The Parable of the Gracious Father

Good morning. My name is Daniel. I'm one of the pastors here.

And we are going to be reading a story this morning that Jesus told us in the scripture.

And stories are interesting. I think stories are part of our lives in really

profound ways. We tell stories about our lives. We tell stories about other people's lives.

We read stories that impact us.

My youngest son, he is like craving stories right now. And so he will bring

us book after book, after book, after book, after book.

It's like, all right, we read this one. Okay, here's another one.

Let's read this one. You're like, aren't you tired? And he's like,

no, let's keep going. You know, he just loves books. And I remember growing

up, I was the same. Like I love to read.

I would read fiction. I would read nonfiction. I loved it. I mean,

I just love these stories, biographies and historical stories.

And I think it's because stories have a way of capturing us and impacting us and changing us.

In ways that other things don't necessarily do that.

Just last night, I turned on the Argentina and Switzerland World Cup match.

And before it started, there was a story.

And it was all about the Argentina team and really how Messi,

Lionel Messi has come in and been a huge part of this and his story and how

it's led him to this moment in his life and his career, to the World Cup and

this huge stage that was right there.

And it kind of changes the way that you watch the game then.

You're kind of paying a little bit more attention to him than maybe you would

have otherwise. stories impact us.

C.S. Lewis said on the importance of stories, in reading great literature,

I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.

Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.

Here as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing,

I transcend myself and am never more myself than when I do.

What he's saying is that stories help us get outside of ourselves and into other

perspectives that we maybe couldn't see otherwise.

A good story can take us from a desert to a rainforest and from the mind of

the simplest of the mind of the most complex.

So it's no wonder that Jesus told us stories to help us to capture meaning and

truth and understand truth in our lives.

And so we're gonna take a look at one of these stories today from Luke 15.

This is a parable that's commonly called the parable of the prodigal son.

I'm not entirely sure that's the best title for it.

So my sermon title is the parable of the gracious father. That's what I would

have titled this section of scripture.

And just so you're aware, the titles that are in our Bibles that are there,

those actually weren't part of the Bible originally.

So if you think, I'm like, oh, he's changing the Bible right now.

No, I'm just like, it's just a title that's there. That wasn't in the original,

manuscripts that are there.

But let's go ahead and dive in here to Luke 15, beginning in verse 11.

He also said, that's talking about Jesus there. He's the one speaking here and telling this story.

He also said, a man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father,

father, give me the share of the estate I have coming to me.

So he distributed the assets to them.

Not many days later, the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled

to a distant country where he squandered his estate in foolish living.

After he had spent everything, a severe famine struck that country and he had nothing.

Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.

He longed to eat his fill from the carob pods the pigs were eating,

but no one would give him any.

When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired hands,

have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger.

I'll get up, go to my father, and say to him, Father, I have sinned against

heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your So.

He got up and went to his father. But while the son was still a long way off,

his father saw him and was filled with compassion.

He ran through his arms around his neck and kissed him.

The son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father told his slaves, quick, bring out the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then bring the fattened calf

and slaughter it. And let's celebrate with a feast.

Because this son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate.

Now his older son was in the field. And as he came near the house,

he heard music and dancing. So he summoned one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

Your brother is here, he told him. and your father has slaughtered the fattened

calf because he has him back safe and sound.

Then he became angry and didn't want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded

with him, but he replied to his father, look, I have been slaving many years

for you and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a young

goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes,

you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.

Son, he said to him, You are always with me and everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and

is alive again. He was lost and is found.

And so Jesus tells us this story. And as we read this story,

it's important to read these stories, really any stories in the Bible,

objectively and contextually.

We have to look at the context of what's being said, but we also might have

to lay down our own expectations and assumptions to really understand the story

to its fullest in what it's really saying.

And so with that in mind, I want to jump back just a little bit to the beginning

of the chapter here to see who it is that Jesus is actually speaking to when

he's telling this story.

