The Story Behind the Stories of Luke 15
During His ministry, Jesus did a lot of teaching and, according to eyewitnesses, nobody taught like He did. “He speaks as one who has authority,” the eyewitnesses said, “not like the other teachers out there.” Now, one of the techniques that Jesus often used when He was teaching was to use parables, or stories, to make a point. Over the next month or so, I want to examine three of those stories Jesus told in Luke 15 that clearly reveal just what’s in God’s heart when it comes to the people that He created.
Imagine for a minute that it’s Friday night and you’ve gone to a movie. You’ve got your seats, the soft, cushy kind that when you push the button on the side you can just lay back. You know what kind I’m talking about, don’t you? They’ve got cup holders on the armrests and each seat has its own pair of armrests. No more of this share the armrest with the person next to you jazz, this armrest is all yours. Don’t you wish you that you could have a pair of those in your living room? Who needs a lazy-boy when you got two of these bad boys? You also have a soda, the kind where you paid extra so refills are free and you have a bucket of popcorn, also with free refills. You know, there’s just something about popcorn and soda that you get in the theatres that’s different from the kind that you buy in the store. It just tastes better. Anyway, you’re all set and then the movie starts.
It’s a sunny day and the scene is a hillside. It looks like some kind of a gathering is taking place and all kinds of people are jostling to get a seat. Strike that, there are no seats, it’s outside. Pull up whatever’s handy and sit down. The camera pans the crowd. It’s huge and it’s quite diverse. It’s a real good cross-section of all of society at the time. The camera swivels back and focuses in on the person who is the center of attention. If it’s true that clothes are what make a man, this guy has a ways to go but, none of that seems to matter to him, or to his audience either for all that matters. This man owns the room and everybody knows it. He clears his throat and begins to speak. The crowd’s hanging on his every word. The camera zooms in closer and the movie has begun.
Luke 15 describes the overall scene like this. “Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them! So, Jesus told them this story.” (Luke 15: 1 – 3 NLT) Now, in reality, Jesus would tell his audience three stories that day but rather than talk about those three stories in this post, I want to talk about these three verses at the beginning of the chapter because they provide the backstory that prompted Jesus to tell the stories in the first place.
In the beginning of the chapter, we’re introduced to three characters, or groups of characters who were on site when Jesus told his parables. The first is obviously Jesus, he’s the storyteller, and a really good one at that. He’s interacting with his audience like any good storyteller would and connecting with them. Then there’s the Pharisees and the teachers of the Jewish law. These men were the extremely wealthy powerful leaders of Jewish society who controlled most aspects of local politics and social life. Politically, they only answered to the occupying Roman Empire. Kind of snobbish in a lot of ways, they were the religious leaders who taught and interpreted the Law of Moses to the rest of society. In the eyes of the rest of Jewish society, in terms of having access to God, these men would have been called the insiders. Extremely proud, they didn’t associate with people who didn’t follow the Jewish law as they did, which would have been many of the audience on site that day.
Then there’s this last group of characters which was actually made up of two groups of people who were frankly polar opposites of each other. Luke labeled them tax collectors and sinners. Now a tax collector in that society was the guy who collected taxes, a thankless job in most societies but in this case, it was even worse albeit kind of deserved I suppose. (I’m not being sarcastic, I’m serious.) You see, a Roman tax collector in Judea during this time was probably more like an extortionist who worked for organized crime than he was an actual tax collector. Allow me to explain. During the time when Jesus was alive, the Romans were building this huge empire that cost a lot of money so they had to raise taxes to pay for it. Their problem was that they didn’t have enough manpower to collect the necessary revenue so what they would do is hire local citizens to collect it for them. The system worked like this. The local tax collectors’ job was to collect the taxes for Rome but, in order to pad their salary, the tax collectors could also collect more if they wished, which they all did. As far as the Romans were concerned, if the tax collector wanted to collect extra revenue in order to fill his own pocket, the Romans didn’t care just as long as they got their cut off the top, which was an exorbitant amount too. The bottom line, collecting taxes became this lucrative economic endeavor for the tax collectors who got rich at the expense of their countrymen, most of whom were living in poverty.
Then there were the “sinners.” This was kind of a catch all phrase that Luke used to describe the irreligious or non-practicing Jews, the people who did not follow the Law of Moses. In terms of education, most were illiterate. Some were common workers who, in order to make ends meet, would do whatever they had to do and if that included not following some of the things written down in the Law of Moses, like working on the Sabbath, so be it. Others were criminals whose crimes ranged anywhere from petty theft to murder, or insurrection. This group definitely included adulterers and prostitutes. In general, looking at this last group as a whole, economically, the tax collectors and sinners spanned a wide spectrum. However, they all had at least one thing in common. In terms of being accepted members of society, especially as it related to Judaism and access to God, they were all outsiders looking in.
Now there’s a lot that I could write about all three groups here but I just want to focus on the last group, the tax collectors and the sinners and how they related to Jesus, or more to the point perhaps, how he related to them. What stands out to me concerning this last group was just how honest Luke was in his assessment of them. Tax collectors. To Luke’s original audience, say no more. Those people had sold their souls for money. Notorious sinners. I know, that sounds like kind of a churchy term so to get a feel for what Luke was saying about these people, let’s look at how they are described in a few translations that didn’t use the word sinners. Non-observant Jews was what one translator said. Other outcasts is how the Good News Translation said it. And then there was The Message translation that describes the whole lot of them as, “men and women of questionable reputation who were hanging around Jesus listening intently.” People of questionable reputation…got it. Don’t bring ‘em home to meet Grandma.
So, what was the problem? The problem was that in the minds of the religious leaders, the insiders, Jesus, this rabbi from Galilee, allegedly one of them, (although in their minds, he lived on the fringe so he wasn’t exactly one of them), was doing something with the outsiders that none of them would ever do. The Message describes the situation like this, “the teachers of the Law criticized Jesus because ‘He takes in sinners and eats meals with them treating them like they are old friends.’” In the society of Jesus’ day, it was a major taboo for a Rabbi to share a meal with the outsiders, because it was an act of friendship in that culture signifying that he totally accepted them. Do you see the irony here? Jesus, the Son of God, the holiest person to ever walk the planet, was eating a meal with and accepting the outsiders, the liars, the extortionists, and the rest of the totally irreligious riff raff, as friends. It was unheard of, frankly, and yet looking at the other gospel accounts, Jesus did it a lot, causing a lot of tension, and it was this tension that prompted Jesus to tell the three stories in Luke 15 that I’ll cover in the next few weeks. Today however, I want to look at a couple of things about the backstory.
What stands out most to me is the grace that Jesus extended to people who probably didn’t get a lot of grace extended to them, perhaps even from their own. Here’s the thing about outsiders, even the outsiders of today, they’re outsiders but they aren’t stupid. They know what they are. They know that they have major character flaws and that they don’t measure up to society’s standards. Furthermore, in the event they’ve forgotten that detail, there’s always someone around who is more than happy to remind them of it. And, in the case of the tax collectors and sinners who were listening intently to Jesus teach, if by some chance they still weren’t convinced, all it took was for them to come into contact with Jesus, the holiest person on earth and they figured it out. Yet, none of that seemed to bother Jesus. The grace that he extended to these people was magnetic and they flocked to him which is kind of odd in some ways because Jesus’s message, his call to repentance from sin and his call for people to follow him and become his disciples was not an easy sell. But the grace that he extended and the offer of forgiveness of sin that he put on the table, presented over a shared meal definitely grabbed their attention. In Jesus, they saw something so radically different from anything they had experienced before that they had to check it out. And some of these people, and other outsiders just like them, took Jesus up on his offer and their lives were changed forever.
So, what does this have to do with you and me? When you stop and think about it, when it comes to access to God, left to our own devices, we’re all outsiders looking in. I mean if God is everything that the Bible says that he is, especially the holiness and the “he knows everything,” part, why would he want anything to do with any of us? We might think we’re better than the people around us perhaps, but, compared to God, no way. We don’t measure up and we know it. Yet, the stories in Luke 15 would indicate that if we would take Jesus up on his offer, there’s grace available if we come to God on His terms.
