Luke 15 is where we're going, that's page 874 in your Pew Bible, we're going to be beginning at verse 1, for the people of God, the Word of God, that's here. Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him, and the Pharisees in the scribes grumbled saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them, so he told them this parable, we're going to skip down to verse 11 over the parable of the lost sheep and lost coin to the last one, 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 his fields to feed pigs, and he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, but 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've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm 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've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son, but the father said to his servants, bring quickly the best robe, put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, and bring the fat and calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and his 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 fat and calf because he's 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've served you, and I've 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's devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fat and calf for him, and he said to him, son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. He was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this year's brother was dead and his alive. He was lost and is found. This is God's word, let's pray. Lord, bring your children in. Unite us at the party in your house this morning we pray, amen. As much as I disliked last week's passage, I love this week's passage. You need to know God used Tim Keller's preaching on this very passage to change the trajectory of my life and my entire ministry. So from the onset this morning I want to be clear, I'm highly indebted to Tim Keller on this sermon, and more than usual I'll be pillaging his material. But having said that, let's jump in. Number one, what is sin? There's a reason we read those first three verses. They set up the whole chapter, they're the reason Jesus is telling these stories. The Pharisees came out to Jesus and they watched him and they said, he doesn't get it. He doesn't understand. If he knew what sin was, he wouldn't be up to his neck in it, would he? So Jesus responds with these three parables. We're looking at the last one, the climax of his response to them. What's he saying? Earlier this week, actually it's probably last week now. I came home to a dad's greatest thrill. I came up, it was around nap time, so I didn't know if our son would be asleep, so I'd open the door very quietly coming in. And I heard this joyful grunt from the next room. And then I heard the slapping of hands and feet, as my son came around the corner, he was crawling like an injured platypus at top speed. He came around the corner and I saw his little face and I ran over and I snatched him up. He's only been in the last month or so that he's been able to start going just about wherever he wants to go. And while that's causing a lot of trouble at our house, it's incredible to come home and see that he wants to come to daddy. It's one of my great joys. But I'm trying to temper that joy with the inevitable day that I know he's not going to want to come to daddy anymore. As a matter of fact, maybe the only reason he'll come to daddy is because he needs some money or he needs the car keys. Or maybe even one day he'll get up in daddy's face and he'll let daddy know just what he thinks of daddy's rules. And just where daddy needs to go. Working with teenagers and having been one myself, don't always come right out and say it. But there's always that moment where we think it. But is this son saying, Dad, just give me my inheritance. When do you ask for an inheritance? When do you expect one? Translation, Dad? I wish you were dead. Just give me your stuff and get out of my life or to put it another way, Dad, I really don't care what happens to you. Just leave me alone and let me do what I want. This is absolute indifference. I mean, there's no worse form of hate, right? I don't care. I don't care what happens to you. Just get out of my way. Jesus is asked about sin and he tells a story to define it. How does he define it? In terms of relationship. In particular, sin is like a bad relationship with your father or more explicitly, sin is us saying, God, just get out of my life. Who has the guts to say that to God? I mean, most people wouldn't come right out and say that. But this son does, the bad son, I mean, that's when we look around and we say, those people over there, I mean, I would never say that to God. But let's take a closer look at the good son. What's he saying? When it comes his turn to speak, what does he say? Dad, I've been slaving for you all these years and you never even threw a party for me and my friends. Translation? Dad, every moment with you is a chore. I just want to enjoy your stuff and I don't even want you to be there when I'm enjoying it. These two sons, they have the same problem, they just come at it from different ways. You hear what Jesus is saying? This would have shocked his hearers. There's two ways to escape your dad. On the one hand, you can just leave. But on the other hand, I mean, you can stay, enjoy all the benefits and just hold them in an arm's length. See, there are two ways we can run from God. We can run from God by disobeying him and that's pretty obvious. And we can see that. But we also can run from God by obeying him. Jesus tells a story about sin and there are two sons, one good one and one bad one. But both of them are alienated from their father. Both of them live in the house with him and they don't want anything