This broadcaster has 1096 show archives available on-demand.
Keep up-to-date with this broadcaster on social media and their website.
June 3, 2021 4:00 am
God finds his joy in the salvation of one lost sinner whom he runs to embrace a lot of views of God. That's normally not one of them were not used to seeing God so so so worse.even if they're not Christians I'm talking about the parable of the prodigal son. The truth is, countless people throughout history and that includes people in the church have missed the point of this story. Could you be one of them.
Find out today on grace to you as John MacArthur looks at this very familiar and yet frequently misinterpreted passage will show you the parables truly life changing message as he continues his series titled mishandled.
Today's lesson comes from Luke chapter 15. So if you have your Bible turn there now and here is John MacArthur the text before us is like so many texts a very familiar text.
Anybody who knows the story knows the story that we call the story, the prodigal son. Let's look at it a shameful request verse 11. Three characters of father, two sons, the younger of them said to his father.
Father gives me the share of the estate that falls to me and at this point they would step back. What that's unthinkable, the younger son is asking the father for his share of an inheritance these out a rank. There is a pecking order. If he's younger, somebody's older this is not only out of rank. This is disrespectful. This is selfish. You get the estate when the father dies.
This is like saying father.
I wish you were dead here in the way I want what's mine and I want it now and I'm tired of waiting. There is no precedent in Jewish society for this. This is an absolute outrage. This is a shameful request and shameful request leads to a shameful response only to see with the father did end of verse 12 and he divided his wealth between them. What what the father is supposed to protect his honor. He does exactly what this willful, rebellious, hateful son asks. This is absurd. You're supposed to wait till he's dead and then the younger gets one third the older gets two thirds, but not until, but the estate is split. That means the older son got his two thirds the younger son got the one third was coming to him and that launches a shameful rebellion.
Verse 13. Not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together in the Greek that simply means he turned it into cash goes on a journey into a distant country that was the whole point is far away from home. As you can, far away from accountability. As you can, far away from restraint. As you can, far away from anybody scrutiny as you can get out there. We can live exactly the way you want to live and nobody that cares about you is going to know shameful rebellion. He squandered his estate with loose living later on in the story is sold, her brother, verse 30 points out that he wasted a lot of it on prostitutes.
All that was his fault, but there were some things that were his fault. Verse 14 when he had spent everything a severe famine occurred in that country and he began to be a need not his fault, but that's how life is and he becomes a bigger verse 15 when attached interesting Greek word here a lot of means to glue so he does this he attaches he find some citizen in this far country, which would be assumed to be a Gentile country any glues himself to the citizen and the guy can't get rid of them. So finally the sentiment of the field to feed swine and it gets worse.
Verse 16. He's out there, ostensibly to feed the pigs guess what he's longing to fill his stomach with the pods.
The swine reading because nobody was giving anything to him. He is starving to death. Verse 17 he says I want to die of hunger, desperation, and the lesson sin is rebellion against God and God will give you the freedom to choose your sin, you can choose it to give you freedom to take your sin as far in the direction as you choose to take it.
Here is the rebellion of one who had no relationship to the one who gave him life. No relationship to the one who held all the riches he ever could have needed all his life.
No relationship to the one who could give in the future as well as the present without his rescinded his disdain for God's person, God's rule.
God's authority God's will, God's goodness. God's resources.
Sin is a desire to run from God to avoid all responsibility accountability to God.
It is to deny God any place in your life is to dishonor God to take all the loving gifts that are available and squander them as far away from God. As you can get it is to waste your life in self-indulgent dissipation, unrestrained lust, shunning all God's goodness. It is reckless evil. It is selfish indulgence that takes you to the brink of death.
Sin looks for fulfillment outside and away from God and never finds it.
It leaves the sinner exhausted empty hungry hopeless pictures extreme. No question. Not everybody is this bad but the question is how does the father going to deal with somebody who is this bad. Jesus really has invented the ultimate sinner. This is as bad as you can get this respected parent disrespect to community dissipation of your own body immorality to the max, violating all your cultural conformity's going to a despised place and attaching to despised people. This is the pits. This is not skidrow.
