Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're like well, if God is with me, why is it going like this?
Speaker 1: If God is with me, why aren't things better?
Speaker 1: If God is with me, why do they seem to get that and I don't seem to get that?
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm performing pretty well.
Speaker 1: Why is everything going right for them?
Speaker 1: Maybe God is more with them and less with me.
Speaker 1: How am I supposed to think about this?
Speaker 1: Why isn't God with me more and why do they get that?
Speaker 1: That's what we can think about sometimes.
Speaker 1: You know there were some people in Jesus' time.
Speaker 1: They were called the Pharisees.
Speaker 1: Many of you guys know about these.
Speaker 1: These were most of them, not all of them.
Speaker 1: Most of them were.
Speaker 1: They just had a wrong heart.
Speaker 1: They had a wrong spirit.
Speaker 1: They were thinking about things wrong and Jesus would trip them out, because the very things that they valued the most, jesus seemed to go right against that.
Speaker 1: They were like the most religious people of their time and yet they were often offended by Jesus and all the people that they thought shouldn't be around God at all.
Speaker 1: That don't deserve him, that don't deserve to be talked to with any kind of dignity.
Speaker 1: You know, the tax collectors were kind of evil then they're not now, but they were then or prostitutes or whoever they were.
Speaker 1: Why should they get to hang out?
Speaker 1: Jesus was supposed to be his prophet.
Speaker 1: Why, why does he hang out with them then?
Speaker 1: Why isn't he hanging out with us?
Speaker 1: Because we're the really important people on campus and so that's.
Speaker 1: But that's how Jesus was.
Speaker 1: You know, he magnetized people that everyone else would give up on and the people that you thought were professionals.
Speaker 1: They would always be at odds with him.
Speaker 1: So Jesus is trying to get a point across to these religious leaders about how much he cares about these people that they might consider icky.
Speaker 1: And so he goes through three stories in a row.
Speaker 1: Okay, he talks about a lost sheep, a lost coin and then two lost sons.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk, we're gonna come in right at the tail, one at the last one, the two lost sons because he's trying to make a point to these religious leaders that kind of have a wrong mind and heart and he's saying the very thing that you don't value is one of the things that God values most in the universe.
Speaker 1: So I want to show you in this story.
Speaker 1: It's a parable.
Speaker 1: Parable is kind of like a story riddle with a spiritual point that Jesus uses to illustrate spiritual truths and that's what he's gonna do for these guys.
Speaker 1: But as he does it, he's gonna introduce something to us about the fact that we can even be with God and yet distant from his heart, and that'd be, and that'd be, the ultimate Christmas tragedy.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about these two sons.
Speaker 1: One of them is the older brother You've heard a lot about, like the lost son, the prodigal son.
Speaker 1: You've heard about this guy.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about him.
Speaker 1: But we're also gonna talk about the older brother, because he doesn't get enough air time and he's really more what the story is about than the younger one.
Speaker 1: The older brother represents these Pharisees and Jesus is trying to tell them you guys need a heart change.
Speaker 1: Jesus has been eating with all these tax collectors, these sinners, and starting out, he jumps into this story and says, okay, so there was this son and he wasn't interested in living with his old man anymore.
Speaker 1: He wanted all of his inheritance now.
Speaker 1: And so he says to the old man, hey, I wish you were dead so I can have your stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go spend it.
Speaker 1: And the old man for some reason gives it to him and he goes off, and then he gets in a little bit of trouble and he thinks better of it and then he says wow, what am I doing?
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go back home and be with my family.
Speaker 1: And when he gets back, the father's like oh yeah, he's back, let's celebrate.
Speaker 1: And yet there was this older brother who didn't like it.
Speaker 1: He was resentful, he was miffed, he didn't want to have any to do with this celebration because this father was celebrating the wrong son.
Speaker 1: And what we've got to understand is that these two sons represent two really different approaches to life.
Speaker 1: And you see this all the time.
Speaker 1: We all are a little bit of this, probably all of us.
Speaker 1: We gravitate toward one or the other.
Speaker 1: But you see this in the culture.
Speaker 1: You see ever, all over the world.
Speaker 1: You see people like this.
Speaker 1: The older brother represents moral conformity.
