THE PRODIGAL SON AND HIS BROTHERS

THE PRODIGAL SON AND HIS BROTHERS

And He said, "A certain man had two sons.” Luke 15:11

In this passage we see the Fatherhood of God. First of all we see him supplying his son with his substance, everything he had, he had from his father. That is a philosophy of life. Whatever we spend in life of force, physical, mental, and spiritual, we obtain from God. All the forces of our life are His forces. The devil never made a human being. A human being! The devil never made a blade of grass. He has destroyed a good many.

Another fact about God is self-evident, although it is not specifically stated. The father is seen suffering the loss of his son.

"The Son of man is come to seek and save that which was lost."

A lost son. When a son is lost, who suffers most, the son who is lost, or the father who has lost him? Fathers and mothers can answer that question! We should be far more earnest in our missionary work if we could get into the suffering heart of God. We cannot over-emphasize the suffering of humanity. But humanity is suffering because it is away from God and He is suffering more than humanity, does, while humanity is away from Him.

Then, of course, the culminating and principal revelation of this story is that when the son gets back_, the father is seen singing.  This is an amazing picture of God. While he was yet a long way off, his father saw him. That is very beautiful. But the next thing is the startling thing, "he ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him," and the Greek word there is "kissed him much;" if we would have it in good, colloquial English, he "smothered him with kisses." That is a picture of God, an old man running, and so far losing his dignity as to fall on the neck of a soiled son, and smother him with kisses. What an apparent sacrifice of dignity! And yet we know that an old man is never more dignified than when he runs to meet his boy coming back. That is God. I dare not have drawn that pic­ture, but Jesus did.

Look again. He smothered him with kisses. But he is not clean! That is what the Pharisees were saying about Jesus and the unwashed crowd. Would it not be better if he waited until he is washed? Would it not be better to wait until those rags are removed, and he is decently clothed? Would it not be better to wait, and see how he does, put him on probation, and if he does better, perhaps his father may receive him? That is the vulgarity of our supposed respectability and accuracy that lack God's love. To all our cau­tious criticisms the Father would say; Let me get my arms about him, and his head pillowed on my breast, and then he will tell all the truth. That is God.

It has been said that if this is the Gospel, there is no need of sacrifice and a Cross. Many years ago, Pro­fessor Ives Curtiss, of Chicago, wrote a book about Semitic religions. Among other things, he described the sacrifice of the threshold. If a son, whether through rebellion or legitimately, left home for a season, it was the habit to offer a sacrifice upon the threshold on his return. The purpose of the sacri­fice was twofold, first an atonement for possible sin, and secondly a feast to be spread when the threshold was crossed. A theologian asked Professor' Curtiss, "Have you ever applied the thing you have described there, to the story of the prodigal son?" He answered back, "I never thought of it, but ls surely it may apply."

Now, am not going to dogmatize about it, but I do say that the sacrifice was offered, and the feast was the outcome. This Eastern custom, which persists to this hour, is there also. I do not want to press that, but do not let us be in a hurry to say that there is no sacrifice there. But even if, in the phase of the parable that shows the attitude of the father, there is nothing said about the Cross, go back, and watch the Son on His journey across the mountains with blood tracks all the way. Love will welcome the boy, but not at the^-cost of purity.

Thus in this parable we see God in the Son suffering in the Spirit searching (motherhood), and in the Father singing (fatherhood) when the boy comes home. Both the motherhood and fatherhood of God.

But Jesus had not quite done. He had something else to say, and He went on, and said it.

"Now his elder son was in the field." There is another son. What are we to do with this elder son? It is rather interesting, I nearly said amusing, and how men have struggled to explain this. I have heard said that this is the difference between the Jew and the Gentile. That is extremely absurd, because we can't say of the Jew what the father said of this son. The differ­ence is not between Jew and Gentile. The difference is between; two sons, one self-righteous, and the other a sin­ner. But that is not all. Look at this elder son, what do we find He was devoted to his father's law, and he was devoted to his father's service; but he was entirely out of sympathy with his father's heart; and therefore unable to set the true value upon his brother. The Pharisees and scribes were the men Jesus was looking at when He talked about the elder son. He was taking them at their own valuation devoted to the law and ser­vice of God. To them He said, in effect: You cannot understand God, you cannot understand the heart of God; if you did, and you could not look with contempt upon these men outside with whom I am mixing. The elder son was out of sympathy with the heart of his father. How many sons of God are like that, even in the Church today!

Some years ago_: I heard my friend Samuel say something about this story, with which I am going to close this meditation. When he rose to preach, he Said, "I am going to preach on the third Son in the parable of the prodigal son." Then, he showed the two, the younger breaking his father's heart and the elder out of sympathy with his father's heart. Then he said "Isn't there another Sort? Yes, there is. He Is the Man

Who was uttering the parable. He was God's Son, His ideal Son on the human level. He never broke God's heart with His sin, but He was so in sympathy with God's heart that He died to save sinners." That is the third Son of the parable of the prodigal!

Where are we? Are we related to Him in very deed? Then the measure of our relationship is the measure in which we know what it is to suffer in order to serve and save; to seek dili­gently, and count no case hopeless; and. above all to sing with a Father when the boy comes home.