The father on the road

Read the sermon · 31 min

Rehearsed conversations▶ 25:59

Good morning everybody. It's good to be here with you. My name is Austin Duncan. I'm the associate pastor here at Crosswalk Church. This week we're going to be in a new series. I'm going to talk about it here in just a second. But before we do that, just a question for you. Have you ever rehearsed a conversation? Like not thought about it, but rehearsed it, out loud, maybe with hand gestures. You do it in the car. No, not me.

Yeah, you do it in the car. You're rehearsing it in the shower where, let's be honest, you're undefeated. You've never lost an argument in the shower in your entire life. Or you rehearse it in the driveway with the engine off and you sit there so long the automatic headlights just turn off, like the car's even saying, "Hey buddy, go inside."

And here's the thing. You don't just plan your part, do you? You plan their part, too. You write their lines out as well. You draft your opening and it's a good opening. It's calm. It's reasonable. It doesn't sound rehearsed, even though you've rehearsed it like 11 times. Then you plan for them to get defensive. And you've got a line ready for that, too. And then you plan for them to bring up that thing from two years ago, and you've got a line ready for that as well. And somewhere in there, if we're being honest, maybe there's even a version where they cry a little bit.

You've prepared four minutes of material ready to go into this conversation. So you're ready. You've got your opening statement and you go into the conversation and you say your first thing and then they just respond with, "Oh yeah, okay." And you're just standing there like, "I've got three and a half minutes of unused material." And part of you wants to say, "No, wait. Can we back up? Get defensive for me. I've prepared for that."

Lost at home▶ 27:56

This week we're starting something new and it's short. It's just two weeks and just one chapter really, just one story. I'm calling this series Lost at Home. And here's the idea in one whole sentence: there is a far country of rebellion and there's a far country of resentment, and the father goes out to both of them. Which means you can leave home out on your feet. You can walk away from home out on your feet, but you can also leave home with your heart. And it's entirely possible to do that second one sitting in a building just like this one every single Sunday for 30 years.

So this week we're going to meet a son who left with his feet, who left physically. And then next week we'll meet a son who never went anywhere at all, but was every bit as far away. This first sermon, I'm calling it the father on the road. And then next week will be the father at the door. It's the same father both weeks. He goes out twice.

Why Jesus tells this story▶ 29:05

Let's open it up. We're going to be in Luke chapter 15. Before we go into this, we need to know why Jesus is even telling this story to begin with. And Luke tells us right up front. I think it's easy for us to have heard this parable our whole lives without ever really noticing where it even comes from or why Luke is telling it. So read with me in the first two verses of Luke 15.

That's the setup. Everything for the next 30 verses is an answer to that one sentence. And notice something, too. This is an accusation. And also, it's true. Jesus never denies this accusation. He is. He's doing exactly what they said he's doing.

The tax collectors keep showing up. And those tax collectors, by the way, these aren't guys with just some boring government job. I'm sorry if you're a tax collector. These are guys that took a cut off of their own neighbors on behalf of an occupying foreign army in their country. So they're not popular men in town. In fact, they're the least popular men in town. And then that word sinners also, which in that world was a category with a wide open front door. Those sinners, they keep coming to him too. They want to hear him. And then the religious professionals, the religious elite, they watch it happen. And what do they do? It says they grumble. Not about his theology at this point. They could have had a debate about that. No, they're grumbling about his dinner guests.

One out of two▶ 31:09

So what does Jesus do? He tells three stories. We're not going to go through all three, but the first two: a man loses one sheep out of a hundred and he leaves the 99 to go find it. The next is a woman loses one coin out of 10, and so what does she do? She sweeps the whole house to find it. Both stories end the same way. Basically, Jesus saying, "Rejoice with me. I found what was lost." And Jesus says that point out loud twice, so nobody can miss it. The point is that there is joy in heaven over just even one sinner who repents.

Now look at the progression of the math in this. We have one out of a hundred, one out of 10. And then he says there was a man who had two sons. One out of two. And this time, the thing that's lost, it's not an inanimate object or an animal. This thing that's lost can talk back. And this time, hang on to this because it's going to be a lot of next week's sermon, there's going to be two of them.

