The Prodigal Son | Luke 15:11-32

Morning.

Today's text is from the book of Luke, chapter 15, verses 11 through 32.

Luke 15:11–32

And he said, There was a man who had two sons, and the younger of them said to his 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 the 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 fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this my son was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

And they began to celebrate.

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 fattened 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 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 killed the fattened 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

He can come and come on up here.

Clap uh while he approaches the stage.

I have this thing where I say it's customary in our culture to clap when people walk towards stages.

Yes.

Uh the uh JP was one of my one of my first and has become one of my best friends in the PCA.

Uh, just one of those great gifts that the Lord had in store for our family uh and for for uh us as a church, but and for me personally uh in coming into the PCA is just relationships that I've gotten uh like the one I've gotten to develop with JP.

Last year, about this time, we went up to Presbytery.

Uh, I rode up with him and Garrett, who also works at his church, and uh we were checking into the same hotel, and I went in to present my last my information for my reservation at the hotel, and then they said, You didn't do something, and you don't have a reservation at this hotel.

And then I turned to JP and I and I gave the saddest look I could, most pitiful look I could possibly conjure in my face, and it and they immediately offered me a roll away bed in their uh hotel room and uh let me just tag along.

But that's just a little glimpse of the generosity that uh um they've shown.

And their church is Christ Presbyterian Church Inglewood, which I'm heading to soon to get to preach there.

And they are going to be moving to uh the DU campus.

They're going to be preaching in one of the chapels in Eiliff Theological Seminary, which is the heart of the beast.

This is like when when uh I don't know, it's like how they blew up the asteroid in Armageddon.

They drilled right into the middle of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, or when like Johnny Depp got swallowed by the Kraken.

That's where he'll be preaching from.

And uh this is such a strategic church for our presbytery.

Uh, this is so important for the future of the church in Denver and for just our hope for what it means to be ministering alongside churches like this.

I think being on DU's campus, they're looking to get an RUF, which is the PCA's campus ministry, started on DU's campus.

This can have ripple effects for the church in Denver that last generations.

And without movements like this taking place, uh we won't be able to affect the city with the gospel in the way that we're hoping to.

And so it's a privilege to get to labor alongside uh men like JP and JP in particular, who's um taking the gospel to these very difficult places that are just right in our backyard and sharing boldly and just bringing hope where there's there's so little hope.

So I want to pray for JP, um and then I'll go preach at your church.

So it's called a it's like a prisoner's dilemma.

Yes, yeah.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless uh Christ Presbyterian Church Inglewood, Lord, especially in this time of transition onto the campus that they're headed to.

Lord, I just pray that you would pave the way for them when they're headed into this place.

Lord, we know that you are jealous of your name.

Even going into a place where probably your name has been proclaimed truthfully before and isn't now.

But Lord, you have selected JP and his church to go in there to be a clear witness to the glory of your name as revealed to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lord, I just pray that you would prepare his heart for that task.

Lord, that you would go before them and prepare the hearts of his hearers, that they might be softened, and that that they might be uh uh that they might hear and understand the grace of God in truth.

And that when they hear that, it would take root and multiply among them.

Lord, I just pray that you would bless that labor.

Lord, we just lift up gratitude and thankfulness for getting to labor alongside him.

Thank you personally for his friendship and the love that he's shown and uh the welcome space that he's created for me and uh and our elders and the people of our church, Lord, and just pray that you would bless him and his ministry.

And uh uh yes, Lord, we lift that up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, thank you, everybody.

Didn't want to miss the opportunity to do that.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, and oh man, it is uh it is a joy uh to be with you guys again.

One of the things that we talk about at Christ Pres is we talk about what does it mean to be Presbyterian?

And we the way we describe that is that we're biblical, we're relational, and we're accountable.

Uh and that means that we have brothers and sisters in different churches that are in our region and pastors that we share alongside that mission and faithfully preaching the Bible and actually having real accountable relationships with one another.

And this is one of the ways that we get to experience that and we get to express that.

And so I bring greetings to you from your brothers and sisters at Christ Presbyterian Church in the south part of the city.

