A Face-Saving Plan

Because what we see here is that God accepts all forms. He'll take any of it. He comes running at any white flag that is being raised. Whether it's shallow and regretful or it's deep and it's like, wow, really harmed the father. As I said, this boy has a dumb plan. But did you notice the father comes running before he gets to tell him the plan? He comes and falls on him kissing him before he says a word. It's just a white flag and it's not even a very good one. This is what I need you to see this morning. Running at any white flag, shallow deep, he comes running.

This is Christ the King Sermons. Christ the King Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh. This week, we are continuing our sermon series entitled The Missionary Heart of God. In this series, we are looking at three parables told by Jesus in Luke chapter 15. In today's sermon, our senior pastor, Jeff Bradford, takes us deeper into the parable of the prodigal son.

Today, we are again in Luke chapter 15. That's on page 908 and 909 in your pew bible. If you want to read aloud with me, we're gonna read from Luke 15:1-2 and then again 11-20. It'll also be on the screen behind me.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him and the pharisees and the scribes murmured saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." And he said, "There was a man who had two sons and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me.' And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country. And there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate but no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough to spare but I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him." — Luke 15:1-2, 11-20

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

We're doing this over five weeks. So y'all will come back and we'll get to finish it.

Several years ago, there were all these BuzzFeed videos that were about non-Americans tasting American foods and giving their reactions to American treats, and then vice versa—Americans trying food from other countries. I love some of these. One person tried Hershey's chocolate and his response was: "I seriously thought it was rotten when I tried one. Hand to my heart, I wouldn't eat another one even if it was free. How that company makes a profit, I will never understand."

Let's try another one. Root beer. Here's another response: "It tastes like mouthwash that they use at the dentist. I can't understand how anyone enjoys drinking this."

Well, Americans also tried foods from other countries, and this is the response to Americans trying a Swedish delicacy called surstromming—a type of canned fermented herring that, according to Americans, "smells like sewage in a can or baby diaper or national park bathroom with dog food dumped in it." And the taste was just as bad.

Now what's fascinating to me about those BuzzFeed videos—I mean, they're funny—is what is a delicacy to one person is disgusting to someone else. And that's actually where we are in this story today. We're in our second Sunday on this, the most famous of Jesus' parables—the parable known as the prodigal son. And the focus today is really on the younger brother and how he goes through this BuzzFeed moment, where what had been a delicacy for him is now disgusting. What he really wanted above all things—life, freedom—now has turned to garbage to him. It's rotten in his mouth. It makes him sick.

One thing I know about people living in the triangle, especially if you drive I-40, you can pick up on this really quickly. We love an accident. We love a disaster. I mean, rubberneckers all over the place. Everything slows down to see what is going on on the side of the road. So what can we learn as we slow down and look at this disaster story, this dumpster fire story about this young man and the decisions he'd made?

So here's my outline if you want to take notes: a deeper hole, a face-saving plan, and white flag.

A deeper hole. I say deeper because last week we talked about the deep hole that this young man had dug for himself. You know, I said this last week—modern Western people, when we hear this story and we think about the word prodigal, we immediately assume that the big sin of this whole story is the wasting of the money. I mean, here's this young man. We know, for crying out loud, this is a Middle Eastern ancient culture. Hot sun, people working outside. This kind of wealth that the family had would have been accumulated over generations, and the guy goes and blows it in a matter of weeks, months—we don't know, quick time. So a lot of times we read the story and we're like, "That's terrible. That's the worst thing that somebody could do." And it's not like he started a business and it failed—he just blew through it. But first century people, and even modern people in the Middle East, they gasp at the right point. That's actually not the big sin of this passage.

The big sin is when he says, "Father, give me my share of the property that is coming to me. Give me what's coming now, my inheritance now." Code words: "Dad, I wish you were dead." In telling the story, Jesus is showing us what sin really is. Most people, when we use the word sin, we think of doing bad things—like wasting money. Wasting something somebody's worked for, that's a sin, right? Jesus is saying no. There's something deeper than that. Sin is looking to make a home in this world apart from God. It's not breaking God's laws. It's not doing bad things. It's breaking God's heart. It's a life in this world apart from God. That's the big sin of the story.

So that's the deep hole. But as we read today, the hole gets deeper. Things get worse and worse because this young son goes to a distant country. Now if you were a first century Jew, you would gasp. Going to any distant country is going to any non-Jewish country—going to any Gentile country. That's what that means: non-Jewish, the nations. And it was a big deal to go and waste your money, but to waste it among the Gentiles, among non-Jewish people, was considered a deep offense against your community.

