The Other Lost Son

Would you join me as I lead us in prayer?

Father, as we think of your great love that you sent your son.

You love this world.

You loved us.

We think of the love of Jesus who endured the cross despising its shame.

The love of the Holy Spirit who draws us to you.

Father, we pray this morning that we might in greater measure grasp the reality of your love in our lives and your love towards those who have yet to come to know you.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

The scripture reading this morning is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

I'll be reading verses 11 through 32.

Please forgive my voice.

It is a, I have a little bit of a cold, and uh I'll try not to let my voice crack too much.

I was joking with the elders.

I might sound like I'm 13 or 14 again.

I said, but if that's the case, I hope I have a growth spurt as well.

You can find it on page 874 in the Pew Bible, if you happen not to have a Bible here with you.

And if you're here this morning and you don't own a copy of the Bible for yourself, please take that Pew Bible home with you.

We would love for you to have it as our gift to you that you would read and study.

Uh and then uh come back each week and we'll study it together.

Luke chapter 15, beginning in verse 11.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

And he said, There were there was a man who had two sons.

And the younger of them said to the father, Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.

And he divided his property between them.

Not many days later the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.

And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.

So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.

And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread?

But I perish here with hunger.

I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Treat me as one of your hired servants.

And he arose and came to his father, but while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for my son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

And they began to celebrate.

And now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.

And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

And he said to him, Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.

But he was angry and refused to go in.

His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you kill the fatted calf for him.

And he said to him, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

It was fitting to celebrate and be glad.

For this your brother was dead and is alive.

He was lost and is found.

Thus ends the reading of God's word.

I want to remind us as we continue to look at this passage, the beginning of this holy week, we're reminded of all that Christ did in his humiliation, in his active obedience throughout his life, and his obedience on the cross and suffering in our place.

And we're reminded of God's great love, and this passage reminds us of the love of God.

Look at the beginning of this chapter for the context of what we're studying here.

It says, Now the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to him.

We need to understand the context of the parable of the prodigal or the parable of the two lost sons.

Really, this is an outworking of what we see in verses 1 and 2 of the sinners, the tax collectors, the outcast, the unwanted, the marginalized, the misfits, those that were lost in their sin and recognized that they were in poverty and there was nothing that they could do about it.

God had begun to open their eyes.

They saw Jesus and they saw in him the hope that they didn't have in themselves, and God was stirring, and they were moving towards Jesus.

And then the Pharisees, verse 2, and the scribes grumbled.

They were critical.

They were condescending, saying, This man eats with them.

He takes them in and treats them as something valuable and special and worthy.

And they said that as an indictment to Jesus.

And so Jesus then tells three parables of lostness.

We saw the story of the lost sheep.

And the shepherd who pursues.

We saw the story of the lost coin.

And the woman who searches.

We see now the parable of the lost sons.

And notice I say lost sons because I want us to understand as we study this passage, we saw last week the younger brother, the younger son, and it was very evident of the circumstances that he was in and his need to turn to the Father.

And it's a reminder of the people who were coming to Jesus, the tax collectors and the sinners.

But what we learn here is that there is not just one lost son, there is two.

There are two.

It is not just the younger son that is lost, it is the older son as well.

We saw last time the younger son's hasty departure.

He asked for his inheritance, offending his father, disregarding his father, having no concern or care for him.

And then we saw him leave and the downward spiral of reckless living as he squandered it all, pleasing his heart and his mind and everything that he saw.

He withheld nothing from before him.

As long as his money lasted.

But it wouldn't last forever.

And he got to the point of desperation, and something began to stir.

And he came to himself and he remembered the gracious love of his father.

But he thought to himself he was unworthy, and in a sense he was, and yet he thought his father is so good.

Maybe he can be treated as one of the servants.

And then we saw the lavish love of a gracious father and welcoming him and seeing him and having compassion on him and running to him and falling on his neck and embracing him and bringing him in and celebrating and giving him the status of a son and not a slave.

But there's another brother in this story, and I want us to consider him this morning.

The celebration is going on.

We see this in verses 23 and 24.

They kill the fatted calf.

They eat and they celebrate.

But now we see the unconcerned elder brother in verse 25.

It says, now his older son was in the field.

I want us to stop there for a minute.

The older son was in the field.

Now he didn't know the events of that day, but it's telling that the older son was in the field.

For him, after his younger brother left, it was business as usual.

It was business as usual.

In fact, he didn't uh go out to look for his brother.

It may have been better than business as usual, because now, moving forward, the younger son had cashed out his share of the inheritance.

So the younger son, everything that they earned, all of the income from the farm, in his mind was his.

All of the property that was left, whatever wasn't sold, whatever wasn't distributed, he now is sitting there.

Everything moving forward is his.

And no one else's.

