The Loving Father, Part 1 God’s Rescue Mission

Luke 15:17-24

We left the prodigal last time in some pretty dire circumstances. He was near starvation, in a pigsty. He had squandered his wealth and then an unforeseen natural disaster of a famine, sent him scrounging for food and tying himself to a man, a citizen of the land, a Gentile who had really no use for him and sent him into the pigsty to feed his pigs.

Whatever the citizen of this far off country was paying him, it was not enough to sustain him and since no one gave him anything, we can understand that because they’re all struggling to survive through a famine as well. But we see there’s no wages for him. There’s no charity coming to him, so he’s facing a future of slow death by starvation, and it’s at this point, Jesus tells us in Luke 15 verse 17, “the young man came to himself.”

There’s a contrast here as he comes to himself, a contrast that forms in his mind between the stinginess of the citizen that he’s working for, and the generosity of his father. Between the paucity and the scarcity in that land that he’s in and the abundance of his home, he says, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread?” A surplus of bread because of what my father pays them. “But I perish here with hunger.”

That is the first hint in the story that the son is beginning to notice his father’s character. In verse 12 it’s clear the son took his father for granted. He had no appreciation for how hard his father had worked, how kind his father had been, how patient his father was in this painful task of dividing the property between the two sons.

But now here we see that the prodigal begins to realize how good he had it, how good life was in his father’s house, how he lacked for nothing. My friend as you listen this morning, and my fellow Christian, my prayer for you today is that you take a good hard look at your heart. See if there’s any ingratitude in you. Think about how you’ve taken God for granted. How you’ve spurned his goodness.

Think about how you’ve grumbled and complained. Think about your sometimes critical spirit. Think about how you’ve complained when you ought to be really doing nothing but rejoicing, nothing but giving thanks. Think about living for yourself when you ought to be bowing down in worship and using your life as a stewardship to obey Jesus Christ. Paul puts it this way in Romans 2, verse 4, asking the reader, us, “Do you presume on the riches of God’s kindness? Have you ignored and spurned his forbearance and his patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” So, what about you? What about us?

So, my hope and prayer is that you will see the love of God today in the character of the father. That God will open your eyes to discern his goodness and his kindness, and his immeasurable patience with you, with us, with sinners. So that in seeing his love you’ll come to him repenting of your sins, trusting him completely because he’s given us nothing but reasons to trust him. That you’ll find salvation, you’ll find forgiveness of your sins, and you’ll give your heart to Jesus Christ. That’s my hope for you today.

The story starts for us today, as we’ve seen with an ungrateful, unrepentant son, and even though his life has hit rock bottom, he’s got one more effort at self-salvation to attempt that we see today. So, here’s our first point.

Number one, the son’s fictitious contrition. It was a false humility. A false contrition was all part of a plan. It says here, “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’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’” And then this in verse 20, “And he arose, came to his father.”

 There are many people who, including a vast majority, I think of commentators, many who believe that there is true repentance found here at this point in the prodigal. That true repentance is working in his heart, that that’s happening right, right now, and it is understandable because there is some language of repentance, but Jesus is very careful to show us that the son is not repentant at this point. Not yet anyway.

Repentance language may be here. What we’re lacking is the heart of repentance. What we’re lacking is true contrition, humility. Notice how Jesus shows us in the prodigal’s little soliloquy here, his speech with himself, shows us in the thoughts of his heart that the son is really concerned about his stomach and not his soul. How many unbelievers, ourselves included, we’re always concerned about our stomach and not our soul. That’s the prodigal here, he’s saying I’m hungry, I’ll die if I don’t eat, so, here’s what I’m going to do and then he executes.

Jesus is showing the young man’s motivations. He’s telling us here what the man, what this guy’s thinking, not so much to show us, and really, it’s not from Jesus’ point in telling the story, it’s not so much just to show us a false form of repentance to help us grow in discernment. Though that is happening here, if we’ll pay attention, but it’s so that we can understand that, that repentance is not something that’s self-generated. Repentance is not something that he musters up from himself and does on his own initiative. Repentance, like every virtue, is a gift of God. Repentance does not come from ourselves; it comes from God as a gift. It is his kindness to us.