So Luke 15, 1 and 2 begins, all the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him.

And the Pharisees and scribes were complaining, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

So the setting is here that Jesus, the disciples are probably there with Jesus

as well, but he's really speaking to two different groups. We've got the tax

collectors and the sinners, and we've got the scribes and the Pharisees.

The tax collectors and sinners, the first group that we kind of come to here,

these have been people who aren't obeying the Jewish law necessarily.

They were probably Jewish of some kind based on just what we can read here and

glean from this here, but they might not have been obeying the rules.

They might not be really aware of what the rules even are.

They're not really following Jesus, but we see they're kind of drawn to him here.

The tax collectors were generally people who were viewed as unjust,

completely unjust. They would take people's money.

They would take more than they were supposed to and kind of pad their own pockets

with it. And they were just looked down upon. They're serving this oppressive Roman government.

And they're just looked down upon by the Jewish people and society in many ways.

And then we've got the Pharisees and scribes, the religious elite.

And these are people who have studied the scriptures. They know what the Old Testament says.

They're following it to the best of their abilities. They're very practical

about it and doing it. The scribes were actually more like religious lawyers

in a way that partnered with the Pharisees to make sure that people were following

these Jewish laws around them.

And they were often seen opposing Jesus in his ministry. They didn't like him

hanging out with the tax collectors and sinners. They criticized him all the time for it.

I mean, he's dining with them. As we see there, this man welcome sinners and eats with them.

They're saying like, you're accepting of these people who are sinners.

You're accepting of these terrible people.

Like you're welcoming them. You're like validating their lives.

Like we just disagree with this.

And so you have these two groups who are there listening when Jesus tells them

this story about two brothers.

I wonder if they might correlate to the two groups. We'll find out here in just a moment.

And so in Luke 15, this isn't the first story that we come to that I read.

There's two other stories that happened before it, which really we see Jesus,

talking about God's heart for the lost, welcoming them in and going to great

lengths to find them and bring them in.

And then we get to the story we just read, which has that theme within it,

but then Jesus takes it just one step further.

So let's begin in verse 11.

A man had two sons.

So as I mentioned, this is quite a popular story referred to often as the prodigal son.

Growing up, I just thought the word prodigal meant, you know,

along the lines of the story, just meant, you know, like wayward or rebellious

or something along those lines.

But the word prodigal, we don't use it in our English vernacular a whole lot anymore.

It means like lavish, someone who's a lavish spender. They're an extravagant

spender to the point of being irresponsible with their spending.

But the thing about this is that son, the prodigal son, this lavishly spending

son, is not the only one in the story.

He doesn't even seem to be the focus of the entire story. Because it starts

off with three people, a father, a wealthy father, as we find out, and two sons.

And a younger son, who's probably going to relate very well to the tax collectors

and sinners who are there.

And an older son, who's going to connect really with the Pharisees and the scribes

who are there to criticize.

And so the younger of the two brothers is highlighted first in this story as

he approaches his father and

he says, father, give me the share of the estate that I have coming to me.

We know just from history that when he talks about the share of the estate that

he would have been receiving, he would have received half. There's two kids.

The older brother receives more, and the younger brother would have received

about half of what his older brother received. So he's going to get about 33%

of this, while his older brother gets about 66% of this estate.

And so it says, and what's interesting about this is the father doesn't really

seem to protest. He's like, okay.

It says, so he distributed the assets to them.

And it continues, not many days later, the younger son gathered together all

he had and traveled to a distant country where he squandered his estate in foolish living.

Now, this is a point in the story where it can make a fairly large difference

understanding the context and understanding the culture that this story is being told in.

A lot of sociologists and anthropologists have kind of looked at the world and

said there's two main frameworks that people look through the world in.

These lenses essentially that they have, they look through the world in.

These aren't necessarily religions, but they're cultures. They're cultures that we live in.

