Micah 7:18-20/1 Peter 5:6-11/St Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
You may know the Greek proverb: “Bad company ruins good morals.” St Paul quotes it in 1 Corinthians 15. What Scripture teaches you also know to be true from your own experience. Hang out with foul-mouthed people and you’re likely to start talking like them. Spend a lot of time with people who look at spirituality and morality from an unScriptural perspective and you’ll tend to want to go with the flow.
And of course “bad company ruins good morals” is easily applied to company we keep in our entertainment and media usage. If pop culture is one’s daily company, with all its scoffing and mocking humor, with its undermining and definition of marriage and sexual morality, with its assault on the sanctity of human life, it will most certainly affect one’s worldview and behavior negatively. Christians are often tempted to see not through the eyes of the Word, but through the eyes of the world.
So it is understandable, at least on the surface, why the Pharisees and the scribes complained about the company that Jesus was keeping. This man receives sinners and eats with them. He wasn’t just keeping company with thieving tax collectors and conspicuous sinners; He was actually sharing a meal with them - a form of fellowship and closeness. How could this man, this rabbi, dirty Himself and His reputation like that? Was He lowing His standards of teaching? Was He condoning their sin? It appeared wrong to the religious leaders.
To explain what He was doing, Jesus told three parables - the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. The first two especially show how Christ came to seek and save the lost; how He is willing to get down into the muck of our lives and exalts you; how He has come to call sinners to repentance, not to condone sin, but to forgive it. Bad company may ruin good morals, but the good company of Jesus redeems and gives new life. What brings joy to heaven is not the self-righteous morally upright, but the one who in humility repents and trusts in the mercy of the Lord to forgive.
Today’s parable of the lost son highlights the mercy of God. A certain man had two sons. The younger son tells his father that he wants his share of the inheritance. He’s tired of waiting around for the old man to keel over. Happy Father’s Day! He wants to get on living life and have some fun. And so in his impatience and audacity, he makes this self-serving request of his father.
The father could have rebuked him for his insolent attitude, but instead he grants his request. The father knows best. And he knows that he can’t coerce and force love from his son. So he takes the hurt in himself and lets him go, knowing that he will likely have some very hard lessons to learn as a result.
Your Father who is in heaven deals with you the same way. You have tried to use Him for your own ends. Praying selfishly or using a religious cloak to justify your behavior. In fact, one way to describe sin is wishing that God were dead, living as if He didn’t matter and we mattered most. In fact, this is what you confess when you make use of Individual Absolution with your pastor. Saying, “My Lord’s name I have not honored as I should; my worship and prayers have faltered. I have not let His love have its way with me, and so my love for others has failed.” (LSB, 292).
Now God could sternly enforce obedience from us if He so chose. But He doesn’t want slaves cowering in submission. He wants children who receive His love and return it, both to Him and to others. And so, sometimes, in His wisdom, He lets us go our own way. He lets us mess up so that we see how barren our life is apart from Him. Even as the Psalmist says, You are My Lord, I have no good apart from You (Ps 16:2).
And to be sure the younger son’s life turned out about as barren as it could be. He may have had fun partying with his friends and living it up for a time. But as another proverb says, “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” When his money was gone, so were his friends. In the end he was left all alone. The best job he could find was feeding pigs - the bottom of the barrel for a Jewish boy. But that’s the way sin always works. It gives short term happiness and long term pain. Sin lives for the moment and sacrifices for eternity.
When the younger son was so hungry that the pig food started to look good, he finally came to his senses. We might say he repented. He realized what he had lost by leaving his father. He realized that even his father’s servants were doing better than him. He was sorry for what he had done. But notice, it wasn’t sorrow that brought him back. It was the memory of his father’s goodness that moved him to turn and head toward home.
In the same way are you made able to truly repent. It is not your contrition, but the certainty that you have a merciful Father in heaven. Being sorry is only the beginning. Judas was sorry! But believing that your Father who art in heaven receives you back for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of His beloved Son, in spite of your unworthiness to be called His child! That is the heart of matter. True repentance includes faith. It is written, God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance (Rm 2:4).
So, in a sense, the younger son did not quite have true repentance, yet. He underestimated the mercy of his father and though that he could only be allowed back as a servant. That was going to be his bargain.
