Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 15:11-24, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 56
- Date: Sunday, May 10, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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The Wrong Crowd
The Wrong Crowd Now, when a kid starts getting in trouble and starts going astray, we say that they fell in with the wrong crowd. Yeah. I’ve been in ministry long enough that I’ve heard parents say this numerous times. My kid fell in with the wrong crowd.
I’ve never heard any parents say, yeah, my child was the wrong crowd. Have you ever heard that? Because I have not. Somewhere out there, there’s just the wrong crowd, and nobody’s actually part of it.
But we’ll complain, that child is running with the wrong crowd, and it’ll be a source of, and there can be some truth in that. Sometimes you get people together, and they’ll do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do on their own. So it’s not always wrong, but there’s that complaint that they fell in with the wrong crowd, and it’s corrupting their behavior. And that was the same complaint that the Pharisees had about Jesus, that they looked at Him and said, He’s running with the wrong crowd.
When we got a couple weeks ago to the beginning of Luke chapter 15, that was the complaint. That’s the complaint that started Luke chapter 15, was that Jesus is running with the wrong crowd. Presumably, the Pharisees were worried that Jesus was going to be corrupted by that. They need not have worried.
Jesus came to straighten out the wrong crowd. What the Pharisees didn’t realize, though, was that it was a good thing that Jesus ran around with the wrong crowd because we are all the wrong crowd. We as a species have gone astray. The scriptures say that we all, like sheep, have gone astray.
And that’s precisely the reason He came. He didn’t come to us because we’re so wonderful, because we’re so lovely, because we’re so deserving of His attention. Although I look around this room and I think there are wonderful people in this room, but by God’s standards, none of us are the right crowd. And so Jesus came to sit with sinners and tax collectors and various undesirable people in their culture.
And the Pharisees looked at this and said, it’s awful. They’re sitting there clutching their pearls and saying, how dare he sit with these people? And in answer to that complaint, Jesus started telling stories. We looked at a couple of those last week, the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin, where he’s trying to make the point that it’s not a distraction from the mission that Jesus is spending time with people like this, it’s actually the mission.
It’s actually the reason why Jesus came was to engage with sinners and to change us. He came to be with the wrong crowd. And this morning, as we continue on with this series, we’re going to look at the third story that Jesus tells. We’re going to look at the start of the third story that Jesus tells to illustrate this point.
And I will tell you real quick, as we’re talking about the prodigal there’s a lot of this that deals with the Father. I have already been asked this morning by a couple of mothers if I was trying to make a point by us singing “This is my Father’s World” on Mother’s Day. I said yes, the point I’m trying to make is that my brain doesn’t make those connections and wait till we get to the sermon and it’s all about the Father. The good thing is that the Father sent the Son for the mothers here and the fathers here and the sons and the daughters that He loves all of us, and He loves all of us enough to come.
So, there’s never a wrong time to glorify the Father. So, that would be my point. And they were joking when they asked that. But it’d be nice if my brain made connections like that beforehand.
But we are going to talk about the Father and this role that He plays, and what Jesus is trying to tell us by this story. So, we’re going to be in Luke chapter 15 this morning, And we’re going to start reading where we left off last week at verse 11, if you’ll turn there with me. And here’s what he says starting in verse 11. And he said, this is Jesus talking, and he said, A man had two sons.
The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me. So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country. And there he squandered his estate with loose living.
Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger? I will get up and go to my father and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men.
The Long Journey Home
So he got up and came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
Restoration from the Father’s Heart
But the father said to his slaves, Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and bring the fattened calf, kill it and let us eat and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found.
And they began to celebrate. So last week we looked at those two parables, the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin that Jesus was using to illustrate why he came and that it wasn’t an accident that he was spending time with sinners. It was actually what he came for. And just as we saw in both of those parables that you and I are the one, we’re not the 99, we’re not the shepherd who goes looking, we’re not the woman who goes looking for the coin, we are the one who is lost in that story.
Seeing Ourselves in the Story
We can easily find ourselves in this parable of the prodigal son as well. The younger son is us. And you may, if you’ve been a believer for a long period of time, you may look at this and say, but I’m not prodigal. I’m not wandering from God.
This is where we start out. This is our nature to wander from God. And just because we’re not there now doesn’t negate the fact that’s where he found us. That’s the condition he found us in.
We are the prodigal son. ### Seeing Ourselves in the Story And we can learn so much, even if you’ve been a believer for many years, we can learn so much from this story as a reminder of where we’ve come from and what God has done for us and come to a new appreciation of the salvation that He has made available to us. If we ever get to a point where our salvation just seems humdrum, oh yeah, He saved me, what’s He done for me lately? We need to go back and consider this story and understand what it is that the Father has done for us. What it is that Jesus came on His behalf to do for us.