Speaker 1: He's just like I'll tell you what I'm not gonna do what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna, like, buckle down.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do what tradition says.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do what the family says.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do what society says.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna be pristine man.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do everything right and then I'm gonna get what I want because I did everything right.
Speaker 1: That's the way to be safe in life.
Speaker 1: That's the way I'm gonna move through stuff.
Speaker 1: And then you've got you've got this other person who's full of self-discovery and self-expression, right.
Speaker 1: And so this person's like hey, man, forget the rules.
Speaker 1: These rules are too much.
Speaker 1: I can't handle this.
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here.
Speaker 1: These rules are chafing me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna move out, just do things.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make my own morality.
Speaker 1: I don't need anybody's input on this.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna give myself over to doing what I want to do, and that's how I'm gonna solve the problems of life and that's how I'm gonna get what I want.
Speaker 1: Two different approaches to life.
Speaker 1: Jesus is talking about both of them.
Speaker 1: What he's really trying to do is shatter our expectations about what's important to God, because most of the world is gonna think the thing that's really important to God is moral conformity.
Speaker 1: That's what he's after.
Speaker 1: Now we have to applaud the younger brother for a little while.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him the younger brother.
Speaker 1: We mean younger brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: He represents all people on one level.
Speaker 1: Both brothers do.
Speaker 1: We need to applaud him on some level, because he really does.
Speaker 1: He wants to do something about.
Speaker 1: He feels these unique impulses in himself.
Speaker 1: He's like I'm my own person, I wanna express my own life, and God has made all of us unique and he's given us different desires, and there's nothing wrong with expressing ourselves and be like no, I'm my own person.
Speaker 1: I'm not just a part of a thing, I'm a thing, I'm a universe that God lives in and it's important for me to be able to express myself.
Speaker 1: That's really good.
Speaker 1: The problem with it is this young man decouples that from his creator.
Speaker 1: So he says, instead of like I'm a created thing that is still responsible and accountable to my creator, I just totally leave him behind and do whatever I want and really I become my own God.
Speaker 1: One day, akite was just getting more and more irritated because he had this string coming right out of his chest and he's up in the sky flying around.
Speaker 1: He's like man, I could go anywhere.
Speaker 1: Look at all the places I could go, ah.
Speaker 1: But this stupid string just holds me back, man.
Speaker 1: And so, day after day, he's fuming, he's steaming it.
Speaker 1: I hate this string.
Speaker 1: Why is this string holding me back?
Speaker 1: Well, one day it just comes undone.
Speaker 1: He's like finally I'm free.
Speaker 1: And he's just flying, flying, and then he crashes because he failed to recognize that the very string that he thought held him back was also the string that held him up.
Speaker 1: And that's how some of us are.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, when we think about God's commands, we're like I just need to be free of this.
Speaker 1: The problem is, you do need to be free, but you don't need to untether yourself from the very God that holds you up and gives you commands to bless you, not to crash you, as our own ways often will.
Speaker 1: So that's the younger brother.
Speaker 1: But then this older brother, he's a moral conformist man.
Speaker 1: He says I'm just going to work hard.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says I know that would seem right, but it's actually the wrong way.
Speaker 1: Jesus messages this is very deadly, this is a poison and it not only will hurt you, it'll hurt your community, it'll hurt your whole world.
Speaker 1: When you think about what Christians look like in the culture, when you think about how does the world think about Christians, when you think what you hear in the news or what you hear at the office or what you hear anywhere, mostly what you'll hear that is negative is about man, these doggone moral conformists.
Speaker 1: They want to take away everybody's fun.
Speaker 1: They want everyone just to get in line with them and do things only their way, and they're all miserable.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows it.
Speaker 1: The world sees the church mostly as older brothers, as mostly people that are a little bit mad and a little bit irritated at everybody else who's not mad with them.
Speaker 1: Now, that's not necessarily fair.
Speaker 1: It probably is fair at different times and different places over the generations when people got that wrong.
Speaker 1: It's not true.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't matter that it's not true.
Speaker 1: It's how people see it.
Speaker 1: It's the brand that the church has and Jesus says that's why it's not only deadly to you personally, it's deadly to the entire world.
Speaker 1: I don't want people thinking that the poisonous message of moral conformity is what God is after.
Speaker 1: That is not what he's after.
Speaker 1: So Jesus continued.
Speaker 1: He's been telling them these parables verse 11, chapter 15,.
