The latest Sermon

Rev. Ellen Campbell Gardner

Isaiah 30:1-5, Luke 15:11-12

We ask that by your Holy Spirit, you would open our eyes to understand, that you would grant us the faith to believe it. And by your Spirit, you would enable us to walk in that belief. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. 

 Our Old Testament text this morning is from Isaiah. And it addresses the actions of Judah. Judah, you know, that's the southern kingdom after the split. And it's the kingdom that is considered to be the more faithful. It's the kingdom in which Jerusalem resided. 

 And that kingdom was under great threat at this time by Assyria. The massive, massive powerhouse country to the north of Israel. And people, instead of looking to God for their deliverance and for their direction, are looking to Egypt, of all countries, to save them. 

 And Isaiah is rebuking them and calling them, these children of God, to look to their Heavenly Father for their future security. Not human powers that pass away. But the power that never passes away. And so, from Isaiah, the 30th chapter, verses 1 through 5. Listen now for the Lord of the Lord. 

 Stubborn children, declares the Lord. Who carry out a plan but not mine. And who make an alliance but not of my spirit. That they may add sin to sin. Who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my direction. To take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh. And to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore, shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to shame. And the shelter in the shadow of Egypt be your humiliation. For though his officials are at Zion and his envoys reach Haines. Everyone comes to shame through a people that cannot profit. That brings neither health nor profit, but shame and disgrace. 

 And from our New Testament, this text that I'm going to share with you today is a text that you all know. It's what we sometimes call the parable of the prodigal. But it comes about because Jesus is confronted by Pharisees and people of the law. And they accuse him of eating with the unclean. A.k.a. the tax collectors and the sinners. 

 And Jesus enters then into a series of parables about God's view of the lost. And that's where our New Testament text is found today. And for the next three Sundays, we're going to be working through the prodigal. The passage, I call it the parable of the lost sons. So, we'll just read Luke 15 verses 11 through 12 today. 

 And Jesus said, there was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of property that's coming to me. And he divided his property between them. This is the word of the Lord. 

 So, in our text, we have three people. In this parable, there are three people that are described. We have the father. And we have his two sons. And there's two things that throughout this parable we're going to be looking at. And that is, one, the first thing is the ways that the sons alienate the father. And secondly, the ways that they are looking for their happiness. For their salvation. 

 So, the father in our parable represents our Heavenly Father. He represents how God cares for us. The younger brother, who traditionally is the focus of this parable, but I don't think is really the focus of the parable. He's the one we often call the prodigal. And he represents to Jesus, or in Jesus telling this text, he represents the tax collectors and the sinners that the Pharisees accuse him of being with. Nowadays we would say the people that used to come to church but don't come anymore, or the people that have never darkened a church. These people violate what we think. They violate Scripture by not being here and worshiping. They violate spiritual laws. They violate purity, rituals, and engage in wild living. Those are the people that Jesus is speaking about with the younger brother. 

 But I said there were two brothers. And so as we move through this series, we're going to look at the older brother as well. Often, we don't do that. We just look at the younger brother. Maybe kind of like we are in the church. We just look at the people out there as the ones who have brokenness, or a lack of reliance on God. But Jesus doesn't do that. And so he has this older brother, and he represents the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Ouch. They're the ones that hold on to tradition and worship in the temple and pray constantly. They're the ones that never left home. And I don't think that there's never been a time that the church, at least recently, that the church doesn't make to look honestly at who we are and what are the areas in which we are not being faithful. But I don't want to look at that in a negative, finger-pointing way, neither at the older brother or the younger brother. 

 I want to start this series looking at who our Heavenly Father is. And because of that, how we can step away from our brokenness or our prejudice and enter into the fullness of life with our Heavenly Father. And so I want to start by defining what does prodigal actually mean? I mean, we've heard it all our lives, but what does that word actually mean? And so I went to the dictionary. 

 It's an adjective. It describes a noun, right? And it's characterized by profuse or wasteful expenditure. Lavish. And that makes sense with the younger brother, right? Lavish, wasteful expenditure. Reckless, a spendthrift. The third definition is yielding abundantly, luxuriantly. 

 I want you to hold those in your mind. I'm going to remind you of those throughout the sermon, but I want you to hold those thoughts of what prodigal means in your mind. Because why would I say then that the real prodigal here is the father? And I mean that for cultural reasons. 

 So, let's go back to the culture of that day. In that day, the father was the center of the whole family. Even their houses were built like that, where the house of the father was in the center, and then he built houses for the members of the family around that house so that it's all really one house, but the center of it is the father's house. 

 Everything in the family belonged to the father. Everything. The land, the people, the animals. Everything belonged to the father. The father also had absolute rule. His word was law. Disrespect was not tolerated. If you go to Leviticus, you will find directions for the father to kill a child if they do not obey, if they're disruptive, if they're disrespectful. So, the father had the power of life and death over everything in the family. Tradition states that only with the death of the father would the property be divided up, and when it was divided up, the lion's share goes to the first son, and then a very smaller portion goes to the second, third, fourth, whatever. Also, when the father dies, the oldest son moves into the father's house, and everybody kind of moves to different houses based on where they fit in the family. 

 So, if you understand that then, you can imagine when the youngest son went to the father and said, give me the share of property that's coming to me, that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law must have gasped. This is an unthinkable, unthinkable impudence. Unthinkable. Now, no son would ever ask that, but this son did. In Jesus' story, this son asked the unaskable. Not only was it disrespectful, give me a demand to the father, but it wasn't his property. Until the father died, it was the father's property. 

 Basically, what this son is saying to the father is, I don't want you. I want the property that I get when you die. So in other words, what the son is saying is, I want you dead, Dad. 

