Audio Transcript

Today we read Luke 15:11–32 together in our Bible reading, the parable of the prodigal son, or the parable of the prodigal sons (plural). It’s a famous story about a father — a blameless father — and his two sons, who are anything but blameless, each of them entrapped by his own sin in very different ways. For parents of prodigal sons and daughters, the story resonates deeply in offering hope, like it does for Heather, a mom in Birmingham, Alabama.

“Pastor John, hello. I am the mother of a prodigal son in his early twenties. I read Luke 15 over and over. I have studied it a hundred times. I was wondering, if you were to talk to the parent of a prodigal son or daughter, how would you give hope to them from this text? I want my life to reflect the life of the father in this story as I wait on the porch.”

It really is an amazingly encouraging parable for parents of prodigals. It has so many layers of encouragement in it. I don’t think we or anybody has ever gotten to the bottom of it and its amazing portrait of the gracious heart of God. We could talk for hours about the implications of this parable, but we don’t have hours. So, let me perhaps mention seven encouragements from this parable.

1. God pursues sinners.

First, this is one of the three parables in Luke 15, which are told by Jesus in response to being criticized in verses 1–2 because of eating with tax collectors and sinners. When the Pharisees and scribes grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2), Jesus responds by telling the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost son (or sons — we’ll see).

So, all three parables are meant to illustrate the fact that when Jesus is eating with sinners, this is what God is doing. He’s embodying the pursuit of God that’s described in the parables as he pursues the lost. That’s what’s happening when Jesus comes into the world and eats with sinners. God is not in any way compromising with sin. Christ is not becoming a sinner by eating. He’s doing John 3:17: God sent his Son into the world not “to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” And so, the father in the parable of the prodigal son is a picture of God acting in Christ to save prodigals. That’s just the basic picture that we should be encouraged by. We need to see God that way. Think of him that way. He’s pursuing sinners.

2. God is glad to have prodigals home.

Second, in all three parables, there’s this jubilant celebration over a single sinner who repents. “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). And in the parable of the prodigal son, the father says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him. . . . Let us eat and celebrate (Luke 15:22–23). So, God’s heart in this parable, in all three parables, is glad to have prodigals come home. He’s not begrudging; he’s glad.

3. God, not guilt, is in view.

Third, in all three of these parables, there’s no focus on the guilt of the woman who lost the coin, or the shepherd who lost the sheep, or the father who lost a son. Now, I’m not saying that to make any comment about the quality of my or your parenting, which all of us know could have been better on every count. People sometimes ask me, “What would you do differently?” And I say, “Everything. I’d try to do everything better.”

“When Jesus eats with sinners, he embodies the Father who pursues the lost.”

I’m simply saying, when I observe this, that that’s not the issue here. Jesus is simply not calling any attention to that, which is crystal clear in the parable of the prodigal son, because the father is a picture of God, who is the absolutely perfect Father, and yet he’s got this lost son. I mean, go figure — how can you be a perfect father and have a lost son? We are encouraged to fix our gaze in these parables not on ourselves, not on our shortcomings, but on the kind of God we are dealing with in these parables.

4. God can bring sanity through misery.

Fourth, the prodigal son experiences a change of heart at the lowest point of his miserable life. He’s ready to share food with the pigs. At the boy’s lowest point, he came to himself (Luke 15:17). And the encouraging thing is that just when it looked absolutely hopeless — How could you return from something so low? — he experienced his awakening.

5. God’s heart runs toward his children.

Fifth, perhaps the most tender and beautiful and powerful moment in the parable, which Jesus surely intended for this effect because he told the parable this way, is the moment when the father sees the boy a long way off and runs to greet him — not walks; he runs to greet him. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). So, he saw, he felt, he ran, he embraced, he kissed. So, oh, let us — I want to say it to myself — let us keep that picture in our minds, not only as a picture of God’s heart, but to make our own hearts tender that way and eager that way.

6. God can raise the dead.

Sixth, the father describes the change in the boy’s life as a change from death to life. “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:24). This is encouraging because the father did not minimize the dreadfulness of the boy’s condition. The boy was dead. From a merely human standpoint, he was hopeless. So, don’t ever look upon the hardness, the indifference, even the bitterness or the cynicism of a prodigal and think, “That can’t change. This is never going to change.” Don’t think that way. It can. He was dead and he lives.

7. God invites both sons home.

And then, finally, seventh: Remember that this father in the parable of the prodigal son had two prodigals, not just one. When Jesus was eating with the tax collectors and sinners, there were two groups of lost people he had to deal with. One was the tax collectors and sinners, and the other was the scribes and Pharisees.

The tax collectors and sinners are represented in the parable by the prodigal son, and the scribes and Pharisees are represented by the older son who was angry. He was angry that the father was celebrating the return of the younger son. Life — he was angry at new life. This older brother, like the Pharisees, saw his relationship with the father in terms of earning privileges rather than enjoying a relationship. So, how would the father respond to this kind of wayward son, the second prodigal son? How would he respond?

Sometimes people say — and I heard this when I was in Germany, writing a dissertation on loving your enemies — “There’s no way that Jesus ever tried to woo the Pharisees. He only had negative things to say about the Pharisees. He never invited them to believe.” And I pointed out in my dissertation that that’s what’s going on here. Look at verse 28. The older son was angry, and he refused to go in and be a part of the celebration of life and salvation. And his father, just like with the younger son, came out and entreated — not commanded, not was angry — he entreated him. He had come out to meet the dissolute younger son. He came out and wooed and pleaded with the legalistic older son.

So, here’s my conclusion, for myself, for all of us: Let’s take heart for at least these seven reasons, and remember Jesus’s encouragement in chapter 18, just a few chapters later, that we should “always . . . pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).