(9.20.26) Sermon | The Prodigal Son | Patrick Hardy

Well, hey, good morning, generations.

Good to be with you today.

Is it good to be here at church?

Maybe.

Some of you are having a good time, some of you not so much.

That's all right, you know.

Hopefully that changes, or you know, it doesn't.

You know, it's all good.

Uh I'm Pastor Patrick, I'm the lead pastor here on staff.

And if this is your first time with us, I do want to just say welcome.

We're so glad that you've chosen to be here on a Sunday morning.

What we know is that going to do going to a new church or finding a church is is really hard.

So our hope is that you felt welcome from the moment you walked in and that the coffee was hot and you got a donut and you're having a good time this morning.

There's no better place to be than at church on a Sunday.

Is that right?

Come on.

I do want to take one moment, I want to celebrate what happened yesterday.

Um some of you know, I want to thank all of our volunteers that came and helped to serve at the food pantry.

I don't know the exact number, but we passed out some serious amounts of food yesterday.

So can we just give a hand to all those volunteers who serve to pass out food to help our community be able to be well fed this month?

So, and it it's not just sun, it's not just the Saturdays when we pass it out.

We have volunteers who are here on Tuesdays and Fridays in order to sort and pack and to bring all the food in.

So uh if you're ever looking for a place to serve, I know Pastor Don would greatly appreciate your help and we'd love to have you on a third Saturday.

But uh God's doing some really cool things through uh through our food pantry ministry here at Generations.

Um you know, I I'm a I'm a middle child.

Um I have a younger sister, her name's Kristen, and then I have an older brother uh named Weston, and uh Weston was a few is a few years older than me, not was, still is, um, and he was a popular guy around town.

Um in high school, I don't know if there was anyone more popular than my brother Weston.

Students loved him, teachers loved him, and most importantly, the ladies loved Weston.

So when I got old enough and I went from middle school to high school, um I kind of felt like my name was no longer Patrick.

I was really known as like Weston's little brother.

If if you're a younger sibling, you kind of know what that's all about.

So now don't get me wrong, I I love my brother Weston.

Uh we were best friends, we would play games together, we would joke together, we shared a room for many, many years, and eventually Weston was my best man at my wedding.

But there were moments in my life where I wished that Weston wasn't my brother.

I wanted to be known for me, for who I was, like anybody in here would.

Um I didn't want to be known as the popular guy's brother.

I wanted to be the popular guy myself.

You know what that?

Um so there were moments in which I felt like being Weston's brother was overshadowing me.

I would feel like everyone was looking out for Weston and overlooking what I had going on in my life.

And this feeling isn't just for middle children.

Uh we have all felt overlooked or overshadowed in our lives.

Maybe you worked really hard at your job for a promotion that was opening up, and when that promotion opened up, they didn't even look at you or consider you for that position that you worked really hard for.

Maybe you were going in to have surgery and you had a bunch of people who said that they were praying for you, but once you had the surgery, nobody ever checked in.

Maybe you were a first-time mom battling postpartum depression and a new level of anxiety for the first time, and the words that were said to you that resonated in your head was you just gotta toughen up.

We've all felt overlooked and overshadowed.

It's almost as if we don't exist or if we disappeared, that no one would really even care.

And I wish that this was just true, like outside of the church, like outside of Christian community, but I think that it's also a problem that we find within the church as well.

We've probably experienced it if you've been around church long enough.

You share a prayer request that's really big and a problem in your life, and someone decides that they're going to one-up it.

They're gonna top you because their problems are bigger than yours.

Or you go to a church and clicks begin to form, and there's an in-crowd and there's an out-crowd, and it feels like you're just on the outskirts and can't break your way in.

And if there's one place that no one should ever feel overshadowed or overlooked, it's within the church, and yet sometimes we can be worse at it than everybody else.

We've all felt overlooked and overshadowed, but I want to remind you that although you may feel like nobody sees you, God sees you.

Psalm 139, 1 through 3 says, You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise.

You perceive my thoughts from afar, you discern my going out and lying down.

You are familiar with all my ways.

The God of the universe not only sees you, but he knows you.

He knows what you do, he knows your every thought, he knows everything you do, he knows every struggle that you've experienced in your life, every weight that you're carrying, and even when other people overlook you, God never does.

