Every Last Word

Guest (Male): Sibling rivalry. How often have you heard, "Daddy loves me more"? "No, he doesn't!" And on it goes. The oldest brother in the prodigal son was jealous of the love his father showed to his younger brother. But the truth is, he didn't even want the love. But we'll see his father longed to give it to him.

Welcome to Every Last Word, a radio and internet program with Dr. Philip Ryken, teaching the whole Bible to change your whole life. Today we reach the climax of the prodigal son. It's the point that Jesus wants to make to the Pharisees he was addressing, and it's the point he wants to make to us as well. Well, this third and final message on the story of the prodigal son is entitled "The Lost Brother." Just who is the lost brother in this story?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: We hear this story of the prodigal son and we usually think of him as the one who was lost. But there was someone else in that family who was just as lost, and that was his older brother. I think when Jesus told this parable, he very much had in mind the Pharisees. They were the ones to whom he was speaking when he told this story.

And they were like the lost brother. They evaluated everything by works, and they really didn't want to show anyone grace. And that's the older brother all over. His little brother came home and instead of rejoicing, he was grumbling to himself. He said, "He doesn't really deserve this, and I know it, and he knows it, and my father knows it. I don't know why this is happening." That's the older brother.

Guest (Male): Well, as we conclude this final of the three messages about lost and found, what is the main point of this story we need to take home and remember?

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: I think like a lot of the parables, Mark, there's maybe more than one lesson. It's certainly a story about our own need for repentance. Whether we're like the younger brother or the older brother, we all need to repent. But even more so, this is a story about the love of God and the costliness of that love, and the joy that the Father has in loving us.

As we hear this story, we should rejoice in the grace of God, and we should be reminded not to be stingy with extending that grace to others. There may be somebody in your life and my life we think really doesn't even deserve the grace of God, but that's the very person that God is calling us to welcome in the name of Jesus.

Guest (Male): All right, thank you, Phil. Let's turn in our Bibles now to Luke chapter 15, verses 25 to 32, and listen together to Dr. Ryken.

Dr. Philip Graham Ryken: If ever there was a son who hated his brother, it was the elder brother of the prodigal son. But if ever there was a father who loved a son, it was that elder brother's prodigal father. Now, many people are familiar with the story of the prodigal son, and yet some are not so familiar with its ending.

The story ends with the jealous, judgmental elder brother refusing to share his father's welcome, and with the father pleading him to come in. It's unfortunate that people sometimes forget that part of the story, because actually it's the most important part. It's the part that Jesus has been leading up to all along.

If you turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 15, I can remind you of the context. Jesus had been speaking to the scribes and the Pharisees who had criticized him for receiving sinners and, worst of all, for eating with them. And in response, Jesus told them a three-part story about three things that were lost: a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son.

In each case, the seeker rejoiced in finding what was lost and then celebrated that joy by sharing it with friends. And so here was a triple parable, showing the joy of God in seeking and saving lost sinners. But the scribes and the Pharisees refused to welcome that joy into their own hearts. Rather than receiving people who were lost, they rejected them. Therefore, they were unwilling and unable to rejoice.

In order to show them what was wrong with their attitude and why, Jesus really put them into the story. Because if the prodigal father is God himself, and if the prodigal son largely represents ordinary Jewish people who turn back to God in repentance, like the kinds of people that Jesus had been receiving, then this elder brother must represent the proud Pharisees who refuse to share the joy of Jesus in the salvation of sinners. These men were a lot like the elder brother, and so are we, if only we will admit it.

Maybe some of us will. Just last week I was talking with someone after the service and this friend said, "Yes, and next week we can have the one that's really about me. That is to say, the story of the lost brother." Now, it's easy to see how lost the prodigal son was, but have you considered how lost this elder brother was? I want to take the time simply to show you how lost he was, and then even for all of that, how much the father loved him.

I think this elder brother was as lost as his younger brother was. Maybe even more lost, because he was lost on the inside, not on the outside. So nobody could really tell how lost he actually was. Even though he had never left the family farm, he had abandoned his father's heart. And so it was that after showing the joy the prodigal father had in welcoming home his long-lost son, Jesus said, and this is in verse 25, "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."

The older brother had been out working in the fields. And on his way back home, he could hear the sound of music and dancing floating across the fields. He was amazed to hear it. I mean, if there was a party, then why wasn't he invited? He couldn't imagine what could possibly be going on back at the house. Or then again, maybe he could, because he almost sounds suspicious as he begins to question this servant. He wants to know what there is to celebrate before he actually goes into the house.

The servant's response is important because it helps us interpret what is really happening in this story. The servant said to him, "Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound." And here is the key to the whole thing: it's the father's welcome that's the reason for the celebration. Already in these words, the elder brother should be reminded of his own position in the family. The servant says to him, "your brother," and that positions the elder brother as being the brother of the prodigal son.

He calls his father "your father," as if to remind him of the relationship he had with his father. Now, obviously, the elder brother is intended to join the party. It's the obvious thing for him to do, especially if you think about the context of the larger parable. What happened when the sheep was found? What happened when the coin was found? Everyone joined in the celebration. Now a son has been found; surely the party will be even bigger. Surely everyone will want to come and to join.

But against all expectation, Jesus tells us as he gives us this parable that the brother was angry, verse 28, and he refused to go in. He was more than annoyed; he was angry. The Greek word here denotes an explosive rage. The elder brother was infuriated by his father's freely offered forgiveness. He wanted his brother to pay for his sins. Thus he refused to share his father's joy in his brother's salvation.

