The Pharisees and religious leaders are complaining because Jesus is hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. This is the context for the ever-famous parable of the Prodigal Son. Read it in this light or you will miss the point of the parable.

But this begs the question, why were the pharisees and religious leaders so riled up when seeing Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners? We have to answer this question, or we can’t move on to the parable.

I suppose we should also ask why Jesus WAS receiving sinners and eating with them. That’s an important question as well.

Why were the religious leaders grumbling? It’s actually pretty simple. On account of many generations of rabbinical writings called the “Talmud,” the religious Jews had been taught from childhood that to hang out with unclean people would make them unclean, that they were to stay away from sinners and hypocrites such as tax collectors, lewd women, gentiles, and others that would defile their pious living. In fact, to eat with a ‘sinner’ was the same as embracing the sinner and his sinful lifestyle.

Well, at first glance this doesn’t seem all that bad and it actually sounds like some pretty good advice. We don’t want our kids to befriend bad influencers, friends that will get them into trouble or tempt them to do stupid things. We want our kids to hang out with ‘good’ people, friends who will help them and love them and speak the truth, support them.

We ourselves don’t want bad influencers in our lives. We don’t want to be friends with addicts or grumpy, angry people, people that bring us down, people that might sell us out just to gain for themselves.

In fact, St. Paul even writes, “A little yeast leavens the whole dough,” and “Bad company produces bad character.” So maybe the pharisees and religious leaders weren’t all that wrong in their complaint.

And yet, Jesus wasn’t always happy with how those religious leaders treated ‘sinners’ and tax collectors. Why? Well, because it’s one thing to say that we shouldn’t make company with sinners and those who might lead us astray, become their best friends. That’s good advice, and we find that everywhere in Scripture. But it’s quite another thing to condemn those sinners, to outcast them, to demean them and lay an eternal judgment upon them. This is what Jesus couldn’t stand when it came to the religious Jewish leaders. They offered no opportunity for repentance; they believed what made a gentile a gentile was something irreparable, that a tax collector was a tax collector because there was something in him that meant no salvation, no forgiveness.

It would be like you going to the hospital because you’re sick and dying, and the doctor says to you, “Sorry, I refuse to help you because you aren’t a doctor; you’re a sick person.” It’s almost ridiculous, but that’s how the Pharisees and scribes treated the sinners and gentiles.

So, the first WHY question is answered, but what about the second? WHY was Jesus receiving sinners and eating with them? Well, this is a simple question to answer as well. Jesus was faithful to the Word of God and not to the Talmud. Where the Talmud went too far and was not faithfully following Scripture, Jesus rejected it, because faithfulness to His Father was more important than Jewish tradition and teaching.

And one of the things we find taught in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is that the Lord permitted non-Jews to join the Jewish community through a process of repentance and rejection of their false gods and idols, and embracing the Lord’s teaching, embracing the commandments. He did not close the door to anyone and more importantly, the Jews were to be His holy priesthood, His ambassadors to the world. They were to pray for the unbelievers, to call sinners to repentance, to teach the faith.

So, Jesus came to do just that. He came to help the unrighteous, the sinners, the tax collectors, the broken, the sick, the hungry, the helpless. He even says that He didn’t come for the healthy but for the sick; He didn’t come for the righteous, but for the unrighteous. In other words, Jesus didn’t come for people who thought their own goodness and their own deeds before God was what saved them; He came for those who had no goodness or whose works were worthless.

Jesus came for sinners and tax collectors, but we have to be careful. And the parable of the Wasteful Son shows just how careful we must be. For many false teachers and many false doctrines have flooded our religious institutions concerning Jesus and His love for sinners. They twist what Jesus said and did and turn Jesus into the justifier of sin and sinful living rather than the justifier of the sinner.

You see, the pharisees and religious leaders went too far when they condemned sinners and offered no hope or rescue, but the modern religious leaders go too far when they strip repentance from the conversation and tell the sinner it’s godly and just to continue to live in sin.

