Luke 15
McGeeCHAPTER 15THEME: Parable of the lost sheep; parable of the lost coin; parable of two lost sonsNow we come to probably the best-loved parable that our Lord told; we call it the parable of the Prodigal Son. The background for this parable is that the publicans and sinners came in to hear the Lord Jesus by multitudes. The Pharisees and scribes began to murmur, to criticize Him because of this. They were scandalized that He would receive them and even eat with them. His answer to the murmuring of the Pharisees and scribes is a parable. Customarily it is called three parables: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son. Actually, it is three parts of one parable; it is three pictures in a single frame. When I was a youngster, I used to visit my aunt, and I remember seeing a picture called a triptych, which she kept in the atticthat’s where she let me sleep when the house was filled up with relatives. I liked to look at that picture because it was three pictures in one frame. This is what our Lord gives us here, three pictures that belong together. It is a triptych.
Luke 15:1
I can’t resist telling the story of a little girl who heard this verse read. On a cold London night, she stepped, shivering, into the shelter of a church where a service was in progress. After the service, when the congregation had gone, she approached the rector, “Sir, I never knew my name was in the Bible!” He smiled, “Well, little girl what is your name?” “My name,” she answered excitedly, “is Edith.” “Oh, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Edith does not appear in the Bible.” She insisted, “Yes, it does. I heard you read it tonight. It said, ‘Jesus receiveth sinners, and Edith with them!’” Certainly our Lord receives Edithand Mary and John and all the rest of us. Thank God, He does receive sinners!
Luke 15:3
PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEPNow in this wonderful parable we see the first picture, that of a lost sheep. The shepherd in this parable is the Great Shepherd, Jesus Christ. We are the sheep. He had one hundred sheep, and one of them got lost. Frankly, that would be a pretty good percentage, to start out with one hundred sheep and end up with ninety-nine. This Shepherd, however, would not be satisfied with just ninety-nine sheep. When one sheep got lost, He went out and looked for it.
When He found it, He put it on His shoulders, the place of strength. He is able to save to the uttermost. The high priest of the children of Israel wore an ephod. On the shoulders of the ephod were two stones. On them were engraved the names of the twelve tribessix tribes on one stone and six on the other. The high priest carried the children of Israel on his shoulders.
Our great High Priest carries us on His shoulders, and we will not become lost. When He starts out with one hundred sheep, He will come through with one hundred sheepnot ninety-nine. This is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ out looking for those who are His own.
Luke 15:8
PARABLE OF THE LOST COINThe second picture in this triptych is that of the lost coin. The coin was probably part of the row of coins which formed a headpiece, signifying her married state. To lose a part of it was like losing a stone out of one’s wedding ring. The woman depicts the Holy Spirit whose ministry is to make sure that each one who belongs to the Bridegroom will be present for the wedding. Every coin will be in place. Every one is valuable to Him.
Luke 15:11
PARABLE OF TWO LOST SONSAs I mentioned previously, Dr. Luke, a medical doctor and a scientist, was also an artist. And he is the one who records our Lord’s glorious parables which no other Gospel writer gives us. Immediately our Lord begins to put the background on the canvas. And I see a lovely home (because this will represent the home of the Father, the heavenly Father) and it’s a glorious home. It’s a home that has all of the comforts and all of the joys and all of the love that ever went into a home. In that home there’s the “certain man,” and that is God the Father. And this Father had two sons. He has more sons than that, but these are representative, you see. One of these boys is called the elder and the other is called the younger. We see the lovely home, and out in front there stand the Father and two boys. Now let’s watch our Lord put some more in the picture for us.
Luke 15:12
Here in this lovely home, a home in which there was everything in the world that the heart of man could wantlove, joy, fellowship, comfortsthis younger boy does a very strange thing. He says, “I’m tired of the discipline. I don’t like it here. I’d like to stretch my wings. I’ve been looking over the pasture, and the grass over in the other field looks to me like it’s lots greener.” And I do not know why that’s true, but to you and me the grass in the next pasture always looks greener. The boy looked out from home and said, “If I could only get away off yonder on my own, it would be wonderful.” He didn’t like it at home; he fell out with his father and lost fellowship with him.
