“The People Around Jesus”
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Prodigal God Series; Luke 15:1-2, 11-32
(from the book The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller)
Introduction: This week we begin a new sermon series on the “Parable of the Prodigal,” found in the gospel of Luke chapter 15, and we will relate this series to our Monday night Bible study as well. The Random House Dictionary (2009) first defines the “prodigal” as an adjective: 1) wastefully or recklessly extravagant: prodigal expenditure. 2) Giving or yielding profusely; lavish; 3) Lavishly abundant; profuse. It then defines “prodigal” as a noun: A person who spends, or has spent, his or her money or substance with wasteful extravagance; spendthrift.
The term “prodigal” is used in Jesus’ well-known parable and we are quick to apply it to the younger son. But, as we study the “Parable of the Prodigal” we discover it is an even more accurate description for another central figure. Let us take some time to do an overview of the parable.
I. The Essentials- (Luke 15:11-32; 2 Corinthians 5:19)
The story of the Prodigal is really about the essentials of the Christian message,
or what we know as the gospel. While many Christians believe they understand the basics of the Christian faith, it never hurts to remember the basics, and in fact, when we look at the basics more than once, we will gain much more each time we return. It is easy to forget the radical nature of the gospel, and the radical nature of God! Sometimes, the longer you are a Christian, you tend to forget. This series will help us to look at the three main characters of the story, the father, the elder son, and the younger son, and understand God, and God’s relationship with us more fully.
Of course you probably know the story, and we just read the passage, but let me summarize for a moment: there is a father who has 2 sons. The younger asks for his share of the inheritance, he receives it, and promptly leaves for a far away country, where he spends his inheritance on frivalous pleasure. He returns home, asks for forgiveness, and to his surprise receives it with open arms from his father. But the elder brother alienates his younger brother, and gets very angry at the whole situation. The story closes with the father appealing to the elder brother to join in the celebration, and to welcome back and forgive the younger brother.
Because we know the story well, it is easy to lose the intensity and excitement of the story. If we allow ourselves to really take it in, then we will be changed in how we understand Christianity. It is a parable that can truly encourage, enlighten and help us to know God’s heart, and God’s desires.
I encourage us all, that as we go through this series, we will wrestle with the concepts that God is trying to teach us here, and let it deepen our faith in Christ. The Monday night Bible study will be an excellent time for us to process this all the more, and to join together in our growth. It will also help us to understand the Bible as a whole, as we realize that it is not right to single out the younger brother as the sole focus of the story. Even Jesus didn’t call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As the story starts: “a man had two sons.” The narrative is as much about the elder brother as it is about the younger brother, and as much about the father as it is about the sons.
We will learn that what Jesus says about the older brother is one of the most important messages in the Bible, and how the father responds is as important too. A better name for the parable could be “The Two Lost Sons.” Prodigal really means, “to spend until you have nothing left.” This term is therefore appropriate for describing the father in the story. The father’s welcome to the repentant son was literally reckless, because he refused to hold the son’s sins against him, or to demand a return payment. We see this response offended the older son, and the local community.
In this story, was is so telling is that the father represents the Heavenly Father Jesus knew so well. As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19- “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses.” Jesus is showing us that God is a God of great expense, willing to spend everything on us, His children. Our greatest hope then is found in this God of reckless grace. This is what should create the desire to seek out God all the more so that change might happen in our lives!
II. The People Around Jesus-
a. Two kinds of people- As I said before, most of the time when we read
this parable, we think about the younger son. The biggest reason is because in many Bibles the passage is titled “The parable of the prodigal son,” and so the focus is placed on the younger son. This morning I want us to see the bigger meaning of the parable, because in both sons, we can see different ways that we alienate God, and there are different ways to seek acceptance into the kingdom of heaven.
I started out this morning reading the first 2 verses of chapter 15 because it gives us the historical setting. Jesus is telling the story to two groups of people: on the one side you have those who are categorized as tax collectors and sinners. On the other side you have the Pharisees, who represent the teachers of the law; the religious leaders; those who are supposed to be following and living for God. Both of these groups of people had come to listen to Jesus.
If we are to understand what Jesus is doing with the parable, we see that Jesus is placing the tax collectors and sinners (who observe neither the moral laws of the Bible nor the ceremonial laws of the religious Jews; and engage in wild living) he is placing them in line with the younger brother who leaves home to experience wild living. The other group, the Pharisees, are placed in line with the elder brother. They held to traditional morality, and studied and obeyed the Scripture. They worshipped faithfully, and prayed continually.