to do with him. They hate him because he's the primary obstacle to the very thing they want, the stuff and dad's presence is a nuisance to me. Let's just compare the two of them for a minute. Which one's worse? You bring in the elder brother, you bring in the prodigal, you sit him down here, have they look? Well, the elder brother, he's dressed nicely, he looks sharp. He's well behaved, he comes to church every Sunday, he folds his hands in his lap. He looks forward and always pays attention during the sermon. He's polite. Yes, ma'am. Always conducting himself in an appropriate manner. But Jesus calls him a white, washed tomb, see the heart's still rotten. The son, the good son is worse off than the bad son. You haven't trouble with that, look at this picture, what happens at the end of the story? Who gets in and who's left out? At the end of this story, the bad son's in the house, the good son is left outside. How could Jesus say that? What's he saying? Look at what the elder brother says to his father, you owe me. You owe me. Look at what all I've done for you, don't you see that? He's having trouble seeing his problem because of his goodness. See, his sickness is more nuanced, his rebellions more subtle. His spiritual sophistication is his downfall. I've never left home, why would I ever need to come back? When I was 12 years old, my mom and I had an awful relationship, it was awful. And my mom desperately wanted to be close to me, and I knew that. So I used that knowledge at every opportunity to manipulate the situation to my advantage, whether I had done something wrong, or whether I wanted something, emotional terrorism. I knew how to get what I wanted. Now over the course of a few birthdays and Christmas, I had accumulated a 12-year-old's fortune of $300. And I kept this money in a little blue vault on my desk. By vault, I mean a box I was given when Christmas that had one number in the combination. You just pushed down the button, you spun the wheel and it popped open. But my mom didn't know that. She frequently would be running late for work, had forgotten to go to the bank the night before, gas almost empty. She'd come see me. I need $20 for gas, remember those days? I need $20. So I would grudgingly oblige, keeping the IOUs, dropping it in there. My mom eventually, eventually had amounted to $180. Our relationship shifted from parent-child to bank lender clients, to collection agency defraudor. Christmas came, and as usual, I got lots of presents. So after Christmas, there were a few major purchases that one might want to pursue. I had a Nintendo, there were games to be bought. So the bank yours truly came to compile its assets in order to go out and take advantage of sales. I came up, I'll never forget, I talked to my mom about it and she just looked at me and she said, that debt was paid in full from your Christmas presents. Oh no, you owe me, you weren't going to give me those presents anyway, give me my money. See how that works? The thought never crossed my mind, mom, you gave birth to me, you raised me, you loved me, you're daily sacrifices at work, you're wonderful. I'm thankful for how you love me, mom, did not enter my mind. Woman, just give me the money and back away. I still haven't gotten that money. Mom, you're going to listen to this. See how that works? It's more insidious. We cover the evil in our hearts with the good things that we've done. I did my duty. You owe me, it's my right, this is not fair, give me what you owe me. If you listen to Jesus very much, you know anytime we're saying that kind of stuff, we're in deep trouble. The elder brother is more lost because of his goodness. We do bad things, it's easy to see that. We're more likely to repent quickly. We're not under any delusion about it. We use our goodness like a bargaining chip with God. It's leverage. It's a way for me to control him. God, you owe me. Jesus is saying to us in this passage, what a stunned is here. Look, it's not so much the bad things, more often, more often, it's your goodness that's the bigger obstacle between you and God and your relationship because you count them against me. You use them as a weapon. We forget that grace exists. We forget about his love. We forget about the fact that he's providing on a regular basis. I mean, why else would Paul have to write a verse like Romans 8.32? Sin is pushing the Father away. Now, if that's what sin is, what is repentance? Number two, repentance. Look at verse 17, when he came to himself, when he came to his senses as what the NIV says. In this, repentance is not merely saying, I'm sorry, or my bad, whoops. I guess I shouldn't have done that one. Repenance is like recovering our sanity. The language of repentance should sound something more like this. What was I thinking? How could I ever have done that? I mean, she's my mother. I love her. Why would I ever treat my mother that way? How could I have been so blind? I never want to do that again, ever. If repentance is recovering our sanity, what does that say about our condition when we refuse to repent, or before we repent? Jesus is saying, refusal to repent is insanity. To put it another way, he's saying, we live like idiots. We're idiots when we refuse to repent. Now a couple of years ago, I made that very point in this pulpit, I got to confess to you, I went to the back and this woman came to me and she said, I want you to know I'm never coming back to this church, and I want you to know why. You are not an idiot. Now it's possible that she has a family member who's clinically insane, and I'd said something insensitive that I shouldn't have, but I didn't get that impression. I thought more about it, and what would trouble her so greatly about a preacher calling himself an idiot? If he's an idiot, maybe I'm