Luke 15:22-32

22 “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. 23 And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, 24 for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began. 25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, 26 and he asked one of the servants what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ 28 “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, 29 but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30 Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’ 31 “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”

Not only did the older son have an angry spirit of grumbling and an inflated sense of goodness but he also had a:

• A faulty understanding of grace

The reason that the party was such an insult to the older brother was because he believed that he deserved more than the younger son. He thought he deserved a fattened calf, or at least a goat because he was the one who had been working hard in the fields and had kept all the rules while his younger brother was off living in rebellion. Christians who rely on following the rules often feel like they deserve some kind of recognition or reward for their service. So when the spotlight shines on those who have repented after living a reckless life instead of celebrating they complain. Their faulty view of grace causes them to focus on fairness instead of forgiveness.  The older son’s faulty view of grace caused him to buy into the believed that grace was based on his work not God’s. As a result he made the motivation for serving God recognition and reward instead of relationship. Yes it’s true that God wants to reward us but that reward is based on obedience not obligation. The true motive for service is love not law. When we base our work for God solely on what we will get our reason for serving ends up revolving around a business arrangement instead of revolving around relationship. We end up believing that we can buy God’s blessing and because belief drives behavior it affects both our attitudes and actions. Not only did the older son have a bad attitude but he also acted like a baby, whining when he could have been worshiping. The problem is that whenever we start talking about what we deserve we end up leaving the realm of grace and step into the area of human performance. In Matthew 20 Jesus shares a parable to show us the true nature of God’s grace. It’s a story of a master who sends workers to work in his vineyard. He agrees to pay them a full day’s wage, so they start working at sunrise. At 9 a.m. he sends some other workers to help, and then at noon and at 3:00 he sends some more. Then, just before quitting time, at 5:00 he sends some new workers to help, too. Finally, the whistle blows and it’s time for the workers to receive their wages, starting in verse 8 we read these words: “Call the workers and pay them their wages. Start with the last hired and go on to the first. Those hired at five o’clock came up and were each given a dollar. When those who were hired first saw that, they assumed they would get far more. But they got the same, each of them one dollar. Taking the dollar, they groused angrily to the manager, ‘These last workers put in only one easy hour, and you just made them equal to us, who slaved all day under a scorching sun.’ (sound like the older brother?) He replied to the one speaking for the rest, ‘Friend, I haven’t been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn’t we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the ones who came last the same as you. Can’t I do what I want with my money? Are you going to get stingy because I am so generous?’” Matthew 20:9-15 The Message. To understand the true power of this parable we need to remember the audience to whom Jesus was speaking in the parable of the prodigal son, verses 1-2. There were tax collectors and sinners there, but there were also Pharisees. The Pharisees were those hyper-religious people, full of their own sense of goodness and they despised tax collectors. What Jesus was saying is that God the Father receives sinners not based on their merit but on His mercy. The Pharisees were trying to earn God’s acceptance, and Jesus was teaching them that they too needed God’s grace. Are you basing your righteousness on following rules or on your relationship with the Redeemer? There are many older brother believers, who have served the Lord for years out of a proud sense of their own religious purity. The problem is that you have forgotten what it was like to be lost, and you think you deserve God’s blessings. God’s grace is available to anyone who comes to Him in repentance.  Righteousness doesn’t come from following the rules it comes from faith in the Redeemer. Remember the thief on the cross he didn’t do any works he just accepted the work. Do you rejoice with the Father when rebels repent or do you end up resenting? Do you find yourself grumbling and focusing on your goodness or on God’s grace? You have a choice you can pout or you party, what will you choose? Will you be the Christian caught up in complaining or celebration?