And this morning we're gonna look at the the parable of the prodigal son, and we're gonna see that not only how God sees you, knows us, and loves us, but how we are called to live when we feel overlooked or overshadowed in our lives.

So if you got your Bible this morning, open it up with me.

We're gonna be in Luke chapter 15 in just a moment.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

Uh, if you don't have your Bible, no worries.

All of our scriptural texts will be up on the screen for you to follow along.

You see, when Jesus would teach, he would oftentimes teach in parables.

And uh in our Western worldview, I think we look at parables in a certain way.

We look at them as like fictional stories with like a good moral teaching to extract at the end of it.

My my daughter, she really likes the TV show Super Kitties right now.

I know you all are big fans of super kitties, but super kitties at the end of every episode, they'll give like a good like lesson for for her to learn.

So now she runs around the house and says, I'm brave, I'm smart, I'm strong, I'm kind.

You you've if you've watched the show, that's they sing it.

And she sings it and she says, Dad, I'm so brave, I'm so smart.

And she's learning these lessons from the episodes as it goes along.

It's it's great.

It's super annoying, but it's great.

Um and I think we read the parables and then we extract the bottom line lesson from it, but the problem with this way of thinking is it leaves us kind of going like, oh, that that's a good idea, and then we just go back to our lives the way it was.

We treat parables almost like the Bible version of super kitties.

It leaves us inspired, but then we just kind of go back to the way we were before.

But the Greek word for parable actually means to lay or cast alongside of.

If the lesson learned from a parable is a direct, to the point moral teaching or principle for you, then what you haven't done is you haven't laid it alongside your life long enough.

You see, Jesus, when he uses the parable, he's not giving you a lesson that you need to learn.

He's telling us a story that exposes something inside of us.

So here's my encouragement for you today.

Don't jump to the conclusion.

You may have heard this story before, you may have heard this parable, you may have heard another pastor preach it, but I'd encourage you to treat this parable like a Trojan horse.

Let it sneak up on you.

Because a parable is used to lower your defenses and to speak truth that can sneak up on you.

So, with all that being said, would you stand with me out of the respect of the reading God's word as we read Luke 15?

We're gonna go from verse one down to 24.

We're gonna do a little jumping around, so you gotta stick with me, but let's let it sneak up on us this morning.

So, Luke 15, starting at verse 1, says this.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Jump down to verse eleven with me.

Jesus continued, There was a man who had two sons.

The younger one said to his father, Father, give me my share of the estate.

So he divided his property between them.

Not long after that the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth in wild living.

After he had spent everything there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need.

So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to the fields to feed pigs.

He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

When he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death.

I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your hired servants.

So he got up and went to his father.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.

He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.

The son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servants, Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.

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

Bring the fattened calf and kill it.

Let's have a feast and celebrate.

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

He was lost and is found.

So they began to celebrate.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

You may be seated this morning.

You may be wondering Patrick, why did you st why didn't you just start at verse 11?

There's a Bengals game I gotta get to, and you're delaying that experience.

You see, Luke, he's giving us a really important detail here about who Jesus is actually giving this parable to.

Who is it that he's actually teaching?

You see, Jesus, he has this crowd that's gathered, and there are sinners and tax collectors who are in front of him, but then on the outskirts of this crowd, there are the religious leaders of the day, and they're kind of muttering to themselves, like, hey, this man he eats with sinners.

Who is he to be teaching anything?

Like he shouldn't be even be associating with these people.

What's he doing?

So the group that Jesus is speaking to needs two completely different messages.

He's speaking to, yes, the tax clin tax collectors and the sinners, but he's also speaking to these religious leaders of the day.

He's speaking to both crowds at the same time.

So Jesus, he begins to tell his story that there was a man and he had two sons.

And the youngest of the two sons, he begins to get a little bit fed up with his family and what's going on around him, and he decides that he's gonna ask his father to just give him his half of the inheritance right now.

And what the youngest son is basically saying to his dad is actually my life will be better without you in it.

I'd rather you just be dead and I have my money than to have to live in this situation anymore.

And you can imagine the father has some serious emotions going on.

I mean, he's probably angry, he's probably frustrated, he's probably disappointed in his son, but he's also probably heartbroken all at the same time.

But in the midst of all that emotion, the father gives to the son exactly what he asked for, half of the inheritance, and lets him go on his way.

