What comes to mind when you find out how to satisfy perfect justice while extending great compassion? Of all the stories that Jesus told—and you know from reading the Bible that he told wonderful stories, many of them—of all of them, this must be the most obvious to consider on Father's Day. It's a story that is not unfamiliar to many of us.
It's a story about relationships, a triangle of domestic tension between a father and his two sons. Now, the point that Jesus is making in the telling of this story is fairly straightforward. Our relationship with God is like the relationship of these two sons with their father—namely, by nature, by birth, irrespective of our interest in religion. No matter how observant we may be in the attendance of worship, by our nature, we are separated from God. Now, in this story, Jesus is doing two things.
He may be doing more, but he's definitely doing this. He's extending a welcome to all who would admit their sinful condition, and he is issuing a warning to those whose rebellion against God is disguised by a smug self-righteousness. Now, I want our focus to be on the body of the twentieth verse. If your Bible is open, you can look at it. The verse begins, So he got up and went to his father. But it's this next sentence that really is the focus of our attention.
Look at what it says. Jesus says, But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Now, that's the picture.
And what we want to do is this. First of all, we want to look at that picture with careful observation. First of all, notice that the person who comes into view in the picture in verse 20, first of all, is the son. Is the son. He is still a long way off. This boy who had left town—probably a fairly handsome boy, self-assured, money in his pocket, and a spring in his step—is now, we're told in the story, on his way back home.
Look at him. You'll find him shoeless, ragged, emaciated, humiliated. And we're told explicitly that the father saw him. What seems to be implicit in the story is the fact that the reason the father saw him was because the father had never stopped waiting for him, had never stopped watching for him. I don't think that we read anything into the text that is not implicitly there by observing, first of all, that what we have here is a waiting father. A waiting father. Now, surely there can't have been a day when his father didn't wonder about him.
Long days stretching into weeks, the weeks becoming months. And with every passing day, the prospect of the boy's return growing less and less likely. Indeed, this kind of waiting father would probably have been told by many of his friends, Why don't you just give it up?
It's hopeless. He's gone. He's gone for good.
But the waiting would have been marked by watching. What's he looking for? Oh, said the grocer, he's looking for his boy.
And someone else waiting to get their shopping says to the stranger, Fat chance. From what I hear, that boy's gone. When he left sleepy hollow, he kissed it goodbye.
He's not coming back. But he's always out there, always watching. And look, he's running! Running! When you do this observation in English, you know you're always supposed to look for the doing words.
You're always supposed to look for the verbs. What was he doing? While he was still a long way off, his father saw him filled with compassion.
He ran to his son. Look at him go! A very undignified thing to do. Oh, you say it was not undignified today. Well, actually, it is relatively undignified to see an older man running. If you haven't seen yourself running, you don't know how undignified you look. But in the East, it was particularly undignified, because their long-flowing robes impeded progress. And therefore, it was necessary for them to gather up their robes and to tuck them into their belts, thus exposing their legs and their feet and their sandals. And off they would go, running down the road. And there had to be something of extreme urgency or significance before an elder in an Eastern community would be seen running.
You just didn't do it. You walked. But he ran, and every father understands why. Every father understands that given the opportunity, given the glimpse of his son, that off he goes down the street, making a beeline for this bedraggled figure. And his running gives way to loving.
Loving. He's filled with compassion. His heart overflows. His arms reach out. He doesn't shake hands. He doesn't say, Oh, I've been wondering if you would come back.
No! His arms are all over him. Come here, he says. He's grabbing him to himself. If he had all the arms, all the tentacles of an octopus, he would have used all of them to draw him to himself and to smother him with kisses. And he kissed him. And the Greek is not just, And he did. But the Greek is he just kissed the dickens out of him.
He was all over the smelly bedraggled rascal as he met him on the highway. And actually, the story gets better, because down there in verse 24, you have the father not only waiting, watching, loving, running, kissing, but you have him dancing, presiding over this merry family reunion and entering wholeheartedly into the proceedings, dancing in the evening shadows. Well, there's probably more there, but we must stop. Careful observation.
Secondly, simple explanation. What's going on? Why tell the story? What's the significance of it? Does it matter? And this week, when I read it and reread it, I found myself asking two questions of it that I'm not sure I'd asked before.
And the first was this. What's wrong with this picture? They seem a strange question to ask, because after all, everything seems so right about the picture, doesn't it?
It seems to be such a lovely picture. But actually, there's really something wrong with it. And it's this. The boy doesn't get what he deserves. He doesn't deserve this, does he?
Think about it. He took the car, he took the clothes, he took the money, he took everything, he headed out, wrecked the car, destroyed the clothes, spent the money, acted like a complete fool, and came walking back up the street. And his father has a party. What's up with the father? The boy had forfeited every claim upon his father's goodness.