One view is called the guilt-innocence framework, and the other is referred

to as the honor-shame framework or paradigm.

We hear in the Western live in a guilt-innocence framework.

That's how we kind of view the world that we live in. And so it's through this

lens that we might look at this story and we might say something like, what a little punk.

I mean, he went and squandered all of your inheritance. You get all this inheritance

and you go and you just go squander it.

And now you've got nothing. Well, good job. You know what? You kind of deserve

what you got there. Yeah.

We're gonna place blame on him because he's spending the wealth that he got

irresponsibly. He's living this sinful life. He's now living in financial ruin.

And so we're gonna look at him. We're gonna analyze his actions and we're gonna

decide whether he's innocent or guilty.

And as we read the story, we're gonna be like, oh, he's guilty.

I mean, like he's guilty of what he did.

But that's not really the cultural lens that this story is necessarily being told to.

The Bible does kind of cover both paradigms, but it's really interesting.

The story is being told more in an honor-shame paradigm. The Bible is really

written from an honor-shame perspective.

And much of the Eastern world still lives in that perspective today.

And so they're gonna place blame on the younger son, but for a very different reason.

They are looking at the son and asking whether the son has brought honor or shame on his family.

And then depending on the family's response to the son, they might bear some

shame as well, as we'll see in a moment, but probably not like we're thinking they might.

So as Westerners, we might read this story about a kid who wants his father's

money to go and try and live his best life and he fails at it.

You know, we think estate and we think money is kind of how we look at it.

But they're hearing the story in this context in shock of what's really going

on, because the shame that this son is bringing on his father and his family is really unheard of.

This punk kid is dismantling his family's legacy. He's selling off his portion

of the land, like his estate would have largely been land that's been passed

down through generations to his family.

And so now he's the one who's taking this and he's like, well,

I'm going to go live this other life somewhere else. He's going to sell that off.

So this land that's been in their family for generations, he's just selling it.

They connected their identity to the land that they lived on in so many ways.

And so he's dishonoring his family's heritage, his ancestral inheritance that's there.

I mean, this was shaming the family in a big way. He's basically saying like,

I'm not part of this family anymore, I'm out.

Like, I don't even want your name attached to me. And as he dismantles his family

legacy, what have also been shocking for this crowd to hear is that the father

doesn't defend his own honor. The father just takes it.

The expectation of the father in this moment would have been to shame his son

right back, to put his son in his place. You don't come and dishonor me like this.

I'm gonna put you in your place right now.

Potentially even, depending on how extreme this is viewed, to saying like,

no, okay, no, no, you're not part of this family anymore.

You're gonna shame me like this? You can get out. You're not even getting an

inheritance anymore. That might've been a more expected outcome of this story.

Instead, it's the father who now bears the shame and ridicule of this son and

potentially even the society that he lives in because they're gonna look at

this father and be like, what is wrong with you?

You should be fighting back. You should be retaliating against your son.

We think stupid kid and we roll our eyes, we might feel bad for the father,

but ultimately it's this kid's decision what he's doing.

But this is unconscionable within the culture that they live,

that this father would just choose to bear this shame and that this son would

do to his family, it doesn't make sense.

And the son isn't just moving away to live his best life as he sees fit.

He's abandoning his family, completely abandoning them and walking away.

And so that's what he does. He travels to this foreign land,

but it gets worse for him as he goes.

Because his son squanders all of his money, a famine hits the land,

and now he's sitting there poor and destitute.

So he shamed his father, and maybe he feels like he kind of got away with that.

But now his father isn't there anymore. Now the shame is on him. I've got nothing.

I'm poor, I'm destitute, and I have no one in this land.

And it just seems to kind of multiply on top of him is now he's hired by the

citizen of this foreign land that he's living in.

So, I mean, and he gets this job that's absolutely horrible from the story we

can see. And it's like, I mean, he's just, he's there and now he's looked down

upon because he's this foreigner that's being basically put to slave labor over here.

