Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 15:11-32
I was fitting to sing about God's grace as we turn to Luke 15. If you have a Bible, ask you to turn to Luke 15. If you don't have one, there should be one in front of you. You can pick that up. Find Luke chapter 15. There is an outline in the bulletin. Hope you received one of those on the way in. You can follow along on the outline. We're going to look this morning at a passage that most of us know as the parable of the prodigal son. We're going to talk about why maybe that is or is not the best title for these verses. But if you're looking at Luke 15, you can look at verse 3 just by way of reminder where it says that he, Jesus, told them the Pharisees and the scribes who were grumbling. Jesus told the Pharisees and the scribes this parable, singular, one parable. What follows is actually three parables, and we talked about last week that Luke is really trying to make a very important point that in what follows in the rest of Luke 15, there's three separate stories, but they're really all the same story, and they're all driving us to the same truth. And when you look at these three stories that are sort of one story, there's an escalation of emotion as you read through it. And so you start off with this story of a lost sheep who gets lost of no fault of its own, really, other than that it's just a fool of sheep, and you pity the sheep. And then you read about this woman who's lost a coin, in fact, she's lost a tenth of her wealth according to the story, and you sort of know the urgency if you've ever lost money, you've ever lost your billfold, you know that. You go from pity to sort of intense, I got to find that, and then you come to the last story, a story about not just one lost son, but two lost sons, and you've gone from pity to sort of urgency to now you can feel empathy with the characters who are lost in this story. This is probably Jesus' most famous parable. You could argue that maybe some of the other ones that Luke mentions, maybe the Good Samaritan is equally famous, but this is a very, very famous story told by Jesus. It's inspired many, many paintings, the most famous of which is Rembrandt's painting, and he titled his painting The Return of the Prodigal Son. And so there's Rembrandt over on the left. He was happy the day that he sat for that picture, and then you can see the painting over on the right, and you see the father sort of stooping down over the younger brother who returned, and you notice that his hair looks not great, and you notice down at the bottom he sort of worn the holes out in his shoes, and you see the older brother is the character in red over on the right with his hands fold, he doesn't look very happy, and it's an interesting painting, just one interesting detail I learned this week. Look at the father's hands. The hand that is on your right is a big, strong manly hand, and the other hand on the left, just to be honest, is kind of a wimpy, small, girly hand. He did that on purpose to say in the story there is no mother mentioned, there's only a father mentioned, but he said to sort of bring in the idea that this young man had a mother and a father, he drew the hands differently. Lots of interesting things you can study on the painting, and some of the things in this scene he got right. Listen, some of the things in that scene that you're looking at, he got wrong. At least when you read the story as it appears in Luke chapter 15. Let me tell you the worst thing that ever happened to Luke 15, 11 to 32. The worst thing that ever happened to this passage is somebody called it the parable of the prodigal son. That's the worst thing that ever happened. When you look at that painting, and you know that the title of the painting is the return of the prodigal son, you look at that and you say well that painting is about the prodigal, the son, the younger brother who ran off and then who came back. And look in your Bible, right above Luke 15 verse 11, if your Bible has headings it probably says like mine the parable of the prodigal son. And so when you get ready to read these verses you say, oh well these verses are about the prodigal son, the one who ran off and then the one who came back. But I want to suggest something to you. I want to suggest to you that this parable is not chiefly about the younger brother who got his father's stuff and then ran off and then came back. In fact I want to suggest to you that out of the three characters in this parable, there's the father, there's an older brother, and there's a younger brother, I would suggest to you that the younger brother is the least important character in the story. I don't even think it's up for debate. I think what Jesus is trying to teach us about the older brother and about the father are much more important. Yes, he's teaching us something about this younger brother but is much more important than this so-called prodigal son who leaves home and then who comes back. Look at the setting, Luke 15, 1-2, the Pharisees and the scribes are grumbling because Jesus is hanging out with tax collectors and sinners. So he tells them these stories and the highest one, the last one, the final one is this story of a man, a father with two sons. If Jesus wanted to teach a story only about the prodigal, he could have cut off the second half of the story but a lot of times in parables, the thing that comes last is the most important and what comes last in the story really doesn't have much to do with the younger brother, it has to do with the older brother. The one who in the story represents the scribes and the Pharisees, the very people Jesus is telling the story to in the first place and one of the chief things Jesus is trying to do is correct their misconceived, their misconstrued, their off-base ideas about who God