The Lost Son, Part 2 | God’s Rescue Mission

Luke 15:11-16

Verse 11 of Luke 15, “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 the property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there 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 the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

   For today, our focus, the lost son, verses 11-16. When a sinner turns to Christ, it’s wholly by God’s grace and it is according to human choice, at the same time. That love of a sinner given a new nature is not coerced, it’s never forced, it is freely given, because there’s a new nature with new desires, new longings. Even in judicial abandonment, God is showing his grace, his patience, his kindness. He’s always working to encourage the sinner’s repentance.

That’s what Jesus is picturing here as this father, rather sorrowfully, and rather painfully divides his estate up, and he distributes his wealth to these two undeserving sons. In the time that it takes for the father to do that, to complete this painful, onerous task, dividing all the movable property between his two sons. You know what the younger sons been doing during all this time? He has been using the time to plan his trip. No thought for his father’s grief. Just a feeling of impatience as he wants to get out of there. He wants his father to hurry up, finish already. So he can just make a hasty exit. He hasn’t verbalized it and he’d never admit it. But his actions say everything here. On his way out the door, he’s saying, you’re dead to me, I’m dead to you, we’re through.

This leads to a third characteristic of a lost sinner. Number three, the lost sinner is, number three, foolishly reckless. The lost sinner, number three, is foolishly reckless. As I said, he can’t stand waiting for the father to finish up with all his evaluations and all his Abacus work and all his math, making the assessments and doing the right sale of certain items, taking his time.

In fact, he judges him evilly for it and says, I know why he’s doing this, he’s trying to hold on to me. He’s taking all this time because he’s hoping I’ll wear out of this desire I have, that’s not gonna happen. Finally he gets the one third that’s his. It’s a big chunk of change. You’ll see in verse 22, his father’s wealth includes fine clothing, jewelry, household servants. If there are household servants, that means there are a lot of servants working out in the fields as well.

He’s got the means to set aside some animals for, just for feasts, provisional animals for feasts, down in verse 25. He even has a large banquet hall and notice it’s inside the house, big enough to host a celebration, including expensive entertainments, loud music, dancing, heard all the way from outside as his brother, comes in from the field. There is a whole lot of money coming his way and he’s got big, big plans, far, far away from this dusty little one horse town.

Look at verse 13, “Not many days later, the younger son gathered all that he had and took a journey into a far country and there he squandered his property in reckless living.” The verb that’s translated there, gathered all he had, sunagó. In this context, it means, to turn into cash. That is, he’s converting all that movable property that he received, the goats, the sheep, the cattle, all the movable property, he’s converting that property into money. And he does so it says, within a few days, in a hurry.

His father would have been slow, wise, careful, in dividing and distributing the estate to his sons because he loves them. He wants him to get everything coming to them. This kid provides quite the contrast to that. In a great haste, within a few days it says he liquidates all of his newly acquired assets. No way he’s gonna get a good purchase price for any of those assets from any shrewd buyer. And believe me, everybody in town knew what kind of shameful kid this was, what he had done to his father. What he was planning to do, what a hurry he’s in.

The resentful older brother would make sure that that was known. He’s not going to get a good price for anything, even here. You can see the prodigal emerging from this kid’s heart. The squandering has already started even before he’s left home. He has no intention of coming back to this place, so no need to leave anything behind. No need to leave a bank account. He liquidates his one third share of the wealth in a hurry, and he leaves home, carrying suitcases of cash.

As he enters into this faraway country, can you guess what those people are thinking? Here’s this young, cocky, naive Jewish kid walking into town carrying bags of cash. Hmm, easy mark, free lunch. The party’s on him everyone. Doesn’t take long before he’s invited everywhere. He’s got a whole host of new acquaintances and friends. Seems to be such a friendly place. Really seems to be working out for him, just as he thought it would.

People in this exotic faraway land are rolling out the red carpet for him. He’s a foreigner in their midst, but they’re making him feel right at home, really, really welcome. Invite him to all their parties, banquets, feasts. They’re really eager to share all their culture with him. All the foods he can’t get there, he can have here. Show him a good time. Just as friendly as they can be. As long as he keeps picking up the tab.

