Notes of an Address on Luke 15:1-241Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. 2And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. 3And he spake this parable unto them, saying, 4What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? 5And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. 7I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. 8Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? 9And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbors together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. 10Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. 11And he said, A certain man had two sons: 12And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. 13And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. 14And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. 15And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. 17And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, 19And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. 20And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 21And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. 22But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: 23And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: 24For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. (Luke 15:1‑24).
I SUPPOSE there is no one who will not own that man has a need: every man looks forward to some improvement hereafter. No man can own that his position here is a satisfactory one. “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” Someone has said that every great thought is allied to melancholy, because it gives the truth of what man is. No man is in a state of happiness; he may be looking for happiness, but he does not possess it, and the one great question with him is, How is my position to be improved? All must own that there is need of improvement.
We get a definition of the state of man’s mind in Proverbs 5:66Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them. (Proverbs 5:6)― “Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.” One object after another calls your interest and attention, and you cannot give your attention to find the path of life, which is the one important thing. Nothing can be plainer than that man has a need. All admit the need, the necessity of man’s condition being improved, and the desire for this in man’s heart is what is commonly called thirsting. Ambition is seeking to improve one’s condition, and the more vigorous the man is, the more he labors to improve it.
According to the world’s idea, a man who has not ambition is not worth much. An able man tries to improve his condition, that his sense of need may be removed. But there is one thing at the bottom of it all which cannot be removed, and that is Death. No one can be perfectly happy because of death. However he may think that he can arrive at surroundings in this world in which he says he can be perfectly happy, there is one terrible thing that mars it all, which he cannot either face or remove, and that is death; and the nearer man has reached the acme of his ambition, the more he fears death. Do what he will, arrive at the greatest improvement that is possible down here, he cannot remove that most terrible thing―death―the consequence of man’s sin. The wine is out, and man’s own resources to relieve his necessity have come to an end, and he himself must come to an untimely end.
But there is another thing beside man’s necessity, and that is the love of God. Revelation alone brings out what that love does, and what an interest God has taken in man’s happiness. Our blessed Lord has come, not only to meet man’s need, but to meet all that divine love requires. This you get set forth in the scripture I have just read (Luke 15). What a difference it makes to the soul when it gets an idea of what God is―not only that He is good, but that He is love, and you cannot account for that love, it acts simply from its own motives. You may know that God is good and still not know that He’ is love. He is good―He would do everything for your good. But He is more―He is love. Love is quite beyond merely providing for your comfort.
What our Lord sets forth in this gospel, and what He enlarges upon as He goes on, is what He propounds here to the publicans and sinners. He here sets forth not only that He came to save sinners, but that the three Persons of the Trinity are engaged in the sinner’s welfare, and that to their own delight and that the love of God not only relieves my necessity, but makes me suited to be in His company He shares with me His own joys. Think for a moment, that God delights in having you with Himself. I think you have no idea what a man is to God, what an interest He has in him. Satan’s whole work was against man.
It is written, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psa. 8:44What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalm 8:4)); but man was the being God took an interest in. He set him in the garden of Eden, and when he failed there God sought him, and in that very place, the garden of Eden, God manifested His grace before turning him out. He clothed Adam and Eve with skins. Thus we see what an object man is to God. The Lord Jesus Christ is, of course, the great object to God, and what belongs to Him (the Church now). Man has been under trial over and over again, but every trial has only proved more and more how lost and ruined he is. God came in and sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, and He could say, “My delights were with the sons of men” (Prov. 8:3131Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. (Proverbs 8:31)). Eve’s feeling about God was entirely incorrect. She thought she could do better for herself than God could do for her. When a soul is converted, it is a contradiction of that. The point of departure is the point of restoration. The prodigal went the very opposite way to Eve.
Man, at the outset of his history, got a false impression of God. Satan, who was a murderer from the beginning, acted on the mind of man, and man accepting this wrong impression brought in death. A natural man thinks, “If I had God’s power I would do great things for myself.” That is at the bottom of his thoughts―that God has the power but not the will. That shows he has an entirely wrong idea of God. Man harbored that wrong idea of God, sinned, and God acted in judgment, and death came in.
I turn now to Luke 15. What the Lord sets forth in this parable, in the company of the publicans and sinners, and what He insists upon, is the delight of the one who finds that which was lost. The lost sheep had wandered on the dark mountains of sin, the Shepherd had sought it, and when He found it, laying it on His shoulders He says, “Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost” (Luke 15:66And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. (Luke 15:6)). Have you got the sense in your soul that that is how God feels about you? There is no way of feeling toward God except as knowing what His feelings are towards you. That imparts confidence. The Lord says here, “That likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance” (vs. 7). Confidence is when you act on how He feels towards you―presumption is to act on your own feelings.
The next part of the parable is that of the woman and the lost piece of silver. Again it is, “Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost” (vs. 9).
What I want, beloved friends, is, that your hearts should be opened to the fact that the Lord has a pleasure in getting the lost sheep―the lost piece. No doubt it was immense gain to the lost sheep wandering on the dark mountains, to be carried back on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd, but what establishes the heart is to know the love that rejoices in finding the lost one.
