The Prodigal Son

There's a section of Scripture that I've been thinking a lot about lately and preparing for the message here. And it's a section of Scripture that actually there's a lot more information in there than I would have thought. There's a lot more meaning. And it seems like Jesus Christ, as He would teach, He wouldn't waste many words, but every single word was very important and had a very powerful mean, a very powerful impact. So what I'd like to do today is I'd like you to turn with me to Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15 is where we're going to spend most of our time today. It's going to be a little bit more of an unusual sermon than I normally give, because a lot of times we'll be jumping back and forth in various Scriptures on a particular topic. We're going to spend almost all of our time here in Luke chapter 15. Sometimes, as we slowly go through each verse, sometimes slower is better than faster, and sometimes deeper is better than shallower. And all of God's Word are inspired, breathed by Him, and they're profitable for teaching, for doctrine. In Luke chapter 15, it actually contains a pretty familiar story about a father who had two sons. We usually call it the prodigal son. But you know, really, it's not primarily a story about a prodigal son. In fact, there are two sons in the story, and just as importantly, there is a story about a father. And as we summarize things a little bit before we get into the bitty-gritty, so to speak, as we summarize, we're going to see that there's actually three parables in this chapter, and they all have to do with celebrations, with something that happened that people rejoiced. We're going to take a look at the first one here. Actually, it's in verses 3 to 7. It talks about a man who lost a sheep. And he left the 99. He had a hundred sheep. He left the 99 to go find the one that was lost. And everyone in the first century in that culture, in that time, would have understand how important that was. A sheep was valuable. A sheep was very valuable at that time. So he went out, and he found it, and he brought it back. And he celebrated. He had all of his friends and his neighbors come and join him in rejoicing and a celebration. Then Jesus tells a second story, or a second parable, about a woman who had ten coins, and she lost one of her coins. You know, back in that time, women didn't necessarily have a lot of money. And then what they had, they would often wear as in clothing. You know, the coin may be close to them. It may be under their clothing, under their garments, or part of something they may wear in their headdress. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. And she probably carried what would have been a significant percentage of her wealth on herself, on her body, in a sense, for someone who was a Middle Eastern peasant woman. Remember the story? She looked hard for it. She looked everywhere, until she finally found it. And then she called her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her. And then the third story, or the third parable, has to do with a lost son. So we've covered a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. And that son, who was found, was for all intents and purposes lost, or even fearful of being dead, and was brought back to life in the very language of the story itself. And then the father puts on a celebration. He invites the whole village to come and to rejoice together. So in this parable, there are three parables, three stories, and they all have to do with a party, in a sense. Three great celebrations, over-the-top celebrations, is what they have to do with here.

And I think as we'll begin to see, as they illustrate something, they illustrate the joy of God. And hopefully we'll be able to illustrate that as we go through. And as we look even at verse number 7 here in this parable, it says, I say to you that likewise, in other words, in the same manner of the story that was just related to them, of this parable of this lost sheep, in the same manner, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance, because they deem themselves righteous.

And in verse 10, the second parable is applied. The one that talks about the coins is applied. And he says, likewise, I say to you. So in other words, the same manner as we just talked about the joy of finding this coin, likewise, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Then in the third story, there is one sinner that repents. It's the younger son who finally comes to repentance. And then there is subsequent rejoicing and celebration, and so the same conclusion can be drawn. Three celebrations, three rejoicings over a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. So today, we're going to go through chapter 15. We're going to try to break it down, go through it verse by verse, take a look at some of the Greek, look through some of the Greek words, and take it apart. If we can, there's a lot more that I'm going to be able to take apart in the time that I have here.

But we're trying to glean what God wants to share with you and me. In this particular section of Scripture. So let's pick it up in verse number 1. Luke chapter 15 and verse 1. It says, "...then all the tax collectors and sinners drew near to Him to hear Him." They wanted to hear the teachings that God had sent through His Son, Jesus Christ. Now when it says all the tax collectors and sinners, it's like they're combining them together.

They're all one. This is about two and a half to three years into Jesus's ministry here. And you know, in making this statement of combining all the tax collectors with the sinners, you know, you couldn't get much lower. In fact, as we look at history, we look at the tax collectors, the people of God, the Jewish people despised the Roman occupation. They did not like Roman taxes.

And yet the Romans would find someone, a Jewish person, that was willing to fulfill that role, that position where they would collect the taxes on behalf of the Romans and then pass it on to the Romans, but they'd be able to keep a percentage of it. And sometimes it could be whatever they could possibly get. So a lot of these tax collectors became wealthy because of fraud.

And so tax collectors were not looked at very well. They were looked at as the lowest of the people of God, at the same level as sinners. Matthew was a tax collector. And the way that the Pharisees and scribes viewed these low people, tax collectors and sinners, that they didn't even have a chance for salvation. It wasn't available to them. So here we see Jesus Christ is teaching these people. And as the Pharisees and scribes were following Him around at the time, kind of at a distance, listening, sometimes mocking Him, telling another side of the story to the people that He was teaching.

But they thought that these people didn't even have the means of being able to be saved. They were upset that Jesus was telling the sinners and the tax collectors that they could have salvation. And this was upsetting to them because they taught just the opposite. And that sets the stage a little bit for what's to follow. Verse 2, And the Pharisees and scribes complain. I think the parallel count in Matthew says they complain to Jesus as disciples.

So trying to get into His inner circle, they complain and said, This man receives sinners and eats with them. That means He welcomed them. He's eating with them. He's sharing time with them. He was in close proximity with them. He sat with them. The key phrase there, I think, is that He eats with them. And you know how the Pharisees and scribes thought, is that these people were unclean.

You did not eat with them. And this was disturbing because instead of Jesus Christ eating with the scribes and the Pharisees, the leaders, He was eating with the sinners and with the tax collectors. Which made them feel that if they were in town, that He wasn't eating... No one was with them. Everyone was with Christ. He was eating with them, with the sinners, tax collectors. And so it made them feel that everyone was around Christ and not around them. Then Christ goes into the parable of the lost sheep, verse number 3.

It says, so He spoke this parable to them and He said, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when He has found it, He lays it on His shoulders and He rejoices. And when He comes home, He calls together His friends and His neighbors and He says to them, Rejoice with Me, because I have found My sheep which was lost. And I find it interesting, He discusses the ninety-nine and then the one. Jesus teaches, in a sense, that the Father would come after the one.