Or maybe, this is your story. You’ve hit rock bottom. In fact, you’re there right now. You aren’t at the bottom of the bucket; you’re looking up at it. Some of it might be things that are out of your control or maybe for some it might just be the consequences of your choices. I have no idea what your backstory is but, whatever it is, perhaps you’ve thought something like this. That when it comes to that idea of doing anything that involves God, that train left the station years ago. Yeah, if you could do things over, of course you’d do it differently but you can’t go back in time, so now, it’s too late. Oh, you’ve heard that God loves you unconditionally but you’ve also heard that there’s an exception to every rule and you’re wondering if you aren’t the exception to the God loves you unconditionally rule. For you, life is just a mess, wrecked beyond repair. Sad story but it is what it is.
Oh really? Guess what. God has been in the business or changing lives that have been wrecked beyond repair since forever and that includes yours. And he doesn’t change. That means that the same grace that was extended to the tax collectors and sinners in Luke 15 is being extended to you. That also means that situation that’s impossible for you to fix is right in his wheelhouse. He can fix anything. Impossible has never stopped him. So, how about it? You wanna give this Jewish rabbi a shot or do you need more information. Tell you what, hang with this blog for a while and see what this Jewish rabbi has for you. We’re gonna unpack this issue from all angles and it’s going to be fun. In fact, it might even give you some hope.
Or perhaps, even right now, maybe the idea that this Jewish rabbi actually loves you and wants to include you, has your attention. How would you communicate that to God, what do you say? As I have said before, God’s not as interested in our words as He is the attitude of our heart. Does a prayer like this express what you’re thinking? “God, I’ve never thought of myself as being someone that you would want to include in your social circle as people who you hang out with but, if it’s true, I’m interested in hearing you out. Could you please help me understand what’s involved. I really want to know.” By the way, if you prayed that prayer, don’t be all that surprised when God responds to you. He has a way of doing that with people who seek Him out. In the meantime, see you next week.
In the meantime, I do welcome interaction with my readers and if you want to reach me, I can be reached at [email protected] . I do monitor that account on a regular basis. See you next time.
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
Imagine for a minute that it’s Friday night and you’ve gone to a movie. You’ve got your seats, the soft, cushy kind that when you push the button on the side you can just lay back. You know what kind I’m talking about, don’t you? They’ve got cup holders on the armrests and each seat has its own pair of armrests. No more of this share the armrest with the person next to you jazz, this armrest is all yours. Don’t you wish you that you could have a pair of those in your living room? Who needs a lazy-boy when you got two of these bad boys? You also have a soda, the kind where you paid extra so refills are free and you have a bucket of popcorn, also with free refills. You know, there’s just something about popcorn and soda that you get in the theatres that’s different from the kind that you buy in the store. It just tastes better. Anyway, you’re all set and then the movie starts.
It’s a sunny day and the scene is a hillside. It looks like some kind of a gathering is taking place and all kinds of people are jostling to get a seat. Strike that, there are no seats, it’s outside. Pull up whatever’s handy and sit down. The camera pans the crowd. It’s huge and it’s quite diverse. It’s a real good cross-section of all of society at the time. The camera swivels back and focuses in on the person who is the center of attention. If it’s true that clothes are what make a man, this guy has a ways to go but, none of that seems to matter to him, or to his audience either for all that matters. This man owns the room and everybody knows it. He clears his throat and begins to speak. The crowd’s hanging on his every word. The camera zooms in closer and the movie has begun.
Luke 15 describes the overall scene like this. “Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them! So, Jesus told them this story.” (Luke 15: 1 – 3 NLT) Now, in reality, Jesus would tell his audience three stories that day but rather than talk about those three stories in this post, I want to talk about these three verses at the beginning of the chapter because they provide the backstory that prompted Jesus to tell the stories in the first place.
In the beginning of the chapter, we’re introduced to three characters, or groups of characters who were on site when Jesus told his parables. The first is obviously Jesus, he’s the storyteller, and a really good one at that. He’s interacting with his audience like any good storyteller would and connecting with them. Then there’s the Pharisees and the teachers of the Jewish law. These men were the extremely wealthy powerful leaders of Jewish society who controlled most aspects of local politics and social life. Politically, they only answered to the occupying Roman Empire. Kind of snobbish in a lot of ways, they were the religious leaders who taught and interpreted the Law of Moses to the rest of society. In the eyes of the rest of Jewish society, in terms of having access to God, these men would have been called the insiders. Extremely proud, they didn’t associate with people who didn’t follow the Jewish law as they did, which would have been many of the audience on site that day.
Then there’s this last group of characters which was actually made up of two groups of people who were frankly polar opposites of each other. Luke labeled them tax collectors and sinners. Now a tax collector in that society was the guy who collected taxes, a thankless job in most societies but in this case, it was even worse albeit kind of deserved I suppose. (I’m not being sarcastic, I’m serious.) You see, a Roman tax collector in Judea during this time was probably more like an extortionist who worked for organized crime than he was an actual tax collector. Allow me to explain. During the time when Jesus was alive, the Romans were building this huge empire that cost a lot of money so they had to raise taxes to pay for it. Their problem was that they didn’t have enough manpower to collect the necessary revenue so what they would do is hire local citizens to collect it for them. The system worked like this. The local tax collectors’ job was to collect the taxes for Rome but, in order to pad their salary, the tax collectors could also collect more if they wished, which they all did. As far as the Romans were concerned, if the tax collector wanted to collect extra revenue in order to fill his own pocket, the Romans didn’t care just as long as they got their cut off the top, which was an exorbitant amount too. The bottom line, collecting taxes became this lucrative economic endeavor for the tax collectors who got rich at the expense of their countrymen, most of whom were living in poverty.
Then there were the “sinners.” This was kind of a catch all phrase that Luke used to describe the irreligious or non-practicing Jews, the people who did not follow the Law of Moses. In terms of education, most were illiterate. Some were common workers who, in order to make ends meet, would do whatever they had to do and if that included not following some of the things written down in the Law of Moses, like working on the Sabbath, so be it. Others were criminals whose crimes ranged anywhere from petty theft to murder, or insurrection. This group definitely included adulterers and prostitutes. In general, looking at this last group as a whole, economically, the tax collectors and sinners spanned a wide spectrum. However, they all had at least one thing in common. In terms of being accepted members of society, especially as it related to Judaism and access to God, they were all outsiders looking in.
Now there’s a lot that I could write about all three groups here but I just want to focus on the last group, the tax collectors and the sinners and how they related to Jesus, or more to the point perhaps, how he related to them. What stands out to me concerning this last group was just how honest Luke was in his assessment of them. Tax collectors. To Luke’s original audience, say no more. Those people had sold their souls for money. Notorious sinners. I know, that sounds like kind of a churchy term so to get a feel for what Luke was saying about these people, let’s look at how they are described in a few translations that didn’t use the word sinners. Non-observant Jews was what one translator said. Other outcasts is how the Good News Translation said it. And then there was The Message translation that describes the whole lot of them as, “men and women of questionable reputation who were hanging around Jesus listening intently.” People of questionable reputation…got it. Don’t bring ‘em home to meet Grandma.
So, what was the problem? The problem was that in the minds of the religious leaders, the insiders, Jesus, this rabbi from Galilee, allegedly one of them, (although in their minds, he lived on the fringe so he wasn’t exactly one of them), was doing something with the outsiders that none of them would ever do. The Message describes the situation like this, “the teachers of the Law criticized Jesus because ‘He takes in sinners and eats meals with them treating them like they are old friends.’” In the society of Jesus’ day, it was a major taboo for a Rabbi to share a meal with the outsiders, because it was an act of friendship in that culture signifying that he totally accepted them. Do you see the irony here? Jesus, the Son of God, the holiest person to ever walk the planet, was eating a meal with and accepting the outsiders, the liars, the extortionists, and the rest of the totally irreligious riff raff, as friends. It was unheard of, frankly, and yet looking at the other gospel accounts, Jesus did it a lot, causing a lot of tension, and it was this tension that prompted Jesus to tell the three stories in Luke 15 that I’ll cover in the next few weeks. Today however, I want to look at a couple of things about the backstory.