The younger brother's out of the scene.

His brother cashed out.

And his older brother's in the field.

He's not looking for his younger brother.

He's not standing by his father watching.

He's in the field.

He's, as it were, he's trying to make sure that he gets the most bang for his buck in this inheritance that's his.

There was apparently no love lost.

We see this as he responds later.

In fact, and we noted this last time, and I'll expand on it this morning.

There's something missing in this parable.

We talked about it last time.

When we see the first parable of the lost sheep, you have a shepherd that is out looking for the lost sheep.

We got to the second parable, and the parable of the lost coin, and we saw the woman who had lost it.

She's searching high and low, sweeping, looking for the lost coin.

And now we come here, and we see the younger brother, this lost son, and we ask ourselves, where is the one who is searching?

Pastor Emman Clowney asks these questions in uh in a book that he wrote, and on this, there's a chapter in there on this passage, and this is what he writes.

Suppose the older brother had indeed known the father's heart.

Isn't that the problem here?

The older brother doesn't understand the heart of the father.

What would he have done?

Surely he would have come running into the house when he was told that his brother had returned.

Might he have done more?

Well, if he had really shared the father's feelings, he too would have been looking for his brother.

Perhaps being already out in the field, he might have seen him first and gone running to meet him.

Could he have done more?

And then Pastor Clowney shares this story.

He says, during the war in Vietnam, Army Lieutenant Daniel Dawson's reconnaissance plane went down over the Viet Cong jungle.

When his brother Donald heard the report, he sold everything he had, left his wife with$20, and bought passage to Vietnam.

There he equipped himself with the soldier's gear and wandered through the guerrilla-controlled jungle looking for his brother.

He carried leaflets picturing the plane and describing in Vietnamese the reward for news of the missing pilot.

He became known as A Tao Feng Kong, the brother of the pilot.

Life magazine report described his perilous search.

In fact, he was so well known even by the Viet Cong that they gave him respect and allowed him to look for his brother because they understood the heart of the older brother, looking for and longing for his younger brother.

But not this brother.

This brother was out in the field.

We see in verse one that the true elder brother is seeking the lost.

The true elder brother, Jesus Christ, is out in the field, out in the highways and byways, looking, seeking.

But not this brother.

This brother is in the field.

So we see the unconcern of the elder brother.

We see his heart revealed.

Well, how does this apply to us?

We pause for a minute before we go on with the narrative.

How is our heart towards lost?

Is it business as usual?

Do we go about doing our own thing in our own field as if the younger brother isn't missing?

As if everything is fine, it's status quo, business as usual?

Nothing's amiss, nothing's awry, nothing's wrong.

Everything is fine.

The Pharisees were concerned about religious practice and religious orthodoxy.

They were the keepers of orthodoxy, they were the practitioners of uh of piety.

They were the righteous ones.

They were the ones that prided themselves in how how spiritual and close to God they were.

But did they care about the lost?

Did they care about the bruised and battered and beat down and broken, the hurting, the wounded and the wicked?

He had no concern for the lost.

I'd mentioned that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference, and maybe indifference is the worst form of hate.

Do we understand the heart of the Heavenly Father?

God so loved the world he sent his Son.

Jesus.

God on the cross to pay the penalty for sin.

Jesus was seeking and saving.

He went, seeing the fields were white unto harvest.

Do we have the heart of the of our heavenly Father towards the lost?

Do we understand?

Do we hurt?

Do we ache?

Do we long to see people come to Jesus?

God is more concerned for the lost than we are.

And God is at work.

And he calls us to share his heart and to go looking for the lost brother.

Well, the true heart of the older brother is exposed as he hears about the return of the younger brother.

Let's look on in the end of verse 25 and following.

It says, And he came and drew near to the house.

He heard music and dancing.

And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

He wants to know what's going on.

He comes in, what's happening?

There's a celebration.

What's the deal?

Maybe he's a little indignant, thinking, how could I not know?

This is my house.

This is my inheritance.

What's being spent is my property.

We don't know what it what his thoughts were at the moment, but he hears music and dancing.

And he calls a servant here.

Interesting, the word translated servant can also be translated child.

It was also used as a servant of the king.

And the servant responds.

And I have to wonder if there was a bit of excitement in the servant's voice, if he understood more clearly the heart of the father than the older brother did.

Because he says, Your brother has come.

Your father has killed the fatted calf because he has received him back safe and sound.

Your brother, he says, has come home.

He's home.

Your brother is home.

And your father, your father who loves him and was longing for him, your father has killed the fatted calf.

He has celebrated in the highest way possible.

And yes, older brother, he has received him back.

He's fully restored.

But we see the response of the older brother.

Verse 28, but he was angry and refused to go in.

He was angry.