And the son he heads off to the countryside and he begins to spend all of the money that he had just gotten on all the lavish things of this life in his wild lifestyle.

In verse 14, it says, after he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in the whole country, and he began to be in need.

What a convenient time for a famine to show up, right?

So he had wasted all of the money that he had just received from his father on the things of this world and self-pleasure, and now he's left with nothing.

He's got no food, got nowhere to sleep, got no house, and he goes, You know what I should probably do is I should probably go get a job.

But I guess his reputation wasn't very good because the best job that he could get was he could go out to the field for this master of these pigs and he could feed the slop to the pigs.

It's the exact job that you and I would not want.

And while he's out there and he's feeding the pigs all of this slop, he begins to look at it and he goes, You know what?

I'm really hungry, and that slop actually doesn't look too bad.

You gotta be down pretty bad to be thinking that the slop of the pigs is something that you want to eat.

And you know, it says something interesting that that nobody would give him any.

And I wonder if he got down so bad that he actually went to the master of these pigs that he was working for and asked, like, hey, could I have some of this slop?

Would you give me some of this?

And that master said, No, you won't.

So don't so not only is he hungry, not only does he have nothing, but he's also humiliated at the same time.

This youngest son has absolutely hit rock bottom.

And Luke writes that when he came to his senses, he thinks, you know what I should do?

I should go back to my father's house because his hired servants are eating better than I have.

Even them have more than enough to eat.

I'm gonna go eat crow.

I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna see if he'll take me, and I'll just be one of his servants.

The sun is down so bad that he thinks the best option for him is to go back to his father, who he spat in his face of, asking for his inheritance, and ask for help.

And he begins to walk back.

He begins to go back home.

And as the sun begins to round the corner and uh come to the driveway of the home, and the father is sitting on the front porch, and the father sees the son from a long ways off, and immediately without hesitation, he stands up and he runs to the son and he embraces him and gives him a hug and welcomes him home.

Not only is this a radical display of love being shown for his son as the head of the household, for him to run was actually viewed as shameful.

He was taking on shame in order to go welcome his son home with open arms.

But the welcome doesn't just end there.

He begins to celebrate his son even more, and he tells the servants, quick, get the fattened calf, get the best robe, put the sandals on his feet, put a ring on his finger.

We are celebrating my son, who was once dead and is now alive.

And they begin to celebrate.

They throw the party of the ages, they invite everybody over to celebrate that this son has returned home.

The son, who had turned his back on his entire family, wasted all of the inheritance on meaningless things.

Sinful things.

He's welcomed back home and he's celebrated with the best of the best, the fattened calf, the party of the ages.

And I need you to know that the story of the prodigal son is actually my story.

It's your story.

We have all taken the inheritance that God has given to us, and we've squandered it in sinful ways.

We have sinned, and because of sin, we are separated from God.

But the father in this story takes on shame and runs to his son to welcome him home.

And Jesus ultimately takes on shame as he goes to the cross for himself for our sins and dies for us.

You see, Jesus doesn't wait for you to get home, he runs to meet us.

And the first time the father is shamed because his son is leaving.

But the second time the father willingly takes on shame in order to welcome him back home.

Now, if I were the father of the son, or if this was Knox, my son doing this, I don't know if this would have been the approach I would have taken.

You know, sure, I still love him.

I would love that he's back home, but maybe we go with a little bit of like a slower approach with this.

Like, you can come back, but like you're gonna earn it, all right?

I need to see that you've changed, that you show a little bit of remorse before I just, you know, throw the biggest party of all time for you.

Or maybe like you can come back, but we're gonna put you on a repayment plan.

I mean, we gave you a lot of money, you wasted it, you're gonna earn it back, you're gonna pay it back, and then you'll kind of come back into our good graces.

I mean, to me, that feels like some worthy consequences.

That feels like wisdom.

He should have to earn it.

But the father embraces him, restores him, and celebrates him with the best of the best.

You see, our Heavenly Father is not standing at the end of the driveway waiting to punish us when we come back home.

No, instead, he's running towards us with open arms, ready to embrace us, to restore us.

And that's the good news.

We were the ones who walked away.

We were the ones who sinned, we were the ones who broke relationship with God, but God loved us so much that he ran after us.

