The Other Prodigal

Hey everybody, welcome to another Sunday Morning Online with Salt Church. We're so glad that you're here with us, whether you're on your couch, whether you're in your kitchen, whether you're at your job during the week because you didn't have a chance to connect with us on Sunday. We're so glad that we're able to connect together through technology. Although we can't be together in person right now, we definitely can be together. The power of the gospel is more than just a place.

It centers on a people, around a people with an idea that Jesus Christ is the Savior. Son of God. And we're so glad that we can connect together. Hey, if you're new with us today, here's what I want you to do. Right here on Facebook Live, if you're with us on Facebook, you can private message us and let us know that you are new.

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And we're so excited that you're here with us today. We're in part four of a series called Prodigal. We've been walking through this fascinating story that Jesus shares with his disciples and others around him. This story of a father and his son. And if you're not familiar with the story, most people are.

But just in case you aren't, if you aren't familiar with the story of the prodigal son, it's about a father and a son. And the son asks for his inheritance. And he goes off and he leaves his father and he spends everything. He goes to the bottom of the barrel with everything that he has. He has nowhere else to go.

He decides to return home to his father, thinking that his father may not accept him, but he would at least allow him to be a servant in his home. And what his father does is receive him with open arms. He's waiting for him to come home and brings him right back into the family. And this is just a beautiful picture of the father and his son. So in week one, we talked about prodigal parts, about the believer's struggle and how sometimes when we look at our lives, we see that we have wayward things in our lives.

We have things that we've strayed from in our lives. That's what prodigal means. It means something extreme or wayward in our lives. And when we investigate our lives, a lot of times that keeps us from being all that we can be in Jesus and being prepared to reach those who are prodigals. And week two, we talked about the lost son himself.

How, what, what is the perspective of the lost son? You know, what does he think about the church and to think about the people? Or what does he think about himself? Week three, we talked about, and that was last week, we talked about the crowd struggle. That's the church itself from a congregational standpoint.

What does the church look like? How are they to react to the prodigals? And what do the prodigals think about the church? And how can we reach those better? This week, we're taking the perspective of the brother.

But next week, you definitely want to tune in because we're going to talk about the father, the most important part. People have a wrong view of the father, and we want to share what it looks like in this story, what Jesus is telling us about our God, the father, and how he loves us. But this week, let's look at the brother. And this is something that's often overlooked. When we think of the story of the prodigal son, we often don't think about the part two, act two of the story.

And that's the other brother. And in beginning with verse 25, in the second part of this story, we see this brother, and he does all the right things. He doesn't leave his home. He tends his father's fields. He does everything he's supposed to do.

But when his younger, wayward brother returns home after he spent his father's inheritance, he returns home. The younger brother returns home. And for the older brother, this feels very unfair. And it made him angry. And it made him despiteful.

And we often overlook this part because this is a very important part. Let me ask you this. Let me ask it from this direction towards you. How do we feel, how do you feel when someone who has just found Jesus and the people celebrate and gather around this person to disciple him and encourage him or her and lead them to greater levels and you are ignored? Maybe you're the person, I work hard in the church.

I do all the right things. I tithe. I stayed in church. And I've put the effort in, yet they're being paid more attention than you are. How does that make you feel?

Let me ask it from this side of the house. How do you feel towards prodigals? How do you feel towards people who probably struggle with certain sins more than you do? How do you react to those things? For some of you, you can relate really well with the younger brother.

I mean, you've come to Christ just recently, maybe in the last 10 years. Maybe in the last year you've come to Christ and you understand completely what it's like to be forgiven. But for others of us, we may relate more to the older brother who's been in the church, who's been doing the church thing for a while, who's been the Christian for a while. And perhaps you relate to them more. So think about this for just a second.

The father is waiting with anticipation for the younger brother to come home. He's standing out on the porch. He's looking over the fields. Say it's a farmhouse and he's looking and he's just waiting for his son to come home. But you have the other brother looking at his father and believing the enemy that the father doesn't really love me as much as the younger brother.