He is so concerned that He would make an incredible effort to come after one percent of people. He is using sheep for us to be able to understand that He is really talking about people, isn't it? Verse number 7, And I say to you that likewise, which we have already covered this verse, that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. Well, brethren, who doesn't need repentance? We all do, don't we? We all do. Every single one of us. Except, at that time, He was dealing with some religious leaders that didn't think that they needed repentance. The scribes and the pharisees, they were righteous in their own eyes, but they didn't yet see themselves. They didn't yet see themselves. I think it's noteworthy in chapter 15, verse 7, when it talks about joy.

A lot of people have talked about an example of angels being joyful. But I think Scripture shows it's not the angels' joy here. Let's take a look at verse 5 again. It says, when He has found it, talking about the sheep that was lost, He lays it on His shoulders and rejoicing. And He comes home and He calls together His friends and His neighbors. I think He's, in a sense, that's applying to the angels. God is the one that's rejoicing here.

And He's calling them to share His joy. He calls together His friends and His neighbors. And notice He says, rejoice with Me. So He wants them to rejoice too. But God is the one, the Father. Our spiritual Father is the one that's rejoicing. For I have found My sheep which was lost. God says they're His sheep, they're not minds, they're not anyone else's. He told Peter, feed My sheep, didn't He? So God is the one that goes and finds that lost sheep.

And then He tells the angelic realm, rejoice with Me. And of course, they did. They did rejoice. But it was kind of a reflection of maybe a little bit of God's joy. He's the one that instigated it. Verse 6, rejoice with Me, for I have found My sheep which was lost. You know, I think a lot of us, including myself, have gotten that wrong over the years.

We've often thought it's the angels that are shouting with joy. But they are in the presence of God's joy, and I think they do begin to celebrate, but it's really because the Father instigated it. Jesus gives this parable to show that one percent of sheep are important. And He goes on in verse number 8, and He talks about a woman and her ten silver coins.

We touched on it, but let's go into the detail. Verse number 8, He says, Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors and says, Rejoice with Me. So you see, she's the one that's excited, and she's actually representing God and the Father. She says, Rejoice with Me. She calls, verse 9, her friends and her neighbors, Rejoice with Me, for I have found the peace which I have lost.

Jesus shows to the teaching now that ten percent are important. Let's notice how important this coin was to her. If we go back again to a Middle Eastern culture back in the first century, let's look at some of the background from that time. Women were given money, but often they didn't have much, and the only money often that they had was the dowry that had been given to them before they got married. Often they would wear their possessions, their wealth, on their bodies. They might have a jewel of some kind or a diamond that they would wear.

They would often have a headband that would show the diamond, or even a coin that was part of that headwear. Or they would wear it on their clothes, or they would have it under their undergarments, under their clothing. Because, you know, at that time, if they were divorced from their husbands, all you had to do was give her a bill of divorcement and say to her, you're on your own.

This marriage is over. You're out of here. And the only thing they could take with them would be their clothing, or these possessions that they had, this jewelry, or these coins. She couldn't have anything from the family. So these things were very important to the women at that time. And we're talking about 10% of her wealth at this time, aren't we? That's a significant amount of wealth for what she had. And so, she lost it. And she did everything that she could to find it. And when she found it, she rejoiced.

And she wanted her friends and neighbors to come as well. So verse number 10, she says likewise, or Jesus says likewise, talking about the situation, I say to you, in the same manner that this woman was so excited to find this lost coin, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Now, the angels are in the presence of God's joy, aren't they? And they're sharing in the joy. This is how important Christ is teaching us that human beings are.

We go from 1% to 10%, and then we're going to come to 50% when it comes to human beings. We're going to take a look at that here in a moment. Further, this begins to show us how important it is that God, the Father, keeps His eyes constantly on us. And how important that we are to Him. And how we are in His thoughts, and that He is looking out for us. You know, it shows how important we are. And these lost human beings that we've referred to in verse number 1, these tax collectors and these sinners, Jesus Christ said they are actually lost, and He's coming to seek that which is lost.

Because it's not too late. It's not too late, is what He's trying to say. Jesus Christ is teaching in this parable that everyone's important. That's how God views it. Everyone's precious to Him. He didn't look at it as well. These are tax collectors and these are sinners, and they have no value. The real spiritual Father doesn't look at it that way. And Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father the way that He is. Not the way that we think that He is, but the way that He is. Very important teaching here in this parable.

You know, we talk about short stories and parables and things like this, and I think Charles Dickens, he said this about the parable of the prodigal son. He said, and I quote, it's the greatest short story ever written. That's quite an impressive statement, quite a profound statement for him to say that. He would have known because he was a writer of short stories, and it also implies that he would have been a reader of Scripture because he was familiar with that story.

I also believe it was Charles Dickens who said this, that there are three stages that he liked in short stories that he felt made a good, excellent short story. Three stages. Seems pretty simple, but they'd have three stages. Number one is the beginning, then the middle, and then the end. Three stages. And he referred to the story of the prodigal son as a great story because it had such a great outline. There were three stages of the prodigal son. He felt. Number one was sick of home. The second stage, homesick. And the third stage, home. Those three stages that he felt was, and I think that's very perceptive by Dickens, because it seems that so many have gone through this particular circumstance in their own lives.

Sick of home, then homesick, and then finally home. We bear them with God. So many of us want, I think it applies to us, so many of us want to do our things our own way. We know God's ways are good for us that we feel we know better. And we don't like anything over our heads, and we just want to do what we want to do. You know, we don't want God around, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves in all kinds of trouble, and all kinds of difficulty, trouble in life, and then we start looking for God.

Finally, hopefully, understanding that we're back home. We come back home, and we come back to God. The Hebrew word is called teshuvah, which means return to God. And that's a Hebrew word that's often used in the Old Testament that has to do, in a sense, with repentance. It's kind of tied into repentance in the Old Testament, but it's interesting. It's coming back. Returning to the Father. Returning to God. All right.

Well, now let's launch into the third parable here in Luke 15 of the Prodigal Son. Luke chapter 15 verse 11. We'll start here as we begin the third parable. And then he said, a certain man had two sons. I think, again, it's important for us to understand who is he talking to? What's his audience? Jesus Christ is talking to these people, and he's got the Pharisees and Sadducees on the side. What's happening in that Middle Eastern culture at that time?

