Two Lost Boys, One Really Good Father

One of my favourite shows growing up was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Anyone watch that one? With Will Smith? I know the lyrics, I'm very proud of this, to the entire rap opening sort of sequence of the sitcom. It is my only claim to any street cred that I know those rap lyrics.

But the series, in any case, is a good one. I really, I really loved watching Will Smith being the super cool and cheeky nephew to a very strict, very disciplined judge. His uncle, Uncle Phil. And just the idea of this kid from the rough streets of Philadelphia moving to the posh, palm laden streets of Bel Air.

And how this odd couple lived together. It's a great premise for a show. Apart from being funny, the show's most memorable moment was at one point where the very cheeky and sort of, let's say not very serious Will Smith, at a point in the series lowered his guard and had a moment of vulnerability where he talked about his father who had walked out on him and his mum. Something that, again, especially in that era, reflected a large proportion of Black Americans, young men who had grown up without a dad. And in that moment, Uncle Phil told Will that he loved him, not just as a nephew, but loved him as something closer to a son.

And that acting display there, the vulnerability that Will Smith as an actor was able to tap into, pretty much launched his career. It was a very defining moment. Well, this morning we are going to look at a scene that is, in my mind, almost like this scene from The Fresh Prince. It's a moving story of a boy who was lost, but who was brought home, and a father who has and had a very big heart. So let's turn to Luke 15 and we're going to read the story of the prodigal son.

Luke chapter 15 and we're going to start from verse 11. 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 is coming to me. And he, the father, divided his property between them. Not many days later, the youngest son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and he squandered his property in reckless living.

And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country. And he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate. And no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself he said, how many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger? I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, father I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, bring quickly the best robe and put it on him. And put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.

And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate. Now his oldest son was in the field and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.

And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. The servant said to him, your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound. The brother was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, look, these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.

The father said to him, son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. So ends the reading. This morning we are looking at this passage and the title of the message is Two Lost Boys and a Really Good Father.

Well, the setting of the chapter of Luke 15 is really important for us as we look into this passage. We find it sort of wedged at the end of a whole series of parables that Jesus has already been teaching. At the start, at the beginning of chapter 15, Luke recounts that there are actually two people who are listening to Jesus as he is telling these stories of lost things. The first verse in chapter 15 says that they are tax collectors and sinners listening to Jesus. That term sinners, that is translated from the Greek, is probably some sort of ironic label.

It's sort of just to say these are bad people in, you know, good and proper society that are listening to Jesus. At the same time, these probably well-to-do individuals who would have been uncomfortable with these sinners sitting nearby are also described. They are mentioned in verse two, where Luke describes that there are Pharisees and teachers of the law also listening to Jesus as he's telling these stories. So there are two different types of audiences listening to Jesus at this time. The so-called group of sinners who live on the margins of respectable society, and a second group of listeners, the religious ones.

The Jewish leaders of the time who held to a strict morality. So now in the context of the passage about the prodigal son that we've just read, we see Jesus busy telling parables and teaching moral lessons to the crowd. And he begins by telling the story of a lost sheep. A shepherd has a hundred sheep. One goes missing.

One wanders off on their own, and this good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine safe sheep to go and find the one lost sheep. Then we come to a second parable in chapter 15 from verse eight where there is the story of a lost coin. A woman has ten silver coins. She loses one of these ten. She is beside herself with that loss and therefore goes and lights a lamp, finds a lamp, and then goes looking throughout the house, scouring under all the couches and behind the fridges to find the lost coin.

When she does, she throws a massive celebration with her neighbours that she has found this coin. Maybe she spent that coin in that celebration. But then we come to the story of the prodigal son. Now, this is a title that we have given this parable, the prodigal son. If I was to ask any one of you what does prodigal mean, we don't even really know.

Like, we know the prodigal son idea. But what does it mean to be prodigal? But I think that's actually a bit of a misunderstanding or a mislabelling of this story. Remember, this is not what the Bible has called this story, this is what we have done when we translated the Bible and we've given sort of headings to passages. I think the story of the prodigal son would best be labelled the story of the two lost boys, the two lost sons, because we'll discover that both didn't know their father, both were very far away, even if one was close.

Contrary to the two parables of verses three to ten, if you read and reflect closely on the parable of Jesus, you realise that it's not simply the story of one bad boy, it's a story of two lost boys. A story of an older brother and a younger brother, and a father who loved both very deeply. But there are two characters involved. Firstly, the younger brother. The story begins with a short but shocking request from my son to his father.

