The Legalistic Son

Luke 15:25-32

Luke 15 is our text and back to the story that Jesus told, the parable starting in verse 11 and running to the end of the chapter.  Verses 11 to 32, probably the most familiar of Jesus' stories, the story of the prodigal son.  Everybody knows a little bit about that story, but it really is not the story of the prodigal son, that's just one third of it.  It's about a prodigal son, a loving father and a very dutiful son.  A younger son who lives openly in wickedness and immorality and disregard for all conventional thinking, all moral standards, doing only what he wants to do when he wants to do it, the way he wants to do it, and pays the consequences, it's also about an older son who's very devout apparently to his father, stays home, does everything that he's supposed to do, does it the way his father wants him to do it.  Fits into the conventional expectations of the religious community around him.  Performs admirably.  One would be classically the bad son, and the other would be the good son.  And in the middle, touching both lives profoundly is this amazing figure of the loving father.

Now it is important in understanding this story, we've been telling you this, to understand that these people were highly sensitive to the idea of honor and shame.  You did everything in your life basically in order to sustain your own honor, or to achieve your own honor, because that's what was so important.  It was very, very important to be an honorable person, it was a works/righteousness system.  You earned your way into favor with God by being good and being religious and being moral and toeing the mark and walking the line and dotting all your I's and crossing all your T's in terms of the standard for behavior in the community.  Very important that you maintained your honor that way and that you were respectable and honorable and that you didn't do anything to shame yourself.  The Pharisees, who believed themselves to be honorable, they were the leaders of Jewish religion.  They believed they were the architects of what honor was and they also were the definers of what shame was.  They had concluded that Jesus was a shameful false Messiah, that He was in fact not of God at all, but of Satan.  They said the worst about Him that could be said.  They said He did what He did by the power of Satan.  And for their evidence, they said look at the kind of people He hangs around.  We see at the beginning of the fifteenth chapter another occasion where all the tax gatherers and the sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  He attracted the worst remnant or element of the society, the outcasts, the flotsam and the jetsam, the scum, the nobodies, the lowlifes, those who had been excommunicated from the synagogue, socially untouchable.  People that the Pharisees wouldn't go near lest their supposed purity be somehow polluted.  In fact, that was their criticism, wasn't it, in verse 2 about Jesus, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." Anybody who socializes with sinners betrays that he belongs there.  And so as they are of Satan, so must He be of Satan.

Well, Jesus needs to defend Himself.  He needs to defend Himself that He is not of Satan, He is of God.  And so He's telling them three stories to demonstrate this.  He is among them because they're lost like the sheep the shepherd had to go and find.  He is among them because they're lost like the coin the woman had to go and find.  He is among them because they're lost like the sinful prodigal son that the father receives and embraces because he was lost and now he's find.  Do they not understand the heart of God?  No they don't.  Don't they understand that heaven's joy is not in the self-righteous 99 sinners who think they need no repentance?  Don't they understand that God's joy is found in the salvation of sinners?  How far from God they are.  They don't know God at all, these Pharisees and scribes who criticize and malign Jesus.  And these stories are intended to make that clear.

The third story is really the main one and I won't go through all of it.  You know the story.  But everything in it is a shameful thing as the Pharisees sort of sit back and listen to Jesus, they're the audience, telling the story.  It's a head shaker and an eye roller from the beginning.  Oh, it's one outrageous thing after another that violates all their conventional sensibilities.

First of all, the younger son makes a shameful request.  He asks for his estate now.  Well you didn't get it in that culture until your father died.  This is tantamount to saying, "You're in my way, I wish you were dead.  Since you're not dead, act like you're dead.  Give me what's mine."  Shameful, unthinkable in that culture of high honor for of all people the father of a family.  And then the father acts in a shameful way with a shameful response.  He gives him what he asks.  What father would do that?  A father should slap him across the face and punish him, tell him, "Absolutely not.  I will not be so dishonored."  But a shameful request is followed by a shameful response, the father gives him what he wants.  This is the request of the sinner to be as free as he can be from God, as free as he wants to be to fulfill his desires and his lusts.  And you now what?  God gives the sinner just that freedom.  You can take your sin as far as you want.  You can take it as deep as you want, as high and as wide as you want.  You can go into every nook and corner that you choose to go into.  You have that freedom.