Luke 15:22-32

22 “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. 23 And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, 24 for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began. 25 “Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, 26 and he asked one of the servants what was going on. 27 ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ 28 “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, 29 but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. 30 Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’ 31 “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. 32 We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’”

In the older brother’s attitude and actions we see several common characteristics of a pouting prodigal, not only did he have an angry spirit of grumbling but he also had

• An inflated sense of goodness

In verse 29 we see that the older son not only exaggerated his own goodness but he also exaggerated his brother’s sin. Five times he used the first personal pronoun: “All these years I’VE been slaving for you; I never disobeyed you. You never gave ME a goat so I could celebrate with MY friends!” Me people are often miserable people. They end up focusing on fairness instead of the father, but what they miss is God’s mercy because if we got what was fair we would all have to face the fire. Instead of basing blessing on God’s grace he based it on his goodness, which caused him to play the comparison game. Comparing creates a critical spirit, look what he said about his brother, “when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!” Now we were never told in the previous verses that the younger brother visited prostitutes, that’s just what the older brother said. Basing God’s gift of grace on our work leads to pointing out other people’s sins and proclaiming our success. In short it promotes pride, which loves to put others down while puffing self-up. Let’s be realistic, there is no way he had been totally obedient to his father all these years. But in his mind, when he compared himself to his sinful brother, he was a saint. The truth is he was a judgmental  jerk who refused to rejoice with the Father because he was focused on fairness according to self. But God doesn’t grade on a curve He grades on a cross, which means we all need to see our sin and stop pretending we are perfect. He was so focused on his feelings that he couldn’t see the repentance and restoration of his brother. His feelings blinded him to the bigness of the Father, you can block the light of the mighty sun with a tiny dime if you hold it close enough to your eye. An over inflated sense of goodness will block you from seeing God’s grace. Our righteousness doesn’t come from comparing ourselves to those more rotten than us but trusting in Christ’s work on the cross. If you want to make a mess of things then start comparing yourself to other sinners. It’s easy to see the sins of others and start to believe that we are better but we need to remember that it’s not just the seen sins we have to deal with but also the secret sins of the spirit as well. Henri Nowen’s life was revolutionized by understanding this point, he was a minister and a moral man but God used this passage to show him he was guilty of the sins of the older brother and it changed his life. In his book “the return of the prodigal son” he write: “Looking into myself and then around me at the lives of other people, I wonder which does more damage, lust or resentment? There is so much resentment among the ‘just’ and the ‘righteous.’ There is so much judgment, condemnation and prejudice among the ‘saints.’ There is so much frozen anger among the people who are so concerned about avoiding ‘sin.’“ The reality is that it’s not just wild living that we can waste our lives on, there are the sins of jealousy, pride, anger, and resentment that which will ruin us. Sometimes these are the harder sins to contend with because we think we can hide them behind a vale of holiness. It’s easy to criticize those whose sins are open and obvious, but do we contend with the heart sins hidden deep within. The older son’s sins were cloaked by his hard work and his seeming faithfulness in serving the Father. But the party was the catalyst that uncovered his secrete sins, you see the older son just like the younger was living to serve self. While he pointed an accusing finger at his younger brother he was just as guilty. While the younger son chose the vehicle of rebellion the older brother used the vehicle of rules. Now Rules may be a more acceptable and better looking vehicle on the outside but we need to remember that they both take us to the same place, separated from the father. What about you do you find yourself looking down on others and seeing their sin as bigger than yours? Are you angry with the Father because life isn’t fair? Are you missing His mercy and grumbling at grace? Yesterday I had the privilege of serving the younger son, a man who has ruined his life with rebellion. He had recently been released from federal prison and needed help getting on his feet. While in prison he met Jesus Christ and was saved from his sin, he found real freedom before he was ever released from prison. A man had given him my name and number and so he called asking if I would help, so I went picked him up and took him to buy the few things he needed. There we were walking through the store a pastor and former prisoner, was I any better than him, no. We were two men both saved by the same Savior. Both equally in need of the same grace, how refreshing to be with someone who got God’s grace, who had nothing from a material perspective but everything from a mercy perspective. Here was a man who marveled at God and had a party perspective instead of a poverty one. What a contrast between us, here I was with a home a vehicle, clothes and money to pay my bills while he was excited with a few quarters so he could do a half load of laundry, that’s all the clothes he had. But I wondered to myself who has the happier heart, whose love and service is more sincere? As we talked together we kept coming back to grace and how we were both clinging to the cross for our righteousness not our filthy rags. If you are an older brother and you find yourself being cynical and critical, then like the father I want to plead with you to participate in the party. The truth is we need to party with the younger son because watching them rejoice is not only refreshing its rejuvenating. It’s time to stop pouting and join the party.