The skit is over. This is the bottom. This is the ultimate sinner and not every sinner is that bad, but it's pretty important to find out how this father is going to deal with one who is in the shame is not over a shameful repentance follows verse 17 when he came to his senses by the way, that's always the start of repentance when you begin to assess your true condition. He said how many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread. I'm dying here. Hunger just a little note here. The Jesus speaks with an economy of words.
It's always staggering to me. He says more than enough while we take about a hired men the social structure course at the landowners, the people with the money and then he had the tenant farmers who rented little pieces of it and work the land and the other little shop owners who had maybe their own little business here and there, little craftsman to do certain things. Then he had servant services category people who basically were part of the family. They were hired the house them you fed them and they did service and they really were part of the family, then you had water here called Miss Tusk hired men they were day laborers they hung around. They just hung around hoping somebody would Hiram like the parable were Jesus you know talks about the men and had a harvest and he went into town and I looking for people at 6 AM and 9 AM and 12 a and three and try to find people who could come and work for the day and back in Leviticus it says when you hire a day laborer, you have to came at the end of the dates can keep his wages overnight because he sets his heart on that is gotta feed his family.
He works one day at a time. These are the low people on the pole and some of them did very medial. Most of the menial unskilled work, although some were craftsman of some kind, but the something about the father here that's really interesting. He says how many of my father's hired men have more than enough not to tell you about this man, because hired men barely eked out an existence they were just a little bit above the destitute, and he is saying. My father gives the low people on the economic ladder more than they need. What is it tell you about the father that he is merciful that he is generous that he is good and this is where he begins to realize the goodness of his father Keith's good he gives more than enough and I am dying here with hunger, and he begins to trust in his father's goodness and trust in the mercy and compassion and love of his father which he scorned once, but which she recalls was characteristic of his father.
Verse 18 I will go I'll go to my father and I will say to him, I'm gonna trust my father's mercy, trust my father's goodness and compassion evidence in the way he treats the lowest people that I can go back to him and he will in some way receive me. This is what I know to be my father's nature, and I will say father I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Just make me as one of your hired men.
While this is embarrassing. He's not only gotta go to his father and face his father in the ways treated his father in the past is going to face his older brother is gotta face the village. The father has been shame, but so has the son and he's going to get the scorned and the ridicule and the mockery in the disdain of the village because it was required to give him that that was part of the cultural punishment for this kind of misbehavior to uphold the honor of the father in the village. Not only that he's looking to years of hard labor. How do you earn back 1/3 of a massive estate as a hired man at low wages. This will take years and years and years and years and only after it's all been earned back restitution complete, will there be hope of reconciliation. He knows his sins are great. Verse 18 I have sinned literally in the Greek into heaven. It's another way of saying what the Old Testament says my sins are as high as heaven there is no holding back here.
He knows what he has become. He asks for no privileges in his mind, no rights he's forfeited them all he can make no claim he does and asked to be in the father's house. He doesn't has to be a family member. He doesn't ask to be a servant in the father's house. Not at all. All he wants is the father to be merciful enough to him to let him work as a day laborer paying minimum wage for as many years as it takes to earn back everything he lost in the hope that there could be reconciliation. He sees now that when he's exhausted his options away from his father while he God was death, and he will pay any price for the life his father possesses will take the punishment will take the humiliation. He'll take the hard labor.
What a picture here is a sinner in true repentance is come to desperation. Who realizes that this is the path of death. He wants reconciliation.
He's willing to confess that his sins are as high as the heavens. He knows he has no rights and no privileges and can lay no claim to anything he wants reconciliation at any cost, even a life of hard labor. Boy, that's the real kind of repentance. What a picture. What a picture. At this point, the Pharisees and the scribes are saying to themselves while exactly what that boy should do.
