SPEAKER_01
0:20 Welcome back to the Daily Blade. 0:22 Again, this is Jay Reisner, lead pastor at Faith Bible Church in Edmund, Oklahoma. 0:26 And we're at the end of the week, almost all the way through the story of the Lost Son, and I hope you've hung with me. 0:32 And I've read very little of the actual text as I've done these devotionals, so I'm finally going to read from this parable. 0:39 Let's read Luke 15, verses 28 through 32. 0:43 The setting is a party being thrown for the lost son. 0:47 But he, the older brother, became angry and was not willing to go in, and his father came out and began pleading with him. 0:54 But he answered and said to his father, Look, for so many years I've been serving you, and I have never neglected a command of yours, and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends. 1:05 But when this son of yours comes home, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him. 1:13 And he said to him, Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. 1:19 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for for this brother of yours was dead, and has begun to live, and was lost, and has been found. 1:28 So from the closing verses of this parable, I want to bring forth three properties of this older brother character. 1:36 He stands out as the only miserable person in all of these parables in Luke 15, and we have to ask why. 1:44 And the answer is because he's eaten up with resentment. 1:48 First, he resents his life of service. 1:51 Did you notice that he that he speaks to his how how he speaks to his father? 1:54 He says, Look. 1:56 Now it doesn't matter what culture or what time you're living in. 1:59 When you're ticked off at someone, you tear into them by saying, Hey, look. 2:04 Look, for many years I've been serving you. 2:06 Does that sound like a son who loves his father? 2:09 Is that a son who delights in working for and with his dad? 2:12 Absolutely not. 2:14 I've been serving you. 2:16 Little brother chose not to serve you, and now you're rewarding him. 2:20 Where's my reward? 2:21 Where's my party? 2:22 Dad tries to respond saying, But but you've been with me this whole time. 2:27 But the older son doesn't care about his dad. 2:29 His mentality is good sons serve. 2:32 Good sons go out to the fields every day. 2:35 They do the work and they don't complain. 2:37 That's the older brother's mentality on serving. 2:40 And because of that, he resents his father. 2:42 Dad, I'm doing the work. 2:44 Little brother wanted you to die. 2:46 But the truth is the elder brother wanted the father to die also. 2:50 He was just more determined to wait it out. 2:53 He didn't love the father. 2:55 He resents his service. 2:57 Well, second, and similarly, he resents his life of obedience. 3:01 He says, I never neglected your commands. 3:04 And what's embedded in that thinking is sort of a quit pro quo approach to his father. 3:08 The formula is, I obey, you bless me with stuff. 3:12 But little brother disobeyed, and you blessed him with stuff, and now you're giving him even more stuff, the robe, the ring, the fatted calf. 3:20 You've never even given me a goat. 3:23 What good is obedience if you can just get rewarded for disobedience? 3:27 And the father stands there pleading, saying, But but but son, we had to celebrate. 3:33 A lost sinner repented, he was dead, and now he lives, he's home, he's here for good. 3:38 But the older son he doesn't care. 3:40 He doesn't have a category for rebellious son being celebrated. 3:46 And here we learn he's just as lost the older brother is as his brother was. 3:51 He stayed at home, but his heart is so distant from his father. 3:57 One more area of resentment. 3:58 Lastly, he resents his father's grace. 4:01 To be shown grace is to be shown favor or kindness that's not earned by your performance. 4:09 The doctrine of salvation says that God saves us by his grace. 4:14 So not by our works or our worthiness, lest any of us should boast, but by sheer grace. 4:21 And the kind of people who resent grace are the people who think that they've pretty much done everything right. 4:28 That's this position of the older son. 4:31 That's the heart of the Pharisees and scribes that this older son in the parable represents. 4:36 Their commitment to the law led them to despise and condemn all those who were not equally committed to the law. 4:45 That's what these scribes and Pharisees are dealing with in this story. 4:48 They can't handle grace. 4:50 They can't handle a teacher like Jesus, they can't handle his radical mercy. 4:56 It's upending their entire understanding of salvation. 5:00 They can't rejoice because grace not only disempowers them, it redefines their whole existence. 5:08 So instead of changing, instead of killing themselves, like the character Javert in Le Miserab, 5:17 they will eventually kill Jesus. 5:20 That's the depth of this older brother's resentment of the Father's grace. 5:26 See, we're naturally lost. 5:29 We are helplessly lost, we are willfully lost, and apart from the grace of God, we can be self-righteously lost. 5:39 We can be blind to our need for grace by our projections of outward goodness. 5:47 One of the things that Tim Keller points out in his teaching on this parable is that in Luke 15, Jesus defines sin in two ways. 5:56 In the younger son, he gives us a definition of sin that's very traditional, basic rebellion. 6:03 But in the older son, he turns the table. 6:06 The older son is not lost in spite of his goodness, but he's lost because of it. 6:13 It's not his sins that are keeping him from the Father, it's his damnable good works. 6:19 So not only do our sins need to be repented of, but our self-righteousness does also. 6:25 When was the last time you went to God, not just for your overt sins of rebellion, but for those sins of self-righteousness.