s too busy to notice, or that your sin must not be that big of a deal to Him? That couldn’t be further from the truth. It may be that in love, He has let you feel that autonomy and sense of freedom in order to bring you face to face with the emptiness of the pleasures you have been chasing after.

END P1

RECAP: So the son is in the pen with the pigs, and he’s so hungry that he’s wishing he could eat the pig pods. And it’s at this moment, in the depths of his sin, that he counts the cost and realizes he was better off at home, even if just as a household slave.

Luke 15:17–19 (ESV) — 17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’

“came to himself”

Literal in the Greek

“and coming to himself”

Returning to his senses

Beginning once again to think clearly

He was a hired hand in a strange land, but he knew that those his father hired were at least well fed. So he decided, in this renewed clarity, to go and seek employment from his father.

But imagine how hard this would be. Think of all the reasons why he couldn’t do that.

You can’t show your face there again.

Think of what you said to your father.

How can you go back empty-handed having wasted all that he worked so hard for?

Think of your brother. What will he say?

What about the other servants? What will they think?

What if he says no?

So he rehearsed what he would say: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”

Having realized his sin, he comes to the only logical conclusion from his perspective. He must confess (both his offense against the father and his offense against God), and cast himself on the mercy of his father.

He doesn’t come back presumptuous or arrogantly. He doesn’t return thinking he can justify his sin.

Instead, he realized that he had forfeited his right to the family. He had given up his position. He had wasted it all.

His only hope was that his father would add him to the ranks of his lowest hired servants (day laborer).

[Sidebar] This is what true repentance looks like. No rationalization, no blame-shifting. Just ownership and humility.

So he gets up and goes, and you can imagine him rehearsing his speech to his dad the whole way home. “I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants…I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” But then we find the unexpected.

Luke 15:20–21 (ESV) — 20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

The text doesn’t explicitly say this, but for the father to see him while he was still a long way off implies to me that the father was looking for him. The son probably expects to meet the servant watching the gate, and maybe he doesn’t even think he’s going to get to see the father at all. But certainly there’s no way he expected the welcome he received.

Notice the description of the father’s reaction:

He sees him (looking for him)

He feels compassion (heart goes out to him)

He ran to him (eager to have him home)

He embraces him and kisses him (love and acceptance)

Again, the father in this parable is meant to represent our heavenly Father. Are you like the son in the pig pen when you think about your heavenly Father? Do you assume he will be angry with you? Do you assume he will be disappointed by you? Do you assume he won’t want anything to do with you? Do you feel like you’ve blown it? Do you feel like you’ve missed your chance? In this parable, Jesus was telling all of the tax collectors and sinners that these thoughts couldn’t be further from the truth. And in this parable, Jesus is telling you the same thing.

P2: Be Amazed by the Father’s Love for You (vv. 18-21)

The Fatherhood of God may perhaps be one of the most difficult aspects of God’s personhood for us to understand. The reason’s are multiple:

It may be that you’ve had a father who has failed you as we’ve already addressed, and to think of God as Father doesn’t bring up good connotations but fearful and angst ridden thoughts and feelings.

It may be that you can’t conceive of the all-powerful Creator of the Universe really being fatherly toward you loving you and willingly forgiving you and accepting you into fellowship again.

It may be that you’ve never had a father, and have no concept good or bad for what it means to be loved in this way at all.

All of those reasons exist and pose legitimate obstacles to our understanding God as our father, yet we are reading this parable, told by Jesus about His Father, our heavenly Father, and His disposition toward us when we come to Him.

Romans 5:8 (ESV) — 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

John 3:16 (ESV) — 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

1 John 4:10 (ESV) — 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

We read verses like this and understand that God has loved us by saving us, but if you’re anything like me, these verses can lose that personal, individual element. Now, it remains true that God saved a people, not a person, but there is an intensely personal element to our salvation.

You and I have a personal relationship with the Father, and this parable helps us understand that relationship.

The Father’s love desires your return.

The Father’s love is compassionate toward you as a wayward child.

The Father’s love is ready to embrace you and welcome you when you return to Him in repentance.

Are you mired in sin? Come back to the Father.

Are you defeated by habitual sin? Come back to the Father.

Have you been neglecting prayer and the Word? Come back to the Father.

He isn’t the angry, disappointed, wrathful Father with His belt off waiting to shame you, reject you, and punish you. He is the father in the parable. He’s ready to meet you and welcome you back.