And so he does.  The shameful request and the shameful response is followed by a shameful rebellion.  We know the story in verses 13 to 16.  The son goes away into a  far country, leaves Israel, as it were, goes into a forbidden Gentile land, unclean.  So unclean that a Jew coming back would shake Gentile dirt off his clothes so he didn't bring it into the land of Israel.  He ends up trying to eat the food of pigs, the unclean animal, working for a Gentile for no pay but just the right to fight the pigs for the carob pods that they're eating.  It is a rebellion that hits rock bottom.  He wastes his substance, involving himself with prostitutes and whatever other wasteful things he can do.  Runs completely out of a fortune which his father gave him which he turned into cash as fast as he could at a discount sale.  And now he's got his cash, he wastes it and it's gone and then a famine hits and he has no resources and he ends up with the pigs.  The shameful rebellion is followed by a legitimate shameful repentance.  He feels badly in verses 17 and 19.  He says, "Look, I have nowhere to turn, I'm going to die.  I'm hungry.  My father pays the people who are day laborers who work for him and he pays them more than they need," which is to say he's kind, he's generous, he's a good man and I know my father and I know he's compassionate, and I know he loves me and I know if I go back he'll be willing to accept me on some terms.  So I, he says, will go back, verse 18, to my father and I'll say, "Father, I sinned against heaven," that is another way of saying my sins have piled as high as heaven, this is a full confession, holds back nothing.  "And I'm telling you I have sinned as high as heaven, you know it, I've done it right in your face.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son."  This is the stuff of real repentance.  Comes to his senses, evaluates his sin, evaluates where it's taken him, evaluates that he has no resource within himself to change it.  I'll go back, I trust my father.  He will accept me on some terms.  I'll offer to work for him as a hired man.  Not a household servant, that would be too much, not a son, that would be way too much, I'm not worthy of it.  But I'll earn my living day wage, the lowest person on the social-economic ladder.  That was the Jewish view of repentance. 

Salvation in the legalistic system of Judaism, and in any other legalistic system in the world and all religions are a form of works/salvation except true Christianity, they're all the same, good people go to heaven, people who are religious who do good things.  If you do them long enough and well enough, that's going to be how you get to God.  And he had that conventional kind of thinking in the story, Jesus makes him a Jew subject to Jewish thinking and so he says I'm going to go back and earn my way into the favor of my father.  I'm going to earn my salvation.  I'm going to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get my way back into my father's house and into his treasures and into his heaven.  And so he comes back.

Now remember, the Pharisees are listening to all this and they're saying, "This whole thing is a big story of shame...a shameful request, a shameful response, a shameful rebellion, a shameful repentance."  He's going to come back, "Ah, now the father's going to do something honorable." But the father gives the son a shameful reception.  Amazing, verse 20, "He gets up, comes to his father.  He arrives in stinking garments that smell like a pig."  He has nothing at all, he's destitute, absolutely bankrupt, absolutely nothing.  His father seems him a long way off which indicates the father's actually been waiting for him, hoping for him, suffering in silence in his absence, loving him even while he's gone.  The father sees him, feels compassion for him and ran...he runs right through town, which a nobleman in the Middle East do not do.  That is unacceptable shameful behavior.  First of all, you don't let your legs be shown in public.  And we went into that in detail. But he runs and he runs through town to get to the boy before the boy gets to town because when he arrives in town, the whole community is going to heap scorn and disdain and mockery on him because that's what they're supposed to do.  That's part of his penalty for the way he behaved toward his father.  The father takes the shame that should belong to the son.  He does a scandalous and shameful thing, runs through town before the son ever gets there, saves him from the shame, throws his arms around him, kisses him all over the head, which is tantamount to saying, "You're a son and I receive you as a son.  All is forgiven, all is past.  Trusting in me and coming, repenting of your sin is all I ask."  And all that can come out of the boy's mouth in verse 21 is, "I've sinned against heaven and in your sight, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son." And he drops the part about being your hired man because that's irrelevant now he has been reconciled.  And here is the glory of salvation, folks, God forgives the one who asks and who repents without any works, with nothing to commend him in his filthy rotten stinking rags as a beggar who possesses nothing and who can earn nothing.  This is gracious salvation.

And the shameful reception goes into a shameful reconciliation in verse 22.  The father not only takes him back as a son, but he gives him full privileges.  Bring the best robe, put a ring on his hand, sandals on his feet.  What is the robe?  Honor, this is the most important garment in the family owned by the father, worn by the father at the most prestigious events the family ever conducted or was engaged in.  Give him all the family honor that is possible to give him.  Then take the signet ring which you used to stamp official documents which gives him freedom to act and authoritatively to act on behalf of the family with all the family resources.  And then put shoes on his feet.  Servants are barefoot, hired men are barefoot, but masters and rulers and sons wear shoes.  Give him full sonship.  Give him full power of that sonship, full authority and full honor.  This is a picture of salvation.  When the sinner comes bankrupt with absolutely nothing, cast himself on his father's mercy, says, "I've wasted everything, my sin is as high as the heaven.  I've sinned against God, I've sinned against you.  I can offer you nothing.  I'm willing to work." Then the father embraces him in love and says, "You don't need to work, I give you full sonship with all rights and privileges, all honors, all authority.  That's salvation.

