Luke 15

Luke 15:1-32

OR THE AND THE Luke 15:1-32THE three parables of Luke fifteen make that a favorite chapter of God’s Word. They present an ascending scale in both numbers and value. In the first, the parable of the lost sheep, the loss is one in one hundred; in the second, the parable of the lost coin, the loss is one in ten; and in the third, the parable of the prodigal son, the loss is one in two. In the first it is the loss of a sheep, and since brutes are regarded by man as mere chattels, the grief could be measured by its value in gold. In the second, the lost coin, while perhaps not more valuable than the sheep, was held as practically invaluable since it was a sign of betrothal, an index of fidelity, and a token of character. In the third and last was the loss of a child, the dearest idol of man’s heart, prized beyond all the wealth of the world.These parables present more than progress in thought; they express the power of an ascending appeal.

The sheep is loved by the shepherd, and even as the song suggests, “if there are ninety and nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold, and one is out on the hills away,” though the “road be rough and steep,” he “will go to the mountains to find his sheep.” The darkness of the night would not deter him; the depths of the valley and the steep of the mountain will not turn him back. He is indeed a type of the great Shepherd of souls, and his search a symbol of the work of soul-saving.But the coin was more precious still.

You can imagine the woman who had lost this symbol of her union, loyalty and allegiance to lover, not only “sweeping the house diligently”, but studying every nook and corner and crevice through tear-dimmed eyes, doubting what the husband’s judgment might be should he suddenly come and note the absence of the coin. It was to the anxious wife what the engagement and wedding rings are to the well married of the present moment. Years ago on shipboard we were stopped at the salon door as we went in to dinner, and the young man told us that his wife had had stolen from her room that day her engagement ring. She was inconsolable regarding it, and before we had quit the ship he had offered $300.00 reward for its return.But sheep and all mere symbols are shortly forgotten when they come into comparison with the son, the treasure of the father’s heart, valued beyond all wealth, all office, or honor; and the great tragedies of life are largely in connection with the bringing up of children. Few experiences are struck through with sorrow to exceed that found in the parable of the prodigal, for ere we finish we shall discover that the father suffered not in one child only, but in both.It will undoubtedly kindle our interest in this parable and repay our study of it if I call your attention to the great central facts running through it. In speaking of these two boys let us consider first, Their Interests in Common; Their Conduct in Contrast, and Their Characters in Comparison. IN COMMON. They had the same efficient father. The parable opens, “A certain man had two sons”. They were both his, then, one babe as dear as another. They were alike his flesh and his blood. It is well-nigh impossible for me to interpret this text in any other way than to see in it two Christians, one of them a backslider who returns, and the other a haughty and proud moralist whose Pharisaical spirit proves almost as painful to his Father as the putrid conduct of the younger brother. The object of Jesus in this parable is, evidently, twofold.

He had been charged with “receiving sinners and dining with them”; of being willing “to be a guest in the house” of one. He wanted men to see that the low; and outcast might be lifted up; and that, whether lifted or not, they were the subjects of the Father’s love; and He wanted men to realize that penitence on the part of the greatest sinner was regarded of God, and for such an one God had His door of mercy.At the same time He wanted men to see another truth, namely, that the proud and haughty are just as certainly sinners as are the drunken and debased, and that neither of them are model children—ideal members of God’s family.

In this entire parable there is no charge against the father. His two boys both held disappointment and compelled distress of spirit. But that was not because he failed to do his duty to either, but rather, because they failed to appreciate his parental excellence, his generous heart, and his guiding counsel. There are men who have noble and efficient fathers but who are nothing bettered on that account. Though souls have a great God they may live little and poverty stricken, or proud and contemptible lives. I am wondering tonight what my individual auditors are making of their relationship to God?

Do you realize in the greatness of God an appeal to be great yourselves, and in the sympathy of your God an assurance of strength against temptation, and even of victory over sorrow and defeat; or are you making little or nothing of the matchless relationship you sustain to Him, living as do the sons of certain successful and great men, in shabbiness and sloth, and ethical indifference? The difference between men you meet on the streets is not determined by the Father’s favor for some and contempt for others. “God is no respector of persons”!

