Gracious God and precious Redeemer,
for Thy mercy and grace we praise You, thanking You, Lord, that
You have bestowed upon us through Christ the blessings and mercy
of saving grace, that You have sent Him into the world, that
He might bear our sins away, that they not be imputed unto
us, but that righteousness might Father, we ask this evening that
You bless this portion of Your Word unto our heart. Let us learn. We pray that we may understand
and see these things that are here and the meaning of them.
Guide us, opening our understanding, for we ask it in the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. All right, selected readings,
I said. Look at Luke 15. First of all,
look at verse 1 and 2 because this has to come before us this
evening. Then drew near unto him all the
publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the scribes and
the Pharisees murmured, saying, This man receives sinners and
eats with them. Now verse 11 and 12. And he said,
a certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said
to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls
to me. And he divided unto them his
living." Now, going to verse 25 and to the end of the chapter. Now, the elder son was in the
field. And as he came and drew near
to the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of
the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said unto
him, Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted
calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he, that
is the elder brother, was angry and would not go in. Therefore
came his father out and entreated him. And he answering said to
his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed
I at any time thy commandment, yet thou never gavest me a kid
that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this,
thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots,
thou hast killed for him the fatty cat. And he said unto him,
Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It
was me that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother
was dead, and is alive again, and was lost, and is found."
You are aware that the first part of the parable is one of
the most popular and the most famous of all of the parables
of our Lord. That would be the parable of
the prodigal son. This man has been heard of by
many. Many wayward people have been
called a prodigal after the model of this young man. Usually the
emphasis in this preaching, in this chapter, is put not upon
the elder brother, but upon the younger son, the one who left
home, the one who fell into sin, the one who squandered his father's
living and degraded himself in the far country. Some, in using
the parable, have made this man out to be a backslider. I've heard Armenians preach on
this text of the Scripture And they see this man as a backslider. They call him a Christian who,
quote, got away from the Lord, unquote. A saved person, they
say, who for a time fell into sin and then came back again
into fellowship with the Father. There are those who would love
to use this. for what they call the carnal
Christian theory, that there are some Christians who are not
spiritual at all, and that they never have made the Lord the
Lord of their life. Now, this cannot be true in regard
to this man. First, because of the context,
and secondly, because of the purpose and the intent of the
parable, which we will get to shortly. but also from the words
of the Father. In verse 24 and again in verse
32. He said, This my son was dead
and is alive again. He was lost and he was found. Now this answers to the two things
in the beginning of the parable that were lost and then were
recovered and put back in their proper place. And they were,
number one, A lost sheep. As our Lord said, if a man has
a hundred sheep and he loses one, he leaves those in the fold. He goes and finds the one that
is lost until he finds it. That's in verse 4 and 5. But
secondly, there was a lost coin. A woman had lost a valuable coin
and she searched diligently for it. She looked under the bed.
She swept the floor. She looked in every cabinet.
Finally, she found it and restored it again to her purse. And that's
found in verse 8 and verse 9. And then comes the lost son in
this parable, who also was reconciled to his father after a season
out in sin. He was restored again to the
Father. even though he had wasted the
Father's substance in riotous and boisterous living and wound
up feeding swine so desperate had he become. But now, let's
ask ourselves the obvious question. Why did the Lord speak this parable? Who is it meant for? Who is it
directed toward? What is the message of this parable
spoken by our Lord. For you see, a parable usually
has one central thought or a central message, and it illustrates one
great truth. And though we are not to make
up points of doctrine about every little thing in the parable,
because at some point the parable will break down, still there
is a central point to every parable. And I repeat the question, why
then did our Lord give this parable? The answer is in the first and
the second verse that we have read. As the Lord was teaching,
a large number of publicans and sinners came and joined in the
congregation where our Lord was teaching. Publicans and sinners. outcasts of society came and
were listening attentively unto the Lord. Now the publicans,
of course, were the hated tax collectors among the Jews. They were Jews who had sold themselves
to the Roman government that they might collect taxes for
the Romans, and most of them enriched themselves by overtaxing
the people and keeping the rest for themselves. Others were infamous,
notorious, open sinners, outcasts, persons of bad character who
came and stood in the audience where our Lord was preaching.