And they always look forward uh to having James uh come and be with them.

It's just one of these beautiful things that we get to experience together.

Uh, our our sermon text this morning, if you're more familiar with the Bible, you might know this uh parable that Jesus tells as the parable of the prodigal son.

It's probably it's probably the most famous of Jesus' parables.

Uh and a lot of ink has been spilled uh over this parable.

The way I want us to think about this parable this morning and maybe even give you a little bit of a um a little bit of a framework for thinking of the parables in general.

What Jesus is doing with the parables is he is being uh the mechanic of our souls.

If you take your car to a garage and to a mechanic, what do they do?

They pop the hood, they take a look around in there, and they look at stuff and they're like, hey, you should probably pay attention to this.

Don't let this linger too long.

Or sometimes they're like, look, you need to do something about this right now.

And Jesus with these parables is being the mechanic of our souls.

He's popping open the hoods on our hearts and he's pointing in places and saying, Hey, you should pay attention to that right there.

Don't let that linger.

Sometimes he's saying, you need to do something about that uh right now.

And certainly we get that in our parable of the prodigal son uh this morning.

Let me pray for us, and then we'll dive into our text together.

If you would please pray with me.

Most gracious God, we uh pray that you would be with us in both the hearing and the preaching of your word, that our hearts might be softened to the good news, Jesus, of your life, your death, and your resurrection, the forgiveness of sins in you and in you alone.

And so, Holy Spirit, we pray this morning that you would convict us in the places that we need to be convicted, and that you would comfort us in the places that we need to be comforted.

That Christ might be bigger in our hearts, bigger in our minds, and bigger in our hands this morning.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh, if I'm a bit of a cinephile, I like films.

I somewhat lament the move that uh has been made towards a lot of like television stuff.

I like a lot of these old films and newer films that come out.

And one of the devices that you see pretty common in films and in literature too, just in general in the arts, is the device that's known as a resurrection device.

That is that there are characters and there are people who are in films and then they that we think as the viewers that they've lost their life and they they die, but then we end up finding out that they actually haven't, that they've actually risen and they are not dead, but that they are alive.

This is a very common device in films.

It's a very common device in books, in literature.

And as I think about that, I sort of ask the question why?

Why is that such a common thing for humanity writ large?

Why is that something that we as human beings seem to be endowed to think about and to want and to long for?

Why is it that when we watch a movie and one of our favorite characters we think dies, and then we find out that they're alive, that tears come to our eyes.

And I think that that's because every single human being, because we are made in God's image, have souls that long for life.

We have souls that long for resurrection.

We have this hope that seems to be embedded in every single one of us that death is not the last word, but that life actually wins out.

And this parable that Jesus tells here in Luke 15 is actually Jesus' answer and his invitation to that longing that exists in our souls.

And so our big takeaway as we unpack this parable of this prodigal son this morning is that what Jesus is doing is he's giving us an invitation, and he is inviting us to step into the hope of the resurrection.

And so, if you're a note taker, like that's our big takeaway this morning, is that we are going to look at stepping into the hope of the resurrection.

And I've actually only got like one big sort of takeaway application-wise for us, and it's embedded throughout the parable.

So I want you to listen out for this.

The big takeaway application-wise for us this morning is the process of grace.

The process of grace.

Jesus is showing us in this parable.

He's inviting us to step into the hope of resurrection, and he's opening up to us the process of grace and what that looks like for us.

So let's dive in.

Let's dig into this parable this morning.

The late pastor and author Timothy Keller looked at this parable and he said, This parable is actually a parable that's about two lost sons.

If you've been around the church and grown up in the church, a lot of times this parable is focused on this younger son, but Keller brings out for us that it's actually about two lost sons.

So we'll actually look at both of them.

There's a younger brother and there is an older brother.

And the first son that we run into is this younger brother.

And this is verses 11 through the beginning of verse 13.

This younger brother, what he does is he comes to his father and he tells his father, Dad, I want you to give me the inheritance that is coming my way now.

I want it, I want it right now.

And in so doing, what this younger son is actually doing is he's coming to his father and he's saying, Dad, I wish you were dead.