And so the father gave to him his living, and the boy left with his pockets full of moneywhich he did not earn with work that he’d done himself. Every bit that came to him, his father had given to him. He didn’t get it by his ability, he didn’t get it because he was clever, and he didn’t get it because he had worked hard. The money he had in his pocket was there because he had a very generous father. And so the boy starts out for the far country. Now our scene shifts, and we’ve got to put in another picture here, and the picture is the far country; you can paint it any way you want to. May I say to you, you can paint it in lurid colors, and many have attempted to paint it that way. I do not think it’s exaggerated to paint it in lurid colors. This boy found out what it was to have what the world calls a good time. He made all of the nightclubs; he knew cafe society; he had money. And when you have money, you can get fair-weather friends.
For a time he lived it up. He enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a season there in the far country. You paint your own picture there. Our Lord didn’t put in any details of what the boy did. But we can well imagine some of the things that he did. However, there did come a day when he’d finished living it up; he reached into his pocket and there wasn’t anything left.
Luke 15:14
Not only is he in a very bad way financially, but the country is also in a bad way. You see, in that country where he thought the grass was greener, the grass has now dried up. They’re having a famine in that land, and this boy does not know what to do. If you want to know the truth, he’s afraid to go home. He should not have been afraid, but he was afraid to go home. Now he’s desperate.
He is so desperate that he’s going to do something that no Jew would ever have done unless he’d hit the bottom. This boy has hit the bottom. He can’t get a job. He goes around to see some of these fair-weather friends, and he says, “Bill, do you remember how you used to come to the banquets I gave and the dinners, and that I always picked up the check and I paid for the liquor and I paid for the girls? Do you remember that? Now I’m in a bad way.
I wonder if you couldn’t tide me over or maybe you could give me a job.” And the fair-weather friend says, “I’m sorry. You say you’ve lost all your money? Well, I’m through with you. I’m not interested in you anymore. My secretary will show you to the door.” And the boy found, after going from place to place, that he didn’t have any real friends in the far country. Finally he ended up by going out to the edge of town where there was a man who was raising pigs, and you could tell it a mile away.
And the boy went over to him and said, “I’d like to have a job.” The man says, “Well, I can’t pay you. You know, we’re having a lot of difficulty, but if you can beat the pigs to it, you can eat here at least.” That’s exactly the point to which he had sunk. And when our Lord said that this man “would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat,” every Israelite, both Pharisee and publican, who was listening to Him that day, winced because a Hebrew couldn’t go any lower than thathe was to have nothing to do with swine (the Mosaic Law had shut him off from them), but to stoop to the place where he’d go down and live with them was horrifying! That’s the picture, and it’s a black picture. You see, this boy has hit the very bottom. Somebody is immediately going to say, “Well, this is the fellow who is a sinner, and he is going to get saved.” No, I’m sorry to tell you that such is not the picture that’s given to us here. This is not the picture of a sinner that gets saved. May I say to you, and say it very carefully, that when this boy was living at home with the father and was in fellowship with him, he was a son, and there was never any question about that. When this boy got to the far country and was out there throwing his money around, he was still a son. That is never questioned. And when this boy went down and hit the bottom and was out there with the pigs (and if you’d been a half-mile away looking over there among the pigs, I don’t think you could have told him from a pig), he was not a pighe was a son.
In this story that our Lord told there was never any question as to whether the boy was a son or not. He was a son all the time. Somebody says, “Then this is not the gospel.” Yes, it is the gospel also. And I will hold to that for the very simple reason that an evangelist in southern Oklahoma many years ago used this parable to present the gospel. People said he imitated Billy Sunday, but I had never heard of Billy Sunday; so it didn’t make any difference to me whom he imitated. He was a little short fellow, holding services under a brush arbor. And the thing that interested us boys was the fact he could jump as high as the pulpit. He’d just stand flat right there and up he’d goa little short fellow.
And we’d sit out there and watch him, and the next day we’d practice to see if we could jump that high. May I say to you, one night he preached on the Prodigal Son, and that’s the night I went forward. Don’t tell me the gospel is not there. It is there. However, let’s understand what the parable is primarily about. The parable is not how a sinner gets saved; it reveals the heart of a Father who will not only save a sinner but will also take back a son that sins.