And the whole parable today, what we call the Prodigal Son, is all about how our Lord treats the sinners. Jesus came, not for the healthy but for the sick, not to justify the sickness, but to cure it, to make the sick healthy.

Now, let us set up the parable. The parable has three actors, the father, the prodigal son, and the ‘good’ son. And each of these characters plays an important part in the parable.

The word “prodigal” means “reckless” or “wasteful,” and this is a fine description of the first son. He goes to his father and demands his full inheritance. It’s clear that the father is quite wealthy. The parable reveals that the father is a land owner and has flocks and herds, and 2,000 years ago, that meant wealth.

And so, the father agrees to give his son his share of the inheritance. And this is quite reckless for the son because the father’s not even dead, and of the things the son will do, this was probably the worst. He treated his father AS dead just so he can have his spending money. And it’s amazing the father agrees to give it. I suspect that any parent in this room, if your son came to you and said, “Give me the inheritance,” you say, “Get out of here and get a job!”

So, the son goes off to a far of land, far from home, far from father, and he squanders his wealth on every depravity and wickedness known to man. And suddenly he finds himself with nothing; he wasted it all. He looks for work, but all he can find is slave labor, feeding pigs at some guy’s farm. And he is so hungry that he even eats the pods, the scraps that the pigs don’t eat, and no one helps him.

Now remember that Jesus is eating with and hanging out with tax collectors and sinners, and the pharisees are complaining about it. The Prodigal Son in the parable represents sinners and the rejected and unwanted. We don’t want to go beyond the parable and assign it wrongly. This prodigal son is a sinner, through and through. There is nothing good or worthy in him that he should receive help or that we should feel sorry for him. He is getting what he deserves for treating his father as dead and squandering his father’s wealth.

At some point the prodigal “came to himself.” What does this mean? Well, the parable tells us, right? He remembers his father! And I don’t want to get into the father too much just yet, but from the parable we know that the father was a righteous, pious, God-fearing man. He taught his sons to live godly lives. We know this because that’s what the other son says in his complaint. He is a good and righteous father.

So, the prodigal son remembers his father. He remembers the good life he had at home, he remembers his father’s godliness and generosity, he remembers his father’s teaching. This is repentance, isn’t it? The son acknowledges his pitiful condition, his wastefulness, and his need for help, and he believes that going back home, if only to enter through the gates as a hired worker, would be better than living in the pig stie of life he’s created for himself. And so, he heads home.

So that we don’t think we can will ourselves to be saved, let’s keep this in perspective. The son is living in utter and complete sin. He remembers his father’s teaching and godliness. He turns and heads home. This isn’t about the son and his, “I made a decision for Jesus” moment. This is about the Father, and the Father’s words and influence working in the son’s mind and in his heart.

This is what the Word of the Lord does when it goes out to the world, to saints and sinners alike. It draws all people to repentance. This is what Jesus means when he says in the Gospel of John, “This is the work of God,” it’s not your work, O sinner, but the work of God, “that you believe in him whom he has sent,” and “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” The Word of God is living and active, and it draws sinners to repentance. Modern preachers don’t believe this. They believe it is the work of men, the work of the dynamic preacher, the work of the moving music, the work of the great experiences and powerful encounters that draw people, but no, it is God by His Word, that draws sinners.

And so, the wasteful son, because of his father’s words and godliness, repents and believes that his father will receive him, if even as a slave worker. His father is a powerful influence in his life, to say the least.

As he starts walking up the long driveway to the house, his father sees him, and breaking all the pious Jewish rules, the father runs out to him in haste and embraces him. Now the son, who still thinks he needs to prove himself to dad, he worked out a script that he’d say to convince his dad of letting him come home. So, he starts speaking his lines, but dad interrupts and calls to his servants and tells them to bring the robe and bring the family ring, and plan a feast and kill the fattened calf, for his son has come home.

Now, the robe and the ring, these are symbols of royalty and inheritance. If you have the family ring, it means you are in charge. If you wear the family robe, it means you are family.