Who was Christ talking to? Well, he was talking to a Middle Eastern people. And they had a culture. They had a way that they were. And at that time in that culture, the Father was the supreme authority over the family. You know, the Father was always held up as being important, as being honored. And here, this Father was a rich man, probably a very rich man. And we know that the Father in this parable picture is God the Father. And Jesus Christ, I think, did this intentionally. And all the people knew they were familiar with the fifth commandment.

You know, to honor your mother and your father, they were familiar with that. And they realized that that was part of the authority of God. God gave the Father a figure to be the soul head over the family, over everything, when it came to the family. That was his responsibility to have that role. And so looking at this, we need to go back about who he's talking to 2,000 years ago to a Middle Eastern family.

And that would have been the understanding that Israel would have had, the people of Israel, and even others at that particular point of time. And if he was a rich father, there's also the possibility that he was one of the elders of the village or town. You know, that he would have sat in the gates, that he would help to judge certain matters, certain questions. He would have been held in the utmost of respect among his family, and possibly even amongst the community. He would have dressed really nice, sitting in the gates, addressing questions. And so here we have a certain man that had two sons, verse number 12. And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. So he divided to them his livelihood. Now it's noteworthy here that he uses the word livelihood and not the inheritance. He uses the term livelihood. Because normally the inheritance did not pass until the father died. And so what he's asking his father to do is, while you're still alive, to go ahead and allocate the portion that belongs to me. To do that, he would have had to sell some of his assets, I suppose, because the land, of course, was a significant asset, but that had to stay in the family. So if this young son was going to get his livelihood divided and go leave and go to a far country, the father would have had to liquidate some assets to be able to generate enough to be able to give to his son. The land was going to stay there, was going to be going from one generation to another. So he would have had to convert it to money. He would have had to convert it to money. You may think, now, how much was this younger son going to get? What was his portion of the livelihood? And if the first thought that may come to our mind is, well, half. But that's not the case. It would have been different than half. Because it would have been a third, actually. Because the firstborn had a right to a double portion from Scripture. The firstborn would get a double portion. We find that in Deuteronomy 21 and verse 7, where it talks about that. So he would have only gotten one third of the wealth. But the land had to stay in the family. So he had to do whether he was... He had to convert things to money, whether he was selling cattle, whether he was selling sheep, or possessions of some kind, furniture. He was trying... The Father was trying to divide this up and do all of this. Let's notice what the younger son says here as we go on in verse number 12. And the younger said of them, said to his father, Father, give me. Now, when we look at the original Greek, it's like saying, I want it. I want it right now. Almost like in the imperative mood, the command, a very disrespectful way of asking for it. Such disrespect. The younger son had no right to it at this time at all. He had no right to it at all. And actually, in the traditions of the elders at that time, any son that would have done what this son did, it would have been considered totally disrespectful to his father and to the family. They would have pulled his son out. They would have probably brought him before the elders. He may have disowned his son. You know, they possibly could have even stoned the son for showing disrespect. Almost like commanding his father. You didn't command the father in that way. Not at that time. To say, give me. You know, like your son or daughter coming up to you and say, Father, give me that car.

You know, a lot of us fathers know how well that would go over. And that's in our culture today. What would it have been like at that culture at that time? When the younger son did this, it was showing disrespect. Give me your car. That just wasn't allowed. That type of thing at that time. That time was something like this would have been done in the family. The father would have actually taken his son to the gates. The presence of witnesses struck him in the face and said, You are dead to me. Such disrespect. You are dead to me. And then he would make his son go away because of the ultimate disrespect. But this father didn't do that. This father didn't do that. Now this is probably in the story where the Pharisees were probably standing on the sidelines and listening to the teaching of Jesus Christ. And they would most likely have been thinking, yeah, He needs to be slapped in the face. Yeah, He is worthy of death to be stoned. But Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father. And He came to reveal the Father the way the Father actually is. Not the way that they imagined Him to be. Not the way that we imagined Him to be. But to actually show through these three stories, through these three parables, just how loving and how caring our Father actually is. He's already shown it through the parable of the lost sheep, through the lost coin. And now Christ is showing people our important, more important than all that. So the younger son says, give me. In verse number 15, and not many days after, the younger son gathered all together. So it took a few days, and I'm sure the Father was scrambling. And what happens when you're forced to liquidate assets, really kind of at a discount sometimes, in order to sell things quickly, you don't get as much money as you could otherwise get. So we probably had to sell possessions, cattle, sheep, furniture, whatever it took to come up with money. Kind of a distressed sale, which would have resulted in a discount. And then it says, then the younger son gathered it all together and noticed any journey to a far country. He said, I'm out of here. He said, I don't want anything to do with you. I don't want anything to do with my father. I don't want anything to do with my family or anything else. And so he leaves. He goes to a far country, and it says, and there he wasted his possessions with prodigal living. I think the center reference of my Bible, maybe yours too, talks about wasteful. Prodigal being wasteful living. As we look at the Greek word, prodigal, it's like grain winnowing.

It's like the actual Greek word is winnowing. When you're at the harvest time, you're throwing the wheat up into the air, and the wind blows the chaff away, and then the good grain just falls down. It's just like throwing it up in the air. And so, this younger son was like spending money like that. It was just like throwing it up into the air, into the wind. You know? Sowing, scattering the money, and having a good time.

I think it's also important that we see in verse 13 that it says, He journeyed to a far country. Now, what country would that have been? Well, we know Israel was his home country, and so a far country would have been a Gentile country. He would have left. He would have had to go at least about 50 miles to leave his home country of Israel. The present-day Syria probably would have been the closest Gentile country at that time, and it could have been as far as 100 miles away. So, when we say that he went to a far country, we're talking about he's going into a Gentile country.

A country, I suppose, where he would have been exposed to a lot of things, that he wasn't exposed to at his home country in Israel. He would have been allowed to partake in a lot of different things. Prostitution, you know, probably those types of things was part of their society. He probably could have had everything and anything that he wanted by going to a foreign country.

And it seems like that's what he wanted. Verse number 14. But when he had spent all, after he had been done winnowing, I suppose, the money, sowing the money, scattering the money, there arose a severe famine in that land. Now, they were actually used to famines because in their history, they had times, you know, once or twice in a generation, where it wouldn't rain.

And so they would have famines and food would become scarce. Much different than what we have here. We've never really gone through anything quite like is going to be described here.

But this says it was a severe famine. So this just wasn't any famine. This was a severe famine, which means they had really fallen on difficult times. And for him, personally, this is like the perfect storm of difficulties, because just about the time he'd spent everything, and that everything was gone, as far as his financial abilities, the severe famine arrives.