And one more thing before we go into this, and file it away because we're going to come back to it at the end. This chapter opens with a complaint about eating. I want you to notice that too. And it's going to end with a party. That means that the feast isn't just some sort of decoration or happenstance to this story. This is the argument. Jesus is defending his own table. We'll come back to that, but it's at the table with the supposed wrong people sitting at it.

This week, we're going to move through the first part of this story with four movements. These movements are that grace gives, hunger turns, grace runs, and this last one will make sense, I promise, at the end: grace refuses. And make note of this. Three out of the four of those are the father. Only one of them is us. Keep an eye out on that ratio, because that's the gospel in miniature.

Grace gives▶ 33:27

Let's talk about that first one. Grace gives. Read with me in Luke 15:11.

I want to slow down on what this boy is actually asking for, because it's easy for us to blow right past it. We want to hurry into, okay, let's get to the sinning, let's get to that part about it. Notice this: the boy doesn't ask for something evil in any of this. What's he asking for? He's asking for his share of the estate. That's what he wants. His father's own property, the thing that his father fully intended to give him eventually in the ordinary course of things. So the inheritance itself, that's not the problem. The property isn't evil. He just wants it now. He just wants it in a form that lets him leave.

Now, I think most of us might have a friend that maybe we've subconsciously converted into a utility. Maybe you know the one. Maybe he's a mechanic. And at some point, we stop texting him about anything except things that are broken. Maybe we send just a video of an engine that's making this weird noise. Or we send him a screenshot with no context and just the word help. That person has a birthday. He has an inner life. He has hopes. And it's so easy just to turn people into a search engine that has a pulse.

And the things that we're asking for aren't bad. We want help, we want their expertise. That person might be unusually good at that kind of stuff and maybe they're usually glad to give it. The point is that the problem isn't what we're asking for. The problem is the shape in which we're asking for it. A shape in which we want the benefit but skip the person.

That's the move here, isn't it? He wants his father's future without his father's household. He's taking an inheritance, which is a gift whose entire purpose is to hold the family together through generations. And what's he using it for? He wants this gift as a tool that gets him out of the family.

By the way, this wasn't normal in that culture either. There's a Jewish wisdom book that was written a couple hundred years before Jesus, a book called Sirach, and it's this collection of practical advice for living well. And it flat out tells fathers, don't hand your property over to your children while you're alive. Wait until the end of your days. That's the culture's own advice, and it's there in writing in that book. So everybody listening to Jesus at this time knew that this was a bad idea before the boy's sentence was even finishing leaving his lips.

Which means that the first shock for these listeners of this story isn't the son at all. It's the father. Why? Because he gives it to him. No lecture, no stalling, no trust fund with strings attached. Verse 12, what does it say? He divided his property between them. And then the story just moves on like nothing happened.

But watch that little phrase in there, because it's going to matter a whole lot next Sunday. He divided it between them. What's that mean? That means both sons got something that day. If you're taking notes in your Bible, underline that, highlight it, circle it. We're going to come back to it next week.

The point is that sin is more sophisticated than just wanting bad things. We picture sin as wanting what's evil. This boy didn't want something evil. He wanted something good, something that was intended for him eventually, but he wanted it in a shape that didn't include his father. He wanted the gift without the giver.

And that's a move we can do ourselves. Even as believers, it's possible to want the calling without the caller. It's possible to want what God gives a pastor, the words, the usefulness, the sense of being needed, in a form that's like, well, I don't want to actually have to keep meeting him. Maybe we want to take the estate and just leave the father. And it can even happen to those employed in the church, which tells you that this far country is not really about geography. You don't need a passport to get there. How do you get there? You get there by just loving something else. The distance is measured in affections before it's ever measured in miles.

The far country feeds no one▶ 39:09

Now watch how fast this inheritance comes apart. Read with me in verse 13.