What stands out most to me is the grace that Jesus extended to people who probably didn’t get a lot of grace extended to them, perhaps even from their own. Here’s the thing about outsiders, even the outsiders of today, they’re outsiders but they aren’t stupid. They know what they are. They know that they have major character flaws and that they don’t measure up to society’s standards. Furthermore, in the event they’ve forgotten that detail, there’s always someone around who is more than happy to remind them of it. And, in the case of the tax collectors and sinners who were listening intently to Jesus teach, if by some chance they still weren’t convinced, all it took was for them to come into contact with Jesus, the holiest person on earth and they figured it out. Yet, none of that seemed to bother Jesus. The grace that he extended to these people was magnetic and they flocked to him which is kind of odd in some ways because Jesus’s message, his call to repentance from sin and his call for people to follow him and become his disciples was not an easy sell. But the grace that he extended and the offer of forgiveness of sin that he put on the table, presented over a shared meal definitely grabbed their attention. In Jesus, they saw something so radically different from anything they had experienced before that they had to check it out. And some of these people, and other outsiders just like them, took Jesus up on his offer and their lives were changed forever.
So, what does this have to do with you and me? When you stop and think about it, when it comes to access to God, left to our own devices, we’re all outsiders looking in. I mean if God is everything that the Bible says that he is, especially the holiness and the “he knows everything,” part, why would he want anything to do with any of us? We might think we’re better than the people around us perhaps, but, compared to God, no way. We don’t measure up and we know it. Yet, the stories in Luke 15 would indicate that if we would take Jesus up on his offer, there’s grace available if we come to God on His terms.
Or maybe, this is your story. You’ve hit rock bottom. In fact, you’re there right now. You aren’t at the bottom of the bucket; you’re looking up at it. Some of it might be things that are out of your control or maybe for some it might just be the consequences of your choices. I have no idea what your backstory is but, whatever it is, perhaps you’ve thought something like this. That when it comes to that idea of doing anything that involves God, that train left the station years ago. Yeah, if you could do things over, of course you’d do it differently but you can’t go back in time, so now, it’s too late. Oh, you’ve heard that God loves you unconditionally but you’ve also heard that there’s an exception to every rule and you’re wondering if you aren’t the exception to the God loves you unconditionally rule. For you, life is just a mess, wrecked beyond repair. Sad story but it is what it is.
Oh really? Guess what. God has been in the business or changing lives that have been wrecked beyond repair since forever and that includes yours. And he doesn’t change. That means that the same grace that was extended to the tax collectors and sinners in Luke 15 is being extended to you. That also means that situation that’s impossible for you to fix is right in his wheelhouse. He can fix anything. Impossible has never stopped him. So, how about it? You wanna give this Jewish rabbi a shot or do you need more information. Tell you what, hang with this blog for a while and see what this Jewish rabbi has for you. We’re gonna unpack this issue from all angles and it’s going to be fun. In fact, it might even give you some hope.
Or perhaps, even right now, maybe the idea that this Jewish rabbi actually loves you and wants to include you, has your attention. How would you communicate that to God, what do you say? As I have said before, God’s not as interested in our words as He is the attitude of our heart. Does a prayer like this express what you’re thinking? “God, I’ve never thought of myself as being someone that you would want to include in your social circle as people who you hang out with but, if it’s true, I’m interested in hearing you out. Could you please help me understand what’s involved. I really want to know.” By the way, if you prayed that prayer, don’t be all that surprised when God responds to you. He has a way of doing that with people who seek Him out. In the meantime, see you next week.
In the meantime, I do welcome interaction with my readers and if you want to reach me, I can be reached at [email protected] . I do monitor that account on a regular basis. See you next time.
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
Who was Really Looking for Who?
One of the things that I have heard numerous times over the years is the statement, “I found Jesus…” and when I hear it, I’m rather amused because I’m not entirely sure it’s true. It’s not that I don’t believe them. Often, as I get to know the person, or do know the person, the evidence is quite clear that they and Jesus are tight. It’s just that according to everything that the Bible teaches, when it comes to this matter of finding Jesus, it’s not so much that a person finds Jesus as it is that Jesus finds them. That idea is certainly a common theme in many of the parables Jesus taught and it was definitely what Jesus taught in Luke 15. Today, I would like to go back there and unpack the first two parables that Jesus told in that chapter.
Now remember as we go back to Luke 15 what prompted Jesus to tell those particular parables in the first place. If you recall from last week, Jesus was eating with and befriending tax gatherers, irreligious Jews, immoral men and women. The Pharisees and teachers of the Jewish law, the religious leaders of his day, were grumbling and complaining about it. One thing about Jesus, he had to be an extremely observant person because the way that Luke writes the story, it’s quite clear that the religious leaders weren’t actually confronting Jesus verbally but were instead muttering and complaining about him under their breath, probably whispering to each other, even perhaps pointing a finger or two in his direction. Simply stated, the folks in the peanut gallery were talking about him behind his back and Jesus called them out.
Luke tells it something like this. Upon observing what the religious leaders were doing, and knowing what they were thinking, Jesus called out to them so that everyone within earshot could hear him. “Hey fellas,” he said, “I have a question for you. Imagine one of you owns a herd of 100 sheep and one of them gets lost, what do you think he would do about it?” Imagine the silence for just a moment as Jesus looked around. We’re not told if he was inside or outside by Luke but if this is happening inside, Jesus owned the room and just in case He didn’t have it already, he now had everyone’s attention. He continued. “Wouldn’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go out and look for the one that wandered off and keep looking until he found it?”
At that point, no one in the audience would disagree with him because it’s a rhetorical question. Herds back then ranged anywhere from twenty five to two hundred and considering how hard the Romans were taxing the people, every member of the flock was valuable. That wasn’t just a cutesy little lost lamb out there, that was a revenue producing animal that yielded wool, meat, and, if it was a ewe, it was an inexpensive source of herd multiplication. Also, just in case you were wondering but hadn’t gotten around to asking the question, shepherds tended to work together so the shepherd wasn’t abandoning the flock and leaving it unattended. His buddies would look after his flock while he was out looking for the one that wandered off. There were probably a few people in his audience who were nodding as Jesus continued. “And when he finds it, he’s gonna carry it home on his shoulders and when he gets home, he’s going to get his friends together and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I found this lost sheep.’”
Now, understand this, no one in Jesus’ audience is stupid, at least not the Pharisees. They knew that parables were simple stories using common things to make a point about something more important in life so when Jesus delivered the application, they may not have agreed with him, but they knew exactly what he was saying as he continued. “In the same way, there’s more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents than over ninety nine who are already righteous and haven’t strayed off.”
Before anyone in his audience had a chance to respond, Jesus followed that story up with another that further emphasized his point. “Let me put it another way. Imagine,” Jesus said, “that a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Wouldn’t she light a candle and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she found it?” Once again, Jesus’ audience would agree with him. The Greek word for silver coin that Luke used was a drachma, a silver coin that was worth a day’s wages. For those of you reading this who get paid every two weeks, how would you like to take a ten percent pay cut on your next check? Just work for free for one day. How about it? No? Me neither. Or some commentators have suggested that the ten silver coins were the woman’s dowry. Bottom line, that coin had value and everyone knew it. Jesus continued. “When she finds it, she’s going to go out to her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I found my lost coin.’ It’s just like that in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.” You can almost imagine Jesus pausing and motioning toward the people he was eating with as he drove his point home.
Jesus would drive home his point with one more parable but let’s pick that up next week. Today, I want to examine a couple of application points in the first two parables Jesus told. First, notice who is lost, the sheep and the coin and who is doing the looking, the shepherd and the woman. In the first parable, the sheep may have known it was lost or it may not have. Jesus didn’t say. (Having worked with livestock on the Roach Place though, I doubt it. Livestock are primarily driven by their appetites and they tend to go where their stomach leads them.) In any case, the sheep was lost and needed to be found. Then there’s the coin. It’s a coin, an inanimate object. It doesn’t know it’s lost and, because it’s inanimate, it doesn’t care either. And, unlike the sheep, it doesn’t have legs so it couldn’t wander back over to the woman even if it wanted to. Thus, in order for the sheep to be found, the shepherd must find it and in order for the coin to be reunited with the others, the woman will have to find it. And, since Jesus indicates in his parables that the coin and the sheep both represent people and the shepherd and the woman both represent God here, one of the points that he’s making is that when it comes to finding God, God is the one looking for and finding us, we aren’t finding him.