 So, what sounds like humility, what sounds like contrition we can see from the young man’s reasoning, which Jesus is telling the story and he wants us to see it, so he shows it to us, this is about filling an empty stomach. This is flesh driven, not spiritually driven. This is the works of the flesh that masquerades as remorse and repentance to take care of what they think is a fleshly problem.

A bit of cultural background that’ll help us to see the point a bit more clearly. We said last time that the son’s shame, his treatment of his father, his rejection of his family, his pining for a foreign land to live as he pleased, this became known outside the family, became known to the whole village, to the whole town. Even before he liquidated his one third share of the estate according to verse 13, word had gotten around about what he had done the way he treated his father with contempt all throughout the village. And the son’s shameful behavior did not go down well with the neighbors, those who held the father in high esteem, those who conducted business with the father. He had brought shame on this family. Shame on a good man. He treated his father with contempt.

And so, his reputation in the community is dirt and it’s lower than dirt. A pigsty is exactly where he belongs. His deplorable actions would have ignited the village’s anger. Its sense of righteous indignation because he had shamed his father. He’d shamed his family. He despised his family name, and if he hadn’t left in such a hurry, they would have driven him out anyway. They have tarred and feathered him and rode him out of town on a rail.

So, for the crowd listening to the story, hearing Jesus tell this tale, that’s exactly how they felt. That’s exactly the emotion that it would have excited within them. This indignation for the son. Even though no one wants to see a, a good Jewish boy be wasted like that and end up in the mud with swine, everybody would have seen this as a fitting consequence of his appallingly shameful, utterly disgraceful behavior.

For the characters in the story, including the prodigal, the elements of shame and honor are in the background, the cultural background of this, any Middle Eastern setting. The young man, as he sat in that pigsty as he’s thinking about what to do next, he knows his reputation is so terribly damaged, probably permanently, probably beyond repair, and this is why, when the famine hit after he had squandered his money on extravagant living and he began to be in need, this is why he would not dare go back home.

He was hoping to hold out long enough. He was hoping to outlast the famine, make his own way in the world, recover what he’d lost. He’s hoping to rebuild the wealth far away from the family, hopefully without their knowledge. Far from that dusty village and to go home now after squandering his father’s estate, off in a Gentile country; there’s no living that down.

In fact, the unstated background of the story here, unknown to us but very well known to the audience of the 1st century, is what’s called a kezazah ceremony. The noun is kezazah, and the Hebrew verb is kezaz. And the Hebrew verb kezaz means to cut off or to cut up in pieces. So, the kezazah ceremony, it was practiced in these Jewish villages, every once in a while, when there was some type of despicable act that brought shame to the family in the village. So, there’s this ceremony, a symbolic act of severing social connection for some disreputable act, some shameful deed. It was basically a ban and driving this person this individual, away from the community. It’s excommunication.

According to Doctor Kenneth Bailey, whose book on this is just phenomenal on Luke 15, he says “The kezazah ceremony was performed for one of two reasons. If a young man, number one if a young man married an immoral woman” that was grounds. Or “Number two if he had lost his family’s inheritance among the Gentiles,” which is exactly what the prodigal had done. His shame was so great, his behavior so disgraceful it warranted his excommunication. A lifetime ban from returning to the village.

So, for those listening to Jesus when they heard about the loss of money and the famine in a foreign land in the Gentile country. When the prodigal chose not to return to the village and hire himself out instead, they knew why they understood. He’s going to face a kezazah ceremony if he returns. Of course he’s not coming back. The villagers in that ceremony would carry the young man into the village square in public and surround him. They’d take a large earthenware pot, like a large jug that would hold water emptied out of the water and fill that large pot with burned stuff like nuts and fruit and grain, and the entire village, gather around, surround the young man and they would investigate and prosecute and unpack the cause of this ceremony.

And then they would break the earthenware pot in front of him, spilling all of its contents on the ground and cry out, “This man is cut off.” His hidden shame would become a public shame. His private disgrace would become exposed as the village passed sentence and he’s banished. He’d be unable to survive there if he tried to camp, come back and hang out in the town area. According to Bailey, again, he says, “No one’s going to feed him or give him a drink or give him shelter or hire him or have anything to do with him. He’s got to leave town if the kezazah ceremony is enacted.”

