Good morning. I hope this doesn't look as bad as it feels, this strange little thing on here. You always get new opportunities. I've worn some things over here. It is the first double ear, double ear microphone. What do you call these things? I don't know. Anyways, a lapel of the future. It is spectacular. It is great to be here. My name is Chris Maddox. I, uh, work in Bolivia, uh, recently commended, uh, in Bolivia, and I'm working on a, Lord willing, accommodation from here from the US to be in CML as well. So I hope to die with my boots on, uh, being a missionary or wherever God would have me, and I hope that that is our desire as well, wherever we are, to live for him. All right, well, since I want to get through a very interesting passage personally to me, uh, the story of the prodigal son, uh, the parable, I, I want to just go right ahead and get right into the story, okay? So if you have your Bibles, Luke chapter fifteen. we're going to be looking at Luke chapter fifteen starting uh, starting in verses one and two and then verses eleven to thirty two. If you're taking, uh, notes, that's the passage we're looking at entirely. That's what we're going to be looking at the whole time is that passage, the story of the prodigal son, but the title is going to be, uh, The Two Bad Sons. Uh, in Spanish, I use a different name that sounds much more theologically appropriate, or whatever you want to call it, but I was at a camp in New Mexico a couple weeks ago speaking to some kids, uh, uh, a big youth camp, and uh, I decided that was a more fitting title for them. I have Thirteen messages on Luke chapter fifteen, so I'm going to shrink it into thirty minutes. So we will do our best. Well, I will do my best, and hopefully we'll be able to glean some great things. It is one of the most important and famous parables that Jesus gave, right? Who doesn't know the prodigal son? It is an incredible story, but sometimes we get lost when we only look at the first, what, fifteen verses, right? We don't realize there's a second part of the story, and actually, if you're going to say who's the most important person in the story, there's three people. There's the younger brother, they call the prodigal son or the wasteful son, the older brother, but there's also the father, and I think it's actually reversed. The most important person in the story may be the father. Uh, what Tim Keller wrote a book called The Prodigal God, which means another word, another definition for prodigal means the giving, the generous. It can be a positive thing. And we see the father in both parts of the story. We only see the younger son in one part, and we see the older brother in the second part. But the story is directed to reach its conclusion with the older brother, not with the younger brother. The younger brother stops in order to lead to the older brother. And the big question is, how does the story end? And we're going to answer that at the end. Okay, let me give you an illustration. I was, I was just thinking about how sometimes we think it is, we think of the Christian life as it's better to be more conservative than to be more in, uh, what we call, uh, to live in the liberty, right? The bad type of liberty, which we call, uh, licentiousness. And I was thinking about going up a road in Bolivia, and you have, it's a one lane road, not paved, and you're watching for buses coming down the other way, and you have a precipice on one side and a big steep rock wall on the other side. And what's the illustration? Well, get close to the left side of the wall, right? Get close to the, to the, well, in my case, the left side of the wall, the big rock wall, because if you get on the other side, maybe you're going to fall off. So the, so the thing it says, okay, be careful. And they say, oh, well, Lysendra's living over here. We have, we got to stay con- super conservative, and that's the best way. You know what? If you look at Jesus' life, the people he attacked the most were the ultra conservatives, didn't he? Who were the ultra conservatives of his day? The Pharisees. They loved money, they loved rules, they loved themselves, and they loved power. That's ultimately what got Jesus killed, his reinterpretation of scripture in the correct way. Instead of them misinterpreting the law and all those things, he interpreted it correctly. And I was thinking, what if you instead, it's not a road with a big stone wall here and a precipice here, it's a road with two precipices on the left and on the right. And God has called us not to licentious living, but he's not called us to legalism either, has he? He's called us to depend wholly on grace. Now, there's a lot of things that go into this, but I wanted to give you that illustration that we want to follow the way that Christ has laid out for us, and that doesn't always mean being super dogmatic on a bunch of secondary issues. Um, I had the privilege of visiting many churches on a weekly basis, and in Bolivia especially, the, the elders often come to me later, and they'll tell me all the problems in the church. I don't know why they trust me with that information, but they want to know my opinion. And I say, well, I don't have any experience, I tell them, but I see some things in the Bible, and one thing that happens over and over is fights over secondary issues. Discussions over things that really don't make us go to heaven. I- I consider that there's secondary doctrines, there's primary