Speaker 1: There was a man who had two sons, the younger brother.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about him first.
Speaker 1: We're talking about three characters in the story and then two more hidden ones.
Speaker 1: Here's the first one, the younger brother.
Speaker 1: The younger one said to the father father, give me my share of the estate.
Speaker 1: So he divided his property between them.
Speaker 1: He's like I don't particularly care about you, father, by the way, I just want your stuff.
Speaker 1: See, I've been thinking about this.
Speaker 1: And as soon as you die, he's the second son, so he only gets one third.
Speaker 1: The first son gets two thirds of all the inheritance, but he gets one third.
Speaker 1: So he's thinking this through and remember, in this time, inheritance is land, it's not just what he's got in the house.
Speaker 1: And so he's gonna sell all this land, he's gonna liquidate it, he's gonna use it.
Speaker 1: And he's like yes, that's what I wanna do, father.
Speaker 1: Now, this is terribly insulting.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to the law in Deuteronomy, he could have had the kids stoned for this.
Speaker 1: He doesn't the father.
Speaker 1: He's like okay, let's see what you get, we're gonna cut that kite string and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Verse 13,.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had set off for the distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living, sold all this land, got all this money, went and squandered it on wild living.
Speaker 1: After he spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country and he began to be in need.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we interrupt, we feel bad for people who are going through a hard time when we try to interrupt their suffering and we try to be like, oh man, that's really bad, let me save you.
Speaker 1: This guy didn't really need saved.
Speaker 1: He needed the famine.
Speaker 1: He needed something to bring him low.
Speaker 1: That was the first domino that ends up.
Speaker 1: Sending him back to the father was how hard it got.
Speaker 1: So before we jump in and rescue everybody, some of us got a rescue complex.
Speaker 1: Let's check that a little bit and say is it possible God is using this to draw them to himself?
Speaker 1: So he went and hired himself out as a citizen of that country, sent him to the fields to feed pigs.
Speaker 1: He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
Speaker 1: When he came to his senses, can you imagine this kid?
Speaker 1: He's out there.
Speaker 1: He's like he's working all day.
Speaker 1: He's looking at, like the pig trough oh man, that was pretty good, gosh man, look at those pods.
Speaker 1: I know there's a couple of roaches in there, that's fine.
Speaker 1: He's just getting more and more hungry and he's thinking about it, thinking about it and I just pictured this.
Speaker 1: I just pictured like one moment his head jerks up.
Speaker 1: What am I doing?
Speaker 1: I am an idiot.
Speaker 1: I could go home and be treated better than this, and that's what he does.
Speaker 1: And he came to his senses.
Speaker 1: So how many of my father's hired servants have food to said?
Speaker 1: How many of my father's servants have food to spare?
Speaker 1: And I'm starving here?
Speaker 1: To this, I'll go back to my father and say to him Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you.
Speaker 1: Now, what I love about this guy's conclusion he knows enough about the father's heart that he thinks that will work.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's one version when the religious leaders are hearing Jesus tell this story.
Speaker 1: They're hearing that and they're like that's a stupid kid.
Speaker 1: That father's never gonna accept him.
Speaker 1: He hasn't done anything right.
Speaker 1: All he's done is waste everything.
Speaker 1: He should look forward to getting a beating when he gets home.
Speaker 1: That's what they're thinking.
Speaker 1: So the idea that the father's actually going to accept him is what is offensive to these Pharisees or religious leaders.
Speaker 1: They see God's heart as primarily angry at sin.
Speaker 1: Well, you can't do that yet, man.
Speaker 1: You gotta make up for some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: You can't just go to him.
Speaker 1: You better get your act back together a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's what this kind of heart set.
Speaker 1: That's how they see God in the entire world.
Speaker 1: They think first get better, then go to God.
Speaker 1: His prodigal son sees it a little bit different.
Speaker 1: He says here's one thing I know about the father Even though I betrayed him and I did some stuff wrong, I know his heart will still be more friendly to me than these pigs.
Speaker 1: I'm still better off with him than I am over here.
Speaker 1: What did he do?
Speaker 1: He trusted that God's heart was primarily friendly.
Speaker 1: My friend, he's right, he's got the right interpretation.
Speaker 1: That's what Jesus is telling us.