It's just like it's all happening at the same time. Obviously, he'd wasted all of his money. But now the severe famine comes, a time where people don't have enough to eat, a time where people start to starve, people get thin. He'd obviously wasted all of his money. And now it says he began to be in want. He'd had a lot. He'd had it all. He'd probably been spending it, and maybe trying to make friends in various places. And now all of a sudden, not only did he not have plenty, he began to become in need.

It says he began to become in want. I think when we talk about in want, we're talking about necessities. The basic necessities, food, clothing, shelter, those things began to evaporate. Now, if you've been back in his own country, in Israel, what happens to the poor there? What happens to the hungry there? Well, God makes provisions for them. When they glean the fields, they don't glean the corner of the fields. The poor and the hungry are able to get something to eat. God makes provision for them. They have opportunity to glean the fields.

It was hard to starve to death in Israel, because God made those provisions for the poor and for the hungry. You may have been poor or hungry or had no money, but you weren't going to starve to death. But was that the case in a Gentile nation? No, not at all. Not at all. And now, he's going to begin to embark on a whole new experience, on a whole new situation. There's a big adjustment period that's coming in his life.

Verse number 15. It says, He went and He joined Himself to a citizen of that country, and He sent Him into His fields to feed swine. There's a few important things here in this Scripture. One of the words is the word, joined.

It's a Greek word. It means glue. It means, you know what? Things were so bad, He's going to go ahead and join Himself to somebody. And He's not going to let go. He is in want. He's desperate. He's in need. And He's joined Himself to a citizen.

He's not going to let Him go. Somehow, some way, I'm going to survive. Now, this isn't even close to a parallel story, but I'll tell you a little bit of something that happened to me when I was in a very difficult financial situation. I was a senior at college. I'd spent all of my money. I was too proud to ask my mother and my father for help.

And I got to the point where I didn't have any money. And I got to the point where the food on the shelf, the kitchen shelf, got less and less and less. Until finally, I took my last 69 cents, and I went down to Trader Joe's, and I bought some chicken wings, and I made chicken soup.

I got down to that point. I needed a job. I went to the watch line where they answered phones, where people would call in for literature requests, and three of my buddies went down also to apply, and they all got hired. And guess who didn't get hired? The one that didn't have any money! And you know what I did? I said, I don't care if they're going to hire me or not. I'm just going to keep showing up. I kept going. You know, I went through the test, no, you don't qualify, you don't have the right voice, etc. Because they listened to me when I took a few phone calls. I just kept coming, and I volunteered my services, even though I wasn't getting a paycheck.

You know what eventually happened? They hired me. I wouldn't go away. I glued myself to the Watts department, and I eventually got better at what I did, and I think I helped. But I guess the point is, this is where he was at, but if he multiplied it 100 times worse, he was in need. He was in want, and he glued himself to a citizen of that nation. He probably didn't even want him.

But he wouldn't go away. So, okay, if you're not going to go away, I'm going to send you out into the fields, and you can take care of this wine. You can fade the paints. This is a situation that we find. And who knows, it may have been an acquaintance that he had. It may have been a rich man that he'd known, that they'd kind of had a relationship. It's hard to know for sure. But he knew that this person had lost all his money. He says, well, I guess I'll give you something to do. And so, this young son was trying to find someone or something to hang on to. His life was at stake. I mean, severe famine. The kind of famine that maybe we've heard about in various countries, like Africa. Or people that have gone without food for a long time, where you start to lose weight. You start to think only about food. Verse 15 shows he joined himself, like glued to a citizen of that country. Which, of course, also would have been a Gentile. And he sent him into the fields to feed swine. Now, Jews don't raise swine, right? They can't even what? Touch them. You know, the diseases, they wouldn't even touch them because of the poisons that came out of their skin. The diseases that they carry. It says, but he sent him out into the fields. So the reference is that he had to go out there and spend time with the swine. He had to go live out there. Now, I've never raised hogs. Maybe some of you have. I haven't, but I've talked with some that have personally actually raised thousands of them before they came into the church. And what I've heard is that you keep pigs and hogs away from everything else, everyone else. You would separate them. You give them the worst ground because they tear up the ground. They damage the ground. Their waste destroys the ground. It just kills everything. So he would have been as far away from the city as you can be. And probably some of you have experienced the smell that goes along, you know? If you've lived in the country, you know, I know they've got the hog confinement buildings now, and they try to control that, but every once in a while the wind's just coming just right. And it is not a pleasant odor. Just the smell. They wanted them away. So he would have been as far away from people as you can get. And you know what he would have felt alienated out there? He would have felt alone out there with the hogs. So you see, and probably was in a lean-to, you know, that the pigs slept in at night. That's probably what he had to sleep in. He was in a bad way.

So you can imagine the scribes and the Pharisees now hearing this story and saying, now he's feeding pigs. Ugh, he's feeding pigs. Now some of you may be thinking that, well, wait a minute, you know, what do you mean the Jews didn't raise pigs? Because weren't there pigs in Israel when Jesus Christ cast the demons out of a couple of men there into a herd of swine, and then they ran off the edge of a cliff, and they perished in the water or the lake?

And some feel that shows the Jews were raising them. But no, let's ask a question. Who controlled the company at that time? Who controlled the country at that time? It was the Romans. They were occupying that.

And you know, if you've been to Italy, you know that they like pigs. They like pork. They eat pork. And it hasn't changed. These soldiers would eat pork, and they've been moved out of that part of the world into this occupied territory, and they didn't want to give up their diet. And so the Romans would hire people, and they would pay them to take care of the swine, to feed the swine. They were still able to eat their pig. They didn't want to leave that part of their diet at home.

I think it's also noteworthy. You know, Jesus Christ could have cast those demons into any animal. It could have been cattle. It could have been sheep. It could have been goats.

But He cast them into swine. And I think, you know, something that's unclean. And I think that shows what tells us a lot about what Christ thought of the swine.

So it says, He sent them into His fields to feed swine.

Now, according to historical accounts at that time, even by Gentile standards, the worst of the worst jobs was to feed the swine, just to take care of the pigs. There was no lower job than that. The smell alone, you know. They wanted people, they wanted that to be away from the cities, away from the people. The diseases that could be transferred from the pigs to Him. So He was like an outcast, because you could catch the disease from the pigs and then pass it from people to people. You may remember the swine flu situation that's been a few years ago, but that came from pigs to humans.

