The Wide Path Dropout Mama
The Wide Path Dropout Mama
The Prodigal Son - Luke 15 Parables - Part 3
Here we are in the final parable to this Luke 15 series, The Prodigal Son. In this episode we go behind the scenes of what is happening cuturally in this story. In this parable Jesus is speaking to educated scholars who understood the unspoken cultural norms that we don't have the benefit of knowing unless we study the middle eastern culture of Yeshua's time! In this episode we do just that, we dive deep into the cultural happenings in this story and find out that the love of our Father and our Savior, Messiah Yeshua is even more stunning than we ever could have imagined! Join me, Ginny, as we take a trip to a 1st Century Jewish village and learn what makes this parable and what it says about Jesus so incredible!
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Hi, my name's Jenny. I'm a wife, a mom, an entrepreneur and, most importantly, a disciple of Yeshua Jesus. I've been a Christian for over a decade, having studied the Bible for at least that long or better. Until about three years ago, I thought I knew Jesus pretty well. Then my world was rocked. I started studying the Bible from its Middle Eastern context and culture, and what I found has completely changed my and my family's lives forever. Join me as I share all that I've learned about our Jewish Messiah and listen to my conversations with other moms on their own journey with Jesus as we discuss the practical ways that we walk out our faith in our everyday lives. This is a conversation for the Christian mom who wants more.
Speaker 1:This is the Wide Path Dropout Mama podcast. Welcome back everybody. Welcome back to the Wide Path Dropout Mama podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. This is the third. Is it the third?
Speaker 1:Anyway, it's the final series on this Luke chapter 15 parable, where we are doing a deep dive on each parable and looking at the Middle Eastern context and culture of each, and in the past few episodes we have learned about some of the Jewish culture and how a disciple was to find a rabbi. We learned about what that rabbi's teaching was called and how it relates to some of the scriptures that Jesus was talking about. We learned that Jesus is in Luke, chapter 15, and all his parables, that he's teaching is defining repentance as allowing yourself to be found and brought back home, which is something very new to a lot of us. It's a very new way of thinking. It took me a long time to be able to actually accept that, and only through my studying of the scriptures and being saturated in the word every single day over the past four years and seeing the patterns in the Bible and seeing the patterns of how God works, was I able to understand and accept that. Yes, I do see that. I do see that in most of the ways that people are repenting is Jesus is coming to them or somehow the word of God is coming to them and they are now confronted with a choice to either keep going their own way or to allow themselves to be found and brought back to the Lord.
Speaker 1:And I have, in my own life, had so many of those times where it was not me who went to him, it was him who actively and incessantly pursued me, so much so that I just couldn't ignore it anymore and I got tired of running and now I am fully his struggling. Until the day that we die, we will be constantly in struggling against our flesh and constantly in the process of sanctification. We are never going to be there. There is nobody, even the person that you look up to and admire the most as a Christian. They have things that they struggle with. They have things that the Lord is still working on in them and that's okay and we should always keep that in mind, both within ourselves and give ourselves grace, and also with other people.
Speaker 1:So I have learned to lean into that process of sanctification and to give myself a break, because I am always have been extremely, excruciatingly hard on myself. I've always just kind of agonized over where I was or where I wasn't or where I thought I should be, until finally I've just gotten close enough with the Lord and gotten to know him well enough to know that he doesn't love me anymore or any less, based on what I have or haven't done or where I think that I should be or shouldn't be. And I've just learned to accept his love and his grace and to lean into the process of sanctification and joy and to enjoy that working on myself with him and knowing that most of the work falls on him, so it doesn't fall on me, and that is a huge relief for me. So, anyway, we are looking at I'm going to begin this episode with looking at these patterns to show you that Jesus and the Lord is the one who comes and brings us. I'm going to reiterate the idea of repentance being allowing yourself to be found and brought back home, by showing you some examples, through scripture, of how the Lord has done just that. He has been the one to show up and to basically take everything on his shoulders, just like the good shepherd did with the sheep, and to carry these people back home, to put them back on the path of righteousness, or get them on to the path of righteousness. And so I want to begin with my first example all the way back in Exodus I gave last, in the last episode I gave the example of it may have been the two episodes ago, either way it's in one of those I gave the example of Jesus in John, chapter 15, verse 16, saying I you did not choose me, but I chose you did not choose me, but I chose you. And the pattern of a back in Jesus's day, when you were looking for a rabbi to sit under their teaching. You were the one who chose your rabbi. You went and you sampled their teachings and you sat under their yokes and you made a decision on who you wanted to follow. But that's why Jesus said I, you did not choose me, I chose you. The Lord drew you to me, and so that's an example of him coming in and choosing you, not the other way around, and one of the.
