Category: Two Sons

With some revisions and changes this is a series of sermons I preached in California, Louisiana  and Tennessee based on the insight I gained from two people: Kenneth Bailey and Paul Bretscher. 

We start this series off by looking intently at all the words Jesus uses to paint this rather colorful picture and we also look at the words Jesus did not directly say, but rather, “inferred.” And we w do that by looking at this very first sentence of this parable: “The parable of the Great Teacher.”

There was a man who had two sons and one of them came to His father and said, “Father, I wish you were dead!”

Whenever we receive guests we often say, “Make yourself at home.”

I can remember so vividly our 7th grade teacher, Mrs. Lemon, reading to us with such enthusiasm the classic, The Tale of Two Cities.

We not only want to look at what Jesus said, but also what he didn’t say.

Loose is the opposite of firm. It is the opposite of hard and fixed.

When I was a young teenager I used to go camping in the woods behind my house.

Jesus is on our side. He is with us till our very end.

Servants are mentioned here in passing by the boy. “My father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare.”

There are a lot of stories in the Bible about banquets and festivals.