I don't want anything to do with you. I want your stuff more than you. This would have gotten not only the Pharisees hot and bothered, but if the people that actually lived that were in this parable, it would have gotten the whole town hot and bothered, not to mention the brother. 

 Can you imagine the brother? Because what this means is that the father, if he's going to do this, he needs to take a portion of his house and sell it. He needs to take a portion of his land and sell it. He has to take a portion of his animals and sell it. He has to take a portion of everything he owns and take it into town in front of all the people and the humiliation of that and sell it. So not only would their jaws be wagging about the fact that he is selling his stuff, but that he lets his son treat him like this. Terrible humiliation to the father. And when you have to sell something quick, you don't get full value, do you? So not only does he have to sell it, but he has to know that he's not getting what he was valued. 

 So, in the eyes of everyone, this father is a fool. So, Isaiah 30 really sounds like it hits the nail on the head, doesn't it? All stubborn children, declares the Lord, who carry out a plan but not mine, and who make an alliance but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin, who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh, to seek the shelter of the shadow of Egypt. 

 But perhaps the Pharisees and the teachers would be most angered that the father didn't do his duty, going against tradition, giving the son what he wanted, instead of what the Bible told him to do. So what is Jesus doing by telling this story? Jesus is defining the way that human beings alienate themselves from God. I think sometimes we only want God for what God can give us. 

 I think our prayers kind of show that, don't they? I think, or I don't think, I know, that rebellion is in our nature. You're not the boss of me. That goes all the way back to Genesis, the second chapter, doesn't it? When the serpent just insinuates that idea, right? Does he really mean that? I think that he's trying to just keep this from you because he doesn't want you to have as much power as he, being God. 

 And we kind of bought into that, didn't we? That's our first sin, to think that we know better than God. He is defining, Jesus is defining the lost look. Of how we live. 

 But more than that, he's defining the true character and the true nature of the Father, because he alone knows the Father perfectly, right? In the very same essence as the Father. He is the true prodigal. Jesus is the true prodigal, and the Father that he's naming is the true prodigal. 

 Wasteful expenditure. Why did the father, in this parable, waste all of his things on this young boy, his second son? I'm sure there are many people in town that said he was being a reckless spendthrift by allowing this to happen. He, third definition, yielded abundantly to his son. Not because he was a cuckold, not because he was not a wise father, but because he knew that he could not get through to that son. He knew that son was going to do whatever he was going to do, and he was going to allow him to make the mistakes, but later on in the story, he was going to be waiting every day for him to come home. What a father. 

What an amazing prodigal father. And that's the father that Jesus wants us to know. That's the father that Jesus only can put into words, because Jesus alone understands the Father perfectly, because Jesus was perfect in that sin. 

 Philippians 2 says it best, in your relationship with others, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. In other words, know the Father the way Jesus knows the Father, because he was in the very nature God, and he didn't consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage, but Jesus made himself nothing, and took the very nature of a servant, and was made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself in becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross, and you don't do that for a father that's not worthy. You do that. You give yourself in a prodigal way, because you understand that your father loves you that way. The younger lost brother never had that kind of mindset, because he didn't know, he didn't want to know, this prodigal father of his, and Jesus is correcting the picture for us, because many of us didn't have a prodigal father when we were growing up. For many of us, it is hard to imagine a father that would love us the way Jesus is describing our heavenly Father loves us, but isn't that the gift this morning? That if you come in with a suspicion of the word father, you can leave entering into a world, where just like that sweet baby's voice, you can trust your heaven, and that's where the grace comes in on the title of the sermon today. 

 That's the prodigal grace of God. There's not one of us in this room that can say that we deserve the love of God, the way we've treated people, the things that we've done in our lives. Every single one of us. 

 We may think we're the older brother, but there are parts of the younger brother in all of us. But when we know our heavenly prodigal father, when we understand the grace, then we can be like Jesus. We can humble ourselves, because the Father shows us genuine humility. 

 Like Jesus, we can be free of the temptation to consider equality with God as something to be grasped, because we're in awe of who God is, of how the Father loves us. Like Jesus, we can take on the nature of a true servant, because it is our heavenly Father's nature to serve us by giving us His only Son. And like Jesus, we know that even death on the cross can't separate us from the resurrected love of Jesus Christ, of our heavenly Father. 

 On All Saints Day especially, isn't it beautiful to say together, to agree together, that the Father would never leave His Son, even in death. And those saints are living the eternal life that He has promised us. Jesus is showing us the prodigal nature of our heavenly Father, and in His love for us, He divines the best way that grace can ever be defined of that unmerited favor. It can't be earned. Neither of the sons could earn the love of the Father. It's something that the Father freely gives. And so we count on God's grace and the bridge that He builds in His relationship with us. And so Jesus knew that and He shares it with us. The question this morning, as I finish, is do you know that kind of love? And if you don't, can you be open to learning just how much your heavenly Father loves you? And that He won't leave you, even when things feel hopeless. That He's making a way for you, even through death. 

 In the next weeks, we're going to be exploring the two sons and how they reflect people outside the church the younger brother, people inside the church, the older brother. Each of them have prodigal rebellion and prodigal resentments. And both of them can allow that to separate them from the Father. I'm asking you to find the fit. Which one do you identify with the most? But the purpose of this series shines a light on the prodigal grace and I don't want us to ever lose that in the next two weeks. 

 Have the Father that each one of us can have. And I pray that as you meditate on this truth, no matter what the word Father has meant to you up to this point, that you will consider the truth of the Father that Jesus describes and shares with us. One that loved with prodigal grace. 

 Lavish, spendthrift grace. Luxuriant. Yielding abundantly that you might have life.