Luke 15:11-16 (NIV) Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.
“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. 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.”
Whereas the first two parables Jesus used to illustrate why he hung out with tax collectors and sinners, the lost sheep and the lost coin, would have easily resonated with His hearers, this parable would have left them in horror-struck disbelief from the first sentence. The very idea of a son, especially a younger son, asking for his inheritance before his father had died would have been repellent to them in the extreme. The could not envision such a heartless, ungrateful, cruel son existing.
And they could not imagine that a father in that situation would do anything other than completely disown that son on the spot, sending him packing with the clothes on his back. They would have been astounded that the man willingly divided his estate on the spot and gave the younger son his share, which would have amounted to 1/3 of all that the man had. (The older of the two brothers would have inherited a double share, so he had 2/3 of the estate waiting for him.)
The younger son no sooner gets his inheritance than he cuts ties with the family and goes to the big city, where he blows every dollar in sinful living. It isn’t long before his need catches up to him, and he finds himself doing the most repugnant and degrading job that any Jew could imagine: feeding pigs! Every day he would have to go to work and make himself unclean by dealing with unclean animals.
In painting this picture, Jesus was actually agreeing with the estimation of the Pharisees and teachers of the law. The tax collectors and sinners Jesus was eating and drinking with had rebelled against God, their Father. They had taken the blessings He had poured out on them to be theirs by right, but had wasted them all in sinful living far away from God’s presence. And now they were experiencing a famine, an emptiness of heart and soul that had driven them to become engaged in work that made them more and more unclean every day that they participated in it. It seemed like a dead-end, a hopeless case, in which God should simply write them off as a lost cause and move on to more promising prospects.
Father, as someone who lived this man’s “far country” life for many years, I can see how his woes were all brought about by his rebellion against his father, and his taking the blessings he enjoyed so freely for granted. I did that with You, and spent every blessing I received from You on myself. But, Lord, I am thankful that this scene of hitting rock bottom is not the end of the story, just as it wasn’t the end of the story in my own life. Thank You! Amen.