We should be in awe of the sacrifice that He’s made, and we should be in awe of the forgiveness that He’s given every day of our lives. We should grow to be more and more in awe of what He’s done. This story goes a long way in helping us with that. This story that Jesus told.
And if you’re somebody that’s not been a believer for years and years maybe you’ve never trusted Christ as your savior at all I want you to pay close attention to this story because this is one of the clearest depictions in all of scripture of what it means to be reconciled to God of what it means when we have that relationship with the Father through the Son, that we come to know Him and our sins are forgiven. It’s not by, no detail of this story is by accident. Jesus was making a point to the Pharisees that God came to seek the prodigal. That’s one of the things that we learned last week. ### Rebellion Against the Father God took the initiative to seek the lost.
He doesn’t wait for us to find Him. He took the initiative. We see from all of these stories together that God is eager for us to be reconciled to Him. But this story starts out with, not with the reconciliation, not with any of that, it starts out with rebellion.
It starts out with a young man who looks at his father and says, I want nothing to do with you. This young man was ruled by his desires, and in order to make himself happy, he was willing to blow up his entire life, including his closest relationships. He went to his father and he asked for his inheritance. There in verses 11 through 13, he goes and asks for his inheritance.
Now, to us, that might not seem like a big deal. Sometimes people start giving away things before they pass. I know there was a time years ago when my grandmother said, if there’s something you want, go ahead and take it. Like, how do you feel about the car?
Not really. I tell you what, she had this, I don’t know if it was a cookie jar or what, but it looked like a head of cabbage, and it had a little rabbit on top, and I remembered it from when I was a little kid. I think it was a cookie jar, but it’s really weird that it looked like a head of cabbage, but I remembered that as a kid, and I wanted that. So, and then years later, she sold her house and split the proceeds among my mother and her siblings.
Here, I’m giving you your inheritance. And sometimes that happens in our world. That’s not that unusual. In their day and time, in their culture, to go to somebody and say, I want my inheritance now could be understood as a statement, I just assume you were dead.
This is a slap in the father’s face. And this young man is willing to do that. He wanted his inheritance. He wanted something he was not entitled to yet and that was tantamount to wishing that his father was dead.
But he was so driven by the desire for that money and everything that he thought it could purchase for him that he didn’t care about that. He just wanted it. How many of you remember those commercials? I forget.
I don’t know if it was some loan company or what, but they’d shout, it’s my money and I want it now. Anybody else remember those? J. G.
Wentworth, yes. Charla and I quote that all the time. The kids have no idea what we’re talking about. That was his attitude.
It wasn’t his money, but he thought, it’s my money and I want it now. And so he goes and he demands his inheritance, and the father allowed him to go. I doubt this pleased the father. But he allowed him to go.
He allowed him to wander and when we get to verse 13 it says that he had wandered over to a distant country. He went on a journey to a distant country. Presumably part of the reason for that is to get as far away from his father as he could and his father’s influence. If his father had enough money that a third of the estate, which is what he would have gotten as the younger son.
A third of the estate was enough for him to go off and party on and live it up in another country. Presumably, this was a wealthy man. He probably had some influence in the community. He wanted to get as far away from his father and his father’s influence as he could.
He was running from the father. And he went, and verse 13 tells us, he squandered his estate with loose living. Now, the English translation doesn’t quite do justice to what we’re talking about here, but to say that way that he was engaged in loose living, you imagine any kind of sin that you could get involved with, you imagine any kind of vice that money could subsidize, and he was probably involved in it. Do you think that pleased his father?
Everything we know about this story tells us that’s not the way his father raised him. Everything he did during this stage of his life, during this season, was a repudiation of his father it was a repudiation of his father’s character it was a repudiation of his father’s desires for him it wasn’t just you know what i’m making different choices than my father it was to look at everything the father had done everything the father had been everything the father had taught him and to say, I want nothing to do with it, I want nothing to do with you. This is not just asking for money. This is turning his back on his father.
And this man represents us. And it doesn’t mean that everybody in this room, it doesn’t mean everybody who’s ever lived is as sinful as we could possibly be. I came to Christ as a young child, and I was one of those children who was scared of my parents. Not scared in the sense that they were abusive, scared in the sense that they were very clear about expectations and consequences, and I knew what would happen if I stepped out of line.