But also there were Pharisees and scribes there, who whether
they came to hear or not, who can say? But they certainly came
to criticize as much as to hear. Now the Pharisees were the largest
sect of Jewry. More of them fell under the sect
of Pharisee than of the other two major parties of the Jews. And these were, I guess we could
call them, the separatists of their day. Ah, but what a picture
the New Testament paints of these people called Pharisee. In the second verse of our chapter,
the Pharisees and the scribes were critical when they saw the
great Teacher allowing such bad characters such free access to
Him and tolerating them in the presence of the audience of the
people. They said, no doubt, and said
it out loud, perhaps, this man receives sinners and he eats
with them. And they intended by this to
put a stain on the character of our Lord Jesus Christ. They
intended this to be an accusation against Him that might hold some
weight with the people. He had not only welcomed sinners
near unto him, but he held the closest communion with them,
eating, sharing meat, entering their house, sitting down at
their table, a thing that a Pharisee would never have done in that
day and time." There were other times when the same thing was
laid to Christ's charge. You have it in Luke chapter 7,
when the Lord sat at meat. with a Pharisee who had invited
him home for a meal. And there was a woman who came
in who had lived a very sinful, open life. And this woman anointed
the feet of Jesus with her tears and with ointment, and wiped
them with the very hair of her head. In verse 39 of that chapter,
the Pharisee who had guested Jesus He thought within Himself,
not out loud. He thought within Himself, whoa,
what is this? If this man were a prophet of
God, if this man were full of the Spirit of God, he would know
that this woman is a very sinful person. You have it again in
Luke chapter 19. The Lord called Zacchaeus down
out of the tree And he went home with that little Weasley tax
collector, who was the chief of the tax gatherers, and Nicodemus,
or rather Zacchaeus, was wealthy from having overcollected taxes,
and was known as a sinner. This man goeth home to be guessed
with one that is a sinner. But let's go back to our text
in Luke 15, and the words in the second verse again. This
man receives sinners and eats with them." Now, he thinks that
J.C. Ryle has a valid point when he
wrote, these words are the key to the whole chapter. Everything
in this chapter revolves around this. This man receives sinners
and eats with them. The whole chapter is a reply
to that charge laid against him. It is never lost sight of throughout
the length of the chapter. The Lord confirms His words from
Luke 5 and 32. I am come not to call the righteous,
but sinners unto repentance. The parable of the prodigal son
here in Luke chapter 15 shows that great sinners, I mean great
sinners, may be reconciled to God and they may be forgiven
and pardoned, and found the mercy of the Lord." Now, we notice
in this chapter that there are two sorts of persons that are
present while the Lord is teaching. There were the persons of unsavory
character, that would be the publicans and the sinners, the
tax cheat, the dishonest man, flagrant sinners in the sight
of God. But also present were Pharisees,
who considered themselves the very paragons of worship. These Pharisees were self-righteous
and thought themselves great examples of religion. They considered
themselves a model of perfection to be imitated. And these called
scribes were the ones that were trained in writing. They were
those that often translated or copied or made copies of the
Scripture, God's Word, and also were at the teaching of God's
Word. Now, we notice another thing
in the chapter and the parable, which is this, that a certain
man had not one son, but two sons. And the two sons were of
opposite character and behavior. They were nothing alike. They
were as different as night and day. One went away from the home
into a far country. That would be the younger son.
And he came to be a most notable and prolific sinner and a man. The other, the eldest, stayed
at home with the father. He worked in the field. He did
what the father asked him to do. He never fell into great
extravagance like his younger brother. He was not a party animal,
but was one who worked in the father's field in subjection
unto him. Consider that these two sons
are representative of the two classes of people that are in
the presence of our Lord as He spoke these words. The younger
son symbolizes the publicans and the sinners who lived wretchedly
sinful lives, who had been disobedient, who had been rebellious, who
had been lawless, not Gentiles perhaps as some think, but hues
of that character. The elder son, on the other hand,
is a symbol of the Pharisees and of the scribes, who were
very religious. They attended synagogues at the
appropriate and appointed time. They were the ones that fasted.