So, returning to our story, that’s the background. This is what is factoring into the young man’s reasoning. As I said, our prodigal, he may sound repentant here at this point to our ears. But Jesus’ audience knew what was up here. They knew exactly why he wasn’t going to return home, why that was so unlikely, because of their cultural awareness, they knew what was motivating him. They could see his false humility, but even for us, who are separated by two millennia, by cultural, language differences and all the rest, for us, Jesus has given the motivation right up front. If we just pay attention to the language here, we see through it as well. He is hungry and that’s what he wants to fix. That’s the problem.

When we read in verse 17, “He came to himself.” That’s, that’s not shorthand for repentance at this point. That’s simply verbalizing through his soliloquy, his internal thoughts. So, when the young man came to himself, he was saying this, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread.” Hired servants there is the word misthios, the root, root word misthos. It means wage, it means reward or compensation. So, this is a wage earner. You can see like in verse 22 by contrast, the slaves that are referred to there in verse 22 they are the doulos, doulos is the singular. So, the slaves are those who are owned by another. So, owned by the father, they’re cared for as a part of the household. The misthios, they’re not like that, they are not part of the household. They are freed men, and they are wage earners.

So, they could be day laborers without much skill. They could also be skilled tradesman. Very highly skilled tradesman, in fact. Even doctors, lawyers, those kind, they were wage earners as well. But they were free, they were independent and of the household, and they could hire themselves out for compensation.

Depending on the kind of work or the level of skill in their service, wages could be paid out daily, monthly, even annually. Large estates like the father’s estate in this story he could afford to hire skilled medical workers doctors, legal help, lawyers, professional skilled workers. The father also would hire day laborers. He would hire unskilled workers to get extra help during times of harvest when, when he had more than enough work for even his household. According to Leviticus 19:13, those kinds of workers were to be paid at the end of every single day because that’s what they depended on. They had to have that money. So, they go home buy on the way home eat, feed their family or take the money or the food home and feed their families.

So, this is what informs the prodigal’s plan, verse 18, “I will arise go to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven, and before you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” So, he’s thinking if he can sneak through the village, avoid getting caught if he can avoid that dreaded kezazah ceremony, he can get to his father, first maybe he’ll have the chance to recite this little speech. It consists of three things; I’ve sinned, I’m not worthy, make me as a hired worker.

First, “I’ve sinned against heaven, and before you.” Again, that sounds really good, right? We want to believe him until you realize that’s exactly what Pharaoh said to Moses. Over and over in Exodus 10:16 after the eighth plague, the locusts had ravaged the land of Egypt, and he says, “Moses, Moses I’ve sinned against the Lord Your God.” And he even uses the divine name, “Yahweh your God, and against you Moses.” Oh, he’s so contrite. Isn’t he? Gentle Pharaoh, he’s just been misled. Within a few verses his heart is hard again, he disobeys the Lord. He sins again. He refuses to let Israel go. So, we see it’s a false contrition.

King Saul, he said the same thing to, to David, or to Samuel I should say in 1 Samuel 15:24 he says, “I’ve sinned or I’ve transgressed the command, commandment of the Lord and your words.” Saul said similar things to David. Things that sounded humble and contrite, but then he kept trying to hunt David down and kill him. Tried to pin him to the wall with a spear. Went after him with his army. False contrition.

Sinners can sound contrite. I know that when I was, before I was saved, well, even times I was saved, I would say words that really sounded contrite, but man, I was hiding a bad motive, wasn’t I? But sinners can sound so contrite when plagues are ravaging the land, when the world is falling apart, when things are beyond their control. Are they sincere when they say this? Probably, as sincere as sinners can be at the time, but something, in order for there to be true contrition, something has to change, and it has to change deep within for humility to be genuine. Something profoundly different in order for contrition to be real and for remorse to lead to true repentance.