Now, if this is true, then the question that we have to ask is why? Why would God do this? We can summarize the answer in one word, value. People, you, me, all of us, are valuable to God, whether we are willing to admit it or not. In the parables, in both cases, that which was lost had value even if it was just in the eyes of the shepherd and the woman. The coin, for example, didn’t know it was valuable and didn’t care. To the woman however, that coin had great value so she searched for it diligently. Same with the sheep, the sheep didn’t know it had value either. Its overriding motive for its behavior was its appetite, but that it had value in the eyes of the shepherd is obvious. If it had no value, or little value, the shepherd would have just let it go, recouped his losses another way and moved on. He didn’t though, he went out and searched until he found it.
This brings up another point. In both cases, that of the shepherd and that of the woman, even though Jesus just passed over it briefly, to successfully search for both the sheep and the coin was not as easy as it sounded. It was hard and frankly, the odds of it being successful, especially if the shepherd or the woman were not committed to the success of their search, were highly unlikely. In the case of the shepherd, going out into the wilderness like that was dangerous both to the sheep and to the shepherd. Even today being exposed to the elements of the wilderness is dangerous and one mistake could be fatal. (Even as I am writing this, KOMO 4 News reported last night that there is currently an experienced outdoorsman/hunter who is lost in the Cascade Mountains and search crews are out there looking for him. The weather is doing them no favors up there by the way, as the first winter snowfall is coming down right now and the odds of this story having a happy ending are decreasing by the hour. (Update: I wrote this piece two months ago and since then, this story has closure. It wasn’t a happy ending.) Back to the shepherd in Jesus’ story, the danger is greater and the odds for success are even worse. There is no team out there, just the shepherd. But if he doesn’t find that sheep, the sheep will die. It’s inevitable.
And then there’s the woman. She’s not in any physical danger but her task is equally daunting. Houses in Judea at the time when Jesus told this parable had dirt floors and no windows. They were dark and the only light that would come in would come in through the door. The lost coin was a dingy gray and about the size of an American quarter and based on the story as Jesus told it, the woman probably didn’t know when she lost it so it could be anywhere in the house. One other thing, also based on how Jesus told the story, the search for the lost coin wasn’t one of those deals where the woman was saying that she’d keep an eye out for the coin when she cleaned the house. No, the coin had such value to her that finding that coin was the agenda for her actions and the fact that her house might end up cleaner because of it was secondary.
So, what does all this mean for you and me? Just taking the parables at face value, left to our own devices, we are all lost and without hope because we cannot save ourselves. I know that flies in the face of modern thinking but that’s what Jesus is saying here. Remember that in both cases, Jesus brought the application point of the parables right back to his audience and pinned it on them so don’t shoot me, I’m just the go between here. We have value in God’s eyes and He’s out there looking for us. Now, granted, He’s God and He knows everything so He knows precisely where we are but, in our case, the search is tied in with the affections of our hearts, our volition, our will. One of the overriding themes throughout the Bible, from cover to cover, is that humanity has rebelled against God in varying degrees and that rebellion has created a separation that humanity is powerless to fix. Part of the problem lies in the fact that some people don’t want to fix anything. Like the sheep who has wandered off, ignoring the inevitable fate, they’re quite happy just as they are. And then there’s another group who might want to fix the problem, but on their terms not God’s. They think that if they change themselves enough, be a good enough person, don’t do bad things etc...or do the right religious acts or rituals, that God will accept them and the relationship will be restored. They take the “let God do God, and they do them” approach and that will just have to be good enough. Never mind that the Bible doesn’t teach that approach, to these people, the idea that God won’t accept that proposal is simply inconceivable, after all, He is love. And then there’s this third group. They’re pretty sure that they’re separated from God and that they don’t measure up to His standards but they have no idea how to fix the problem. They wish they knew how to fix things, but they don’t.
But here’s the good news. God is fixing the problem. In the next several weeks, I am going to unpack just what the process of that usually looks like but for today, I just want to stay with the overall theme and suffice it to say, our salvation is God’s idea from start to finish. In the parables both the shepherd and the woman initiated the search, not the other way around and in the real world, Jesus coming to earth was God’s idea, not ours. And considering the price that Jesus paid, that took the solution to a whole new level. The separation that our rebellion caused between us and God was like we weren’t even on the same planet as God anymore and the only thing that could fix it was a willing and sinless, key words here being both willing and sinless, sacrifice. Going to the cross was both God the Father and God the Son, Jesus’, idea. Let that thought sink in for a minute as you consider how much value God placed on us and how much He desires to restore the relationship with us that our rebellion caused.
Like I said, in the next several weeks I am going to unpack what that process often looks like but, for today, if you’re thinking that you don’t want to wait for that, if you desire to restore that relationship with God, simply pray and admit to God that you have rebelled against Him and that you can’t save yourself. Thank Him for sending Jesus to die for your sin and thank Him for forgiving you of your rebellion. Tell Him that you believe that Jesus died for your sin and was raised from the dead and that you accept him as both Savior and Lord and that you will submit to Jesus’ leadership in your life from this point forward.
If that last paragraph just described your desires and if you did that, please email me at [email protected] . I want to start praying for you specifically. In the meantime, for you and the rest of my audience, for the next two weeks I want to unpack the Prodigal Son parable and see how it applies to us today. See you next week.
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
Now remember as we go back to Luke 15 what prompted Jesus to tell those particular parables in the first place. If you recall from last week, Jesus was eating with and befriending tax gatherers, irreligious Jews, immoral men and women. The Pharisees and teachers of the Jewish law, the religious leaders of his day, were grumbling and complaining about it. One thing about Jesus, he had to be an extremely observant person because the way that Luke writes the story, it’s quite clear that the religious leaders weren’t actually confronting Jesus verbally but were instead muttering and complaining about him under their breath, probably whispering to each other, even perhaps pointing a finger or two in his direction. Simply stated, the folks in the peanut gallery were talking about him behind his back and Jesus called them out.
Luke tells it something like this. Upon observing what the religious leaders were doing, and knowing what they were thinking, Jesus called out to them so that everyone within earshot could hear him. “Hey fellas,” he said, “I have a question for you. Imagine one of you owns a herd of 100 sheep and one of them gets lost, what do you think he would do about it?” Imagine the silence for just a moment as Jesus looked around. We’re not told if he was inside or outside by Luke but if this is happening inside, Jesus owned the room and just in case He didn’t have it already, he now had everyone’s attention. He continued. “Wouldn’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go out and look for the one that wandered off and keep looking until he found it?”
At that point, no one in the audience would disagree with him because it’s a rhetorical question. Herds back then ranged anywhere from twenty five to two hundred and considering how hard the Romans were taxing the people, every member of the flock was valuable. That wasn’t just a cutesy little lost lamb out there, that was a revenue producing animal that yielded wool, meat, and, if it was a ewe, it was an inexpensive source of herd multiplication. Also, just in case you were wondering but hadn’t gotten around to asking the question, shepherds tended to work together so the shepherd wasn’t abandoning the flock and leaving it unattended. His buddies would look after his flock while he was out looking for the one that wandered off. There were probably a few people in his audience who were nodding as Jesus continued. “And when he finds it, he’s gonna carry it home on his shoulders and when he gets home, he’s going to get his friends together and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I found this lost sheep.’”
Now, understand this, no one in Jesus’ audience is stupid, at least not the Pharisees. They knew that parables were simple stories using common things to make a point about something more important in life so when Jesus delivered the application, they may not have agreed with him, but they knew exactly what he was saying as he continued. “In the same way, there’s more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents than over ninety nine who are already righteous and haven’t strayed off.”
Before anyone in his audience had a chance to respond, Jesus followed that story up with another that further emphasized his point. “Let me put it another way. Imagine,” Jesus said, “that a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Wouldn’t she light a candle and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she found it?” Once again, Jesus’ audience would agree with him. The Greek word for silver coin that Luke used was a drachma, a silver coin that was worth a day’s wages. For those of you reading this who get paid every two weeks, how would you like to take a ten percent pay cut on your next check? Just work for free for one day. How about it? No? Me neither. Or some commentators have suggested that the ten silver coins were the woman’s dowry. Bottom line, that coin had value and everyone knew it. Jesus continued. “When she finds it, she’s going to go out to her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I found my lost coin.’ It’s just like that in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.” You can almost imagine Jesus pausing and motioning toward the people he was eating with as he drove his point home.