one, too. I mean, whether we like to hear it or not, Jesus is strongly implying that here. When we refuse to repent, we're living like idiots. Repenance is wanting to come back to sanity, repentance is wanting to come back to the Father. Repenance is wanting in on the party. When a child is socially maturing, I've talked with several of your parents about this. Your kid hits the age, but they start to realize, Dad, that's not cool. You need to stand over there, Dad, a little more space, you know. You're ruining my life, Dad. You're ruining my party. My poor son. He's doomed. This is how we conceive of it. When a child grows through that stage, oftentimes they'll come back around. The pendulum swings back, and they realize, you know what? If something important is happening, I want the people who really matter to be there. I want the people who really show me love. As a matter of fact, if I'm going to celebrate, I want the people closest to me to be there. There's like this awakening that it's not really a party if those people aren't there. That's the problem with these brothers. Both of them live in the house with their Dad. Both of them want a party, but neither one of them wants Dad to be there. Are you hearing that? Is God a buzzkill for us? If God comes to your party, does it ruin it? I mean, what does that say about how we view the party? And if God is the party, who's missing out then? Rependance is coming back to sanity. It's coming back to relationship with the Father. It's the joy of entering into the party, but we've got a problem. Can an insane man make himself sane? No. We need something else to come first, and it does. Look at this passage, every time the Father's love comes first. It's number three. The Father's love comes before repentance. In verse 20, the bad son's coming back. He's coming back with a prepared speech. Did you notice that? He's coming back saying, I'll be a hired hand. He thinks he played his cards wrong. If I would have just done it like my brother did it, I would have gotten what I wanted. And his repentance is wrong. The way is repenting, but it doesn't matter why, because the Father's love comes first. You see that? While he was still a long way off before he had said a word, dad comes tearing off the front porch, just about tackles him, showers him with kisses, embraces him. I mean, you know, even though he's got a speech ready, he already knows. I'm a son. I'm back in before he says a word. Look at verse 28, even with the older son, the Father goes out to bring him in. And when the fat and calf had been killed, they didn't have refrigeration back in those days. If you're going to have a fat and calf, you got to invite the whole town. Otherwise, the food will go bad. So the whole town's at this party, and now this son and his turn is embarrassing his father in front of the whole town by refusing to come in. But his dad goes out, and he tenderly pleads with him. But maybe the most shocking examples in verse 12 at the beginning. When the son asks for the inheritance, audacious, arrogant, he actually gets it. This may not be as big of a shock to you and me as it was to his original hears. Family honor in the east is huge. For him to even make this request would have shamed his entire family, but his dad gives it to him anyway. I mean, can you imagine people would be gossiping? What are you doing? What an awful father you are. You're ruining his life. You're enabling his sin. Is that what he's doing? No, look closer. This dad's up to something. He's buying time with his son because in that culture, if you'd made a request like that, that father would have hit you, cast you out the door and said, I've disowned you. You are no longer my son and left him penniless. You can imagine this guy wandering around the rest of his life saying, if only I'd played my cards differently. If only I would have come into what was mine, my money, life would have been great and would have been his prison. His dad is not abandoning him to evil. He's not paying for his ongoing evil lifestyle. He is leaving him to a hollow vice for a time, hoping that as an extreme measure, his son will see its hollowness, will remember what's of substance and will come back home. Daddy's love. Think about this with me. You want to know why the older son is so angry? Where is he when the young son comes back? He's out in the field. Where's dad? Who knows how long this has been? Dad's on the front porch. He sees him while he's a long way off. I mean, has he been languishing on the front porch every day since he left, watching for his son? While the older son runs the estate, can you imagine his bitterness? The dad's love coming after him, paying for time, hoping that they'll come back in. I mean, this is the goal. This is a strong hope that he'll remember. Daddy's love. He'll remember Daddy's kiss. Ray Quartese tells a story of Joe Bailey's son in Chicago. This young man had a wayward lifestyle, had a major problem with drugs, left home to a hard party in life. And one night his dad got a phone call from the police. They said, your son's been arrested with DUI. If you'll still claim him, you can come get it. So the middle of the night gets up, gets dressed, goes to the police station, asks for his son. We don't know what you're talking about. So he goes to the next police station. Maybe I got the wrong one. You need to know if you've never been to Chicago, the suburbs are stacked right on top of one another. So he goes to the nearest police station. One question, same response. We don't know what you're talking about. He goes to four police stations in the middle of the night. And then he decides to go to a son's house. He drives up to this shanty of a home, comes up, it's 4 a.m., he knocks on the door loudly. No response. If he