So many of us have been there. Let's look at Scripture. Let's just go through Scripture real quick. If you can turn to Luke 15, starting with verse 25, and we're going to read the story of the second brother. It says, Now his older son was in the field and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.

And he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. And he said to him, Your brother has come and your father has killed a fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound. But he became angry and not willing to go in. And his father came out and began pleading with him. Pleading with him.

But he answered and said to his father, Look, for so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected any of your commandments. Yet you have never given me a goat or a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came home, Can't you feel the tension in this? But when this son of yours came home who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes and you killed a fattened calf for him. And he said to him, Son, you have always been with me and all that is mine is yours.

But we had to celebrate and rejoice. For this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live and was lost but has now been found. So as we learned in our past study last week, the context of this is Jesus starts telling the story in the environment of spectators. And some of these spectators were the Pharisees. And they were complaining about Jesus.

They were looking at Jesus. He's hanging out. He's fellowshipping. He's congregating with tax collectors and sinners. So they're talking about this.

Here's what I see in the Pharisees when I see them looking at Jesus who's hanging out with the sinners and the tax collectors. I see this thing called the older brother syndrome. They look at him. They're like, how dare he? Why is he doing that?

Why is he doing that? The older brother syndrome, when they look at the younger brother and they look at the father and they believe those lies about what Jesus and God cares about most. So number one, here's what an older brother syndrome will do. It affects how we see ourselves. Number one, it affects how we see ourselves.

In Luke 15, 29, when you look at verse 29, it says this, But he answered and said to his father, Look, for so many years I have been serving you, and I have never neglected any of your commandments, and yet you have never given me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. Now, can't you just sense the extremity in that? I never neglect any of your commandments. Now, right there is just wrong anyway. Because the Bible tells us all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, right?

I've always done the right thing! And we become self-righteous when we start having that type of mentality. I've served you for all these years. I've worked hard in church. Here's something that Jesus shared.

If you look in the same book, if you go to chapter 18, beginning with verse 9, And it says this, and he also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and viewed others with content. One version says that they despised others because they saw their own righteousness. They loved their own righteousness. So he begins to share this story, and here's how it goes. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself. God, I thank you that I'm not like those other people, swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even the tax collector. I fast twice a day. I pay my tithes of everything that I make, of all that I get. And if I could just stop there for a minute.

And all these things are good, okay? These aren't bad things. Jesus wasn't saying these things were bad things. But just listen to the attitude of this Pharisee as he's, Oh, look what I do for you, God. I do all these things, and I thank you that I'm not like them.

I think all of us can relate a little bit to that. Maybe that seems a little extreme to you, but sometimes you do that. I thank God that I'm not there. I thank God I can control myself. I can control my alcohol.

I don't get involved in those areas that that person's going in. I don't deal with those drug habits. And then we tend to blame people for getting into their own situations or issues, right? We can become Pharisees in that way because there's things that we perhaps struggle with that we don't see. And we see the things that are wide open for others, and we're quick to judge people in those areas.

But here's what it says about the tax collector in verse 3. But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven. I mean, he didn't even want to look to heaven. He had such a fear of God. But was beating his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner.

And then Jesus says, I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exhausted. They were trusting in their own righteousness. Now, you talk to a new believer.

You talk to somebody who's just given their life to Christ. And you say, what about God's grace? They're going to say, you know, don't you know it? I know all about God's grace. But he talks to somebody who's been in ministry or been in the church for 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years.

It all of a sudden becomes about, man, you know, grace is great. But, man, I've done a lot for God. And people should do what I'm doing. And it's easy to fall in that trap. We talk about the battle of self-esteem, right?

We talk about high self-esteem, low self-esteem. But take away, take away high, take away the low, take away the esteem. And what do we got? We got self. We got self.

It's all about self. See, that's the brother's battle. That's the syndrome that we have to deal with being the older brother. And when the focus is on you, you lose the battle every time. But when your focus is on Christ, you win.

You win every time. A pastor friend of mine shared a story how he visited another pastor at another church. And the church was struggling. And he was having dinner with the pastor. And the pastor of that struggling church told him, he says, man, you know, our church is struggling.