We're going to get into some grammar, but there's two verbs here and they're doing all the work in this verse. First, what did he do? He gathered everything up. He packed his whole life into something portable that he could just take with him. And then what happens? He squanders it. And the word that Luke picks there literally means to scatter, like seed thrown across a field. So he gathered his stuff up and then scatters. Everything holding his life together comes apart inside that one sentence.

I think it's interesting too, the word that describes how he lived in the ESV. It says recklessly, holding nothing back. It's actually where we get our word prodigal, which was not so much about sinning as much as it is about spending. Prodigal is somebody who goes out and just pours everything out into the world for worldly things with both hands.

Let's continue. "And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need." So he spent everything and then the famine hit. The timing of that is merciless. Why did you run out of everything? Famine.

And look what happens to all that freedom. Then verse 15 says he joined himself to a citizen of that country. And the word that Luke uses there has glue in it. It means that he stuck himself to this guy. A kid who couldn't stand living under his father's roof is now glued to a total stranger. A stranger who does what? Who sends him out to feed pigs. Pigs, for a Jewish boy. The unclean animal. The one that Leviticus names by name. There is no job on this earth that that kid could have taken that would say you're not who you are any louder than this.

And then verse 16 is written in a way that means that it kept on going. He was longing day after day after day to fill his stomach with what? With the pods that the pigs were eating. Longing to fill his stomach with animal feed. This isn't just a bad moment in his life. This is a season of his life. And what does it say? And no one gave him anything. Set that back against verse 12. His father gave him everything.

Now there's a word of care in this that I want to say, because Luke says a famine arose in that country. He doesn't say that the father arranged it. So I don't want you walking out of here thinking that you heard me say that God took your job or your health or your marriage in order to teach him a lesson. That's not the point in this story. I'm not trying to smuggle that in. Here's what I'll say instead: rock bottom doesn't earn the father's mercy. Sometimes it just ends our ability to pretend that being off in this far country has the ability to feed us. Because here's the truth about this far country. It will take everything that you have and it will feed you nothing. And if that's true, then you don't have to wait till you're in the pig pen to come back home.

Hunger turns▶ 43:14

Continue with me now in verse 17. "But 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.'" Came to himself. It's an idiom that we still use in a form today. It's what you'd say about a boxer getting up off the canvas. The fog clears. Oh, he came to.

I want you to notice what's his very first clear thought. It's bread. It's not God. He's not having a theological awakening right there in this pig pen at this moment. He's doing math about food. He's mentally gone to his father's payroll and he's running the numbers, and he's realized even the hired help back home is eating better than he is.

And then verse 18: "I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.'" Now hold on. That's not math anymore. That's confession. That's the language of someone recognizing sin against God himself.

So that raises the question: which is it? Is he actually repentant or is he just hungry? Yes. He's both. And for some of you, that might be the most freeing thing in this chapter.

But let's be honest about how we get here. I don't think anybody in this room, maybe some, but usually people don't walk into church for the first time because we have completed a rigorous comparative survey of all the world's religions and we've just concluded that, oh, this one holds up the best under scrutiny, so now I'm going here. Maybe we came to church because of a girl, or a doctor's office, or a mother-in-law who's just relentless and doesn't respect boundaries. Or we'd had a genuinely terrible Tuesday and somebody mentioned maybe there's food and they eat after service sometimes.

His repentance is real and it's immature at the same time. Where does it start? It started in his stomach and it ended up in his conscience. It began because he was starving and it arrived somewhere true. Which means maybe your motives don't have to be entirely theologically perfect before you're able to turn and come home. His weren't. What got him moving? Hunger. And somewhere on that road, hunger turned into confession.

I'll put it this way. If clean motives were the entry ticket, nobody's getting up off the ground. God's not embarrassed by the reason that you started walking. Hunger, maybe that's what starts the walk for you, but grace is what finishes it.

In fact, R.C. Sproul preached on this verse and he said something way better than I'll be able to say it. He said that he came to himself, and Sproul puts it this way: but he didn't come to himself by himself.