In truth, we need to see that these people hanging around this kid are as rapacious as wolves. They’re like sharks that smell blood in the water, and they’re pouncing. Low morals among them, bad character because people who are willing to hang out with the young and the inexperienced, attracted to their wealth. They’re of the same ilk. They love the free party provided by this rich kid. These are not good people.

This kid doesn’t come with nobility and virtue on his sleeves. Like attracts like. His newfound friends were just like he is. They’re bottom shelf character people. Doesn’t take long before he’s burn through all that cash. He eats at the best restaurants, stays at the best hotels, drinks the finest wines. He indulges all of his sensual appetites, saying no to nothing. He tries new things, enjoys new experiences. He’s flashing his cash. He’s tipping everyone he sees. He’s buying expensive gifts because he needs to keep those new friends close. Keep them interested.

The apparent safety of anonymity far from home, far away from family, far away from anyone who cares enough to correct him. Anyone to hold him accountable and keep him safe from himself. It’s there it says that he squandered his property in reckless living. What he demanded of his father, what his father labored a lifetime to provide for him, what he, what he suffered heartbreak, to disperse to him. This kid has blown it in living wastefully.

That expression zao asotos that’s where we get the concept of the prodigal. Comes from asotia means dissolute, debauched, indulgent, dissipated, profligate, and all with a flair for the extravagant. One source I read found a really helpful explanation from Aristotle of all people. He says this, “We label as prodigal those who are incontinent and those who become spendthrifts to satisfy their intemperance. That is why prodigals have such a bad reputation. They have several vices all at once. Properly speaking,” Aristotle says, “The word prodigal refers to the one who has only the sole vicious tendency to destroy his means of subsistence.” End Quote.

That’s a good way to think about the prodigal and what this is, the sole vicious tendency to destroy his means of subsistence. You wanna picture that? He’s cutting off the branch he’s sitting on. It’s like a cartoon character. Albert Plummer sums it up this way, “It’d cost him nothing to collect this wealth together and he squanders it as easily as he acquired it.”

We see that all the time, don’t we in those who win the Lotto? They win some big huge million, multimillion dollar prize. You think, wow, they’re set for life. No, they’re not. They’re set for a few months turns out. Sadly, the timing of his squandering everything couldn’t be worse. He’s about to become the victim of climate change here if you notice in the text. He said the lost sinner here is shamefully selfish. He’s inconsiderately ambitious. He’s foolishly reckless, and now his bad character like catches up with him, doesn’t it?

Number four, the lost sinner is invincibly stubborn. The lost sinner is invincibly stubborn. It says, “When he spent everything a severe famine arose in that country and he began to be in need.” Love how Jesus throws in a little twist of divine providence into the story, really moves the story along. Jesus describes here a famine. It’s severe, it’s widespread. It’s all throughout the country, according to the grammar there, it’s everywhere. So with no cash left, reality catches up to this kid and bites him and even though reality bites him hard here, he still thinks he can figure this out.

Here’s the plan. It says there, “He went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country.” Hired himself out, that’s an unfortunate translation in view of the vividness of this term here. The verb shows in the King James version, the NAS version, capture the more basic sense. It says, “He went and joined himself to one of the citizens. He attached himself to the man.” The literal expression there is he glued himself to this guy. So what does he do? What’s his plan consist of? He finds someone important.

It’s kind of ironic here because he’s probably of the same stature of his father, ironically. Find somebody important in the land, a citizen of that country who owns enough and he sticks with that guy. Younger son here is, he’s invincibly stubborn. He is invincibly ignorant too. He, he, he’s still under the illusion that he’s something. He still esteems himself highly. He thinks all that spending earned him friends, true friends.

He’s under the illusion that this older man is impressed with him, brings his list of qualifications, his, his previous experiences all on his resume, and where did he get all that experience? Family farm, under his father, got his father’s wisdom. The citizen farmer here is no dummy though. He’s watched this kid, entitled kid come into town. He’s heard about him. He’s the spoiled rich kid. He’s seen all of them come and go. It’s the same story. He’s impressing everyone with wads of cash, eating fancy food, drinking with scoundrels, cavorting with prostitutes.