Speaker 1:We're going to go back, actually, before Exodus, we're going to go all the way to Genesis, chapter 15, and take a look at Abraham. Now, when Abraham was you know, the Lord had promised him that he was going to have many descendants, that he was going to be a blessing, and he didn't yet have his son. But the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and when he made this covenant, he told him to bring me. He said to let's go there and just take a look. He says in chapter verse 5,.
Speaker 1:It says Then he brought him outside and said Look up at the sky and count the stars. If you can count them, your descendants will be that many. He believed in Adonai and he credited it to him as righteousness. Then he said to him I am Adonai, who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession. And he replied Adonai God, how am I to know that I will possess it? He answered him bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a dove and a young pigeon. He brought him all of these, cut the animals in two and placed the pieces opposite each other, but he didn't cut the birds in half. Birds of prey swooped down on the carcasses, but Abraham drove them away.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is the making of a covenant. This is what you did back in those ancient times to establish a covenant with someone. So he is promising Abraham that his descendants are going to be as numerous as the stars. And Abraham is like how am I going to know if this is true? He's like I'm going to make a covenant with you. So he is asked him to bring all of these animals, these sacrifices. But then what does he do? He puts Abraham into a deep sleep and the Lord himself shows up as thick darkness, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. And he passes between the animal parts. And so he puts Abraham into a deep sleep and then he goes through those animals himself and declares a covenant. So he's basically saying here, I'm going to keep this covenant with myself. I'm keeping it with you. I'm making this promise to you, but you don't have a part in this. I am going to bring this to fruition. This is my responsibility, this is what I have vowed to do and I am going to do it. So we see already back then that the Lord himself was the one who said I am going to establish this covenant with you and I myself am going to be the one to keep it. You're not going to keep it, I'm going to keep it.
Speaker 1:Exodus. And actually, and this is where he says you know, your descendants are going to go into a land not of their own. They're going to become slaves for 400 years, and then I is getting ready to take them out of Egypt. At this point. The Israelites have been in bondage for 400 years. The generation alive at this time in Egypt knows nothing else but this kind of life, but this kind of life. And we are going to read, let's read Exodus, chapter six, verses six through seven. It says this therefore, say to the children of Israel I am Yahweh, I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as my people and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am Yahweh, your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. So let's take a look at that word burdens. So he says I will bring you out from under the burdens.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to read you a paragraph or some out of this book that I've mentioned several times in this podcast. It's called Finding the Afikomen by Christy Eisner. There are two books and they are about the seven feasts of the Lord, and also she writes about the Sabbath in there as well, and the first book is about the spring feasts and then the second book is about the fall feasts. I highly recommend this. It is a it is a beautiful book and it will set your heart on fire and it will give you a yearning, a strong desire to know Jesus intimately through these feast days, because these feast days are the key to unlocking all the mysteries that are found in scripture that you wouldn't necessarily understand until you understand the feast days and some of the idioms attached to those feast days. But anyway, I'm going to read you something out of that book. So when he says I am going to rescue you from the burdens of the Egyptians, let's read here. It says that. So she is explaining that.
Speaker 1:She read a book from a rabbi called From Bondage to Freedom, and his name is Rabbi Abraham Tversky. And this is what he says In commissioning Moses to liberate the Israelites from Egypt, god said I will extract them from the burden. And this word is sivlis of Egypt. He says this word sivis also means tolerance, and so if you replace the word burdens with tolerance, let's read it then and see how it reads. Therefore, say to the children of Israel I am Yahweh, I will bring you out from under the tolerance of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgment. And then it goes on to say then you shall know that I am Yahweh, your God, who brings you out from under the tolerance of the Egyptians.
Speaker 1:So before the Lord rescues them out of Egypt, he has to actually make them understand that they are in bondage, because at this point this is all they've ever known. They don't even realize how much bondage they're actually under. They have become complicit in this lifestyle. They don't know anything different. They think that this is life, and so he actually has to produce an intolerance of it. He has to actually cause them to quit being able to tolerate being in bondage. So right there, he has to insert himself and create this friction and produce a cry from them. He has to make them cry out to him to rescue them. He has to make them cry out to him to rescue them. So there we see another pattern of him coming in and being the one to begin to save them. Basically and these are just a few examples of the Lord kind of showing up and taking it upon himself to rescue his people.