How slow we are to believe the interest and delight that God has in having us with Himself. Look at all the wonderful acting’s of divine love―the magnanimity of it. If the shepherd had not borne the judgment, there would not have been freedom to come out in these manifold expressions of divine grace to the poor sinner.
In the first part of the parable we have the work of Christ, in the second the work of the Spirit, and now we come to what is called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it is not rightly so named; for it is really the third part of one parable, which now describes the father’s feelings about the son. In order to understand these feelings, and what necessarily must follow from the acting’s of his heart, let us see what the course of the prodigal was. He says, when he is in want and comes to himself, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee” (ver. 18). But how was it on the father’s side? “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him” (vs. 20). Do you believe God would do this towards a poor sinner? Have you really the sense that God loves you, that He has communicated it to your heart? It is not simply a question of forgiveness here, it is reconciliation and proving that there was love.
We get the two things brought together―necessity brings the prodigal to the father, and love brings the father to the prodigal―he had a sense of his father’s goodness. You are lost because you do not believe in His goodness, therefore God has to bring a man down, putting him into straits, and then compelling him to come like the prodigal. He was brought to his last end, no hope left, “no man gave unto him,” and then comes the light into his soul and he says, “I will arise and go to my father.” Oh, what a moment when the soul learns there is goodness in God! That is conversion―and a wonderful conversion change it is―built not upon what I am, but upon what He is. But he had to learn that there was not only goodness but love; how surprised he was to find that when he was a great way off, in the place of suffering and need, his father saw him, and ran towards him. Love travels faster than necessity. Is your soul exercised about this, and can you say, God had a greater delight in having me than I had in going to Him? Necessity was what was before the prodigal, and he counted on his father’s goodness, but not upon his love. Love surpasses and runs faster than necessity. Are you sensible of His love? Do you believe that the first thought of God toward you is love?
Now come out two things which always mark the love of God. The first is that I must be actually suited to Him, and the other, that I must share His joys. God does not only get a man out of his necessities. A benevolent person might say, “I will make that man happy” in his own way. Some people think of God as benevolent, and look to Him for the favors of this world. They know their sins are forgiven, and expect easy, happy times here, to be prospered in business, &c. That shows they have not got to His love. I say again there are two great underlying qualities of love. God grant, beloved friends, that your hearts may be awakened to its reality. It is beyond all human expression that God loves to have me with Himself. I speak to those who are converted. How little does the soul enter into the fact that God intends I should share His joys.
Nothing can equal it, nothing is so captivating to the heart as to hear the blessed God say, I love you and must make you suitable for My company and make you a sharer of My joys. Therefore the apostle says, “We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” How many of us do that―joy in God? It was said of the Philippian jailer, “He believed in God, and rejoiced with all his house.” “And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:1111And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. (Romans 5:11)). That is where the love comes in first. I want to get the simple sense in my soul―that is true of God. Therefore we have confidence in Him, and can say as in Colossians, “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints” (Col. 1:1212Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: (Colossians 1:12)).
This was the manner of the father’s reception of the prodigal, making him fit to be at home in the house―the best robe, the ring, and the shoes, all showing the distinguished nature of his reception, and the welcome he had; nothing was wanting, it was complete. If man’s necessity only were before God, He would have given him what he wanted and made him happy in the things men are happy in―natural things. That would have been benevolence. But love delights to share its joys, and to make me suitable to its company. This is so profound that we cannot take it in, but here it is set forth by this parable and also in other parts of Scripture.
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:3232He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)). And to what end? Oh, may the eyes of your hearts be opened to see that you are not only made suitable to Himself, but that love does its best for its object! What an effect it would have upon us did our hearts enter more fully into the thought that God delights in our company. He wants to have us in His presence, and to have us suitable to be there. The prodigal was made suitable; he could not go in in all the rags his prodigality had brought him to. No, he was to come in invested with all that suited the father’s house, and in what came from that house―an entirely new creation, in a new order of things altogether.
Then it is, “bring hither the fatted calf, and let us eat and be merry.” Those are the actual joys that are in His own presence. How are we to know this now? By the Holy Ghost come down from a glorified Christ. I believe it, and I value it. When there is real faith you will value it. Do you really believe that this is what God is? “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:1818No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (John 1:18)). What an unaccountable thing, beloved friends; we cannot understand it, but we have to believe it. It is not simply that He clears me of my guilt, but love has come out now—God has declared His love, and says, as it were, “I cannot do without your company, and I will fit you for My company.”
Then I go in, and there is the great feast. The greatest feast in heaven is when a sinner repents and turns to God. The blessed Lord had to meet your necessity, and accomplish the Father’s will and pleasure; so He could say, “He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me” (Psa. 18:1919He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me. (Psalm 18:19)). I want this to rest in your hearts, the delight the Father has in having you in His own presence, and then you will find in your measure how you can delight in the joys of God. If you have not got beyond the fact that your need is the measure of God’s grace, you have only got a measure of the gospel. “In thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psa. 16:1111Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. (Psalm 16:11)). J. B. S.