The Lost Brother, Part 3 | God’s Rescue Mission

     We do have one more chance to look at Luke 15, so if you turn there in your Bibles, you’ll be right in the right place. This is the parable of two lost sons and a very loving father. Verse 29, “These many years I’ve served you.” Serve that’s pretty soft. He used the word for enslavement, which is douleuo. Oh, I’ve been slaving away for you. You’ve been mistreating me for years. So it’s systemic, this enslavement. I’m sick of it and I’m sick of you. Despite of your enslavement in spite of your master slave relationship with me, I never disobeyed your command, ever.

Oh, really. Hold on to that thought. We’re going to come back to that in a moment, but let’s just pass it by for now, even though so obviously wrong, he continues, he says In spite of my perfect record in service to you. You never gave me a young goat. I never disobeyed you. You never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. You took him to Ruth’s Chris steakhouse; me and my buddies can’t even get happy meals at the drive thru. In spite of my perfect record and service to you, you gave me nothing.

 He also accuses him, in verse 30, of the injustice of failing to punish his brother. “When this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him.” What’s this? Legitimate charge, we don’t know for sure early on in the text, we don’t know for sure that he’s, this younger brother has cavorted with prostitutes. He may have. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.

What is he doing here? He’s making a Deuteronomy 21 charge against his brother and against his father. He’s telling his father that he has failed to treat this kid as a rebellious and stubborn son. How he is, he’s a glutton and a drunkard, and yet you have not done what Deuteronomy 21 requires of you to do. Deserves to be stoned by all the men of the city, but you, not only did you stand the way of the Kezazah ceremony, you celebrated this profligate.

You blew a huge chunk of money, my money, by the way, and threw him a party. The way Jesus has structured that sentence. He’s front loaded it with all the evidences of the younger son’s bad character which really implicates the father as well. He comes, you give, and you give prodigiously. In other words, he’s saying, like father, like son. You did this to him. You did this.

When he squanders your wealth with prostitutes, you turn around and squander it yourself. You squander it right back. You encourage the gluttony. You encourage the partying. An over indulgent father has produced an, a self-indulgent son. Any surprises here? Any mystery? Notice also how he refused to call him brother, my brother. Rather, “this son of yours.” He wants no association with him at all. He doesn’t want to address his father, as father. He doesn’t want to call his brother, brother.

Basically, he’s saying, if this right, here is what this family is like under your leadership, if this is what this family is like, receiving prodigals, eating with them, I want no part in this family. Isn’t it the same thing that the prodigal son said to his dad when he left? Let’s go back to that incredible claim in verse 29. “I never disobeyed your command.” Never disobeyed.

There is no reason to take this elder son’s testimony of himself at face value. Okay, so maybe he kept, when the father said go plow, he plowed, when he said go plant, he planted, when he said go harvest, he harvested. Okay, so maybe he followed orders. Was he in line with the father? Particularly in light of the profound dishonor that he shows his father by refusing to enter the house? By accusing the father of injustice? By blaming the father for the prodigal’s prodigal behavior?

The elder son here treats his father with dishonor. He slanders him. He resents him. He’s angry with him. He’s bitter at him. And he’s contemptuous toward him. He hates his father. He hates his brother too. How can this be a positive portrait of the Pharisees? Does it really matter if they kept all the jot and tittle of the law? Does it really matter, if they kept all the rules. If they really harbored this kind of contempt, does it matter if they appear to be obedient, if they keep the letter of the law, if they violate the spirit and intent of the law with their hearts?

No matter of how hard they work in the field, if they really want no part in the father’s home. The Pharisees, like the elder brother, they don’t share the father’s heart. They don’t rejoice in the father’s love. They have no gratitude for the father’s kindness and grace. So I ask you, whose sin is worse? Prodigal, or the malcontent?

Is it the one who wanted his father’s money from the start and made no pretense of hiding it? Or is it the one who would bide his time and be patient to get the whole estate? The one who played the hypocrite, the one who pretended friendship, the one who covered his contempt with feigned external obedience. Who’s the worst sinner? God knows.

These are the secret sinners. These are those who hide their great contempt of heart with politeness, with social appropriateness. They cover their shame with their works of righteousness. Sure, the younger brother engaged in awful behavior, abhorrent living. He loved and pursued his sins.

But the older brother he’s simply avoided certain sins, outward sins, and he’s indulged himself in more respectable sins. The elder brother has taken the socially accepted route; the one that gives him praise in public, the one that boosts his reputation, the one that ups his credit, causes his star to rise, increases his social standing. His good works are done to serve a self-centered prideful motive. He’s not virtuous in this. He’s not more virtuous than his younger brother. He is less virtuous because he covered his wicked heart with a mask of respectability, with a mask of hypocrisy.

Listen, no amount of money. No amount of success or achievement, whether in the world or in the church. No degree of religious involvement. No degree of attainment. Church attendance. Adherence to standards and all the rest, none of that can erase the guilt of sins. Nothing can silence the accusing conscience that cries all the time, guilty, guilty, guilty as charged. My friend, if you’re the older brother, you’re the lost brother.

