God The Father

Luke 15:11-32

INTRO: Today is father’s day. There are those of us who are fathers and grandfathers some even great grandfathers. I was thinking about this and I realize that a number of us are “empty nesters”. Our children have left home not just to go to college but to be on their own, perhaps in far away places, maybe to start families of their own. I wondered for those of us in that situation, do we stop being fathers for our children when they leave? How do we continue to be a dad when our kids are grown? How does that relationship change?

Certainly we do not have the same relationship, that same authority line, to use a word maybe kids don't want to hear. How do you deal with a grown child?
Indeed, what is my responsibility to my children and their families once they leave home and have their own family – leaving father and mother and cleaving to their spouse?
These questions are not made-up questions, but things I think about and have been thinking about since our daughter got married. In fact how do you deal with the fact they are married?

You've now got a son-in-law or a daughter-in-law perhaps even both and you don't have the same history with them, obviously, as you have your own children.
You're knowledge of them is limited, especially at the beginning of their marriages. It is something we have to learn about. Parenting grown kids is very, very different than parenting children at home and the relationship is nowhere near the same.

I think about stories in the Bible of godly fathers, and I look to them to give me some examples, because these are not hypothetical questions, they are real questions.

Our lesson today is taken from Luke 15:11-32 which I’m sure you will recognize. One verse in particular I would like us to consider is Luke 15:20 "So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.” [para]
The focus of this sermon is the father found in the story of the prodigal son. There are lessons we can learn from this dad.

In the parable that we're going to look at today, Jesus tells us about a father, and in the parable the dad is a representation of God the Father and how God parents grown children.   I want to live in such a way, that even though my children are no longer at home, they will never doubt my love for them or my desire for them to be right with God and so I wanted to look again at this parable..  

I’ll admit I never really thought through this story from the fathers point of view.
I've dealt with the story of the prodigal son by considering the son or dealing with the older brother or a combination of both in the sermon.

Before we dig into the father of the story, it’s helpful if we hear and understand why Jesus tells the story.

I. Background Gives Meaning to the Message - Luke records for us the context of the three parables that we find in Luke 15. Let’s start with why Jesus told these three parables before we look at the last one today.

A. Luke 15 opens with these words Luke 15:1-2 – “ Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to Him to hear Him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them.''” The reason for the parable, the reason Jesus tells all three of these parables, is verse 2, “this man receives or welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

1. That’s the issue here. Jesus interacts with them as if they were equals or friends, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law see them as sinners and He eats with them. These teachers of the law have made this statement around how much of a connection—should religious people have with non-religious people or religious people that are not acting righteously.
2. In fact, to their point of view, eating with, welcoming, being in some type of fellowship with, tax collectors, and sinners would be wrong.

B. To appreciate the parables, we need to understand this group of people that came to Jesus, whom Jesus has table fellowship with. These are people who, by definition, were excluded from the religious community.

1. I would guess most of these people do not attend the synagogue on the Sabbath. They would not be welcomed in those synagogues and if they were there they would not be in fellowship with others as we see in Luke 18:13 – “And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven...” These people are, for the most part, considered to be outside of a covenant fellowship.
2. My guess is they are outside of that general bonding that happens in the religious community, but yet these people came to hear Jesus. Obviously, as you take a look at the Ministry of Jesus, He spends a tremendous amount of time reaching out to the very people that the religious world had forgotten about, or pushed aside, or had deemed unworthy.
3. Yet here they are wanting to hear Jesus. We are not told how they knew of Jesus, perhaps by word of mouth, or that His reputation is of one that cares. They gather around him to listen to him. Jesus accepted these people as they were, not what they were worth to the religious assembly. Jesus wanted them to hear God’s message. Unconsciously, His enemies spoke in these words the Master's highest praise. Intended by them as a slander, the words have been treasured by the church of all ages as glorious and eternal truth. I’m thinking of the hymn we sing; “Sing it o'er and o'er again: Christ receiveth sinful men; Make the message clear and plain: Christ receiveth sinful men!”

C. Jesus is not condoning their actions but is affirming their value in the eyes of God. I say that, because in all three parables, the message is that when a person repents, God forgives.