This man is not impressed at all. He’s got him all figured out. The kid’s obviously far from home. He’s a foreigner in their midst. There’s a good reason he’s this far from home. Well, it’s not a good reason, something bad, something hidden, something he doesn’t know. But he doesn’t have to figure it out. He knows what’s there. This kid’s got daddy issues. He’s got family problems, social issues, legal issues. He’s in trouble.

This man would be a fool to trust him, and this man is no fool. He didn’t accomplish what he accomplished through playing the fool, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use this kid. He’s gonna use him like everybody else. Might seem like there’s nothing worse, especially during a severe drought to have some foreign kid see you as his survival strategy, to attach himself to you, to glue himself to you. So to deal with this unwelcome pest, someone he doesn’t trust at all, he sends this Jewish boy into the fields, end of verse 15, “to feed his pigs.”

What does a prodigal do? Does this stop him? Does he say, you know what? Something is not going right here? No, he follows the stubbornness of his own heart, an invincible stubbornness. And he takes the job. Why is this evidence of invincible stubbornness? For one thing, he’s just not stopped to assess what’s got him to this point. He’s been foolish in cashing out, in not saving anything, not tucking something away for savings and famine relief.

He’s been foolish in blowing all this money. He’s been foolish in playing when he ought to be working. He’s been foolish in his choice of companions. He was foolish to flee to foreigners in the first place and leaving behind true prosperity. Foolish to leave home at all. Not once here has he stopped to question himself. Not once does he doubt his own judgment, even in this low time, with this level of failure, he still trusts in his own thinking. Still making his own plans, trusting his own solutions, taking the job by feeding this Gentile’s pigs.

His invincible stubbornness has caused him to let go of the last shred of dignity that he ever had. Just degrading employment for anyone to feed pigs for a living, but it’s scandalous level of disgrace for a Jew. John Davis says, “To feed swine was the lowest and most despicable occupation, to which a Jew could be reduced.” The rabbis used to say, “Cursed is everyone who keeps and breeds pigs.”

It makes those who support the accursed pig farmer feeding his pigs at the lowest level of low, to a Jew. This young man would know that, he’s raised as a Jew. The situation is desperate and there’s this famine to consider, my growling stomach. Still, his conscience is nagging him about his failures. Reminds him of his profligacy, his wastefulness, his carelessness that got him into this mess in the first place. His conscience accuses him that he has descended about as low as he can go, and this is where his stubborn heart has taken him. Degrading him to the very bottom, to the lowest of the low, into the slime with the pigs. Kid is lost.

He is willfully lost. He is guilty. He’s humiliated. He is degraded. He is desperately low, and listen, it is all his own fault. It’s in this condition, finally, that he comes to his breaking point. The lost sinner is shamefully selfish, inconsiderately ambitious, foolishly reckless, invincibly stubborn and now, with no money, no savings, reduced to doing unskilled, shameful labor on the unclean pig farm, he is all out of options.

So, final characteristic of the lost. Number five, the lost sinner is eventually broken. The lost sinner is eventually broken. “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.”

Carob pods were a staple in the diet of John the Baptist. They could be eaten by humans. Also, it was known as the locust tree, not because locusts ate from it, but because they didn’t. Locusts actually eat anything green, but they won’t eat this. Even locusts don’t stoop so low. The carob tree is sturdy, it’s hardy, it’s drought resistant, had a thick trunk, sturdy branches. It grows to heights about twenty-five to fifty feet. Carob tree is a, it’s a flowering evergreen. It has broad, green, feather shaped leaves. The fruit it produces are legumes. So it’s a carob pod which contains ten to fifteen hard, brown seeds inside of this pod. And the pod is like a long, thick, flat pod and shaped like a, like a horn, about an inch or, or an inch and a half wide and about five to six inches long.

That’s where the Greek name actually comes from is its shape. Keration, it comes from, it’s the diminutive of the word keras, horn. So little horn is what it looks like. A little horn, about six inches long. It’s curved like a horn, it’s flat, has a wrinkled surface, turns dark brown and leathery when it matures.

Good thing about the carob tree, virtually drought proof, so it’s still bears fruit in times of famine. It’s locust proof as well, so they, even they can’t eat it. But the carob pods are packed with nutrients. I don’t see it as much today, but there was a time when I used to see carob, carob stuff everywhere. There was a carob craze, replacing all kinds of chocolate products with carob as if that’s a good idea. So no more chocolate chip cookies. Instead, carob chipcookies. Didn’t catch on, I’m very thankful to say.

