“The Feast of the Father”
Sunday, February 7, 2010; Luke 15:22-27
Series: The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller

Introduction: Up to this point we have talked about how what Jesus teaches us in this parable is the gospel: that God seeks out those who are lost, and receives those who confess their sin, and welcomes them into His family. With this truth we receive a new identity, a new nature. Our lives are changed as we have this relationship with God. But what then? How are we to live from there?

We talked last week about how the father threw a feast for his son who had returned, and how at the end of the world we will have a feast with God. But just before Jesus left this earth, He too instituted a meal that was to be like a feast; The Lord’s Supper. This meal is a sign of God’s saving grace.

So let’s finish our series this morning by talking about three ways to exper-ience a feast, which corresponds with the ways we are to let Jesus shape our lives.


I. Salvation is experiential- (John 2:1-12)

a. Sensory- One of the great things about eating a meal, is not just its
nutritional value, or that it gives the body energy, but the fact that God has designed us so we enjoy the sight, and smell, and taste of the food as well. FOR EX.- When we come to the table, and there is food there that we love to eat, before we even sit down we say, “That food looks and smells good!” We experience it through more than just our sense of taste, but also our sense of smell and sight.

In the gospel of John, chapter 2, we are told that Jesus attended a wedding reception. At this reception the couple ran out of wine too early. This put the couple in danger of being deeply embarrassed. Jesus chose to honor a request and change some water into wine. Why would Jesus honor this request? Why was it important to make sure the wine didn’t run out?

The answer to this is that Jesus knew the importance of the joy that comes from a celebration of this kind. Jesus is the Lord of the feast, and wanted to make sure that the people continued in this feasting spirit. Salvation is not only legal in nature, where Jesus pays the penalty of our sin, but also sensory. The Bible talks about us needing to “taste and see” that the Lord is good.

Jesus’ salvation for us is a feast. As we believe and rest in Jesus’ work for us, the Holy Spirit becomes real to our hearts. But we need to do more than just believe that God loves us, we need to sense this reality and experience the power of this love. God’s love can become more real to us than the love of anyone else. God’s love can delight us, and console us, and strengthen us. God’s love lifts us above our fears.

b. Strong feelings- This makes all the difference. If you are filled with
shame and guilt, you do not merely need to believe in the abstract concept of God’s mercy. You must sense, on the palate of the heart, the sweetness of God’s mercy. Then you will know that you are accepted. If you are filled with worry and anxiety, you do not only need to believe that God is in control of history. You must see, with the eyes of your heart, God’s wonderful majesty. Then you will know that God has things in hand.

You might wonder, is it really possible to have this kind of experience? Some people find this more difficult than others, because they are of a more rational, controlled temperament. Others are so hungry for mystical experiences that they read into their every intuition and feeling as if they are a word from the Lord.

But Jesus does offer to us access to the presence of the Father. While we live on this earth we get just a foretaste of what we will experience in heaven, but the more we seek the Spirit of God, the greater the taste we will have. The hymn writer Isaac Watts speaks of it in these lines from one of his hymns: “The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets before we reach the heavenly fields or walk the golden streets.”


II. Salvation is material- (Matthew 25:31-46)

a. Physical creation is good- Along with experiencing a meal through
our senses, a meal is also a physical experience. The Lord’s Supper is to be experienced physically, not just mystically. Because of this, we see that Jesus believes that the material world does matter.

The book of Genesis tells us that when God made this world, He looked at the physical creation and called it “good.” God loves and cares for the material world. The fact that Jesus was resurrected and the promise of a new heaven and earth show clearly that God still cares for the material world. This world isn’t just a theatre for God’s show, to be discarded at the end. No, the ultimate purpose of Jesus is not only individual salvation and pardoning of sins, but the renewal of this world; the end of disease, poverty, injustice, violence, suffering, and death. The climax of history is not a higher form of disembodied consciousness, but a feast. God made this world with all of its colors, tastes, sounds, lights, and all of its independent systems. This material world is now stained and broken because of sin, and God will not rest until this world has been made right again.

There are many philosophies that say this world is just an illusion, or a temporary copy. If that were true, then this world would be unimportant. All that would matter would be the issues of our soul and spirit. However, Jesus was not simply saved in His spirit, but resurrected in body. God made both the soul and the body, so there is an important reason for us to live in this body. Although Jesus’ main concern was the healing of our spirit, for us to be saved in Him, Jesus also healed the sick, fed the hungry, and cared for the needs of the poor.

b. Salvation seen in serving others- In the gospel of Matthew, chapter
25, Jesus describes Judgment Day. Jesus says that at the judgment day many will stand there in front of Jesus and call Him “Lord,” but Jesus will respond that He does not know them. Jesus says that what will show God that we are saved, that we are His children, and He is our Lord, is how we treat the hungry, the sick, the prisoners, and the outcasts. In other words, how we serve in this material world, shows that we understand how God cares for the material.

This is not a contradiction to what we have been talking about in the Parable of the Prodigal. Jesus is saying that the inevitable sign that you know you are a sinner, saved by God’s grace, is having a sensitive social conscience and serving those in need. Younger brothers are too selfish to do this, and elder brothers are too self-righteous to do this.