The youngest son comes to his dad and says, give me my share of the estate. The original hearers would have immediately known what was going on in this request. It indicated a terribly broken relationship that this boy had with his father. The crowd listening to it would have been shocked by this request. There was nothing wrong for a son to get a part of their father's wealth.

But normally in order to inherit that wealth, the father must have passed away. Here Jesus shocks the listeners by telling them that the youngest son asked for his inheritance immediately. Straight off the bat, suggesting, I wish you were dead. I wish you were dead. The youngest son is essentially saying that he wants his father's things, not the father himself.

The father may not be dead yet, but in this man's heart, the relationship with his father is. But then what's more shocking is the father's reaction. In a strongly patriarchal society like the ones of the ancient Middle East, a request like this would have been met with a severe punishment. A whack upside the head and get out of here. What a stupid request.

The father would have kicked this boy out with nothing. But instead the father complies. He goes about, I mean how long would it have taken, goes about selling what he has, selling his wealth in order to give this man his part. Now most of the listeners would have not understood or not have suspected a patriarch responding like this, but here is a father who patiently endures a tremendous disrespect. A tremendous loss of honour, as well as the pain of rejected love.

But we're being shown a father just a little bit, a father who maintains affection for his son, even as the son rejects him. Now in those days, the youngest brother generally got a third of the inheritance. Older brother, two thirds, youngest brother, a third. Yet the father had been such a wealthy man that the son thinks that even a third of such an inheritance could mean that he quits work for his whole life and can live off that for the rest of his life in some distant country. And so the boy, verse 13 says, goes to a far off distant country and here he squanders everything he has had and received on an out of control lifestyle.

We can probably imagine that sort of lifestyle, we do live on the Gold Coast. But through his own ineptitude and his self indulgence he winds up flat broke, not a penny to his name. He finds himself literally down in the mud with the pigs. Verse 17 says, and while he's there, there's a famine in the country and he looks at these pigs. And he looks at the slop that these pigs are eating.

The pods, meaning like the banana peels and the papaya skins. And he thinks, man, what I would give to be eating those things. And then Jesus says, there comes a point where he has a moment of clarity. In Alcoholics Anonymous they talk about that moment of clarity. And he realises my father's hired help, the staff that my father had, were treated much better than I am.

I know that I have deserted my father, I know that I have disowned him, but maybe I can be one of his employees. And so he trudges off back home. The best he can hope for, he thinks, is that he can rekindle or get some sort of transactional relationship with his father. He has given up a father son relationship, but maybe somewhere where I can earn his love, earn his support of me. That could be good enough.

But then we come to the dramatic scene where the son comes within sight of the house and his father, he wonders how this happens but he sees him a far way off. It's a dad that hasn't stopped looking, hasn't stopped hoping. His eyes are on the horizon and he sees a little figure and he knows it's his son. And he runs to greet him. And again, as a rule, a distinguished wealthy Middle Eastern man does not run.

He would not dare to pick up his robes exposing his bare legs like a boy, but his father runs. And he falls on his son, the Bible says. And he embraces him and he kisses him all over. But shortly, I mean, the son has been travelling for weeks and months perhaps and he's been preparing his speech and he has it ready. Father, I know I have sinned against you and against heaven.

I don't deserve your love. I don't deserve to be your son. But is it possible? Can I just come and work for you? But before the apology is finished, the dad calls his hired help, his servants, and he says bring out the best clothes.

This guy stinks, he's been with the pigs. Bring him the best ring that I have. Put it on his hand to show that he's my son. And then go and get the fattened calf, the calf that we've all been waiting for. The whole household has been looking at little Bessie as she's been getting nice and plump.

Wondering when are we going to have this incredible feast? Bring the fattened calf. And the feast is like that feast you have once a year. It's like a Christmas roast and an Australia Day barbecue thrown into one. Word spreads quickly and there is a huge party going on, music and dancing is filling the air.

They are celebrating the restoration of a younger son back to life. What an incredible love. This father, his deep, deep love for someone who has hurt him and rejected him. But there is another part to the story that is only half the story. There is an older brother.