In fact, Kenneth Bailey—he's written a bunch on this—was a guy who was a New Testament teacher who taught his whole career in the Middle East. Every time he tells this story, people always remember this one thing: Kezazah. And this is still practiced in small communities in Israel today and lots of communities in the Middle East. K-E-Z-A-Z-A-H. Kezazah. A family will take a giant pot in front of the adult child that has shamed the family, and they'll throw it on the ground. "Our relationship is broken. You are dead to us. You are no longer part of the family." When that happens, the village knows it. And Bailey says, from that point on, if that adult son would come back to that village, everybody knows what to do. You pick up what's nearest to you and you throw it. You call them any kind of name you want to. You chase them out of town. You have the right, in some places, to stone that person to death. It's extremely offensive.

So it's gotten worse. The hole's gotten deeper. Then it gets deeper because we read here that a famine strikes the land right at the time that the boy's money runs out. Now when somebody's down on their luck, people will help them out. But when a famine strikes, everybody's down on their luck. Nobody has extra. Nobody's got stuff to spare. Suddenly it's not one person in crisis—it's everybody in crisis. And this young man is reduced to begging. In a famine, nobody's willing to help him. He's at the end of his rope.

So the text says that he attaches himself to a citizen of that country. He finds a wealthy person. He finds somebody who's got some means, and he attaches himself. "Let me come and work for you." Now in the Middle East, even today, you don't out and out say no—that's considered rude. Rather, you pick something that would be distasteful to that person if you don't want them around. You pick something that they would never want to do.

So this citizen of the country, knowing this is an Israelite young man—easily identifiable by his accent—says, "Oh, okay. Pigs." Jewish people don't eat pigs. They don't touch pigs. Pigs are considered unclean. And in other words, the citizen of the country is saying, "Let me give you something that'll make you go away. Surely you'll leave me alone."

But the young man doesn't have any options and he takes the job. Soon he's so desperate and hungry he's looking at what are in Israel called carobs—these pea pods that are inedible for humans but animals can digest them. He begins to look at those and say, "Man, I wish I was a pig. I wish I could eat what pigs eat."

Think about this. He's lost everything. All the money he had, he's lost his community. There's been very likely a Kazaza ceremony that's happened in his village cutting him off. He's lost his dignity. He's working among pigs, and there's a famine going on.

Remember Queen Elsa from Frozen and how she talked about freedom? This is my last time picking on Elsa, by the way. You know the song "Let It Go" and she sings "No, no, right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free, let it go." That's what she thinks. And that's what this young man thinks. He thinks he's going after freedom. Where does that take Elsa? Doesn't she end up in a frozen castle slash frozen dungeon of her own making? That's exactly right.

That is a great picture of life apart from God—an ice castle that's an ice dungeon. Free, but not really. Don't believe Elsa? Eminem acknowledged this. He said, "You have to be careful when it comes to what you wish for. I always wish for success, but it's become more of a nightmare to me than a dream."

Or Billie Eilish—number one album in 2019 at only 18 years of age—and she said this: "Famous trash." Why? Because the more famous that she became, the less she enjoyed her life.

Justin Bieber said, "I had a lot of money, clothes, and cars, and accolades, and achievements, and awards, and I was still deeply unfulfilled." He wrote a song about it called "Lonely."

Or Lady Gaga. She's backstage right before a concert at Madison Square Garden—the Madison Square Garden—and she's weeping. She's supposed to be getting her makeup on. She says, "Sometimes I just feel like a loser. It's crazy because here we are at Madison Square Garden, but I sometimes feel like the loser kid in high school and I just gotta pick myself up and I have to tell myself I'm a superstar every morning just so I can get through the day."

There's a way to have everything and have nothing. That's what lost looks like.

A Face-Saving Plan

So the boy comes up with a plan—a face-saving plan, a dumb plan, but a plan. He begins to do the mental math. His life hasn't ended up how he thought. And so he comes up with this speech, and this is what we read:

"But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's servants have food and then some. I'm perishing here with hunger. I'm gonna arise and go to my father and I'll say to him: Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.'" — Luke 15:17-19

Sounds like a good speech, doesn't it? Except one thing. Jesus is quoting the Old Testament. He puts words from your Bible in the Old Testament into the mouth of the younger son. And the people listening to this—remember, the people who are hearing this are the Pharisees, the religious people, people who like church, good people. These are people who would have memorized the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah. They would immediately know, "Wait a second, Jesus is riffing on somebody else in the Old Testament."