Speaker 1: No, god's primary heart towards you is not, he's not just angry about your sin.
Speaker 1: That's not what he thinks about all day.
Speaker 1: When God thinks about you, he doesn't think man, I hate the last thing that they did.
Speaker 1: His heart is primarily towards you, the heart of a friend.
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 1: I just wanna warn you you're missing a few spaces to say amen, just so you know.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of good that I'm already preaching here and I'm looking out and I'm like does anyone even feel this?
Speaker 1: Cause I'm feeling a lot of it right here.
Speaker 1: It's okay, the sermon's not over.
Speaker 1: You've got time to get a little bit louder.
Speaker 1: But he says verse 19, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
Speaker 1: Make me like one of your hired servants.
Speaker 1: And here he's correct.
Speaker 1: He's got the good kind of shame right here.
Speaker 1: He begins to self-identify the right way.
Speaker 1: He's beginning to self-identify first by saying you know what?
Speaker 1: It's true, I'm actually, I don't deserve to go back to my father.
Speaker 1: I think he'll accept me, I think he'll be friendly, but I know that I, like, I don't deserve to be a son.
Speaker 1: That's definitely true.
Speaker 1: And he begins to dawn on him and my friends.
Speaker 1: This is where we all gotta get again and again and again.
Speaker 1: It's not just that he broke dad's rules, he hurt dad.
Speaker 1: And that's what we've all gotta know when we're thinking about our own younger brother's self.
Speaker 1: It's not just that I broke the rules, that's not the big deal.
Speaker 1: The big deal is who I betrayed.
Speaker 1: So let's pretend you've got a friend, you guys are pretty close, and they come to you and they say man, I feel bad about this, but I shouldn't confess to somebody I stole $3,000.
Speaker 1: And you'd probably be like, wow, that's a sum.
Speaker 1: But you know, god's gracious and I'm sure he'll forgive you.
Speaker 1: And then they say and I stole it from you.
Speaker 1: That's still the same sin, but probably it just changed in your heart a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right, you're like wow, I thought we were friends.
Speaker 1: First I felt honored, you were telling me, and now I'm just mad that you stole it from me.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because we already had a relationship.
Speaker 1: How could you steal it from me?
Speaker 1: I've already done good to you, I've loved you, I've been with you".
Speaker 1: That's the way the Father sees it.
Speaker 1: It's not just that you broke the rules, it's that you betrayed and left and demanded from me the one who loves you most and best.
Speaker 1: So he begins to develop good shame.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to character two, the Father.
Speaker 1: So he got up, went to his Father, but while it was still a long way off, his Father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.
Speaker 1: He went to his Son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Speaker 1: The Son sent to the Father.
Speaker 1: He starts saying he's been thinking about this Father.
Speaker 1: I've sinned against heaven and against you, no longer worthy to be called your Son.
Speaker 1: But the Father said to his servants Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.
Speaker 1: Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, bring the fattened calf and kill it.
Speaker 1: Let's feast and celebrate, for this Son of Mine was dead and is alive again.
Speaker 1: He's lost and now he's found.
Speaker 1: So they began to celebrate.
Speaker 1: This guy's coming back and he's like I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work for the old man, I'm not going to be treated with any special, just going to be treated like a slave.
Speaker 1: But the old man isn't having it.
Speaker 1: He says no, no, no, no, we're not doing it that way.
Speaker 1: Get the best robe.
Speaker 1: Did you hear that?
Speaker 1: Whose robe would be the best?
Speaker 1: The Father's robe would be the best.
Speaker 1: He says put sandals on his feet.
Speaker 1: You know slaves didn't wear sandals.
Speaker 1: And so what?
Speaker 1: The Father is saying you don't get to come back as a slave.
Speaker 1: If you're coming back, you only get to come back as a Son.
Speaker 1: Are we hearing that?
Speaker 1: God just doesn't want you to do stuff for him?
Speaker 1: He says look, you're in error.
Speaker 1: And you're still in error despite everything that you've done.
Speaker 1: See, my friends, we're all going to stumble in many ways and we're going to get some minor things wrong and some major things wrong.
Speaker 1: And God says I can forgive that.
Speaker 1: I will welcome you back, I will celebrate you, I'll open my arms, I will even honor you in the presence of others.
Speaker 1: And now this younger Son is beginning to realize and think and contemplate about the fact that his identity is growing.