The first two verses of the chapter is a summary of the responses we will understand from the younger and elder brothers. There was something about Jesus that brought both groups to him, even though they responded to Jesus in different ways. And Jesus was very open to receiving both groups because He knew they both needed the teaching of God in their lives. And yet, we see that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were not open to the other group, as they complained: “This man welcomes sinners and even eats with them.” They couldn’t understand why Jesus wasn’t condemning them. They didn’t believe that Jesus was telling them the truth like the Pharisees would.
So to whom is Jesus really directing this teaching? It is to the second group that Jesus is trying to impact. It is in response to their attitude against the tax collectors and sinners that leads Jesus to this story. This parable is meant to look at the soul of the elder brother, as it climaxes with a powerful plea from the father to change his heart.
While it is easy to get caught up in focusing on how the father forgives the younger son when he comes back, and this should be a focus of ours, unfortunately we have gotten too caught up in that, and missed the point that Jesus meant for His original listeners. It is about God loving us no matter what we’ve done. And so, we see that the target is about religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading with the moral insiders through this story. Jesus wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls, and the lives of the people around them. It is a mistake to view it as a story just about the younger brother.
Unfortunately, we see that the intended listeners’ hearts were not softened, but rather they were offended and infuriated by Jesus’ teaching. They, who had hard hearts, did not let this story penetrate their heart.
Through this parable Jesus challenges what nearly everyone thought about God, sin, and salvation. His story relates the destructiveness of self-centeredness (the younger brother), and condemns the elder-brothers moralistic life in the strongest terms. Jesus is telling us that both the irreligious and the self-righteous are both spiritually lost, and their paths lead to dead ends.
b. Why people like Jesus and not the church- The truth is, both the
younger brother and the older brother are with us today; living in the same society, and maybe even in the same family.
As family structures have been observed, it is usually the oldest sibling in the family that is the parent-pleaser. The younger sibling tends to be more of the rebel; the free spirited one. The first child often grows up and takes a conventional job, settling near mom and dad, while the younger sibling goes off to experience life less conventionally, and not usually in the vicinity of their parents.
In today’s society, we see how many people consider themselves non-religious or even anti-religious. They believe moral issues are highly complex and are suspicious of any individuals or institutions that claim moral victory over their lives. Likewise, there has been a considerable amount of growth of those who are now drawn to conservative religious movements. Here we see the lives of the two brothers played out.
So, whose side is Jesus on? Example- In the movie The Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits ask the ancient Treebeard whose side he is on, he answers: “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side…But there are some things of course, whose side I’m altogether not on.” Jesus’ own answer to this question is similar, and comes out in this parable. Jesus is not on the side of the irreligious or the self-righteous, but singles out the religious moralism as a particularly deadly spiritual condition.
Imagine for a moment back after Jesus died and was resurrected, and the Christian church began. They didn’t have a temple, they didn’t have priests. Where did they meet? How did they practice the sacrifices? And they would answer that they don’t make sacrifices anymore, because Jesus’ sacrifice took care of that, and they meet in homes. So because this was beyond anything they knew, the Romans called them atheists.
The irony of this parable should not be lost on us. To most people in our society, Christianity is a religion, and is moralism. The crucial point is that religious people were offended by Jesus, but those who were estranged from religious and moral observance were attracted to Jesus.
Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious, while it offended the religious. This is why the Pharisees, the religious leaders, were the ones to lie about Jesus’ guilt, and stir up the people to move Pilate to have Jesus crucified. Jesus wants the church to attract the younger brothers, and challenge the elder brothers. Overall, Jesus wants us all to follow Him!
Conclusion: The younger son certainly was a “prodigal” in the sense of the
noun form of that word. Like the “tax collectors and sinners,” the younger son
didn’t follow the rules, didn’t obey the moral laws of the Bible, certainly didn’t adhere to the rules for ceremonial purity (I mean, he lived with pigs!), and he left home to engage in wild, reckless living.
On the other hand, we see the older son maintaining the traditional morality of the family. He represents the “Pharisees and teachers of the Law.” These people studied and obeyed scripture; they worshipped faithfully, and prayed constantly.
Do you see how Luke shows the different groups’ responses to Jesus? The unrighteous are flocking to him while the self-described righteous are appalled and offended by Jesus’ acceptance of them.
The parable is actually addressing the Pharisees and teachers of the Law” whose hearts are cold toward those who need new life. The parable is a plea for the “older brothers” to change their hearts. I believe it is also a strong plea to you and me who might be – unknowingly and unintentionally – like the older brother. It is Jesus’ plea for us to have a change of heart to that of the Father who is truly “prodigal” in his lavish, extravagant love and mercy.