1. Jesus is not saying these people don’t need to repent, in fact, just the opposite. There is repentance that needs to take place, but when it does, forgiveness is immediately and completely given by God. God desires these “tax collectors and sinners” to be a part of His great family. He places value upon them for who they are, not what their value is to the religious community.
2. If we were living in that time He would not be condoning our actions, but valuing each of us as a person, wouldn't “we” want to hear what He had to say? It is the same today, He can look at you and He can see that you have worth, even though inside you may feel unworthy of anything.

II. God Hurts - Let’s look at the dad of the last parable and see what lessons we can learn from him.

A. I want to take a look at the story from the father’s point of view. Luke opens the parable of the prodigal son in; Luke 15:11-12 – “Then 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.' So he divided to them his livelihood”. I have heard people say that the father in this story was wrong for giving the younger son his inheritance. You may disagree with what the dad did, but before you say his actions were unwise, let me remind you that the father of the story Jesus tells, is our Father in heaven. So at this point I’m trying to grasp how the father in the parable did the Godly thing.
B. What Jesus is talking about is how God the Father deals with His children, specifically, the tax collectors and sinners. The giving to the younger son is simply the statement that our Father in Heaven gives us the freedom to love him or forsake him. I repeat, this is really a story from the father’s point of view, and with understanding that the father, is God. There's only one conclusion that I could come to then, and that is God never forces me to be a part of the family.

1. He doesn't do that. It's an honor to be a part of His family. It's a blessing to be a part of Him, but He never forces me to be a part of Him. God will not force your obedience. He wants you to want Him, to see your need for Him, to rely upon Him, but God will not make you stay in the family.
2. We need to understand a truth that is seen in the overall story, God hurts when we think we know better how to live our lives, than being under the guidance of God and a part of the family of God.
3. If as I grow, I decide that I love the world more than I love the Father and I want to live my life my way more than I want to live under the guidance of the Father, then I can take what I think are the blessings that I have been given by God and go and live my life the way I want to live my life. The son is saying; “I would rather get from you what I can get then to be in a relationship with you. In light of that, the father lets him go.
4. Thinking about that this statement that the son makes, it has to hurt the father. Parents hurt when their child leaves home and throws the love of the parents away.
5. It’s not that the child hates the dad here, but the child believes he can lead his life better than being at home with his father. When children refuse a parent’s love because they want to do their own thing, ignore the warnings given by the parent, --the parent hurts.

C. If I think on this story and examine myself, I find that I bring pain to God when my desire to live my life, my way, is me being like the younger son, wanting what God has to offer, but not the God who is offering it.

1. The Father says, I understand that your desire is not to be in a relationship with me, and I'm not going to force that relationship. If you think you can do better out on your own than you can with my wisdom and guidance and love and support then--I'll let you go.
2. To think that the father of this story doesn't hurt, that he just gives the son money and lets him walk away, I think misses the parable, misses all three of the parables, and the meaning behind the father's pain. It is dismissing God when I crave sin more than desire a relationship with Him. When I do so I have done to my Heavenly Father exactly what the prodigal son did to his father.

III. God Forgives - There is more to this teaching by Jesus than just that God hurts when I choose to live in sin instead of in His family.

A. I would have to say that there are times in my life where I have willfully and openly chosen to live in sinful actions that I know are absolutely counter to God. Yet at that moment, I really did not care. I wanted my sinful way of life. It’s what I wanted because I believed it would bring me more happiness in the moment.
B. Let us continue in Luke 15:13 – “the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.”[KJV] The younger son takes his inheritance, goes far away and wastes that property in ways that are obviously sinful, until it’s gone. And then in Luke:15:14 – “And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.”[ESV]

1. His inheritance is gone and a famine strikes where the young man is living, and he has two choices: die of starvation or find a job to survive.
2. You know what? Dying isn't his choice. He goes out to find a job. Verse 15 – “So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.”
3. Look at the context of all this. The boy gets a job to feed pigs. I don't think Jesus is making this story overly complicated for us to figure out. I am hearing Jesus speak right into my life as well as the lives of those listening. If I am like one of those tax collectors and sinners, and I chose to walk away from the relationship that comes from God’s family, and if I chose to live the way I wanted to live, and then I find that I do not like what my life has become, I did it to myself.
4. Those people may understand the pigs much better than you and I understand them. The young man finds himself feeding pigs. He doesn't just find himself feeding pigs, the Bible says in the next verse that he finds himself wanting to eat the food that he is feeding them.
5. That tells me that pigs are more valuable than the boy is to the owner of the pigs. He who had found the benign governance of his father so unbearable, has been reduced to submission as one of the lowest menials.