I wish that you were dead so I can get what's mine and what is coming to me.

And in this parable, Jesus is specifically honing in on this idea of death.

We'll see multiple deaths in this parable.

It's a significant feature of what Jesus wants us to pay attention to.

And this first death that we run into is actually the death of this father because the younger son comes to him and wishes him dead.

And then this crazy thing happens.

The father actually grants the request of the son.

He actually says, Okay, you want your inheritance now, then I will split the inheritance and I will give you your inheritance now.

And look, we have to know, like, I mean, that's shocking for us to hear, like, right now, but in the ancient Near East, that would have been incredibly shocking.

One, that a son would come and wish his father dead, but then also that the father would grant the request of the son and give him his inheritance.

And so in verse 12, the father divides the inheritance between the two sons.

And that's an important little piece there.

He goes ahead and divides all of the inheritance between these two sons, and he gives the younger son his inheritance, and effectively, this father is dead.

And this younger son, he heads out.

He heads out, and in the back half of verse 13 through verse 16, we see what it is that he does with this inheritance that he has been given.

And the way that Luke talks about it, he says, This younger son, he squanders away his inheritance with reckless living.

And that word there for squander, it's actually it's actually a word that's not actually talking about money or stuff.

It's a word that is getting at this idea that he is actually squandering away his life, his heart, his soul.

Jesus is being intentional here.

He is preoccupied with this idea of death, this younger son taking his inheritance and squandering it in reckless living.

Jesus is saying he is killing his very soul.

The innermost parts of his being, and Jesus, ever the mechanic of our souls, shows us that our life and our action is never separated from our hearts.

It's never separated from our souls.

As a matter of fact, Jesus would say that it would be out of the heart that one would act, that you and I would act.

And so what's happening here with this younger brother is that dollar by dollar, he's killing his soul.

He's putting his soul to death.

And this is the first thing that we actually see about the process of grace.

Sometimes what grace looks like in our lives is that we actually come to death through reckless living and squandering our souls away.

Has that ever been true for you?

Have you ever engaged in soul killing stuff?

That next right click on the internet that you know that you shouldn't be looking at that.

That next bet that you place.

All of the overs, over-embing in food and drink, and exercise.

Recreation's a massive idol in Denver.

The over-imbibing in your social media, do you love Doom Scrolling?

You love Doom Scrolling, let me tell you, you're killing your soul.

You're engaging and squandering your soul away.

Or maybe it's even something as simple as the many hours that you spend on um Candy Crush.

Anybody play Candy Crush anymore?

And Jesus' point here is that it sin kills.

It's a really big deal.

And in a world that wants to just kind of try to affirm anything and everything that you and I want to do, this is this is a really big push.

This is really counter-cultural what Jesus is getting at.

That sin is a very heavy thing, that it actually destroys us.

And this younger brother was squandering his very soul to death.

And that's the second death that we get to see in this passage.

And as a matter of fact, Jesus tells us that he gets to the point where it's all gone.

They ain't no more, as we would say in South Carolina, where I grew up.

And actually, a famine has come over the land, Jesus tells us.

And so this younger son, he needs a job because he's squandered away his inheritance, he's killing his soul, and he needs a job.

And so he goes to look for a job, and the job that he finds is feeding pigs.

And now here we have to just sort of crack open just a little bit the culture that Jesus is speaking into.

Just to put us into a little bit of the context of who it is that he's talking to here.

He's talking to religious leaders, he's talking to Pharisees and he's talking to scribes, but he's also talking to these groups of people called sinners and tax collectors, and the Pharisees and the scribes look down on the sinners and the tax collectors.

And something that we have to know about what God had instructed his people in the Old Testament is that pigs were unclean animals, which was God's way of communicating to his people that fundamentally our hearts are unclean and they need to be made clean.

And God in his grace came to his people and he gave them this book called the Book of Leviticus to help them understand that deeper truth of our hearts and our souls have to be washed clean by his redemption and by his grace alone.

And here we have this younger son taking a job to go and to feed the pigs.

