No. 1. — Luke 15.
WE are all very familiar with the three beautiful stories in the 15th of Luke. But the Word of God is not like other books.
It is so simple that simple people can understand it, but it is as deep as the heat of God, so deep that wise people cannot understand it.
If you are one of the wise people you may say in your heart, “I am sure there is nothing in the 15th of Luke that I don’t understand perfectly.” But there are two things in it that with all your wisdom you know nothing about; you don’t know what it is to be lost, and you don’t know what it is to be found, and if you don’t exchange your wisdom for the heart of a little child you will end up, like the miserable elder son in this chapter, outside the joy of the Father’s house forever. But if you do know what it is to be lost, and better still what it is to be found, the 15th of Luke will always thrill your heart with joy. Eternity will never exhaust the depths that are unfolded in it by Him who came down to make the love of God known to you.
First of all this chapter comes in where we should least expect it. It comes after the rejection of the blessed Lord by His own earthly people, the Jews. In the 13th chapter He utters those deeply touching words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate; and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
With a heart wrung by grief that we cannot enter into, He pronounces sentence against those whom He had so deeply loved, “I would” “but ye would not.”
Then in the 14th chapter He goes on to show that if those who were first invited to the Supper which God’s love had made ready would not come, nevertheless He would have His house filled. God in His own wonderful way turns the very rejection of the Lord Jesus by His own people into wider blessing. In Romans 11. the apostle Paul tells us that “through their (the Jews) fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles.” Instead of the blessing being shut up in the heart of God by the heartless rejection of the Lord Jesus, it was only like a great river dammed up by some fall of rock. Seeming for a moment to be checked, it rises, and, gathering strength, bursts through the barrier and floods the country far and wide. So the love of God in Jesus burst every barrier at the cross, overflowed all ancient limits, and reached us poor, hopeless Gentiles who had no claims, no promises at all.
That is why the Lord Jesus before beginning the parables in the 15th of Luke says, “He that hath ears to hear let him hear.” It is for anybody who has ears to hear it. To have an ear means to take an interest in a thing. If you know nothing about money matters and were to pay a visit one day to the Stock Exchange, you would see hundreds of men, with notebook in hand, intent on the announcements rapidly made of the prices of various stocks. These announcements would have no meaning for you whatever, but to the eager men with their busy pencils they would mean gain or loss of thousands of pounds. Now the people who had an ear, that is, who took a personal interest in what Jesus was saying, were bad people, publicans and sinners. If one of the scribes around had stood up to read the law, these bad people who pressed round Jesus with such eagerness to hear Him would have hurried away out of hearing as far as they could. Why? Because the law could only tell them what sinners they were, and what they deserved, it could do nothing to meet their need.
But the words that fell from the lips of the Saviour so sweetly upon the opened ear of the sinner were not law but grace. What is the difference? It is very simple. Law is God dealing with me according to what I am. Grace is God dealing with me according to what He is. The law of God tells me what I must do for God. The grace of God tells me what God has done for me. (See Romans 4:4, 5, 10:5; Ephesians 2:8, 9, and many other passages.) But the very fact of God’s stepping in to do the work for me proves that I cannot do it myself. This is the starting-point.
Next, it is very easy to see that the first two parables are not at all like the third in their details. In the first two the whole subject is what the shepherd did, and what the woman did. The only two things that the Spirit of God tells us about the sheep and the piece of money are that they were both lost, and both found. There is not a word about the feelings, thinking’s, or doings of the sheep or the piece of money.
But in the third parable, while it is the father himself who tells us that the prodigal was lost and is found, we get the whole story of how the prodigal got away, what he did, what he felt, what he thought, and what he said, from the time he left the father’s house until the moment when the father met him. This contrast is easy to see. In brief it is the difference between the blessed work that the Lord Jesus did on the cross for God’s glory and our salvation, and the work that must be done in our souls that we may learn our need and God’s way of meeting it. We learn the consequences of the work that was done entirely outside of us, and so get established in grace. The work on the cross was perfect, and God desires that the work in our souls should answer to it; but that is not done in a moment, so the third parable is much longer than the others, but they must come first.
This is why many do not get settled peace, because they do not begin with the Good Shepherd’s work, and so learn its infinite perfection, completeness, and eternal consequences. They begin with their own experiences and go on with them. This is putting the work that is done in us in the place of the work that has been done outside of us, but it is not God’s order.
Have you got settled peace with God? If you have not, ask yourself whether you have not been putting your experience in the place of the perfect work of Christ. How did the lost sheep get on the shoulders of the shepherd?