Jesus would drive home his point with one more parable but let’s pick that up next week. Today, I want to examine a couple of application points in the first two parables Jesus told. First, notice who is lost, the sheep and the coin and who is doing the looking, the shepherd and the woman. In the first parable, the sheep may have known it was lost or it may not have. Jesus didn’t say. (Having worked with livestock on the Roach Place though, I doubt it. Livestock are primarily driven by their appetites and they tend to go where their stomach leads them.) In any case, the sheep was lost and needed to be found. Then there’s the coin. It’s a coin, an inanimate object. It doesn’t know it’s lost and, because it’s inanimate, it doesn’t care either. And, unlike the sheep, it doesn’t have legs so it couldn’t wander back over to the woman even if it wanted to. Thus, in order for the sheep to be found, the shepherd must find it and in order for the coin to be reunited with the others, the woman will have to find it. And, since Jesus indicates in his parables that the coin and the sheep both represent people and the shepherd and the woman both represent God here, one of the points that he’s making is that when it comes to finding God, God is the one looking for and finding us, we aren’t finding him.
Now, if this is true, then the question that we have to ask is why? Why would God do this? We can summarize the answer in one word, value. People, you, me, all of us, are valuable to God, whether we are willing to admit it or not. In the parables, in both cases, that which was lost had value even if it was just in the eyes of the shepherd and the woman. The coin, for example, didn’t know it was valuable and didn’t care. To the woman however, that coin had great value so she searched for it diligently. Same with the sheep, the sheep didn’t know it had value either. Its overriding motive for its behavior was its appetite, but that it had value in the eyes of the shepherd is obvious. If it had no value, or little value, the shepherd would have just let it go, recouped his losses another way and moved on. He didn’t though, he went out and searched until he found it.
This brings up another point. In both cases, that of the shepherd and that of the woman, even though Jesus just passed over it briefly, to successfully search for both the sheep and the coin was not as easy as it sounded. It was hard and frankly, the odds of it being successful, especially if the shepherd or the woman were not committed to the success of their search, were highly unlikely. In the case of the shepherd, going out into the wilderness like that was dangerous both to the sheep and to the shepherd. Even today being exposed to the elements of the wilderness is dangerous and one mistake could be fatal. (Even as I am writing this, KOMO 4 News reported last night that there is currently an experienced outdoorsman/hunter who is lost in the Cascade Mountains and search crews are out there looking for him. The weather is doing them no favors up there by the way, as the first winter snowfall is coming down right now and the odds of this story having a happy ending are decreasing by the hour. (Update: I wrote this piece two months ago and since then, this story has closure. It wasn’t a happy ending.) Back to the shepherd in Jesus’ story, the danger is greater and the odds for success are even worse. There is no team out there, just the shepherd. But if he doesn’t find that sheep, the sheep will die. It’s inevitable.
And then there’s the woman. She’s not in any physical danger but her task is equally daunting. Houses in Judea at the time when Jesus told this parable had dirt floors and no windows. They were dark and the only light that would come in would come in through the door. The lost coin was a dingy gray and about the size of an American quarter and based on the story as Jesus told it, the woman probably didn’t know when she lost it so it could be anywhere in the house. One other thing, also based on how Jesus told the story, the search for the lost coin wasn’t one of those deals where the woman was saying that she’d keep an eye out for the coin when she cleaned the house. No, the coin had such value to her that finding that coin was the agenda for her actions and the fact that her house might end up cleaner because of it was secondary.
So, what does all this mean for you and me? Just taking the parables at face value, left to our own devices, we are all lost and without hope because we cannot save ourselves. I know that flies in the face of modern thinking but that’s what Jesus is saying here. Remember that in both cases, Jesus brought the application point of the parables right back to his audience and pinned it on them so don’t shoot me, I’m just the go between here. We have value in God’s eyes and He’s out there looking for us. Now, granted, He’s God and He knows everything so He knows precisely where we are but, in our case, the search is tied in with the affections of our hearts, our volition, our will. One of the overriding themes throughout the Bible, from cover to cover, is that humanity has rebelled against God in varying degrees and that rebellion has created a separation that humanity is powerless to fix. Part of the problem lies in the fact that some people don’t want to fix anything. Like the sheep who has wandered off, ignoring the inevitable fate, they’re quite happy just as they are. And then there’s another group who might want to fix the problem, but on their terms not God’s. They think that if they change themselves enough, be a good enough person, don’t do bad things etc...or do the right religious acts or rituals, that God will accept them and the relationship will be restored. They take the “let God do God, and they do them” approach and that will just have to be good enough. Never mind that the Bible doesn’t teach that approach, to these people, the idea that God won’t accept that proposal is simply inconceivable, after all, He is love. And then there’s this third group. They’re pretty sure that they’re separated from God and that they don’t measure up to His standards but they have no idea how to fix the problem. They wish they knew how to fix things, but they don’t.
But here’s the good news. God is fixing the problem. In the next several weeks, I am going to unpack just what the process of that usually looks like but for today, I just want to stay with the overall theme and suffice it to say, our salvation is God’s idea from start to finish. In the parables both the shepherd and the woman initiated the search, not the other way around and in the real world, Jesus coming to earth was God’s idea, not ours. And considering the price that Jesus paid, that took the solution to a whole new level. The separation that our rebellion caused between us and God was like we weren’t even on the same planet as God anymore and the only thing that could fix it was a willing and sinless, key words here being both willing and sinless, sacrifice. Going to the cross was both God the Father and God the Son, Jesus’, idea. Let that thought sink in for a minute as you consider how much value God placed on us and how much He desires to restore the relationship with us that our rebellion caused.
Like I said, in the next several weeks I am going to unpack what that process often looks like but, for today, if you’re thinking that you don’t want to wait for that, if you desire to restore that relationship with God, simply pray and admit to God that you have rebelled against Him and that you can’t save yourself. Thank Him for sending Jesus to die for your sin and thank Him for forgiving you of your rebellion. Tell Him that you believe that Jesus died for your sin and was raised from the dead and that you accept him as both Savior and Lord and that you will submit to Jesus’ leadership in your life from this point forward.
If that last paragraph just described your desires and if you did that, please email me at [email protected] . I want to start praying for you specifically. In the meantime, for you and the rest of my audience, for the next two weeks I want to unpack the Prodigal Son parable and see how it applies to us today. See you next week.
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach
The Younger Brother’s Story
Last week we looked at the first two stories that Jesus told in Luke 15 where he illustrated how God felt about the people and how He throws a party when someone, anyone, changes their mind and returns back to Him. To make His point, Jesus told three stories, one about a lost sheep that was found and another about a lost coin that was found, and lastly, to make sure that His audience was getting it, He told this story about a lost son, a rebellious son, who rebelled against his father’s leadership and went his own way. That’s the one I want to talk about today. It’s loaded with thought provoking details and went something like this.
“There was this man who had two sons,” Jesus said, “and the younger son told his father, ‘Give me my share of your estate now while you’re still alive,’ So the father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.”
As Jesus spoke, a hushed silence fell over the room. Heads snapped to attention. In that culture for a son to say something like that to their father was unheard of. Essentially, what the son was saying to his father was, “You’re already dead to me.” No son in his right mind would say that to his father. It was unthinkable, but perhaps not the most shocking thing that Jesus just said. What was even more unthinkable was that the father actually granted the request. This father was apparently quite wealthy and generally, a man with those kinds of assets also possessed an immense amount of status and clout, enough so that not only could he disown the son and throw him out with nothing but could also have him stoned to death if he was so inclined. This father didn’t do that though. He granted his son’s request.
Jesus probably paused for just a moment to survey the audience. Everyone’s eyes were riveted on Him. He continued. A few days later the kid packed his bags and moved to a distant country far away, and there, free of his old man’s authority and with enough money to pull it off, he did whatever he pleased. He partied like a rock star and probably woke up more than once with no memory of what he had done the night before. Now if asked, he would tell you that life was good but if his life was a house, it was a house of cards and eventually, like all houses of cards, it came crashing down. Maybe it was a series of bets gone wrong in a card game, maybe it was an attempt to buy a beautiful woman’s heart, or maybe he bought the house drinks more times than he should have. We’re not told because Jesus didn’t go into the sordid details. All we’re told is, “his money ran out at the same time that a great famine swept over the land and he began to starve.” This is not an exaggeration on Jesus’ part by the way. In that part of the world during that time period, famines were real and so was starvation. He probably was in danger of dying.