doctrines. The primary doctrine is ba- basically this: they put a gun to your head and you say, do you believe this? And if you say yes, that's a primary doctrine. So that would be belief that Jesus Christ is God and man. The Bible is the ultimate authority of mankind for everything we need to know. God is triune. There is a Trinity, God in three persons, and finally, salvation by grace, not by works. I would consider those the four main primary doctrines. Everything else ca- falls into important categories, but not ones I would die for. I wouldn't die for one cup of wine, for example, in Bolivia, they fight over that. We fight over how many pieces of bread we're going to use. We fight over a lot of funny things, and you know what? It causes some serious divisions. Where's the unity? It's very difficult for me, and that's something I deal with, and that's why this passage has been so important to me, because Jesus is pointing out the great danger of legalism in the Christian. Christ extends grace to all. Here's the big idea. Christ extends grace to all. The proud and self-righteous are clearly even more lost, according to Jesus. God extends, Christ extends grace to all people, but the proud and the self-righteous may be more lost and harder to reach with the gospel because they think they've made it by works, right? I live in a Catholic country. Everybody thinks you say, hey, are you going to heaven? And say, well, I think so. Well, how do you, why do you think so? Well, it depends how good I do, you know, how how high in the ladder I go, how much weight I have in, in, in this side of the balance. And some Christians, we live that way. We enter by grace, and we finish by works. Galatians chapter three, uh the whole book of Galatians is about that. Galatians says you start by grace. Grace is everything. It's not one time. Grace, we are dependent on God's grace for us. Okay, let's read Luke chapter fifteen, verses one and two. Luke fifteen one and two, and then we're gonna jump. Now the tax collectors and the sinners, first group, were all drawing near to hear him, talking about Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. Here's the accusation. And Jesus gives them three parables to explain why they are wrong, and the third one is directly specifically at what is going to happen to them if they continue hating Jesus and his grace towards the sinners and tax collectors. Could you imagine going down the street in Israel and you just get pointed to say, hey, you're a sinner. That was just... they they they refer to them as sinners publicly. And what did that make them? The Pharisees were saying, well, we have it made. And the scribes were their little buddies because the scribes interpreted the law how the Pharisees wanted it to be interpreted. They were at odds with the Sadducees and the Herodians, but they had a common enemy, Jesus, because he messed mainly with their economy, and he messed mainly with their authority structure, and they could not handle that. So they had a common enemy, and one of the big reasons was because he showed mercy, he showed grace, he showed compassion towards the people who really did need it. But what they didn't realize that they as well needed it. Everybody needed the grace of Christ. Nobody was making it, and then they just needed a little bit of help. No. So he gives them three parables. Parables are very historically difficult to interpret. Is that not right? How many times have you scratched your head and said, what in the world does this mean? There's many parables that I say, how do you apply this? Where is it going? Uh, and then you hear some person give you this beautiful, uh, explanation, then you hear another explanation that's totally different. You said, wait a minute, what do we do here? Very challenging. Jesus, while he speaks in simple terms, he is probably the most difficult person to understand in the Bible. I- I would say. I- I gave a class on the life of Christ recently at the Bible school. It was a great challenge. It was- it was very nice and exciting to study and everything, but it was difficult. The parables, why he did certain things, understanding the kingdom, the time frame, his audience, the context, all these things, and then how it shifted in between, and then the cross, and what happens after. I mean, the church isn't even involved for the first sixteen chapters of Matthew, for example. So what do you do? How do you explain? The kingdom of God is at hand. Lot of difficult things, including this parable among many. So first things first, a parable has three contexts. Here's a basic rule to understand a parable has three contexts. First is the original context, the people in the parable, right? It's a fictional parable, but it, we have to start with the people in the parable. So in this parable, there are three people. We'll get to it shortly. Older brother, the younger brother, and the father. There's a second context that would include the original audience. This is the one that's most often forgotten. We have to understand the parable, first of all, through the original audience, through the context of them. Who's the original? It told us, that's why we read verses one and two. The tax collector and the sinners, one group. Second group, the Pharisees and the scribes, and lastly, the speaker being Jesus Christ. The second context, sinners, the holy people, according to them, and finally Jesus Christ. So there you have the