Prodigal Son's and Daughter's

Prodigal son’s and daughter’s…The Parable of the Christ-Like Father.

Intro: Happy Fathers day! Today I want to thank fathers out there and also challenge us to the high calling of scripture. Scripture challenges us to love sacrificially just as Jesus sacrificially loved his church in a real and tangible way. Thank you if you are a father or are acting within a fatherly role.

Let us pray

Who I am:

Family & Job

YL & Grant

Story: Daughter taking our dog for a walk. Terrifying but all that mattered was that we found her.

Just like how I would have done anything to find my lost daughter, today we are going to look at a parable that Jesus tells about God’s incredible redeeming love for us.

Luke 15:11

Background: Jesus is setting the stage, in vs 1 “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming to hear him.” Jesus knows his crowd.

It would be easy to talk about things that tax collectors and “sinners” would like to hear, but Jesus looks at their heart and how his heavily father who he is representing to the world looks at them.

Today is fathers day, which in our state and our world, is a day to celebrate but for most people, it is a hard day. Most people in this world have messy, hard, or non existant relationships with their fathers. We often project those thoughts and feelings onto our heavenly father.

Jesus is about to tell this amazing story about a father, so giddy for his son to return home he is watching and waiting to a crowd so unfamiliar with this concept that they would be baffled. I want you to hear this story too if this applies to you.

Tax collectors and “sinners” were more than likely separated from their families. This story hits home.

After 2 stories about rejoicing over lost things being found, Jesus enters into a much longer story all centered around this fathers love.

Vs 11-13

This younger son goes out, and parties hard. He is probably living it up, the “good life”. The life everyone runs towards but the life that everyone walks away from empty.

“What is the thing you feel like you need to fulfill your life?”

John 10:10 Jesus’s life to the fullest is vastly different than the worlds understanding of full life.

In todays world, his social media platforms would look incredible…but we know deep down, all rebellion ends up in pain and hurt.

We don’t know why this son chooses to rebel, but what we do know is that his rebellion is amazing...for a little while.

We all probably know this story very well. A famine hits, the son is sitting with pigs and the son eventually comes back, the father accepts him and older brother is mad. We typically focus on the younger brother because we often associate ourselves as a lost son who has wandered from the father, which is true and good. But on this father’s day I want to reexamine this story from the perspective of the father because it is actually he who is the main character of this parable.

3. The gentleness of the father

The son speaks first, asking for his inheritance.

speaking first is a sign of disrespect

wishing his dad was dead

he only saw this man as someone who could give him something

“We don’t focus on the father because we cannot typically relate to the father”

The Gospel according to Luke (How Great the Father’s Love for Us (15:11–32))

At one time or another, in fact, most of us have been like the one or the other. But we have never known anyone like the father, nor would we claim to be such ourselves. The father is the first party named and the last to speak, the unique and causal figure in both halves of the parable. None of the problems posed in the parable can be solved without the father, who is the last remaining link of each son to the family.

Edwards, J. R. (2015). The Gospel according to Luke. (D. A. Carson, Ed.) (p. 437). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos.

The fathers grace is tangible

None of our problems, situations, brokenness and pain can be solved without the working of the father in our lives and the outpouring of his grace and love…all of this is while we are still far away and traveling back to him. It is unearned, it is unmerited. It is grace, upon grace, upon grace upon grace!

We are not told if the younger son straightened up, or whether the older son joined in the celebration. The father is the only finished character within this story, and he is the character that has moved towards restoration. This parable is about the indomitable love of the father, from start to finish, this parable is about God and his incomprehensible grace and faithfulness towards you.

The Gospel according to Luke How Great the Father’s Love for Us (15:11–32)

This parable, even more than the parable of the Good Samaritan, has been the object of more theological commentary from the early church to the present, and has commended itself as the subject of more painters and artists, composers and musicians, dramatists, writers and poets than any other parable of Jesus.

Because we like sheep have all gone astray, yes, but also because the father is the rock in which the son returns to.

vs. 19-22 What the father gives to the son and what it signifies

Best robe

Ring

Sandals

bring the calf and kill it

The son probably sold all this, did the father buy it back?

Parables are not to be elaborated or “what iffed”, any good theologian knows that the words Jesus used and gave us or left out here for a reason and not to be added to, but I can’t help but wonder…whose articles were these? Where they his?

Regardless, the father is moved not by the good deeds or son’s restored nature, but rather by his preemptive characteristic of seeing a broken man return home. T

he son hoped that he would be spared, only to find that the father had been waiting out of his own goodness and love, all from the beginning. This story is all about God’s shocking faithfulness and love for his unfaithful children who can offer him absolutely nothing.

This is the gospel! Jesus is King and Lord and we are not. We are brought into his Kingdom by his decree that he claimed victoriously when he defeated death and sin on the cross and enacted the victory when he rose from the dead.

The New International Version Chapter 5

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This Parable is scandalous and I bet the tax collectors and sinners sitting around Jesus were shocked. I bet the Pharisees and Religious Leaders were horrified. This story isn’t a moralistic challenge at how fathers should treat there son’s and forgive anything family members do. That would be an oversimplification. Relationships are messy and difficult.

What this parable does define for us is who our heavenly father is and how he responds to us. God doesn’t move and forgive because of our actions, our good deeds, our faithfulness to him, but rather, he moves out of his unchanging character nature towards his creations that he loved and created with a purpose.

If fathers day is hard for you, or complicated, remember that no matter where you are at in your journey, our heavily father is waiting to embrace you with his love.

“No father could ever amount to what a son truly needs in life. We were created for relationship with our heavenly father. I pray you would take time today to examine your life and hearts and see where Jesus needs to bring healing. He is waiting.”

Let us Pray