I love that, because I want you to see that none of this is new to Jesus. He isn't inventing a God who takes people back. He is the God who takes people back. Israel had been singing about this God for centuries. They said, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him." That's in their songbook.

And the prophets heard him talk this way, too. Jeremiah pictures a wayward, runaway Ephraim finally praying, "Bring me back." And what comes out of God in reply? It isn't a lecture. It's this ache. He says, "Is he not my dear son, my darling child? My heart yearns for him." Israel's own scriptures already knew this God. But what Jesus does here next, it puts him in motion.

Grace runs▶ 48:07

So let's watch him run. Our third point is that grace runs. Read with me now in verse 20.

That phrase that stands out to me: while he was still a long way off. The father's response starts before the son even hits the property line. Before the speech, before the apology, it starts while he's still filthy. He's still smelling like a pig field. It says something about the father running to that still. And he's still running those three rehearsed lines in his head and still, as far as he knows, a very long way from being welcomed home.

In fact, years later Paul will compress this whole scene into a single sentence when he says that God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. There's that word again. Still. Not after. Still.

And think for a second about what it takes to see somebody while they're still a long way off. You can only spot somebody that far out if you're watching the road.

And then Luke says that the father felt compassion, and the word he chooses comes from a word for your insides, your gut. This isn't warm fuzzy feelings, warm sentimental feelings. This is the thing that happens in your stomach when somebody you love is in trouble. You feel it before you even think about it. You feel it inside.

And here's what gets me. Luke uses that word exactly three times in his entire gospel. Once when Jesus sees a widow at Nain bearing her only son. Once when a Samaritan sees a beaten man in a ditch and can't bring himself to walk past. And once here, for this father. That's the company that Luke puts this father in. So when you want to know what God's insides do whenever he catches sight of you coming back, Luke shows you three times.

And what does the father do? He ran. Now you may have heard preachers say that a dignified man in that world would never ever run, that running was scandalous all by itself. I'm not going to tell you that, because honestly the Bible has people running all over the place. Zacchaeus runs and climbs a tree. Peter runs to the tomb. A rich young man runs up to Jesus and drops to his knees.

But here's what you don't need any historical background to see. You just need eyes. It's eager. It's undignified. It's public. Whatever the neighbors thought about this family, and they had thoughts, the father settled that matter in front of every one of them at a dead sprint before his son could even get one word out in his own defense.

I'll tell you, if a running man and a guilty son colliding on a road feels strangely familiar, it should. We've seen this already before in the Bible. Jacob's coming home after 20 years. He stole his brother's blessing and ran for his life. And now he's headed back and he's terrified. He's arranging his wives and children in a defense formation because he fully expects to die. And here's the detail I love: Jacob's been rehearsing, too. He sent gifts ahead in waves. He coached his servants on exactly what to say. He's got this whole presentation ready. And then he looks up and his brother's running at him. And Esau runs to meet him and embraces him and falls on his neck and kisses him. And the two of them just stand there in the road and weep. Twenty years of rehearsal and the reunion never asked for any of that.

The Bible already knew what reconciliation looks like when you can see it in somebody's body. Jesus takes that old family picture and he hands it to the father.

Charles Spurgeon preached on this passage on a Sunday morning back in 1864, and he saw the run better than I can describe it. Go figure. I just want to read you a little of it. He says this: "He looked and looked again till at last he said, it is he. And down comes the old gentleman. I think I see him running downstairs and the servants come to the windows and the doors and say, where is master going? I've not seen him run at that rate for many a day. See, there he goes. He does not take the road. That is a little roundabout, but there's a gap through the hedge, and he's jumping over it, the straightest way that he can find, he chooses. And before the son has had time to notice who it is, he is on him and has his arms about him."

I love the way that he puts that. Doesn't take the road, because the road's a little roundabout. He sprints. He jumps over the hedge and he's just trying to get to the son.

The speech that never finishes▶ 54:00

Now continue with me on. It says this in verse 21: "And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'" And that's it. That's where it ends. He had four minutes of material and he gets through two lines.