He's working with pigs, which in the Jewish culture, pigs were unclean.

So Jesus is telling the story to them and they're hearing this, oh my gosh, pigs.

Like this is the worst of the worst. for this kid.

But even worse than that, it's not just the pigs that he's working with.

He's now wanting to eat what the pigs are eating.

I mean, this is the lowest of the low that you can get at this point.

But then a turn happens in verse 17. It says, when he came to his senses.

When he came to his senses, he finally sees that he's the one in the wrong.

That the situation that he's in is not somehow someone else's fault or something else's fault.

It's not the famine that has put him in this position. It's him.

It's not the citizen of this other country who's given him the worst of the

worst jobs and that's why, you know, I'm over struggling. No, it's him.

It's not his friends who abandoned him at this point. It's him.

He's the one responsible for getting himself into this mess.

And what I find so interesting as his heart begins to turn and his heart begins

to change is the very first place that he looks is to his father and his father's house.

Something in him realizes there's a goodness there that maybe he missed.

Verse 17, how many of my father's hired hands have more than enough food?

And here I am dying of hunger.

He knows where he has to go, but now he has to come to terms with the fact that

he's abandoned his family.

He sold off his portion of the estate, essentially saying to them,

I'm no longer part of this family.

I'm separating myself from you completely. I am not your brother. I am not your son.

That's who he has to go returning to, to try to be accepted in some way.

And so he says, I'll get up, go to my father and say to him,

father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy

to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired hands.

So he got up and went to his father.

He's going to the man that he has shamed more than anybody else in his life at this point.

And surely this is the moment that the father is also waiting as well.

Crawling back to me, are you?

Yeah, I see how it is. You go and you do all this kind of stuff,

you hurt your family, you disown your family, you bring us shame,

you sell off this land, so now we have less land that we can work,

and you're coming back here poor and destitute and penniless?

You are worthless.

What are you going to do, pay me back for all of this pain? You can't do that.

You don't even have anything at this point in time. You're a disgrace.

That would have been the expected response. I mean, he knows he has no standing

in this family any longer.

And he knows that to pay his father back means just, I mean,

that's a life of servitude.

So that's what he's going to try to do. But at least he'll be able to eat, right?

So he gets up and he goes to his father. And what we find is that indeed,

the father has been waiting for this moment.

Verse 20, but while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and

was filled with compassion.

He ran through his arms around his neck and kissed him.

Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father doesn't even let him finish his thought.

The father told his slaves quick, bring out the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Then bring the fattened calf and slaughter it. And let's celebrate with a feast

because this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.

So they began to celebrate.

It turns out that the father had been looking for him and waiting.

And the father doesn't wait until he gets to him. He runs to him.

He sees him from a long way off, it says. And he runs to him.

Running to this lost son.

And when he gets to him, he lovingly embraces him. And the son tries to acknowledge

his needy position, but the father stops him and instead takes his tattered

clothes and clothes him in the finest garments, puts a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet.

This son of mine, the father says, as he welcomes back this son into his family

as a son with the full rights and privileges of being in the family again.

Completely undeserved. What this son deserved was a starve to death with the pigs.

Instead, he's come to his senses.

And what that means is that when this son finally gets to this place of being

fully honest about where he is, who he is,

what he's done, that he really is unworthy of being a son because he has sinned,

against heaven and against his father.

The realization that he's having is not just that he's sinned against his father,

but that even now that he's on his own, he still doesn't have it together.

He still can't get this life right and he can't blame anybody else for it.

And it's in that place that he encounters his real father and grace, unimaginable grace.

We read this and we see this beautiful story and it's something that we long for, this grace.

To know that we might be accepted in our brokenness.

This incredible grace that we have read about and we know that God possesses

and we know that it's in this grace where we suddenly find freedom in our lives.