is and what he was like. So I would say to you that Jesus is telling us way more about the older brother who stayed, and we'll see what happens at the end of the story, and the father who welcomes both of his sons back than he is the younger son. I would even go so far as to say this, the true prodigal in this story is not the younger brother, it's the father. If you're just emotionally connected with the word prodigal and you need it to be part of this parable, fine, call it the parable of the prodigal father and look on your outline at the definition of prodigal, spending resources freely and recklessly, wastefully extravagant, saving or giving something on a lavish scale. You could look at that definition and say, "Yeah, the younger brother who ran off with his father stuffed and wasted it, he's the prodigal. He went and he lived lavishly and wastefully and extravagantly." Okay, that's fine. I think the father's the prodigal. The father is the one just looking at this definition who freely gives forgiveness. He's the one who is almost reckless and wastefully extravagant with the grace that he extends to his sons. He's the one who is lavish and how he forgives his sons and welcomes them into the family. The father is the prodigal in this story and so I don't want you to make a habit of sort of scratching things out in your Bible, that's not a good habit to start, but maybe out in the margin of your Bible you could just put a question mark, not by the story but by the title of the story. If you understand Luke didn't write the title, the editors put that in, maybe just put a little question mark by the title to remind you, maybe this story isn't just about the prodigal son, the younger brother who ran off and then came home. Maybe Jesus is telling a story about a man who had two sons because he wants us to learn not only about one of the sons but the father and what both of the sons did and what they experienced. The big idea is really simple. I told you it fits with the passage. Last week it fits perfectly with the gospel of Luke, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. That's right out of Luke 19-10, the theme verse for the entire gospel is what we talked about last week in the first two parts of Luke 15 and this morning we see it clearly, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. Now look in the text and let's read this parable, the parable of the forgiving father or you could say the parable of two lost sons, Luke 15 verse 11, 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 the property that's coming to me and he divided his property between them, not many days later the younger son gathered all he had and he 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 field to feed pigs, he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate and no one gave him anything, so 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 he 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 am no longer worthy to be called your son but the father said to his servants, bring him quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fatten 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. 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, your father's killed the fatten calf because he's received him back safe and sound but he was angry and he refused to go in, his father came out and entreated him but he answered his father, look these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. When the son of yours came who's devoured your property with prostitutes you killed the fatten calf for him and he said to his son, son you're always with me and all that his mind is yours, is fitting to celebrate and be glad for this your brother was dead and is alive, he was lost and he's found, let's pray. Father as Hunter has prayed, as Tyler has prayed, we pray and we ask and we plead with you to show us more of yourself this morning as we look at these verses that are so familiar to us, help us to see them in a new way, in a clear way but in a right way and in a correct way. Father, we pray for your spirit to guide us, to convict us, to help us understand where we fit in with this story and Father help us to see Jesus clearly as we think about this father and his two sons, we ask it in Jesus name, amen. Verse 11 is key, Jesus tells a story and it's about a man with two sons and this is the first thing on your outline that you can fill in. The story is about a father who had two sons and both of them were lost. If you read it thinking that one son was a good son and one son was a bad son, you totally miss the point of what Jesus is trying to say. You miss the context of verse one and two and who he's talking to and why he's talking to them, he says there's a man with two sons, younger and an older and in what Jesus describes, you see very plainly that both of them are lost and so let's talk about the younger brother, he comes to his father and he boldly brazenly says to his dad, I want you to give me my part of your estate. You can jot down Deuteronomy 21-17, it's an Old Testament law and it basically says that the oldest son receives a double portion of whatever the father has and so when the younger son comes and says give me my portion, there's two sons, the older son's going to get double, what he's saying is I want a third, I want my third, now it's not all that uncommon in Jesus' day for a father to make the decision on his own to basically retire and what would happen is they would drop this legal document and the father would divide his estate between his heirs, in this case the older son would get two-thirds, the younger son would get a third, the father would retain ownership of the property but the sons would now be in charge of running it and it would just sort of be a will put in place before the father died. That happens