His grace is equally provided to each, and your failure in all spiritual things, if such curses your soul, is not His fault. Your Heavenly Father is none other than the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Declaration of Independence says, “All men are born free and equal.” It is not true! Most men are bound from the womb and no two of them are equal. But for the re-born it is an absolute certainty that the same blessing has come to each, namely, that of becoming “the child of a King”.They shared an equally good fortune. The younger son said to his father, “Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me, and he divided unto them his living”.

He receives no more than his share, but be it said, he received no less than his share. And let it be understood also that what he did receive was given him of his father, and the grant was evidently generous.

There are a good many men that complain that they have been the subjects of ill-favor; they grumble that God has not treated them right; that they were not well born or properly environed; they were not treated properly at college; some professor had a prejudice against them; or the parents did not select them as chief among the children, and so they make it out that their failures were the fault of somebody else, or everybody else except themselves. Few people take stock in this over-worked excuse. It may be true that you had less brains than your brother from birth, but the world has a thousand times illustrated the fact that it is not the brains with which a man begins that makes for life, but it is the uses to which he puts those which he has. It is true that not all men are alike environed, but it is also true that the best environed go bad and the worst environed often turn out well. It is true that luck seems to fall out to some men and ill-luck overtakes others. But it is also true that the lucky man just as often loses out and makes his “wheel of fortune” a wheel of evil fate, while the unlucky man converts his hard experiences into a stepping stone and attains the higher things.

In fact, as one studies life he is profoundly impressed with the thought that man is, in a measure, the arbiter of his own destiny, and it is up to him whether he will “waste his substance in riotous living” or whether he will conserve and add to the same. There is not a particle of doubt that this younger son had as good an opportunity as his older brother enjoyed, and that his poverty was self-imposed, his want was attributable to his waywardness and nothing else, and his swine associates were solely due to the fact that he had turned his back upon the finest family fellowship and had voluntarily gone out of the most beautiful and palatial home.

I therefore make this suggestion to you men who are “hoboes”, if such there be present tonight, and if not, then you pass it down to Bridge Square as coming from me, “Quit coming to me with an appeal of ill-luck, and if you come at all, tell me the truth; tell me that you had a fair chance, and that you would not use it; that friends offered to help you and you declined their counsel; that fortune favored you and you turned that favor into frivolity. In other words, cease lying, and confess that both your fortune and the Divine favor have been above your deserts.”They faced life with kindred opportunities. There is not a single thing in this text to indicate that the older son was educated and the father had kept the younger from school and in ignorance. His courtly language to the “father”, his imperious demand “Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me”, are alike indicative of culture and independence. Teachers who turn children from faith to infidelity are accustomed now to try to lay the blame on the home, to charge up to parental failures all faults of sons and daughters. Observation disproves the justice of the charge, and hundreds of times, yea, many hundreds of times, have I seen children grow up under the same parents, sit at the same table, eat identically the same food, be clothed almost as twins are clothed, equipped in the same schools, financed equally, and one of them appreciate all that was done for him, the other despise it; one respond with affection, the other flout it; one contribute joy to the home, the other bring it sorrow; one become the pride of every member of the house, and the other only named when necessity requires it; and then with shame and sorrow.

I am asking you young people tonight what you are doing with your opportunities—how you are treating the counsels of friends and family! In other words, I am asking you whether you are playing the game fairly, whether you are gladdening the old father’s heart, bringing pleasure to the devoted mother; whether your entrance to the home is like a ray of incoming sunshine that gladdens brother and sister and friend, or the opposite!

Remember the parable of the prodigal son.In the second place I call your attention toCONDUCT IN .The contrast in the conduct of these brothers is as marked as their interests are common. One of them prized, the other despised, the home. The first took his journey into a far country, turning his back upon the house of his birth and breeding, and there he wasted his substance with riotous living. The second could say truthfully, “Father, Lo these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment”. The younger son treated that home with contempt. To him any place was better than his father’s house, and the elder son treated it with proper appreciation.

Its roof and walls marked the center of most of life for him. The first practically forgot he had a father; the second gave attention to every command and showed his deference by obedience.