three people that also fit so neatly with the people in the parable, right? The younger brother is the sinners and tax collectors, the older brother is a Pharisee, and the father is Christ, offering salvation to both the sinners and the self-righteous. Lastly is the context of Titan Dry Bible Chapel, or anywhere today, and you have to bridge the gap, right? You have to say, okay, here's the original message, how do we take that to today? You can get some pretty funny illustrations if you just go straight, right? If you don't even look at the original content, you say, well, they did that, therefore this. And you can jump, uh, there is a, uh, there's a, there's a part where Jesus is teaching on washing hands. He says, your disciples do not wash hands. And then the application of Jesus was, well, that doesn't matter. So then do we take that today? Okay, kids, don't wash your hands anymore. Not a big deal. Jesus doesn't care if you wash your hands. See, it misses the total point. He was talking about their ritual purification, which was so important to them doing all this traditional stuff, and by washing their hands, they're actually getting to heaven. That's a very different context, and then the application becomes about legalism, not about washing hands. There's one example. Okay, three contexts. We're going to look at the first context, but try to understand it through the eyes of an original Jewish person. Now try to tell a story in that way, okay? So imagine we're on a mountain, on a little hill. Maybe we're sitting down. Maybe we're listening to Jesus tell us this parable that would become famous until today. Two thousand years later, there's still messages going on about this. For me, an incredible, incredible story, and it has so much in it. It's one of his longer parables too. Third parable directed at this problem of receiving sinners and eating with them. Third parable says, verse eleven, and Jesus said, there was a man who had two sons, and a 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 that 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, I like the Spanish here, it says, when he had wasted, wasted everything, he wasted his life, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and fixed 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 paws 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? The light bulb went on. I will arise, and I will go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you 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 ways 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 against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. On and on. But the father ignored it. He says 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. We usually stop there, don't we? We're not going to, but we do need to look at this first part before we continue to the second part. Without the first part, the second part has no real, uh, significance on its own. The younger brother, the bad son, the first obvious bad son, goes to his dad and says, Dad, give me my inheritance. Obviously, in that time, and even today, you don't get inheritance until what happens? Until, until dad dies, right? So he was telling, he says, old man, I'm tired. Just fall over and die. I'm ready for my money now. I don't want your rules. I don't want, I just want your money. I do not appreciate you. To a Jewish ear now, to the Jewish person listening to this, this would be a terrible, terrible dishonor. In America, we don't have an honor system as, as great as, for example, in Asian culture or even in Latin American culture, so this is not very well understood. But when you tell your dad, I wish you would die, that's offensive enough, right? This would be such a crime for the Romans or for a Jew that would, that could easily, um, that kid could easily be killed. The father had the right to kill his son for dishonoring him that way. It could, it could even for a lesser crime, you could kill your son. I've heard in the Roman Empire, the Roman, a Roman father, for any slight disobedience, could kill his son because it was, he was his property until he became an heir, and you didn't become the heir or the rightful heir until you received, until you achieved about eighteen or twenty years old. The Apostle Paul talks about that, and then you don't become, uh, an heir in a sense that you actually have it until your dad is, has passed away. So this son does a very big crime. He says, Dad, I want your money, and the only way to do that, I wish you were dead. So the dad, all the Jews are thinking, okay, well, there's an easy, easy answer. The dad goes and stones his son. That might sound terrible to us, but a Jewish listener would be totally for it. So, all right, I'm here. I can help out anytime, just let me know. But the strange part, the first of many strange things, is the father divided his property between them. Said, okay, younger brother would get about forty percent, older brother about sixty percent. Okay. I'm like I was dead to you. I'm greatly dishonored, but I will do what you asked. Why? Why would a father extend this piece of, this mercy to him? Well, in the context, maybe because he hopes the son will change his mind and return home. Instead of killing him now, maybe give him a chance to repent. The Jew would not understand this. A lot of people would not understand this in that culture. And he goes away to a different country. Another very bad mark. You