Speaker 1: He went from okay, I know that I'm not worthy to be called a Son.
Speaker 1: He goes from acknowledgement that he's a sinner.
Speaker 1: But did you see right there at the end of verse 24, so they began to celebrate.
Speaker 1: The young man goes in and does celebrate.
Speaker 1: He doesn't just stand outside and be like, no, but I'm really, I suck really bad, though.
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't do that, he gets it, he believes it.
Speaker 1: I know I am a sinner, but I know that I am a forgiven sinner.
Speaker 1: Guys, that's really important in terms of our identity.
Speaker 1: See, god doesn't want you to just beat yourself up all day.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is true.
Speaker 1: If you're just like man, I'm so awesome.
Speaker 1: I just don't do stuff wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm better than everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need to first go to step one and understand.
Speaker 1: That's not even a little bit true.
Speaker 1: No, you are a sinner, like everybody else.
Speaker 1: You also have hurt the Father's heart.
Speaker 1: But we don't stop there.
Speaker 1: We progress from there to I am a sinner, but I am a sinner who is now and forever a forgiven sinner.
Speaker 1: And that way I'm a new thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not even what I was before.
Speaker 1: I'm not even what I was before I left.
Speaker 1: I'm something new.
Speaker 1: I got raggedy and torn up and now I come back and I'm restored and I retain some of the wisdom and the knowledge I got from going into the pig pen.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: This is one of my first Bibles.
Speaker 1: I got it in 1996, and I tore through it.
Speaker 1: Man, I was just in one of those phases where the Spirit of God was on me and I'm like I don't know everything about this.
Speaker 1: And so I tore through the entire thing.
Speaker 1: I tore it up.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a flimsy cover and so it all got falling apart and it became kind of a raggedy version of what it once was.
Speaker 1: Then I went to a friend and I said can you restore this for me?
Speaker 1: Can you make it so that it's better than it was, because it wasn't all that good in terms of its binding?
Speaker 1: And so she took it and she sewed it together.
Speaker 1: She got better materials and she made it an even better Bible.
Speaker 1: Now, what's so powerful about this for me is all my early first notes.
Speaker 1: You know when you're first figuring stuff out.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of you you're like, oh my gosh, I'm writing on down.
Speaker 1: All these notes and all these things are now captured.
Speaker 1: This is so valuable to me.
Speaker 1: It's more about I couldn't just go buy another one of these because it's got my heart in it and she took that raggedy version and she made it.
Speaker 1: Now it's even better.
Speaker 1: It retains all the old stuff, but it's also improved and better than it originally was.
Speaker 1: See, when we come to Christ and we get forgiven, in some ways you're better than if you'd never sinned at all, because now you know for the rest of forever now, 10 years from now, 10,000 years from now, you know what it's like to be a forgiven sinner.
Speaker 1: You know what it's like that your father overlooked your sin.
Speaker 1: He didn't just not have to deal with it, he saw it, loved you anyway and pulled you in, put on that robe, put on the ring, put on the sandals.
Speaker 1: He says you are my son, you are my daughter and I ain't losing you.
Speaker 1: You guys are doing better.
Speaker 1: Keep it up.
Speaker 1: See, being forgiven is cause for celebration.
Speaker 1: It really is.
Speaker 1: Here's the older brother.
Speaker 1: Third character the older brother Meanwhile the older son.
Speaker 1: This is really what the parable's about.
Speaker 1: This is how Jesus is directing this to these religious leaders.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.
Speaker 1: When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.
Speaker 1: So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on.
Speaker 1: Your brother's come, he replied, and your father's killed a fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound.
Speaker 1: The older brother became angry and refused to go in, so his father went out and pleaded with him.
Speaker 1: But he answered his father look, all these years I've been slaving for you Never disobeyed your orders, you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.
Speaker 1: But when this son of yours squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you killed a fatted calf for him.
Speaker 1: He is mad because he is not being treated the way he thought he should be treated, given all that he's done right.
Speaker 1: He's looking at this comparison.
Speaker 1: He says I'm cheated here.
Speaker 1: He doesn't even call him father.
Speaker 1: He's being super disrespectful.
Speaker 1: He's like hey, look you, you wouldn't do that in that culture too, to the older father.
Speaker 1: And yet that's what he does.