We find freedom from the habitual sins that entangle us, freedom from the shame

that we've lived under our entire lives, freedom from our own low self-image,

freedom from the weight of expectations that the world puts on us,

but also freedom to be who God has called us to be regardless of what the rest

of the world thinks, freedom to be bold for Jesus in a broken world,

freedom to fully spend our lives in pursuit of God and his ways without fear of failure anymore,

because we suddenly know just how much we're loved.

We see it.

How often though we miss this grace.

How many people have I known who haven't experienced God's presence and the

joy of this freedom and the love in their lives?

Why is that? Why do we miss this?

What is it that causes us to miss this grace? See, the difficulty of grace is

it's only through the full recognition of our sinful nature that we can have

the hope of fully experiencing God's grace.

We have to come to terms with who we really are.

When I became a Christian, there was a lot of sin in my life.

And one of them was anger and rage.

I was so angry. And I mean, and it would just erupt out of me.

I could be in stores and just scream at cashiers that they didn't do exactly

what I thought they should be doing.

And I brought people to tears numerous times just through the rage that lived

in me. I would scream at my parents.

Just, it was uncontrollable. When I became a Christian, it was only overnight that changed.

I woke up the next day a completely different person than I had been before.

But there are other sins that didn't go away. They were still there.

I used to have a real problem with pornography.

And I didn't know what to do about it. Became a Christian, it didn't go away.

I would go to God, I would confess my sin like the Bible tells me to do.

I would go to others like the Bible tells me to do and go confess my sin to

them as well and nothing really changed.

In fact, half the time I would go to people to confess my sin and they'd be

like, yeah, me too, like I'm struggling with that as well.

But you're like, great, thanks so much. That's really helpful.

Glad to know that we're in this fight together.

But I began to wonder, though, if there was really freedom.

I knew that the Bible talked about freedom from sin. I'd read about it.

I knew it was supposed to be there, but I wasn't seeing it.

I didn't know how to get it. And there came a moment in my life where I'm sitting

there and I'm analyzing my life and I'm looking at it and I'm like,

I don't think I can do this anymore.

Like, I want to be a Christian. I want to follow Jesus. But like, I'm terrible at this.

I'm not strong enough to do this. I'm too weak to follow Jesus.

And so I called a friend and expressed all of this to him. And his answer really caught me off guard.

So I told him all of this and he said, Daniel, do you know how proud of you

God is right now in this moment?

To which I said, I'm sorry, what? You heard what I just said, right?

And he continued, he said, Daniel, you've been trying to do this in your own

strength your whole life. And you're finally realizing that you can't.

You're not there anymore.

And so now you get to meet the real Jesus and the full force of his love and his grace and his mercy.

But it took the full recognition of who I was.

Up to that moment, I really thought that I could do it. I could overcome all of my sins,

but that wasn't the answer. And in that moment, I did find that there was a

father running towards me to embrace me.

And I met him really for the first time and got to know him for the first time.

And a freedom that I had never known before came flooding into my life because

I realized in that moment that the stories were true.

There was nothing that could separate me from the love of Christ.

I still haven't gotten over that moment.

And the primary mission of my life since that moment has been that I want other

people to experience this as well.

Because there is nothing in this world that compares to that. Not even a little bit.

And Jesus is trying to communicate to us here through this story that we are far more broken.

We are far more sinful than we could ever imagine our lives to be.

But there's a savior and a God who loves us far more and accepts us in those

places that we can't imagine him accepting us.

He's calling us to our senses and beckoning to us that we would return.

And while it seems from the Bible that repentance really comes through a revelation

of God, which makes it difficult, what the Bible also tells us is that if we

will seek him, we will find him.

And we can know this unimaginable grace that God gives to us.

And if the story ended right here, we could leave feeling pretty good this morning

that we can bask in God's love and acceptance as we look to him despite the

horrible brokenness that resides within us.

And we still can leave that way this morning, but the problem is the story doesn't end here.

We were briefly introduced to another son at the beginning of the passage.

