The Fatherland.
I. Of all God's cords the finest, and perhaps the strongest, is the cord of love. The true home of humanity is God God trusted, communed with, beloved, obeyed.
II. Far from home, humanity is still in the hand of God. Not only is it subject to His righteous and irresistible sovereignty, but it has a place in His deep and desirous compassion.
III. It would be rash to say that where the home is right the inmates never go wrong. Still, the promises to believers include their children, and the instances are anomalous and few where a hopeful outset ends in a worthless old age. In order to make your home the preparation for heaven, the first thing is to strengthen that cord of love by which you ought to hold your child, even as our heavenly Father holds His children.
J. Hamilton, Works,vol. ii., p. 261.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son. Regarding the son here as a type of man, and the father as a type of God, as He is seen in His Son and set forth in the Gospel, let us now study these, the two prominent figures in this beautiful parable, beginning with the prodigal.
I. His conduct. In the condition of the prodigal we have a picture of the misery into which sin, having estranged us from our heavenly Father, has plunged its wretched votaries. Type of the sinner who departs from God, and a beacon to such as feel irksome under the restraints of a pious home, he seeks happiness only to find misery: ambitious of an unhallowed liberty, he sinks into the condition of the basest slave.
II. His change of mind. Sin is here represented as a madness; and who acts so contrary to sound reason, his own interests and the reality of things, as a sinner? Happy such as through the Spirit of God, working by whatever means, have come to themselves, like the prodigal; and are seated, like the maniac who dwelt among the tombs, at the feet of Jesus clothed and in their right mind.
III. His distress. "I perish," he said, "with hunger."
IV. His belief. "Behind yonder blue hills, away in the dim distance, lies my father's house a house of many mansions, and such full supplies that the servants, even the hired servants, have bread enough and to spare."
V. His resolution. "I will arise and go to my father." Remove the prodigal, and setting conscience on the bench, let us take his place. No prodigal ever sinned against an earthly, as we have done against our heavenly Father. Well, therefore, may we go to Him, with the contrition of the prodigal in our hearts and his confession on our lips: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight." The Spirit of God helping us thus to go to God, be assured that the father, who, seeing his son afar off, ran to meet him, fell on his neck and kissed him, was but an image of Him who, not sparing His own Son, but giving Him up to death that we might live, invites and now waits your coming.
T. Guthrie, The Parables in the Light of the Present Day,p. 57.
The Father.
I. How the father received his son. As soon as the wanderer is recognised, on flying feet the old man runs to meet him; and ere the son has time to speak a word, the father has him in his arms, presses him to his bosom, and covering his cheek with passionate kisses, lifts up his voice and weeps for joy. And this is God God as He is drawn by the hand and seen in the face of Him whom He sent to seek and save us, to bring us back, to open a way of reconciliation, the God who, unwilling that any should perish, invites and waits our coming.
II. How the father treated the prodigal. The ring he gave him signifies here the espousals between Christ and His Church; it may be the token of her marriage, the passport of those who are blessed to go to the marriage supper of the Lamb. (2) The naked foot was a sign of servitude. Therefore the order to put shoes on his feet was tantamount to the declaration from the father's lips that the prodigal was not to be regarded as a servant, but as a son; that to him belonged all the privileges and possessions of sonship; that he who had never lost his place in the father's heart was now to resume it at his table and in his house.
III. How the father rejoiced over the prodigal. Grief retires from observation; joy must have vent. In this parable, so true in all its parts to nature, this feature of joy stands beautifully out. To these servants the father had never told his grief; but now the prodigal is come back, and his heart is bursting with joy, he tells them of it. So God rejoices in His ransomed; and let them rejoice in Him. The sun that shines on you shall set, and summer streams shall freeze, and deepest wells go dry but not His love. His love is a stream that never freezes, a fountain that never fails, a sun that never sets in night, a shield that never breaks in fight: whom He loveth, He loveth to the end.
T. Guthrie, The Parables in the Light of the Present Day,p. 77.
References: Luke 15:11. J. Keble, Sermons from Lent to Passiontide,p. 420; Homilist,new series, vol. ii., p. 50. Luke 15:11-13. J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 140; Ibid.,vol. xxii., p. 78. Luke 15:11-24. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. xiii., p. 199; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 373; H. Batchelor, The Incarnation of God,p. 25.Luke 15:11-32. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 268; Expositor,1st series, vol. ix., p. 137; J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons,p. 234; R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 390; H. Calderwood, The Parables,p. 48; A. B. Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Christ,p. 280. Luke 15:12. Preacher's Monthly,vol ii., p. 253.