Tim Keller notes that anger is a reaction when something you love is under threat.

Anger isn't always bad, but it's a reflection of what it is that's in our heart that we love.

He notes this in the in a sermon.

He says, if you look at the things in your heart that anger you, and then ask this question, what am I defending?

And you have an answer to the things your heart loves the most.

There is righteous indignation when God's honor because we love him.

There is anger when our family is hurt by others, and we rightfully love them and want to protect them.

But we get angry so often, and the anger is directed at others, and it reveals what's in our hearts and what we truly love.

So anger can be appropriate, but clearly here it's misplaced anger.

He is angry and he refuses to go in.

Maybe he saw the exclusive claim that was under threat, his inheritance slipping away.

Now his own younger brother moving back in.

Everything that is spent moving forward is not his younger brother's, but his.

Maybe it was his self-righteousness that someone so unworthy, someone so less than him, could take a place in the family.

In his mind, maybe his brother had had everything that was coming to him.

He has nothing left.

Whatever it was that stirred him, he was angry.

What would have happened?

Imagine with me for a minute, what would have happened had it not been the father who saw the younger brother, the younger son?

Imagine what would have happened if it had been the older brother who had seen the younger brother coming home.

And he had met him on the way, he had met him on the path, he had met him as he had come across over the horizon.

How different would that conversation have been?

You, what are you doing here?

Look at yourself.

You're a mess, you're disgusting.

You smell the high heaven like manure.

Where have you been?

What have you been doing?

How could you do this?

How could you hurt the heart of your father?

You don't care.

How can you even claim to be a son?

Get out of here.

You're not wanted, you're not accepted.

Leave now before you hurt him even more.

You were so arrogant, you were so cocky.

Now look at you.

Look at what you've done.

Look at what you've become.

Look in the mirror.

Face yourself and realize you don't belong here.

This isn't for you.

But that isn't the story.

That isn't what happened.

It's the heart of the father that we saw.

But now we see the heart of the father again.

We see the heart of the father again.

The father comes out, verse 28, and entreats him.

I don't want this to be lost on us.

The father, the heart of the father that was turned towards the younger son.

The heart of the father is turned towards the older son.

The father could have been absolutely indignant at the older brother.

For his high-handed rebellion and refusal to come in.

He had no right to not come in and join in the celebration with his father.

Look at the reaction of the son of the older brother.

He answers his father, verse 29.

Look, these many years I have served you.

Literally, what he says here is, I slave for you.

And I continue to slave for you.

I am slaving for you day in and day out, week in and week out.

Don't you even notice all of the hard work and things I do, breaking my back to try to please you and serve you?

I'm a slave to you.

And don't you even see it?

He points to all of his works and all of his effort and all of his machinations to try to please the Father.

I slaved for you all these years.

I never disobeyed you.

In his heart, what he's saying is, you owe me.

You owe me all that I have done, all that I have labored all of these years, I've never disobeyed you.

I've always followed the rules.

You owe me.

There are some quid pro quo, some this for that.

It's like a barter system.

God, I did this for you, now you owe me.

This is what he's saying, Father, I did this for you, now you owe me.

That's his attitude for his father.

That's his understanding of his relationship with his father.

He reveals that even though he was in the house, he had no true understanding of the heart of the father.

He did not know his father, even though he was close in proximity.

He says, You owe me.

And then look at what he says next.

And I'll share with you what the Greek says.

It says this it says, You give your smut-filled son Philemonion, and you can't even buy me a happy meal.

Okay, that's not exactly what it says.

But that's what he's saying here.

He's saying, You look at your son.

Look at your son.

He was out squandering his money on prostitutes.

Now, he couldn't have known that.

The son had just come back.

He didn't know what the younger brother had done.

He would have had no way of knowing.

But he assumed the worst.

He assumed the worst of his younger brother.

That was what was in his heart.

Or perhaps, maybe secretly, he thought, now, if I was in that situation, this is what I would do.

But he assumes the worst.

And he has contempt for his father's grace and forgiveness.

He's saying, How dare you forgive him?

How dare you accept him?

How dare you restore him?

How dare you celebrate.

Really in both of these sons.

Now we see in the context of it that Jesus is talking about God's love for the lost, his desire to minister, to reach them in the heart of the Father towards those who are caught up in sin.

But it's easy for us, even as believers, to fall into the trap of these two brothers.

For some of us, we fall into the trap of the younger brother.

We read a passage like this, and sometimes we feel just like the younger brother did in verse 18.

We're not worthy to be called sons of God.

We're not worthy to be his children.

Surely God can't accept us as his sons.

And even as followers of Christ that we've asked for forgiveness and come into a relationship with God, somewhere in the back of our minds is this lingering question: does God really love me and accept me and forgive me and restore me and treat me as his own and place me on equal footing with all of his other children?