But the pods, these pods can be processed, they can be crushed, turned into pulp. They’re ground into different sizes for animal feed or flour, or carbon bean meal. So they’re edible. They’re just not good, and they’re hard to eat, but pigs can eat them. They can and do eat virtually anything. So the Gentile pig farmer feeds his pigs these carob pods, cheap, drought proof animal fodder, sends this Jewish kid into his pigsties to keep his pigs alive during the severe drought.

And we find out here that whatever he’s paying this kid, it is not enough because Jesus says, verse 16, “he is longing.” Very strong word there, epithumeó, the word for lusting, for strong visceral desire. “He’s longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate.” He couldn’t get enough to eat. The guy’s not paying him enough to survive, and the people of this land are cruel because “no one gave him anything.”

In other words, he’s less valuable to them than an animal. Of less value than a vile unclean pig. They know that at least the pigs, unlike him, the, the pigs are going to provide meat they can eat. This human being has no better use than to keep sustaining their food source during this famine. And even if he were to, for lack of food, drop over dead in the pigsty, pigs will eat that too. They’re covered.

When you’re longing to eat carob pods, and if you know what I’m talking about, that doesn’t look good. You know you’re in a state of desperation when you’re willing to gnaw on this leathered looking substance. It’s like you’re willing to eat, you hear this in times of famine and starvation, people willing to eat their boot soles, leather. They chew on it, and that’s the same thing here. When you’re at the point, when you’re that hungry when you’re at the point that you are envying the pigs. Listen, you’re in a really, really bad place.

And now the son’s, lost son’s journey to the depths of degradation, it’s now complete. He’s gone from beloved son to total stranger. From stranger to lowlife, from lowlife to slave. He’s gone from slave to animal, and a pig no less, and lower still. From pig to pariah of less value than an unclean pig, and even if worse, comes to worse, and he dies, now he’s pig food. In his lost condition, he might as well be dead, which is exactly how the father describes him, verse 24, verse 32.

Look the Pharisees and scribes need not worry that Jesus has some kind of naive view about the true condition of tax collectors and the sinful rabble that surrounds them. Jesus knows them, as he knows all people as he knows us, you and me as well. He knows exactly what they are and the wonder of all wonders is that he loves them still. That he has compassion for them.

In this story, Jesus has described the condition of the tax collectors really, they’re in league with Rome. They’re being used just like the lost son was used. He’s beholden the last son to a Gentile master who cares nothing about degrading him for his own purposes. It’s a picture of how the Roman overlords also treated the tax collectors. They didn’t respect them, turning on their own people, turncoats. So they degraded them further and further. They reduced them to servile labor, of taking money from their own fellow Jews. So they’re pariahs, they’re all castaways.

And all those sinners, all of them exposed to the person and the work of Jesus Christ. All of them looking up and seeing his perfection, hearing his gracious teaching. Hearing the promise of salvation for anyone who will confess himself a sinner. Confess his personal sins against a holy God, repent of them and put his trust in Jesus Christ. All those sinners, they’re coming to him in droves to find in him full and free salvation. No more condemnation. They just need to come to their breaking point. Just need to look up from the dark muck of the pigsty that they’re lying around in to see the bright and the beautiful contrast of Jesus Christ, to come to their senses by God’s grace and believe in him, follow him.

That’s where we’re gonna find this lost son when we come back. He’s finally come to the breaking point. He’s suffered the consequences of trusting in himself. He has nothing left. All is lost, it’s by his own folly, his own doing. He has nothing left to live with, to live for. He’s covered in shame. He’s latched onto this unsympathetic Gentile, a man who cares nothing for him, but just wants to use him like everybody else. He’s forgotten in this strange foreign land, uncared for in this pigsty, defiled, starving, with no sympathy from the strangers whose company that he once longed to keep. And now, left all alone with his thoughts. An accusing conscience, haunting memories of home, verse 17, it says, “He comes to himself.” That’s the turning point. “Comes to himself.” That’s the gracious working of God evident in his life to lead this sinner to repentance.