Luke 15:15
Maybe you thought a moment ago I was exaggerating when I said his fair-weather friends wouldn’t help him. Our Lord made it very clear that they wouldn’t help him"no man gave unto him." Why is it today that Christians sometimes get the impression that the man of the world is really his friend when he’s trying to lead him away from God? Well, believers do get that impression. This boy got that impression also. He was being led away from home, from his father, farther and farther away. And he thought these folks were his friends. Now we don’t have any letters that he wrote back to some of his friends at home. But if we had one, I think that it would have said, “Say, you ought to come over here. You know, there are some real people over here where I am. I tell you, I’m having a big time. You ought to come over.” But, may I say to you, the day came when he found out these were not his friends. “No man gave unto him.” Now that’s the black part of the picture, and I think it’s about time for us to see some of the bright colors our Lord painted into the picture, for our Lord always, always put down a black background and then put the bright colors in the foreground of the picture. Have you ever noticed that God paints that way? And so, on the black background of this boy’s sindown in the pigpen, out of fellowship with his father, having left home in a huffour Lord begins to put the bright color.
Luke 15:17
He came to himself. Sin does an awful thing for us. It makes us see the world incorrectly. It makes us see ourselves in the wrong light. It makes us see the pleasures of this world in the wrong perspective, and we just don’t see clearly when we’re in sin. This boy, when he was at home, looked out yonder at the far country, and it all looked so goodthe grass was so green and the fun was so keen; but now he came to himself.
And the first thing he did was a little reasoning. He began to use his intelligence. He said, “You know, I’m a son of my father, and here I am in a far country. I’m down here in a pigpen with pigs, and back in my father’s home the servants are better off than I am, and I’m his son.” When he began to think like that, he began to make sense. And this young man now acts like he’s intelligent.
Luke 15:18
Now we get to a really bright picture. This is the brightest one of all, and it’s the picture of that lovely home we were telling you about. Oh, it’s a beautiful home. It’s the father’s house. The Lord Jesus said, “In my Father’s house there are many abiding places …” (Joh_14:2, translation mine). This is the house. The house is there in the background, and I see a father looking out the window. He’s been looking out the window every day since his boy left. And do you know why he’s been looking out the window? He knew that one day that boy would be trudging down the road coming home. Somebody asks, “Do you believe that if you’re once saved you’re always saved?” Yes. Somebody asks, “Do you believe that a Christian can get into sin?” Yes. “Can a Christian stay in sin?” No. Because in the Father’s house the Father is watching, and He says, “All my sons are coming home. My sons don’t like pigpens because they do not have the nature of a pig. They have the nature of a son. They have My nature, and they won’t be happy except in the Father’s house.
The only place in the world where they will be content is the Father’s house. And every one of My sons that goes out to the far country and gets into a pigpenregardless of how dirty he gets, or how low he sinksif he’s My son, one day he’ll say, ‘I’ll arise, and I’ll go to my Father.’” And the reason he’ll say, “I’ll go to my Father,” is because the Man who lives in the big house is his Father. Up until now, after at least 6,000 years of recorded human history, there never yet has been a human pig that has said, “I will arise and go to my Father’s house.” Never, never. Pigs love it down there. They don’t want to go to the Father’s house. The only one who wants to go to the Father’s house is a son; and one day the son will say, “I will arise and I will go to my Father.” Now the son starts home. Maybe you thought a moment ago that I was exaggerating when I said that this father had been looking out the window every day. But he had, and now he sees him coming. He has compassion, and runs, and says to his servant, “Go down to the tree and cut me about a half a dozen hickory limbs. I’m going to switch this boy within an inch of his life.” Is that the way your Bible reads? Well, mine doesn’t either.
It ought to read that way. Under the Mosaic Law a father had a perfect right to bring a disobedient son before the elders and have him stoned to death. This father had a perfect right to say, “This boy took my name and my money, my substance, and he squandered it. He disgraced my name. I’ll whip him within an inch of his life.” He had a right to do this. But this father, rather, did something amazing.