Speaker 1: He's thrown off all that.
Speaker 1: He says essentially, you shouldn't love this kid because he hasn't done right like I have.
Speaker 1: You owe me a lot of stuff for all the ways I obeyed you and I'm still waiting.
Speaker 1: Pony it up Because see, father, here's the thing, I didn't really want you.
Speaker 1: So he didn't say throw me a party with you and me, father.
Speaker 1: He said throw you, throw me a party for me and my friends and you give me that thing that I coveted, that I wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted that goat.
Speaker 1: You didn't deliver.
Speaker 1: So I'm mad.
Speaker 1: You're treating him good and you didn't treat me like I wanted.
Speaker 1: He made a deal.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, father didn't make that deal.
Speaker 1: It's bad news, but we've all got a little bit of the older brother in us.
Speaker 1: Some of us are more older brother-ish than others, but we've all got him in there.
Speaker 1: And you can tell if you've got a little bit of the older brother when you begin to say, god, what's the deal?
Speaker 1: You owe me more than this.
Speaker 1: Look at what I've done for you, god.
Speaker 1: Look at the way I've left that.
Speaker 1: Or I went and did this and I've worked so hard to obey you.
Speaker 1: What the heck?
Speaker 1: Why are they getting so blessed and why not me?
Speaker 1: Because here's the deal.
Speaker 1: This cost me a lot and, I'll be honest, I was expecting more than this.
Speaker 1: I was expecting more, and many of us, you know that was even part of how you came across.
Speaker 1: You were like, yes, I want Jesus, like I see that that's an incentive, but I also want what God's gonna do for me and that's what Jesus is putting his finger on.
Speaker 1: Hey, my God is gonna do stuff for you.
Speaker 1: But if you're thinking about this like God owes you something, like it's a deal you and God are shaking on, then here's the problem.
Speaker 1: You're still really trying to control God, just the same way that the younger son was controlling.
Speaker 1: They're both trying to control God.
Speaker 1: One is by throwing off all the rules and one is by obeying the rules so meticulously that God has to.
Speaker 1: God has to.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna be good, you've got to do what I decided you would do.
Speaker 1: And, my friends, these people are all over the world and it's just the wrong way and it's in all of us.
Speaker 1: One day, a king had one of his servants come in and this servant in particular had a little bit of land and he grew carrots, and he loved the king so much he wanted to bring him his best bushel of carrots, and so he brought the best bushel to the kings of king.
Speaker 1: I just want, I just think you're the awesomeest king.
Speaker 1: I just want you to have these carrots.
Speaker 1: They're my best stuff.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, take a taste.
Speaker 1: King takes a taste.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, these are good.
Speaker 1: He sees the guy's heart and he says man, you really love your king.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you my entire garden to be over.
Speaker 1: Why don't we?
Speaker 1: I want you to run my garden.
Speaker 1: My garden isn't this good.
Speaker 1: Why don't you run all the lands that I have and you can be charged at?
Speaker 1: Well, one of the noblemen is nearby.
Speaker 1: He sees this.
Speaker 1: He's like oh my gosh, he just got to all this land.
Speaker 1: He says I know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: I've got this really cool horse.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get that horse and bring it to the king.
Speaker 1: So he goes get the horse, presents it.
Speaker 1: Hey, king, I just want you to know you can have this horse here.
Speaker 1: It is, isn't it beautiful?
Speaker 1: But the king knows the heart of the noble.
Speaker 1: The king knows you don't actually love me.
Speaker 1: You just want what I can give you.
Speaker 1: So thanks for the horse and that's all he gets.
Speaker 1: Do you see the difference?
Speaker 1: One gives to the king because he loves the king.
Speaker 1: Another demands or implies the king will owe me if I do this for him.
Speaker 1: Our friends, elder brothers, go around doing a lot of good.
Speaker 1: I know this is gonna sound mean.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't mean it to sound mean.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to tell us truth.
Speaker 1: And the truth is there's a lot of great good heart, of people that do a lot of good on planet earth.
Speaker 1: There is a strain in all of our hearts that from time to time, what it does is it.
Speaker 1: I'm feeding the hungry, not for the hungry, but for me.
Speaker 1: I'm clothing the naked, not for the naked, but for me.