What allows Him to do that? The cross. The payment that was made by your elder brother, your Savior. God can bring you back and remain holy and just because of the cross. So you don’t come back now fearful that you’ll have to work your way back into His good graces. You come back already in His good graces because of Jesus.

END P2

The son can’t help but still go through the speech he has been rehearsing the whole way home, though I imagine he did it with somewhat of a quizzical expression on his face.

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

Now notice the father’s response: No lecture, no folded arms, not even an “I told you so”, just love.

Luke 15:22–24 (ESV) — 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

The father goes into full celebration mode:

“the best robe”

Not servant’s garb

Not even common dress

This was formal attire, even more, the best of what the father had to offer

Revelation 6:11 (ESV) — 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

“a ring on his hand”

Probably would have had the family seal on it implying once again that he belonged to the family.

Not a transfer of authority or power or a bestowal of a status greater than his brother.

“shoes on his feet”

From nothing to even having fine footwear

“the fattened calf”

Usually reserved for significant feast days/religious holidays

It wasn’t common to have meat with a meal in first-century Israel

This would have taken hours, but for the father, it was worth it.

“let us eat and celebrate”

What prompted such a response? What caused him to run to his son and embrace him out of compassion and love?

“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

Before this parable, Jesus had told two others about the joy that heaven has when a lost sinner repents. This theme emerges once again in the parable of the prodigal son.

But is this parable just about a lost soul coming to faith? Is God only eager to embrace the sinner the first time he repents? If you are already saved, does the Father now have a different disposition toward you?

The father had another son, and this son was not happy with what he was witnessing.

Luke 15:25–28 (ESV) — 25 “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ 28 But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him,

Just like the prodigal, the father went to the older brother as well, wanting the same thing, come and celebrate and be a part of the family. Some of you in this room need to come to the Father like the prodigal for the first time. Others, need to realize the love the Father has for the prodigal is the same love He has for you, and you need to come to Him again. The elder brother needed the father’s embrace as much as the prodigal. The elder brother needed to repent as much as the prodigal. And the father was ready to embrace him just as he had the prodigal.

P3: Realize Your Father Desires Your Repentance (vv. 21-32)

Illustrate: If I gave you a brand new Tesla and you decided to use it as just an instagram backdrop, do you think that would make me happy? But if you used it, would that make me happy?

The elder brother questioned his father’s fairness. But the father didn’t really even go there. He pointed to the unlimited access the elder brother has enjoyed to all the father has. But then he quickly reminded him of the reason for celebrating–the return of his lost brother.

Is there more joy in heaven over the repentance of a lost sinner for salvation than a sinning Christian for sanctification?

Perhaps there is because of the nature of conversion.

That said, if the elder brother had come in and sought his father’s forgiveness for his pride and unloving heart, don’t you think the father would have been overjoyed at this as well?

Christian, what do you believe transpires in the heart of your heavenly Father when you come to Him in repentance?

Do you think He begrudges you the grace He provides you?

Do you think He wonders, “Again!? How many times?!”

Do you think He considers it a small matter not worth getting excited about?

Think of what we do when we repent.

We come before the Father with no excuses, no rationalization, no blame-shifting, and simply to plead forgiveness in Jesus.

Do you think the Father delights to forgive the sinner by applying the blood of His Son?

When you confess your full need for Jesus’ blood, do you think that maybe the Father smiles and celebrates the glory that this attributes to the Son?

1 John 2:1–2 (ESV) — 1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Acts 17:30 (ESV) — 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

Acts 26:19–20 (ESV) — 19 “Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20 but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.

All of heaven may not celebrate when a sinning Christian repents, but I believe your Father does.

Romans 8:31–32 (ESV) — 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Psalm 51:17 (ESV) — 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Conclusion:

For some of you this paradigm of God as father like this is strange, and it will take some adjusting to. But this is one of the main ways that God has revealed Himself to us. It’s one of the main ways He wants to relate to us. So we would do well to think more of what it means for God to be our father.

Application Questions:

The prodigal son wanted the benefits of his father without the relationship. What are some ways we fall into the same mentality when it comes to our heavenly Father?

The prodigal’s father was merciful and gracious to his son especially in his patience toward him. How has your heavenly Father been patient toward you? What do you think is the purpose of that patience God has shown you?

The depiction of the prodigal’s father waiting for his son eagerly and responding to his return with compassion–Is this how you conceive of your heavenly Father? If not, how do you typically think of Him? Why do we find it difficult to picture our heavenly Father the same way Jesus depicts this prodigal’s father?

Read 1 John 2:1-2. Why would our repentance bring joy to the heart of our heavenly Father in light of these verses?