Christianity, therefore, is materialistic in this way. Jesus’ miracles were not so much violations of the natural order, but a restoration of the natural order. God did not create a world with blindness, leprosy, hunger, and death in it. Jesus’ mir-acles were signs that someday all these corruptions of God’s creation would be abolished.

Jesus hates suffering, injustice, evil, and death so much, He came and experienced it to defeat it and, someday wipe it away. So to know this should lead us as Christians to be motivated to do something about hunger, sickness, and injustice. Christianity teaches us that God hates the suffering and oppression of this material world so much that He chose to get physically involved in the fight against it.


III. Salvation is individual- (James 2:18; Matthew 13:23)

a. Individual nourishment- A meal fuels growth through
nourishment. The Lord’s Super or Communion represents ongoing growth in God’s grace. In order for us to survive and grow, we must eat and drink regularly. This is what we must do with the grace of God as well. We must make sure that God’s grace is central to our lives; in what we see, think, and feel.

As we have talked about this in this parable, believing in the gospel of Christ is how a person makes a connection with God. It gives us a new relationship; a new identity. It is like the younger son coming home from being lost. But just believing in the gospel is not enough; we are not finished with the gospel method. It is like what James said in James 2:18- “Someone may well say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works and I will show you my faith by my works.” Faith and works need to go hand in hand.

We regularly look to other things besides God and His grace for justifying us, giving us hope, and helping us to feel secure. We struggle to believe the gospel enough to let it change our behavior from one of selfishness to one of giving. To overcome this struggle we must feed on the gospel, digesting it, and making it part of who we are. This is how we grow. This is how we are individually nourished.

EX. The other day I had two sponges. One was soaked and the other was dry. I set down the soaked sponge on the counter, and then placed the dry one on top of it without thinking. When I came back a few minutes later, I realized that the water had soaked into the dry sponge. As I thought about this, it didn’t surprise me, because that is what sponges do, they soak up that which is around them.

As I was writing this sermon on Monday, my mind went back to the sponges, because it reminded me of my own coming to Christ. I grew up in a family that believed in God, but didn’t go to church. I was taught right from wrong. But as I got to high school, I started having friendships that led me to do wrong things. In my sophomore year, I re-connected with an old baseball friend, who invited me to church. Through his bringing me to church, and his prayers for me, I ultimately gave my life to Christ.

This is where the sponge comes in. We are like sponges. When I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, I was soaking up what they believed and how they behaved. Then when I went to church, I started soaking up what other believers believed, and how they behaved.

This reminds us that salvation is individual, but it is also communal. We become saved as an individual, but we are to live out our salvation with God’s people!

b. Communal nourishment- As I said before, as believers we cannot
live out the gospel and be selfish. The solution to stinginess is a reorientation to the generosity of Christ in the gospel, where He poured out His wealth for you and me. The cross of Christ proves that God cares about your every need. The point is that what makes us responsible and generous Christians is not the desire to follow the moral laws, but a deep understanding of our salvation through Christ. Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behaving according to the rules without a heart-change will be short lived.

The gospel is not just the ABC’s of the Christian life. It is not just reading our Bible on our own and then trying to live it out. The only people who produce changed lives are those who as Matthew 13:23 says, “hear the word of God and understand it.” It is about understanding the costliness of what Jesus has done for us. It is understanding the seriousness of our sin, just as the younger brother finally realized the seriousness of his sin, and had a change in attitude and behavior.

The more we are around others who understand this and live it out, the more likely we are to do the same. This is why it is so important to feast with community. We live in a culture in which the interests and desires of the individual take precedence over those of the family, group, or community. As a result, a high percentage of people want to achieve spiritual growth without losing their independence to a church or organized institution. This is why you hear people say all the time: “I am spiritual but not religious,” or “I like Jesus, but not the church.” They say they are interested in a relationship with God, but not if they have to be part of an organization.

Now this isn’t completely surprising, because many churches are filled with elder brothers—people who want the benefits of being in a relationship with God, but don’t want to have to welcome in those whom they consider to be “sinners.” And yet, they don’t realize that staying away from churches because they have self-righteous elder brothers in them,, is just another form of self-righteousness; they are declaring that they are better than those in the church. You cannot have a Christian life without a band of Christian friends; without a family of Christian believers.

C.S. Lewis, in talking about this connection we make in the presence of other believers, said in his book The Four Loves: “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity….The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall have.”

Conclusion: Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal lets us know that He is the Bread of Heaven. Jesus tells us that both the sensual way of the younger brother and the ethical way of the elder brother are spiritual dead ends. He also shows us that there is another way; through Him. To enter that way and to live a life based on His salvation will bring us finally to the ultimate party at the end of history. We can have a foretaste of that future salvation now when we truly make a connection with God through having a relationship with God’s people.

In a moment we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. We will feast in the presence of God and one another. We will do this, hopefully being like the younger brother, understanding our sin, and the grace of God. Let us not be like the elder brother, concerned about the sins of others. But rather, understand that in our imperfection, we are welcomed together by God, through Christ at the celebration of the feast. Let us praise God for His being a prodigal God to us, one who is extravagant in His love, grace, and mercy. This day, and every day. Amen.