So this was the lowest of the lowest jobs. They didn't even pay you to do this job. The only thing you got was you got the chance to live with the pigs, lean to, I suppose, and experience. And once they killed the pigs for food, you would get pig to eat. And you could trade it, you know, for maybe if you could find someone to work with, that would trade. But otherwise, that's mainly your only source of food.

So you were isolated. You were alone with the pigs.

Verse number 16 says, He was eating pig, and it sounds like He would have rather eaten what they were eating. Verse 16, and He would gladly have filled His stomach with the pods that the swine ate.

You know, years ago, maybe some of you worked with pigs. You may remember the old slot buckets.

You know, that was like a five-gallon bucket you put in the far corner of the kitchen. You would throw those old rotten tomatoes. You would throw all of the waste into that bucket.

And then you'd go out and do what they call slopping the hogs. You know, you'd go feed them what was in the five-gallon bucket. The pigs would eat anything.

And it says it was almost like He was wanting to put His head in that slot bucket and eat what they were eating. It had gotten to that point.

So here we can see, I think we picture the old slot buckets. A lot of you can remember that. That's what He was thinking about doing. So that was where He found Himself. That's where He was in His life.

And I mean, He was literally starting to starve to death.

Now the pods here, my center reference, it says they were carob pods, like the carob chocolate that we hear about. But the pod was so thick, they'd open up these pods, they'd take out the carob, and then the pods were so thick that no animal could eat it. It was just too tough. You know, the horse wouldn't eat it, the cattle wouldn't eat it, the sheep wouldn't eat it, but the pig would eat it. The pig would eat those pods. It was more or less a filler. There was very little carob actually that was left in the pod when they took out the carob. So you'd have this pod which was virtually impossible for a human being to eat. I mean, you had to bake it or cook it or steam it to try to make it soft enough to make it so you could actually eat it. But if you could eat it, then you'd get sick. Your stomach would hurt. So it was not a good situation, but it says he would have gladly filled his stomach with those pods. He was that hungry.

If you're starving to death, you do things you don't normally do. There's a lot of stories here. I see pictures of people that are hungry in Africa, or the Middle East, or even times during World War II when they were not eating enough. We don't think about it as a severe family. We don't think about it. We've got grocery stores, supermarkets, malls. We've never really, maybe at least in my lifetime, had a severe famine in this country. You know, that may be something that comes if it's God's will to bring that someday to help us to learn. But you know, in Africa, what they would do is they would get so hungry that they'd take the bark off the trees. It kills the trees. But they'd take the bark off the trees and they'd boil it to make it soft enough for them to eat.

You know, in World War II, there was a time when the Germans were marching on, I think it was Leningrad, and they had the Russians surrounded, and they couldn't escape because of the weather. The snow was all piled up, and the Germans were going to try to starve them out. And the Russians were peeling the wallpaper off some of the, you know, where they were. And these buildings, they were peeling the wallpaper off of the walls, and they were eating the glue.

They were eating the glue to survive.

These are some of the things that happened in a severe famine or a situation that can come on the scene, and that's where this boy was. This is what life was like for him.

It says that no one gave him anything.

No one was looking out for him at all. No one gave him anything.

No, they may have looked at him and said, well, you know, you had it all. They remember him as the one with all the money, with all the wealth. Why would we give you anything? You weren't really a good steward with what you had.

Verse 17, But when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's servants have bread enough to spare, and I'm perishing with hunger? I'm dying.

I'm dying with hunger.

He came to himself. He had a defining moment. And I think a lot of us, hopefully most of us have at least one, if not a few defining moments in our life where we finally get it. God begins to get through to us and we begin to understand. We begin to realize some things. And he had a defining moment. Unless he did something, he was going to perish. He was going to die. And he had nowhere to go, at least at this point. No one was giving him anything. He was dying. He had nowhere to go but the grave.

This is where somebody realizes that their life is ruined and they need God. He'd come to that point. The world's eventually going to come to that. God hopes that we'll all have a defining moment. And thankfully, if you have done that now, hopefully you and I and others that will yet to be called are going to say, there's got to be more to life than this. There's got to be more. Where I'm headed, I'm headed to an early grave.

And they realize there's got to be more to life than this. I think it's important as we think about these parables and as we think about this chapter and we think about our own lives and ask some questions of ourselves, especially as we see Passover's just about five weeks away and the days of Unleavened Bread and all the lessons that they teach us about beginning to remove the leaven, the sin that is in our lives.

As we ask ourselves the question, and we'll get into the detail a little bit more about the second son, but which son are we? Which son are we? Are we a prodigal son this year that needs to return?

Because we haven't been as close to God as we need to be? Or are we an older son, maybe, to self-righteous? Because it seems like these are two things that God wants us to consider before Passover. And maybe we've been a little bit of both. We've turned away from God, we've strayed from God, we wanted to do our own thing in our own way. Maybe we feel we've got it all figured out and there's no need for us to repent.

We're already self-righteous. But the Passover isn't far away and it's a time when God wants us to look at ourselves, examine ourselves, and rededicate ourselves to Him. I think this parable here points out at least two distinct characteristics that God says we tend to have a problem with. As human beings, as His sons and His daughters. Two distinct characteristics that God says humans have a tendency towards. The first is to run from God. Do things our own way. Do our own thing like the younger son.

Or to be self-righteous and feel there's no need to change. Like the older son. Verse 17, says, But when He came to Himself, He said, How many of My Father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare? He knew His Father had been generous with His hired servants. He paid them well. They had bread enough and to spare. They had more than what they needed.

Because His Father was a wonderful employer. He paid them well. He was generous. The younger son was probably thinking at this time, because he was the son of a rich father, and His servants are doing better than I am. They're not starving. They've got bread enough and to spare.

And look at Me. And He'd had it all. He'd had plenty. But now it was gone. He says in verse 18, I'm going to rise up. I'm going to go to My Father, and I will say to Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before You. I think it's interesting that He acknowledges He's not only sinned against His human Father, but He's sinned against heaven. He's sinned against His spiritual Father as well. He has come to that understanding.

He's come to that point in His life. So Christ, as He tells the story, helps us to realize, because this boy sinned against His Father, He'd also sinned against His spiritual Father in heaven. In verse 19, and I am no longer worthy to be called Your Son. Make Me like one of Your hired servants. So now what He's beginning to think, you know what He's beginning to do in a way, He's beginning to think, how am I going to approach My Father?