They gave tithes of what they possessed. They prayed loud and
loud, even in public and on the street corner. And in their own
eyes they had never transgressed the commandments of God as echoed
by that elder brother in the field. They observed the traditions
of the father. Many other such like things they
did. But what a picture of forgiving
mercy to a wretched, vile sinner do we see in the younger son's
return unto the father. as the father receives him as
a deeply contrite son, welcomes him with open arm, ran out to
meet him, fell upon his neck and hugged him and kissed him
and then brought him in the house and put on him the best robe
and killed a fatty calf and made a festival that day. But then,
beginning in verse 25, we come to the older son. What about
the elder son? How will he be treated, or how
rather will he react to the action of the father? So freely receiving
his younger brother back from the fields of sin, as we say. Will this older brother be glad,
merry? Will he rejoice? Will he join
course with the father and say, This my brother was lost and
is found. This my brother was dead and
is alive. Will he rejoice that his prodigal
brother at last has returned from the field of sin, and that
he is safe and alive, that he is humbled and that he is contrived,
that he has a new heart and a new spirit, and therefore enjoy the
privileges with the other son? Will the elder brother Rush to
embrace the younger as the father had done. Well, the answer is
no on all accounts. When he heard of it, verse 25
to verse 27, we see his reaction. Verse 28, he was angry even though
the father came out and entreated him to come and join in. He was
angry. He refused to enter in. refused
to participate in the merriment of the house because he resented
what he heard. He was greatly indignant. He thought it a great injustice
to him as a faithful son, and he thought it a waste to be feeding
a prodigal with a fatted calf, the best of the lot. He thought
his father had erred. He thought his father had wasted
his joy and merriment. and that a prized animal has
been wasted upon the prodigal. So let's see here how closely
his attitude and his conduct and his words mirror that of
the scribes and the Pharisees back in verse 1 and verse 2. Remember what it said of them?
They murmur. And they murmured the Lord's
teachings on this occasion. They murmured at the fact that
He tolerated publicans and sinners in the congregation. Another
word rendered murmured, as in Matthew 20 and verse 11, and
Luke 5 and verse 30, and John 6 and verse 41, means to grumble. This is a different word in the
Greek, means to grumble. The word in Luke 15-2, Luke 19-7
seems stronger. It means to greatly murmur, to
complain, and to do so throughout the crowd, not trying to muffle
it or to keep it down. Even so, the elder brother, when
he heard, greatly murmured. Neither murmuring of the Pharisees
or the elder brother. was directed towards the one
that they looked down upon. Rather, the Pharisees directed
their murmuring toward and against the Lord who had allowed such
to be coming. And the elder brother directed
his murmuring also against the father. In verse 29, he spoke
directly to the father and murmured about what he had done. The Pharisees
said, In verse 2, this man receives sinners and he eats with them. And the elder brother, by the
way, lays the same charge to his father, saying in verse 30,
he has come, you have received one which has devoured your living
with harlot. You have received and you have
eaten with one that is a sinner. You have welcomed a prolific
sinner into your home and to your table. Now this is the first
time that we read of the younger son, rather, yes, this is the
first time that we actually read of the younger son actually keeping
company with Harlot. And it may be true, as we read
in verse 13, of riotous living. Now the NIV has it, loose living. My Marshall's Interlinear has
it, living prodigially. That's what he did. Barry's interleaner
has it, living dissolutely, living a perverted way of life. And the elder brother seems to
mean by it, by heaping contempt upon his brother and at the same
time to blame the father for receiving and honoring such a
prodigal. Now, let's keep in mind that
the confession or contrition of the younger son in verse 18
through verse 21. Listen to him. I have sinned
against heaven and against you, he said to the father. He further
said, I'm not worthy of the title of a son. Take me to the field
and make me no more than a slave. Put me out yonder among the servants. Send me to do the most menial
of tasks because I am not worthy of the title of son." How deeply
humbled is the young man. Now, contrast the words of the
elder brother who said to the same father, I have never transgressed
thy commandment, not at any time, and I have rendered or given
to you perfect obedience. You'll see that in verse 29.
