Jan. 19, 2024

Deep-Dive: New Testament Missionary Methods - Luke 15:1-32

Introduction

Do you like a good story?

I LOVE a good story!

There’s something about growing up, I suppose, in the culture I grew up in, that makes us love a good story.

When I was small I’d be carted around visiting the relatives … usually elderly … and they’d be from a different era, a different world, so different (looking back own it) that our horizons barely touched.

But, that having been said, their very difference captivated me.

And I suspect now with hindsight that they also felt that difference and they looked for ways to cross our time-induced, wildly experience-divergent cultural GAP.

The best one, the greatest one, seemed to be their ability to tell stories.

Now we DO tell stories to bridge our gaps between people, to share our different horizons on the world.

If you want to start to understand a person you’ve just met, you might ask directly (Though it’s usually INDIRECTLY) ‘what is your story?’

And as we share our stories we come to understand one another better and get to know one another - to get closer.

Similarly, if you want to understand a people or a culture, you REALLY need to get acquainted with their stories, which encapsulate and embody their cultural outlook and identity.

So my elderly relatives, looking to bridge the gap, would often resort to ‘telling the boy a story’.

I used to love it.

It was MARVELLOUS and I’d sit wrapped in wonder at their tales of a world and of a people I didn’t know.

But little did I realise; they had an agenda.

Every story seemed to have a point, a moral.

Of course, I was being entertained!

But all the while they were identifying with me and winning me over with their tremendous, riveting stories.

They were trying to change my view of the world, to bring me closer to THEIR view, they were trying to get me to see things THEIR way as if through THEIR eyes … and it was a painless way to shape my worldview, my outlook.

There was a painless blend of entertainment and serious worldview building, and attitudes and values and ideas I picked up then still shape me now.

And when the Son of Man came amongst the sons of men, this is how He shaped their worldview in order to enable the sons of men to live as the Sons of God … by grace through faith alone.

In his book ‘The Amazing Genius of Jesus’, Dr. Peter J. Williams seeks to demonstrate the Lord’s absolute genius in storytelling.

He doesn’t say this, but this is what I learned again from it … that identification which leads to the ability to create difference in human beings is the product of the story-telling ministry of Jesus.

Here’s how people’s outlook gets challenged and re-crafted to bring them to a place where they can grasp the Gospel’s concepts (sin, human accountability to God, substitution and atonement … and here, supremely GRACE, which makes no sense in the legalistically moral universe we were born into).

And all that is necessary so that we can begin to see that the Gospel makes sense and that it’s call is not just justified but glorious.

First Jesus radically identifies with His hearers, but there is ALWAYS what you might call a moral (but that I’d prefer to call a message) that doesn’t inform so much as MOVE you along the road to salvation … if not towards Him then in the opposite direction.

Now, the LONGEST story we have recorded from Jesus is usually called the parable of the Prodigal Son and most people seem to think of it as Luke 15:11-32, but there’s a problem with that because Luke 15:3 seems to refer to all three stories in Luke 15 as a single parable … the lost coin, sheep and son (ONE lost son there, because the one who went away at first was subsequently found).

So:

Luke 15:1-3 “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 Then Jesus told them this parable …”

Take that with the continuation clues at the beginning of v. 8 and v. 11 … and you’re dealing with ONE parable, delivered to the same diverse audience, throughout chapter 15.

But look, the sort of entertaining but pointed stories told to me as I sat on the mat by the fire before the elderly relative’s armchair in the corner were very differently crafted from those related in the public bars of the valleys town.

You will not grasp the work the story’s doing simply by examining the story.

You need to understand the audience it’s addressed to, to get the point of it.

Every good story is crafted to engage its audience, and to deliver a cargo that is meant to reach right to them.

1. Every story has an audience

Luke 15 is crafted to meet the challenge of its audience in conveying the really revolutionary message that it carries.

So the crucial question at the outset if we’re going to understand what’s going on here is: who were that audience?

Luke 15:1-2a “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered …”

Two sets of people but with four names were present.

One group were ‘tax collectors and sinners’.
And there were also Pharisees and scribes.

Wonderfully, and this is characteristic of the Bible’s depiction of the ministry of Jesus, a group of religious outcasts was drawing near to Jesus.

More than that, we’re told they were ‘drawing near’ (not standing aloof) to ‘hear Him’ (not to find ways to avoid the implications of what He was saying by CRITICISING Him).

But in this audience, there is also that second group of people that were readily recognised in that time and place as the religious insiders and yet … their behaviour is characterised not so much as drawing near to hear Jesus but as GRUMBLING.