This is not going to be an easy thing to do. This is going to be a very humbling, very humiliating thing to go back to My Father. You know, as He'd said to His Father earlier, give Me! In a commanding, imperative tone or mood, give Me. And now He's saying, make Me like one of Your servants. His attitude had completely changed. His attitude was different.

You know, sometimes you're thinking, how am I going to do this? How am I going to approach this? He's practicing. He's practicing about how He's going to say this to His Father. You know, sometimes when we get in trouble, you're at school and you break the window, you're too close to the school building, and you shouldn't have been playing that close. You break the window, you know the principal's going to call your parents, and you're rehearsing on that long walk back home, what you're going to say to your parents.

Because you know you're going to get in big trouble if you don't have a good story. He's rehearsing in his mind what he's going to say. Is this? No. So here, this is important now to this young man. Because if His Father does not take him back, He's dead. He's dead. This is His last hope. He's got nothing. He's got nowhere else to turn.

His situation is that serious. He's got nowhere else to go. And if His Father doesn't take him back, it's done. It's over. You know, as people in the world, God wants us to understand too that we don't have anywhere else to turn. That ultimately, He is our Father and our elder brother is our Savior. There's really nowhere else to go. There's nowhere else to turn. There are so many people right now that don't have any hope, brethren. There's a lot of people out there like that. They haven't yet come to the realization yet that this young man did.

He says, make me like one of your hired servants. So He's gone from an attitude of give me to make me like one of your servants. In verse 20, He rose and He came to His Father. And He was still a great way off. His Father saw Him and He had compassion and He ran. Brethren, this is a very important word here, this word ran. It says, as a matter of fact, you know, a Middle Eastern father who was respected wouldn't have run. They walked.

They've got servants that run. This isn't something in that culture that a father would have ran. It says he had compassion and he ran. There's a song that's on Christian stations. It's called, He ran, or I think it's called, God ran. I don't know if any of you have heard the song or have seen it. There's even videos that you can see on YouTube and it's some pretty moving videos.

Where they put the pictures together with the words of the song as they're singing the song. And, you know, even modern times, his son leaves home. He's had an argument with his father. He's angry at his father. He leaves home. And then the father, every day, is looking on the horizon down that dusty road, looking for his son.

There's a reason why he saw him when he was a long ways away, because he was looking for him every day, hoping he'd come home. It's pretty moving. It's quite a moving story. This father had compassion on him and he ran. Brethren, this is the father that Jesus Christ is revealing and he does not lie. He's paying a perfect portrayal of our spiritual father.

That we are that important to him. You're his son. You're his daughter. He's your father. And this parable shows that when we turn to God and when we really repent, God runs to us. He runs to us. He not only accepts us, he runs to us. Our father does that.

He doesn't meet us halfway. He's running. It's a beautiful scene. It's a beautiful story. It's an amazing thing. That's what our father does to us. So if anyone ever says, you know, sometimes I have a hard time asking for forgiveness. God is just waiting. He's just waiting for us. He's waiting for us to repent so he can clean us up, so that he can purge us, so he can make us whole again and make us clean, so we can begin to change and grow, so that progress can begin or to be restarted again.

It says, and he fell on his neck and he kissed him, which means the father was beginning to lose control emotionally. He was fully accepting his son. The embrace means full acceptance. And who's he kissing? He's kissing this stinky, smelly, pig-smelled son who probably has sold most of his possessions because he's starving from hunger. No, he probably didn't have anything but the clothes on his back.

He was making his last pitch to his father. This was it. This was it. His father was his only hope. He'd walked 50 to 100 miles, probably with very little to eat. This is the scene. This is the situation.

This was his last chance. How did his father respond? He runs to him. He runs to him. You can imagine prisoners of war. You probably have seen these in World War II and some of the people that were in concentration camps weren't fed enough. Imagine your own son that was in some situation like that for a year or two and that he's come back. He's just a skeleton of his former self. He's probably lost 30 to 40 pounds, maybe 100 pounds if he's lucky. You'd just lose it as a father, wouldn't you?

You would just lose it. That's what God the Father... that's the kind of father that we have. That's how God views you. One percent. One. God views us the same way. We're stinking. We're filthy. With sin. And when we turn to Him and repent, we come to ourselves. God runs to us. He's been waiting for that. It's a beautiful scene. I'd like to tell you a true story. Police officer in my hometown, Elberly, Minnesota. True story. Something happened to him. I'll call him John, not his real name. Police officer. He was on his day shift.

Things were going along pretty well, pretty normal, pretty quiet, and all of a sudden he gets a call from his wife. He said, I met them all. Isaac was with me and he's gone. He's missing. Isaac is missing. John said, you're kidding. As if a wife or mother had already won't have a kid about something like that. But then he realized her voice was different and that she was saying, this is serious business and I need you. He detected that pretty quickly. I told her I'd be there right away. I called into my partners for help and I assured her that their help was on the way when I hung up on the phone.

He said, I turned on my lights. It's a convenient thing for me to do to get somewhere quickly. I turned on the sirens and the lights, but it seemed like an eternity before I could finally get there. Into this mall. And he said, you know, it's different. He said, you know, I've always taken it seriously when somebody's child was missing, but this was my son. This was my son. And it affected me differently. He took everything I could to control when I talked to my partners to try to let him know what he was wearing and describe what he looked like. He said, I was having a hard time keeping it all together.

And he said the thing that was different, he said, is I had fear. I had fear that I might not ever see him again. After an attorney says I arrived at the mall, I ran inside, started to ask store clerks if they had seen a small boy and giving them a description. He said they were all saying before I could even get done. They said, no, I haven't seen him. It's like somebody had already asked them that question before and somebody probably already had. But I kept moving from store to store, person to person. I kept hoping. I got to the center court area near a jewelry store where Isaac was last seen.

And I heard my name and I turned around and there was one of my neighbors, Tanya, and she said, we found him. We found him. Come on over here. We found him. I just about lost it right there. And I'm quoting now. I just about lost it right there. They found him. What sweet words to me. There he was next to my wife. I picked him up. I held him. I hugged him.

I fought back the tears. He said, Joy. Pure Joy. Is the only way I could describe it. This is him now. This is his story. Is the only way to describe it. My lost son is found. Some friends of ours asked my wife and I if we got angry with Isaac. Or they told us how naughty he was. I couldn't believe my ears. Naughty, angry, no way.