And I know it's my fault. And he responds to him, he says, that's the most arrogant thing anybody could say. You're one of the most arrogant people. And he's like, what? I just told you my church is struggling because of me.

I just told you that. And he said this, because, it's this, because if you take fault when the church is struggling, you will take credit when it's going well. You'll take credit when it's going well. Well, if your focus is not on Christ, you'll fall every time. But when your focus is on Christ, you will win.

The second thing I want to mention is it affects how we see others. Having this older brother mentality, this syndrome, affects how we see others. Go to Luke 7, starting with verse 36, and we see a powerful situation here. Now, one of the Pharisees was requesting him to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee's house. This is Jesus entering the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table.

So, we see that they invited Jesus into their house. This was probably uncommon, because the Pharisees typically didn't like Jesus, but they invited him in. I don't know if they were trying to kind of look at him, test him, see what he was all about, or if they were actually interested in him being a part of their group. Who knows? But this is what was happening.

And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner. There was a sinner. In most cases, when you look at this thing, sinner, you're probably talking about a prostitute when it relates to a woman. So, she was probably a prostitute or in a very sinful lifestyle. And when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, she brought in an alabaster vial of perfume.

She brought in this really expensive vial of perfume that was probably worth at least a year's wages. And standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and kept wiping them with the hair of her head and kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume. And then here's the response in verse 39. Now, when the Pharisees who had invited him in saw this, and I want you to underline this if you're following or kind of catch this. He said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would know.

He would know who and what sort of woman or person this woman is who is touching him and that she is a sinner. So, I think it's funny that he says that because he was thinking about that and then Jesus answers. And he says this, Simon, I have to say something to you. So, if he was a prophet, well, Simon, let me say something to you. Wow, I didn't even say that.

I didn't say anything out loud. I was thinking this and he responded. You see where that's going? And he replied, Say it, teacher. And then he says, A moneylender who had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii and the other 50.

When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave both of them. So, one had a lot. A lot of money he owed back. The other had probably a decent amount of money, but not near as much. So which of them will love him more?

So which of them will love him more? Simon answers and says, I suppose the one whom he forgave more. And he said to him, you have judged correctly. And then he turned to the woman and he said to Simon, do you see this woman? I entered your house.

You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, which was a custom in that day. These were welcoming customs any time you went to somebody's house. But she anointed me and my feet with perfume.

Really expensive perfume on top of that. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many. He wasn't denying that she was a sinner. She had a lot of things going on. But they have been forgiven, for she loved much.

But he who is forgiven little, loves little. Now, this message or this passage is often misunderstood. A lot of people think, well, if somebody sins more, then God forgives them more and he loves them more. So he must love heavy sinners more. Sometimes it gives people an excuse to sin.

That's not what this is saying here at all. But in context, he's answering Simon's thoughts. Think about this. He's answering Simon's thoughts. He's being prophetic.

He's answering. He heard what he was saying prophetically. And he said this. This passage does not teach that some are better than others. That's exactly what this is saying.

It's saying that some people think they are better than others. This passage does not teach that some are better than others. It teaches that some think they are better than others. It doesn't teach that there are those that are worse than others. It teaches that there are certain people that think that other people are worse than others.

That's what he's getting at here. And we owe all the same. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all need Jesus Christ. We all are desperate for a Savior.

We all owe so much. But what he's saying is, if you knew how much you owe, she knows how much she owes. But if you only knew how much you owed, you would love me at a greater level. But you love me little. You love me little.

A mentor friend of mine was sharing with me when he was starting his church or when his church was still young. And there was a lot of new people coming in. There was a lot of new believers coming into the church. And some of the people who had been there for a few years and felt like they were being neglected. And they decided to form a little committee on the side.

If you know what I mean, some of you pastors probably listen to this. You go, oh, no, that's happening. Yes, that was happening. They had their little committee. They started talking among themselves.

And they're like, you know, we need to talk to this pastor. We've got to talk to pastor because he's neglecting us. You know, we've been here for the long run. We've done the ministries. We've given.