This is the first thing that had any sense to it. What he should do and he did. Verse 20 he got up came toward his father walked back in his filthy swine smelling stinking close trudged back toward the village. Now, what can we expect the father to do when he gets it all. The Pharisees would know exactly what the father would do. Finally, this father has an opportunity to desist stain.
His honor, and to do what he should what is right and just and honorable, and what the father should do is stay up in his estate and when somebody says your son has come to town.
The father says I'll see him in four days.
Let them sit in his stinking close and take the scorn in the mockery of the village heaped upon him as discipline and then after four days I will see him father would expect him to come in, bow down to kiss the father's feet and take punishment from the father, maybe even a lashing and then get ready to work for decades and if you could sustain it for decades and decades and decades then maybe reconciliation but reconciliation comes only because of restitution so said the rabbis. There is no reconciliation without restitution. But if you think there's been shameful behavior. Now here is the most shameful behavior. Yet verse 20 shameful reconciliation while the young man was still a long way off, still outside the village.
Maybe there was a gate there was a dusty road leading to the village. Maybe there was a gate. Maybe there was just sort of a defined place where the first little buildings were while is a long way off, his father saw him now are okay up to here and now. The whole thing becomes ridiculous, and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him knowing you are you kidding me. What a fool this father's father's a bigger fool than his son so much here so long way off. Must mean the father was looking. Suppose we could assume that this was a regular thing for him to look for that son Solomon father was the seeker felt compassion and those Pharisees are say how weak is this man candy ever respond in a righteous honorable way and then he did the unthinkable. He ran Middle Eastern noblemen don't run such a summits you don't do because physically can do it. There is an entire body of literature Jewish literature written about the fact that you don't run if you're a man they were robes down to the ground and that was so that their legs were not seen. It was a shame to let your legs be seen that is of course the case still forced some folks. When you get to a certain age keep those things covered up is probably good idea, but the bottom line and that culture was you. If you ran, you had to pull it up and show your legs with shame fact literature says that even a priest when he's offering sacrifice cannot lift his robe off the ground to keep it out of the blood.
There was one rabbi who who condemned a man for lifting his robe above his knees while walking through thorns to keep from getting caught. You just didn't run. He didn't run.
First of all because it wasn't dignified. You didn't run because you moved in a graceful stately manner and you didn't run because it would be a shame if anybody saw your lower body and if you pull them up high enough and ran hard enough they could see more than your legs. This word ran in the Greek is the word for sprinting in a race. This man came out of his house and sprints down the middle of town toward the sun and the people in town in a Middle Eastern village would have been appalled this indecent, shameful thing. The rabbi said a man should not even jump for fear someone might see your lower leg infection. Robes were called mid which means that which gives me honor what is he doing he's running through town bring shame on himself.
Shame on himself, taking the abuse.
This is selfless. This is self emptying condescension. Why is he doing this because he wants to listen to this. To get to the sun before the sun gets to the village because as soon as that son enters that village he's going to be mocked and scorned and heaped upon with shame and ridicule in the father runs through town takes the shame to embrace the boy before he receives the shame.
This is downright crazy behavior for a Jewish Middle Eastern noblemen embraced him. Hugs the pig scented rebel and kissed him in the great kissed him repeatedly customary to kiss cement all over the head just kissed him all over the head full reconciliation full reconciliation. No shame for the boy. The father has taken the shame father came out of his palatial home came down came to the village sprinted through took all the scorn in the shame through his arms around the boy kissed him all over the head and everybody knew he's received in fully as a son. No shame for that boy should have been beaten should had to sit there and take the shame. That's what they thought, what is this what is one word grace and they didn't get it. It's grace. And they didn't get grace he got it because in verse 21. The son said to him. Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your site I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. And he stopped what he leave out what he leave out of his speech. Go back to verse 19 what's his last line in verse 19 make me one of your hired men, but he doesn't see that he planned to say it but he doesn't say it because he doesn't need to say it because he doesn't have to earn back his father's love. He doesn't have to earn the reconciliation. He gets grace. He leaves out the hired man part that would've been an insult to his father's compassion and insult to his father's love and insult to grace, he just repents he entrusts himself to the mercy of his father and that's all a sinner ever needs to do this of course is what outrage the Pharisees all the time.