C. Back to the parable in verse 17, Luke 15:17 – “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” It says “he came to himself”, some translations say he “came to his senses.”

1. When he came to his senses, what does he remember? The relationship with his father. He remembers what it's like to be a part of the family. His desire is to go back home and to be a part of that again.
2. That's a very difficult thing to do, because the moment you do that, you've got to admit you messed up. Most people don't want to get to that point. They don't want to say, I messed up, I walked away. They want to find a way to blame their situation on someone or something else. It's the church's fault, it's God's fault, it's my family's fault.
3. This boy, to his credit, told himself the truth. Instead of a false bravado with which he might have screwed up his courage to stick it out, he simply faced up to the facts of his hunger, loneliness, and hopelessness.

D. He puts together his confession and his decision in verses 18 and 19, Luke 15:18-19 – “I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.'' '”

1. The son plans to talk to his father and he's going to say; “I’ve sinned against heaven and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called a son.” Would you give me a job? He is asking; Would you at least let me be kind of connected to the family, if not a part of the family? Could I be on the outskirts of the family and still enjoy a little bit of the benefits of the family?
2. Remember, if you were listening to Jesus talk and heard the first two stories and now this third one, you knew as a sinner Jesus was talking about you. Jesus spoke into your life, your past, and reminded you that you are spiritually where you are because of your own choices.
3. These people were coming to hear Jesus for a reason. They were on their journey from the pigs back home and Jesus takes them to the Father in the parable.

E. The son has put his confession together in his head and then we come to Luke 15:20. “he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”

1. Whoa! Wait a second. Doesn't that boy need to say, Father, I totally messed up. I am wrong. I am no longer worthy to be called your child. Doesn't he need to get all of that out first?
2. Verse 20 is full of emotion: But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, felt compassion, ran and embraced him. Wait, doesn't he need to sit on that front row and confess every sin he's ever done publicly in front of everybody else and be totally humiliated before we could give him a hug?

F. The Bible says while he, the son, was yet a great way off, his father saw him. How did that happen? I suspect we might say the father had kept an “eye out” for the son. Remember who the first people to hear this were.

1. The point of the story is that Jesus is saying God desires those tax collectors and sinners. If I was one of those people and I'm listening to that story, this has got to be overwhelming to me. That's the God that I walked away from yet He runs to me.
2. The God to whom I said to; I would rather live my own life than live in relationship with you—embraces me.
3. Doesn’t the son confess? Yes he does in verse 21 but he does not need to seek his father out. I note that the son never came out with the intended request to be made as one of his father's hired servants. His father interrupted him before that part of his speech could be made! The son’s coming home was the repentance his father wanted to see. What is the father’s reaction to the repentance of the son? He throws a party!
4. Think what it would have felt like to know that the Father you rejected would run to meet you. Jesus tells of the father in this verse that he was watching for the son to return and when he saw him “he felt compassion” and ran to him.

G. How does God run to us today? God didn’t wait for us to make it all the way home. God comes running to us with a message of love and forgiveness in the form of Jesus. The father doesn’t wait for the son to get out his words of confession and sorrow. Instead, the father interrupts and throws a party for the son who came home.

1. Jesus Christ, put Himself right here on this earth to show us the Father's love. He came not because I am worthy to go to him, but because of the cross and the resurrection.
2. He opens His arms for me to be in a relationship that I don't deserve to be in, to live under a new covenant, this body of Christ.

IV. Lessons From The Father - Here is what I observe we should learn as fathers from the father Jesus describes: First, there is the possibility that our children will hurt us. Here's the truth, children will probably cause us to hurt inside at some point in our adult life, in their adult life.

A. They will either say or do things that could cause us to feel as though they are dismissing who we are in their life, not that they hate us of course. They've cut those apron strings and I understand much of that, but I know that there are going to be times in which adult children still bring pain to their parents.