So in these next few weeks I want us to experience the depth of this parable so that we might be able to grow even closer to Jesus, and we might welcome all the more the “younger brothers” of our world. Let us be blessed by the words of Jesus. Amen.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Prodigal God Series; Luke 15:1-2, 11-32
(from the book The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller)
Introduction: This week we begin a new sermon series on the “Parable of the Prodigal,” found in the gospel of Luke chapter 15, and we will relate this series to our Monday night Bible study as well. The Random House Dictionary (2009) first defines the “prodigal” as an adjective: 1) wastefully or recklessly extravagant: prodigal expenditure. 2) Giving or yielding profusely; lavish; 3) Lavishly abundant; profuse. It then defines “prodigal” as a noun: A person who spends, or has spent, his or her money or substance with wasteful extravagance; spendthrift.
The term “prodigal” is used in Jesus’ well-known parable and we are quick to apply it to the younger son. But, as we study the “Parable of the Prodigal” we discover it is an even more accurate description for another central figure. Let us take some time to do an overview of the parable.
I. The Essentials- (Luke 15:11-32; 2 Corinthians 5:19)
The story of the Prodigal is really about the essentials of the Christian message,
or what we know as the gospel. While many Christians believe they understand the basics of the Christian faith, it never hurts to remember the basics, and in fact, when we look at the basics more than once, we will gain much more each time we return. It is easy to forget the radical nature of the gospel, and the radical nature of God! Sometimes, the longer you are a Christian, you tend to forget. This series will help us to look at the three main characters of the story, the father, the elder son, and the younger son, and understand God, and God’s relationship with us more fully.
Of course you probably know the story, and we just read the passage, but let me summarize for a moment: there is a father who has 2 sons. The younger asks for his share of the inheritance, he receives it, and promptly leaves for a far away country, where he spends his inheritance on frivalous pleasure. He returns home, asks for forgiveness, and to his surprise receives it with open arms from his father. But the elder brother alienates his younger brother, and gets very angry at the whole situation. The story closes with the father appealing to the elder brother to join in the celebration, and to welcome back and forgive the younger brother.
Because we know the story well, it is easy to lose the intensity and excitement of the story. If we allow ourselves to really take it in, then we will be changed in how we understand Christianity. It is a parable that can truly encourage, enlighten and help us to know God’s heart, and God’s desires.
I encourage us all, that as we go through this series, we will wrestle with the concepts that God is trying to teach us here, and let it deepen our faith in Christ. The Monday night Bible study will be an excellent time for us to process this all the more, and to join together in our growth. It will also help us to understand the Bible as a whole, as we realize that it is not right to single out the younger brother as the sole focus of the story. Even Jesus didn’t call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son. As the story starts: “a man had two sons.” The narrative is as much about the elder brother as it is about the younger brother, and as much about the father as it is about the sons.
We will learn that what Jesus says about the older brother is one of the most important messages in the Bible, and how the father responds is as important too. A better name for the parable could be “The Two Lost Sons.” Prodigal really means, “to spend until you have nothing left.” This term is therefore appropriate for describing the father in the story. The father’s welcome to the repentant son was literally reckless, because he refused to hold the son’s sins against him, or to demand a return payment. We see this response offended the older son, and the local community.
In this story, was is so telling is that the father represents the Heavenly Father Jesus knew so well. As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19- “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses.” Jesus is showing us that God is a God of great expense, willing to spend everything on us, His children. Our greatest hope then is found in this God of reckless grace. This is what should create the desire to seek out God all the more so that change might happen in our lives!
II. The People Around Jesus-
a. Two kinds of people- As I said before, most of the time when we read
this parable, we think about the younger son. The biggest reason is because in many Bibles the passage is titled “The parable of the prodigal son,” and so the focus is placed on the younger son. This morning I want us to see the bigger meaning of the parable, because in both sons, we can see different ways that we alienate God, and there are different ways to seek acceptance into the kingdom of heaven.
I started out this morning reading the first 2 verses of chapter 15 because it gives us the historical setting. Jesus is telling the story to two groups of people: on the one side you have those who are categorized as tax collectors and sinners. On the other side you have the Pharisees, who represent the teachers of the law; the religious leaders; those who are supposed to be following and living for God. Both of these groups of people had come to listen to Jesus.
If we are to understand what Jesus is doing with the parable, we see that Jesus is placing the tax collectors and sinners (who observe neither the moral laws of the Bible nor the ceremonial laws of the religious Jews; and engage in wild living) he is placing them in line with the younger brother who leaves home to experience wild living. The other group, the Pharisees, are placed in line with the elder brother. They held to traditional morality, and studied and obeyed the Scripture. They worshipped faithfully, and prayed continually.
The first two verses of the chapter is a summary of the responses we will understand from the younger and elder brothers. There was something about Jesus that brought both groups to him, even though they responded to Jesus in different ways. And Jesus was very open to receiving both groups because He knew they both needed the teaching of God in their lives. And yet, we see that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were not open to the other group, as they complained: “This man welcomes sinners and even eats with them.” They couldn’t understand why Jesus wasn’t condemning them. They didn’t believe that Jesus was telling them the truth like the Pharisees would.
