Central Christian Church Lampasas

INTRODUCTION

The story of the prodigal is not a story about sins it is a story about lostness. Lostness not badness -- awayness.

The true emphasis is not on the sons, but on the father. It is an unveiling of the heart of God. The central truth of the parable is the picture of the heavenly Father's heart of love toward undeserving sinners.

Jesus showed us that the Almighty God is our Abba Father.

The younger son exploded in rebellion. He knew what he wanted. His desires led him to gamble all in getting what God condemned. He loved sin. It promised satisfaction to appetite and ambitions. Lured him by its promises. Its fascinations hypnotized him. He had his fling.

He rebels against the father. He shows that he is dissatisfied with his father's provision, his father's restrictions, and his father's guidance.

It was different with the elder son. He liked it at home. Not that he loved his father. Like the rest of us, he wanted to have his own way. He thought he was smart enough to manage his father and to get out of him what he wanted. He loved himself too much to be interested in pleasing anybody but himself. Pride born of self-conceit was his guiding star.

These are good pictures of sinful man - victimized by sin, deluded and deceived by sin, rebelling against the loving restraint of Father. This is also a great picture of a loving God who patiently and lovingly waits for the return of the prodigal.

This story represents two wayward sons. They were not slaves, not servants, but sons.

THE FAR COUNTRY WAS NOT MEASURED BY DISTANCE

Anywhere a man is away from God
A world without God or forgetful of God
Wherever you are not in fellowship with God your life is a far country. You do not belong there.
They both sought to please themselves -- that is essence of far country.

Descriptive phrases of these two prodigals:

Younger:
* "He said, Father give me…" v. 12
* He gathered all he had and traveled to distant country. v. 13
* He squandered his estate in foolish living. v. 13
* He spent everything. v. 14
* A severe famine struck. v. 14
* He had nothing. v. 14
* He went to work ... to feed pigs. v 15
* He longed to eat his fill from the carob pods the pigs were eating: v. 16
* No one would give him any. v. 16

Older:
* He became angry. v. 28
* He did not want to go in. v.28
* His father pleaded with him. v. 29
* He replied to his father, I have been slaving ... I never disobeyed your orders ... yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. v.
* This son of yours (not my brother ... your son!). v.30
* Has devoured your assets with prostitutes. v. 31

Although the older brother in the parable had bitterness and hatred in his heart, he only saw the error in his brother’s actions. He blamed everything on his brother.

We have all been prodigal of the Father's gifts. We have all received of Him; yet we have lived as though Christ had never died, we have lived with self at the center, away from the compassionate loving heart and home of the Father.

THE FAR COUNTRY HAS MANY ROADS

Notice the two roads these two sons took.

The Departure of the Younger

Here is a type whose lostness is obvious. It is obvious to the son and to others.
* He is not at home; he is in the far country.
* He is not a worker; he is a waster.
* He is not lifting up; he is dragging down.
* He is not creating; he is destroying.

Why did this young fellow go into the far country? One reason. He went away because he was seeking to please himself. He was so intent on pleasing himself that he had no thought for any loss or pain that might come to himself or to anyone else.

Self-pleasing, then, is the very essence of sin. Now, self-pleasing is expensive. Nothing can be more so. He who is bent on pleasing himself is doomed to pay a terrible price. If self-pleasing is my god, it will hurt me. It will also hurt others. No man ever sinned without wounding somebody else. It is costly:
* It cost him the fellowship of his father, and all the joys of home.
* It cost him his freedom. What tragic iron. For it was his freedom that he went out to seek. "Give me!" he said to his father in the hour of his self-will. When his heart was broken, he said, "Make me!"
* It cost him the humilation of doing the lowest possible job for a Jew.
* It cost him is everything. The story says that he spent all that he had.

Walking away from God and living for ourselves can cause us to do some dumb and disastrous things.

The Demise of the Younger

First, when he reached the far country, what did he do? "He wasted his substance with riotous living." The word riotous means without saving. He took the gifts his father bestowed on him, and spent them in the far country, without making provision for leaner days and the ultimate needs of life.

What did he waste? "His substance." He had come into possession of gifts from his father. So man is seen here going out from God to waste his substance, "God's substance.

He joined himself to a citizen, and what will the citizen do? Send him into his fields to feed swine. He prolonged his degradation; indeed, he deepened his degradation.

"No man gave unto him." Their only interest in him was that as a machine for feeding their pigs. Each for himself! If he fails, let him die. That is all the far country has for any man. The far country will give nothing, will have no pity, no sympathy, no help.

The Older Brother

* His whole attitude shows that his years of obedience to his father had been years of grim duty and not of loving service.

* His whole attitude is one of utter lack of sympathy. He refers to his brother, not as my brother but as your son.