sometimes when the father wanted to step back. What was unusual in this story is that the son goes to his father basically saying, I wish you would hurry up and die so that I can have your stuff. I wish you weren't here so that I could just have my stuff but since you're still here, is there any way I could just go ahead and get my stuff now? Clearly a violation of the Fifth Commandment to honor your father and your mother. He boldly comes and he says to his dad, I wish you were dead. All I really want is your stuff. You see in this younger brother that he loves his father's money and his own sinful desires more than the father. There's really zero concern in his life about his relationship with his dad. He just wants him dead. He wants him out of the way and what he really wants is his money and what we see in the following verse is that he wants the money so he can go fulfill all of his sinful desires in a flagrant way. Now let's just be clear. In Jesus' day, in this culture, if a son were to come to his dad publicly like this and say to him, I wish you were dead, give me my stuff, everyone listening to this story would expect the next line to be the father reared back, clinched his fist and popped his son right in the nose. Or he took his hand and he slapped him upside his head and then he grabbed him by his ear and twisted it and drugged him back, took him out to the, you pick the analogy, the picture, the wording you want. But what everyone would expect is the father to say, you have lost your mind. Not only will I not give you your third, but I'm writing you out of the will completely and I'm disowning you. It's so egregious what he's done to his father. Everyone listening would have expected that the father says absolutely not and you're no longer part of this family. Instead, he does what the younger son asked him to do. Here's your third. And can you imagine how devastating it would have been for the father, for the younger son to get his third in immediately he liquidates all of it, the animals, the land, things that had been in that family for generations. That not only the father, but the grandfather and the great grandfather and the great grandfather had worked for to establish this estate and it's of no value to the younger son at all. All he wants is the cash and so he takes his third, he liquidates it and Jesus says he goes and he squanders it in reckless living. He goes to a distant country, it's an important detail. There's always opportunities to squander wealth at home, you know that. But this son says I'm going to a distant country. Jesus of Jews speaking to Jewish Pharisees about Jewish people in this story says he leaves home and goes to a distant land. In their minds what they hear is he leaves the promised land, he leaves the covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the rest of them. He leaves the promises that God gave to us, not only is he abandoning his family but he's abandoning his faith in saying I want nothing to do with any of you or with anything that Israel has to do with, with the land, with the promises that covenant, none of it. I'm taking my third, I'm going to a distant land and he squanders it. You're not surprised when you read that he runs out of money and he runs out of friends and he ends up hiring himself to the highest bidder which is really a low bidder who says well you can feed my pigs. The lowest job, a job that a Jew would never consider in line of the fact that pigs are an unclean animal, you can go and you can feed the pigs. And this pitiful detail is here where he longs to eat what the pigs are eating but no one will give him any of the food. No one cares. And at some point in this wretchedness the light bulb goes off, Jesus says he comes to his senses, he comes to himself and he says why don't I just go home? He doesn't think for a second he can go home as a son but he says I can go home and be a servant, my father has lots of servants and they eat really well, better than pig pods. I could just go home and work for my dad and so he starts to work on his I'm sorry speech and he gets his stuff together and he's heading home and the I'm sorry speech has four parts. It's in verse 18 and 19. Part one I've sinned against God against heaven. Part two I've sinned against you my father. Part three I'm unworthy to be called your son and then part four let me just be a servant. Three out of four is not bad. Pretty good when he says first I've sinned against God, that's true. And he's right to acknowledge that he's sinned against his father and he's completely right to say I'm unworthy to be called your son but I want you to see this detail. The younger brother is a lot more like the older brother than you may think. Because when he comes to his senses and he confesses his sin before God and he confesses his sin to the father and he acknowledges his unworthiness. His response at that point is let me just work it and pay it back to you. I'm not asking you to bring me back into the family, I'm just saying let me show up and feed the animals. Let me show up and clean the stables. Let me show up and clean the house. Whatever you want me to do I'll be your slave, I'll be your servant, I'll work for it. And it's interesting when you get to verse 21 that he only gets through part of his I'm sorry speech. He gets through the first three parts, confesses his sin to God, confesses his sin to the father. He acknowledges his unworthiness and right there the speech ends. And it ends because the father jumps in and the father jumps in and he doesn't say yes you can come back as a servant. He says to another servant bring him in as a son. Think about the older brother. Little brother took his third and left. Everyone in town knew about it, the community knew it. It was embarrassing for the father, it was embarrassing