As a matter of fact, Luke tells us that he found himself in this position where he actually longed for the very thing that he was feeding these pigs to eat.

You ever seen you ever been in a pig trough?

Have you ever seen pig slot?

You think that's something that you'd be interested in having on your dinner plate?

And Jesus is unpacking something for us here in this younger son.

What's happening to him is he is growing in desperation.

He is growing in a sense of exactly what his situation is and exactly what it is that is going on.

And so he has this real growing desperation that is happening inside of him.

And we come to verse 17.

And verses 17 through 19 is sort of like the second death part two for this younger son.

He's been squandering his soul to death, but then he starts to think about his very situation.

He starts to think about exactly where it is and what it is that he is doing.

And again, this is a process of grace.

Sometimes what Jesus does is he allows us to squander our souls away.

He lets us go there, and then he brings us to a point of a quiet desperation where we actually start to think about our lives.

We actually start to think about the things that we have been engaging in and how that's killing our very souls.

And so this younger brother silently ponders where his life is.

What it is that's really going on.

And he starts to think to himself, you know, my dad's servants back home, they don't have to worry about food.

And here I am, like looking at the very slop that I'm feeding these pigs and thinking to myself, this is what I would like to eat right now.

And my dad's servants, they don't even, they don't even have to worry about food.

You ever been to that spot?

You ever been to the spot of quiet desperation?

Where Jesus, in the process of grace, he's even let you go into squandering away your soul a little bit.

And then he's bringing you into a spot of quiet desperation that you might see more clearly his grace, that you might come closer and understand that you've been trading your soul for sin.

And with each click, you feel life going out of you.

With each bet, you feel life going out of you.

And you start thinking to yourself, this is not good.

If that's ever happened to you, that's grace.

That's the grace of God to you in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Let that work on you.

And maybe that's where you're at this morning.

Maybe that's where you're at right now.

You've been engaging in soul-crushing stuff.

And Jesus, even right now, maybe in this moment, is bringing you to a quiet sense of desperation.

That is the process of grace.

Let it work on you.

Follow that.

And the younger brother does.

He follows.

He follows this sense of quiet desperation.

The process peels back the reality of his situation and just how desperate he really and truly is.

But he's actually not quite to the point of understanding that he's dead just yet.

Verse 18, Jesus tells us that the younger son, he arises and he thinks to himself, I will go and tell my dad that I've sinned against heaven and against him, and I am not worthy to be called his son.

And then in verse 19, I will ask him to hire me as his servant.

Oh, so close.

So close to really getting grace, but not quite.

Not quite there.

He's so close, but he's still missing a piece of it.

He's not quite yet understanding that he's actually dead.

He thinks that he can go back to his dad and say, hire me as a servant.

I can work off my debts to you, Dad.

I'll prove it to you.

I can be better.

I can I can do better.

I can I can earn your love, Dad.

I can earn getting back into your good graces.

You ever been there?

You ever been to the spot where you think that you and your own power can really get a handle on your sin?

Let me tell you what that sounds like.

To be so close, but to not quite understand just yet that actually we are dead in our sin.

This is what that sounds like.

It sounds like this.

I'll stop doing that.

It sounds like this.

I'll never do that again.

It sounds like this.

No more.

No more.

I quit.

It sounds like this.

I promise.

Never quit again.

This is where the younger brother is.

He's not quite yet at understanding that he's actually really dead.

He thinks that there's something that he can still bring to the table to bring himself back into the good graces of his father.

And then we come to verse 20 in this parable.

And verse 20 is the climax of the parable.

It's absolutely the climax of the parable.

The younger brother, he goes home to see his father.

And just for a second, just for a second, I want you and I to put ourselves in the shoes of this young man.

Imagine that quiet, desperate walk home.

Coming to the very end of himself.

Imagine it being inside of your own head, processing through all of the ways that you've been killing your soul, hopeful that somehow you can come back and convince dad that you won't do it again.

Imagine that walk.

A number of years ago, there was a movie that came out that was written by uh John Krasinski from The Office, if you had any Office fans here.

He wrote a movie and he had directed this movie.