He attempted to solve the problem by persuading a local farmer to hire him, so the farmer sent him out to feed the pigs. The kid was so hungry that even the pods that the pigs were eating looked good to him. But no one took pity on him. No one gave him anything.
So, there he was, homeless, starving, and living alone as an immigrant. The people living there had never loved him, only his money and once that was gone, they’d kicked him to the curb. And it was there, with his mouth watering as he was staring at the pigs who were wolfing down their dinner, that he came to his senses and started to reflect back to life in his father’s house. It was the food that he most remembered. Yep, the food. The cooks were awesome and not only was there more than enough to eat for him, but there was also so much abundance that even the servants had leftovers. He gazed back at the pigs. What was he doing here? Was he that stupid? The bucket he was holding fell from his hand. That was it. He was going home to his father and once he got there, he’d admit that he had sinned against heaven and against his father and admit that he was no longer worthy to be called his father’s son. He would ask his father to take him on as a hired servant.
So, the young man started off for home, not at all sure how he would be received. What he had done to his father in his culture was so disgraceful that he most likely would no longer be part of his father’s family but he was banking on his father’s character that things would turn out all right and that he’d be better off than he was.
To be continued… Sorry. This is a long story so I’m going to have to tell the rest of it in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, let’s park here and pull out a few application points.
First, I want to focus on the son’s motives, do a little speculation here. Now, if you will recall, the young man by asking for his share of the inheritance early, essentially told his father that he was dead to him. I wonder what caused him to do that? Perhaps it was greed. He didn’t want to wait for his father to die to get his money. Or maybe, just maybe, it was something else. There’s something about that request that just smacks of rebellion against his father’s authority, because while yes, the father had the money, more importantly, he also had control of that money. At its core, that request is a declaration of independence by the son against his father.
You know, there’s a lot of that younger son in all of us, I think. Left to our own devices we will buck God any time that what He says to do is at odds with what we want to do, even if we know that His way is the right thing to do. For example, we know that we’re supposed to love that other person, to treat them decently, not talk about them behind their back but we don’t want to. They’re just an ass but God says that if we want to obey Him, we have to love them anyway. But we just don’t feel like it so we ignore what God says and just go for it…with style. Since we can’t afford bail money, we do the next best thing and assassinate them at the character level.
Or, how about this one? You know lying is wrong but you find yourself in a situation where telling the truth will cost you bigtime. It could be honestly answering questions about where you were last night to what really happened at whatever event they’re talking about. It could be anything really and, in any event, it’s darn uncomfortable because it’s causing a lot of drama and you just wish that it would go away. And it probably would too except that God, or that conscience of yours or your mother’s voice that’s ringing in the back of your head, (which when you get to be my age, is really trippy because she’s been dead for years), is pounding at you to tell the truth. So, what are you going to do. You do what you want. You blow it off and lie anyway. It’s no big deal it’s just a little lie.
Or let’s try something that’s a little more life changing. You know that cheating is wrong. But your current relationship has gone to hell in a handbasket, and well, there’s this option at work. They’re good lookin’ and they treat you better than your significant other does and well, yeah, you know what I mean. Or maybe you’re single and available but they aren’t and their relationship has blown up. You don’t even have to be religious on this one, in fact, you could even be an atheist here and you still know that to pursue things here is wrong or, at the very least, really stupid. But what are you supposed to do? You’ve gotten to know the other person really well and you two have hit it off to the point that they’ve made it clear that they’re game if you are. In fact, if we’re being honest here, they are hoping that you are, so what are you going to do? It’s especially serious if there’s a ring involved because that ring on your left hand is not just an ordinary ring so you have to make a choice. Now, I’m not naïve and I know that of my readers, I have people who have gone both ways on this one.
The bottom line is this. To one degree or another, regardless of the issue, across the board we’ve functionally taken God’s moral code, discarded it, and replaced it with one of our own and that, at its core, is rebellion against God.
The second thing that stands out about the youngest son centers around the question of who caused the son’s problems in the first place. This one isn’t rocket science. The kid did. All the father did was give the kid what he asked for and let him go. The father didn’t want to but he loved him enough to let him go even though he was sad when he did it. Was he sad because he was a controlling father? That isn’t what the evidence would indicate. If he was a controlling father, he would have tightened the screws on the son. This is just a theory but my guess is that he was sad because he knew what would happen to his son. He was smart and he knew that if his son left home under those circumstances, that the consequences for the son would be disastrous.
I read this a few years back, “We are free to make our own choices but we are not free of the consequences of those choices.” The son learned this the hard way. He chose to rebel against his father and live as he pleased. He spent money like there was no tomorrow. He was incredibly popular probably as long as he had money but when his money ran out, no one wanted anything to do with him anymore. He went from being a somebody to being a starving nobody. Worse yet, he ended up having to do something that no Jewish man with any ounce of self-respect would do, he ended up feeding pigs. One thing about Jewish culture at the time, in the Law of Moses it was specified that there were two kinds of animals in the world, the clean and the unclean. The clean animals you could eat but the unclean animals were not to be eaten and pigs were considered to be so unclean that the average Jew wouldn’t even touch them, so the idea of feeding pigs was absolutely degrading for the son. And yet, there he was, starving, feeding the pigs and actually wishing that he could eat what the pigs were eating. Think about it. The pigs were full and he was starving. And the reason that he was starving was because of the choices that he made. He couldn’t pin any of this on his father, he did it to himself.
So, as Jesus tells it, the young man came to his senses. He compared his lot in life with that of his father’s servants, the people who work for his dad. They were so much better off than he was so he decided to go home, confess his guilt to his father, and ask his father to just take him on as a hired servant. For the record, in context here, in the son’s mind, nothing was guaranteed. Most wealthy men at that time, if their son had done that to them, would have rejected him. Frankly, it’s what he deserved, but, spoiler alert, that isn’t what he got. As Jesus tells it, instead of condemnation, the father gave him grace.
So, what does this mean for you and me? Like I said, there’s a little bit of little brother in all of us. We’ve all usurped God’s authority in our life to one degree or another. Let’s go back to the feeding of the pigs part of the story. You know, I’ll bet that was something that if that younger brother had gone back in time, say ten or fifteen years earlier, that if someone had told him that he would end up feeding pigs, that he would have called them a liar. No way would he ever do something like that and yet, there he was, feeding the unclean pigs. Now understand me here, the act of feeding the pigs was not sin but it was one of the consequences of rebellion.
Coming back to us though, how many of us have done something like that? Figuratively speaking, how many of us have fed the pigs in our lives? Looking back, we were faced with choices and everyone told us not to do (fill in the blank) but we did it anyway. We ignored all of the red flags, blew through the stop signs and did it anyway. It felt good at the time maybe, but now we see how short sighted that decision or series of decisions was, and as the events of life played out, there we were, reaping the consequences of our choices, standing there starving and feeding the pigs, doing things we swore that we would never do.
Or maybe, that’s where you are right now. Forget the past, you’re feeding the pigs right now. You’re all alone and you’re doing stuff that you swore that you would never do. You don’t want to but there just doesn't seem to be any other alternative? Or…maybe there is. In this story, God is represented by the father and, as we will see in the upcoming weeks, the father extended all kinds of grace to his son. He lavished it on him actually, in part because that was the father’s nature. You know what? Speaking literally now, everything that I read in the Bible tells me that’s God’s nature too. Yes, He’s holy and just but He’s also holy and full of grace and, given the choice, He would much rather extend grace than He would extend judgement. The Bible teaches clearly that our rebellion against God caused a separation between us and God that was so severe that our destiny was to be eternally separated from God in a place that the Bible calls hell. Hell is a literal place where we can go in the end if we insist on it but it was not intended for us when God created it and He doesn’t want us to go there. In fact, God so much doesn’t want us to go there that He came up with a solution so we wouldn’t have to. God the Son, Jesus, lived a sinless life and paid the penalty for our rebellion when He died on the cross. And on the cross, God the Father meted out the full punishment for that rebellion and Jesus took it all, including the ultimate consequence, death itself. And then, to show that justice had been served, God the Father raised Jesus from the grave. Justice had been served, God’s anger at our rebellion had been satisfied and now God’s lavish grace and forgiveness was and is available to anyone who wanted it. It’s an offer that’s still on the table. All we have to do is end our rebellion and accept it by faith.