Jesus stepped into our shame.

Jesus went to the cross, Jesus took on sin on himself, and because of what Jesus has done, there is a way home for you and me to be in right relationship with God.

Because of that moment, because of what Jesus has done, we can be restored.

So when you turn and tur turn towards the Father, what you'll realize is that the Father is already running towards you.

Now, usually that's where the sermon ends.

The band comes on up, we do a little invitation, you know, we sing, and I send you on out.

But Jesus wasn't only teaching the sinners and tax collectors.

No, he was also teaching the religious leaders of the day as well.

And in the back of this crowd, I'm sure Jesus, as he's sharing this story to them, he can hear the religious leaders kind of snickering back and forth to each other, like, who does this guy think he is?

What a ridiculous story.

What a ridiculous thing to teach them.

That the father would just welcome you back.

But Jesus flips the story on its head and continues, and he talks about the other son.

Look at what it says in verse 25.

It says, Meanwhile, the older son was in the field.

When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.

So he called one of the servants and asked him, What was going on?

Your brother has come, he replied, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has come back safe and sound.

The older brother became angry and refused to go in, so his father went out and pleaded with him.

But he answered his father, Look, all these years I've been slaving for you.

I've never disobeyed your orders, yet you have never even given a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him.

While the younger son spit in the face of his father, taking his inheritance and just going and wasting all of it, the other son had to stay home.

He watched his father's heart be broken.

And the other son stood by his side and was loyal.

He was unwavering.

He was honoring to his father.

He has made all of the right decisions and has done nothing wrong.

And to be honest, the other son probably never did any of this out of the motivation that he wanted the fattened calf killed for himself.

He probably did it just because he was trying to honor and love his dad through all that he was going through.

While his younger brother was gallivanting throughout the town.

So when the younger brother returns, there's a lot of pain and damage that's been done in this other son's heart.

He's been carrying this weight for a really long time and he's probably annoyed, he's probably hurt, he's probably angry, he's probably heartbroken as well for what his father's doing for his other his brother while not doing for him.

Why would there be such fanfare for someone who's caused so much pain to the family?

But look at what the father's response to this outburst is.

He says, My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate and be glad.

Because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

And that's it.

Story over.

And I remember there were times that Weston would come home from school and he would get all the praise for what he had done.

Like Weston would achieve and he would get all the attention, and I felt as though myself and my sister were like an afterthought to my parents.

We would go to Target or Walmart, and my brother Weston, he would go to the DVD section and he would pick out all the DVDs that he wanted.

And it felt like mom and dad's answer was always yes, but when I went and picked something out, it was always you gotta put that back.

We're not gonna buy that for you.

I felt overlooked, overshadowed.

We all feel unseen when we look at those around us being celebrated, and it can feel like we are the ones being overlooked.

Whether it's the job promotion, the work done around the house, the position that we think that we have earned, we all want to be recognized and be given the credit where credit is due, or at least where we think that it's due.

We all feel like the other son in our lives, but Jesus leaves this parable open-ended.

Remember, he's speaking to the sinners and the tax collectors, but he's also speaking to the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the day.

And Jesus could have ended this parable by saying that the son comes to this, you know, he comes to this place and he goes, you know what, I'm gonna go and celebrate my brother, and goes inside and enjoys the party, and he has this total heart change.

Or Jesus could have ended this story and said, you know what, the brother, he was so mad that he went back off to the field and he never celebrated his brother.

But Jesus leaves us in this tension of, well, what happens next?

There's a choice to be made here for the oldest son.

And the choice is hard because there are a lot of emotions that are involved here.

You see, when we feel overlooked, we are left with a choice.

Will I focus on who isn't seeing me, or will I look for who God is calling me to see?

You see, Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees who often ostracize the sinners because in their eyes they thought that their sin was the reason that the Messiah hadn't returned yet.

And Jesus is calling them to step outside of their finite perspective and to look at the sinners around them.

He doesn't command the Pharisees to lovingly embrace the sinner, but he leaves them with the choice in the example of the Father as a leading.

What I didn't mention to you about my brother, and some of you know this, my brother actually has Down syndrome.

You see, all the moments that when I was growing up, I felt like I was being overlooked.

I was actually the one doing the overlooking.

Sure, Weston got a lot of recognition that I wanted for myself.