It was called A Quiet Place.

And the premise of the movie, A Quiet Place, is that uh what you don't necessarily understand as you're watching it early on is that aliens have sort of invaded Earth and they are on a mission to just snuff out humanity.

And the way that they can tell where people are at is if they make any sort of noise.

And they're so dialed into sound that if they hear any sort of noise, they can know exactly where it is and they can rush there and they can kill whoever it is that is making that noise.

And so the point of the movie, of the quiet place, is to not make any noise.

If you make any sounds, then the aliens will come to you and they will take your life.

And there's this moment towards the end of the movie where John Krasinski's kids, he has two children, they find themselves in this old pickup truck, in the cab of this pickup truck, and they have made a lot of noise.

And one of these aliens is just pounding on the cab of this truck, and you can tell as you're watching it, like there's nothing that's gonna stop this alien.

He is he is going to get in there and he is going to get to those kids.

And so essentially, Krasinski's children are dead to rights.

They're dead.

They have no hope whatsoever.

This alien is going to get them and is going to kill them.

And then off in the distance, you see Krasinski's character, who's the dad, and he's looking at the cab, and he sees his kids in there, and they are looking at him with a level of desperation that we could only imagine.

And here's this alien about to get to them.

And he looks at them, and in sign language, he looks at his children and he says, I love you.

I have always loved you.

And then he screams as loud as he can.

And immediately the alien hears these screams, takes his attention away from these children that are dead to rights, and tracks down Krasinski's character and kills the dad.

He's willing to give his very own life to save the life of his kids.

And here we have in this parable that Jesus tells, a son who is the walking dead.

And what happens?

Dad runs out to him, which within itself was a bit of a faux pas in the ancient Near East.

Older men didn't run.

But dad runs out to his son, societal decorum, tossed out the window, and he lays his arms around his son and he hugs him and he kisses him.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine being this younger son and hearing from the fields, my son, my son, I love you.

I have always loved you.

And the very touch of the father is the thing that brings this younger son back to life.

And the younger son, he gets there finally.

He actually gets there, but it's only because the father hugs him.

And this too is the process of grace.

And you'll notice if you go back and you look at verse 21, what the younger son does as the father hugs him back to life.

He says, I've sinned against heaven and against you.

I'm not worthy to be your son.

And you'll notice what's missing there is his plan for the back end offer to be a hired servant.

He's there.

He got there.

The only way that I actually have life, Father, is if you give it to me.

I am not worthy to be your son.

We have these catechisms that exist in the history of the church, and this process of grace, I think, is summed up in the Heidelberg Catechism, question number one, which asks this question What is your only comfort in life and in death?

And the answer goes a little bit like this that I'm not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from the power of the devil.

That's grace.

That's the process of grace.

That's what this younger son had finally come to grips with.

The only way that I have life, Father, is if you hug me back into it from my squandered dead soul.

And the response in verses 22 through 24 is full on restoration, full on celebration.

This party that the father is going to throw for this younger son who is back, who is dead and is alive again is a resurrection party.

It's a resurrection party because his son was dead.

But now he's not.

And what the father does is he places his robe on him and gives him his ring and his shoes.

And that's a way of communicating to you and to me that what he does for the son is he completely covers him in grace.

Utter gift.

The father gives him resurrection life.

And then we come to our third death in this parable, and that is the death of a fattened calf.

That's what the Father does to celebrate the resurrection of his son, is that he goes and he kills the fattened calf so that they can throw a resurrection party.

And the fattened calf, the very purpose for which the fattened calf lives is to give its life away to another.

That's the very purpose of the fattened calf.

Every family would have had a calf that they were looking to fatten up so that they could kill that calf and then celebrate what it is that God does in this process of grace.

And in this very moment, they are celebrating the hope of the resurrection.

Do you see what Jesus is doing here?

He's inviting you and me to step into the hope of the resurrection.

Verse 24.

He was lost, but he's found.

The love of this father knows no limits.

It is limitless.

And that too, actually, is a part of the process of grace.

You see, here's how grace works in us sometimes is that we squander our lives away in reckless living.