Yes, we have to make a choice. Going back to the story, if the younger son had stayed where he was, he would have died. The only chance that he had to live was to end his rebellion and go return to his father. It’s the same way with us. If we stay where we are, feeding the pigs so to speak, we will die and spend eternity separated from God, who still loves us more than we can imagine.
So how do we end this rebellion? It’s a heart attitude really but it’s usually expressed by prayer, which is simply talking to God. If you don’t know what to say, and if this expresses what you desire to do, try praying something like this. “God, I have rebelled against you and I’ve caused a separation between us that I can’t fix. If things don’t change, because of my rebellion, I will spend eternity separated from you, and I don’t want that. Thank you for loving me and making a way for me to end my rebellion. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for me so that I can end my rebellion against you and be accepted by you. I believe that you raised Jesus from the dead. As of right now, I am ending my rebellion against you and from this day forward, I will follow you the best that I can. Please help me because I can’t do this alone. In Jesus name, amen.” If you prayed that prayer or something like it, and you meant it, your separation from God is ended. Now, I will say this, there’s this lie out there that says that if a person ends their rebellion that all of life’s troubles will end. That’s not true, but here’s what’s different now. You’ll never be alone. God will be right there with you, working your circumstances for your good and His glory.
Next week I am going to unpack more of this parable. We’ll look at this from the father’s perspective, see you then.
The Father: A Snapshot of God’s Heart Part 1
I won’t lie. I’ve been looking forward to writing this part of the story since the time I started this series because the picture that Jesus paints of God through the father in this parable is just cool. As you recall from last week, there was this wealthy father who had two sons and the youngest one came up to the man with a scandalous request. In the interest of time, I’m going to quote directly from the New Living Translation to tell the story.
A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, “I want my share of your estate now before you die.” So, his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.
A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything.
When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, “At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.”
So, he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.”
But his father said to the servants, “Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.” So, the party began. (Luke 15:11 – 24 NLT)
In this parable, the quality of the father that stands out most is grace that he extends to his son. It’s first demonstrated when the youngest son asked for his share of the inheritance and his father gave him what he asked for. This is highly unusual for that culture because men who were as wealthy as this father apparently was had the power to disown the kid on the spot and throw him out, which they generally would do. Even if they didn’t necessarily want to, in order to keep their reputation intact, that was often their only recourse. That’s not what this man did though. He did the exact opposite and gave his son precisely what he asked for. That’s grace, pure and simple.
The second place where the father’s grace is demonstrated is when the son returned totally bankrupt. Jesus says that while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming and filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. Every commentary I’ve read agrees on several points here. First, the father was apparently watching the road, longing for his son’s return. The father may have been dead to the son but the son was not dead to the father. That was his boy out there and when he saw his son in the distance, he felt love and compassion for him and he sprinted to him. That’s another thing about that culture at the time when Jesus told this story. In that culture, running was considered to be undignified for the family patriarch, they just didn’t do that. If necessary, the patriarch would walk to where they were going and, usually, they didn’t walk to you, you walked to them. Not this man though, and not today, this was something that he’d wanted from the day that his son left so he ran to his son. The other thing that’s noteworthy is the fact that the son didn’t get to finish what he’d rehearsed to say. What he wanted to say to his father was that he’d sinned against heaven and his father and that he was no longer worthy to be called his son. That part he was able to say but he also wanted to ask his father was to please take him on as a hired servant. Apparently, his father didn’t give him the chance to say it. Dad hijacked the conversation instead.
The third thing to notice about the father’s grace is the specific details of it. It was an absolute, abundant, extravagant and over the top kind of grace. Before the son could ask his father to take him on as a hired servant, the father cut him off mid-sentence and said, “Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him.” This garment was probably one that belonged to the father and it signaled that the son was an heir and a loved member of the family. Dad wasn’t finished though. “Bring a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet.” The ring was a symbol of authority and it reinforced the son’s status as a son and an heir. Lastly, the son was given sandals, sons wore sandals, hired servants usually went barefoot. Dad sill wasn’t done. “And kill that calf we’ve been fattening up. We have to celebrate because this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost but now he is found and we’re throwing a party because of his safe return.” The father threw a party of the style that was reserved for a visiting dignitary and made his son the guest of honor. His rationale for all of this? His son had been dead and was now returned to life and that was grounds for celebration.
So, what does all of this mean for us? How are we supposed to apply this parable to our lives in 2022? Now, remember in this parable that the father represents God and here were the points that Jesus was making about God. Notice first that the father was fair. In the beginning of the story, when the son no longer wanted to live under his father’s authority, his father gave him what he wanted. He gave him complete autonomy ... and the consequences that came with it. The son ended up in poverty and would have starved had he stayed in that foreign land. God does the same thing with us. If we don’t want God in our lives, if we don’t want to live under his authority, we don’t have to, He won’t force us. However, in the end, He won’t spare us from the consequences of that choice either, not in this life nor in eternity.
Which brings up the second thing to notice about the father. He saw his son from a long way off and when he did, he was full of love and compassion and he sprinted to his son. The implication that Jesus was giving here was that the father was looking for his son. As I previously stated, the father may have been dead to the son but, in the heart of the father, there was no way that the son was dead to him. You know what? Regardless of where we are in life, God feels the same way about us and in the same way that the father in the story moved toward his son when he saw him from a distance, so God will move toward anyone who will intentionally move to return to God on God’s terms.
There is one thing that’s worth noting here in the story and that’s how much suffering that the son experienced before he returned to his father. That’s how it is a lot of times in the real world. God is looking for us and often times, allowing us to experience the pain and hardship that we brought upon ourselves are part of the process. C.S. Lewis put it this way, “God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a dead world.” Could God spare us the consequences of our choices? Sure, He could. And sometimes He does, or at least suppresses those consequences so we don’t feel the full force of them. But sometimes He doesn’t. In fact, sometimes He allows us to experience the full force of those consequences but not because He hates us or doesn’t care. No, just the opposite is at play. Some of us are so rebellious and stubborn that we won’t turn to God until things get so bad that He’s the only viable option left that makes sense. And, when we do come to God, just like the son experienced from his father, we too will experience grace beyond our wildest dreams.
While we’re on this topic of grace, let’s go back to the story for a minute and examine the gifts that the father lavished his son with and fully comprehend the significance of them. The father gave the son one of the finest robes, a signet ring, and sandals. The son wasn’t accepted back as a servant, no, all three gifts signified that the son’s status had been fully restored. He was once again a member of the family with all of the rights and privileges that came with it.
So, what was the point that Jesus was making and what does it mean to us? Jesus was painting a verbal picture of what God does for everyone who comes to Him on His terms. When the son confessed his rebellion to his father and acknowledged that he had done wrong and asked for forgiveness, forgiveness was granted. The same thing happens to us when we acknowledge our rebellion and ask for forgiveness. But there’s more, lots more. Throughout the New Testament, second part of the Bible, the writers use words like adoption, children, sons, daughters, friends, and words just like those to describe people who have repented and surrendered to God. Jesus talked about having a close, intimate, and tight relationship with those who chose to follow Him. Is it still unclear? Try this description given by Tim Keller as he describes our access to God if we have chosen to surrender our wills to Him. “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.” Bottom line, for the person who ends their rebellion and gives control of their life to Jesus, according to the Bible, they are declared to be sons and daughters of God and they have full access to God in a thing also known as prayer.
There is one thing however that’s worth noting. The son did not experience these benefits until he returned to his father and neither will we until we return to God. If the son had stayed where he was, he would have died. Dead and lost were the two words the father used to describe his former state and incidentally, those are the same two words that God would use to describe us unless we choose to return to Him. So, what will we do? Will we surrender to God or not? The ball is in our court. God is looking for us, orchestrating the events of our lives, and calling us to come to our senses and turn to Him. But even though He could, He won’t force us to end our rebellion. That choice is on us.