And now he's spending more time. And he loves them more. We need to have a talk with them. So they assign a certain person, a delegate, if you want to call it that, to come to him and say, hey, hey, pastor, listen, we've gotten together and we've been talking and we just feel that you love those people. Or you care for those people more than you care for us.

And he said, or those people are more important to you than they are to us. And his answer was shocking. He says, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right about that. No shadow of a doubt.

And he began to explain, listen, you are seasoned Christians. These people need a doctor. You now need to be the doctors. You now need to be the people that go out and minister. And I love you just as much, but these people need to be cared for right now.

And it's important for us not to lose that scope as we're thinking about not to have a different view of others. We don't want the older brother syndrome where we have a low view of others. If we have a low view of others, then we have a low view of God. The third thing I want to mention is it affects how we see the Father. Because the entirety of this passage is about the Father's heart.

It's all about the Father's heart. We have the lost lady or the lost coin. The lady was searching for the lost coin. We have the shepherd who lost a sheep. And then we have the father who lost a son in this passage in chapter 15.

He's telling many stories. And it's all in response to the lost. But the older brother's response in verse 29 was this. That you've never even given me a goat. You've never even given me a goat.

What? Is that true? He's never even given him a goat? He loves the lost person, but he doesn't love me. Look what it says in verse 11.

It says this. And he said, So he divided his wealth between them. So that was a lie right there. You've never even given me a goat? He had wealth with him.

He was dividing it for him. In fact, the older brother actually got twice the inheritance of the younger brother. But because he didn't see himself correctly, he didn't see others correctly, and he certainly didn't see the father correctly, all he could think about was, you didn't even give me a goat. You didn't even give me one little young goat. In verse 31 it says, And he said to him, Son, this is the father, he's saying, Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours.

All that is mine is yours. And what this does is it represents presence and provision. The presence and provision of God. See, the older brother left home, the younger brother left home physically, but the older brother left home in his heart. See, the older brother was furious, and the father tried to bring him home.

He was begging him to come back home. But I want you to look at this. There was a fattened calf that the father sacrificed and cooked, and they brought all their friends in. They had a big party. And in this day, in Jewish custom, when you cooked a fattened calf, and when you had a big celebration, and you invited everybody in town, a celebration like this meant that what was happening was extremely important to the father.

It was the greatest day of the father's life. But the elder son didn't even care. He didn't care. He didn't want to be there. He didn't want to go in.

What does this say about what the older brother really cares about? He cares about the things of the father, but he doesn't care about the father himself. He cares about the inheritance of the father. All he could see was his inheritance dwindling away, but he doesn't care about the thing that his father cares about the most. Therefore, he doesn't care about the father.

The father says, I have already given you everything that I have, but it doesn't matter to him. And the father invites him back in again, and then the story abruptly ends. See, the first son, the younger son, is a vivid picture of sin, Wayward destruction in a person's life. Very visible sin. But the second part, Jesus turns the table.

We look at the older son. They are both and they both want what the father has. They both want the inheritance. One is good and the other is bad. But both are alienated from the father.

One is trying to control the inheritance and the situation of the father by being bad. I'm gonna walk away and I'm gonna run away from this and I'm going to dismiss you all together. I'm gonna walk and be far from you. While the other is trying to control the inheritance through obedience, through not breaking his commandments, by living righteously. But both are lost.

Both are lost. You can escape God through morality and religion just as much as you can escape God through immorality and irreligion. You can go to church. You can try hard. You can practice obedience.

You can try to serve Jesus and you can think, man, if I work really hard maybe I'll live or be blessed with a somewhat decent, relatively good life and I'll go to heaven one day. And if that's the language of your heart, if that's the language of your soul, then Jesus is your model. He's your example. He's your boss. But he's not your savior.

He's not your savior. You're seeking to be your own savior. And your morality and religion as a way to get out of God what you want. But not God himself. The elder brother, brothers syndrome.

The elder brothers do what they can get, do so they can get things from God. But gospel believing Christians simply love him and want to know him more and delight in him. They just want Jesus. So we all want to be older brothers and in closing, all of us want to be older brothers and older sisters. And when I look at the life of Paul, I see a fine example.