In the midst of this astonishing grace and forgiveness and love, powerful and as magnificent as it is, it is not the finish of the story, is not the clincher of the story. We are told of an older brother who comes home from work, he's been in the field and he hears the commotion and he motions for one of the servants to come along and explain what's happening and they tell him it's because the younger son has come back. And big brother gets angry. He is furious and now it's his turn to disgrace the father. He refuses to go in.

He stands at the edge of the property, at the gate. He's beside himself with anger. He does the maths. By restoring his younger brother to the family, him an heir again, the younger brother has come to claim not just the one third that was his, now his two thirds are being divided again. The older brother starts burning with rage.

I've worked myself to death and I've earned what I got. My brother has done nothing and yet he is lavished with wealth. Where's the justice? And the father hears about the son and goes out to speak to his older boy and again he finds a son who disgraces him. He refuses to take part in this feast.

He refuses to come into the house where his father, his father who he's supposed to love, is. In verse 29, he addresses his father incredibly rudely. He says, look, look you. All these years I've served you. Never once have I gotten a goat to celebrate with my friends.

Here you are rewarding this runaway. How ridiculous. And how does a father again respond to another boy's disgrace of him? Everything inside me would say another whack upside the head. See you later mate.

Instead he responds with tenderness again. My son, he says, everything I have is yours. Everything I have is yours. But we have to celebrate because your little brother was dead and he is alive. He was lost and he is found.

Come into the feast. You'll get a share of the fattened calf. That's more than enough. I'll give you one leg. That's way too much.

Come and enjoy my wealth and my pleasure. Now the listeners, if they were sitting in pews, would be on the edge of their seats. Will this family be united in love? Will these two brothers come and hug one another and cry tears of joy at seeing one another? But as these thoughts pass through our heads, the story ends.

Jesus finishes the story. We don't get an and they all lived happily ever after. We are left with a cliff hanger. What does that mean?

Why does Jesus tell this whole story to finish at this point? Well, we said earlier that Jesus is addressing certain types of people. He knows who is listening to him at this point. We are told of tax collectors and sinners, we are told of Pharisees and teachers of the law. Once you start seeing that, you start recognising some of the characters in this story.

Sitting with Jesus are some broken people. People that have made a mess of their lives. People that have through self indulgence become their own worst enemies. Then there are some self righteous and cold hearted listeners listening to Jesus as well. But the teaching that Jesus here gives cuts across time and space because even as we listen to these stories, we start seeing aspects of our own heart.

We start seeing aspects of those around us even. And in this story Jesus is showing two ways that people can break their relationship with God who is called our father in heaven. In the first half of the story Jesus shows us the younger brother. A depiction of sin that anyone can go through where they, through their own self indulgent, self centred, self obsessed understanding, want to take all the father can give, all his good gifts, but not Him. This indulgence in our lives can be like that.

We over indulge in the things that God wants to give us and we say thanks but no thanks to you. We'll do with this. We'll do with these gifts what we want to do. We don't need to know you and how you would have us use these things. And so we see in the younger brother a son who has rejected God and all that is just in us says that this one does not deserve God's love in return.

The second half of the story however focuses on the older brother who is completely obedient to the father. And by analogy, he is completely obedient to the law of God. This person is completely disciplined and in doing the right thing. And so we have these two sons, one bad by normal standards and one good. Yet the majesty of the story of the prodigal son, or as I would like to call it, the two lost boys, is that it should actually be a story of the loving father.

Because both sons are alienated from the one dad. And we don't get a happily ever after ending to the story. Jesus deliberately leaves the older brother in his alienated state outside the party. And ironically, it's the bad boy who enters the father's feast. It's the good son who refuses and remains lost.

Why is he still lost? Because he tells his dad, I have never disobeyed you. In other words, it's not the older brother's sins that has created the barrier between him and his father. It's actually the pride in his own moral record that has caused that. The picture starts emerging that the brothers' hearts are actually more alike to each other than we first thought.

What did the younger brother want in life? He wanted his father dead so that he could have all the benefits to make his own choices away from the father's influence. What does the older brother want? He wants his father's goods rather than the father. The father is celebrating.

The father is at his happiest and he refuses to go in to see his father because he wants all that wealth. And the conclusion is this, that neither son, neither old nor the young son, truly loved the father for who He was. In fact, they were both using the father for their own selfish desires, to have the wealth, to have the pleasures without the relationship. With this parable Jesus gives us therefore a much deeper concept of the problem of sin. Most people when they hear that word, think of it as failing to keep God's rules, failing to conduct their lives in a way that is pleasing.

