The Significance of Works

Not too long ago, I purchased some new property out in the woods. For the first 6 months after purchasing it, I covered most of the land getting ready for hunting season. But, even with all of that coverage, it wasn’t until I had the timber cut on the property that I realized that there was an old house place right up by the main road. The privet hedge and vines had grown up and through that house to the point that it was unrecognizable until the loggers cut all of the trees around it. Perhaps you’ve noticed that with buildings and equipment. It doesn’t take long for the earth to reclaim an area that we’ve disturbed. And, it’s kind of disturbing too, because so much work goes into building a new house. That old house place had roughhewn beams that someone had cut with an axe, and yet now it is being absorbed back in the ground.

            We want our works to last. We want recognition for the hard work that we’ve put into something. We want people to remember us and to somehow live on through that hard work. In Genesis 5, Lamech writes a song about his violent murder of a young boy so that everyone might remember and fear him. The people of Babel set out to build a tower into the heavens so that they might make a name for themselves. King Nebuchadnezzar build a golden statue to celebrate his greatness and to be remembered. And yet, all of those things are gone now. Lamech is a little-known name in the lineage of Cain. The tower of Babel was left in ruin. Nebuchadnezzar and the empire of Babylon have long been wiped from the face of the earth.

            Regardless of how much we try, we cannot save ourselves by our works. We cannot extend our lives by appeasing the gods with our right living. We cannot make ourselves acceptable before God by following a certain code of ethics. And yet, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day believed that they could. In part, they thought that they could be accepted before men because of their good works. Jesus warns his disciples in Matt. 6:2, “when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have their reward.” They also believed that their good works would make them acceptable before God. In Matt. 23:27-32, Jesus pronounces woes on the Pharisees, calling them whitewashed tombs because they look good on the outside, yet on the inside they are dead. In verse 32 he tells them that they are filling up the measure of their fathers. You see, they thought that by their good works they were filling up rewards, adding to some treasury of good works that they could count on to save them in the final judgment. But instead, Jesus says that they are really filling up a cup of wrath that will be poured out on all of the unrighteous.

            So, now in Luke 15, Jesus turns to the last parable in this triad of parables that drive at the problem of value. We’ve already seen how the Pharisees wrongly valued other people in the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and how they wrongly valued themselves in the Parable of the Lost Coin. Now, we come to this most famous of parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. You’ve heard this parable preached 1000 times, I bet, so there is not much else that I could say about the prodigal son and his wondering. But, most of the time, when someone preaches this passage, they focus on the prodigal son. Really, though, this parable would be better called the Parable of the Older Son, or at least the Parable of the Two Sons, because the point of the parable isn’t really focused on the prodigal son. Remember, the whole reason Jesus is telling these three parables is because of the grumblings of the Pharisees. The climax of the parable starts in verse 25, and that’s really where I want us to focus today. Having said that, there are two repeated themes that I want you to notice about the prodigal son, and then we will notice two things I want you to see about the older son.

            First, notice that, just like the lost sheep and the lost coin, the prodigal son is as far away from his father as he possibly can be. Notice the language in verse 13. First, he left immediately from his father’s presence. No goodbyes, no regret. Second, he went to a far country. The idea here is that he went into Gentile territory, which would have been outside of the reach of a good Jewish father. And lastly, he went as far as he could go away from his upbringing in the reckless living that he carried out. See here that Jesus is a masterful story teller. He uses the story of the lost sheep as an analogy to compare sinners to a helpless animal. He uses the story of the lost coin to compare sinners to a valuable heirloom. But now, he shows just how corrupt and sinful these people really are. They are helpless, not because they are innocent little lambs and not because they are made out of good stuff or have a good heart. No, they are helpless because they have willfully rebelled against God and have been entrapped by the sin and reckless living they have enjoyed.

            Second, notice that the younger son is incapable of making himself right before his father. In verse 17 it says that he came to himself and realized that even the hired servants in his father’s house have a better life than he does. He can only hope to be his father’s employee now, but all he can do is go and beg to be accepted as that. This boy has no way to make this situation right. He has wasted all of the money his father gave him, so he has no way to repay. When he left, he burned every bridge he could in his relationship to his father, so he cannot even appeal to his position as his father’s son. And, he has lived in such a way that he is now morally corrupt and ceremonially unclean, so he cannot even appeal to a common religion or common practice with his father. He has absolutely nothing that he can offer to repair this!

            And yet, you know the rest of the story. When he was still a long way off, verse 20 says, his father came running. His father gladly received him back, killed a fatted calf that they would have kept for big occasions like receiving a local official or a family reunion. He gives his son the best robe and a ring of authority and receives him back without any question of where he has been or what he has done.

            This is the picture of every sinner, but it was especially a picture of a particular group that the Pharisees despised. There were a group of Jews, known as the Hellenistic Jews, who had been scattered out into the world after the conquering of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. These Jews had adopted the practices of the countries to which they went. They ate their foods, wore their clothes, did business with outsiders, and even married people of those nations. The Pharisees hated them for it. And, they hated tax collectors in much the same way. They too had adopted the practices of Gentiles. These are the younger son of the story.

            So now, notice the older son. First, in verse 28, it says that the older son was angered by the acceptance of his brother. Now, surely, if you have siblings, even at a base level you can get this. Even though my children get along well, they still question my judgment when I seem to be favoring one child over another. As humans, we think that we are masters at judging fairness. We say we believe in paying people what they are worth, and yet women are paid, on average, around 20% less than men who do the same work. We say that we want everyone in our family to get equal share of their inheritance, but then when Mama or Daddy dies, all of the sudden items that we previously cared nothing for become more important that life itself. No, we really don’t value fairness. When we say we are for fairness, we really mean we are for what is fair to us.

            Second, this older son is upset because of all of the work and honor that he has put in. In verse 29 he complains that he has served his father and never disobeyed. Here is the interesting thing about this, and don’t miss how poetic this is. The younger son believed that he could only expect to be a slave but was received as a son, and the older son was already a son but had viewed his whole life as slavery. He assumed that he could work hard enough to gain his father’s acceptance, and the whole while he already had it. His father tells him that very thing in verse 31.

            Friend, your works before God are like filthy rags if you aren’t a part of his family. You may think that you can work your way up, from a lowly waiter to the head servant and somehow gain acceptance into God’s family. But, you will never be accepted in the Family of God unless you are adopted into it. And the only way you can be adopted is through the work that Jesus Christ did for you. Hebrews 2:17 says, “Therefore [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” Don’t look to other people and try to measure your acceptance before God based on what they do. No, look to Jesus and what he has done. Trust in his works and be saved.

            Brothers and sisters, may we learn to rejoice like the father of this parable and not scowl like the older son when a sinner enters the kingdom of God. May we seek out the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the wayward brother. And, may we give up our notions of fairness or the value of our works, and instead rest solely in the grace of God for our salvation.