Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

*READ passage w/emphasis and FEELING

Idea: I can’t love _________ because of _________________.

Pray

They found the security they needed to make sense of their world by putting—and keeping---people in their places.

This served to preserve social and ethnic distinctions and to safeguard their positions of power and privilege.

Context: The Jewish leadership downright hated Jesus and that is b/c felt that they had God all figured out.

From various passages from the OT, they assumed that God wanted clear-cut social boundaries in place between Jews and Gentiles, between “good” Jews (Pharisees and priestly elites) and “bad” Jews (tax collectors and sinners), between men and women, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, etc.

They found the security they needed to make sense of their world by putting—and keeping---people in their places.

It also served to preserve social and ethnic distinctions and to safeguard their positions of power and privilege.

As a result, these actions automatically excluded a whole lot of people from blessings—both spiritual and material—that God intended them to have with the coming of Jesus the Messiah.

What Jesus did is began to teach us what God is like by dismantling these boundaries between people.

He began to warmly receive marginalized individuals like tax collectors and prostitutes/sinners, outcasts of Jewish society, much to the disgust of the religious establishment.

And this is exactly what we find Jesus doing in where we find our passage today.

found the security they needed to make sense of their world by putting—and keeping---people in their places.

This served to preserve social and ethnic distinctions and to safeguard their positions of power and privilege.

Jesus then goes on to teach three parables.

The Parable of the Lost Coin - God’s care and concern for those lost within the house

The Parable of the Lost Sheep - God’s care and concern for those lost in the world

3.

The Lost Son

Here we find Jesus rejected by the religious leaders of Israel, Pharisees and teachers of the law, while being accepted by the outcasts of society.

Much to the disgust of the religious leaders, Jesus associated

Here we find Jesus rejected by the religious leaders of Israel, Pharisees and teachers of the law, while being accepted by the outcasts of society.

Much to the disgust of the religious leaders, Jesus associated

Lost Sheep, Lost Coin

Transition: We are going to focus our attention on the third parable, the Parable of the Lost Son/Prodigal Son.

It begins with...

I. Rejection

Step back and look at New Testament world perspective:

The group took priority over the individual (Individual vs.

Western cultures)

A person’s most important group was his family

Son requested his share of the estate—his inheritance—was a very selfish + rude request

Normally, not divided and given to heirs until the father could no longer manage it well

The Father consented without protest and gives him his share of the inheritance

Transition: Son lacked the wisdom to use his inheritance wisely.

Instead, he sadly spent all he had on...

II.

Reckless Living

Luke 15:

Squandered - Not poor business choices but poor life choices

Not always inside + out, sometimes outside “blessed” and inside broken

2. Life left him Left him feeling empty and broken

Life lived for himself left him empty and broken (both inside and outside)

Life living for ourselves (American Dream - direct contradiction to the life of the Gospel)

Items in and of themselves as empty

Not always inside + out, sometimes outside “blessed” and inside broken

Not always inside + out, sometimes outside “blessed” and inside broken

“Feed pigs” = As a Jew, he could have stooped no lower

“No one gave him anything” = Where were the people he squandered his wealth with in wild living?

“When he came to his senses”

He fully expected to be hired by his father

John A. Martin, “Luke,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed.

J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 245.He found himself

God is good and He sometimes displays His goodness by allowing us to get to the end of ourselves, so we realize that we need Him AND other (REPEAT)

:14-

He fully expected to be hired by his father

Saw himself as unworthy to be a part of his Father’s house again

III.

Restoration

Luke 15:20-

Mercy comes running

Mercy comes running

All the son could see was the sin that he was carrying

All the Father was looking at was the son He loved

This is the real turning point in the story - Father embraces the Son

The Prodigal could have devised the greatest repentance plan know to man and still been rightly shunned by the Father

The key moment is the Father’s embrace

The real change in the prodigal - both his change of status and of heart - happens in the arms of the Father.

That’s where repentance occurs.

“Imagine yourself in those arms.

You may have bene sorry before, by now you loathe yourself - yet you can’t escape his love.

You had thought you stank in the pig sty, now you feel your stench to the core - yet you are held close.

You had composed a repentance speech, now your awareness of sin overwhelms—but you’re enfolded in His grace.”

2.

Grace is love even when we don’t deserve it

Luke 15:20-

Through the Gospel, everyone is welcomed home.

God cares that his son/daughter is home!

He is going to invest in them b/c some of them are going to come back home.

You can be lost in a pew and never really be a part of what it means to be home.

Everyone is welcomed home.

God cares that our sons are home!

He is going to invest in them b/c some of them are going to come back home You can be lost in a pew and never really be a part of what it means to be home.

Jesus is saying to them, I am here for you and I am here for them.

Jesus wants everyone to come home!

Jesus is saying to them, I am here for you and I am here for them.

Jesus wants everyone to come home!

Application: If this is you!

You can be accepted by Christ.

Transition: However, let’s keep looking at the story...

IV.

The Point

The older brother was doing what he had done day after day since his brother’s departure

Millennials

Brother’s Rejection of him

Among those who belong to the same generation in Bible times, the closest family tie was not the contractual relationship between husband and wife.

In the NT world the closest family bond was the bond between siblings - blood ran deeper than romantic love (marriages)

It wasn’t just the Father that was rejected by the Prodigal son but the brother as well

Natural Response - lost Son in the house (Parable of the Lost Coin)

Life living for ourselves (American Dream)

Comparison - the thief of joy