for the son. Everyone looked down on him, they gossiped about him, they talked about him. And everybody sort of at that point admired by default the older brother. He stayed home. He took his two-thirds, you understand when Jesus says the younger brother, I want my third and the father divides the property. He divided it. You take your third, everything else is your older brothers. It's all yours. Everything that's left that wasn't liquidated belongs to you. He stayed home and he worked, worked the land, worked the animals, took care of his responsibilities. Everybody sort of admired him for that. They knew the younger brother was a loser but they said to themselves over coffee, well at least the father has the older son. At least he's got one good son. He's got somebody to stay home and to take care of the family name. One problem with the older son and this is number three on your outline. He loved the father's money and his good reputation more than the father. He loved his father's money and his own good reputation more than the father. And you see it when his little brother comes back. That's when it all becomes clear and his heart is exposed for all of us to see how black it is. Little brother runs off, older brothers working hard, dignified, he's doing what a responsible adult should do. He's coming in from the field one night and he hears a party. He knows that there's not a party planned and immediately he suspects the worst. Do you know how we know he suspects the worst? He doesn't come home and look for his dad. He comes home and looks for a servant. Kind of strange detail, right? If there's a party going on at dad's house, why don't you go ask dad what's going on? He doesn't do that. He knew this day could come. In fact, he's been dreading the day or the possibility that this day would come and so he goes home and he grabs a servant and he says, "Tell me what's going on." And he says, "Great news. Your brother's home and your dad's throwing a party." And do you know what the older brother heard at that point? You're telling me that my dad is using my two-thirds to throw a party for my little brother? He took his third. The rest of it's mine and he didn't ask if he could use it. He told me dad is using my stuff, my fat and calf, my wine, my food, my bread, my resources to throw this big party. No one asked me. Luke gives us this detail in verse 28 that the older brother was angry and he refused to enter the party. Why was he angry? This is all speculation, but think about it. Why would he be angry? Maybe he was angry because little brother got to take all that money and go have a lot of "fun" while he stayed home and worked the fields. Maybe he'd been thinking about that. Here I am, stuck at home, little brother's out doing whatever he wants to do and I don't get to do that. I just got to stay home and I got to work, I got this reputation to uphold, people are looking to me, I need to do what I'm supposed to do, and he's angry that the little brother got to have all the fun and he got to stay home. Maybe he's angry that when the father saw the son, he had compassion on him and threw him a party instead of scolding him and bringing him back in as a servant. Maybe we give the older brother the benefit of the doubt and we say, "Look, probably didn't want the father to just murder the younger son. Maybe the father, a compromise could have been the father brings him back not as a son, but as a servant of some kind and he would have in effect you understand worked for his older brother." He probably would have been fine with that. I think what he's really mad about is that his dad took his two-thirds, his money, the older brother's stuff and threw a giant party with it and he is having to pay out of his own pocket for the party celebrating his younger brother who came home. That speculation, here's what's not speculation. The older brother who stayed home with his father is completely, totally estranged from any real relationship with his dad. Look at the text in verse 29. He finally looks his dad face to face when his dad comes out and what does he say, "All these years I've served you. Literally, I have been your slave all these years. If you're a dad, would that be a strange way for your kids to talk to you? Wouldn't you think as a dad, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. All these years you've been my son." That's not how the older brother sees it. He doesn't think of the relationship in terms of a father-son relationship. He thinks of it in terms of a master-slave relationship. All these years I've been your slave. Verse 29, kind of comical, "I have never disobeyed one of your commands." Parents, what would you say if your kid said that to you? They looked you in the eyeball, while you understand, angry and refusing to come into your party, they look you in the eyeball and have the audacity to say, "I have not one time in my entire life from birth till the present never disobeyed your commands." It's an interesting statement. Verse 29, "You never gave me a young goat, but you give him the fat and calf, translation for us. You wouldn't even buy me a hamburger, but you cook and prime rib for him." Are you kidding me? Do you really think that that was true? Do you think the father never provided for this older son, never gave him what he needed to eat, to live, to survive? Probably not. Verse 30 is interesting. Look at verse 30, older brother still speaking. He brings up prostitutes for the first time in the story, out of nowhere. How does he know? How does the older brother know what the younger brother did with his money? Well, either he really knows and he's been spying on him and getting reports about him, or maybe he doesn't really know that that's what he went to spend the money on. Maybe the older brother just knows if I