So to whom is Jesus really directing this teaching? It is to the second group that Jesus is trying to impact. It is in response to their attitude against the tax collectors and sinners that leads Jesus to this story. This parable is meant to look at the soul of the elder brother, as it climaxes with a powerful plea from the father to change his heart.
While it is easy to get caught up in focusing on how the father forgives the younger son when he comes back, and this should be a focus of ours, unfortunately we have gotten too caught up in that, and missed the point that Jesus meant for His original listeners. It is about God loving us no matter what we’ve done. And so, we see that the target is about religious people who do everything the Bible requires. Jesus is pleading with the moral insiders through this story. Jesus wants to show them their blindness, narrowness, and self-righteousness, and how these things are destroying both their own souls, and the lives of the people around them. It is a mistake to view it as a story just about the younger brother.
Unfortunately, we see that the intended listeners’ hearts were not softened, but rather they were offended and infuriated by Jesus’ teaching. They, who had hard hearts, did not let this story penetrate their heart.
Through this parable Jesus challenges what nearly everyone thought about God, sin, and salvation. His story relates the destructiveness of self-centeredness (the younger brother), and condemns the elder-brothers moralistic life in the strongest terms. Jesus is telling us that both the irreligious and the self-righteous are both spiritually lost, and their paths lead to dead ends.
b. Why people like Jesus and not the church- The truth is, both the
younger brother and the older brother are with us today; living in the same society, and maybe even in the same family.
As family structures have been observed, it is usually the oldest sibling in the family that is the parent-pleaser. The younger sibling tends to be more of the rebel; the free spirited one. The first child often grows up and takes a conventional job, settling near mom and dad, while the younger sibling goes off to experience life less conventionally, and not usually in the vicinity of their parents.
In today’s society, we see how many people consider themselves non-religious or even anti-religious. They believe moral issues are highly complex and are suspicious of any individuals or institutions that claim moral victory over their lives. Likewise, there has been a considerable amount of growth of those who are now drawn to conservative religious movements. Here we see the lives of the two brothers played out.
So, whose side is Jesus on? Example- In the movie The Lord of the Rings, when the hobbits ask the ancient Treebeard whose side he is on, he answers: “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side…But there are some things of course, whose side I’m altogether not on.” Jesus’ own answer to this question is similar, and comes out in this parable. Jesus is not on the side of the irreligious or the self-righteous, but singles out the religious moralism as a particularly deadly spiritual condition.
Imagine for a moment back after Jesus died and was resurrected, and the Christian church began. They didn’t have a temple, they didn’t have priests. Where did they meet? How did they practice the sacrifices? And they would answer that they don’t make sacrifices anymore, because Jesus’ sacrifice took care of that, and they meet in homes. So because this was beyond anything they knew, the Romans called them atheists.
The irony of this parable should not be lost on us. To most people in our society, Christianity is a religion, and is moralism. The crucial point is that religious people were offended by Jesus, but those who were estranged from religious and moral observance were attracted to Jesus.
Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious, while it offended the religious. This is why the Pharisees, the religious leaders, were the ones to lie about Jesus’ guilt, and stir up the people to move Pilate to have Jesus crucified. Jesus wants the church to attract the younger brothers, and challenge the elder brothers. Overall, Jesus wants us all to follow Him!
Conclusion: The younger son certainly was a “prodigal” in the sense of the
noun form of that word. Like the “tax collectors and sinners,” the younger son
didn’t follow the rules, didn’t obey the moral laws of the Bible, certainly didn’t adhere to the rules for ceremonial purity (I mean, he lived with pigs!), and he left home to engage in wild, reckless living.
On the other hand, we see the older son maintaining the traditional morality of the family. He represents the “Pharisees and teachers of the Law.” These people studied and obeyed scripture; they worshipped faithfully, and prayed constantly.
Do you see how Luke shows the different groups’ responses to Jesus? The unrighteous are flocking to him while the self-described righteous are appalled and offended by Jesus’ acceptance of them.
The parable is actually addressing the Pharisees and teachers of the Law” whose hearts are cold toward those who need new life. The parable is a plea for the “older brothers” to change their hearts. I believe it is also a strong plea to you and me who might be – unknowingly and unintentionally – like the older brother. It is Jesus’ plea for us to have a change of heart to that of the Father who is truly “prodigal” in his lavish, extravagant love and mercy.
So in these next few weeks I want us to experience the depth of this parable so that we might be able to grow even closer to Jesus, and we might welcome all the more the “younger brothers” of our world. Let us be blessed by the words of Jesus. Amen.
posted by Logan's Blog at 4:30 PM
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