But Jesus' definition goes much deeper than that. It goes to the heart of how much we actually love our heavenly father. Do you know that it's possible to miss out on God even by keeping the moral laws? How? Well, if you stake your relationship with God on your moral conduct, then you start believing that you have rights.

You say, I have done x and y, therefore God must answer my prayers. I have lived this life, therefore I deserve good things. I should have a husband or a wife. I should have kids. I should have kids that also love and respect me.

God owes you because you see yourself slaving away to serve some big boss in the sky and you don't think that you need a saviour who has pardoned you by free unconditional love because you think you are your own saviour. In the same way, some of us sitting here may have lived a very loose life. A life very far away from the father heart of God and what that would have wanted for you. You are the younger brother. Also wanting all of God's good gifts but not caring much about the father behind them all.

In this situation Jesus is saying the radical definition of our lives comes from understanding that we are not lost to God through not adhering to His laws. We are lost to God through our hearts not loving Him. What this story needs is a true older brother. The story needed something in the order of a brother, even older than this older brother, who would have said to the father, These two younger brothers of mine, they just don't get it. They have you, even when they don't want you.

I will go and show them your love. A man, a writer by the name of Edmund Clowney, tells the story of a young man who was a US soldier who became missing in action. He was a soldier in the Vietnam War. And the family back home could hear no news about where this brother was, where this son was in the war. And the oldest brother took it upon himself of this family to go to Vietnam and searched in every barrack, searched through the roughest jungles in Vietnam to find his brother.

And the story goes that both sides of the conflict, on the Vietnamese side and on the US side, left this man alone knowing just what a noble pursuit this was to go and find his lost brother. He became legendary. He was just simply referred to as the brother. Jesus is the brother that is needed in this story. Jesus, in him telling this story, in him leaving the story on this cliff hanger, is causing us to yearn for a brother who does the right thing.

Think of the kind of brother that we need. We need one who simply goes to another country to find us, to tell us that a father still loves them. A father is still willing to receive them back. We need a brother who is willing to give up his inheritance, to allow lost brothers to come back into the family. And it's not just going to be a large amount of money.

We need a brother to pay with an infinite cost of life because we have messed up ours. We have squandered everything. But not only is he needing to save the younger brothers, he needs to save the manipulative, self righteous older brother as well. The ones that have also rejected the father. And the parable shows that true forgiveness and acceptance into the household of God costs something.

It was going to cost this older brother, this angry brother something. And the gospel tells us it had to take the life of Jesus in order to reconcile us. This is the parable and the true message of this parable and what it's telling us. Our true elder brother, Jesus, had to pay our penalty on the cross. And because Jesus has paid the full price to restore us back into the Father's kingdom, we may join the feast.

We may join the celebration. We may come into the Father's pleasure at having won us back. The Father's glory is absolutely His. There is glory in His kingdom because He is powerful, He has created, He has imagined, He has brought life into existence. But part of the King's great glory is that He has saved a people.

It's that He is gracious and compassionate. That is His great glory. That is His great pleasure. That is what the father was celebrating, that he could be kind to his son. And so because the price was paid for this boy to be restored back into his family, and because Jesus paid that price for us, we may join the feast of God's getting us back to Himself.

This morning if you are the younger brother, perhaps you are the younger sister, stop running. It's time to come home. Are you the older brother? The one that's angry, the one that just thinks my life needs to be better? I deserve so much more.

Look at how I serve God. Remember that you are your father's forgiven and loved child. God is a happy father, and He invites you into His celebration feast. And even as the oldest brother, you can only enter into that feast because you have an even older brother who has made it possible. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for these wonderful truths this morning. We thank you for this incredible story that so succinctly sums up your heart. Lord, there is power and authority in these words. We know that this is true. Something of it resonates in our heart.

Something in it makes us long for this. And so Lord we thank you that we may hear this and also hear that it is available for every single one of us. Father help us to see the sin beneath the sin, the sin that is deeper than all the other sins and that is not loving the Father. Not loving Him for all that He is. Rekindle that fire and that love in us if it has gone cold.

And for those of us who have never experienced it, those of us who have never really truly known it Lord, help us to see it for the first time. Lord, I thank you for your grace. I thank you that you are a happy God, a happy father who is at this moment even celebrating. We want to enter into that celebration. We want to enter into that joy. And we thank you, Lord, for what you have done for us because of Jesus.

In His name we pray. Amen.