Wednesdays: February 24 – March 31

6:15 – 8:45 P.M.

Supper, Fellowship, Worship, Discussion Groups

In this compelling six-session study, pastor and best selling author Tim Keller presents a new way of looking at this well known parable.
 
Where most teaching focuses just on the younger “wayward” son, Dr. Keller challenges us to consider both the role of the elder brother and the father as well.
 
Even Jesus began his parable with “a man had two sons” so, you see, the story is not just about the younger son who leaves home and squanders his inheritance before eventually returning home.
 
The story is as much about the elder brother as the younger, and as much about the father as the sons.  To this end, Dr. Keller contends that the story might better be called “Two Lost Sons.”
 
In six sessions your group will explore the prodigal who spent until he had nothing left, the self righteous and offended elder son, and the father who forgave with reckless abandon.
 
And in it all, your group will learn the love of the Heavenly Father who lavishes his love upon his children and welcomes us back into his loving arms.  Session titles include the following:

• The Parable
• The People Around Jesus
• The Two Lost Sons
• The Elder Brother The True Elder Brother
• The Feast of the Father

What’s The Prodigal God about? It’s about being ‘prodigal.’ The word ‘prodigal’ is an English word that means recklessly extravagant, spending to the point of poverty. The dictionaries tell us that the word can be understood in a more negative or a more positive sense. The more positive meaning is to be lavishly and sacrificially abundant in giving. The more negative sense is to be wasteful and irresponsible in one’s spending. (Some people think prodigal means ‘wayward,’ but there is no dictionary that indicates that the word means ‘immoral.’) The negative sense obviously applies to the actions of the younger brother in the Luke 15 parable. But is there any sense in which God can be called ‘prodigal’? I think so.

First, the elder brother is offended by the father’s extravagant and (to him) irresponsible welcome of his younger brother. The father, of course, represents God, and legalists are always offended by the gospel of free grace. They see it as wasteful and unfair. After all, they worked for their acceptance. These are the people to whom Jesus was telling the parable in the first place—the Pharisees who objected to Jesus’ lavish grace to tax collectors and sinners. They certainly thought Jesus was being far too free and irresponsible with the love and favor he was promising them from God. Jesus depicts them in the parable as the elder brother upset with his father’s prodigality.

Second, the positive meaning of the term ‘prodigal’ is definitely true of God. He spent himself to the uttermost on the Cross. He did so ‘recklessly’ in the sense that he did not reckon the cost to himself. Jesus was someone who spent himself into helpless poverty (2 Corinthians 8:9) and was ‘in want’ in the most extreme way.

So the title ‘Prodigal God’ calls attention not only to the mistaken way that legalists regard God’s gospel of grace, but also to how Jesus, though he was rich, spent everything without thought for himself, that we might be saved.