What if God had written off Moses for being too old or David for being too young? What if Jesus had not seen the potential in a group of fisherman or if Boaz had discriminated against Rachel for being a foreigner? What if Jesus had not given Peter a second chance after denying him three times or Paul a second chance after he brutally persecuted Christians?

There are those who are lost as was this elder son:
* His type is seldom counted as lost, either by himself or others.
* He is not away in the distant land among swine as is the case with his prodigal brother, although he is just as lost.
* He is in an environment that is wholesome and clean.
* He was a worker.

The elder brother did have respectable virtues. Socially he had not brought reproach upon his father. He had resisted all temptation to physical dissipation.
* He was industrious and thrifty.
* He despised slothfulness. He was the enemy of extravagance.
* His conduct created no scandal.
* He was the enemy of moral laxity.
* He did not gamble.
* He condemned lawlessness.
* He required himself to abhor immorality.
* He was entitled to all the credit that was due him.

The Older Brother's Inquiry

This elder brother had missed the high qualities in his father's life. He simply could not understand his father's patience, forbearance, and grief over the younger brother's absence from the home. His heart had become so frozen by selfish conceit that he lacked understanding or compassion.

His brother was a notorious sinner; he himself was righteous. His brother deserved nothing except to be abused and upbraided; he deserved to be praised and honored. He was an utter stranger to what his brother had suffered because of his sin. The older brother reminds us of the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

The Older Brother's Indignation

He is absolutely out of sympathy with both his father and his brother. His father grieves over the fact that his younger son is in the far country. But this elder brother does not grieve. His being away is to him a matter of no importance whatever. Then when the prodigal returns his father rejoices greatly. But there is no joy on the part of this industrious son. He has no love for the father nor for his brother.

Notice His Instruction

It is interesting to note that of the seven deadly sins of tradition, four are of the mind and spirit and three pertain to the flesh. It was the sins of the flesh: lust, gluttony, and sloth that overwhelmed the prodigal.

It was the sins of the spirit: pride, covetousness, envy, and anger that took captive the elder brother. They are sins perhaps more deadly than the sins of the flesh.

These sins of the spirit are born of a conceit that makes all desires seem righteous and good. In the end they are repelled by the sins of others and proud of their own.

The sins of the spirit are insidiously scandalous. They easily deceive the public and those who are in their power into thinking either that they are harmless, or, as a matter of fact, they are most desirable. It is difficult to awaken such sinners to a realization of their sin.

Thus both sons had revolted against their father, the younger from parental control, the elder from parental love. Each wanted the same thing: to have his own way.

The elder brother judged his brother. It is such an easy trap for us to fall into when we look down upon others.

We sometimes criticize others unfairly. We don't know all their circumstances, nor their motives. Only God, who is aware of all the facts, is able to judge people righteously.

THE FAR COUNTRY IS A LAND OF POVERTY

1. Cost both fellowship with the Father.
2. Cost both freedom -- ironic, that's what he left to find. Ended up a slave. The one who stayed home was a slave to his own desires.
3. Cost them everything – the younger spent all. The older never enjoyed what he had.
Prov. 22:8, "The one who sows injustice will reap disaster." Sow iniquity, reap vanity.

THE FAR COUNTRY IS A LAND OF DECEPTION

He came to himself. Before that, he was out of his mind. Sin had distorted his vision, clouded his mind. Sin is insanity. This same irrationality characterized the older brother.

As long as man is away from God, he is not really himself. Only himself when he is on his way home.

RETURNING HOME FROM THE FAR COUNTRY

The older brother never came back. The younger did.

1. He recognized his desperate condition.
2. Recognized father's sufficiency.
3. Determination to return.
4. Reception of the Father.
5. Confession of the son.

The ordinary slave was in some sense a member of the family, but the hired servant could be dismissed at a day's notice. He was not one of the family at all. So he came home; and, according to the best Greek text, his father never gave him the chance to ask to be a servant. He broke in before that.

That robe stands for honor; the ring stands for authority, for if a man gave to another his signet ring it was the same as giving him the power of attorney; the shoes stand for a son as opposed to a slave, for children of the family were shod and slaves were not.

Robe, ring, and royal sandals await the lost one. These three things answer exactly the prayer which he meant to have prayed.

1. The robe is the answer to "I have sinned."
2. The ring is the answer to "I am no more worthy to be called thy son."
3. The sandals constitute the answer to "make me one of thy hired servants."

These symbols are Eastern. Put the robe on him, the robe that befits the father's house. The ring was the sign of relationship, of sonship. "Put a ring on this finger." He is my son. Give him the sign of sonship. Put shoes on his feet. The slave was never permitted to wear shoes. The badge of slavery was the absence of sandals.