He'd forfeited every claim on his father's goodness. If nobody else understood that, he understood it, as we'll see in just a moment. So how are we to understand this?
Well, let me tell you. The parable is about God, the love of God, the concern of God in seeking and saving the lost. This is the story that Jesus is telling. He is telling the people who are around him that God actually loves saving people, that God forgives sins, that God delights to forgive sins. And the sons, both of them depict our condition, separated from God, either by willful rebellion or by passive indifference. We are the ones who are separated. We are the ones with a broken relationship, and the Father depicts God.
Now, you have to think about that for just a moment to realize how amazing it really was. Jesus speaking into the listening audience that is largely Jewish, who have pictures in their mind of God speaking from Sinai, and the mountains flashing with lightning, and the thunder rolling, and the amazing otherness of God that is conveyed to them. And Jesus says, The picture that I'm giving you here of the Father is this.
This is a waiting God, a watching God, a loving God, a kissing God, a dancing God. The second question I asked was, What's missing from the picture? Or better still, Who's missing from the picture?
If you think about this, you'll get it. Jesus is missing from the picture. Well, obviously, Jesus is telling the story, but actually, he is essential to the story. Because the one who tells the story is the key to the way the story ends.
Think about this for just a moment. Some people tell this story along these lines. God is a great, loving Father. And we, his sons, have wandered off and made a hash of things, but he doesn't really care. In fact, he cares so little about it that he's decided to have a party, and you're welcome. Therefore, don't worry about it.
God winks at sin, God doesn't care, mess up all you like, come home, and it's fine. Now, what is it that prevents us from making that application of this story? Because on face value, it appears that that is exactly what's being said, doesn't it? Well, because all of the stories of the Bible have to be said within the framework of everything that we know about the Bible. And when Jesus, in telling this story, said to the listeners—and he comes to the point and he says, And he saw him and was moved with compassion for him. In the mind of Christ himself, in that expression of compassion you need to understand, is the very fact that he is standing there telling the story. For it is on account of the Father's love and compassion—John 3, remember—God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. So that Jesus speaks this story of the Father's love in the awareness of the fact that we cannot understand the compassion of God unless we see it in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And let me tell you why. God is good and therefore forgives. God is just and therefore punishes sin.
Obvious question. How, then, can God simultaneously display justice in punishment and mercy in pardoning? If in this story God the Father is not simply winking at sin, simply not letting the boy off, how in the world, then, is justice to be served?
Well, the answer is in the cross, you see. That's why you cannot understand God as a loving Father absent his revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ. That you cannot understand the compassion of God until you say to yourself, Here I am, lost and alone in the company of multitudes, and he is sending his Son for me.
So you see, there's the explanation of what's going on. God's love is expressed in this story, but the story doesn't contain all that is necessary to understand his love. We need to step back from it and view the panorama of the gospel, and we realize that his compassion is conveyed at the cross. For there in the cross the Lord Jesus, who was sinless and perfect, took sin upon himself—became sin—so that we who have forfeited every right to our Father's love, every right to a party, every warm embrace, may be embraced and welcomed and fated and rejoiced in because of what another has done. That brings me finally to personal application.
Personal application. You see, what the Son does here is he confesses, doesn't he? Have you ever confessed to God? Fathers, have you ever really faced up to whether you have a relationship with God the Father or not? Have you? This is not a question about your interest in church or your concern for the well-being of your family or the combination of freedom and religious orthodoxy and so on.
No, no, no, no. It's something far more significant than that. Have you ever, like this boy, come to your senses? Have you ever done what this boy did, and that is, took a long, hard look at things? Most of us are unprepared to take a long, hard look at things, especially take a long, hard look at ourselves.
Because if we are prepared to take a long, hard look at ourselves, we may actually come to the same conclusion this boy came to, and that's very demeaning. And so most of us are unprepared to do so. For we may have to admit that deep down inside, we're falling apart. We don't know where we're going, and we actually can't make sense of the journey of our lives at all.
Oh, we fill in the blanks in a variety of ways, but if we take a long, hard look at ourselves, we realize that while it may not be a pigsty in which we find ourselves, things are not the way that we might expect them to be. And in that moment of self-realization, there's an opportunity for change. Some of you have been coming to that point routinely, and you keep saying to yourself, Yes, I'm going to deal with that one of these days. I have faced up to that, and I will tackle it. Would you presume upon the patience of God?
Don't you realize that his kindness would bring you to repentance? But you know, if you come to that moment and you face up to things and you're unprepared to do what is necessary in terms of confession, I'll tell you what you probably do. That is, you put on a mask. If you could, you would mask the reality from yourself and from God, but you can't. You can't hide your own heart from God, you can't hide it from yourself, but it doesn't prevent you from hiding it from other people. Face the fact you don't know who you are, you don't even know who you want to be, and you don't know who you're supposed to be. And guess what?