Why does the father do that?  Because it gives him joy.  In verse 23, what the Pharisees would see is a shameful celebration, "Bring the fattened calf, kill it, let's eat and be merry."  The father's joy, the heavenly Father's joy is found in the sinner who comes home and repents and is forgiven.  This is the joy of God.  Verse 24 says, "This son of Mine was dead."  You remember, I told you when he left they had a funeral for him, he was out of the family.  But he's come to life, he was lost, he's been found and they began to be merry. 

We come to verse 25 and there are three more shameful things here...a shameful reaction, a shameful response, and a shameful resolution.  These involve the older son.  The shameful reaction, verse 25, "His older son was in the field.  When he came and approached the house he heard music and dancing.  Summoned one of the servants, began inquiring what these things might be.  He said to him, 'Your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.'"  And we meet the older brother.

Now most people say the older son, oh yeah, he was the Christian.  Yeah, he was the believer who was at home doing what he should.  That's not true.  No, that's not true at all.  The older son, fascinating what Jesus does here, the older son...now you've got to understand, you're the Pharisees and the scribes, the legalists, you're sitting there listening to the story, everything everybody has done up to now is shameful, everything.  You're just waiting for somebody to do what you perceive as the right thing.  Now here comes somebody who will do something that the Pharisees think is the honorable thing to do.  This is our boy.  This is our guy.

Verse 25, "And in..."  By the way, meeting him, they meet themselves.  This is their guy.  This is they.  "His older son was in the field."  Now he's been out in the field working that day as much as landowners work, sitting under a shade tree making sure everybody else does what they need to, overseeing is what they do.  In fact, noblemen in the Middle East didn't usually work.  That was somehow beneath their dignity at a certain point.  But anyway, he was out in the field.  What strikes me is that the father hasn't told him anything.  The father certainly hasn't been looking for him.  The father hasn't sent a messenger out to the field wherever he was to say, "Hey, hey, hey, your brother's back and we're going to have a party, come on in, greet your brother, embrace your brother, rejoice with me and help me get this party off the ground."  Because, look, he was the number one primary party planner in the family.  That was the job of the firstborn son, he had the responsibility to carry off all the events of the family, particularly those that were designed to be in honor of the family.  And the party was in honor of the family, not so much the son who came back, but the father who took him back, reconciled him.  And the whole village game together to give honor to such a loving gracious merciful forgiving reconciling father.  But nobody bothered to tell him.

The father doesn't go to him.  Why not?  Wouldn't you listening to the story?  You say, "Why didn't somebody go get him and bring him back?" The answer is, he has no relationship to the father.  The father knows he has no interest in his brother, he proved that at the beginning of the story when he didn't try to stop his brother from doing what was terrible.  He had no interest in his father, proved that by not intervening between his brother and his father to stop his brother from such a dishonorable act toward his father.  In fact, he took his part of the inheritance gladly, never defending his father's honor.  He has no relationship to anybody in the family.  Being out in the field is sort of a metaphor for where he was in terms of that family.  The younger son was in a far country, this guy's in a far field.  But the symbolism there is they're both way off from the father.  They both come home but to very different receptions. 

So he's out in the field.  The day ends.  It says he came and approached the house.  And since he hadn't up to that point heard anything, there must have been an indication it was a pretty big estate.  This father has a great estate where someone can actually be far enough away you don't even know when a huge celebration involving hundreds of people is going on at your house, which is a way to indicate the greatness of the Kingdom of God.  But he comes back and he approaches the house.  And he says, "He heard music and dancing."  Now again, everything up to this point has been shameful.  It's all just against what all of them believe to be right.  They're drawn into the story now.  They've been making critical judgments all the way along.  Jesus was a master at this.  He pulled his audience right into the story.  They had to make ethical judgments all the way.  Simple story, understandable, ethical elements of the story, they sit in the position of making the ethical judgments.  There they are, the experts on honor and shame, having been surprised and shocked and outraged by the conduct of everybody, they are about to find somebody they like who turns out to be them.  It's brilliant stuff...brilliant stuff.  They understand nothing of divine grace, they resent divine grace, they don't understand the loving heart of God.  They don't understand His mercy and tenderness, compassion, forgiveness and desire to reconcile with sinners.  They know nothing of that.  That's why they don't understand why Jesus, God in human flesh, spends His time with sinners.  This is the one guy that makes sense to them.  They resent the unholy son.  They see him as the opposite of their own self-righteous selves and they think the father is some kind of a fool for shaming himself in the way he treats this simple son.

But finally they have somebody they can identify with, somebody who knows what honor is.  And he comes to approach the house.