But the father doesn’t work that way. He’s waiting, looking down the road, hoping his lost son will return. And it says, But while the younger son was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. Dignified men don’t run. But the father was compelled by love, hurrying to welcome his son back.
The father goes out to the son, even as the Lord is always going out and reaching out to you with His mercy. Notice, the father embraces the son even before the son can say a word, even before he can make his confession. In this you see that the Lord doesn’t receive you back and forgive you based on how well you repent or because you formulate the right words. Your Father in heaven forgives you and receives you to Himself because of His grace and mercy toward you in Christ! He loves you! It is who He is. It is undeserved and unmerited.
There is a saying that confession is good for the soul Its true. But even better for the soul than confession is the mercy and love of the Lord your God. This is what restores and saves. This is what the father is doing here - welcoming his son back into the family. And its not conditional or probationary. The father treats him in the way that full, honored son would be. He puts a distinguished robe n him. He gives him the family ring with the full authority it brings. He put sandals on his feet, because only the servants are barefoot. And the father throughs a party to celebrate the son who was dead and is alive again.
This parable is not so much about the son as it is about the father, the prodigal, extravagant father. For this is a picture of your Father in heaven and His compassion for you. In the Gospels that word compassion is used only of Jesus and God the Father. In this parable is describes the Father’s love for his lost son. God’s love for you. You don’t have to prove yourself first. The Father delights in you! He wants you as His child. It is His great joy to have you home.
In fact, so much does God want to have you with Himself that He made His own Son to be like the younger son. In a way, Jesus is the real prodigal son in the parable. It says that the Father gave to the younger son of his livelihood, or literally, of his ousias, his substance - just as we confess in the Nicene Creed that Jesus is of one substance with the Father.
Then the Son of the Father goes into a far off country, that is, the Son descends to earth and become Man for us. Here He is extravagant with all His Father’s wealth; giving away His mercy to tax collectors and sinners and the likes of us. He is prodigal and wonderfully excessive in the way He freely gives out His treasures of forgiveness and life. Finally He loses it all for you, dying in your place, pouring out His lifeblood to pay your eternal debt.
Then Jesus arises and returns to His Father who exalts Him to His right hand and gives Him the Name that is above every name, rejoicing that He who was dead is alive again, that He who was lost for a time to the grave has been found triumphant over sin and death and the devil.
So to you. Once you were dead and lost. But God the Father raised you to life in His Son Jesus. Now He says to you, “Your brothers, My Son, was dead and is alive again. Repent and find your life in Him. No matter how far you’ve sunk, Jesus has gone into the pit for you and brings you back with Him. You are not an outcast stepchild. You are robed in Jesus’ righteousness at the font and the family ring is placed on your finger. The banquet table of the Supper is laid before you, the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. You are a full fledged child in My house through Jesus. There is great joy in heaven for each one of you who are here in penitent faith. Welcome home.”
One last thing: there is another son, the older brother. Notice that the father has to go out to him too. For he too had left home in a sense, forsaking the father’s love by thinking that he had to earn it, that his father’s favor was a reward for his good behavior. All these years I’ve served you, he says, talking more like a servant than a son. But here too the father gives all. He says, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. In the end Jesus leaves it unanswered: does the older brother believe and enter? Does he prefer to have a goat with his friends rather than the Lamb with his Father and brother? Do you? Do you believe the fullness of God’s mercy is yours apart from any merit or worthiness in you? What about for others?
In today’s Gospel Jesus declares that it most certainly is. The older brother is a warning to us that we ought never become legalists counting on our own self-righteousness to get or keep us in the house. For in the end this attitude kept him from the joy of the feast. We ought never to think that there are certain sinners for whom Christ Jesus didn’t shed His precious blood. He came sinners - only sinners.
If we refuse to keep company with all who repent and trust in Him we refuse to keep company with Christ Himself, just like the Pharisees. And we are placing ourselves outside the joy of His Household. Repenting of our own sin and being forgiven we are able to rejoice in the repentance and forgiveness of another. Only in seeing ourselves as lost sinners can we rejoice that Jesus welcomes penitent sinners to His Table. This man receives sinners and eats with them. That’s good company. So come, let us eat and celebrate the Lord’s mercy. For here the lost are found. Here the dead are made alive.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
You may know the Greek proverb: “Bad company ruins good morals.” St Paul quotes it in 1 Corinthians 15. What Scripture teaches you also know to be true from your own experience. Hang out with foul-mouthed people and you’re likely to start talking like them. Spend a lot of time with people who look at spirituality and morality from an unScriptural perspective and you’ll tend to want to go with the flow.