Second thing he says, “I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.” Again, that’s true, but it doesn’t go deep enough. It’s not for the right reasons, because at this point, and in light of the next statement in his homecoming speech, the son thinks his unworthiness consists in losing the money. He sees his error but his demise, in his mind is weather related. I would have been fine if that famine hadn’t hit.

Things were really starting to workout for me. All those friends I bought with, well, all those lavish gifts I gave I was just about to reap a great harvest of reward for all that extravagant generosity. I just need to, just need to get back on track. Just get back on track, last this famine, see it through and now that that hasn’t happened, I got another plan, I got another plan. There’s no thought in his mind at this point, but the nature of his sin against heaven, what it is. No thought in his mind how deeply unworthy he truly is, and that becomes abundantly clear.

Thirdly, when he suggests a solution, he says, “treat me as one of your hired servants.” Actually, that’s the ESV. Treat me, make me is what it says. It’s the verb poieō, make me, do this for me. JB Phillips, in his translation, renders it this way. “Please take me on as one of your hired men.” That’s a good translation.

Interesting, isn’t it that his solution still, at this point, still protects his independence from his father? He’s no longer worthy to be considered a son. Yeah, we get that. What about becoming his father’s slave? Would that do? Slaves were treated as sons. I mean they were treated as part of the household. They’re counted as part of the household. A father is responsible to care for the slaves. They didn’t have the rights and privileges of sonship, but he’s already acknowledged. I’m not worthy of that.

So, what’s keeping him from entering into slavery with his father? Be cared for, provided for, enjoy the provision and protection of that home, have the family name cover him again. The prodigal doesn’t want that. He still wants his freedom. He still wants his independence from his father. He doesn’t see the nature of his sin. He doesn’t see the true unworthiness as sin against his father. Sin against the family name. The despicable way that he really dishonored his father and his mother. And then he’s got in the back of his head, he’s got that kezazah ceremony, which is not in the back of his head anymore, now it’s coming to the front of his mind. He thinks his sin, consistent losing the money in a Gentile country, his dishonor is unworthiness, is about financial mismanagement.

And so, to rectify the situation, he plans to overcome the disgrace with good old fashioned hard work. Make me as one of your hired men. I’ll, I’ll apprentice with someone. I will learn a profitable skill and trade. Take my journeyman’s test, take my master’s test. Eventually in time I’ll provide for myself, I’ll earn an income, but I’ll pay you back. I’ll dig myself out of this hole by working hard. I’ll restore my reputation by earning it.

Um, no, he won’t. This kid has no chance at all of paying back his father. No chance of paying back his debt. That’s way too much, because remember his heart hasn’t changed. He’s no different, he’s just moved locations. He’s the same person. He found himself in a pig sty, the same person that murdered his father, the same person that took all the estate. Nothing’s changing. But everybody listening is saying, yeah, this is what he should do.” This is always the way with the sinner. Thinking he can do it on his own, thinking he or she can get to heaven by merit.

The prodigal sees no need for grace at this point. For him, it’s simple, just go get a job, feed myself, pay back what I’ve lost, restore my honor, restore the honor to the family. The only obstacle is that pesky kezazah ceremony. Banishment is going to really throw a wrench into my plan.

So, if he can get his dad to sign off on his deal he’s got a chance here. So, if he’s going to pull off the plan, if he’s going to succeed on the road to self-restoration, he needs to find his father first. He needs to get in there, find his father, secure his blessing in order to avoid the banishment, the excommunication, and that can give him a chance, by a little time to find a trade, maybe in another village, hire on there, become an apprentice, make a living, pay his debts, recover financially, and restore his reputation.

So, verse 20, “He rose and came to his father.” Makes the long trek back to the village from which he, by the way, had longed to escape in the first place. We can imagine as he’s walking, and the closer he gets, we can imagine the tension that he feels knowing what’s gonna happen if he gets caught by one of the villagers, the hunger, and then that growing anxiety had to combine to severely weaken his condition. He’s half starved, he’s dirty, stinking of pig, he’s frightened by the prospect of discovery. So obvious, isn’t it? The kid did not know what he needed. He’s lost. He is clueless. The father knew though. The father knew exactly what he needed.