did not leave your country. No, uh, Naomi in in the book of Ruth knew that because she went to Moab, she had offended God, and she thought that because of that, she had received all the challenging things, the death of her husband and two sons, because of going to Moab. It was a, it was a crime, unpatriotic, to leave your country. And he left his country. And then he wasted everything. Terrible. Not very good with money, not very good investing or anything like that. He just blows it all. And then, no money, no friends usually goes along with it, and what happens? He reaches a time of famine. Zero, nothing available to him. So he has now a few options left to him. They're starting to dwindle. His options are fix it myself or return home. He's not about to go home yet. I'm gonna fix it. So he goes out and hires himself to a Gentile person, another X on his, uh, resume. The Jews are thinking, man, this is one bad son. First of all, he, he takes his father's money, he dishonors him, deserves death, goes to a different country, and then he goes and is a pig farmer. Do Jews eat pigs? Of course not. That would, that Jesus chose that job specifically to show us how, eh, disgusting this son was to the ears of a Jew. Always the context, right? Jesus is specifically making the audience realize how terrible this younger son is. It says, and he was longing to be fed with the paws that the pigs ate. Can you imagine that? Sitting in a, sitting down, hot outside, pigs are rolling around in their mud. It sm- doesn't smell too good. I don't know if you guys have smelled pigs, but I have not had very many good experiences with that. Okay, none. It doesn't smell very good. And they're eating, uh, paws. There's actually what the word in Spanish is actually a kind of this long, strange, kind of sweet fruit that grows on this tall tree, and it kind of falls down. And I used to, when I was a kid, kind of chew on it a little bit, but I mean, you're not going to get much substance from that, and especially if it's covered in mud and you're eating with pigs. I mean, how humiliating. Do you understand? I mean, the dregs of what you could be doing, the worst of the worst. And here he is trying to eat with pigs, and he is longing for this. It reminds me of the human beings. We long, everybody longs for something more than what they have. And a lot of times, as Christians, we do too. We wish for things would be different, for better circumstances. God has promised us the very, the very best. But sometimes we criticize non-believers for going after things. You know what Saint Augustine once said, or just Augustine? He said a quote that's been very, uh, powerful to me. He says, sin, sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place. Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place. He was longing to be fed, but from the wrong place. He was looking for happiness, for success in the wrong place. A lot more I could say on that, but that verse really struck me actually just this morning. Longing, looking for satisfaction. You're looking for Christ. You're looking for your... Everybody has these, these ideas, these utopian ideas of a better life, a better world, how it could be if. And then we have the super rich people with everything, and how are they doing? Not very well. I mean, you don't have to, uh, be an avid reader of, what is it, the tabloids or, or, or the entertainment news to realize they're not doing too well. You can just, you can glean it pretty quickly. You say problems, divorce, hatred, jealousy, and that's what our kids want. That's what they see on TV. They said, oh, I would like to be like that person. Say, that person has so much, and then they committed suicide. Hmm, I wonder what happened. They were longing, they received it all, but it wasn't enough. Finally, the good thing happens, but he came to himself. You can translate that literally as repentance. He changed his mind. The light bulb went on, and he said, I got to go home. So the only good thing this son does in the entire story is the last thing. He says, I am going to go home. I now appreciate my father. I realize how much he sacrificed for me and how much I actually love him. From going from hating his father to loving his father. But you know what? I will mention one more thing, though. I think when people get to the end of the end of the end in their life, I think a lot of people have experienced that. I've experienced that when you kind of, you lose friends, money, opportunities, and you say, this is it. The human says, okay, I have two choices. For the Christian especially, I can choose to trust God and to ask him to forgive me and to give me a second chance and to help me through this. But you know what a lot of people choose to, though? It's getting more prevalent in American society, is suicide. It's a very real thing. Depression. It's a real problem. And the answer to that is still the answer for everyone. It is grace. That he knows, and God puts us through trials, like this younger son did a lot of times, so that they will come to grace. I could tell you many stories, I'm not going to, of how people in the hardest of situations come to themselves. They wake up, said, hey, wait a minute. Maybe God is doing this because he actually loves me and wants me to change. But if we choose pride and we say, I'm going to fix it even when I have nothing. Suicide is a form of pride too. Very terrible form, uh, more to say on