He was lost. I thought I might never see him again. There was no way I was going to be angry at my son. I'm going to rejoice at the fact that he is here. Brethren, if an earthly father can have that moving of an emotion for their son, how much more our heavenly Father for you? We don't understand. The Pharisees and the scribes didn't understand. The sinners and the tax collectors didn't understand. Jesus Christ came to reveal the Father. This is the way that He is. It's pretty powerful, isn't it? It's pretty moving. This is the kind of Father that we have. Jesus came to reveal the Father the way that He is.

Go back to Luke 15, verse 21. And the Son said to Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in Your sight, and I'm no longer worthy to be Your son. Just what He'd rehearsed. He thought about what He was going to say before He went, then He sees His Father, and He had been thinking about this. It was His last pitch. Because even though His Father came, it didn't necessarily endrain Him, it embraced Him and kissed Him.

It didn't mean that everything was going to be okay. He had to realize that. He said, I'm no longer worthy to be called Your son. Just like we're not worthy to be called His son. We need to be rescued. We're not worthy to be rescued. We're not worthy to have Jesus Christ die for us. And God wants all of us to realize that. We're not worthy of that. But it's only by His divine love, His graciousness, if you will, His concern that He died for the worst of us.

Jesus Christ wanted to show that if He will die for the very worst of the worst, then He's willing to die for all of us. He's willing to rescue all of us. He said, I'm no longer worthy. He'd had a defining moment.

This was genuine. This wasn't contrived. This was real. This was sincere. He came to a true repentance, this younger son. He came to a true repentance, which is actually exactly where he needed to be. Verse 22, but the Father said to His servants, bring out the best robe. Bring out the best robe. Now, the actual Greek word here is the Greek word for stole.

You know, we would think of it as something really nice, like a tuxedo for men, so to speak. A special robe that you would only wear on special occasions. Maybe a wedding, or at a holy day, if you're going to have some king or some ruler that was going to come into your house, that you would put on your very best before they would dine together.

It was something that was hardly ever worn. And He said, put my robe on my son. He said, get the best robe. Put it on this stinky smelly, if you will, hog-smelled son of mine. He didn't care. He didn't care. You can imagine how the boy felt, because younger son felt. Here he probably didn't have much to wear, sold almost everything. And here he says, put it on my son.

And then he said, and put it on him, and then put a ring on his hand. Put a ring on his hand. Which, back in that time, it would have been like a signet ring, like a crest, that you'd have this ring, and if you were wealthy, you could go to a place to buy something and you'd just stamp it into the wax, and that was like a credit card, it was like a check.

You could buy something with your ring. Put a ring on his hand. A boy from a wealthy family could have this ring, and he could pretty much buy almost anything that they needed. So here he was giving his son a ring. He was restoring him. The servants didn't necessarily have this ring. So he was restoring him to the family. He was restoring it. It was not just to become a servant, but again, back to the full power of a son. And notice, and put sandals on his feet.

Which meant what? They didn't have them. They didn't have any sandals on his feet. And also, as we look at history from that time back in that first century, in the Middle Eastern culture, the servants wouldn't wear sandals. In fact, that's how you could identify who was a servant and who was a son or a family member, because the servants didn't wear any shoes. They didn't wear sandals.

And so he says, I'm going to put these sandals back on my son's feet. Verse 23, and they bring the fatted calf here and kill it and let us eat and be merry. The fatted calf. Let's talk about that. This was something for special occasions. You know, the common food that would have been eaten when it came to meat would have been, oh, I suppose goat or sheep or fish was more common. But now veal or the fatted calf, that was special because you had to raise food in order to eat that food later because they would eat the grain.

They would eat the food that you'd raise. And this would make a very tender meat. And so this was for very special occasions. A holy day, a special time, a special event where they'd have this tender meat. And of course, beef was very, very expensive because of this situation. And so what did the father do? He said, kill the fatted calf.

He's probably made the boy think, am I really that important? Am I that important to my father? And God is telling us here that yes, you are. Yes, you are. You tax collectors, you sinners, you're just as important as any of the rest. There are those who've turned away from God's truth, and some have actually come back. And there may be some that are out there thinking of coming back. You know, this is a story that needs to be told because, well, they're lost, just like we have all been lost until God begins to work with us until we respond to Him.

It's a very encouraging parable. Verse 24, For this my son was dead and is alive, and he was lost, and he is found, and they began to be merry. Now, whether it be literally or figuratively, this father thought his son was dead. You know, he'd gone to a foreign country. He'd never heard from him. He might as well, in a sense, have been dead. Now, you can maybe imagine the scribes and the Pharisees shaking their heads in disbelief. How is it that he's telling us this story? You know, this is just a crazy story.

It makes no sense. The father would have done something different. This makes no sense. Because they would never have done that. This son, they probably thought, should have been beaten down. He should have been humble. You know, you should have had a period of time where he had to make himself worthy. And he would get back into good graces. He dishonored his father. He dishonored his family. This father was much too lenient.

You should have given him only enough food to survive and let him serve you the rest of his life, on his hands and his knees, because of the shame that he's brought to you and to the family. Make him regret he ever turned against you. That's how they would have viewed it, many of them.

Because they didn't know the true God. They didn't know the true Father. They viewed a very harsh God. And that's why Jesus Christ had to come to reveal the Father. Jesus Christ said in a sense, you don't really know Him. You think you know Him, but you don't really know Him. And I'm telling you what He's like.

I'm revealing Him to you. You don't know how much love that He has for His sons. So they would have been shaking their heads, probably thinking, who is this teacher? Who's trying to teach us this? What Father would do that, much less God? I mean, they knew what Jesus Christ was trying to tell them. They knew what He was teaching. They knew what He was teaching about God, the Father, or about God. It says, and they began to be merry. So there was a happy time here. It was a time of rejoicing. It says in verse 25, Now His older son was in the field, and as He came and He drew near to the house, He heard music and dancing.

So there's a party going on. There's a celebration. There's a rejoicing, a sincere, loving rejoicing going on. There's a party. And you know, this is referring to the Father. He's the one that put together this dancing, this party. We often don't think of God that way, do we? We often don't think of God that way, but Jesus Christ thinks of Him that way and reveals Him that way. As He came and He drew near to the house, He heard music and dancing.