There is a theory now to the effect that the home is a comparatively recent evolution; that man lived first in trees, then in caves; later in tents and last in homes, as he evolved from monkey to man. Nonsense! On the contrary, Adam and Eve doubtless had the most ideal home life yet realized on earth; but what a fight it has been to retain that pristine holiness and happiness that makes a home, and the fight continues today as never before. Men, prodigal sons, distress the home, break its heart and make the house that was once merry with children’s laughter to be sad with parental sobs, even as Cain dragged the first home into disgrace and gave early evidence of the eternal contest that would be waged to keep its purity, its pleasures, its perfections; and when one thinks of how men have labored to build homes, and prayed to retain holiness in them, and sacrificed to make them centers of both pleasure and profit, surely the home ought to be appreciated; and when one remembers how mothers have brooded over their homes and besought God to make them little heavens below, and yearned over their children that they might be heroes and scholars and saints, we can understand what the contest of keeping home pure and sweet has cost the ages. We know wherever that contest has been won, the world has profited so that out of a home made beautiful by a mother’s genius, the great Carlyle came; out of a home characterized by the maternal energy and courage and ambition of a Letitia, Napoleon went; out of a home where a mother sang as only a mother can sing into the ears of her infant son, Mendelssohn at last stood forth to be the master musician of the world; out of a home where courage combined with deep convictions, came Martin Luther; out of another of a kindred sort the incomparable Spurgeon; and out of yet another, the hearth of which was kept holy before God by the combined consecration of both parents, came the most marvelous family of modern times, the Booths.I want to ask you young men and women, here in such great numbers tonight, what you are doing for your home and what you may be doing against it? Are you behaving like the junior, spoiling the happiness of the home, despising the peace of parental hearts, treating with contempt the very house itself, or are you, like the elder brother, blessing it with your presence and making it beautiful by your filial love and to blossom by your acts of obedience?We note further, One son increased, the other dissipated his fortune.

The elder remained at home with his father and with the background of a fruitful farm. His barns were filled and at times he almost needed to question, as a richer one did later, “Where shall I bestow all my fruits and my goods”?

The younger went forth in the flush of fortune. He spent with lavish hand; he created social occasions in order to prove himself the social lion of the hour. He ordered the plates replenished and the glasses refilled. He drank toasts to the health of the “old man” back on the farm amidst guffaws of laughter, and to the memory of “mother who once had me tied to her apron strings,” and to his elder brother, “the home molly-coddle”; while waxed mustached men and painted and half nude women sat about the festal board and laughed at his coarse jokes. One who chooses such a course in life needs more than his share of his father’s fortune. That will shortly fail him.

When the income is fixed and limited, and the outgo is continuous and unlimited, it doesn’t take long to convert luxury into want; not long to degrade wine dinners to husks that swine do eat!My good friend, Dr. Shields of Toronto, tells the story of an Irishman who wished he had $1,000,000.

Somebody asked him if he did have it, what he would do with it. He answered, “I’d buy the biggest alarm clock I could get.” “And then what?” “I’d sit it for foive o’clock in the morning.” “And then what?” “Sure, and whin it wint off I’d wake up and say, Shut yer mouth, ye blatherskite. I don’t have to git up; and I’d turn over and go back to slape agin.”A million dollars would last a good while if a man did nothing but sleep, but it doesn’t last long if he drinks and eats and travels with a fast crowd. One portion of father’s estate will not suffice. He needs a continual influx to meet this river of expense and to save his fortune from flowing to bankruptcy, and any young man here tonight who is spending more than he is earning is on the way to want—is on the way to the hog-pen. Every man who is adding a little to his estate daily, I care not how little, provided it grows, and the income is bigger than the outgo, is a measurable success, and the gaunt wolf is not scenting his track expecting to shortly find a feast in him.We call your attention to another and consequential fact, The first enjoyed success, the second endured suffering.

It is always so. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”. Once more I go back to the fact that sin and suffering are indissolubly connected, logically joined.

When you read, “He took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living”, you are forced to the absolute conclusion, “I know what is coming. He will spend all. There will be a famine in the land. He will be in want. He will search for work and not find it, and at last take the lowest possible employment, and to save himself from starvation, feed himself on husks that only hogs could eat.” Sin and suffering, cause and effect, promise and conclusion. One should never forget that the course in life is a choice that one can make.