that, but... And he comes home, says, Dad, he's going to tell his dad, I have sinned against you and against heaven. I'm no longer to be called your son. True. And he starts to walk. He repents, and then he starts to walk. I think that has a illustration to repentance, and then what changes repentance should bring in a Christian, right? Like be- like coming to Christ. And the father sees him from a far way off, far way away. He says, hey, that's my son. Maybe he has a shaggy beard, maybe his hair is all grown over, maybe he is dirty and sweaty, has no sandals on, he has poor person clothes on because he sold it, and he sold his ring, and he sold his shoes. He's hungry, he's skinny, he's pale. He says, that's my son. And he does another surprising thing. The father has compassion. He runs, he embraces, and he kisses him. Shocking, shocking to the Jewish audience. You are not supposed to do that. The father never runs. That's dishonorable. And he was waiting for him. He, he saw him from a long ways off. He said, that's my son. He was waiting expectantly for the return of his son. Just come home. And then he embraced him and kissed him. And while the son is trying to sputter out, oh dad, I'm so sorry, please just give me a job cleaning toilets. Dad says, my son is home. We're gonna celebrate hi- this. Give this hippie a bath. Please cut his hair, give him some nice clothes, put a son's ring on him to say this is my honorable son, who's not honorable at all. Kind of an illustration of, of God calling us as his chil- us his children, huh? He says, call this one my son, treat him as Jesus Christ. That's how God treats us. All the blessings in the heavenly places that belong to Jesus Christ are also for us. Isn't that what Ephesians one tell us? It is. That's crazy. That's crazy talk. And that's what God does for us. We do not deserve it. What did we do? We said, God, I'm a sinner. We recognize what we once loved, we now hate. We realize the true place of satisfaction is in Christ. And they put on a party. And now older brother shows up. Now the older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing, and he called to one of the servants and asked, what's going on? 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. How should he respond? Said, hey, I haven't seen that guy in months. That's amazing he came home. That's not how he responds. He responds like the Jew wanted to respond in the original audience, probably. They say, Dad, why are you accepting this son? They would respond like this. A lot of the audience, I think, would naturally respond as the older brother. He was angry. He was angry, and he refused to go in. So his father came out to entreat him. How interesting, again, the father shows up. The father showed mercy to the younger son, and now he's working with the older son. Both of these guys have serious issues. We're going to find out that the topic of the message isn't one bad and one good son, like sometimes we've heard it illustrated. It's two bad sons, two wicked, hateful, prideful sons. First mark against him, he was angry, and he refused to go in. His father came out and showed him grace, showed him compassion, said, hey, let's talk about this. Understand what's going on. Is this your house, or is this my house? Is this your money, or is this my money? The father said, this is mine. Are you going to obey me? Are you going to accept your brother? Are you going to show love and compassion to your kin? Or are you going to put your back to him? The Pharisees did this to this, to the sinners all the time. They called them openly sinners. The Samaritans too. They said, oh, you're not of us. You're not really Jews. Said, yeah, they're Jews. Sorry, but as far as I check, maybe we don't have DNA tested, but they're Jews, all right. Those tax collectors, they're Jews. They're just as much sons of Abraham as you are, but that doesn't get you to heaven. And when Jesus offered salvation to both groups, especially to those sinners and the task collectors who listened to Jesus, said, hey, wait a minute, you can't talk to them. They're the bad boys. They've done all these awful things. You can't hang out with them, Jesus. I'm sorry. What do you think you're doing? Nobody does that. You're supposed to be this respectable, honorable teacher of the law and this smart person, and you're going with them? I'm sorry, you lost a screw somewhere. Sorry, Jesus. He says, well, if we're going to talk about who has authority here, I think I have a one up on you, but they had a hard time understanding that Jesus wasn't just some good teacher. He was exactly what he said he was. He was God. And one of the important messages that he was bringing is that everybody needs to repent. Everybody needs to be shown grace and accept that. No one's getting to heaven by their own works, like the Pharisees thought. So when the father comes and talks to him and says, hey, forgive your brother, give him a second chance. But he answered his father, look, these many years I have served you. He's angry, remember, so we have to put up the tone here. And I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. See the ego coming through there? The I, me, mine. But this, when he, but when this your son, this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed a fattened calf for him. Angry. It's funny, when you first hear about the older brother, what is he doing? He's coming in from work. He's probably sweaty, he's