The non-devout are drawing near to Jesus to listen.

The allegedly devout were there to grumble - and THAT is the issue.

That is a bit of a theme … not a ‘one-off’ in Jesus’s ministry, so Matthew 21 expands on this theme right across the chapter and Matthew 21:32 says: “Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.

For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Now, back in Luke 15 here we need to note that ‘hearing’ and ‘grumbling’ are opposite responses, showing us the actual piety of the supposedly impious and the actual impiety of the people who were deemed to be pious.

The actual situation is the reverse of what was generally assumed.

The crucial thing to notice in Luke 15 is that it is in response to the allegation made by the supposedly but not actually pious people that Jesus tells the three stories (but one parable) in Luke 15, with the numbers of lost decreasing with each instance of ‘lostness’ being cited there, but the percentage loss increasing which has the effect of increasing the focus … down from

1% of the flock being lost, to
10% of the wealth (the coins) being lost but
100% of the sons being lost … though crucially with 50% of those lost ones being found as the result of the immensely gracious action of the Father towards his son that returned to him..

Let’s take a closer look at the two groups of two contingents in the crew that rocked up there that day.

a) Tax collectors and ‘sinners’

The reason the scribes and Pharisees were grumbling (v. 2) is the company Jesus keeps.

They object that Jesus WELCOMES tax collectors and sinners (who the religious in the land regarded as lost and disreputable souls) and worse still Jesus ATE with them … which was a string statement of acceptance in their culture.

b) Pharisees and scribes

That ‘grumbling’ they are doing is particularly revealing … it’s a word strongly associated with the rebellions of the Israelites during their wandering in the Wilderness.

2. Radically identifying with the scribes and the Pharisees

There’s something we need to understand about these guys.

They were REALLY motivated by attention to the very fine detail of the book of the Law … and Peter J. Williams demonstrates how you really won’t get to grips with Luke 15, which is all about and directed to the particular group of grumblers identified here, unless you realise this.

He’s done an absolute work of art on unpacking this in his ‘The Surprising Genius of Jesus’ … but the best we can do is to touch on a couple of examples of how Jesus identifies with these scribes and Pharisees and then afterwards we’ll go on to see how Jesus points up the differences He needs to get from them by using the very things they’ve identified with Him over.

Basically … it is GENIUS!

a) Example of identification: Story – a mashal

The ‘mashal’ in Hebrew literature started out as basically a maxim about the practical, intelligent way to conduct one’s life and in speculations about the very worth and meaning of human life.

The most common form of these wise sayings, was typically a pithy, easily memorized aphoristic saying based on experience and universal in application.

So the mashal in its simplest and oldest form was a couplet in which a definition was given in two parallel lines related to each other either antithetically or synthetically.

Proverbs 15:5 is an example of a simple antithetic saying:

“A fool spurns a parent’s discipline,
but whoever heeds correction shows prudence.”

Other forms of the mashal, such as parables, riddles, allegories, and ultimately full-scale compositions developed later.

It’s worth knowing that the word mashal was derived from a root that meant “to rule,” and thus a proverb was conceived as an authoritative word.

But the point of them was to counter folly with wisdom.

They were anti-folly.

They were part of the Bible’s wisdom tradition and taught the rules that ‘fools’ needed to hear and accept to become wise.

And because this group of people in the crowd addressed by the Lord in Luke 15 very much saw themselves as the wise who were very much concerned with teaching rules for life to rescue fools from their ignorance

… Jesus was operating very much in their world and no doubt they were waiting for Him to say something to address the folly of the masses that were there in the same crowd.

But not themselves.

They think Jesus is going to affirm them and teach these assembled peasants a thing or two … these ordinary outsiders who don’t know the Law the way they do.

It’s a bit like when hardened old religious sinners sitting towards the front in the main body of the chapel LOVE it for the visiting preacher to cast his eyes upward to the young people sitting on the balcony to berate the errors of the young.

(If you know, you know.)

But the point is, given the people in the audience and what made them tick, the Lord is addressing what makes them tick and drawing them in.

b) Example of identification: A man had two sons

And then there’s the whole ‘a man had two sons’ thing.

The scribes and pharisees in the audience function on a reward- retribution theology where the Lord’s blessing is deemed to follow righteousness and reward it directly, where the opposite is also true.

They are being drawn to associate themselves in their thinking with this man whom the Lord had rewarded with two sons … they are being drawn in to the story and approve for this man is being aroused in them automatically on the basis of the way they think.

