Sunday message · The Lost Parables of Jesus series
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Message Summary
In the third message on Jesus’ parables in Luke 15, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to the lost son in Luke 15:11–32. Children will trade ten dimes for fifty pennies until a teacher shows them what the coins are worth, and learning the true value of something changes the way you value it. The Pharisees could not see the value God placed on the sinners following Jesus, and Phil warns that anyone who does not grasp how much Jesus loves them may make decisions as foolish as trading dimes for pennies.
When the younger son asks for his share, the father divides his estate between both sons, a detail Phil only recently noticed. The younger son squanders everything in a distant country and, when famine strikes, ends up feeding pigs; runaway plans, Phil says, rarely account for unplanned events. Coming to his senses, he rehearses a speech: he has sinned against heaven and his father, is no longer worthy to be called a son, and will ask to be a hired worker, returning home on his own terms.
Churches, Phil says, are full of people with their own plan for getting right with God: go back to church, start serving, join a Bible study, and God will accept them. But while the son is still far off, the father is filled with compassion, runs to him, embraces him and kisses him. The son’s confession needs to be said, by him and by us, but the father interrupts before he reaches his terms, calling for the best robe, a ring, sandals and a feast, because his son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. The Father has already settled the terms of our return.
Every person is extravagantly valuable to God. As Phil has said for years, nothing you do can make God love you more, and nothing you have done can make him love you less. God is not content for us to be just on the property, attending church without letting the Father embrace us. Setting his notes aside, Phil reflects on how deeply fathers love their sons, and how much the heavenly Father loves us. Meanwhile the older brother, a do-gooder who had already received his share, refuses to celebrate, and the father pleads with him, because Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know God values them too.
Many churches affirm the Great Commandments and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19–20), but Phil warns that failing to value the Great Commission can keep us from living out the Great Commandments. All three parables show that God values the one who is lost, and “the thing that Jesus died for is the thing that we get to live for.” As Christ’s ambassadors, we plead with people to come back to God (2 Corinthians 5). For those far from God, the only speech needed is a humble confession to a Father who loves them. Those right with God but not lately calling anyone back to him are invited to join the party God started when he ran out first.
Questions about the prodigal son
It shows that God has already settled the terms of our return. A younger son wastes his inheritance, then comes home rehearsing a plan to work his way back as a hired servant, but his father runs to meet him and restores him as a son before he can finish (Luke 15:11–24). Jesus told it to grumbling Pharisees, so it also asks whether we will join the Father’s celebration.
Prodigal means wastefully extravagant, and it describes the younger son, who “squandered his wealth in wild living” in a distant country (Luke 15:13). The word itself is not in the parable; it is the story’s traditional name. This message turns it around: every person is extravagantly valuable to God, which is why the father runs to his son and throws a feast (15:20–24).
Because he was filled with compassion when he saw his son while he was still in the distance (Luke 15:20). The son had rehearsed a speech asking to be made a hired servant, but the father ran, embraced and kissed him, then called for the best robe, a ring, sandals and a feast. As Pastor Phil puts it, the Father has already settled the terms of our return.
The Pharisees and scribes who grumbled that Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them (Luke 15:1–2). Like the older son, who refused to join the celebration for his brother, they were do-gooders who could not see the value God placed on the lost. Yet the father went out and pleaded with him (15:28), and this message says Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know that God values them too.