tries the door knob, the son locked. He comes into this house, just all torn up, no furniture anywhere. He goes in the main room, and there's his son lying on the floor in a disheveled pile, asleep, after all he's done for him tonight. He walks over to him, he leans over him, and he kisses him on the forehead. And then quietly, he leaves. A few months go by, and his son starts coming back around to family gatherings. He starts coming back around to see what the family's doing. His life is starting to change a little bit. He gets involved at church, he gets involved, and a lot of different things are going on. He becomes a Christian, and his life begins to have all kinds of different hallmarks of joy. So finally, his dad's confident enough to say, son, what happened? I mean, what changed your life? He said, dad, you don't know. That night you came to the house. The police who called you, one of my friends, Frank called you. I don't want to sleep. I was wide awake. You walked in, and you hovered over me, and I thought you were going to lay into me. But instead, you kissed me, I changed everything. The father's kiss. The love of the father comes first, and changes our lives forever. Now to the degree that you're a prodigal, and some of you in this room are more prodigal than elder brothers. Some of you are unusual mixes of it. To the degree that you're a prodigal, you probably love that. You love that. If the story had stopped right there, you would have thought it was a great story. But that's not what Jesus is after. And for those of you in the room that are elder brothers like me, this bothers you, especially especially when it happens for somebody else. Where's the penalty? Where's the justice? He's soft on sin, I tell you. Where's the cost? Exactly right. Number four, grace cost. If you're a recovering Pharisee like me, you need to see this. I've looked through the gospels. I can't find another picture like this. Everywhere else it seems like, Jesus is harsh with the Pharisees. He is hard on them. He yells at them. It's intense. But here they've asked him about sin and he shares a story and at the end of it, this father goes out to his self-righteous arrogant son who won't come in and he tenderly pleads with him. I mean, these Pharisees would know he's talking about us. What's going on here? Look at what the father says to him. My son, all that I have is yours. He's not exaggerating. The younger son's part of the estate had been liquidated and everything left was the elder brothers. So when the father calls for the robe, when he calls for the ring, when he calls for the sandals and the fat and calf, who's are they? They're the elder brothers. They're mine. Don't you see? He got his reward and he wasted it. Why should I have to pay for him to come back in?
This father says, oh, my son, if only you understood my love. See, this is the deeper problem. He's alienated from his father's heart. He doesn't understand. And this is our problem. If we have an older brother who resents having to pay for us, who refuses to pay our way back in, who refuses to come out and plead for us to come back in from the field, we're in trouble. We need a better brother. We need there to be another son, a third son, and there is the one telling the parable. Brian Chapel tells a story of two boys in his hometown. They were brothers. They lived near a river, so they went down to play by the river one day. The town was known for its river commerce, so they frequently dredged the river to clear the channel, and they would dump the sand out in huge mounds at the river's edge. You can imagine these huge mounds look like sandcastles, so kids loved to play on it. But it was incredibly dangerous. Because when the mounds were dumped out on the side, they were wet. And the water inside, sometimes it would form pockets, and then when the water dried out and drained off, it formed these caverns, basically. They were like sinkholes. If somebody went across the top, it would drop in, sand would pour on them from above and crush them and suffocate them. And these two brothers stumbled across just such a sinkhole. When they didn't come home for dinner, a search party was organized. They went out, looked on these huge sand piles, and they found the younger brother buried up to his chest, just his head and shoulders protruding, unconscious, because of the weight of the sand pressing in on him. The searchers dug frantically until they got him dumped free down to his waist, and then they were able to revive him. They shouted, where's your brother? Where's your brother? I'm standing on his shoulders. In the moment they had fallen in together without a thought to himself. The older brother had reached down, grabbed his younger brother, put him up on his shoulders. He'd sacrificed his rights, his inheritance, his very life to save his brother. Take no mistake, brothers and sisters, this is the love of God. We get in to the party because he was left outside. We get clothed with the ring, with the robe, with the sandals, because he was stripped and they cast lots. We get the fat and calf because he got the vinegar. We get Daddy's kiss. We get Daddy's dance at his cost. There is no other love like this, there's no other God like this. The one task of the Christian life is just to live in this love, to live in this forgiveness, and share it with the world. That's the party. Who's ready to party? Let's pray. Lord, thank You for bringing a fool like me into the party. Lord, some of us here this morning are black sheep, and some of us are recovering Pharisees. And some of us are some kind of weird hybrid. Lord, we just thank You that You love us out of that mess. Come get us. Bring your children in, Lord, that we would celebrate the party with You, and Your name we pray. Amen.