You can determine your future just as certainly as you can determine the next step, for the future is only a series of steps. If you will choose your steps aright, you can walk to success, and if you deliberately choose wrong steps, you will walk to suffering, to sorrow, to sin, to swinishness.

Don’t come to me and tell me then you are not to blame for what you are! In God’s Name, who is to blame? Certainly the father in this case was not to blame. The mother is not mentioned, but no man ever read this parable and imagined that this lad lacked in maternal blessing. Certainly the elder brother was not to blame. He may behave badly later—he will —but he had not fought with this youngster and forced him from the house, nor even by contemptuous treatment driven him from the home. The text says he deliberately took his own journey. Instead of selecting the neighboring town with opportunities above the country place of his birth, he set off for a “far country”, to engage in no occupation except that of money-spending, and in no social service but in sin.

God has given each one of us the power of choice. We can have what we will if we are ready to work for it, and what we have will determine what we are and who we are and what will be our estate, good or bad. That is why every one of us must give an account of himself to God. Personal responsibility does not rest in the imperious will of the Almighty; it rests instead in respective abilities and the uses to which men put them! You can be a coward and cringe, or you can be a conqueror and compel all enemies to drag at your chariot wheels.Newell Dwight Hillis in one of his books tells the story of the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table; how they watched eagerly for news from their brother knights away, but fighting for the cause they all loved, and when some stranger was seen riding slowly toward the palace, the crippled Knights would hobble forth and ask, “How goes the battle? Hath Gareth shown himself a hero?

What prisoner have you released and what fallen one have you succored?” and in that hour, alas for the knight from whose unwilling lips was forced a confession of retreat! No place was made for him around that Table; but unable to endure the blazing eyes of these battle-scarred ones, he slunk away to hide himself in some hut where he might nevermore be seen.

And how piteous was the fate of all those who sought to make their nests soft; who lined them with silk and tried to shut out the cries of the wounded; who feasted while putting away the thought of the famishing, and who left the battle raging without participation.Indeed, even now, all such have no part in the reward of Cromwell or Lincoln or any hero that suffered and saved the state. They are the commercial Levites who pass on the other side, leaving their fallen fellows to perish. They are the ignoble sons of greater and better sires, traitors to parental influence and paternal memories, and in the end, when they front the great ones who have come scarred from the battle with poverty, selfishness, superstition and sin, they will fall upon their faces and call upon the mountains and rocks to cover them from the wrath of every Hampden, Cromwell, Luther, Savonarola, Howard, Shaftesbury; from every Paul and John and Polycarp, and above all, from the pitying eyes of the all-courageous and conquering and yet all-suffering Christ! Oh, what contrast in conduct and how that contrast will be blazoned in the light of the last day! IN . One of these came to penitence; the other increased in pride. Here let me say the whole scene begins to shift and the reason is not far to seek. One of them sees the error of his way and sets about changing it and improving it. The other finds no error in himself and feels no necessity of penitence or Divine compassion. The result is that the first reaches a great and momentous decision. “I will arise and go to my father”. A man who has decided to face about, and the man who has decided to seek God, is the man who has turned his steps in the direction of all spiritual success; while the man who enters the tabernacle in Prince Albert coat, removes his silk hat and with extended chest and back-thrown shoulders and open-eyed, brazen-faced profession, says, “God, I thank thee that I am not as other men.

I am a moralist; I am generous; I am cultured; I am competent; I am all sufficient;” will continue to go down to his house without justification, for “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.Daniel Krummacher was once asked, “Who was the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son?” and he answered, “I well know now, for I learned it yesterday. I myself am the elder brother,” and then he confessed, “Yesterday I looked upon a very ill conditioned person and was fretted and angered because I saw that he had been visited by the Spirit of God and saving grace had been bestowed upon him, and I didn’t think him worth it.” If that be true, and it is true, then tell me what is to become of those self-opinionated egotists who walk their ways through this world, and despise not outcasts only, but look with contempt upon their equals and even with scorn at their superiors and imagine that they have never met either?