So it is time now for us to ask, what was the spiritual state
of the older brother? Must we take him for a saved
man? Is this a man who has been saved
and has been yielded and obedient unto the Father? Is this a saved
man, however one with an attitude problem? Does the parable expose
the sad state of the self-righteous people in the world. Yes, the
latter. Self-righteous people are aimed
at by this son. J. C. Ryle and others have pointed
out that this elder brother is an exact type of the scribes
and the Pharisees in the days of our Lord. In that, Luke 18
and verse 9, they trusted in themselves that they were righteous. and despised others. One went up to the temple to
pray, and the Lord gave that parable to those who trusted
that they were righteous and despised others. Paul wrote of
them in Romans 10 and verse 3, being ignorant of God's righteousness,
and going about to establish their own righteousness, they
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Consequently, they had no real righteousness before God, at
least not a justifying righteousness before God. All they had was
their self-righteousness, which the Lord severely condemned and
which the prophet Isaiah likened to filthy rags. In Isaiah 64,
excuse me, and verse 4, all our righteousness is are as filthy
rags," the prophet said. Such was the elder brother. But
he pleads here the merits of his obedience, saying, I served
all these years without once ever having a transgression against
you. Never once did I violate your
orders. Never once did I contradict one
of your commandments. Remember that man the Lord met
in Luke 19, verse 20, and Jesus said, you know, the law do this
and that and the other. And the young man said, all of
these have I kept for my youth up. Then notice that the elder
brother complained that he had not been properly rewarded for
his faithful service unto the Father. Verse 29, the last part,
you never gave me so much as a young goat. that I may celebrate
with my friends and make merry with them. The fatted calf for
the younger, not so much as a little goat, a little kid for me to
make merry. There's something here for us
not to overlook, and that is the favor shown to the younger
brother who had been a great sinner. Arouse a deep animosity
in the self-righteous older brother. This son of yours, he said, as
soon as he has come, who has wasted your living with prostitutes,
you kill for him the fat, the stall cat, kept for special occasions
for the family and celebration, while I never so much as had
a young kid, just a little goat, that I might have a merry time
with my friend. This shows that self-righteous
moralists and those who believe in legal works and have lived
what we call a moral life in their time, do not take well,
and they do not look with favor upon the free grace of God distributed
by Jesus Christ. They're not excited about the
free grace of God. The elder staked his claim to
this, having been a keeper of the law and never having dismissed
the commandment of the Father, like many today. Who do you think
of themselves as being, who do not think of themselves as being
a great sinner, as being lost? Many today who have not the marks
of Christianity, they don't think of themselves as being a sinner
in danger of the judgment and the curse of God. They don't
think of themselves as being lost and in danger of hell fire. They don't think of themselves
as undone, wretched, blind, naked of any saving righteousness. They have no sense of being a
sinner like others. They were raised in church. Or
they were raised perhaps under a moral influence. They've never
been a prodigal as to their life. They've never been drunk. They've
never been an adulterer. They've never been a gambler.
They've never been a spin thrift. They've never swindled a neighbor
or a friend. They've never been arrested.
And all this they lay out as the ground of them not being
a sinner. On the contrary, they have been
brought up in church. They've learned the creeds. They've
memorized Bible verses. They've married well and married
in the faith, given all their children Bible names and exposed
them to the creeds and the teaching of the church and Christianity.