Speaker 1:And with that let's get into our parable for the day. This is the climax to the three parables that we have been reading in Luke, chapter 15. This is the parable of the prodigal Son, also known as the Running Father in Middle Eastern culture. But as Kenneth Bailey in the Cross and the Prodigal, which is the book that I mentioned in the last episode, he actually calls it the Parable of the Compassionate Father and the Two Lost Sons, and I actually really agree with him, and you will find out why as we get into this story.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's start with the beginning of this parable. Okay, we are in Luke 15, in verse 11. And he said there was a man who had two sons. Okay, so we're going to stop right there, which is crazy, because it's just one very small sentence, but I want you to see that all three characters are mentioned in this very first sentence. And he said there was a man who had two sons. So we already have the father and the younger son and the older son, just right from the beginning, and that is going to tell us that the relationship that they have between each other is going to play a big role in the way that this is all playing out and why.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's move on to verse 12. And the younger of them said to his father Father, give me the share of property that falls to me. And he divided his living between them. Okay, here's where it starts getting juicy. So the younger son says give me the share of property that falls to me. Notice that he doesn't say Father, will you give me my inheritance?
Speaker 1:Okay, so, first of all, the fact that the younger son asked his father to give him what belongs to him is. It's an absolute unheard of request Back in this time if a father was going to pass on his inheritance or the inheritance that belongs rightfully to the older and the younger son. In the law, in the Torah, it states that the older son gets a double portion and then the younger son gets a third, basically. And so the younger son is asking for his portion, and that was a huge slap in the face, because the only time that a father in that culture in that time would pass on the inheritance would be as if he was getting close to death, and in this particular parable that is not the case. The father is still very much alive and well and he is the one managing the estate. So the fact that his younger son asks for that is a major dishonor to him and he has every right to be angry and to refuse to give his son what he's asking for. But that's not what he does. It says that he divided his living between them, which means that he actually gave between them, which means that he actually gave. Not only did he give the inheritance or the wealth to the younger son, he also gave it to his older son, and the fact that they allowed him to do this it speaks volumes of both. The younger son Well, first of all, he's the one who requested this, which is a huge dishonor. But the fact that the older son didn't step in and contest this says a lot too, and we'll get into why in just a little bit. But you have to understand basically what he was asking, the fact that he asked for the share of the property instead of his inheritance. He carefully did not say the word inheritance for a reason Back then, when you were getting your inheritance from your father, your father was passing away and he was getting ready to give you the inheritance and the blessing, just like you see throughout scripture, abraham did it, isaac did it, jacob did it.
Speaker 1:When they were nearing their death, they gave their son their blessing and in this case the inheritance would be. It would be a lot more than just the quote, unquote the wealth. And back then, a family's wealth wasn't in stocks and bonds, it wasn't in your bank account, it was. It consisted of a group of homes, livestock and property likely, and it would have taken many generations to accumulate whatever wealth that they had at this time and back then, your attachment to your family and specifically a father as head of a household, that was the highest honor.
Speaker 1:Age was a high honor. It meant that you were wise, it meant security. It meant a number of different things, but the father or the oldest had the responsibility of taking care of the house. They had the responsibility of of the building the wealth, continuing in the efforts of building the family wealth and caring for that wealth. And you also were the one who maintained the integrity of your family name. So whenever you were at public events, like a wedding or town meetings or whatever the case was, you were a representation of your family, and so you had to uphold yourself with the highest of integrity to maintain the quality of your family, and so you had to uphold yourself with the highest of integrity to maintain the quality of the family name and everything that went along with that and the respect and the honor that came along with that.
Speaker 1:And you'll see throughout the Torah a lot of times when they were talking about a woman marrying, marrying, and if she lost her husband she would either have to return to her father's house or the brother of her spouse would have to take her in. It was a huge deal to be a part of a household, because that was your security, that was your pension as you got older, that was your social security, that was your assurance to marriage, that was everything. You being attached to a household was all of your security wrapped up in that. A perfect example for this would be the story of Ruth and Boaz, or the story of Naomi and Ruth, because Naomi has a family. She has a husband and two sons. They leave the land of Judah and they end up in the land of Moab, and her two sons end up marrying these Moabite women.
Speaker 1:Well, naomi's husband dies and then her two sons die, leaving just the two of the daughter-in-laws and Naomi, and they have no covering, no protection, nobody to provide for them. And so Naomi begs her daughter-in-laws to leave and go back to their father's house. That way they would have some type of providence, they would be provided for, they would have a covering and then they could maybe go on to marry again. But Naomi is going to return to her land to try to find a way to survive, basically, and she, like I said, she begs her daughter-in-law to stay or go back home, but Ruth refuses to, she says that she wants to go with Naomi. So Ruth and Naomi go back to the land of Judah, where Naomi has property and Boaz is family to Naomi's late husband, and so you'll see in there that Boaz is their kinsman redeemer, and what he ends up having to do is to go to the town or go to the elders of the village and say, hey, listen, I want to buy the land of Naomi and I want to take Ruth as my wife, and so I'll be able to provide for them. And that's exactly what he does. And so that is a perfect example of the needing to be attached to a family, to have a covering and to have protection and to be provided for. And, as another side note, that ends up being the bloodline of Jesus, because Ruth and Boaz have Obed, obed has Jesse and Jesse has David, and we all know that Jesus comes from the line of David.