probably tired. He's the administrator of the property for dad. He's probably a very hard worker. He's probably very honorable, respectable. You'd think good things about the older brother. But then when you look at his intentions, when the brother comes in, you find out why he was such a hard worker. Is it possible to think you're going to heaven by being such a good church member? Happens all the time. Is it possible to think you are better than someone else in church because you don't have such an obvious sin as him? Or you haven't struggled with that? Is it ha- is it easy to look down on someone else? I think it is. I think a lot of Christians, we do this, and we have scales of holiness based on what we do. Very interesting. And this younger brother has come back. The older brother says, I don't want to see him anymore. And he says, okay, dad, I'm going to talk seriously to you. You got to understand what's going on here. I'm the hard worker. I'm the good guy here. And that, he- he shouldn't be here. You know what he's also doing? He says, that's my money. Remember you gave the inheritance to me too? Why are you giving it to him? So now he's jealous. The father said, well, I'm still alive. Do you want me dead too, just like your younger brother? See, both of the sons thought it, only one of them said it openly. But the older brother's story is not done yet. He may still do worse. Many years have I served you, obeyed you. I have never disobeyed you once. Is that true, you think? Eh, no. Most likely not. Sounds like a lot of ego. Sounds like a lot of, uh, trying to make yourself look good, like the Pharisees were. Just like that Pharisee who stood in the temple and raised his hand and said, oh God, I am so thankful I am not like this tax collector. I give to the poor, and I do all these great things. And then what's the tax collector doing in the temple in the other parable of Jesus? He's beating his chest with his head down, saying, oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus said, who went home justified? The self-righteous or the repentant? Jesus said the repentant. It's very clear. His older brother is pumping himself up, saying, hey, I'm, I'm something. He says, but hey, you're giving him the fattened calf, the best animal in the entire flock, herd. Herd or flock? It's herd, right? I don't want to get my words mixed up here. Sorry, I'm not from Yakima, you know. Although I do live near a farm. I won't say anymore. He says, you never gave me even a young goat. Where's my party time, huh? Where's my fun time? I worked all this time, and he went and blew it all, and you're going to kill the best animal in the house for him? What is wrong with you? Don't you know that's my animal? That's always really your animal? Oh, really? Okay, okay, we can do, we can do this. What about my friends? Ego, lying, bitterness. And he says, when this son of yours came, why does it say this son of yours? Have, uh, have any of your kids or siblings done this to your siblings, maybe? Say, that brother, not brother, we don't say that, that son of yours. You know, what is it kind of saying? He says, I'm not identified with him. No, your brother does something really dumb. I don't know him, not in a family, not related, sorry. You know, sometimes my dad would walk down the street with me, and the music would be blaring on the street for some reason, in Bolivia it's common, and he'd start dancing. I'm like fourteen. I'm very, very sensitive, you know. You know, very worried about my own appearance and my huge baggy pants and everything else that I was wearing at that time. And I'm walking out through, my dad starts dancing, you know, and I said, Dad, hey, cut it out. Dad, Dad, I don't know him, I don't know him. I don't, I'm not a, I, I walked the other direction, he's just laughing and he's loving it. My dad's definitely that way. He says, this your son, you can call him your, your son, but I'm not calling him my brother. I will not be identified with him, just like the Pharisees said, they're sinners, they're not Jews. They're done, they're out, crossed the line. This son of yours has come, and now he's going to falsely accuse his brother of something he had no idea if it happened or not. It's possible, but he doesn't know. This is called false testimony, isn't it? He says, he devoured your property with prostitutes. He didn't say that. He wasted everything. Did, did, did the son actually go and be with, younger son be with prostitutes? Well, sometimes you might infer that. Well, of course, the older brother said so, but was he with the younger brother? No. How did he know this information? Well, he didn't. He just made it up to make himself look better. He falsely accused him. And you've killed the fatted calf for him. And now the dad steps in, and he said to him, son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. You're my future heir. But he recognized that his son doesn't have love, doesn't have grace, doesn't have compassion. Jesus told the Pharisees, you tithe mint and cumin. In other words, you do the little things in the law that look good externally, but you have forgotten about what things? Love and mercy and justice and the important things. What is the law about? Jesus said, love God, love people. Who are people? Who are your neighbor? That includes everyone. And the Pharisees had a really hard time with this. Externally, they looked the part, but internally they were lost. You