That next line, the third line, says this: "Make me one of your hired servants." There's the proposal, the thing that he had worked on that entire walk home. Never says it. The father's next words to him in verse 22 aren't even an answer to him. They're to the servants.

Grace refuses▶ 54:41

That's where we get to this fourth movement: that grace refuses. Every good thing in this world seems to come with paperwork.

Some years ago, I was let go from a job, and they were very kind about it. They told me as gently as you can deliver news like that that my skill set was clearly in graphic design and that sort of stuff, and that's not what I was doing there. When I first started here, I wasn't a pastor. And then they did something that they absolutely didn't have to do. They told me, as long as I could show that I was looking for a position, they would keep paying my salary. I went to church with the boss. On one condition too, that I had to actually show the applications that I was sending in. I had to show that I was actually pursuing design work. So I printed off applications, portfolio submissions, proof I was trying. I had receipts. I showed up and they said, "Man, we didn't expect you to actually bring this much stuff." I said, "Well, I saw on Dr. Phil, if you want a full-time job, you spend full-time hours."

I'm not telling you that to complain. Losing a job can be hard, and they weren't unkind. In fact, they were generous. They gave me a runway that I hadn't earned at all. But it was generosity with a shape to it, because that's what generosity looks like when an institution does it. There has to be a form. Somebody has to be able to show the file.

And so here comes this boy up the road basically with, "Hey, I've got my form filled out. Make me one of your hired men. Put me on the payroll. Let me work this off. Give me a runway with some accountability on it. I'll do it." So he's not asking for a handout anymore. He's trying to apply for a job. And the father doesn't even read the proposal. What does it say?

Look at these items as a set, because that's how everyone in Jesus' time listening to this parable would have taken them. I love this too. The son says all this, and what does the father do? Doesn't even acknowledge it. You said a sentence, and he talks to his servants.

The best robe, not just a clean robe. The best one in the house. A ring on his hand, most likely a family signet ring, the kind that you press into wax to seal a letter for a family. And then shoes on his feet. And the calf. The one animal on that whole property that had been grain fed and held back waiting for an occasion that was worth it.

And here's the thing too about a fattened calf. If you've ever bought a cow that's been processed, you can't eat a fattened calf by yourself. You can't eat one with eight people. A calf feeds a neighborhood. And catch this too. That calf doesn't get fat overnight. Somebody had been feeding it. Which means the whole time that boy was out in the far country rehearsing his speech, the father was rehearsing the welcome party.

The father's not arranging a quiet, okay, let's meet over coffee and we'll have a discussion. No, he's throwing the doors open. This is public restoration and it is loud and public on purpose. And we tend to do the opposite, don't we? Maybe we forgive quietly, or we restore discreetly. Partly out of decency and partly because a loud celebration would make everybody in the room have an opinion about it, a visible opinion about it.

That son came home with a repayment plan and the father never even looked at it. No receipts. Instead of receipts, go grab the robe. Go grab the best robe.

And then verse 24 says this: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." And they began to celebrate. Dead, alive, lost, found. That's the father's own category for what was going on. And he's going to say it a second time at the end of this chapter, which means it's not just embellishment. That's the frame of this father's perspective. And that's the same perspective as the sheep and the same perspective as the coin.

So when Paul goes looking for language that's big enough to describe what happened to us, this is the kind of frame that he lands on. You were dead in your trespasses and sins, but God being rich in mercy made us alive together with Christ. Made alive. Not hired. Made alive.

And listen to the son. What are his words? My share. Property. Hired servant. Not worthy. Every one of those statements is transactional. Even his repentance gets a price tag put on it. He goes from "give me" to "make me," which is progress, but it's still doing business.

And now listen to the father. What are the father's words? Compassion. Ran. Robe. Ring. Sandals. Feast. My son. Two totally different ideas of what a homecoming even is. And the father never lowers his terms, never lowers his language. He doesn't say, all right, six months as a hired man and then we'll revisit this whole welcome home thing. He refuses that whole category altogether. He's not going to let the relationship become a debt. Why? Because a debt can be paid. And a son who's paid his father off is a son who never has to come to the table again.