You know, maybe all of this is new to you and you’re wondering just how you’re supposed to end this rebellion against God. Maybe this idea of having complete forgiveness for everything you’ve done wrong and having full family rights and privileges in God’s family is something that you know you don’t have right now but you really want it. So how do you get it. It really comes down to a heart attitude and it’s usually expressed through prayer. Basically, praying is simply talking to God and saying something like this. “God, I’ve rebelled against you and the consequences of that rebellion has caused me to be separated from you forever unless you do something about it. I’ve been wrong and I’m asking you to forgive me and please save me because I can’t save myself. I believe that Jesus paid the penalty for my rebellion when He died on the cross and I believe that Jesus was raised from the grave on the third day. I accept Him as my Savior and I am choosing to follow Him for the rest of my life. Thank you for forgiving me and making me a member of Your family. In Jesus name, amen.
If you prayed that prayer, I’d love to hear from you. Go ahead and email me at [email protected] Next week, we’re going to take a look at the other brother in the story, the older brother. He’s an interesting character too.
The Father: A Snapshot of God’s Heart Part 2
In the story of the Prodigal Son, there’s still one person that we need to take a look at, the other brother, the oldest son. Now usually when I have heard sermons on this part of the story, the preacher’s focus is almost entirely on the oldest son. But what say we take a different approach, shall we? Oh, we’ll talk about the oldest son, but I want to draw our attention back to the father because the way he handles this other son is quite revealing on the character and grace of God so, let’s get into it.
Picking things up from last week, as you recall, the youngest son had returned to his father in a state of bankruptcy, shame, and ruin and, instead of giving the kid what he deserved and further condemning him, the father did just the opposite. The father had showered him with grace and forgiveness and reinstated him into the family. He also threw a party and made the kid the guest of honor. Now, what a party it must have been! It had to have been joyous and loud, (like it had the volume level of a party in our society that generally involves the cops being called) and I suspect in full swing when suddenly, toward the end of the day, the oldest son who had been working hard all day long in the fields, came home. As he got close to the house, he heard all of this noise and probably stopped, wondering what was going on. It hadn't been like that when he left in the morning, and, as far as he knew, nothing had been planned, but there was obviously a party going on now so he pulled one the servants aside who gave him the inside scoop. “Your brother has returned,” the servant told him. “And your father has killed the fattened calf and we’re celebrating because of your brother’s safe return.”
The older brother was livid! Since the time that his brother had left, he had seen his father longing for his younger brother to return. He had might have even seen a few tears shed and even if there had been no tears, he definitely knew that it bothered his dad and it had to have irritated him. He didn’t understand it. There hadn’t much more that his little brother could have done to ruin his father’s reputation. The whole affair had disgusted him, so much so that there were times that he probably wanted to tell his dad to get over it and write the kid off. The kid had made his bed, now let him sleep in it. Give the kid what he deserved, give him what his conduct had earned. Apparently, however, grace would be what his brother would receive, not the justice he deserved and this was the last straw. In his anger, the older brother refused to go into the house. He would have no part of this. No, they were going to have to do this party without him. He would be a no show.
Now, his father, upon hearing of this, went out and tried to reason with his oldest son. He pleaded with him to come in. I imagine that the son listened for a few minutes, steaming, but finally, it was more than he could take. “Look you, (he doesn’t even call address his dad as Father) all these years I’ve worked my tail off for you, done everything that you asked me to do and you never once even gave me a goat, a much less expensive animal that the fatted calf you just killed, so that I could have a party with my friends.” He took a deep breath as he continued, “but when this son of yours comes back after wasting all your money on prostitutes and what not, oh, you’ll throw this party and kill the fatted calf for him.” He spat the words out.
His father tried to further reason with his son. “My dear son, you’ve always been with me and everything that I have is yours. But we’ve got to celebrate this amazing day because your brother was dead and has come back to life, he was lost and now he is found.” And with that, Jesus, sat back and looked about at his audience and allowed them to process what they had just heard.
Now, as we analyze this last part of the story, there’s something we can’t ignore here and that’s how the story ends…it doesn’t. Unlike the other two stories, Jesus didn’t end this one. He just left his audience hanging and that was by design. You see, throughout Luke 15, Jesus had a target as he told all three parables. He was aiming at the religious leaders and the teachers of the law. The oldest brother represented them and, for those of you reading this who are like myself and were raised in a church practically, it’s entirely possible that he’s aiming at us too.
Disclaimer here: For my non church attending audience, you can relax for a minute, although you might be able to glean some things from what I’m about to say, you aren’t the primary target in this next paragraph or two. I want to address the church going audience reading this because frankly, church, when he told this last part of the parable, we’re the ones who Jesus was talking to. Looking at the obvious, the older brother was a rule follower. He knew how to play the game because he’d been raised in it his entire life, kind of like those of us who were raised in Christian households. He didn’t love his father any more than did the younger son and, upon close scrutiny, he was just as rebellious as his younger brother, his rebellion just looked differently is all. He rebelled in socially acceptable ways. Yes, he obeyed his father’s rules but only because he felt he had to, not because he wanted to. His life agenda was not close to being the same as the father’s life agenda. His obedience was kind of a smoke and mirrors act to hide what was really going on inside. How many of us church going types have been guilty of this? I know that I have. We raise our hand in worship on Sunday and raise our finger at the other drivers on the road on Monday. We read our Bibles in the morning, check it off of our, “to do” list and then live as we please for the rest of the day. Specific proof? How about this? If someone were to ask us to show them the songs are on the play-list on our phone, the appropriate question might be, which play-list? Do they want to see the play-list that we listen to on Sunday, or the one that we listen to when the kids aren’t around? Or maybe this is our story. We look at the sin that we see going on all around us and while we walk away from it, mentally we don’t. In the corridors of our mind, we’re fully engaged in it. Now, because we aren’t actually doing it, we tell ourselves that it’s okay. And it is until we read Matthew 5, 6 and 7 where Jesus raised the bar for what actually constitutes what sin is and took it to the motive level. No, I’m not throwing spiritual rocks at you, I’m throwing spiritual rocks at me. You just happen to be sitting on the same bullseye on the same target. Face it, we’ve all been there and we’re all quite capable of going back there if we aren’t careful.
So, what was Jesus’ point when he added the older son to the story? It was really two-fold. In the first place he wanted to contrast the attitude of God toward the unchurched, the tax gatherers and sinners, with that of the churched, the religious leaders of his day. The religious leaders of his day were closed and condemning. They demanded that the irreligious masses, essentially clean their lives up and then they would be accepted by God. They certainly weren’t out looking for these people. God, on the other hand, was open and accepting. He was, and still is frankly, out looking for people, extending grace, asking people to come as they are and He would change their lives.
But Jesus had one other point and it had to do with the heart of God. He used the father to clearly illustrate the heart of God toward the religious people, the church attenders, and paint a vivid picture of God’s message for them as well. In the story, the father went out to the oldest son and invited him, pleaded with him actually, to come in and join the party. The same grace that was extended to the younger son was also being extended to the older son. “There’s a place for you too,” was what he was telling him.
Pretty cool, huh? You know what though? That’s what God is telling all of us too. What this parable shows is that whether we are church attenders or non-church attenders that we’re all in need of God’s grace because there ain’t none of us who measure up. We’ve all rebelled against God albeit in different forms. Some of us just do it more blatantly than others and what God is doing is inviting us to end our rebellion and come back to the place where our relationship with God the Father can be restored to how it was intended to be in the first place. What this means for those of us who were raised in a church is that we have to admit that none of the religious things that we have done, or are still doing, without a change of heart attitude, really counts for anything as it relates to our being accepted by God and pleasing to God. It means that we have to admit to God that just like the non-church attender, we too have rebelled against God and have failed to measure up to God’s standard of right and wrong. It means that we too have to ask God for His mercy and forgiveness for our rebellion. It means that we too, must place our faith in Jesus and His death on the cross as the only payment that is sufficient to make right the offence that our rebellion has incurred against God. It means that we too must change how we currently roll and start actually doing the things that Jesus would do if He was facing the same set of circumstances that we are facing.
But what will we do? Like the parable, God is leaving the ending of this story up to us. He could write the end of the story, He’s certainly strong enough to force all of us to end our rebellion and follow Him, but in the same way that Jesus left the parable wide open, so God, staying true to His character, at least from our vantage point, is leaving that choice up to us.
For the next couple of weeks, we’re going to unpack a few themes that run throughout all three of the parables in Luke 15 and take a good look at how this whole thing applies to us in 2022. That being said, I’ll see you next week.
Copyright 2022 by Sam Roach