know, I really struggled with this in, uh, I'll just be honest, in American culture, because I'm from a Latin culture. I'm American and Bolivian. I was born and raised in Bolivia, so when I first went to Emmaus, one of the most difficult things for me is feeling like a great sinner when everybody else was so spiritual. You'd walk down the hall, says, says, uh, did you read today? How's your, how's your prayer life? Oh, pray for me. And then all these spiritual words, and and then I went to, I I met some Baptist people too, and said, are you walking in the spirit? Says, why thinks, how do you do that? Walking in the spirit, you know? How do you do that? This is really strange to me. All these phrases we use, and then, you know, we don't, we're not open about our own deficiencies, our sins, our shortcomings. Uh, even in Bolivia, sometimes I hear preachers, and it makes you sound, makes it sound like the preacher has everything figured out. Oh, but man, I'm a sinner, and I can never be like him. And one of the things I have to say all the time in Bolivia said, I am a great sinner. I'm not ashamed of that, in a way. You know why? Because I'm depending on grace, not on my goodness. I say I'm a sinner. I'm working to change. God help me, but I still sin. I still struggle. The Pharisees were not going to tell anybody their, show them their dirty laundry. And at Emmaus, I had a lot of problems with that. I didn't understand. I felt like a terrible sinner, and I left Emmaus because of that. I went back, and I realized that it was just all a show, but there were a lot of people that, that was just how they expressed themselves, and I started to try to be really honest, especially with the younger group of the Emmaus students, and disciple them and say, hey, you know what? Let's be open about who we are and what our problems are. Otherwise, where's the help? If we're just going to be facade, that's not right. We got to be honest, and the Pharisees were very good at acting apart, but inside being dead man's bones. Didn't Jesus say that? Blind leading the blind. Vipers. Finally, finally Jesus says through the Father, it was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this your, your brother, it is your brother, stop disowning him. Was dead and is alive, was lost and is found. End of story, right? No. I really don't like it when Jesus doesn't finish stories for us. Same with, like, the book of Jonah. It doesn't end. Well, he's sitting under the tree, he's really angry, God says, I care for everyone, and then the story doesn't have anything else. Did he like the message? Did he agree? I guess he wrote the book, so he probably must have agreed somewhat. But with this story, what happens? The older brother says, okay, okay, I'll come inside. That's not the right answer. Context. This is a prophetic parable, if there is such a thing. I just made that up. It's a prophetic parable. It's going to say, if you continue in this way, what is going to happen? You decide the fate. Two brothers are angry with the father. One said it openly, left, then came back home. The other son eventually said he hated the father, and he shows why, because of his greed, because of his jealousy, because of his power monging, mongering, how do you say that? He loved himself more than his brother. He loved himself more than his father. And he finally said it openly. The context is the younger brother are the sinners to whom Jesus is offering salvation. The older brother are the Pharisees to whom Jesus was also offering salvation on a more intellectual basis, also with miracles, and he was saying, both of you need salvation. Both of you are sinners. I will show you. He in the, in, in the Sermon on the Mount, he showed the extent of the law, that everybody was a sinner. And if you didn't follow the whole law, you followed none of the law. You were condemned by the entire thing, according to the Bible. So here it is. What's going to happen, Jesus said? What are you going to decide? Will you accept that I eat with sinners and tax collectors? Will you accept that I show mercy to Zacchaeus? That I love the prostitute woman who was about, who came and washed my feet? That I helped a woman who was about to be stoned? Are you okay with that? Are you going to understand grace? Or are you going to let your pride get in the way? You know how I think the story ends? The younger brother may have said, I want you dead. The older brother just did it. In this story, you could say the older brother took a knife out and stabbed his father to death. Isn't that what happened? Didn't the Pharisees falsely accuse and crucify Jesus Christ on a cross? Isn't that the end of the story? It is, isn't it? So I say a prophetic parable. He was laying it out to them, saying, here is grace for everyone. I- I'll show you your evil. I'll show you what your problem is. Jealousy, bitterness, lying, hatred, anger. Will you repent like the younger brother did? See, both brothers were bad brothers. The redeemable one is the first brother. The really terrible one is the second one because he did not repent. Now we have examples of, for example, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, who did repent, so we can't group them all together. But you know what? What I said at the beginning holds true. Christ extends grace to all, but the proud and self-righteous can be more lost. Couple questions for you to finish. Which brother do you identify with? You can