Ray Yates writes:

The parable of the prodigal son!

 Luke 15

 The parable from Luke 15 is about two sons not one. It can be argued that that the older brother is the focus of the parable, pointing a finger Pharisees.

 The parable clearly demonstrates that both sons were lost, one found his way home to father, but did the older brother join the party?

 I believe a key question of the parable is would the Pharisees & teachers of the law catch God’s love for the lost?  Or would they look on disapprovingly?

 The younger son came to ‘himself’, but would the older son come to see that he too was lost.

 I believe the older brother, not just the younger one, was lost. The older brother was lost in plain sight of the father, rather than lost by moving away. We too can be lost in plain sight of God.

 In what sense was older brother lost?

 Before I try to answer this question, this talk is a warning to those for whom duty or the church as an organisation becomes more important than the embrace of the Father.

 This isn’t a decision we make, but a drifting, over a period of time, but we do need to make a decision to seek the Father’s embrace.

 1.       The older brother had lost touch with the father.

 Geographically, the older son was close to the father, but relationally he was miles away.  Not once does the older brother use the word father.  The older brother spent time close to his father but never acquired the father’s heart!

 We need to ask ourselves: Am I drifting away from the Father’s embrace?

 Do I need to return home?

2.       The brother was a son, but he was living as a slave:

 ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.

 It is so easy for us to become like the older brother, where it becomes about duty rather than relationship to the Father.  When it becomes about what we do, and not what God does in us…  On the surface we can seem to be very busy for God but lost…

Paul says we are sons not slaves:

 Romans 8.15:

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

 3.       The older son didn’t take hold of his inheritance…

 It is worth looking at v12:

The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

 It wasn’t just the younger son who got his share of the estate but the older brother got his share of the estate but was living as if he hadn’t received his inheritance!

 Hear what the older son says:

‘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.

 Here the father’s response:

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

 Are you living as though you have no inheritance in Christ?

 Paul writes

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people (Eph 1.18)

 The Pharisees & the scribes had access to the riches of God’s truth but never enjoyed it or saw the blessings (Rom 9.4-5).

 For all this they were lost!

·        Do you hunger for the Father’s embrace?

·        Are you living in God’s grace-or are you a son living like a slave?

·        Do you need to take hold of your inheritance in Christ?

Revd Ray Yates