Salvation comes to you when you acknowledge that you are worse than the prodigal. Like Paul, you’re numbered among the lowest of sinners. He counted himself the chief of sinners, that spots taken. But Paul was a Pharisee like this. Salvation comes to you, when you number yourself after him because you thought you could mask your sin with your works, with your achievements, with your results, with your profitability, with your bottom line, and you’ve twisted God’s justice to serve your own narrative that you are the righteous one, and you are in no need. You’ve twisted God justice to see yourself as the aggrieved party all the time and others, as the ones who cause you suffering, they are the oppressors, they are the victimizers, they are the abusers and it’s me against the world.

Can I just plead with you to drop that narrative? Just drop it. You’ve twisted the concept of justice and made it a servant of your own sin. You’ve got to abandon that, and abandon it now. You got to cling to God’s justice so you see yourself as nothing but a vile hypocrite. When you see his justice and your sin in contrast, you see yourself as nothing more than a vile hypocrite deserving the full penalty of divine justice, his wrath, death in an eternal hell, where we’re conscious in that torment and you’re there, alongside all the tax collectors and all the sinners that you despised and condemned and you have to look up to them. If you humble yourself now before God, his grace means he’ll lift you up.

By this time, Jesus’ audience is feeling extreme discomfort. The Pharisees and the scribes had to be fuming at this point. Jesus is talking about them. He’s exposing their letter of the law of obedience as nothing but hypocrisy. It’s a mask that hides their loveless contempt for God. The religiosity is nothing but a deceit. It’s covering a heart full of pride and greed.

Once again, another one of the father’s sons has it coming big time. I mean, when his contempt is exposed like this, what does he deserve? The father has every right to slap his son across the face. Get in here, get in this house. Or even worse, to say you know what? Forget you, you’re just. Hey servants, come over here. Jail him, put him away. I’ll deal with him later. Punish him severely for his insolent pride, public rebellion. Instead, it says his father came out and what, “entreated him.”

Utterly shocking, the verb parakaleo has the basic meaning to call someone to oneself. But the verb here is in the imperfect tense, which pictures the father, who’s repeatedly imploring his son. He’s continuously, earnestly pleading with him over and over and over again. My son, please don’t do this. Please don’t stay out here. Come inside, come inside with us. Come, come greet the guests. Come see, see what’s happened to your brother, it’s remarkable. Talk with me, please. My son, don’t be hard hearted. Soften your heart.

 One commentator says, quote, “It’s almost impossible to convey the shock that must have reverberated through the banquet hall when the father deliberately left his guests, humiliated himself before all, and went out in the courtyard to try to reconcile his older son.” End quote.

The father leaves the party, pleads with his malcontented son. His pleas are interrupted by his son’s anger, by this speech that’s full of slanderous accusations against his father’s justice. Religious hypocrites love to talk about justice. They’re always grumbling about what they think they deserve, but they have no clue whatsoever about true justice.

But the father lets him vent. He waits patiently until his son, like the fool of Proverbs, gives full vent to his wrath, and when he’s expended, his, his shot there, the father responds, and when he responds, he doesn’t respond in like manner, does he? It shows him here responding calmly, gently, patiently, tenderly. It’s the father, instead of coming in justice, he comes in Christ, first time. Justice is coming in the second coming. This time he comes in peace. Verse 31, he says son, literally it’s, child. His elder son paid him no compliment of an address, but he doesn’t return the favor. He actually pays him a compliment. He calls him child, teknon, teknon.

He could have used the word son, huios, but he used the term of endearment here. My child. It’s not an insult to the older son. He took it, he didn’t take it that way. He didn’t take it like he’s being condescended to, or talk down to. He took it as a term of endearment. Both these boys are his sons. The father loves them both. He’s not playing favorites, so there’s no charge of favoritism that can stick with this father.

But he says to the older son. “Son,” my child, “you’re always with me. And all that is mine is yours.” You’re always with me means, Son, I’m the reason for all this wealth and prosperity. You’ve had an abiding, continuous opportunity to build a relationship with me. He’s saying. I’m here. I’m always with you. You’re always with me. Slaves remain relationally distant from their masters. Sons draw near. They enjoy intimacy, they enjoy friendship with the father.

They share an unquestioned affection with one another. The elder son, in that home had plenty of time to assess his father’s true character to mark all of his goodness to see his acts of kindness, his patient abiding love. Love that’s on display in this amazingly gentle confrontation. Accuse the father of injustice; there’s a crime. There is a crime punishable by the by the same banishment that he’d hoped upon his brother. He says, “All that is mine is yours.” The father is not just pointing to the division of his estate, which now belongs to the elder son. He’s pointing to his life of magnanimous generosity and that’s the thought that it actually awakened the prodigal over in a foreign land in the first place, in verse 17, that his father, even the hired servants, have more than enough to eat, to accuse the father of stinginess, really? That’s your charge? Not going to make that stick, that’s another crime.