Speaker 1:So pretty cool, and you being the son of someone was a huge deal. That's why you'll see it over and over in scripture, from the Old Testament all the way through to the New. Whenever they're naming the family names, they're saying such and such, son of such and such, and a father was known as father of so and so, and I'll give you some examples. So look at Jesus, the son of David, peter, son of Simon, such and such, son of Jonah. Over and over you see, son of, son of, son of, because your family name was everything. That is who you were, that was who you were known to be in your community. That's so whenever you were being introduced to somebody, they would ask you who are you? What family are you from? Who's your father? Who's your son? They wanted to know that family name because that was going to tell them everything they needed to know about who you were.
Speaker 1:And so the son is essentially saying I don't need, don't? I don't need any part of that. I don't want to be attached to this family. And being a part of a family clan was so important that it was unheard of for anybody to forfeit that, forfeit that. And if you were not a part of a family clan, if you were not attached to a household, you were known as like a vagabond or a wanderer, and you were not treated well. If you were a loner in a village, people would mock you, they would follow you around and yell at you and kind of sing mocking songs at you. It was a big deal not to be attached to somebody. People didn't trust someone who wasn't attached to a family. And so the son is all of this. He is kind of he's spitting on. He's spitting on you Everything that his family has worked hard to be seen as in the community and to earn in their family wealth, and he's just completely forfeiting all of that security and all of that inheritance, this idea of being attached to the household or a household.
Speaker 1:I want to read a sentence from the book the Cross and the Prodigal by Kenneth Bailey that I've been talking about. He says the household of God should mean to the believer what the extended family means to the Middle Eastern villager. So you should have some light bulbs going off right now or at least kind of remembering this idea of the house of God. I think David mentions it a lot in his Psalms about being in the house of the Lord, and I want you to understand that when you see in Scripture it talking about being in the house of the Lord forever, that should hold so much weight for you. That should now, knowing what you know now based off of what we've just learned, it should hold so much weight and it should mean so much more to you.
Speaker 1:When you see it in scripture saying something about the house of the Lord, that is a big deal. That is basically saying that we are members of the household of God, and that carries so much significance to it. It means so much more than just taking that phrase at face value. That actually means that we carry the name of Yahweh, we carry the name of Yeshua. That is who we are attached to. We are son of Yahweh, we are sons of Yeshua. That is a huge honor and that means that everything that belongs to the Lord now belongs to us too. And I want to read something to you.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of scriptures that come to mind that I want to share with you. This one, the first one, in Isaiah 56, this scripture just means so much to me, just knowing what I know now about who the Lord is and about scripture, and I hold it so dear to my heart, and it's in chapter 56. It's talking about the Sabbath. I'm not going to read the whole chapter to you, although whenever I do an episode on the Sabbath, which I will be doing in the near future, I will share all of this with you, but for now, I just want to share the part that pertains to what we're getting at here, or what we're talking about here, and it's in chapter 56, starting in verse four. It says For here is what the Lord says as for the eunuchs who keep my Shabbats, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, in my house, within my walls, I will give them power and a name greater than sons and daughters. I will give him an everlasting name that will not be cut off. How beautiful and powerful is that. Now that we know the importance of being attached to a household. And there's another scripture that I want to share with you.
Speaker 1:Let's take a look at Psalm 23. This is going to tie in both this idea of being attached to the house of the Lord, and it's also going to bring in this idea of repentance and it being something that the living God does. Y'all, when you see this, oh my word, just get ready, ok. So remember, in the first episode, I was telling you about the Greek word for repentance and then the Hebrew word for repentance. The Greek word is metanoia means to return, and the Hebrew word is teshuva, but for short it's shub.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's take a look at Psalm 23, and you're going to see where I'm going here. Let's take a look here. It says let's take a look here. It says the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. Okay, that word restores. If you go to the blue letter Bible and you click on that into the interlinear blue letter Bible and you click on that into the inner linear, you're going to see that that word restores is shub. That word restores is translates to repentance in Hebrew. So let's read it knowing that definition. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He repents my soul. Oh, oh, my goodness y'all. He repents my soul. He repents my soul. And let's continue on, because now we're going to tie in this idea of being attached to the household of the Lord. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake Yea. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff. They comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And here we go and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever. Oh, my goodness, y'all, if that is, does that just bring such new life to Psalm 23? I believe that you will never see that the same again. Talking about he is the one who repents my soul and the highest honor, my greatest prayer, my greatest desire is that I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That is my prayer. I hope that that is your prayer too. So I wanted to just kind of take that little side trail to just tie that into what we're learning about this household and repentance. So let's get back to our parable and repentance. So let's get back to our parable. Okay, so we're still in verse 12, where it says that he's asked for the share of property that falls to him. The younger son has, and the father has divided the living between the two of them, his two sons. Now we've talked about the younger son and what he has chosen to pass up. Right, he's chosen to pass up the responsibility. But let's take a look at the older son and also let's take a look at what would have been his inheritance. So it says in the Torah that the older son gets the lion's share of the inheritance, or a double portion, so he has more. And also, the older son would have been the one to carry on the bulk of the responsibility. He would have been the one to carry on the family name. He would have been now the head of the household, the representative in the community for his family clan, and that would have come with a certain level of. It would have come with perks, right. It would have come with a level of authority, right, it would have come with a level of respect within the community. And so if you're looking at this situation where you have these two sons and the father, so the younger son has just completely disrespected and dishonored his father by asking for his inheritance, which tells you something about that relationship. There's something broken there. And then when you look at the older son, so the older son, we don't know if he was there when this happened. He probably was, because it does say that he divides it between the two sons, but if he wasn't, he would have absolutely heard about it, because everything, you knew everything in a small community. There the servants would have heard. It would have gotten back to the son if he wasn't there. And in this case the older son should have stepped in and said hey, wait a minute now, don't do this Like. This is not right. You should not do this to your father. You're going to bring dishonor on our family. We cannot have that. You're going to hurt your mom Like let's. You know, we need to just talk about this. That did not happen. So that tells us something about the relationship between the two brothers. And it could be that the younger brother couldn't deal with the fact that the older brother was going to have authority over him. And, you know, it just seems like there's a rocky relationship all the way around, both between the sons and their father and between each other. And now let's take a look at what it, let's take a look at the older brother and let's go into detail, just kind of zoom in on his part in all of this. So, like I mentioned before, he could have and should have. He would have been the one that should have been the mediator and should have been the one to say hey, you know, don't do this. But he didn't. He stayed silent, didn't he? And he allowed his father to give him his share of the inheritance as well, or of the wealth too. So that tells you something. And then also, not only is he silent when his father is giving out the wealth, he's also silent when it comes time for his brother to leave. And in that case too, he should have spoken up and put a stop to this. And yet again, he didn't. Because, due to the culture of the community and what went down, if something like this were to happen, the father would not have been able to tell his son goodbye. The son, at this point, was cut off from the community. He was no longer a son, basically. And there would have been no. The father would not have been allowed to bid his son goodbye. And so at this point, it would have been the older son's responsibility to go and bid his younger brother goodbye, say a blessing over him for safe travels. But again, he has stayed silent and he has had nothing to do with this. So let's continue on in the parable and see what happens next. Now we've come to verse 13. It says 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. Okay, the very first sentence says not many days later. So here we are, a few days after the younger brother has done the unthinkable in first century Jewish culture, and he has asked his father who is very much alive and well, nowhere near his deathbed to give him the wealth that is supposed to come to him at his father's death. So this is what this tells us. The fact that it's only been a few days means that the younger brother has liquefied his assets in a very short amount of time. What does that tell us? That tells us that he sold it for cheap. It was kind of like it was a sell at any price. He would just take whatever he could get so he could quickly liquefy and get the heck out of there. Because first of all, I mean obviously he wanted to go anyway, but because he did what he did, he is now going to be cut off from the community. So he needs to get out of there because he's no longer welcomed pretty much. And here's where it gets complicated In this case. If you were a Jewish boy and you squandered all of your wealth in the land of the Gentiles, there was a ceremony that would have to be enacted upon you and it was called the kazaza, which literally means the cutting off. And what the community would do is, if you even dared to come back home, they would meet you on the outskirts of town and they would take a large piece of pottery and they would break it in front of you and then they would yell so-and-so is cut off from his community or his family, and then that was it. They would have nothing to do with you at that point. And so, with that in mind, let's continue on in our story. In verse 14, it says and when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country and he began to be in want. Okay, so it doesn't tell us what he squandered his money on. There have been I'm sure you've heard your share of different ideas of what it could have been, but in the book the Cross and the Prodigal by Kenneth Bailey, he talks about the idea of it possibly being something like him, just living high, like high on the hog, like he would have maybe thrown banquets and just made himself out to be a wealthy young gentleman, probably like lavishing gifts upon people, because in that culture being generous was. It was honorable, and so he probably. It's possibly what he could have. We really don't know, but it's just an idea. But in any case we do know that he did lose all of his money among the Gentiles. So let's read verse 15. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that. So here we are. He is in the land of the Gentiles, he's far away from home, he has squandered all of his money and now there is a famine. So at this point he is still prideful. He is not ready to come back home. He's gonna try to exhaust all possibilities until he like going back home is the absolute last resort. So what does he do? He finds somebody in this land and he kind of clings to them. He tries to make himself a hired hand right, and so this person, the citizen of this Gentile community, allows him to work for him. But what he does is kind of interesting, because it would have been really obvious that this boy was Jewish, and all of the Gentiles know that Jewish people do not. They don't have anything to do with swine. That is detestable to them. So they wouldn't touch swine, they wouldn't have anything to do with them. So it's pretty interesting that the guy you know has him go feed his pigs and it may be that this Gentile was kind of trying to get rid of this Jewish boy, because it says that there was a severe famine. So there was probably a lot of begging going on, and not just from this Jewish boy but probably from a lot of other people too, because since there was such a severe famine, there likely would have been many people coming around trying to get anything they could from the members of the community that had a little bit more and that did have food and things like that. So that's just a speculation, we don't really know, obviously. But moving on to verse 16, it says he longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. So at this point our boy has exhausted all possibilities. He has tried to hire himself out, he has probably begged around town and at this point he's getting really hungry and even though he is not eating the pig's pods, he is desperate to eat from them. And being that it's swine and that he's Jewish, that's really bad and he's getting pretty desperate here. So let's read on and see what he's going to do In verse 17,. It says when he came to his senses, he said. It says when he came to his senses, he said how many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men. So he got up and went to his father. Okay, there's a lot going on in this little couple of verses. He thinks to himself what am I doing here? I'm sitting here starving to death and my father's servants have plenty to eat. Now a lot of teachings that we've all typically heard. At this point is the point that the son is changing his mind and he's getting ready to go back. This is the point of repentance. Right Wrong. This is not where this kid's mind is at right now. In this culture, in this community, when something like this were to happen, if you wanted to come back to your family which would have been hard enough anyway, because you've got the whole kazaza ceremony but if your family even dared to consider taking you back, they were not allowed to take you back as a son. They would have to take you back as a servant or, and not even a servant. What they could do is let you work as a craftsman and to learn a trade or something like that, and then you would have to pay your way back into the family. You would have to return the inheritance that you squandered and you would have to work that off. But here's the thing In a village like this, you couldn't just go get a job somewhere and earn the money and to pay back your father. You had to have the backing of your father to even get a job, to even be able to learn the trade. And so what is on the younger son's mind right now is that I've got to go back and I've got to get my. I have to have my dad's backing so I can get a job and be able to pay him back. But in the meantime at least I'll be able to eat and I still won't have to be back in my father's house. I can still stay away from my family but still be able to eat. So at this point he's not even really thinking about reconciliation. It's not like he misses his family and he and he feels remorse for what he did. He's just hungry and he wants to eat. So he's like I'm just gonna do what I need to do to get back into the community so I can try to earn my way back into not even the family but the community, so I can eat right. So this is where his mind's at when he is thinking about going home. I wanna read a section out of the book the Cross and the Prodigal by Kenneth Bailey to illustrate where the prodigal's mind is when he's getting ready to prepare this speech to his father. It says the planned opening remark in his speech was carefully selected. He prepared to say Father, I have sinned before heaven and your sight. Jesus was addressing a scholarly audience. Remember he was talking to the Pharisees here. This sentence is a paraphrase from the mouth of Pharaoh when he addressed Moses. After the first nine plagues, as pressure mounted on Pharaoh to deal with Moses, he finally relented and summoned the prophet and confessed I have sinned against Yahweh, your God, and against you. This is in Exodus 10, 16. The language of the Aramaic version of this text is even closer to Luke 15, 18 than the Hebrew. Everyone knows that Pharaoh was not sincerely repenting. Rather, he was trying to manipulate Moses into serving Pharaoh's interests. The appearance of a new version of this well-known statement from the mouth of Pharaoh makes clear that the prodigal had a similar intent. He wanted to manipulate his father into trusting him just once more and endorsing him for a job training with a reputable craftsman, so that he could earn his way. He wanted no grace, he can manage on his own. He did not offer to become a slave Slaves are not paid. He needed money and asked to be trained as a skilled craftsman. So you see that he really wasn't preparing the speech to show his father how remorseful he was. He didn't feel bad. He was looking to serve himself, to get back in, to be able to have money so he could eat. Now what he doesn't understand yet is that it isn't so much that he has broken the law I mean, he has broken all cultural norms and he has done the absolutely abhorrent, the unthinkable to his family, the unthinkable to his family but he doesn't understand that in his father's mind, what the real issue is is that he has completely broken his father's heart. His father was gutted when his son asked for what he asked for and then when he left, you see, because the father, if something like this happened, likely was thinking that he would never see his son again. So, with this in mind, knowing that the father is broken hearted, he's thinking that he's never going to see his son again, let's continue reading the parable. 