Your mask is slipping. And God knows, and you know. Don't you think it would be more sensible to take a long, hard look at yourself and admit what the boy admitted? Number one, that he was lost. That his real need wasn't for something called food. His real need was a relationship with someone called Father. That the insatiable longings that had taken him off into the far country could not be satisfied there.
That his very physical frame was indicative of his spiritual emptiness. He was lost, and he was guilty. And we're lost and guilty. That's what the Bible says. That's why Jesus is telling the story. And like the Son, our folly is rooted in our stubborn desire to go it alone, to live without God, to flout his rules. And like the Son, we've sinned against heaven and in God's sight. And like the boy, we need not only the Father's friendship, but we need the Father's forgiveness. And isn't it remarkable that the boy, having come to himself and prepared his speech, he knows he's forfeited every right to a place in the house.
He knows the best he can hope for is to live somewhere, perhaps in the yard, perhaps to be one of the hired helpers of the day. And back he goes. And what does he meet? His confession is met with compassion. There's nothing that will make a man or a woman realize so clearly the sinfulness of our sin and our utter unworthiness as a personal, dawning realization of the love with which God as our Father welcomes us in our rebellion and in our lostness. It is his love for us. The prodigal went back home, not primarily because he was tormented by a guilty conscience, but I think because he was driven by the hope of mercy. And what mercy, what love, what grace? Look at how it finishes. Confession, compassion, celebration.
What a deal! But notice who missed it. The older son was in the field, and when he came here, the house, he heard music and dancing. What kept him out? What kept him away from the celebration? The same thing that keeps some of us away from the celebration—our foolish pride. The elder son, who has remained within the spatial orb of the Father, geographically still there, fulfilling the role of a slave while living as a supposed son, comes and he says, What is this? Oh, says the servant, Get in here.
This is terrific. It's the celebration, because your brother is back. And he says, And he refused to go in. And why did he refuse to go in? Because he said to himself, My brother doesn't deserve this.
And of course, the answer was, You're absolutely right. But do you think that you do? And see, he had to realize, in his smug self-righteousness, that he was as lost and as guilty as his brother. And that's always hard for the self-righteous to admit. You see, the love which God displays, the welcome that he extends to those who come to him in repentance and in faith, has nothing to do with our deserving. It is entirely a matter of grace. The love which he displays—the waiting, watching, loving, kissing, dancing love—has nothing to do with our deserving. It has all to do with his grace.
We have all forfeited the right to entry into the home. You say, Well, that's interesting. I never really figured it in that way at all. I always thought it was just a story like, you know, you take God off, but God's kind of benevolent, and he lets you off. No, I couldn't tell you any worse.
No, it's not like that at all. No, there was hell to pay for your sin. That's why Jesus died on the cross.
And unless you and I come to the cross and admit that we're lost and that we're guilty, and believe that on the cross he was bearing your sin as if there was never another sinner in the world—you, Dad, your sin—unless we come and admit that and believe that and consider the fact that our old way of life is lost and futile and that only a new way of life with God will deal with the remainder of our earthly pilgrimage in the hope of heaven, then we will face the judgment of God and be lost for all of eternity. So come to him. Come to him in your sinfulness and in your emptiness. Receive his forgiveness and his fullness. He accepts people in the tattered rags of rebellion.
He accepts people in the starchy clothing of religious formalism. Well, you say, Well, what would I say to him if I went to him? Well, you would say this to him, Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever was prepared to believe. But through you I believe I'm more loved and accepted than I ever dared I could hope. I thank you for paying my debt, for bearing my punishment, for offering me forgiveness.
And I turn from my sin, and I receive you as my Savior. You see, I've been at Parkside now so many times, lost and alone in the company of multitudes, with life in my body, yet death in my heart. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.
Alistair has titled this message, How Deep the Father's Love. Can I ask you about your vacation plans? How would you like enjoying Christian fellowship and beautiful autumn scenery as you study the Bible along with Alistair? Well, this coming September, Alistair will be the guest speaker on a seven-day tour of New England and Canada from aboard a Holland America cruise ship. The cruise will depart out of Boston on September 21st. We'll visit scenic ports in Maine, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island.
It will finish up in Quebec. You can learn more about the cruise and book your cabin at deeperfaithcruise.com. Now, if you listen regularly to Truth for Life, you know that along with Alistair's teaching, we love recommending to you books that we have selected with great care. Currently, we're recommending a book for older elementary and middle-aged children that teaches the important truths of the Bible. It's called Faith Builder Catechism. It's a collection of 52 one-page weekly readings. Ask for the Faith Builder Catechism when you donate today. To give, simply tap the book image in the mobile app or visit us online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Thanks for joining us today. With the culture pressing our kids in so many different directions, how can young adults be sure they are on the right path? Tomorrow, we'll hear a special graduation message from Alistair. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