And sometimes we fall into the thinking of the older brother, of looking at our position and our status, looking at all the years that we've known Christ, and we see all of these people who are outside of the church who don't have a relationship with Christ, and we look down on them with contempt because they're caught up in their sin.

Or maybe we slip into the mindset of the older brother, thinking to ourselves, God, you owe me.

How hard I work for you, all of the things I do for you, I serve you.

I've given my life for you.

You owe me.

And so even as we see the message here, it's important for us to reflect in our own hearts and our own minds, our own lives, and how easy it is for us to fall into these traps.

In fact, I find it in my own life.

You know, I've been reflecting a lot over the last several months, and God's doing a lot in my life, and um pastors are still growing too.

Um thinks I'm not a sinner, you just need to come and stay with me for a day, and all illusions will be wiped away.

But back seven years ago, um, when our oldest daughter, and I shared this story before, so I'll just share it in brief, but I want to share a little bit about how that affected my heart.

Um, when my oldest, Grace, was when we were pregnant with her, at 19 weeks we developed third-degree heart block, which means the upper and lower chambers of her heart stopped communicating.

So the upper chambers of her heart were beating at 135 beats, her lower chambers were beating at 64 beats a minute.

Um because of that, we had to go in every day for an ultrasound.

And the doctors told us that any day could be the day that things just took a turn for the worse, and they he warned us there would be these cascading events, and so we were looking for the first clue of what that might be, of what these cascading events, because then we knew we were going to lose our daughter.

And every day I prayed, God, please heal her.

Please heal her heart.

And every night I went to bed hopeful that in the morning when I woke up and we went to the to the to the perineatologist and we had the ultrasound, that the doctor was going to say, we don't understand it.

The heart block is gone, everything's normal.

And every morning I woke up, and as we drove to the hospital, to the to the doctor's office there, there was this fear that today was going to be the day that we lost her.

And every day I prayed and and and I began to pray and think, God, I have served you, I have given up other careers I could have done for you.

I've never asked you for anything, God.

I've only I've only asked you for one thing.

Right now, I'm asking you, please heal my daughter.

And I prayed every day, and I cried and I prayed and I pleaded, and in my heart I thought, God, you owe me at least this one thing.

And it didn't happen.

And something in my heart closed down.

And there was something in me that said, Does your father really care about you?

Does he really know?

Is he really interested?

And I began to question and doubt.

And God has been over these years and in even in recent days of showing me the greatness of his love as Heavenly Father.

And that he has plans and purposes that we don't understand, but that his eye has always been on me.

It has never left, that he has always been there loving me and caring for me and delighting over me and at work in me.

And so we can slip into the mindset of the elder brother very easily.

But look at the lavish love of the Father as we close.

Verse 31 and 32.

And he said to them, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive.

He was lost and is found.

We saw the lavish love of the father when the younger brother came and he saw him and he had compassion and he ran to him and he fell on his neck and he began to kiss him in this affectionate kiss, and he restored him, turning to the servants and celebrating.

We saw the father coming out to meet the older brother in graciousness, not in anger.

And now the father appeals to his own goodness that he is gracious in relationship.

You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

He's gracious in giving.

It was necessary.

This is the heart of the Father.

There was nothing else appropriate to do in such a wonderful circumstance.

Don't you know me?

Don't you know my heart?

This, your brother, was dead and is alive.

He was lost, and now he's been found.

What's amazing here is the story ends abruptly.

We never find out what happens to the older brother.

It just ends right there.

There is something deeply beautiful here that I think we miss.

Remember in verses 1 and 2 that Jesus was talking about the sinners and those who were on the outside who were coming in?

And then we saw the Pharisees and the scribes.

What's amazing here is Jesus is telling this story more to the scribes and Pharisees than to the sinners.

And there is in here a pleading and a calling for the Pharisees and the scribes to repent.

Like the father is calling to the older brother and asking him to recognize his graciousness and his generosity.

Jesus is turning to the Pharisees and the scribes, the religious leaders who were later to put him to death and is pleading with them to come to him.

And that Jesus is reflecting the heart of the Father towards those who would later kill the Son of God.

Let's pray.

Father, as we close this parable, this powerful passage of Scripture.

That today is the day that you are calling them to recognize their sin and their need and to turn in faith and forgiveness to Jesus Christ.

Or maybe like the older brother who is caught up in religious self-righteousness but doesn't understand or know the heart of the Father and again needs to repent and turn to Jesus Christ and forgiveness and faith.

And Father, for each one of us here, that we fall into the trap of the younger brother, thinking we're not worthy.

That even now we don't feel your love.

Or we're like the older brother, thinking that you owe us, and we miss the reality of your goodness and grace.

Do your work in our lives, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.