You know who that is? These words—"I've sinned against heaven and against you"—are from the mouth of a guy called Pharaoh. In Exodus, the Israelite people are in slavery and Moses comes to the Pharaoh, the reigning king of Egypt, and pleads on God's behalf and on the people's behalf. "Let God's people go." And Pharaoh doesn't do it. So God sends 10 plagues over and over to really frustrate and cause Pharaoh to be like, "Let his people go," but Pharaoh's holding on.

There's this moment in Exodus chapter 10 where Moses and Pharaoh are talking again and Moses says, "Let God's people go," and Pharaoh says these words. It's a great speech. He says this:

"I've sinned against heaven and against you. Now, pray to God for me and ask for God to forgive my sin." — Exodus 10:16-17

Now, great speech, but missing one thing: they can go.

The word in your Bible for being sorry is the word "repentance." It means to turn around. You're going one way, you go the other way. You switch direction. Question for the class today: Do we think of Pharaoh in the Bible as a model of repentance? No, we don't. He's not exactly turning to God in this moment. He's just miserable. He's sick of the plagues.

Like Pharaoh, this is a clue for us. What's happening inside this boy? He's not repentant either. He's miserable. He's at the end of his luck. He's taken full stock of the situation and he's done the mental math. He's like, "This isn't going so great." And he comes up with this plan.

Now, they say necessity is the mother of invention. Have you heard that before? Just means when things get bad, you get creative. So the boy begins to get creative. He comes up with a plan. Now get this. He comes up with a plan that allows him to go back without having to go home. To go back without having to go home.

And here's what the plan looks like. Hired servant, number one. Contract employee, not living in dad's house but living in the village somewhere, working for dad, taking a salary, but living apart from dad. I'm restored to dad as employee but not son.

Second part of the plan, as a paid worker he can sort of make up for what he's done in the eyes of the village. He can show himself to be responsible. People will be like, okay he's not as bad as we all thought and he's sort of paying down his debt. This is what happened in the Bible. You could do this in Jesus' day. This is called a way of actually paying off your debts. You could become an indentured servant for a while and hire yourself out for a period of months and pay down your debts. That's what he's proposing.

Third part of this, he's imagining a servant-boss relationship with the father. He's like, that'll work. I want you to think about that. That's all he understands of God. This is how God works. Servant, boss.

And finally, the younger son still has no language here of relationship. Never does he say the word reconcile, never does he say sorry, he isn't intending to submit himself to the father. He simply wants to work for the father. In other words, he doesn't have to be humbled. He doesn't want grace, he doesn't want mercy. This is save face. I'm not embarrassed. I can go home with my head held high. I have a plan. It'll work.

Why? Why does he come up with this? Because he doesn't understand what the father is really like. He has no idea. Now there are a lot of people who think this is what Christianity is, and I would dare say many of you think this is what Christianity is—not because of what you'd say, but how you live. We think that Christianity is a boss-servant relationship with God. So many times people think of this like, I will sort of get it together and do all the things. I find that the church is filled with people who are doing things for all the wrong reasons. Doing things because you think you need to, because you have to. We have so many get right plans. I mean, this time of year is all about get right plans. Get right with your fitness, get right with your eating, maybe get right with God. We always have a spike in the fall and in the spring when people start coming and I'm glad you're here, but this isn't how God is.

Many people assume God loves them only when they're doing the right things. The father loved the son when he was far away. His heart was filled with love for his son. Why do you think he sat by the window and watched? Why did he go to the edge of the village daily and look at the horizon? God loves us even when we're far off from him, even when we're disobeying. It doesn't cancel out God's love. God's love is that big. That's how he is toward us.

The Father's Response

Now this leads me to our last point, and this is so important. If you don't hear anything else I say this morning, I want you to hear this part really clearly. Any white flag—any white flag—the father in this passage does what no self-respecting Middle Eastern patriarch of a family would ever do. He runs. He exposes his legs. Not supposed to do that. This guy probably hadn't run in public in thirty or forty years. He pulls up his robe and he runs.

He arose and came to his father, but while he was at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and he ran and embraced him. — Luke 15:20

Lest you think this is just a New Testament Jesus thing, from Hosea chapter 11, this is what God says about his people. This is what God says about people.