Not having been included in anything at all.  The father knows that.  He knows he has no interest in him.  He knows he has no concern for his joy.  He knows he doesn't care about his younger brother.  He knows that.  He has no love for his father, no desire to honor his father, no respect for his father, no interest in what pleases his father.  He has no compassion on his father's grieving heart for the wayward son.  He doesn't care at all about his brother.  He's a Pharisee, he is a Pharisee.  He pretends to stay in the father's house, to be dutiful, to do what the father says, to hang around, to get what he wants, to get approval and affirmation and wealth and land and community prestige.  He wants to appear religious.  On the outside he upholds all the conventional modes of external honor.  So he comes and he hears the music and the dancing, the sumphonias(?)  and the choros, from which we get symphony and chorus.  It's a party.  There's music and in those days the men danced in a circle, men only, and there was clapping and singing.  There would be instruments included in the music.  In fact, sumphonias is originally a double pipe but it also in some Arabic translations is used to refer to voices together.  So voices, instruments, dancing, the whole thing is going on.  It's a celebration.  The fattened calf has been killed.  What they did was not filet it, but they chopped it up into slabs of meat and they would cook it in chunks in the bread ovens.  And they would start the party in a very imprecise way, life was not nearly as by the clock as it is today.  The day was over, the work was over, the announcement would go out, come, killing the fattened calf.  The son is home and people would begin to come when they arrived and they would come and they would eat and the meat would continue to be cooked.  And it would be continually cooked for hours and the singing and the celebrating would go on into the night as the ebb and flow of this wonderful celebration took place.  Well it's already on its way.  It's already full-blown when the older son arrives.  And again an indication that he probably came a long way, indicating the greatness of the father's estate.  He is stunned.  He is shocked.  He is surprised.  He is confused.  But mostly he is suspicious, because legalists are always suspicious, particularly of joyful people.

And by the way, something this big wasn't ever planned in a day.  This was planned by months and months and months of preparation.  And not with him as the center of it.  He is, after all, the owner of the land because the estate has already been divided, though he doesn't take possession of his part until his father's death, it is already assigned to him.  These are his resources.  This is then his calf and all the rest of the things that are going on are using the things that actually belong to him and he hasn't even been consulted.  Here's the biggest event that the village has ever known, the biggest event the family's ever known and he doesn't even know anything about it.  He doesn't even know it's happening until he shows up.  This too is another outrageous act on the part of the father who just continues to do shameful things in their minds.  It's an insult.

And so, he arrives.  "And when he approached the house he heard music and dancing,"and then it should say, "And he rushed in to his father and said, 'Father, what's all the joy about?'" But he doesn't do that.  If he loved his father, he would have rushed into the house and said, "What's going on?  What's going on?"  And his father would have said, "Your brother's home," and he would have embraced his father and rejoiced with tears because he knew his father loved his brother.  He knew he had ached in his heart as long as he was gone, and he knew he had gone out to look for him day after day, even though he didn't know he was back...noone had told him yet.  Whatever made his father rejoice would make him rejoice if he loved his father.  But he has no love for his father at all, he has a love for himself.  It's all about him and his property and his reputation and his prestige.

So in verse 26 it says, "He summoned one of the servants." Servant actually is paidion  here and it's from pais in the Greek which means a young boy.  All the family servants would be inside.  They would be taking care of all the guests.  As I said, a hundred to two-hundred guests wouldn't be unusual to eat a fattened calf.  Not everybody ate a huge 16-ounce piece.  And the fact is they didn't eat a lot of meat except on special occasions and then not a lot.  But on the outside there were young boys and what this tells us a little bit about that Middle Eastern culture, the adults would all be inside, they would all be in the house having...in the courtyard of the house having this great celebration at some point, and out on the fringes would be the kids that didn't get to come, but they were sort of the perimeter celebrators, you know?  The fringe participants, the young boys would all hang out on the edges because this is a huge event.  And this would be the first group that he would meet as he comes in and the first ones he runs into after he hears all this are these young boys.  So, verse 26, "He began inquiring what these things might be."  This is shocking.  What in the world...I go to work, it's a day like any other day.  I go out there to sit under the tree and make sure everybody's does what they're supposed to.  I come in and you've got the biggest celebration ever.  What is going on?  And why wasn't I consulted?  And how is it that I don't know about this?

And he says to him, verse 27, "Oh, your brother has come."  Oh-oh, that should have filled his heart with joy.  That should have been enough that after that was said he rushed in because he knew how his brother's life had started out when he left.  He must have been so anxious and excited to find out how that whole thing had ended up.  He knew his father's heart had been broken when his brother left.  He knew how he regularly looked for him and longed for him.  If he loved his father at that po