Did not want that to happen, and on top of that, just did not want to disappoint them. On the path I was headed down, even if I had not come to Jesus Christ and had not come to faith in Jesus Christ, I don’t think I would have been out knocking over liquor stores and clubbing baby seals and whatever else, you know, whatever else somebody could get up to. I don’t think I would have lived a life like this man, but still, still you can live what looks outwardly a moral, upstanding life and your heart be distant from God. And that’s the problem I faced up to even as a child and recognized that in what little I could have gotten up to at that point in my life, my heart was not right with God.
See, every time we sin, and it doesn’t matter whether we’re following in this man’s footsteps and saying, how far into the darkness can I go? Or whether we’re just living a moral life that looks upstanding to the community. Every time we choose to sin, every time we choose something, whether it’s in action, whether it’s in words, whether it’s in attitudes, that is not in line with God’s will for us, it is not just a different choice, it’s a repudiation of Him and His character. It’s saying, God, I don’t want this, and I don’t want you, and I don’t want your ways.
And why is that? Because what God says is right, is right because it flows from who He is. Honesty is good because God is a God of truth. Faithfulness is good because God is faithful.
All these things that He tells us, that’s why it tells us in both the Old and New Testaments, be ye holy for I am holy. What He tells us to do reflects who He is. So when we say, I don’t want that, really what’s in the root of that in our hearts is I don’t want you. We’re in the same place as this young man. And our sin separates us from our Father.
The Ruin of Life Away from the Father
And eventually that sin is going to lead to ruin. ### Sin Always Leads to Ruin And we see in verses 14 through 16 that ruin reveals our need for the Father. This man went out looking to have a good time. And the Bible does say that sin is fun for a season. My mother told me that when I was a kid and I thought, you can’t say that.
Well, the Bible says that. Talks about the pleasures of sin that last for a season, for a little bit. Sin is fun until the consequences come. Just like it’s always fun to spend until the bill comes due.
Sin promised him joy. It promised him happiness. It promised him fulfillment, but it left him in a terrible state. Look at what happened to him.
Verse 14 tells us that he spent through all of his inheritance, and eventually he’s left with nothing. Then on top of that, there’s a famine that hit the land so that he couldn’t sustain himself. Not only is he out of money and his friends have deserted him, it’s really hard to find a way to make ends meet without that money. And so he thinks, I’ve got to take a job.
And he degrades himself, not by taking a job, there’s nothing shameful about that, but the job that he took. Jesus, Jewish teacher, speaking to the Pharisees, Jewish religious leaders, within a group of followers who are all Jewish, that’s their context. In their mind, they’re imagining this story, a young Jewish man goes out to a far country. You want to talk about the most degrading job that somebody could take, slopping the hogs.
You think about the most disgusting animal. And by the way, I’ve been told they really don’t smell that good, right? I’ve never raised hogs. Not in a hurry to either from the stories I’ve heard, but I’ve heard they don’t smell great.
But even just from a cultural standpoint, pigs were unclean according to the law of God. And it was one of the most offensive, degrading jobs that somebody in that culture could take to go and feed the swine. That’s what he did in verse 15, because that’s all he could do. He couldn’t afford enough food.
Verse 16 tells us nobody gave him anything. That means he had tried begging and nobody was giving him any food. So he’d taken this job feeding the animals, and he was so desperate that he was willing to eat what they ate. The greek wording there means that they were eating carob husks which apparently we can eat i think they make it into a chocolate substitute now but in their day it was considered animal feed you didn’t eat that but he was so desperate he would have eaten after the pigs if he could have i guess they again hearing stories about raising pigs my guess is they didn’t leave anything for him and you probably didn’t want to get in there with them to try to compete with them for it.
But that’s the level of desperation he was at. This man had seriously miscalculated what his life was going to be like once he left his father’s influence behind. And again, this man represents us because this is what sin does to us. It promises fulfillment.
It promises happiness. It promises everything we could want. It promises to fulfill every desire, but it always takes us further than we intended to go. It always costs us more than we intended to pay, and it always makes it harder to get back than we anticipated.
Sin is a horrible and a cruel master. It brings us to the depths of darkness and desperation, and it may appear on the surface to be working out well for a while. But there’s only so far we can wander from God before that real sense of desperation hits. And it’ll bring us to those depths.
And when we get there, when we hit that rock bottom, we are helpless and we are hopeless. Actually, we’ve been helpless and hopeless the whole time, but we realize it. And we’re unable to get ourselves out of this, out of this ruin without the Father. And so he comes to this moment of realization in verse 17 there’s a moment where it says he came to his senses and this is where we see repentance starting in this man’s story repentance is what returns us to the father verse 17 says he came to his senses and it’s not just a reaction to his circumstances.