How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? How can I make you like the disgraced? How can I treat you with disgrace? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. — Hosea 11:8

This is the heart of God. God is like this. This is the heart of God for all kinds of sinners—the good ones and the bad ones in our estimation, the Pharisees and the tax collectors, the nice people who recycle, the bad people who don't recycle. This is the heart of God for people. This is the heart of God for you and you and you.

You know, I want to clarify and correct some of my sermons in the past. I've stood up before you in the pulpit and in a desire to be really clear with the Bible, distinguish between true repentance and false repentance. Now that comes from a passage in Second Corinthians that talks about worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is like regret, remorse. That's what the younger son's like right now. He's not necessarily like, I can't wait to see my dad. He's got a dumb plan. It's worldly sorrow.

I think the terms "true repentance" and "false repentance" haven't been very helpful for our congregation, and I apologize if this has thrown you off. What we see in Luke 15 is rather shallow repentance and deep repentance. Because what we see here is that God accepts all forms. He'll take any of it. He comes running at any white flag that's being raised—whether it's shallow and regretful or deep and really harms the father.

This boy has a dumb plan, but did you notice the father comes running before he gets to tell him the plan? He comes and falls on him, kissing him before he says a word. It's just a white flag, and it's not even a very good one. This is what I need you to see this morning: running at any white flag, shallow or deep. He comes running.

The best illustration I can give you, I'm going to have to show you in video. I've never used video in the pulpit before, and I apologize if this offends some of you, but you'll get it.

You can see the time: 1983. If you don't recognize it, NC State pulled off this amazing basketball victory. I was 12 years old. I don't remember anything about the game. I remember that guy running—that crazy, crazed look in his eye of complete loss of composure, a complete "I have got to do whatever it takes and move whoever I've got to in order to get to those guys in the middle of the court." That's the kind of running your father does to you. Every time sinners repent, that kind of welcome.

We'll get to more on this next week. We'll see how the younger son can go from shallow to deep. That will come later. But I want you to hear this this morning: any white flag, any white flag, any white flag.

Can I ask you to take an assessment today? What in your life started out like Hershey's chocolate and now has become sour—or root beer that's like mouthwash, or surströmming, like a baby diaper? What in your life has been something that you have prized and thought was really great and delighted in, and you're realizing, "That's not what I want"? What does it look like for you today to turn and move toward the father? The father who comes running, that kind of father. What would it look like for you to turn?

The Chicago River Story

In conclusion, I want to tell you a story. We've done this tour twice now. We have a son who lives in Chicago, so we've gone and done the architecture tour of Chicago. You ride on a boat—it's great. I recommend it. One of the things we learned about on the tour of that river, the Chicago River, is that they've changed the river.

For years, the Chicago River flowed out into Lake Michigan. But during the industrial revolution, as Chicago grew and the meat packing plants grew, all the sewage flowed into the Chicago River and then flowed into Lake Michigan, which was the city's drinking water. So the city became really sick with cholera. There was a huge cholera epidemic, and city officials tried to figure out what to do about this. They can't clean the water. And they did something crazy.

They realized that the Des Moines River is like 28 miles away, and they thought, "What if we dug a canal and made the water go a different direction?" This is a crazy engineering story, and I know some of you are engineers and could explain how this works. I don't know how they did this—they dug a bunch of dirt. They dug a 28-mile trench and then cut off the water flowing one direction and reverted it so it went the other way. The water from Lake Michigan now flows down the Chicago River, out to the Des Moines River, and then out the Mississippi, out to the ocean. And like this, it began to change the health standards for the city—all because they turned the water around. They turned the direction and went from unhealth to health.

This morning, I want to give you a chance—and it may be a little thing, it may be a really big thing—to pick up a flag. I would dare say there's something in every life in this room where we need the father. He can't resist it. Any white flag. Would you turn? Would you give a chance for the father to run to you? What do you think that would feel like?

Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this your word. There's nothing like your word. We thank you for the way that you cut through our mistaken pictures of you. Lord, help us this morning—whether we are shallow or deep in our repentance—to repent. Whether we are miserable and we just know that we really want you. Father, I pray for lots of little white flags this morning. Father, help us to experience the running, the kissing, the embrace, the restoration of the father.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to today's sermon. If you have questions about our content or if you want to engage more deeply with our church, visit our website at ctkrally.org.

This has been Christ the King Sermons, a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.