Jesus in his grace comes to us and he starts poking and prodding for us to come to grips with how really and truly dead we are.

We come to quiet desperation, and sometimes we think we can get a handle on our sin.

And Jesus presses further and further and says, No, no, I have to do this for you.

It is only my life, my death, my resurrection that is your hope in this life and in the one to come.

I have fully paid for all of your sins.

And then it goes even further to show us the magnitude and the limitlessness of God's love to us.

That we would get the robe and the ring and the shoes, and we would be heirs with Christ in his kingdom.

And that that would get celebrated because of the death of another.

Do you see it?

Do you see what Jesus is doing here?

How he's inviting us to step into the hope of the resurrection?

Because it would only be through his death, which was the very purpose for which Christ came.

There's this old hymn that captures this.

The hymn is called Grace Greater Than Our Sin.

Listen to this.

This is how limitless God's love and his grace is to you and to me.

Sin and despair, like the sea waves cold, threaten the soul with infinite loss.

Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold, points to the refuge, the mighty cross.

Grace, grace, God's grace.

Grace that will pardon and cleanse within.

Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin.

This is the process of grace.

God's grace, God's love is limitless towards you and towards me.

And then Jesus, like he actually does with every single one of his parables, if you notice this, you go back and read through Jesus' parables, he always has this real sober ending.

And this parable is it's it's not bereft of that.

It actually has a very sober ending for us in verses 25 through 32.

Because remember, back in verse 11, this parable is about two sons.

And Dr.

Keller would say about two lost sons.

And so as we read through and as we've walked through the parable that Jesus is telling here, we sort of have this lingering question inside of each of us.

And the question is this is where's the older brother?

Like, why introduce him up there but not talk about him?

Where's he at?

What's going on?

And the very next time that we run into the older brother, what has he done?

He's placed himself outside of the resurrection party.

He refuses to go in.

He has no desire to be present with his brother and with his father, celebrating that his brother was dead but is alive.

He was lost, but he is found.

And what does the dad do?

What does the dad do with the older brother?

He moves towards them.

He comes outside.

In verse 28, Luke tells us that this older brother was really angry, really upset.

And his dad comes to him and he says, Hey, come inside.

Come celebrate the resurrection of your brother.

Come inside.

What's true for your brother is also true for you, can be true for you.

And the elder brother responds to his father, and you can kind of imagine it.

And maybe you've even done this.

Maybe this has even been you.

It's been me before, I know.

And he's like, all I ever did was serve you.

All I ever did was obey.

All I ever did was the right thing.

Do you feel the indignance?

Do you feel the pride?

Do you feel the arrogance?

All I ever did was what I was supposed to do.

And Jesus is purposefully juxtaposing for us here.

The older brother, the father, comes to him and asks him to come inside.

And his response is look at everything that I ever did for you.

And the younger brother who comes to the Father and says, I've sinned against heaven and against you.

I am not worthy of being called your son.

Jesus purposefully is juxtaposing these two responses for us.

Now, if you'll remember back in verse 12, the dad divided the inheritance between the two brothers.

The younger brother got what was coming to him, and the older brother got what was coming to him too.

And so as we press in more deeply into this parable, we realize the elder brother was just as happy to wish dad dead as the younger brother was.

He was happy to wish dad dead and to take his own life.

We see no protest whatsoever from the older brother.

What the older brother should have done when his younger brother came to wish his dad dead was go to his younger brother and say, wait, wait, wait, don't do this.

Don't do this.

Don't you know how much our father loves us?

Don't you know?

Don't you see how gracious he is?

Don't know, don't do this.

But no.

No protest.

Just as happy to have the father effectively dead.

And then in verse 31, we see the Father's limitless love offered yet again.

Son, all that is mine is yours.

Just like your little brother.

Who is dead and is alive, who is lost and is found.

And then Jesus leaves this parable open-ended sobering reality.

We have to remember who Jesus is talking to.

He's got Pharisees and He's got scribes.

The elder brother is embodied in the Pharisees and the scribes, and the younger and the sinners and the tax collectors.