Again, punishable by the same kind of banishment that he wished upon his younger brother. So by saying “all that is mine is yours,” he means my heart, son, my heart has always been generous. I’ve always been open, I’ve always been eager to share, eager to give my bounty of this entire estate is wide open to you. Slaves don’t feel the freedom to go into the pantry and dig around, do they? They don’t feel the freedom to take what they want. It’s sons who enter the pantry or the garage or whatever.

Right? Your sons, go into your pantry, eat you out of house and home. Go into your garage, take all your tools, never return them. The problem is not a stingy father. The father is generous. The problem is in a son who thinks of himself as a slave, not a son. In fact, he wants to be a slave, not a son. He wants to be, just like the younger son proposed, he wants to be a hired servant, free from this family. The older son is not satisfied in a relationship with his father. He has really has no interest in his father, wants his father stuff.

It’s what he wants. But he wants to detach from his father. He wants the stuff abstracted from a relationship with his father, just like his younger brother. He wants his father’s goods to celebrate with his friends and notice his friends, not his father. And now just like his younger brother, his patience has run out. He’s tired of waiting for his father’s death. He’s ready to commit patricide.

Pharisees and scribes, just like this. They held in their hands, studied it fastidiously, day by day they held in their hands direct access to God through his word. Recited that shema daily, but they never followed up on the love of God. They didn’t love him with all their heart and soul and might. Salvation, the Kingdom of God, the glory of God, it’s all there for the taking. Their hearts are shriveled up. Shrunken by an insatiable greed and envy, blinded by their pride. Fundamentally, they didn’t understand justice at all, though they thought they did.

Since their own petty sense of offense was their standard of justice, they had no idea what true justice true righteousness meant, patient to the end. The father explains justice to his son in verse 32, here’s what’s just. “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this your brother was dead, and is alive. He was lost and is found.”

The son’s charge, “this your son” the father has turned that around, says “this, your brother.” In the ESV’s “it was fitting” that’s not strong enough at all. It was necessary is what he’s saying, it was right. That’s the appropriate strength to make the father’s point here. To celebrate, it’s nothing less than a matter of moral rectitude. It’s a matter of righteousness. This is true decency. This is moral necessity. How ironic isn’t it? For the older son, whom everybody thought was a good boy, everybody’s viewed as the righteous one the decent one, the one who understands propriety, understands decency.

Well, he’s the one who needs the lesson in rectitude. He’s the one who needs to understand righteousness and decency. His sense of right and wrong is so warped, because it’s self-referential. He’s oriented to himself, so he’s in tune with his own offenses, his own desires, he’s not attuned to God at all. What offends and pleases him. What’s fitting or righteous to celebrate. Well, because the father is supremely good and kind, it’s a safe bet that whatever the father rejoices in that’s fitting to rejoice in as well.

There’s a worthwhile reason to rejoice in whatever the father rejoices in. In this case, it’s a dead sinner brought to life. It’s a lost sinner found. It’s a great work here of rescue and resurrection, didn’t happen by chance. This isn’t like oh how lucky he came to himself. Came back and look, he’s restored. Didn’t happen by the younger son’s power, prowess, wisdom, planning. Raising the dead son, finding the lost son, bringing him home that is all the father, it’s all him, it’s all his work. It all glorifies the father and that, folks, is worth celebrating.

Well, we’ve come to the end of the text, haven’t we, in verse 32. Well, we’re still wondering how does this end? I mean, don’t leave us here. Tell, tell us what happened, did the older son repent? Did he confess his profound wickedness that he’s committed in offending his blameless father? Did he fall into his father’s embrace? Did he seek and receive his forgiveness? Did he ultimately join the party?

Sadly no. It’s not what the older brother did. We know what he did, because when we follow the career of these Pharisees and scribes, we know the outcome, don’t we? I couldn’t find anyone who put it better than John MacArthur did. He really poignantly captured what happened next. Doctor McArthur says he’d love to write the ending of this story, quote, “that the son seeing his father’s love, compassion, and grace, came to his senses about his wicked heart, was humbled, repented, and reconciled.” And then Doctor MacArthur goes on this way, “But you know what? I don’t get to write the end. Who wrote the end? The Pharisees wrote the end. Here’s the end that they wrote. And the older son being outraged at his father, picked up a piece of wood and beat him to death in front of everyone. That’s the ending they wrote. That is the cross. And that’s what they did just a few months after this. And they congratulated themselves on their righteous act that preserved the honor of Israel and Judaism and true religion and God.” End quote.

What about you, my friend? Fellow Christian if your heart has become hard, if you need to, like the older brother, thaw out, and remember the grace of God to you, that found you when you were nothing more than a prodigal covered in filth dressed in filthy rags. Let this story provoke your repentance, restore you back into the father’s house, so you can take your seat and honor the father as he ought to be honored.

For any of you who are not yet Christians. Before it’s too late, will you repent of your pride? Your self-righteousness, your works. I’m often reminded as a pastor, I’m often informed when someone passes away and I realize every time, man there are no guarantees. Life is really short. Will you before it’s too late, repent of your pride, self-righteousness, your works? Will you hear this really gentle, tender appeal of Christ, God in Christ, coming to reconcile you to himself. Will you receive the gift, his free salvation. While there’s breath, there’s hope. While there’s breath, there’s hope.