And of course “bad company ruins good morals” is easily applied to company we keep in our entertainment and media usage. If pop culture is one’s daily company, with all its scoffing and mocking humor, with its undermining and definition of marriage and sexual morality, with its assault on the sanctity of human life, it will most certainly affect one’s worldview and behavior negatively. Christians are often tempted to see not through the eyes of the Word, but through the eyes of the world.
So it is understandable, at least on the surface, why the Pharisees and the scribes complained about the company that Jesus was keeping. This man receives sinners and eats with them. He wasn’t just keeping company with thieving tax collectors and conspicuous sinners; He was actually sharing a meal with them - a form of fellowship and closeness. How could this man, this rabbi, dirty Himself and His reputation like that? Was He lowing His standards of teaching? Was He condoning their sin? It appeared wrong to the religious leaders.
To explain what He was doing, Jesus told three parables - the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. The first two especially show how Christ came to seek and save the lost; how He is willing to get down into the muck of our lives and exalts you; how He has come to call sinners to repentance, not to condone sin, but to forgive it. Bad company may ruin good morals, but the good company of Jesus redeems and gives new life. What brings joy to heaven is not the self-righteous morally upright, but the one who in humility repents and trusts in the mercy of the Lord to forgive.
Today’s parable of the lost son highlights the mercy of God. A certain man had two sons. The younger son tells his father that he wants his share of the inheritance. He’s tired of waiting around for the old man to keel over. Happy Father’s Day! He wants to get on living life and have some fun. And so in his impatience and audacity, he makes this self-serving request of his father.
The father could have rebuked him for his insolent attitude, but instead he grants his request. The father knows best. And he knows that he can’t coerce and force love from his son. So he takes the hurt in himself and lets him go, knowing that he will likely have some very hard lessons to learn as a result.
Your Father who is in heaven deals with you the same way. You have tried to use Him for your own ends. Praying selfishly or using a religious cloak to justify your behavior. In fact, one way to describe sin is wishing that God were dead, living as if He didn’t matter and we mattered most. In fact, this is what you confess when you make use of Individual Absolution with your pastor. Saying, “My Lord’s name I have not honored as I should; my worship and prayers have faltered. I have not let His love have its way with me, and so my love for others has failed.” (LSB, 292).
Now God could sternly enforce obedience from us if He so chose. But He doesn’t want slaves cowering in submission. He wants children who receive His love and return it, both to Him and to others. And so, sometimes, in His wisdom, He lets us go our own way. He lets us mess up so that we see how barren our life is apart from Him. Even as the Psalmist says, You are My Lord, I have no good apart from You (Ps 16:2).
And to be sure the younger son’s life turned out about as barren as it could be. He may have had fun partying with his friends and living it up for a time. But as another proverb says, “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” When his money was gone, so were his friends. In the end he was left all alone. The best job he could find was feeding pigs - the bottom of the barrel for a Jewish boy. But that’s the way sin always works. It gives short term happiness and long term pain. Sin lives for the moment and sacrifices for eternity.
When the younger son was so hungry that the pig food started to look good, he finally came to his senses. We might say he repented. He realized what he had lost by leaving his father. He realized that even his father’s servants were doing better than him. He was sorry for what he had done. But notice, it wasn’t sorrow that brought him back. It was the memory of his father’s goodness that moved him to turn and head toward home.
In the same way are you made able to truly repent. It is not your contrition, but the certainty that you have a merciful Father in heaven. Being sorry is only the beginning. Judas was sorry! But believing that your Father who art in heaven receives you back for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of His beloved Son, in spite of your unworthiness to be called His child! That is the heart of matter. True repentance includes faith. It is written, God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance (Rm 2:4).
So, in a sense, the younger son did not quite have true repentance, yet. He underestimated the mercy of his father and though that he could only be allowed back as a servant. That was going to be his bargain.