There is many a minister who may have been as orthodox as Paul himself, but whose spiritual pride will yet be his undoing, for “not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in Heaven”. Many will say to Him in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name? and in Thy Name have cast out devils? and in Thy Name have done many wonderful works? And then will He profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity”. Pride is iniquity that God will not brook —a sin of sins—a soul-destroying sin. I beg you not to expect to get into Heaven on the basis of your works and not to boast yourself before Him. Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.One came back home; the other went out from it.

The text is clear. “I will arise and go to my father”. He was brought in to the best robe, to a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet; for him the fatted calf was killed and with his return the house was merry.

Now the elder son, when he heard that music and dancing and learned what it meant, sulked without and absolutely refused to enter. Even his father’s plea availed not. “He would not go in”, though that father came out and entreated him. God’s house will be filled with only those who want to enter. The poorest prodigal on earth, if he be weary of sin and set his face homeward, will find outstretched arms awaiting him and a royal welcome, and the proudest moralist that ever walked the earth, if he disdain God’s redemption and refuse to enter fellowship with His redeemed, will be left without to sulk, doomed in soul by spiritual pride. You may attempt to blast another way into Heaven, if you like, but if the Bible is our final authority upon that subject, the way of penitence, rugged though that path may be, is the only one that leads home.Now, finally, the sincerity of the one started music; the selfishness of the other silenced it. This little touch here is true to all spiritual experience. “They began to be merry”.

When the elder son drew nigh, he “heard music and dancing”, and asked, as men always ask, “What is it all about?” That is not difficult to answer. Turn over to the Book of the Acts, eighth chapter, and you will get your answer.

Philip was preaching Christ in Samaria and the people with one accord gave heed to those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. Unclean spirits crying with a loud voice came out of many that were possessed with them, and many taken with palsy were healed, and there “was great joy in that city”.What is it all about? Sinners have sought and found the Lord. That is what has started the sweetest song of earth, for twenty centuries. The world never knew how to sing; music was never set to a major key nor was the minor made to do its best until Christ came, the sinners’ Saviour. Who shall stifle such music? The man whose pride makes impenitence possible! Who shall end such melody?

The man who in his own moral egoism despises the house of God and rejects the Spirit of grace! He silences it! Not only that, but oftentimes he chokes even the singers, so that if they should part their lips with thought of song, a sob and a sob alone would escape.Dr. George Truett in his volume, “A Quest for Souls”, tells a story that has been many times duplicated in my observation and in the observation of the average minister—the story of how one night, when he was about to close his service, a Christian physician rushed in and said, “Wait! Wait a minute. I have a request.” Then he told of one of his patients, the successful husband of a great spiritual woman, who was at death’s door.

Five doctors had just finished a consultation and had said that in human help there was no hope. “But,” said he, “I am a Christian and I believe God, and this man has told me to come and have you pray for him and has solemnly promised that if he lives, he will consecrate his life to God.” The prayer was offered, and in Heaven the prayer was heard and answered, and next morning—marvel of marvels to the physicians—he had commenced to mend. A few days later he was on the street, practically well, and when his wife’s pastor met him it was Saturday night.

He said to him, “So glad to see you. So happy you lived. You will be with us in God’s house tomorrow?” He winced and said, “No, not tomorrow. I am behind with my mail. I have a large number of letters unanswered. I have lost so much time through this illness I cannot get there tomorrow.” The pastor retained his hand and pled, “Do not treat the Sabbath that way. Keep your promise to God.” His face colored and he answered, “I know what you are thinking about; but I can’t come tomorrow. Maybe when I catch up I will.” “Man”, said Dr.

Truett, “You have been brought back from the gates of the grave. You live in answer to prayer and your pledge is unredeemed. Come tomorrow.” He loosened his hand and as he went away, said, “Sorry, but I cannot. Not now, possibly later,” and he was gone. Week succeeded week and the sanctuary saw him not, and one day a group of men stood in the depot, ready to set off to the East on business, and this man was among them. Before the train rolled in, while they chatted, his face paled; he put out his hand gropingly to rest against the wall, but even that support sufficed not. He sank on the depot floor. The ambulance was called; the doctor was hurried; they carried him home.

A few hours and apoplexy had ended it all. “He that being oft reproved and hardeneth his heart shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy”.Who will sing at such a funeral and what song can be sung? Oh, man, do not silence the music of the earth and at the same time shut forever your ears to the harmony of Heaven!