Speaker 1: So I feel better about myself, so I can have my record and present it to God and be like see, I saw all these people doing nothing and I'm the one who stood up.
Speaker 1: I'm the one who did it.
Speaker 1: Aren't I better?
Speaker 1: And that's how they control, quote, unquote, control.
Speaker 1: How to control God?
Speaker 1: Are we seeing?
Speaker 1: We can be with God and yet still very distant from his heart.
Speaker 1: And so he says in verse 31, my son talking to the elder brother, my son, the father, said you are always with me and everything I have is yours.
Speaker 1: But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again.
Speaker 1: He was lost and now he's found.
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Jesus says I am with you.
Speaker 1: I am with you, but you can be with me and our hearts are a universal part, because the truth is, you don't care about what I care about.
Speaker 1: We're together.
Speaker 1: The father and the son were together, but their hearts were far apart.
Speaker 1: My friend, I want to suggest to us that there are places our hearts are far and distant from God.
Speaker 1: When we don't care about the people he cares about for us, it's primarily about us.
Speaker 1: We're like forget those guys, look at all they've done wrong anyway.
Speaker 1: God makes us aware of this distance so that we'll, number one, ask for forgiveness for our own self-righteousness and, number two, draw near to those younger brothers.
Speaker 1: Did you notice this?
Speaker 1: Both of these guys are lost.
Speaker 1: Both of these guys are resentful of God's authority and trying to control him in different ways.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the two hidden characters.
Speaker 1: The first hidden character in this story is the Christian.
Speaker 1: The Christian is the one who has experienced what the younger brother has experienced, but has moved on to say now I also carry care about younger brothers Remember, see, this is different than the gospel whereas the older brother's just trying to get God to do stuff because he did stuff.
Speaker 1: The gospel's different.
Speaker 1: We talked about this last week.
Speaker 1: The gospel says Jesus likes you, jesus forgives you, jesus is able to take away the penalty for your sin if you trust him.
Speaker 1: That's the gospel encapsulated.
Speaker 1: Christians believe the gospel.
Speaker 1: What that means is they say it's not just that those are wrong or those are wrong, it's that everybody's wrong and everybody's loved, and Jesus wets everybody who trusts him's appetite to grow in obedience, out of love, not to get God to do something.
Speaker 1: Is this so deep that your minds are just blowing and you can't even speak because it's so profound?
Speaker 1: Is that I'll trust that?
Speaker 1: That's the reason I ain't getting more amens over here, but all that is is a dead end.
Speaker 1: See, true Christians, they understand.
Speaker 1: It's not just that I'm repenting for my bad stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not that I'm asking forgiveness for my bad stuff.
Speaker 1: Check this out, stay with me.
Speaker 1: Stay with me.
Speaker 1: I'm repenting for the sin that's underneath the sin which is my own self-righteousness.
Speaker 1: I'm repenting from all the right things I did for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: I'm saying God, it's not just my actions, it's my heart that is wrong and I need you to forgive it, because I will, in your name, do stuff for me and it leads to flocks leaving the church because we're like this is not relevant to me.
Speaker 1: All of these are older brothers.
Speaker 1: All of these just want what they want and they don't care about the hurting for the sake of Jesus.
Speaker 1: So, first hidden character is the Christian, but the second hidden character and the most important character is the better brother.
Speaker 1: See, there's a version of the older brother that would have been good.
Speaker 1: There's a version that would have celebrated oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love that this son gets to come home Check it out.
Speaker 1: Did you notice?
Speaker 1: This party costed the older brother Because all the inheritance is his now.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if we're killing fatted calves which can feed a whole community, he's like that's my calf, this is all mine.
Speaker 1: I'm throwing this party and I don't even want to.
Speaker 1: It costs the older brother, but the better brother says I know it costs me.
Speaker 1: The better brother looks at you and looks at the father and he says steps forward, I'll take him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever it costs, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: It costs my blood, let's go, because I want them.
Speaker 1: He's the better brother and he leads the right way.
Speaker 1: This brother missed his opportunity to lead Jesus.
Speaker 1: The better brother says right now we're going after people far from God.
Speaker 1: We will severely inconvenience ourselves to help people find their way back to God.
Speaker 1: That's what we call the fierce code.
Speaker 1: That's the first code in the fierce code.
Speaker 1: We will severely, severely, we will severely inconvenience ourselves to help people find their way back to God.