But the father doesn’t work that way. He’s waiting, looking down the road, hoping his lost son will return. And it says, But while the younger son was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. Dignified men don’t run. But the father was compelled by love, hurrying to welcome his son back.
The father goes out to the son, even as the Lord is always going out and reaching out to you with His mercy. Notice, the father embraces the son even before the son can say a word, even before he can make his confession. In this you see that the Lord doesn’t receive you back and forgive you based on how well you repent or because you formulate the right words. Your Father in heaven forgives you and receives you to Himself because of His grace and mercy toward you in Christ! He loves you! It is who He is. It is undeserved and unmerited.
There is a saying that confession is good for the soul Its true. But even better for the soul than confession is the mercy and love of the Lord your God. This is what restores and saves. This is what the father is doing here - welcoming his son back into the family. And its not conditional or probationary. The father treats him in the way that full, honored son would be. He puts a distinguished robe n him. He gives him the family ring with the full authority it brings. He put sandals on his feet, because only the servants are barefoot. And the father throughs a party to celebrate the son who was dead and is alive again.
This parable is not so much about the son as it is about the father, the prodigal, extravagant father. For this is a picture of your Father in heaven and His compassion for you. In the Gospels that word compassion is used only of Jesus and God the Father. In this parable is describes the Father’s love for his lost son. God’s love for you. You don’t have to prove yourself first. The Father delights in you! He wants you as His child. It is His great joy to have you home.
In fact, so much does God want to have you with Himself that He made His own Son to be like the younger son. In a way, Jesus is the real prodigal son in the parable. It says that the Father gave to the younger son of his livelihood, or literally, of his ousias, his substance - just as we confess in the Nicene Creed that Jesus is of one substance with the Father.
Then the Son of the Father goes into a far off country, that is, the Son descends to earth and become Man for us. Here He is extravagant with all His Father’s wealth; giving away His mercy to tax collectors and sinners and the likes of us. He is prodigal and wonderfully excessive in the way He freely gives out His treasures of forgiveness and life. Finally He loses it all for you, dying in your place, pouring out His lifeblood to pay your eternal debt.
Then Jesus arises and returns to His Father who exalts Him to His right hand and gives Him the Name that is above every name, rejoicing that He who was dead is alive again, that He who was lost for a time to the grave has been found triumphant over sin and death and the devil.
So to you. Once you were dead and lost. But God the Father raised you to life in His Son Jesus. Now He says to you, “Your brothers, My Son, was dead and is alive again. Repent and find your life in Him. No matter how far you’ve sunk, Jesus has gone into the pit for you and brings you back with Him. You are not an outcast stepchild. You are robed in Jesus’ righteousness at the font and the family ring is placed on your finger. The banquet table of the Supper is laid before you, the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. You are a full fledged child in My house through Jesus. There is great joy in heaven for each one of you who are here in penitent faith. Welcome home.”
One last thing: there is another son, the older brother. Notice that the father has to go out to him too. For he too had left home in a sense, forsaking the father’s love by thinking that he had to earn it, that his father’s favor was a reward for his good behavior. All these years I’ve served you, he says, talking more like a servant than a son. But here too the father gives all. He says, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. In the end Jesus leaves it unanswered: does the older brother believe and enter? Does he prefer to have a goat with his friends rather than the Lamb with his Father and brother? Do you? Do you believe the fullness of God’s mercy is yours apart from any merit or worthiness in you? What about for others?
In today’s Gospel Jesus declares that it most certainly is. The older brother is a warning to us that we ought never become legalists counting on our own self-righteousness to get or keep us in the house. For in the end this attitude kept him from the joy of the feast. We ought never to think that there are certain sinners for whom Christ Jesus didn’t shed His precious blood. He came sinners - only sinners.
If we refuse to keep company with all who repent and trust in Him we refuse to keep company with Christ Himself, just like the Pharisees. And we are placing ourselves outside the joy of His Household. Repenting of our own sin and being forgiven we are able to rejoice in the repentance and forgiveness of another. Only in seeing ourselves as lost sinners can we rejoice that Jesus welcomes penitent sinners to His Table. This man receives sinners and eats with them. That’s good company. So come, let us eat and celebrate the Lord’s mercy. For here the lost are found. Here the dead are made alive.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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