Jesus gracing sinners. Jesus embracing sinners, kissing them all over the head reconciling with this young man receives reconciliation, restoration, forgiveness, son ship and all he does is trust his father and repent of his sin.
He has no plan for restitution.
No works.
This is grace gift of loving, merciful and compassionate father slowly learn about the father.
Father really is God in Christ coming down from heaven to the dust of our towns to seek and save the lost sinner who comes to him.
God initiates these the seeker. He sees the sinner before the sinner sees him, he finds the sinner before the sinner finds him, and he runs the gauntlet and takes the shame.
His love is lavish is pure grace is limitless and here we see the point.
God finds his joy in the salvation of one lost sinner whom he runs to embrace to kiss and restore a lot of views of God. That's normally not one of them were not used to seeing God so eager, so effusive, so lavish solely loving to the worst sinner the sun got it got the was reconciled.
That's John MacArthur highlighting critical truth that you might have missed. In the parable of the prodigal son.
It's part of John's current series on grace to you titled mishandled along with teaching each day on the radio. John's a pastor, author and Chancellor of the Masters University in seminary.
John, you said that this story of the prodigal son is likely the most inexhaustible of all the parables of Jesus and yet it's simple enough for a child to grasp, but you have to wonder if some people miss the profound truth because it's so simple, so simple that they think they know it they think there's nothing more to discover and yet this is really riches and it yeah you remember Phil when I preach the prodigal. I think I preached 10 sermons maybe 11. I think getting through the story of the prodigal took 10 hour plus long sermons and backing up those hour-long sermons was 68 hours of study for each of those 10, so it wouldn't exaggerate to say I could've spent 60 hours just on that parable in my study will more than that to because then you wrote a book on the issue and that took hours of snow and then the commentary on it but yeah I think we underestimate the profound depths of most of the things that Jesus taught, and particularly the parables while they are intended to have one simple point, the nuances are just exhibit inexhaustible and it's us that's a delight to dig into those things so you mentioned it, and I'll mention it again.
The book, the prodigal son. I know you think you know the story. We even use the word prodigal, in no just vernaculars. Anybody who knows wasted his life is a prodigal, but the story of the prodigal son is infinitely richer than you would ever imagine. In fact, I think in all the years 1/2 a century of teaching a grace church.
There probably was more response to the series on the prodigal son than any other series of ever done. The people were amazed by by that story. We would love for you to get a copy of the book of the prodigal son for limited time all our books including the prodigal son, along with the commentaries on the New Testament.
MacArthur study Bible, English and Spanish additions. All of it available 25% off the regular price. Take advantage of the reduced prices and order today. A copy of the prodigal son yes do this book is an ideal complement to John's lesson today and tomorrow on grace to you. The book will deepen your understanding of God's remarkable grace toward sinners and it will help you better explain that grace to others to see the richness of Christ's most famous parable, and to take advantage of our current sale prices pick up the prodigal son when you contact us today. Order today and you'll pay just 925 for the prodigal son book and shipping is still free. Simply call toll-free 855 grace or visit our website TTY.org and as John mentioned, the prodigal son is just one of many Bible study tools on sale for 25% off the regular price.
Let me highlight just a few get our flagship resource MacArthur study Bible, or individual volumes from the MacArthur New Testament commentary series, or many of John's books like one faithful life for anxious for nothing, or 12 extraordinary women to see all the resources available go to GT Y.R number again 855 grace and our website TTY.org sale won't last long. So place your order soon, now for John MacArthur in the entire grace to you staff on Phil Johnson encouraging you to watch grace to you television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378 or check your local listings for channel and times and then be here tomorrow when John wraps up his look at the parable of the prodigal son with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on grace. Can you