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. Wow, that is absolutely stunning when you look at what is really going on here. We're going to dig into this and see just how amazing what the father has just done there. Okay, in that culture, in that time, an elder, especially a patriarch of a family, would never be caught running. That was a shameful thing to do. It would be embarrassing for him to be seen running and he's not just running, he is racing for him to be seen running and he's not just running, he is racing. So he's running with everything he has, which means that he would have had to pick up his robes in the front to be able to run the way that he wanted to, and that would have exposed his legs, which was even more humiliating. But he knows that his son is as he's approaching the village that these villagers are getting ready to enact this kazaza ceremony onto him, and they're about to taunt him. He knows what his son is about to come into, and so he's racing, not only because he is so overjoyed at just the sight of his son, but he wants to protect his son from the consequences of what he's done. So let's read further. It says now the son is getting ready to say his speech, that he's rehearsed. Okay, but when the son is coming back, he was never anticipating seeing his father show the amount of compassion on him as he has. You can't even imagine what it must have felt like for the son to see his father running after him, completely, shaming himself in front of the whole community, just to get to him. Can you imagine how that must have felt? I don't even. I can't even imagine what was going through his mind and how his heart must have felt, given that reconciliation wasn't even something that was on his mind. Let's continue to read. It says in verse 21, bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. Okay. So the father has humiliated himself. He is raced in, completely, just saved his son from having this shameful ceremony enacted upon him and being cut off from the community. And not only is the father saying you are not going to cut him off, he is my son, he is highly regarded. I'm going to put my best robe on him a ring sandals. So there's no way that the community can do what they're wanting to do now that the father has accepted him in this way. Now let's bring this whole picture, let's bring this story back into full picture. The whole point of these series is that we are going through the scene and the setting and the reason behind Jesus teaching these three parables. Remember that we have the Pharisees there. They're listening in. We've got the sinners and his disciples. So Jesus has a full audience and he is going through these three parables so that he can explain to them what repentance is like. And he's also explaining to the Pharisees. Well, he's answering to the Pharisees because, remember, the whole point of this is that the Pharisees were grumbling because he was accepting sinners and he was eating with them and fellowshipping with them. And Jesus is explaining to them. Look, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing, and not only should you be happy about the fact that I'm doing this, this is what you have been supposed to be doing in the first place, but now I have to do this because you're not doing your job. And so this is what he's doing. He's explaining, he's run through these three parables and now we've come to this final parable that is the climax to the three. This shameless, extravagant compassion and forgiveness and love to this son who has committed the ultimate sin against his father and his family. And the father's love is just this stunning picture of the father's forgiveness and his love and the humiliation that Jesus suffered to reconcile us back to himself. And so now we are going to turn our attention back to the brother, okay, which, as you know, is the Pharisees. The Pharisees are the ones who are kind of depicted as this older brother here, and let's see how the father reacts to the older brother, aka the Pharisees, in regards to him completely welcoming back his younger son. That has dishonored the family. He's committed the ultimate sin, but the father has had extravagant compassion on him and brought him back into the family as an honored son. Now let's take a look at how this plays out with the brother. Verse 25 says Meanwhile the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. Okay, let me stop there and explain. We can gather from the fact that the father had a banquet robe, he had sandals, a signet ring, he has a fattened calf, he has servants. They are probably very wealthy. And so the older son, when it says coming out from the field, you would imagine that he had been out there all day working. That likely was not the case. He was probably overseeing. He was probably sitting all day just watching the work take place. So when he comes in, he's walking up and I'm sure that he could hear the music from far off. He's walking up and I'm sure that he could hear the music from far off. So when he comes up, he finds these young boys standing outside of the house watching what's going on, and he asks them hey, what's going on? And then we come to verse 27. And he said to him your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him with peace. Okay, this has come full circle now. So we've got the older son is coming up on the scene and he is seeing that not only did the father allow the son back into the home, the kazaza ceremony has not taken place, the son has not been cut off and, in fact, he is now seated in the place of honor at a banquet in his father's house. This is exactly what is happening in the scene with Jesus and the sinners. Jesus is having a meal, he's fellowshipping with sinners, and the Pharisees are livid. They are expecting Jesus to be getting onto them and telling them everything that's wrong with what they've been doing and that they need to change, they need to be reprimanded. But that's not what's happening. That's not what's happening with Jesus and that's not what's happening with the father and the prodigal. And so let's move on to verse 28. But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him. Okay, this is saying so much in this tiny little sentence. The older son would have absolutely been expected to go inside and shake hands with the guests and make merry with the father, the prodigal son and the rest of the family, but that's not what he's doing. He is extremely upset and because he is refusing to go in, that is also a very shameful and dishonoring way to treat your father because you are dishonoring him in front of the entire community. That was another huge slap in the face to his father. So now we've got this father's two sons in the same day, have disrespected him, dishonored him, and what is he doing? He showed extravagant compassion to the prodigal son and now he's doing the same thing to his older son, because it says that the father goes out and entreated him. That word insinuates that he is pleading with him. He's not going out there angry because the son has dishonored him in front of the whole community. He's actually humiliating himself again in front of everybody and begging his son to come in and enjoy the party with everybody. But let's continue reading and see what the older son chooses to do instead. 