Now up to this time, the Pharisees had been on the sidelines listening to the story, probably arguing with it mentally all along the way, every step of the way. And all of a sudden, Jesus Christ brings them into the story. The older son. He likens the older son to them, or you could say He likens them to the older son. All of a sudden, they're no longer just listening. He's going to make them part of the story. Verse 26.

So He, referring to the older son, called one of the servants, He asked, what do these things mean? So here's the older son. He's already got two-thirds of the wealth. I mean, the livelihood had been distributed already while he was still alive. In a sense, He'd already had two-thirds of us lively. He hears music. He hears dancing. But did He run up to someone and say, hey, what's going on?

What's the good news? What's the excitement? No, He didn't do that. He didn't say, wow, this is great. No, He doesn't run up Himself. He asked for somebody else. He calls for one of the servants. He doesn't even go Himself. He says, go find out what's going on. And so He does. Jerome, this shows a little bit of His attitude, which was the attitude of the scribes and the Pharisees that we saw in verse 1.

They didn't want to associate with them. All of these sinners and tax collectors were coming. And what were the scribes and Pharisees doing back in verse 1? Well, they're over there. They're not going to eat with them. They're kind of off to the side at a distance. Probably thinking, what is this? What's going on here? What's this He's done? What's happening? Verse 27, He said to him, the servant is speaking now to the older brother, Your brother has come.

And because He's received Him safe and sound, Your Father has killed the fatted calf. Probably much the disbelief of the older son. Because that fatted calf was probably something He was supposed to eat on a holy day. There's some conjecture here. But now they've killed the fatted calf. Verse 28, how does He respond to all of this? But He was angry. And He's not going to go in. He wasn't going to come near there. And even His brother, whom He had not seen in a long time, He wasn't going to go see Him.

He wasn't going to go near Him. He wasn't going to talk to Him. Even though His Father had hired music, meaning they had to bring somebody in to play, or maybe the servants played, He made special arrangements for there to be music and to be celebration.

And that people could dance. There was a celebration. There was rejoicing. There was a party. It says, therefore, His Father came out and pleaded with Him. His Father tried to help Him to see. He pleaded with Him. Brethren, this is just so much like the Father sending Jesus Christ and trying to plead with all of us. But particularly the older son here now talking about the scribes and the Pharisees. Come on, see the things that I see. Don't you understand what's happening? He pleaded with the scribes and the Pharisees. Come on, I'm here. I'm the Messiah. I'm here as a human being.

Verse 29, so He answered and He said to His Father, Lo, these many years I have been serving you, I never... That might be a little bit of an overstatement here. I never transgressed your commandments at any time. Pardon that. There's a little bit of a self-righteous attitude. Because we know the Scriptures say that all falls short, all of sin falls short of the glory of God. He said, I have never transgressed your commandment at any time. I've never done anything against you. I've never chose this attitude. But He wouldn't even come to the celebration. He sent a servant to find out what was going on. And yet, you never gave me a young goat that I might make merry with my friends. He had all the stuff! He already owned that goat. He had two-thirds of the stuff. That had been given at the time that the younger son had left many years ago. He was the only son there at that time. If there were daughters, they didn't get anything. So He had all the stuff.

He had two-thirds of the Father's livelihood. Yet He wanted the Father to kill a goat for Him. Saying, hey, let's celebrate. Yet if He acted like the Pharisees, there probably weren't a lot of friends to invite. You know? So here He's mocking His Father, which is similar to some of the mocking that the scribes and Pharisees did with Jesus Christ. Just a couple more verses here. That as soon as this son of yours, this is an important phrase here, this son of yours. You know, the older son couldn't even call his brother by name. He referred to him as this son of yours. In other words, saying, he's dead to me. I don't think of him as my brother. He's your son. He says, this son of yours has devoured your livelihood. Now wait a minute. The Father had willingly given him the third. So it was already given to the younger son. It was a portion of his future inheritance given before his death. But you know what? The older son is thinking he shouldn't have got anything.

He wasn't worthy to get anything. He was so disrespectful, this and that, he wasn't. And of course, if he wouldn't have gotten anything, then of course the older son would have gotten more. Who has devoured your livelihood with harlots? You've killed the fatted calf for him. Verse 31. And he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. Further, they'd had Moses, they'd had the law of Moses, they had all this, the Jews and the Israelites were given all of the promises. But now somebody else that left comes back home. And they have an opportunity. They still have an opportunity. They are still important. This parable shows that God is forgiving. But the teachers of the law were not teaching that. They were not forgiving at all. They wanted no one else to have salvation but them. He said, Son, you're always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make Mary, verse 32, and be glad. It was right for us to rejoice. For your brother was dead, and now he is alive again and was lost and is found. Wow! It's right for us to rejoice. There's been a big change in your brother. Now, some may say this is a good story, but it doesn't seem to have an ending. It seems to close here before it ends. At the end of this story, you kind of want to know how does it end? Where does it go from here? Well, in a way, we know how it ends. This was really one of God the Father's last calls through Jesus Christ, and He was trying to reach these scribes and Pharisees as well. It was a last call for them to change in this life. And in the story, did the eldest son forgive the younger son? Well, it doesn't really go on to say. But if we know how things worked out, we would have probably answered no, because look who Christ was talking to. Did the oldest show compassion? Did He ever offer His forgiveness? He never really did in this story. And what happened in the story that goes on beyond that with how the scribes and Pharisees dealt with Jesus Christ? They never changed. Most of them. There were a few exceptions. But most of them didn't change. They ended up taking His life. They killed the son of the Father. They hated the Father, they hated Christ, and they put Him to death. There's a lot of characters in this story. There's the Father, of course, who pictures our spiritual Father. There's the younger son and the older son, which actually pictures a great percentage of the human race. And that's why I think it's so important when we speak of this prior to Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, that we think about and ask ourselves the question, which one are we? Or are we a little of both? But to examine ourselves and to look at ourselves before five weeks down the road and Passover begins. So think about that. Because it's a time that God wants us to examine ourselves and to find the sin that's still there, part of the Days of Unleavened Bread, to find some of the sin that's still there and to repent of that sin. And of course, we know how God's going to respond to that, to the true repentance where we actually really are genuine, examining ourselves, coming to a defining moment. Brethren, God wants us to have the attitude that that younger son eventually had. Because we are all sinners and we come short of the glory of God. And to have that defining moment, to have that defining moment before Passover, where we are looking, we see something that's still there. And we ask for forgiveness, genuine repentance. That's the attitude that God desires for all of us to have before this Passover season, before the Days of Unleavened Bread.