We're told there's a man and two sons, and immediately we're introduced to this

younger son who demands the estate.

But now this older son comes into the story in verse 25.

Now his older son was in the field. As he came near the house,

he heard music and dancing.

So he summoned one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

Your brother is here, he told him, and your father has slaughtered the fattened

calf because he is in back safe and sound.

When we begin to understand the story, we can kind of empathize with the older brother though.

We're like, yeah, I mean, you left, you abandoned all of us and now you're back,

and our father is throwing a party?

Like this doesn't make sense at all. And so the son's response might feel right

to us. Verse 28, then he became angry and didn't want to go in.

So his father came out and pleaded with him, but he replied to his father,

look, I have been slaving many years for you and I have never disobeyed your orders.

Yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours, yeah, he hadn't forgiven his brother.

When this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes,

you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.

Son, he said to him, you are always with me and everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

In the beginning of this story, it's the younger brother who leaves home and

the older brother stays.

Now the younger brother has returned home and is welcomed in while the older

brother is outside, refusing to come in.

The younger brother returns and puts the full force of his hope in the mercy of his father.

The older brother returns and puts

the full force of his hope in his own behavior and his right standing.

And so we might ask at this point though, but aren't we supposed to behave?

Isn't that part of this whole Christian thing that we're supposed to behave?

Aren't we supposed to do what the Bible asks us?

Like how is the older brother actually in the wrong here?

And what we find the problem is in this story is that the older brother has

worked so hard to be right and to be good that he never really got to know his father.

And now he's looking at this younger brother who left and was completely disobedient

and shameful who's now accepted,

how do we make sense of this? what are we supposed to do with this?

And I think it's worth somebody came up to me after the first service and asked

they said, how is it that a son, these two sons could live there their entire

lives and not know their father?

And it's a good point. And it's a good question. And what we have to think about

though, and when we look at this is we're reading a story that Jesus has told us.

We're given the information that Jesus has given to us in the story.

These people don't exist outside of this story.

So there is no backstory to this. We don't know what the story was leading up

to this. All we're told is what Jesus gives us.

And so that's the answer to that. Why did they know? Well, there was no story

before this. This is a story that Jesus is telling. It's not a factual story

about people's actual lives. It's a fictional story to help us to learn, you know, what's here.

But let's take a look at another scripture that I think is going to help us

to make sense of what's going on here from 1 John 2, starting in verse 3.

This is how we are sure that we have come to know him, by keeping his commands.

The one who says, I have come to know him, yet doesn't keep his commands,

is a liar and the truth is not in him.

Okay, but wouldn't this support the older brother though?

I mean, he's been obedient. It's a younger brother who was disobedient.

We gotta keep reading. Verse five, but whoever keeps his word truly in him,

the love of God is perfected.

This is how we know we are in him. The one who says he remains in him should walk just as he walked.

Okay, we're getting a little bit of a clue now because this older brother who

remained is not walking as his father has walked.

He's at odds with his father here. They're looking at the world in two very

different ways at this point in time.

Let's jump down to verse 9, which is really going to sound like it's almost

a response directly to the story we've been reading here.

It says here, the one who says he is in the light but hates his brother is in the darkness until now.

The one who loves his brother remains in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, walks in the darkness,

and doesn't know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

The plight of the older brother is so hard because he thinks that he is so right.

He's done everything right. He's obeyed his father and done what his father asked.

He didn't leave and dishonor his family like the other younger brother did,

but he never got to know his father in the process.

We just read, the one who says he remains in him should walk just as he walked,

but he's not walking as his father is walking.

He's living in deception.

Darkness has blinded his eyes. He can't see. Because he's so focused on himself and his rightness.

See, the problem is the truth of the older brother is that we can grow up in the church.

We can serve in the church. We can know what the Bible says.

We can do what the Bible says and yet still remain outside because we're focused

on our own good actions, our own righteous standing and even our own theological correctness at times.