Sons were in their minds a blessing from the Lord, so here’s this man with two sons.

It makes them feel all warm inside.

Now … there are LOTS of other points in this story where the Lord radically identifies with these scribes and pharisees that v. 2 tells us about

“the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

So, in the story Jesus tells perhaps, those scribes and Pharisees thought, some rules for wisdom would be applied through this father God was (they thought) obviously blessing with sons on account of the wise way he led his life.

But little did they realise where this was going …

Radial association set up the lesson in the radical difference the Lord was calling for from them.

This switch happens at multiple points in this 3-element parable of the lost sheep, coins and son … but we’re just picking up two of them today, so let’s stick with them as we look at the radical difference Jesus is calling for from these scribes and Pharisees in these two elements that build bridges into their world …

3. Radically differing from the scribes and the Pharisees

To do that, there’s something we need to understand about these guys.

They were REALLY motivated by attention to the very fine detail of the book of the Law … and Peter J. Williams demonstrates how you really won’t get to grips with Luke 15, which is all about and directed to the particular group of grumblers identified here, unless you realise this.

He’s done an absolute work of art on unpacking this in his ‘The Surprising Genius of Jesus’ … but the best we can do is to touch on a few examples of how Jesus identifies with these scribes and Pharisees and then afterwards we’ll go on to see how Jesus points up the differences He needs to get from them by using the very things they’ve identified with Him over.

Basically … it is GENIUS!

a) Example of difference: A story - mashal

Now, of course, everyone like a story but there’s a long Biblical tradition of this mashalim which make a point with a good story:

The Tanakh contains many parables (and also a few symbolic stories, such as Ezekiel 3:24-26, 4:1-4, and 14:3-5).

Some of these parables are:

Of the trees who wished to crown themselves a king, the fruitful trees not wishing to abandon their functions except for the bramble (Judges 9:7-20); intended to illustrate the futility of crowning kings.
Of the poor man who had raised a single lamb which a wealthy neighbor took to set before a guest (2 Samuel 12:1-4); intended to illustrate the sin which David had committed with Bathsheba, Uriah's wife.
Of the wise woman of Tekoah, who induced David to make peace with his son Absalom (2 Samuel 14:6-8).
Of the prophet's disciple, showing Ahab the wrong course which he had adopted toward Ben-hadad (1 Kings 20:39-40).
Of the vineyard which does not thrive despite the care bestowed upon it (Isaiah 5:1-6), illustrating Israel's degeneracy.
Of the farmer who does not plough continually, but prepares the field and sows his seed, arranging all his work in due order (Isaiah 28:24-28); intended to show the methodical activity of God.

You get it in the Jewish writings … Talmud and Mishrah … which follow on after these religious teacher guys in the crowd that day with Jesus.

But in the case of the writings that come out of their tradition, the stories are never against themselves.

And that’s the difference with this Luke 15 parable of Jesus … they’ve been lining up with certain elements of the story … but Jesus’s parable has got a bite and the difference is that whilst they thought a mashal was something to bite the irreligious with, this one is biting them in ways they have not yet anticipated … radical identification is about to lead to radical difference, in a very memorable way.

b) Example of difference: Which man had which two sons?

Now you’ve got to remember that these scribes were fanatical copiers of the Hebrew Scriptures to the extent that they counted letters to ensure they’d copied accurately, kept track of how many times this or that or the other cropped up in the Old Testament texts, and so on.

They were counters (as Jesus said) of jots and tittles.

And to those who were such counters of jots and tittles the Lord says:

Luke 15:11 ““There was a man who had two sons …”

And then to the expert teachers of the Law He says:

Luke 15:12 “The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.”

Now, you might not think that a man having two sons is of any great significance at all, but the scribes in that crowd would be thinking like this:

‘Who is described for us in Scripture as having just two sons?’

You see, they were great counters and numberers of incidents and events, of words and of letters in Scripture in their professional lives … and it permeated their thinking.

So, again, who had JUST two sons in Scripture?

Peter J Williams highlights just how many resonances there are in Luke 15 with the book of Genesis, but strangely enough when you ask the question about who in the Bible had two sons most people will say Abraham … who had Ishmael and Isaac, the son of the slave woman and the son of the free … and some will say Isaac … who had Esau and Jacob with his wife Rebekah.

But after his wife Sarah dies Abraham takes another wife and has six more sons.

So Isaac is a far better fit in the scribal mind because he is by far the most famous man in the Old Testament to have two and TWO ONLY sons: Esau and Jacob … famously rival sons … by the same mother, Rebekah.