What the father did for this son was not deserved. Not only did the father not allow his son to sell himself back to the estate as a hired hand, but the father gave him full family status and even more than that. Why? Shouldn’t the son pay back some of his squandering’s? Shouldn’t the son suffer some consequence for his treating dad as a dead man?

But for the father, such is not at all the point. His son has come home. His words, his teaching, his commandments, his influence finally drew his son to see the blessings and joy of living at home rather than living out in some distant place in the world. That’s the point.

Up to this point, Jesus totally shut down Talmudic law, Pharisaical law concerning how to deal with sinners. It’s not about casting them out or staying away from them, and it’s not about justifying the sin. As I said earlier, there are lots of false preachers and the false church going about making the sin good and godly, telling homosexuals it’s okay to be gay, telling women it’s okay to murder an unborn child for any reason, telling people it’s okay to keep sinning because sin isn’t really sin anymore. This world is inundated with all that, but this parable chews it up and spits it out because it’s a blatant, devilish lie. The son was a sinner of the worst kind. Every depravity you can imagine, he committed, amplified by 10. And it ruined him because that’s what sin does. Sin does not make you a better person; being worldly does not make you a better person; living for the world and chasing after the world does not make you a better person, more socialized, but it makes you a disgusting, dirty, deprived, and empty person, worthless, poor, broken, weak, undeserving of anyone’s love or affection. And of this you must repent. The heavenly Father has spoken His word to you, taught you his commands, showed you what true life is all about. Repent of the lusts and passions of sin and run back, return to the Lord.

Jesus hanging out with sinners and eating with tax collectors, this is the Word made flesh and dwelling among God’s people. Because all people have sinned and all people have fallen short of the glory of God, and Jesus has bore the iniquity of us all. The father embracing his lost son is the Word of God doing what it does, drawing sinners to repentance, sinners back home to dad, and dad will always embrace tightly all who repent and trust in His goodness, and not only embrace, but give so much more.

But then there’s that other son. He’s workin’ in the field doing everything right, trying to make his father happy by his own goodness and own righteousness, and he sees that there’s a party going on up at the ranch. He finds out that his brother has come home, and he is mad. This ‘good son’ just squandered his father’s wealth and kindness, not by walking away and wasting it abroad, but by grumbling and complaining about how his father chooses to use his wealth. This ‘good son’ is as bad as the prodigal son, if not worse. He didn’t want his brother to come back. He was even glad to see him go.

And he questions his righteous father’s motives, his sanity, when the signet ring and family robe is placed on his brother.

The father calls him to repent as well. “My son, your brother, he was dead and now he is alive.” Did the ‘good son’ finally repent? Parable doesn’t say. But it’s clear that both sons were sinners and the righteous father’s words had to draw them both to repentance and trust. And the son we think is the worst sinner is nothing compared to the other son who tried to earn his way to his dad’s grace by his good deeds, but his heart was revealed when he scorned his dad and treated his dad like dirt for simply loving his kids.

This parable was meant to show the religious leaders that the love of God does not stop at the door of the self-righteous, but that it goes out into the world of sinners and tax collectors and draws them to repentance and faith as well.

And today, it reminds us that our righteousness and our ‘goodness’ isn’t enough to save us, because like both the prodigal sons in the parable, we must repent. And God provides for us the very means of repentance, the Word of the Lord, Christ Jesus who eats with us, who walks with us, who dies for us, not because we deserve it or choose it or work for it, but because God the Father draws us to Himself by His living Word.

And for all who repent and believe in Him, the Father will NEVER turn them away. Those who continue to reject God’s mercy and refuse to repent and would rather eat the scraps of pigs and live for the waste and filth of this world, then such is what they will receive on the Last Day.

But God calls all people to repent. He sent His only Son to preach and teach and draw all people to Himself, not to judge or condemn, but forgive and save. Sin is still sin and still evil, and living for the world is still dying for the world, but for we who have been drawn and are being saved, there is only mercy and goodness and an inheritance waiting for us in life eternal.

We were lost, but we have been found; we were dead, but thanks to Jesus, we are now alive. Amen.