We could look at this and say, oh, he’s desperate, he’s hungry, he’ll think anything, he’ll say anything in order to get what he wants, but it’s not just a reaction to his circumstances, although he does say in verse 17, I’m here dying of hunger. He realizes something’s got to change, but it was also a recognition that his father offered something better. This coming to his senses is a recognition that his father offered something better. He said, how many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread?
This is not just, oh, I’ll go say what I need to say to get food. He’s recognizing something about his father that these people that work for his father, even these slaves and servants, he said, they’re well taken care of. That doesn’t sound like somebody we would want to rebel against. And so it’s like a light bulb comes on and he recognizes something is wrong.
And he’s determined to go back to his father. He says in verse 18, I will get up and go to my father. And he doesn’t go in a prideful way, in an entitled way. I’m going to go back and he’ll have to take me back because he’s my father.
He recognizes that he’s wrong in this. He’s rehearsing here. He’s rehearsing the conversation. He says, I’m going to go back and I’m going to tell him, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven.
That means I’ve sinned against God. And in your sight, I’ve done wrong according to God. I’ve done wrong according to you. He’s rehearsing what he’s going to say to try to soften the Father because he thinks he’s got to work for this.
He’s got to convince the Father to take him back. And he comes in with this unconditional surrender. We talked a couple weeks ago about what unconditional surrender means, that you come and it’s not like we’re going to negotiate me laying down my arms. It’s, I’m laying down my arms and whatever you say happens next, happens next.
He comes to the Father, whatever the Father is going to do is what’s going to happen. He comes in with this surrender and he acknowledges that he’s not worthy to be there. He says, as he’s rehearsing this in verse 19, I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me one of your hired men.
And folks, this is one of the clearest pictures of repentance in all of Scripture. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking to you about what repentance means. We have this wrong idea of what repentance means that we think it’s cleaning up our lives in order to come to God. Now, I think if we are repentant, our lives are going to change on the other side, it’s going to show up in that way.
But the repentance itself is this point where we get on the same page with God and we acknowledge that He’s right and we’re wrong. And we go from sinners that say, I love my sin and hate God, at least in comparison, to now as repentance sinners, we say, I love God and I hate my sin. So we as believers, it doesn’t mean that we never sin again, but if we’re repentant, it means we sin. And immediately there’s that feeling that, why did I just do that?
I disappointed my father. Why would I do that? We don’t wallow in it. That’s repentance, is that change of mind and change of heart that is eventually going to lead to a change in behavior.
But it starts with that change of heart and mind. And that’s what happened with this man. Has he undone everything that he has just done with his riotous, I think that’s my King James coming out, riotous living, I think is what it says. Everything he’s been involved in.
Has He gone and undone that? Has He now started and shown a track record of walking the straight and narrow? No. He’s just come to this point where He realizes, my Father was right all along.
What am I doing? I need to go back and be right with my Father. That’s repentance. He’s acknowledging without any kind of reservation, without any kind of excuse that He’s wrong and the Father’s right.
And that’s what repentance looks like for us. That we come to God and we’re not trying to make excuses for what we’ve done wrong. We’re not trying to justify what we’ve done wrong. We’re coming to the Father and saying, you’re right and I’ve been wrong this whole time.
And even though I know I’m going to continue to be wrong, I don’t want to be anymore. I want to do what you want. It’s a softening of the heart. This repentance is a softening of the heart that causes us to seek His forgiveness.
The unrepentant sinner doesn’t care whether he’s got God’s forgiveness or not. The repentant sinner wants that forgiveness and wants to be right with God. And so this man, he has this change of heart and this change of mind where he’s driven back to the Father. And we see in the next few verses that he goes back to the Father with this prepared speech.
And it’s easy to miss, but I think one of the neatest things in this whole story, neat is a great theological term. I think one of the neatest parts of this whole story is he goes back with this rehearsed speech to his father, and he doesn’t even get through it. There’s about three things he says in the speech. He gets through the first two, and the father starts saying, hey, everybody, come do this, get that.
He’s not even listening anymore. Not because He doesn’t care about His Son, but because He does care about His Son. He doesn’t need to hear the whole speech. ### The Father’s Joyful Restoration The Father was eager to restore Him. And what this story teaches us is that restoration comes from the heart of the Father.
Restoration with God doesn’t come because we’re wonderful, because we’ve earned it, because we’ve deserved it. It comes from the heart of the Father. The Father wants to restore us. The Father is eager for us to be right with Him.
We see in verse 20 that the Son comes, and while He’s still a long way away, the Father saw Him. It means the Father’s out there watching. Father’s out there watching for the day the Son is going to come back and repent. When He saw Him, don’t miss this part, verse 20 tells us He took compassion on Him.