And Jesus leaves this parable open-ended on purpose to communicate to you and to me that deadness and lostness takes on a multitude of shapes and sizes.

And actually leaving it open-ended with the elder brother, Jesus is communicating to us that the deadness that comes from self-righteousness actually blinds in a way that is even more dangerous than the reckless living of the younger brother.

And so he's really coming at the Pharisees and the scribes, and he's kind of putting it right on the nose for it.

And in leaving it open ended, Jesus is leaving us and them with a question What will you do?

How will you respond to the limitless love of the Father to send the Son to lay down his life for your reckless living, for your self-righteousness, for my reckless living, my self-righteousness?

He's even actually inviting these scribes and these Pharisees who at this point they're out to kill Jesus, to put aside their self-righteousness and to step into the hope of the resurrection.

But it is this sober ending, and the sober ending is this as if you reject that.

If we reject what Jesus is offering here in the hope of the resurrection and the process of grace and the limitless love of God and the reality that we are actually dead in our sin, and we have to be made alive by the death of another, if we reject that, then we don't really have any hope for resurrection.

But if we receive it, if we receive it, then we are heirs to all of God's promises that are yes and amen in Jesus.

And so if I might encourage you as we finish up this morning, don't waste away your life in reckless living, in soul-crus.

Don't waste away your life on the next bet or the next image or the next Instagram post.

Don't waste your life away in anger and bitterness and self-righteousness.

And if that's you this morning, aren't you tired?

Aren't you exhausted?

Just being angry about everything all the time.

Don't waste your life away in that.

And don't waste away your life in reckless living.

Both self-righteousness and reckless living kill your soul.

Jesus.

He pops the hood on our hearts and says, look there.

Where are you bent toward?

What are you struggling with?

See, see that it is my death on the cross alone that actually brings resurrection life to you.

Luke 15 is about these two lost sons.

These two lost sons.

And in this story, what Jesus does is he invites us to step into the hope of the resurrection.

And each week, that's what we do at this table.

When we come to this table, we are stepping into the hope of the resurrection.

When we come to this table, we are proclaiming the Lord Jesus' death for the forgiveness of our sins until he comes again and he makes all things new.

On the night in which Jesus was betrayed, he was celebrating the Passover with his disciples.

And after giving thanks, he took bread and he broke it and he said, This is my body which is given for you.

Take and eat and remember.

And in the same way, he took the cup and pouring it out, he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

Take and drink of it, all of you.

And as often as we come to this family meal, to this table that Jesus has set, and that Jesus is cooked, and he's laid out in front of us, what we're doing is we're proclaiming his death until he comes again and he brings the resurrection of all things, the redemption of all things, and heaven comes to earth, and sin is ripped out by the roots, and we are with him forevermore.

Hope for that day.

Long for that day.

If you're here this morning and you belong to the Lord Jesus, you've been baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you've joined yourself to Christ's church, then this table is for you.

Come take, eat, and remember.

But if you're here this morning and that's not true of you, if you're here this morning and you're still like processing grace and you haven't quite gotten to the point where you're like, yep, I actually am dead and I have to be brought to life by Jesus.

If that's not where you're at this morning, we wouldn't want you to come and to partake of something that's not an accurate reflection of what you believe and what you would say about yourself.

And we certainly don't want you to feel coerced to come and to partake of something that doesn't reflect what you believe in.

So we would ask that you allow these elements to pass you by.

You're welcome to stay at your seats and pray or have somebody.

I would love to pray for you.

And I'm sure that Zach and some of the other elders, they would love to talk to you about what it means to step into the process of grace, to receive Christ, to bring him in and to become an heir to all of God's promises that are yes and amen.

Let me pray for us, and then I'll invite us to come receive the supper.

Most gracious God, we thank you for this bread.

We thank you for this wine, these common things that you take and use them for an uncommon purpose, to bring grace into our hearts and into our lives, Jesus, to mysteriously bring us up into the heavenlies with you as you are really and truly spiritually present in and through this supper.

And so as we come to this table, would we take in the grace that is being offered here?

And we pray these things Christ in your name.

Amen.