I wanted the attention, I wanted the praise, but I had never considered the opportunities and accomplishments that I had in my life that he was never gonna get to do.

I got to play high school and college sports, I got to go off to college, I got to move out away from my parents.

The times that I felt most overlooked were merely times making up for the missed opportunities that he had in his life.

You see, walking the Christian life oftentimes is just like this, where we're walking step by step with God, trying to do everything right, make all of the right decisions, and then there are people who just seem to just come around who are celebrated, and you can feel like you're almost invisible or forgotten to others around you.

But here's the good news: God sees you when you feel overlooked.

We are called to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.

We are to celebrate those around us following the example of this loving father who runs down the driveway to embrace the coming home of the Son.

All that we see in the times when we feel like we're the other son is all we see is ourselves, our struggles, our circumstances, our hard work.

It's me, me, me.

And when we see others, and all we see is their sin and their shortcomings and their past and why they're not as worthy as we are, we are just stripped of the joy in this life, and we constantly feel as though we are being overlooked.

But instead, we're called to be a vessel through which the acceptance of the Father is displayed through us as we run with loving embrace to welcome those home into the presence and the relationship with God.

We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ in this world and to allow actions of humility to shape and mold us into Christ's image.

So as the band comes on up and we get ready to close, I want to acknowledge something for us right now.

For us as a church, we are in an interesting season.

We are in a season of change.

And because change is exciting, uh it's awesome, but it's also scary.

It also is hard, it's also difficult because change means that the things that you've loved, the things that you're accustomed to, the things that you've invested in, they are changing.

And whenever things change, it's easy to feel like you are overlooked.

It's easy to think, what about me?

What about what I've done?

What about the things that I've always done?

What about the things that I'm interested in?

What about the things that matter to me?

And I want you to hear me clearly this morning.

God sees you.

God knows you.

He sees your faithfulness, he sees the years you've served, he sees the prayers that no one else has heard, he sees the sacrifice that no one else has noticed, he sees the things that you've given up, he sees when you feel overlooked.

But here's the challenge that Jesus gives us through this story of the prodigal son.

When you feel overlooked, remember the father sees you.

And when you see someone else being overlooked, be the one who sees them.

You see, the father, he sees the son and he ran away, who had ran away, and when he sees him, he races back to warmly embrace him.

But he also sees the son who stayed at home.

The father sees the sinner who's coming home, and he sees the son who's standing outside the party.

He sees both of them.

And as we pursue this vision of Vision 141 to reach the 141,000 people in northern Kentucky who do not know Jesus, I'm gonna be honest with you.

Our goal is not to make you comfortable.

Our goal is to be a church where people who are far from God can walk through these doors and discover that there is a father who's running after them to embrace them with loving arms.

You see, we want to be a church who runs down driveways with the Father because there are prodigals in all of our lives.

Maybe it's a son or a daughter who's walked away from the faith.

Maybe it's a brother and a sister who's not living the way they should.

Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a coworker, maybe it's actually someone who's sitting three rows in front of you right now that you haven't taken the time to see and notice.

And maybe, just maybe, you've been waiting for them to make the first move towards you.

Like when they ask, I'll mention it.

When they're interested, I'll say something.

They don't really want to come, I'm not gonna invite them.

But what if Jesus is inviting you to make the first move?

Jesus doesn't wait for us to get home, he runs to meet us.

And if we've ever experienced that kind of love from the Father in our own lives, then we should become the kind of people who run towards others the same way.

So this morning, we're gonna close with the song The Jesus Way, but during this song, I I want to invite you, I want you to think about someone in your life, a prodigal, who's someone that you can pray for, for God to soften their hearts, to open up a door, to create an opportunity for you to share what Jesus has done in your life with them and to invite them into the loving embrace of the Father.

So as we sing this final song, I invite you, if there's someone that's so heavy on your hearts, I truly do believe that the battle begins on your knees.

These altars are open.

Let's be a church who prays for those who are lost.

Let's be a church who invites them back in with open arms.

Let's be a church who's for the lost, not just for our comfort and for our preferences.

I want you to pray that God would open a door for you to love them.

I want you to pray that God would soften their hearts and that God would give you the courage to reach out to them.

Remember, the Father sees you, so go see someone else.

Did you pray with me?