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. But when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him. Okay, a lot of things going on in here. Let's look at the sentence where he says you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends Right there it tells you that his way of thinking is very self-centered and selfish, because he says you never gave me a calf so I could celebrate with my friends. Not, you never allowed me to have a party or you never threw a banquet for me. He's kind of alienating his family and just making it about him. And then it also says when this son of yours comes back, he's calling his brother his father's son. So again, he's alienating himself and separating himself from his family. And then he also throws out accusations about what his brother spent the money on. He has no idea what his brother spent the money on. He just got here, so he doesn't even know anything about what happened. All he knows is that, instead of his brother getting punished, he's being honored at this banquet. And so it just shows you the mindset that this older brother is selfish. All he cares about is himself. He does not care that his brother is home safe and sound. He's completely ignoring this extravagant compassion that his father has chosen to treat his brother with and now is choosing to treat him with because he's not punishing him for the way that he's acting out on his father, which to us it kind of seems normal that you know the older brother would be aggravated because the younger brother is getting treated seemingly better than him. And you know he stayed and he was an obedient son. But really the older son this whole entire time has had very cold and selfish tendencies. He never cared about his brother, he never tried to reconcile his brother and his father. It was always about him and he could kind of just care less with what was going on, which is a lot like what the Pharisees were doing. They are very much about themselves, about how pious and how good and how righteous they are. And look at me, look at how I've obeyed the law to a T and I don't act like these sinners. I, you know I can't be compared to these sinners, but in this culture, what the older son and the younger son did, they were so extremely abhorrently disrespectful and dishonoring and it was very much grounds for complete and utter separation from the father and the family, which, by example, is what the penalty for sin is. It's separation from our loving father and what this, what Jesus is trying to say in this parable, is look, both of these sons are extremely disobedient and they deserved, they deserve separation from me. But the father has extreme compassion, just like I have extreme compassion on every one of my children, on every one of my children. And a lot like the end of this parable because it kind of leaves everything hanging. You don't get to see what the older son does Because let's go down to the very last couple of verses of the parable. It says at verse 31, my son, the father, said you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and now he's found. Look at that beautiful compassion, look at that sweetness and tenderness towards this selfish, nasty attitude older brother. He's still pleading with him and still wants to reconcile him to himself and to his brother. He wants the whole family to be glad and to be rejoicing at this beautiful reunion and this reconciliation that's taken place and he just wants no part of it. But it's on purpose that Jesus has left the parable kind of hanging in the air like this, because he's basically saying to the Pharisees look, I'm giving you an opportunity to be reconciled to me, to celebrate with me that these sinners are now going to be coming home. They're not going to be punished like they were on the road to receiving. They have now been brought into the rest of the fold, just like you, and I want you to be rejoicing with me. I want all of us to be a big, happy family and to rejoice, and that's what he's leaving the Pharisees the opportunity to do by ending the parable the way that he does here, and that's going to wrap up our episode for today. I know it was a very long one, I know that it was full of a lot of history, a lot of information, but I pray more than anything that the gravity of God's forgiveness and his mercy, and then the way that Jesus describes what repentance is like, I hope that it's changed the way that you see him in such a beautiful and loving way. I just pray that it would drive you to want to be so much more intimate with him, because ultimately, that is what he is after. That is what the Father has given his Son to give us is not just to be saved and not just to be found and brought back home, but to have that intimate, loving relationship that the father of the prodigal is longing to have with his son. He falls on him, kisses him, falls on his neck, and that is what I want for each and every one of you is to be in such an intimate, loving relationship with the Father and with Jesus, and I hope that you have seen that Jesus is even better than you ever knew. I mean, we all knew that he's amazing and he's so many things, but there's so much more to him than what just meets the eye and that we just read in the Bible. And when you go into that culture and you learn some of these things, it just man, it just he is so much better than we could even fathom, and that's not a surprise when it comes to Jesus. But I pray that you can maybe research this more on your own and find out a little bit more about what's going on. There's a lot more that I didn't share with you. That's there, and I hope that this inspires you to take a deeper look into all of Scripture, not just these parables, but everywhere. Things like this are happening all over the Bible that if we just understood the culture, if we just dug a little bit deeper, we could see that the Lord is so much more beautiful than we ever knew. And with that, that is going to do it. I thank you so much for joining me. I pray that he keeps you in perfect peace and we'll see you next time on the Wide Path. Dropout Mama podcast.