Speaker 1: The reason we do that is because we understand God cares about these people.
Speaker 1: He's not just happy to just give us our stuff, but there's always a cost.
Speaker 1: The better brother knew there was a cost and he paid it.
Speaker 1: My friends, there's always got to be a payment.
Speaker 1: The forgiveness is free.
Speaker 1: You get forgiven for any sin, for free from Jesus, but it still costs Jesus.
Speaker 1: If I come into your living room, I come into a place you watch TV maybe it's the basement, wherever you are and I take a 10-pound dumbbell and I whip it at your flat screen TV.
Speaker 1: You have two options there.
Speaker 1: If you're going to forgive me, you have three if you don't want to forgive me.
Speaker 1: If you're going to forgive me, one of the two things is going to happen.
Speaker 1: Either I'm going to pay for that TV, or you're going to pay for that TV, but somebody's got to pay and Jesus says I'm going to pay, it still has to be paid for.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to be the one who does it.
Speaker 1: And he says now I've been the better brother and I've shown you what to do.
Speaker 1: So now, if you love the Father, do what I do and go after the ones who are missing and lost and don't even know it or care.
Speaker 1: Are we hearing this today?
Speaker 1: That's why we do stuff like Christmas Palooza.
Speaker 1: That's why we give you stuff like these little invite cards.
Speaker 1: It says God with us.
Speaker 1: There's some on the back table there.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can find them around the church somewhere.
Speaker 1: There's just little invites that say come to Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: The reason we do that is not because we just want a lot of people in here.
Speaker 1: It's because Jesus cares.
Speaker 1: As the better brother, I want more people to come home so we can celebrate with all of them.
Speaker 1: And, my friend, you've got to understand, dear heart, you and I, we have the call to be servant ambassadors to those who are still out in the pig pens, not quite come to their senses yet, and we have to be.
Speaker 1: When we're in convenience, we're like why do we have to do this?
Speaker 1: You've got to be a gift card.
Speaker 1: Why are you preaching in such a way that it's not just clear and easy for all Christians to understand, but sometimes you're talking away that, so non-Christians can't understand the reason.
Speaker 1: You're in convenience by that, because Jesus can convenience himself and paid the price.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: We're always going to do it.
Speaker 1: We're going to take the hit, we're going to pay it and if you want to pay that, that means you're going to serve and you're going to pay.
Speaker 1: You're literally going to like pay and tithe the offerings.
Speaker 1: You're going to sign up.
Speaker 1: That's the inconvenience.
Speaker 1: It's not that some amorphous we is going to inconvenience ourselves, my friends.
Speaker 1: That means you and me are going to inconvenience ourselves.
Speaker 1: Come on somebody.
Speaker 1: So here's some applications.
Speaker 1: When there's somebody new here that you don't know, here's what you do.
Speaker 1: It's really, it's super advanced.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to do.
Speaker 1: You walk up and you say I don't think we've met.
Speaker 1: My name is Phil Neblink.
Speaker 1: I know it's an advanced move, but I know that you can do it.
Speaker 1: I know it's inconvenient, but I know that you can do it.
Speaker 1: We're going to severely inconvenience ourselves to help people find their way back to God and we're going to ask God.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 1: We're going to pray to Him.
Speaker 1: We're going to recognize some places we've been the older brother.
Speaker 1: We're going to ask God for a change of heart.
Speaker 1: God, we change my heart.
Speaker 1: It's a heart thing.
Speaker 1: I don't value what you value and I value you giving me my things more than I value other people, knowing your love and your mercy, and it's okay.
Speaker 1: He forgives us.
Speaker 1: But until we ask for forgiveness, he doesn't change us and that's what we need.
Speaker 1: So let's bow our heads, hello.
Speaker 1: We want to recognize that there are places we have just selfishly, just because you know we're part of this thing down here, we've tried to manipulate you or we've been disappointed or mad at you when we didn't get the thing that we thought we should, and we just wanted to proclaim together that's the older brother spirit, that's not who we are, that's not who we're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: We know it's going to try to cling to us, so we ask that you teach us and train our hearts.
Speaker 1: Change is God, to love those you love and follow the example of the better brother and pay the price so that others can come home for the celebration.
Speaker 1: In Christ's name, amen, amen.