This is part 3 of a series that I preached at the church where I serve as pastor.

As we look at Luke 15 and see how Jesus shared three parables that speak to how God pursues those who are far from Him because of sin, we come to the final parable that He shared.  It is possibly the most popular of all the parables that Jesus shared.  It has been commonly referred to as the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).

I think that this is not a good title for this parable myself.  While a good deal of the parable talks about this young man who squandered his inheritance on foolish living, the focus is on the father.  While Jesus didn’t necessarily give titles to His parables, I believe the best title for this one might be the Parable of the Loving Father.  In this parable, Jesus shares three distinct characteristics of the loving Father.

As Jesus begins this parable, He introduces the main characters: a father and his two sons.  The father is clearly seen as a representation of God.  The two sons would represent people who were in the crowd that day and even today.

First Characteristic of the Loving Father: The father allows distance.

Jesus tells that the younger son demanded his inheritance and wanted to go and live his life as he wanted to.  The attitude with which the request is made is one that would cause anyone to cringe.  There is a great deal of disrespect present in the request.  What would the father do?

Surprisingly to many, the father grants the request and allows his son to go.  I will be honest, this has made me scratch my head many times.  Why in the world would the father allow his son to go – with his inheritance – knowing that it was not going to end up well?

We have seen this picture played out before.  A young person who thinks that they know best is going to get out from the rules of their parents and conquer the world.  The immaturity is overflowing.  You can easily see how this is going to end up.

Jesus shares this characteristic of the loving father because God will allow us enough of our desires at times to show us that they are not what we need.

God could have easily created human beings much like robots.  He could have said, “Thou shalt obey all of my commands,” and we would have done it… no problem.  Honestly, there are times when I wish that He would have done it that way.  But God didn’t do it that way.

In His sovereignty, God created mankind with the ability to choose.  One reason for this is because love is choice.  It is not a feeling.  Love is not a mud puddle that we fall in to or crawl out of; Love is a choice.  If God had created us without an ability to choose, there would be no such thing as love.  God desires us to choose Him and experience the fullness of His love.

Sometimes that choice doesn’t always happen.  Jesus shows that the young man chose not to love his father but rather to go his own way.  It doesn’t take long for reality to set in as we see in Luke 15:14-16.  While everything was fun and all, when the money ran out, so did the friends.  If that weren’t enough, a famine hit the land.  The only job that this young man could get was feeding pigs.   We get a sense of just how bad things were in Luke 15:16:

He longed to eat his fill from the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one would give him anything. (Luke 15:16 CSB

You know things are bad when you get to craving what you are feeding the pigs… and you can’t even get that!  It is like the old saying that goes something like this: “Sin will always take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay!”

In Luke 15:17, Jesus shares that this young man finally hits his head on the bottom of the barrel and comes to his senses.  He begins to think about how good things were back at home.  Everyone had all that they needed or wanted.  Even the workers were well taken care of.  The young man begins to prepare and rehearse a speech to get back into his father’s good graces.  Maybe just maybe, this young man could be taken in as a worker.  He knows that he had forfeited his sonship, but maybe he could just be a slave.

As the young man sets off for home with speech in hand and heart, Jesus introduces us to the second characteristic of the loving father.

Second Characteristic of the Loving Father: The father eagerly awaits the return.

In Luke 15:20, Jesus shares that this young man sets off for home.  As the young man hits the driveway, you can almost see him stop and take a deep breath.  He walks towards the house with head hung low.  He is going over the speech he had prepared in his head.  As the young man looks up, what does he see?  His father is running towards him.

The father wraps his arms around his son and kisses him. The father wastes no time in embracing and restoring the son to his place.  There was no “I told you so”… there were no pointing fingers… there was just the never-ending, never-fading love of the father.  This is a beautiful picture of God as He longs for creation to return to Him by the avenue that He made for them.

The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.  (2 Peter 3:9 CSB)

As a party begins at the return of the lost son, Jesus reminds us that there was another character in the parable – the older son.  In Luke 15:25-28, we see that the older son hears of his brother’s return and gets angry at how the father has welcomed him.  This older son was “the good one.”  He had never gone off the deep end.  He had always obeyed the rules.  No doubt, Jesus looked right at the Pharisees and scribes that day as he told this part of the story.  They were so angry that Jesus would welcome “sinners” like He did.

Third Characteristic of the Loving Father: The father goes.

While the older son was seen by many as good and moral, he still had sin that he needed to be delivered from.  The wonderful thing is that God’s pursuing heart goes out to those who are in blatant rebellion of Him and to those who are “rule-keepers.”

Jesus shares that the father goes out to the older son (Luke 15:28).  The father was not content with just having one of his sons where they needed to be.  He went to the older son and confronted him about his sin and invited him to come and join the party.

I truly believe that Jesus shared this parable with the intention that all who hear – in that day and today – might know that God is a loving God who pursues all who are lost.

Do we hear what Jesus is saying?  Sin has affected us all (Romans 3:23).  We all are in need of redemption.  God has made that redemption possible through Jesus Christ (John 14:6).