And equally famously Esau sold Jacob his birthright.

(Who are standing in the crowd in front of Jesus as he tells the three-part parable in Luke 15? Scribes and Pharisees who have a massive birthright in the Old Testament but who Luke 15:1-2 tell us were grumbling like the Hebrews in the Wilderness not listening attentively as Jesus taught them God’s Word.)

Notice, Luke tells us this:

“Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

It is if course the issue of inheriting their promises that underlies Luke 15 … and Jacob loved but Esau despised his birthright.

I’ve just tried to stick with two example of Jesus identifying radically and differing radically with the couture and worldview of the people He’s trying get through to in Luke 15, but there are many links between these Old Testament brothers and Luke 15:

Esau the older brother is connected with the field and comes in from the field when the food has already been prepared - just like the older son in Luke 15
Esau says he is dying of starvation (Genesis 25:32) just like the younger son in Luke 15:17
More strikingly Jacob takes advantage of the older brother, the main heir’s desperation and gets him to forgo his right to inherit.

Interestingly in Genesis, Jacob is said six times in seven verses to ‘draw near’ (remember these guys are scribes and would notice that sort of thing) as Jacob draws near to the father figure to bring him food.

Esau’s was the blessing … but he loses it (gives it up!) and becomes murderously angry with his brother Jacob who is forced to flee to a far country where he does herding work and comes back to live as a wealthy man.

In fact, Peter Williams identifies at least ten things in common between Luke 15 and the story of Esau and Jacob that the sort of minds these scribe and pharisees would by nature be running on:

i) There’s a man with only two sons
ii) a younger brother going to a far country

iii) the younger brother herding animals in the far country

iv) someone saying he’s dying of hunger
v) a younger brother wearing the best robes, given by a parent
vi) an older brother coming in from a field

vii) the significant use of the expression ‘draw near’ (Luke 15:25 also applies)

viii) an older brother made angry by the younger being benefitted contrary to retribution-reward theology

ix) concern about a younger brother losing inheritance to a younger one, and (funnily enough … and this only happens in the Old Testament on that one occasion in the Esau and Jacob story too) young goats being served as a meal.

There’s more similarity, of course, between this account of the two sons in Luke 15 and the two sons Esau and Jacob in Genesis.

In Luke 15:20 we read that when the Father saw the younger son returning home he felt compassion and “he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”

This is in fact the same expression as in Genesis 33:4 … the same reactions as when Esau welcomes home his cheating brother Jacob, returning from the far country … and the very opposite of the scribes and pharisees’ response to the ordinary people coming back to the Father from their spiritual wilderness in Luke 15:1-2 which sees the scribes and Pharisees (far from rejoicing, running to welcome them falling their necks and kissing them) GRUMBLING: ““This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Even Esau, who is cheated out of all his inheritance, does not think in as mean a manner as the older son does in Luke 15 … and the scribes and Pharisees are beginning to look very like a much meaner version of Esau, of whom the scriptures say Malachi 1:2-3 ““I have loved you,” says the Lord.

“But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’

“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob,³but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”

And it’s all to cast THEM as the ones the mashal is against, THEM as the ones showing up as needing to turn from folly to wisdom.

Given their background as scribes and Pharisees … how can they MISS this lesson that they should not resent Jesus and therefore God welcoming the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ in v. 1?!

They are being taught contrary to their theology and practice that they should not resent God’s unmerited favour, in fact favour CONTRARY to what appears to be deserved, being shown to the undeserving.

Neither should they react as if they stand to lose through God’s generosity.

Of course, these scribes and Pharisees HATED the Roman tax collectors, but Jesus is showing that even Esau could teach them a thing or two about forgiving someone who actually HAD ripped him off.

c) From ‘bridge’ to ‘bite’

So, here’s the thing.

We’ve seen previously how the Apostle Paul in his two longest recorded sermons in Acts demonstrates his missionary approach which was to set deliberately about opening the ears of his hearers … radically identifying with the worldview and the culture that they came from.

But we also saw that having opened their ears by deliberately identifying with them in order to open their ears, Paul showed his radical difference from them as he explained the Gospel to them.

And here we’ve just scratched the very surface of how the Lord Himself radically identifies with and then radically differs from the worldview of the scribes and Pharisees in the crowd hearing him as he teaches the three-part parable about actual lostness in Luke 15.

You have to build a bridge in order to open ears, but the purpose of that bridge is to get the goods across.

