Jesus was definitely trying to
get across to the Pharisees and scribes at that time, particularly
in this parable, that he was looking that there would be a
law gospel distinction. He takes two characters. He takes
three characters. He takes four characters. and
begins to illuminate through a little moral spiritual story,
the parable of the prodigal son. In typical Jewish fashion, the
older brother would get double the inheritance as his siblings.
In this case, the older brother would get two-thirds and the
younger brother only a third. The younger brother says to his
dad, I want my money now. Remember the commercial for,
was it J.D. Wentworth? I want my money now. Yet what
he's saying in that reality is, You have become dead to me. You're
going to give it to me anyway. You owe it to me. Give it to
me now. And the entitlement mentality
leads him from a place of haughtiness to a place of absolute humility
and bitterness. Was this kid ADD? Was he ADHD? Was he anxious? Was he depressed?
Was he frustrated? Was he all the things that we
take medications for today that he was a little bit nutty and
saying, I want my stuff now? Or was he suffering with a super
huge case of being discontent? I'm going to tell you, it's my
thought process, that he was a malcontent to a massive degree. As we are all malcontent to a
massive degree. We're always doing something
on what's the bigger, better deal for me? What's in it for
me? FOMO, fear of missing out. I'm
in the business of comparison. And what we know is that those
things have a tendency to cause a massive amount of consternation
and problems. And it does. It causes some anxiety,
especially when we're in the business of comparison. But he
compares himself to the world and says, I want my money because
he knows what he's going to do with his money. It's already
preplanned. He's not going to the stock market
to invest it. He's not going to start an orphanage.
He's going to rock and roll and party till the cows come home.
When we find ourselves in the midst of sin and we find ourselves
going against what the Word of God has to say, we find ourselves
in a season of discontent, we are going to do exactly what
Jonathan Edwards says. We always do exactly what we
want to do according to how it's going to make us feel at any
given moment. And that's a problem because we get absorbed in the
moment and we don't look out what's going out in the distance.
We tend to be what we call myopic. What is right in front of us
right now? And we make decisions based on
what's in front of us right now, not what is necessarily going
to be better for us. This kid knew what he was going to do.
Did he ever consider, holy mackerel, there's an end to the party.
I don't know exactly what riotous living this kid does because
it's a parable. But let's take it for what he did. He got crazy.
I mean, there was a no bars hold kind of attitude. He had the
money, he could afford all the good things. And that's exactly
what he did. He was riotous. He was prodigal. He took his money and he wasted
it with reckless abandon. There was nothing left. What
does it profit a man to gain the world yet lose his soul. He gained everything that the
culture in the world would tell you that was good at that moment,
right? Let's eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may
die. And he imbibed, and ate, and all that kind of thing until
there was nothing left, and his friends helped him do it, and
what good friends he had to help him do all that partying, right?
Hey, you gotta go to the store, we're running out of this, and
you get to the store and run out of this. No more money. Here's
the problem. He lost the glorious days of
champagne and filet mignon. And if you've ever had champagne
and filet mignon, it's better than burger fries and coke. Burger
fries and cokes are better than dumpster diving. But here's a
young Jewish boy who now has to find his way into the working
world again. And what does he do? He goes
somewhere where he's humiliated beyond belief. So there's four
humiliations for a young Jewish boy finding himself in the hog
pen. Number one, he subjected himself
to a pagan. If we look at the preceding parable,
and we're talking about the Good Samaritan, which is worth investigating,
there's a reason why He's humiliated when it comes down to submitting
himself and subjecting himself to the authority of a pagan.
The Jews of that time did not think that that was very lofty
at all. As a matter of fact, they thought the pagan was very
low. Number two, he had to feed the pagan's pigs. What do we
know about Jews even today? What don't they eat? They don't
eat pork. They don't eat pigs. So imagine
not only are you humiliated from that standpoint, but the fact
is now you're feeding what you would never eat yourself. Number
three, he's not even eating as well as the pigs. Now that's
got to be humiliating because he doesn't eat pigs. He's not
supposed to eat pigs. The pigs are eating better than
him. So now he realizes in a caste system that he's lower than what
he values as low. Number four, no one gives him
food, not even the slob. So he comes to this conclusion,
even my father's servants are treated better than this. So
he looks at what he would never participate in. He realizes the
caste system that he finds himself in, lower than the swine, and
then comes to realize, I've got to come to my senses. And the
scripture says, he comes to his senses, which means now he thinks
about what is going on, the decision that he makes, the gravity, the
weight, the encompassing of the bad decisions that says, look
it, this is no good. I am in a bad place. bad place. There is nothing good that can
come from this at all. He realizes that he has sinned
against his Father. Is this not the great revelation
that we have as someone who's walking around lost and then
we come to our spiritual senses that we begin to realize that
we have sinned against our Heavenly Father? And that's the analogy. Remember, keep this in mind.
He's talking to the Pharisees and the scribes. So every allegory,
every little type and shadow that he's putting inside of this
parable, they should understand. And they should understand it
in full because these are the things that they were teaching
to the Jewish people at that time. And so when they're talking
about, do this, do that, jump higher, run faster, try harder,
you've got to give your best, you're not working hard enough,
they understood that. And then along comes Jesus and
begins to deconstruct all of these ideas. He hems us into
the idea that, you know what, we're not going to keep the law.
You mean to tell me, do you really think, does anybody here really
think that the scribes and the Pharisees of that time kept the
law perfectly? No. He comes into his senses
and he realizes he has to go home. When we run from the law,
we have a tendency to not come home. When we run from grace,
we have a tendency to want to come home. Because grace forgives
the sins that we have committed. So think about the idea, he says
he comes to his senses, he realizes he has sinned against his father,
and he wants to go home. Think of every time when you
were a little kid and something went wrong, what did you think
in the back of your mind? I just want to go home. The Wizard of
Oz, there's no place like home. And so the home becomes something
different. He wants to run back to his father's estate. He wants
to run back to his father's arms. He's already been humiliated.
He begins to recite what he's going to say to his father. I've
sinned against you, father, and only against you have I sinned.
I'm not worthy to even be called your son anymore. Put me in line
of your servants because they're doing better than me. At least
they're not humiliated because they know their place. They have
food to eat. They probably have a hot shower.
They probably have a cot to lay on. They have things that I don't
even have anymore. And so, he goes off to home.