was going to do what my younger brother did, that's what I'd spend the money on. Maybe there's a little bit of projection here and he says, "Look, we all know what he's been doing." He says that because he knows, "I know what I would have been doing." Verse 28, "He's angry. He even refuses to call his brother brother and he calls him, "What? Your son." Not my brother, he's your son. Think with me about the father and this is where it gets good. The father's willingness to go out to both of his sons is a remarkable picture of grace. Grace, grace, grace. Think about the father going out to the younger son. Jesus says he sees him when he is a long ways off. He didn't even get the chance to make it up to the front porch and knock on the door. The father's been waiting and hoping and praying and anticipating. Sooner or later, he's got to come back and he sees him while he's a long ways off. And what is the first emotion that he has when he sees his son? Jesus says it's compassion, it's not anger, it's not righteous indignation, it's not, "I told you this was going to happen," it's compassion. And out of that compassion, what does he do? He picks up his skirts, which is an incredibly shameful thing to do, picks up his robe and he makes a beeline for the son. Don't miss this. Here comes the younger brother walking the road home into town. Everybody's going to know about it, everybody's talking about it, there's a buzz, he's coming, we heard he's on the road, he's almost here, they're watching, and they're just sort of wagging their finger at the younger brother. It's shameful, it's embarrassing what you've done. You should be humiliated. And what does the father do? He deflects all of that negativity and he takes it on himself and he says, "You think that's embarrassing? Watch what I'm about to do. I'm about to show you my white legs and I'm going to pull up my skirts and I'm going to make a beeline to my son. And when I get there, I'm not going to ask him to bow down like in the picture of Rembrandt. Luke literally says, "He falls on his neck." That's what Jesus says. He falls on his neck and he's hugging him and he's kissing him. And he listens to a little bit of the, "I'm sorry speech," but then he cuts him off. Before he can even get to the part where he says, "I'll work it off. I'll pay it back. I'll be your servant." He says to another servant, get a ring, get a robe, get some shoes. He needs some shoes, kill the fat and calf, call everybody you know we're going to have a party. The son of mine was dead and now he's alive. He makes a complete spectacle of himself, the father does, so that the son is not a spectacle. And no one who's watching it is now wagging their finger at the son. They're wagging their finger at the father saying, "What a fool. This guy's crazy. He's lost his mind. Every father worth his salt would just slap his son across the cheek if he had the shame and the audacity to walk home like this." And instead, he picks up his robes and he does something that noble Jewish men would never do. He runs to him, humiliating himself and brings him right back into the family. He's a bad father. It's what everyone listening would have thought. Come home with no consequence. Think about him going out to the older son. We're in there at the party, everybody's celebrating. The older son refuses to come in and he's pouting and he's angry and he's throwing a hissy fit outside the party. What he's saying to the father is, "I want nothing to do with you." And everyone at the party would have heard about it. You know how gossip travels at parties. They all knew about it. They're all in there having a good time. "Did you know the younger, the older brothers outside, he won't come in? What's the father going to do? Is he going to go out and set him straight? Is he going to knock him in the line?" And what they expected is that the father would do one of two things. One, he would just stay where he's at and have a good time and forget about his older son. Or if he was going to go out there, it would be to knock some sense into him. Instead, the father goes out to his older son and he says, "I want you to come into the party." And then this tirade is unleashed and he says, "I'm not your son. I'm your servant. I've been your slave all these years. You've never given me anything. I've never disobeyed you on and on and on with the nonsense." Does the father slap some sense into him? Does he get angry with him? He just says, "You've always been with me. Everything that I have is yours. Your brother's back. Will you just come into the party?" And he begs the son to come back. And listen, everyone watching looks at that father in the weakness that he shows and says, "That's embarrassing. Knock your kid into line. Tell him how to obey. You're just going to beg him pathetically to come into the party. That's embarrassing. Do you see what the father's done? The exact same thing he did with the younger son when he came back. He comes back in shame. The father runs out to him and humiliates himself. The older brother refuses to go into the party. He's making a fool of himself. The older brother is. And the father says, "Well, I'll make a bigger fool of myself. I'll just come out and patiently ask you to come into the party." Here's the application. It's really, really simple. Number one, there's two ways to be lost. Two ways. One is rebellion and the other is moralism. Maybe you sit here today and you say, "You know what? I'm a lot like the younger son." And rebellion is the story of my life. And I've just sort of taken what's mine and I've gone out and I've lived recklessly. And I've chased every whim and fancy and lust and desire and I had no regard for my responsibilities or what was right. Just opened rebellion. It was all about me and my own sinful desires. That's one way