Let's just look at the attitude of Paul. Ten years after his conversion, he writes in 1 Corinthians 15, 9, 4, I am the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Seven years later, Ephesians 3, 8, to me, the very least of all the saints. He calls himself the very least of all the saints. Two years later, one year before he died, he wrote to first, he wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1 and 15.

It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners among whom I am for most of all. I am a sinner. The attitude of his heart, guess what? He had the right opinion about himself. He had the right opinion about others and he certainly had the right opinion about God.

How? This is a man who died daily. He was crucified with Christ. He nailed his fleshly desires to the cross. And in 1 Corinthians 2, 2, he says this, for I am determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

It was all about the Lord. It was all about Jesus. It wasn't about the things of Jesus. It was about Jesus himself. It wasn't about what was on the Lord's table.

It was about the Lord. He wanted nothing but Jesus. I'm reminded of John Newton who wrote the tune, Amazing Grace. All of us know Amazing Grace. I don't care where you are, how far away from God you are.

You know this tune, Amazing Grace. And he was a former ship captain. He went blind later in his life and he made this statement here later in his life. He said this, there are two things I still see clearly. Christ is a great Savior and I am a great sinner.

Christ is a great Savior and I am a great sinner. So the story ends abruptly as we talked about earlier. The younger brother returns home, goes into the feast and is forgiven. But the older brother refuses to go home into the feast and is lost as far as we know. The story closes.

God doesn't want good people. God wants new people. We like to think that good, that the good are saved and the bad are lost, right? That's how we think. But Jesus shows us that both are lost, that both need him, that both are desperate for him.

On the surface they may look different. Some things may be outward and others may be inward. But both are lost. I love how Tim Keller says it. He says it like this, we think that the way to be saved is to repent of our sins and Jesus shows us that you also have to repent of even the very reason you did anything good at all.

What a powerful statement. Maybe you are in the older brother category. Maybe you've done things right your entire life. I can tell you there are those that I have come in contact with or I've talking to that's been to church their entire lives and they've given their, and one Sunday or one week they've given their lives to Christ and they'll tell you that I've been going to church my entire life but I never knew about the cross. I never knew that I needed to be forgiven of my sin and there are many of you out there like that.

Perhaps you're an older brother. You pay your tithes. You went to church. You went to mass. You did all your things.

You did all the correct things. But do you have a relationship with Christ? Is it about Christ? Is it the things on the table? Is it about the tradition?

Is it about the family? Or is it about Christ? And then there are those of you who are on the other side that are completely wayward. Can I tell you the Father is waiting for you? Both are lost.

Both of you are lost. But the Father is waiting for you. He's waiting for you to come home. He's standing out with his arms wide open. Older and younger.

Come in my children. Wherever you are. I want a relationship with you. If you're one of those, the Bible says those who believe in Jesus and call on his name will be saved. All have fallen short of the glory of God.

But there is salvation waiting for everyone who repents and believes and gives their life to him. If you'll pray this with me, Lord, I believe that you are the Son of God that you died on the cross for my sin. I've been so wayward, Lord. I've done many things that I'm not proud of. On the other side of the house, you're like, Lord, I've done all the right things.

But it really hasn't been about you. I've never really made you Lord of my life. But today, God, I give my life to you. I believe that you died on the cross for my sin. I believe the cross is the only way.

Jesus is the only way to God. So I give my life to you. I turn to you today. Come into my heart. Transform me from the inside out in your name.

Amen. If you prayed that with me, you have given your life to Jesus. I need you to celebrate. We're going to celebrate with you. Let us know by instant messaging us here on Facebook or sending it at info at saltchurch.

org. Send your information. to us, and we'll send some things out to you to help you get started on your walk. When we're back together, whenever that'll be, we'd love for you to come to church with us, be a part of us, be a part of the family. We'd love to disciple you.

But we're so excited that you've done this. This is the greatest moment in your life. This is certainly, the angels in heaven are celebrating right now. So we love you and thank you so much. And thank you all for being with us today.

Next week we'll talk about the Father, and we just can't wait for that. To happen and be back together next week. Stay tuned for things during the week as we stay connected online. We love you. God bless you.

Have a great day.