He felt compassion. You say, of course He did. He’s the Father. Is that how we are?
Somebody does all that to us and they come back, do we immediately feel compassion? Or do we want to make them understand what they’ve done wrong? The Father felt compassion. What I’m telling you is the Father is more eager for restoration than we can even fathom.
The Father took compassion on this sinful son. And it says in verse 20, that He ran to His Son and embraced Him and kissed Him. And this, again, seems so natural to us, but in their culture, the Father didn’t run to you. And the Father didn’t weep all over you.
This Father was so eager for restoration that He forgot what was considered proper etiquette. And what was dignified and pursued the restoration. For us, God did not care about what was considered proper etiquette or what was dignified. Jesus was purposely sacrificed in the most humiliating way possible so that we could be reconciled in order to show the price of sin.
And yet he willingly went through that. The father ran to his son, and the son began in verse 21 to verbalize his repentance, but the father already knew because here he was coming back. The father didn’t need to hear the speech. Here’s the repentance on display.
Repentance is more than just words. Didn’t John the Baptist say, go and produce fruit demonstrating repentance? That’s what this man did. He wasn’t just saying the words.
He had shown his repentance, and the father said, I don’t need to hear all the speech. I don’t need to hear all of it. He interrupts him partway through and set out to restore his son without a lecture, without chastening. And I’m not saying there’s never time for a lecture, okay, because as a parent, I need that job security.
There are sometimes times for a lecture, but that’s not part of this story. It’s not the point Jesus is trying to make. Without any further lecture, he sees the repentance and the Father restores the Son. You look at the things that he offers in verses 22 and 23.
He begins to call to the servants and say, bring a robe, bring a ring, bring sandals, kill the fatted calf. Other than the fatted calf, I’ve tended to overlook all of those details, but they have meaning. Those are in there for a reason. You would put a robe on somebody as a mark of honor when they came as a guest to a feast.
They’re the guest of honor. Not saying that this son is a guest, but it’s a sign of honor for him. Put a ring on his finger, that’s a mark of authority. That’s why kings and popes are given rings as symbols of their office.
It’s a mark of being restored as a person of authority in that household, in that estate. Put sandals on his feet. Found out this week that typically the slaves and servants didn’t necessarily wear sandals. What is this?
This is saying you’re a son. You are still a son. And the fatted calf is a mark of joyous celebration in their day in their day and age fat was a good thing and you break out the fat when it was going to be a celebration you want you didn’t want to you didn’t want lean beef you wanted the fatted calf because they were going to celebrate and folks this is how the father responds to it when sinners repent the pharisees wanted the sinners continually ground down for what they’ve done. And don’t, make no mistake, God takes sin seriously.
That’s why the cross happened. But now that sin has been paid for at the cross, when we repent, this is how God responds to sinners. When we repent, He responds with joy because the dead have been raised to life and the lost are found. And we can be restored to the father because Jesus has purchased our place in the family.
This, I think, is the most remarkable part of this story, that this man recognized he was not even worthy to come back as a servant. You know what? He’s right after what he did. He wasn’t worthy even to be called a servant in that household.
But the father embraces him and brings him back in. The father would have been completely justified in saying, you know what, you’re not worthy to be a servant, get on out of here. But instead, the father received him back in and said, you’re not going to be a servant here, you’re a son. You’re my son.
Not because you deserve it, not because you’ve earned it, but because I want you to be my son. ### Adopted Into the Family And ladies and gentlemen, that is exactly what our father has done for us. Romans says that in our sin we are enemies of God. That sounds harsh until you realize we’re the ones that fired the shots. Through our sin we made ourselves enemies of God.
And God would be completely justified in saying you have acted like that get out of my sight. We’re not worthy even to be servants in in His kingdom. But God embraces us and brings us in not even as servants, but as sons and daughters. We are adopted into His family because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.
That is the remarkable thing about the gospel. God doesn’t just save us as though you could say just about something like salvation. It’s incredible that He saves us. It’s incredible that He forgives us, but He doesn’t stop there.
He adopts us and brings us into His family. My friends, you can be right with the God of the universe who made you this morning. You can have fellowship with Him. You can be restored to Him.
This very day, not because of any good you’ve done, not because of anything you have to earn or deserve, but because He is eager to restore you. And by sending Jesus to pay the price for your sin, He’s already done everything that’s necessary for you to be forgiven. Jesus was nailed to the cross and shed his blood and died to pay for your sin in full and rose again three days later to prove it. All that’s left is for us to come in that repentance and say, I want to be right with God and ask for that forgiveness and we’ll have it. He’s eager for us to have it.