apply this to before coming to Christ. You can apply this as a Christian. Are you depending on grace? Are you still struggling with sin? Well, repent. Come back, look for change, come to Christ, who is the true fountain of joy, of everything we look for. Stop longing after sin that doesn't really give you what you really want. That's an application for the Christian, and people are usually on one side or the other. I think it was, uh, John, um, Wesley who said, sometimes we get on the horse on one side to fall off the other. You come to church and become more legalistic, or you become... there's a lot of liberty in some churches. There's the Christians, but they don't look like Christians. They dress, talk, act. You say, are they Christians? Probably not. If you look and talk and act like a non-Christian, you probably are one. So there is a call there to a change of lifestyle, to come home, to dress like a son, to act like a son. Now, that doesn't save you, but a true Christian will act like a son. What about the other group, though? The older brother? Maybe we have a hard time with people, don't forgive very much. We have a bunch of rules, and we think that by that we are super uber spiritual because I pray five hours a day and read my Bible twenty six hours a day. Right? It's true, and we can all become part of that. There's nothing wrong with that, but if we become that our basis of who we are, if that's our basis of getting to heaven is what we do, then we miss the point. One of the most important truths is that we need to recognize that we are completely dependent on grace, and I ask myself that. Was I saved by grace? Yes. Do I continue through grace? Is there one day I can say, well, I did enough today to get to heaven? If grace goes away from one day, I'm back where I started. I depend on the work of Jesus Christ yesterday, today, forever. I am saved from hell into heaven, and that is a hope. I am not yet saved in a way. My future is to be saved out of where I was originally going, and I have a guarantee, a seal in the Holy Spirit says you are going, my friend, and there's nothing you can do to lose that. But we can also be honorable or dishonorable sons. So we depend on grace, but there's also the battle to honor him in our life. It's a difficult dichotomy, but if we start mixing works and law, we have serious issues. Works and, works and, uh, grace, I'm sorry, we have some serious issues. So, last point. There's a third son in this story. You know there's a third son in this story? Well, I just made it up. The Son of God came that we might imitate him. That's a First Peter one— uh, First Peter two twenty one. We actually looked at it a little bit this morning. We're looking through First Peter in one of the classes. It says Jesus Christ came, suffered for us that we might follow in his steps, that we might be an example to us. The perfect son is Jesus Christ, and we are called to imitate him. To hate our sin is one thing we must do, yet also to love the sinners around us. Extend forgiveness. We want the change, but let's not look down upon the people who are struggling through difficult things. Let's make it easy to be transparent, to talk about things, and to see how the Bible really has a solution. Sometimes we're so cooped up with, oh, if someone finds out this, I'm really in trouble. What would we do with David if he came to church? King David? Oh, well, uh, I'm a murderer, and I slept with another woman, but God forgave me. Oh, really now? I don't think so. How about that, you know? What if a sinner of the tax collectors came in? Man. And Jesus loved those people? Do I? Wow. All right. I went a- over. Not uncommon, I'm so sorry. Uh, and I'm gonna pray. But before that, if you wanna kind of know what I'm doing, where I am, I'll put a little update, uh, list. You can put your name and your email if you want to get update emails from me, kind of find out what I'm doing, but thank you so much for, uh, bearing with me. It was great to be with you guys, to share one of my favorite parables. I really love the prodigal son, and I hope you could enjoy it maybe in a new light as well. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this day, for the opportunity this week to share your love with a hundred and more kids, whatever will be at the day camp. I just pray that will be an a good opportunity to live out the love we should have. Father, there's so many things to learn from this parable that I just briefly touched on, and and I pray that we might meditate on this and and ask ourselves, who do we identify with more, and what does that mean that we need to change? I pray that we might realize our total dependence on grace and be so thankful for it, and to live to honor you like Jesus Christ. A lot of things to apply, Father, but I thank you for this parable that shows us that all people need grace and that you are willing to give all people grace, but we must overcome either our sins or even our pride, which is also a sin. Pray for this church, Father, you bless each one of them. Encourage us this week too, that we might live to your glory in whatever we are doing, and be examples of Jesus Christ, that they might be attracted to the freedom that truth brings, even though it can be hard to understand, that they would say, I want that. We might show Christ to the world, for we are the ambassadors until you take us home. For all this I pray, Father, in your son's precious name, amen.