We Are Prodigal – Made New

- April 27, 2025

We are prodigal

Chris Brewster | Together Church Sermons

April 27, 2025 | Series: Made New

Over the past few weeks, I have been all over the place as I tried to determine how best to give you the news today. Sometimes, when I have to meet with someone to give important news, I get nervous about how to state it, so that it will come across the way it should. This is the case with both good news and bad news. When I am speaking, it is the same thing. My normal process is to think and pray about a particular message or speaking opportunity and then to discern what the most important message I am supposed to leave folks with. In my work we call this the BLUF or the Bottom Line Up Front. So here it is:

The BLUF – We must be saved. We can be saved.

I’m going to just get it out here right now. The news is both as bad and as good as it can get. Our origin story. Our trajectory. Our God. Our opportunity. The Bad news is of the sin of man, both corporately and individually.

The Good news is of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

The Scriptures are given so that we might know our God and our Savior Jesus. They are also given to us so that we truly know ourselves. The Author of Truth gave us the Word so that we would be able to know and understand truth. About who God is and about who we are. So, today we will look at a passage that I believe is beautifully given to do both of these things. We will be looking at what may be a very familiar passage in the Gospel according to Luke.

We are (the) prodigal

In church we often think of the word “prodigal” in both the noun and adjective form, specifically in the case of the third of three parables that Jesus was teaching his followers as recorded in Luke 15. In this passage, he speaks of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. The son is often described as a prodigal in that he was extravagant and wasteful in the way he treated his father’s wealth/his inheritance, life and possessions. We also think about the son as prodigal in the noun form, that is, one who has returned after an absence.

Luke 15:11-31

The Parable of the Lost Son

11 Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

13 “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. 14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

To take a moment to understand the scene from Luke 15, we would recall that Jesus is speaking to a mixed crowd, made up of all types of folks. The ones who had come to hear him were considered the worst of society. The dregs. The rejects and the ones who lived lives that were obviously and painfully in opposition to the Scriptures. And yet, these were the ones both welcomed by Jesus and drawn to Him. He had a crowd that was made up of the most fallen. The most publicly flawed. The most shunned by the religious institutions of the day. Not the sort of men and women you would bring home to meet the family, most likely.

The folks Jesus was reaching were not those who were considered worthy by those in the religious establishment.

As an aside, and to us church folk, it is often a real challenge to be both in the world and not of the world. Most often, we see the two camps divided by those who are both in and of the world and those who are striving to be neither of the world nor in the world. We are often drawn to withdraw, protecting ourselves and our people from the perceived dangers and temptations of the world, forgetting that he said as recorded in I John 4:4

1 John 4:4

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

We got this, because He has us! We should not fear the world, nor he who would come against us, because as my friend Wes Lane says, “Our Dad is the biggest baddest bear in the woods!”

Because we are saved people, we can offer grace and understanding to those our God would redeem, not withholding our love, not living in fear that we will be corrupted and not forgetting that we too are saved from our sin. This is the message the father gives the so in the rest of this story.

25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”

The lessons of the prodigal son:

We are so like the son in this story!

We:

Wander widely
Waste wildly
World weary

Worn down, hurting, embarrassed and burdened unto the point of despair by the result of sinful choices, the son finally turned back to the Father. What a shame that it took this to turn the face of the beloved son to the loving Dad! What a shame indeed. That any would squander the love and provision of the Creator God on the hollow, murderous lies of the flesh. But we do all turn from him. We wander, like sheep who go astray, each turning to his own way. But, and don’t miss this! Our God (says Isaiah) has placed upon himself the iniquity of us all!!!

We know the lessons of the son all too well. That we have squandered the precious generosity of the richest father in the universe. We have demanded our inheritance, our free-will, and we have marched off to exercise our stupidity with enthusiasm and remarkable energy.

But, we will all come to the end of our sinful selves and know we are in deep, tragic trouble with no hope to escape the quicksand of our iniquity. We then decide one of two things – to push on, careening into hell, often determined to take others with us, or we stop, disgusted by the stench of our sin and we stagger, crawl, drag ourselves back and thrown ourselves at the feet of our Father, begging for mercy.

We spoke a bit of the definition of prodigal as it applies to the son in this story, but one of the definitions of prodigal applies equally well to the Father! It says this, “having or giving something on a lavish scale.” Similar words are generous, lavish, liberal, unstinting, unsparing, bountiful and copious.

Now that is the kind of prodigal I can get behind! One who not only has everything, but gives it lavishly!

The lessons of the prodigal Father:

Radical restoration
Lavish love
Abundantly available

The story of my friend Penny. I remembered, or at least I thought I did, when my childhood best friend became a follower of Jesus. It was in our little church in Tuguegarao. We were meeting in a borrowed hall, and we were singing a beautiful invitation hymn, “Just As I Am”. This was, in her words, the “nudge” she needed to move her life toward her Savior. “How could I not respond to this invitation?” she asked me. How, indeed…

Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee,

O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, and waiting not

To rid my soul of one dark blot;

To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,