Paul and the Lord Himself therefore radically identify, but with the sole and certain purpose of moving forward from ‘bridge’ to ‘bite’.

And as he does so here in Luke 15 the Lord exquisitely applies the gospel in a range of crucial areas that apply particularly to their case …

i) Free grace for the repentant son

Contrary to everything that these scribes and Pharisees with their retribution-reward theology stood for, Jesus emphasises God’s are grace for His outrageous but repent children.

ii) The ingratitude of the eldest son

Furthermore, Jesus in this parable warns powerfully against the air of superiority, self-entitlement and ingratitude of the eldest son who has been sticking around for ages … who ends up falling out both with his redeemed brothers AND actually, his father.

Blames the younger

The Greek word for to waste or to squander (Williams p.22) is διασκορπίζω - diaskorpizō

It’s not a very common word but Jesus uses it again the sort of the next chapter (Luke 16:1) “Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’”

Wastage was not something the Pharisees liked at all … and after Jesus commends the dishonest steward for something he does to redeem the situation Luke 16:14 fills in the background on the Pharisees and their attitude to what they saw as waste:

“The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.

He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts.

What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”

So when the younger son is characterised in this way the Pharisees are GOING to side with the elder against the younger

… whereas it is actually the one who DEPARTS from the Father because he objects to association with sinners who they are identifying themselves as.

Now, actually, blaming the younger man entirely for his bad fortune is misplaced because, the way the BIBLE tells it, it is a combination of a bad choice and a series of adverse circumstances that lead to the younger son being in the situation he found himself in.

Yes, v. 13 tells us that he squandered his WEALTH in wild living …

13-14 ““Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.”

But even then he wouldn’t have been in such dire straights if his employer hadn’t stopped paying him:

Vv. 15-16 “So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.

He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.”

So his circumstances … for which he is being entirely blamed … are the consequence of:

An unwise initial choice to take his inheritance … unwise but not unknown and provided for in Deuteronomy
A bad stewardship of his funds: wasting them

But then also

Not an unwillingness to work but exploitation in the labour force, coupled with
A famine breaking out in the land!

The younger man has made some bad young man choices … but these Pharisees were set up mentally to loathe him for it and in doing that they identify with the older son in the parable who was LOST to the Father in the end and not redeemed by Him … as Jesus tells things.

2) Blames the Father

The older son and the younger son BOTH (not just the younger in the actual story) have the inheritance shared between them.

The apocrypha warns against doing this but Deuteronomy 21:17 regulates the division of an inheritance like this so that the firstborn son received DOUBLE what the brothers did in such situations. The eldest son was already more than quids in!

And Jewish hearers of this story would have imagined the older son received very much the larger part of the father’s wealth.

iii) The godless rebellion of the eldest son against the father

1) Legalism

A hard-working person very easily concludes that they are reaping the rewards of their own virtue … and consequently conclude that those who do not work as much are reaping the rewards of their own wickedness.

Self-righteousness comes easily to a hard worker.

But to accuse the younger brother of wasting his inheritance on prostitutes … how would he know that?

2) Charging the father’s mercy with wrongdoing

3) Implacably rejecting the Father

In this parable the ‘lost’ son was the elder one.

The one the scribes and Pharisees would have been identifying with from start to finish.

Without a fundamental change in attitude the older son (like the scribes and Pharisees) is going to be left outside the celebration.

Conclusion

Now look, there is such a lot of immensely carefully crafted theology in Luke 15, it is a parable that richly rewards deep thought and careful contextual study.

But we have looked at it with a particular point in mind … the way the Lord radically identifies with culturally and then radically differs from spiritually, the scribes and the Pharisees in the crowd there that day, a group that seemed bent on grumbling and criticising not repenting and believing the Gospel.

We’ve seen this pattern of radical identification and radical difference characterising the way that the Gospel gets communicated in the New Testament to open the ears of the people before proceeding to address their hearts through those once closed but now opened ears.

Such is the immense condescension of our gracious God that He doesn’t come with a crowbar, but with a mission to open ears before feeding through them the words of life that none deserve but that saves their souls.

And He passes that on to His followers.

It sounds right, you see, but to say ‘we should simply preach the Gospel and it’s up to them to believe it or not’ is just not an approach supported in the Bible.

My whole point is that we are to imitate the matchless condescension of our God in opening the ears that are closed so that the mercy of our God can soften the hearts that are hard … according to His will, good pleasure and purpose.

And to see that, and to live with that as our mission and our purpose, makes us in fact faithful followers of Christ and servants in the Kingdom of God.

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