And when our Lord got to this part of the parable, and when He put this bright color on, it caused all those that were present to blink their eyes. They said, “We can’t believe that. It’s bad enough to see him hit the bottom and go down yonder with the pigs, but it’s worse for the father to take him back home without doing something. He ought to punish him. That’s the thing that we don’t like. He ought to be punished.” Will you notice what the father did.
Let me read it accurately now.
Luke 15:20
He’s in rags, and you can almost smell himoh, that pig smell! There stands the boy, and the father goes and puts his arms around him and kisses him.
Luke 15:21
Now he’d memorized a little speech, you see. He’s saying the thing he’d planned in the far country. I think he repeated that little speech all the way home. I think every step of the way he said, “When I get home, I’m going to say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.’” He started to say this to his father but he didn’t get very far. He got as far as, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son” when he was interrupted.
Luke 15:22
If you really want to have a ball, you can’t do it in the far country. If you’re God’s child, you can’t sin and get by with it. You may even go to the pigpen, but, my friend, you can never enjoy it. If you’re a son of the Father, there’ll come a day when you’re going to say, “I will arise and go to my Father,” and you will go. And when you go, you will confess to Him. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn_1:9). That’s the way a sinning child gets back into the fellowship of the Father’s house. In fact, the only way back is by confession. Have you ever noticed the things the father says he’s going to do for the son? He says, “Get a robe.” Now a robe was clean clothing that went on him after he’d been washed. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Our Lord washes us. The One who girded Himself with a towel is the One who will wash one of His sons who comes back to Him; he has to be cleansed when he’s been to the far country. And that robe is the robe of the righteousness of Christ that covers the believer after he is cleansed. The ring is the insignia of the full-grown son, with all rights pertaining thereto. He’s brought back into his original position. Nothing is taken from him. He’s brought back into his place in the Father’s house. Christ right now is at God’s right hand, still girded with the towel of service for one of His who gets soiled feet or soiled hands by being in the far country. When we confess to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We have to come like the Prodigal Son came. “Father, I have sinned, and I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me a hired servant.” And the Father will say, “I’d never make you a hired servant. You’re my son. I’ll cleanse you, I’ll forgive you, I’ll bring you back into the place of fellowship and usefulness.” A son is a son forever. There is another Prodigal Son in this parable.
Luke 15:25
Listen to this boywhat a complainer and a griper he is! This is the real Prodigal Son. He was angry when he heard that his brother had returned and a party was being given in his honor. He would not go in and join the others at the feast. His father came out and entreated his son to come to the banquet.
Luke 15:29
There are many Christians who are not living in a far country; they are trying to live for God, but they are as poor as Job’s turkey. Why? They are blessed with all spiritual blessings, but they will not lay hold upon them. God says, “It is all yours; everything that I have belongs to youtake it.” Our heavenly Father is rich in spiritual blessings and they belong to us, but He will not force them upon us. We must reach out and take them for ourselves. The story closes with the elder son out of fellowship with his Father. The Father, however, left the door to fellowship wide open. Years ago Dr. Chadwick made the statement that there is a third son in the parable of the Prodigal Son. The younger son broke the Father’s heart, the elder son was out of fellowship, and the third Son is the One who uttered the parable. He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He is the ideal Son without sin. He came to a far country, not to run away, but to do the will of His Father. He did not spend His life in riotous living but in sacrificial dying. He was not a Prodigal Son but a Prince of Peace who shed His blood for the sins of the world. He was not a wayward son but a willing sacrifice. He says, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (Joh_1:12). Salvation comes to those who simply believe on His name. If you are the son who went away to a far country, you can come back to the Father by confessing your sins to Him. Perhaps you are like the elder son who was out of fellowship. He had no concern or love for his brother. He thought he was serving God; he had never transgressed as his brother had. Yet he had never enjoyed a feast with his friends. The Father says to you, “All that I have is thine.” How wonderful to have a Father like this! Sinner friend, if you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are not the Father’s son. You can become a son only by putting your faith and trust in Christ who died for you. If you accept Christ and come to Him, God becomes your Father and He will never throw you overboard. If you leave Him and one day return, He will be waiting to put His arms around you. How wonderful He is!