1. I have met few parents of adult children who have not felt some hurt by their kids. Certainly not to the degree in this story, but parents hurt when their children dismiss their love and guidance.

B. The second lesson is that we want to be the type of father that should the need arise, meets our repentant child with a true embrace. We want to be the father that doesn't have to wait for our child to say I'm sorry. When we see the actions that he or she is trying to put forth into words, let it cause us to say, “we're good”.

1. Even though they may work through trying to say what they're trying to say, we want to be the type of dad that embraces them and loves them even when they know they've hurt the relationship. If their life shows the signs of repentance, then our actions will be to embrace them without shaming them.

C. Third, we want to be the father that promotes unity in the family. Luke 15:25-28 – “Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. "So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. "And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.' "But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him.”

1. Jesus in this parable tells is not just about the prodigal son and the father. The story is also about the older brother, which we know is the representation of those Pharisees and teachers of the law that were muttering about Jesus spending too much time with the tax collectors and sinners.
2. The older brother, when he hears the music and he finds out what's going on, stays outside. The father has to go out to him, just like the father went running to the younger son. The father could have just focused on the family and the younger son. He also might have said, wait a second, you say you've never messed up. I could probably give you time and time again in which you have.
3. I give a tremendous amount of honor to the father of this parable, because the bottom line is... he's got two kids that have really messed up, one just more publicly than the other. It doesn't stop the father from going out to the elder son and listening to the older son talk about how life isn't fair.
4. Perhaps the older brother would have deserved some correction but the father does not do that. He points out what's right with both of them. The focus is on what is good.
5. We should want to be a type of father who does that. The father doesn't deny anything. He just simply says to that older child, everything I have is yours. Then the father talked about “his brother” that was dead and is now alive, was lost and is now found.
6. The father doesn’t dismiss the older brother or tell him how bad he is, but he wants the boys to see the same value in each other that he sees in both of his sons.
7. The father promotes unity among his children, even though the children, these boys, probably are struggling to have unity with each other. That’s the kind of father we should want to be. The father loves them both, and it really kind of brings me to my fourth and last lesson that I learned from the father in the story.

D. Fourth, we want to be a father who celebrates what’s right about our kids, not focus on their failures. The father that Jesus speaks of sees the good in the repentance of the younger brother and the good in the faithfulness and work of the older brother. That’s the kind of father we want to be.

CONCLUSION:
It’s Father’s Day and I am a blessed dad. I have children who care about me or at least they tolerate me. They live in relationship with me though we are apart physically. They share their family with me. I feel blessed by my children, children-in-law and grand children. I am also blessed with nieces and nephews and their children and their children’s children. They may think I am out of touch with reality at times, but they love me. They are kind to me, treat me with respect and share their lives with me. I am a blessed dad.

Do we ever disagree now that my children are adults? Yes. Do we work through it? Absolutely, we're family and we want to stay family.

Jesus is telling us not about the personal family, but about God's will. Jesus tells us just a little about the nature of our Heavenly Father.

God loves you.
You have a Father in heaven who, even when you disappoint Him, will run to welcome you with a hug when you come home. We have a Heavenly Father who celebrates us and values us even when we have given no reason for God to value us.

We have a Heavenly Father whose family is big enough for all of us. Some of you really are better, more spiritual, and live more holy lives than others. Just don’t forget the family of God welcomes home the worst of us.
If God is going to love the unlovable, the hurtful, the one whose life and words cut to the heart; then I want to make sure this family is open enough for them to come home and be celebrated.

I will close with this thought: Are we the type of church, the church which belongs to Christ, that welcomes home someone whose life has been lived in open rebellion but would really like to find their way back to something better?

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In this plan we learn from the New Testament how to be saved. We need to hear the word; believe in Jesus; repent of our sins; we must confess our belief that Jesus is the Son of God; and be baptized for the remission of our sins... If we follow these steps, the Lord adds us to His church.

Perhaps there is someone in the assembly today with the need to be buried with Christ in baptism. If you have never done these things, we urge you to do so today. If anyone has this need or desires the prayers of faithful Christians on their behalf, we encourage them to come forward while we stand and sing.
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Reference Sermon: Jeffrey Dillinger