Grace refuses your payment because grace wants your presence. So I'm just going to ask you something. Don't answer it out loud. What are you still trying to pay for? What are you still trying to pay for?

There's a theologian, Henri Nouwen, and he wrote a line about this parable that has stuck with me. He has a fantastic book called The Return of the Prodigal Son. If you haven't read it, you should read it. He has a line in that book where he says, "I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found." Every time. Not once. Not in a faraway country. Not in my 20s, in my 30s. Every time.

Two things said plainly▶ 1:02:32

I'm going to say two things plainly before we wrap up today, because sermons like this can get misused sometimes. First, the father here is a picture of God. If you missed it, I'm going to say it. He is a picture of God. Not a certificate that every earthly father is safe. Somebody in this room may have been hurt at home. The son went back, but that means you come back home to our heavenly father. Being reconciled to God is what this is talking about.

And second, being restored as a son and being qualified for a role are two completely different things. This story settles the first one. It was never trying to settle the second.

The table he was defending▶ 1:03:20

Now here's the last thing, and it's the reason that any of this matters today. Go back to verse two with me. This man receives sinners and eats with them. Jesus isn't standing in a lecture hall describing the character of God in the abstract for a bunch of seminarians. He's standing in a room with the wrong people who are sitting too close to him and the right people are grumbling about it. And this parable has the whole answer. He's saying, yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. And if you want to know why, this is what my father's like. This is what this table is even for.

And the question sitting underneath this whole parable, I don't want to walk past it. Notice that the father never says it was fine. He never says that the far country didn't happen. He doesn't rewrite the last two years. The estate's gone. It really was spent. Somebody absorbed that loss. And in the story, it's the father, quietly, and he never brings it up again.

And that raises the question underneath verse two that we talked about. How does a holy God throw open the doors and invite you to the table with what we have actually done? And how does he not stop being holy while he does it? And Luke answers that not just in chapter 15, but two chapters later. Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem and he goes and he pays for the table that he's been defending this entire time. So the robe wasn't cheap. Grace never has been. Somebody bought it, and he knew the price when he started telling this story.

The father runs down a road in this parable, and then the son walks up a hill in the real one. So there's a robe and a ring and a table and a father who runs.

Come home▶ 1:05:41

As we wrap up, I just want to say this. You don't have to have your speech ready. You wouldn't get through the whole thing anyway, because our father has a habit of interrupting speeches with embraces. You don't have to wait for the perfect motives. Hunger might be what gets you moving, but just come home. Just come home. Let him set the terms.

And maybe this morning it isn't a payment plan for you. Maybe it's a turning that you've never made. Maybe you've been around this all of your life without actually ever coming home. If that's the case, then hear what this story is holding out to you. Coming home doesn't mean cleaning yourself up first. It means to stop trusting your ability to make yourself worthy and start trusting the mercy that God is offering you in Christ. You walk up that road with nothing but the truth and you let the father do what only the father can do. He's never once turned away somebody who turned to him. Not one time.

So let me encourage you. Do not leave this room the same. We're going to sing in just a second. And I want you to settle it with God right where you're standing. If you want someone to pray with you, I'll be right out these doors. Come find me after the service. Or any other pastor on staff, Josh, Gavin, Lauren. We'll count it the best part of our week.

And hear this: the son really did get up and the father really did run. The only thing you've got left this morning is whether you'll get up. Maybe you've rehearsed long enough. Again: grace gives, hunger turns, grace runs, grace refuses. The father's on the road.

Prayer▶ 1:07:48

Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for today. Thank you for your words, and thank you that this is the way that Jesus answers that confrontation, those three stories, and with this one. Thank you that no matter where we are, we don't have to have the speech ready. We can just turn to you.

Lord, I just ask that you soften any hearts that need to be softened to this, and just move in us to have the humility to come back to you, to keep returning back to you even whenever we stray. Thank you that your son even made any of this possible, that walk up the hill and the resurrection. We worship you, we thank you, and we ask you these things in Jesus' name. Amen.