to be lost. The other way to be lost is to, in your mind, stay very close to God and to try to be a very moral person. You know in your heart that there's blackness and you struggle with anger and bitterness like the older brother in this story. And sooner or later it's all going to come spewing out and make you look like a fool. But you try your best to sort of keep it stuffed down and bottled in and you're very self-righteous and you like to wag fingers a lot and you think that because you slave away for God that somehow that's going to compensate or cover or pay for all of the sin in your heart. And when you read this story, it's very clear that Jesus thinks both of these brothers are totally estranged from the Father. And remember who he's telling it to. You got the scribes and the Pharisees over here. Think they can earn it, deserve it, pay their own way, you got the tax collectors and sinners over here. Jesus doesn't let either of them off the hook. He looks at these guys and says, "You're estranged from the Father. Your rebellion is wickedness. You need to repent." And he looks at these guys and he says, "You thinking you can earn it with the Father and paying back is wickedness and you need to repent." The last idea is this. We need an older brother who's willing to seek us and save us or put another way we need an older brother who's willing to pay for our return. Understand the lesson from this parable is not you should be like this brother or not like this brother, that's just more moralism. The lesson from the story is what we really need in our lostness is someone to seek us and save us and pay for us to come back. Think about early on in the parable. When the younger brother says to his dad, "Give me my third so I can leave." Where's the older brother? What's he doing? He's sort of like Adam when the serpent is talking to Eve in the garden. Adam, where are you at? What are you doing? Where's the older brother? That's not what older brothers are supposed to do, stand by while their younger brother makes a foolish decision and runs off to ruin and waste his life. Why didn't the older brother step in between the younger son and the father and say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You need to think this through. Don't do this. Don't throw this away. Your priorities are right. He didn't step in and when he was gone, why didn't he go after him?" That's what a good older brother would do. He would leave home to go get his younger brother and do anything in his power to bring him back. Instead, he just sits home, takes pride in his own accomplishments, and assumes the worst about his little brother. When he comes back, he's furious. Verse 28, "He's angry," and he's angry, I believe, because the father is spending his money to bring the younger brother back in as a son, not as a servant. And you understand the situation where the property has been divided. This younger brother cannot be brought back as a son unless it's at the expense of the older brother. Do you understand that? Be easy for him to come back as a servant. Just come back and work. We'll pay you your wages. That's not how he comes back. He comes back as a son. He's brought back into the family. He's brought back into the family at the expense of the older brother, and he's furious about it. He's outraged. That's not what you need, and it's not what I need. You need an older brother who will go seek you and save you. You need an older brother who will pay the price for you to be brought back into the family. You need an older brother who won't grumble and be angry at the price that he has to pay, but one who for the joy that was set before him would endure the cross and scorn its shame to pay the price for you to be brought back into the family. This is Luke 19, 10, in parable form, the son of man, our true older brother, came to seek us and to save us and to pay for our return. I hope your story has a happy ending because every story in Luke 15 has a happy ending except the older brother story, and we don't know what happens. Did he go into the party or not? We don't know. And it's just left open ended so that you'll think about it, and so that you'll wrestle with it, and you'll say, "Where am I? Where do I fit in? Am I going to the party, or am I going to refuse to go to the party?" I hope you go in. I hope you run to the son of man who came to seek you and to save you. I hope you come and you say, "I've sinned against God. I've sinned against other people. I'm unworthy to be brought into the family, but because of what you have done," I can't pay for it as a servant, "because of what you've done, I want to come back in. I want to be part of the family, and I want to be part of the celebration." Let me pray for you. Father, we find ourselves in different life situations, but one thing that we all have in common is that left to ourselves were lost. Father, some of us are lost through open, flagrant rebellion, and some of us are lost through prideful, arrogant moralism. We thank you that Jesus came to seek us and to save us. He came to pay the price for those of us who have wandered far from home, and he came to pay the price who thought that we could earn it ourselves. And Father, we thank you that our story can have a happy ending through our true older brother, through Jesus. And I pray for the folks in this room, some of whom know Jesus and follow Him, some of whom don't, and I pray that this morning as we think about this story, that it would drive us to the cross and that we would run to Jesus, not to come back into paying back as a servant or a slave, but to just accept the gift of sonship because of what Christ has done for us. As we sing, be honored in our words, be honored in our hearts, and in our thoughts, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]