Prodigal Series Day 15: Good Father, A Story within a Story

Welcome to week 3! This week really highlights the positive aspects of the story.  We are spending the rest of our time together focusing on the Father, and He will leave you in awe. 

I’d like to introduce you to a pair of inter-related parallels which can be better appreciated now have a fairly good handle on the text. 

Back in week one, I suggested that the prodigal son parable was a parallel to Jesus’ own ministry.  The parallels don’t end there!  Let’s push ourselves a bit more and extrapolate further.  Let’s also consider that this is not the only story of exile in the Bible, right?  We have the exile motif all throughout the Old and New Testaments.  There’s even a whole book dedicated to exile: the book of Exodus. 

We not only have another exile-type narrative in the Prodigal Son, but we have a narrative which is actually a microcosm for the entire Bible!  Think about it! The entire Bible is one entire exodus story…a story between two gardens (in Genesis and then in Revelation), wherein God is revealing how His lost children find their way back home to Him through Jesus. 

Remarkable!  The Prodigal Son is a stand-in for the entire Bible! 

OK. Ready for one more parallel?  Let’s take this same metaphor one step further.  If the Bible is the story of how God’s children get reconciled back to Himself, which is also the story of the Prodigal…then the Prodigal is also totally reminiscent of the entire human race. 

We are lost.  We need to be found.  Going back to the Father through Jesus is how we get there.

See, I told you this “basic” story is more than it appears, even after many readthroughs! Have I made good on my promise to teach something new on an old story yet?  I hope so!  If not, you are certainly wiser than I am!

And believe it or not, we are still not done with uncovering what we can glean from the parable (even when the series is over, there will still be way more we haven’t touched on!).

Last week we learned how this is actually the story of two lost sons, not one.  This week I want you to consider something else entirely:  it’s a story about a father’s love. 

We are going to explore just how well the father loved by looking at his reactions throughout the parable.  You see, he really challenged norms in three main ways, and we are going to spend a day on each of those ways before wrapping up at the end of the week. 

The next three days will be relatively short teachings, but they will offer lots to reflect upon for the reader who yearns to apply biblical principles to their life. Sound like a plan?

See you tomorrow!

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