But we miss our father in the process.

And do you see what happens when that's the focus? See, to someone who has staked

their relationship to God on their behavior and their rightness,

they will be especially offended when someone who hasn't believed as they think

they should be behaving suddenly receives grace.

What does this look like for us today? Well, let's say you have a neighbor and

you've gotten to talk to this neighbor and they're of a different political

persuasion than you are.

I mean, let's just say they're Democrats. Listen, we're in Marion County.

It's like 123% Republican or something like that here. Amen.

And you know you've talked to them and they don't believe in Jesus.

But they showed up this morning to church and they're hearing about this God who forgives them.

And they're hearing what he actually does and that forgiveness and that grace

that he pours out and they say, man, I wanna follow that.

That's who I wanna follow in my life. That's what I wanna be a part of.

They've realized their sin and they come and they turn to Jesus.

What are we hoping they've repented of?

What are your expectations for your neighbor in that moment?

Is that they would suddenly change their political persuasion.

We might be putting expectations on them that aren't necessarily in the Bible.

It's pretty easy to find ourselves in the shoes of the older brother.

Let's look at it a little bit differently. If you're in a conflict with someone,

and I hear this so often, well, I'll apologize when they, and then we put some condition on it.

When they acknowledged that I was right, That's when I'll apologize.

When they change their behavior in a certain way that I have now dictated what

that behavior should be, that's when I'll apologize then.

I'll apologize when they apologize to me.

But what we're ultimately saying in that moment is that when they comply to

my standards, that's when I'll accept them.

But that's the exact opposite of what the Father is saying here.

Son, it's not based on what you have done. It's based on who I am.

I'm the only one who can bear the shame and the guilt of your younger brother,

and bear your pride and your self-sufficiency.

Only I can restore your brother to the family. And it's only in knowing me that

you can be restored to the family as well.

Isn't that the danger that we so often are tempted to live in?

How often do we turn our faith into a formula that we control based on our own

self-perception of what we've done for God rather than what he's done for us

in the relationship that he is inviting us into?

Tim Keller, who's a pastor out of New York City, said in his book on Galatians,

the great and central basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts

are set on God, but how unshakably his heart is set on us.

And the Bible reminds us well that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We love because he first loved us.

And I think that's why Jesus ends the story here with his compassionate plea

to the Pharisees and the scribes as well.

This grace is also for you guys.

Will you come in?

You're going to have to lay your life down now.

If you're to save your life, Jesus says, then you must lose it for my sake.

We have to lay our lives down and be honest about who we really are,

our brokenness, our utter sinfulness, our agendas, our wrongness,

and even what we view as our rightness.

We have to lay it at Jesus' feet.

And what we find is those feet are feet that have been running towards us this

whole time, ready to embrace us and welcome us back to the family.

The story ends and we don't know what the older brother does,

because the end of the story is also our invitation to come home as well. Let's pray.

Jesus, we are so in need of you, God. We.

We're so quick to,

look at our lives and believe that we are right in just about everything.

But God, you come to show us that there's only one who is right. That is you.

And so you do call us to lay our lives down at your feet. And,

God, I thank you that it's when we do that, God, that you lift the shame off

of our shoulders for the lives that we've lived.

Because now we know that we were created by this amazing God.

Who loves us beyond our brokenness and beyond our sin.

God, I pray that that would just go deep within our hearts.

We thank you for your love. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your

mercy that you pour out on us, Lord Jesus.

Jesus, you came from heaven to die for us so that we could know this so deeply

within our hearts and that we could then go live in this world free.

So we thank you.

I pray that as we walk out of these doors and we live our lives this week,

that we would remember that, that we would know that, that we would see it,

and he would give us opportunities to come to our senses,

so that we could see you for who you really are. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Let's finish with this verse from John, 1 John 3, verse 16.

1 John 3:16

This is how we have come to know love that he laid down his life for us that is good news.