Such, my brother and sister, are very hard to convince of
being a sinner in need of the saving grace of God. Self-righteous
men to this degree are very hard, saving for God's special work,
of course, to convince that they are a sinner because they trust
in themselves that they are in the favor of God. Now, to expand
upon an earlier thought of the animosity of the self-righteous
against free and pardoning grace, I came across this quote of a
certain commentator I'll share with you. He, that is, the elder
brother, is a type of the self-righteous, ignorant moralist who cannot
bear the doctrine of salvation by grace or endure the idea of
great sinners being completely pardoned and put on the same
level with themselves." We have another fault to point out in
the elder brother, in that he disavowed, disowned his very
own brother. In verse 30, if you will look,
referring to his brother as, this thy son. Not my brother,
but this, your son. He refuses to own the returning
prodigal as his very own flesh and blood brother. Though the
servants, in verse 27, said, thy brother is come. The father
in verse 32 refers to him also, this your brother has come. He cannot bring himself to embrace
his younger brother. But also notice, the pouting
elder brother does not confine his discontent to the younger
brother. No, he faults the father. He
accuses the father, even as the Pharisees did the Lord. You,
he said, have received a sinner. You have even eaten with him
at the table. As soon as he has come in from
the fields of sin, no sooner has he come than when he came,
his idea is this, you should have denied such to the returning
prodigal. He's unworthy of it, is the idea
of the elder brother. Gil said, the elder thought such
rejoicing and celebrating was unbecoming to the father, even
as legalists believe that only law-abiding people can be considered
the children of God." That there is no easy forgiveness for great
sinners is the thought of many in the world today. Gill also
said the elder brother would prefer another method to be taken
with the younger, such as sending him out. Disown him. Send him
away. Refuse him. Send him to the slaves'
tent, but not to the house and the table. Let him be beaten
with many stripes. Let him work day and night, keeping
the law, till he has merited the right to the father's table
and his house. Don't give him the privilege
of sonship till he has merited it by his works and by his goodness. What a contrast between the view
of himself by the two brothers. The elder saw himself as being
in perfect obedience to the commandments of the Lord and one worthy of
the blessing. The younger thought, though at
first indifferent and rebellious, came to see himself as a great
sinner, unworthy of the father's embrace or of the father's kiss. humbling himself, willing to
be a slave. Don't make me a son, just put
me out there as a slave. Old Puritan writers wrote of
the difficulty of convincing such as the older brother of
the fact that they are sinners in the sight of God. It's hard
to do. To which I might add, they remove
themselves from the church where the depravity of the race is
strongly emphasized. That kind of people don't go
around where they preach on the depravity of man and the fall
of the race. They stop their ears at hearing
of the wrath of God, want to hear the love of God. They close
their eyes to gospel truth. They're self-deceived and perhaps
by God as well deceived. They're like the death adder
that is described in Psalm 58, verse 4 and 5. that He has stopped
His ears that will not heed the tune of the charmer, though He
charms ever so wisely and ever so beautifully. Let us remember
that God hates self-righteousness. It is a stench in His nostril. It is contrary to His Word, for
He has said, There is none righteous, no, not one. None will ever sue
for mercy. or the pardon of God through
Christ, until they are shown what a sinner they are in the
sight of God. Those who see themselves as righteous,
on the other hand, will resist that and perish in their own
delusion, except God does by His sovereign grace intervene
in their life. It is an insult to all like the
elder brother. to be told that they are sinners
worthy of everlasting damnation. It is a deep insult for them
to hear such a thing, and they will go away. In closing, let's
look at the scene in Luke 18, 9-14, when the Lord Jesus Christ
spoke this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that
they were righteous and despised others. So here goes up to the
temple, a Pharisee to pray and a publican to pray. Now the Pharisee
said, what a good man I am. I do this, I fast, I tithe, I
pray. And the publican, smiting down
upon his breast, felt himself a great sinner. And he stood
there and confessed his unworthiness and sued for the mercy of God.
Be propitious is the word. God have mercy to me, the sinner,
but it is really God be propitious toward me, the sinner. Remember
something? Who went away justified that
day? Not the proud Pharisee who said, I fast, I tithe, I pray,
and I'm thankful I'm not like this old publican here. No, it
was the publican who went down to his house justified rather
than the other. Because remember this, God resists
the proud and he giveth grace unto the humble. Thus the elder
brother has taught us many good lessons from this passage of
the scripture, sort of neglected sometimes, lying at the end like
it does, and not necessarily preached upon too much. Let's
bow for prayer, please.