It occurs to me that it was probably a good thing that the father saw the prodigal son first before his elder brother got a hold of him, because he would have told him to go out and get a job. The last thing he wanted to do was celebrate his brother's return. And it also occurs to me that I'm not sure I would have wanted to be this servant that has to go and explain to the elder brother what has happened. Here is someone who hears the music but has no song in his joyless heart, and thus refuses to join the dance of reconciliation.

Surely there was something more going on here than mere sibling rivalry. Of course, it's true, children naturally resent any show of favoritism, and older children particularly. I mean, anytime their younger sibling gets some privilege that they themselves were denied, they resent it. But here is a bitter complaint. Notice what the elder brother says, beginning in verse 29, not even addressing his father as his father, but simply saying this: "Look, these many years I have served you, yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him."

With these bitter words, you can hear all of the years of secret resentment come pouring out. I mean, what do you have to do to get a party in this family? That's what the elder brother wanted to know. "He got a cow, Dad. I never even got a goat." And once again, we see how lost the son was, lost because he resented the grace that his father lavished on his second-born son, that unworthy sinner.

One thing that may have made this especially galling was that when this prodigal father threw this party for this prodigal son, he was spending the elder brother's inheritance. You may remember from verse 12 that his father had already given him the legal right to his inheritance, and therefore this banquet ultimately came at his own expense. That was more than the elder brother could bear. If we could give him a motto, maybe it would be this: no reconciliation without compensation.

But honestly, don't you think the elder brother had a good point? Put yourself in his situation. Look how faithfully he had been serving on the family farm. Look how irresponsible his brother had been. What kind of world would this be if people get rewarded for squandering their inheritance, while the hardworking people, the decent people, get nothing in return for doing the right thing? Oh, the injustice of it all.

Here you see the elder brother reciting his service record. What it shows is what a high regard he had for his own obedience. In his humble opinion, the elder brother thought that he had done everything right. He had never disobeyed his father. He had never done anything that required any kind of serious repentance. If anyone needed to be forgiven, it certainly wasn't him. And all he wanted now was credit where credit was due, not to mention penance where penance was due.

This self-righteous attitude may remind us of Mark Twain's famous put-down: "He was a good man in the worst sense of the word." But I wonder if he was really as righteous as he said he was, as he thought he was. Notice here that he accuses his brother of squandering his inheritance on prostitutes. How did he know that? This was nothing more than a scandalous assumption. He had no idea how his brother had wasted the money.

In truth, the reckless accusation that he makes tells us more about his own wicked heart than it tells us about the prodigal son. Why would he even think that his brother would do this? Very likely because that is what he would have done with the money. Here was a man who prided himself on keeping the letter of the law, but at the same time, he was cherishing adultery in his heart.

Do you see how completely lost he was? Lost in his rejection of the father's joy, lost in his resentment for his brother's reward, lost in the unrighteous desires of his own sinful heart. But he was lost most of all because he rejected his sonship, seeing himself as a slave instead of a son. His rejection of his sonship is clear already from his refusal to join in these festivities. He was the eldest son. He was obligated. He was demanded to be present for any kind of family celebration.

In fact, it would have been customary for him to honor his father's guests by serving them at the table. Often the eldest son would have served as a kind of the head waiter for the occasion. It would show how much the guests were honored. But by refusing to take that place at the table, the elder brother was renouncing the responsibilities of his sonship. He was also, and he had been doing this all along, denying the privileges of his sonship.

Notice how he speaks about the work that he had done for his father. He says in verse 29 that he has served his father. But the word he uses for service is commonly used for slave labor. He's thinking so much of all the hard work that he has done. He's the model son. He has stayed at home the way that his father wanted. He has worked in the family business. He has succeeded in life where his brother has failed.

But here, in this moment of unguarded anger, he inadvertently reveals the true attitude of his heart. He shows us how he's been looking at his relationship with his father all along. It had always been performance-based. He had never served in love, but only out of duty. Now he was demanding what duty deserved. He wanted his goat, and he wanted it now.

According to his calculations, if he did not get the reward that he felt he had earned, then everything he had ever done for his father was wasted. Do you see how lost he was? Do you see how far away he was from his father's heart even right there at home? He had kept the letter of the law, at least to his own satisfaction, but he was still estranged from his father's love.

He didn't understand that his father loved him because he loved him, not because of anything that he had ever done or ever could do. Well, as you look at the elder brother's spiritual situation, don't you find that he is one of the most spiritually unattractive people in the entire Bible? Isn't he one of the people that you'd least like to spend time with? So stingy, so self-pitying and resentful and proud and bitter, so unforgiving and unrepentant, so unwilling to show grace to other sinners.

Here was a man who only knew how to celebrate his own accomplishments. In other words, he was a lot like the Pharisees and a lot more like us than we usually dare to admit. The connection here that Jesus is making, first of all, is with these men that he was instructing by means of this parable. The Pharisees thought that they were the model children who did as they were told. Certainly, they never disobeyed their Father in Heaven. They never did anything that demanded costly repentance.

And yet, for that very reason, their hearts were estranged from the love of God. You see, because they did not see their own need for grace, they had no grace to give to anyone else. How much like the elder brother they were, how much like they were in their refusal to reconcile their brothers and sisters to God, to go after them and pursue them with the grace of God. How much like the elder brother they were in resenting the welcome that Jesus was giving to the people they called sinners.

Really, when Jesus sat down to share table fellowship with tax collectors and other infamous individuals, the Pharisees thought that that was practically immoral. I mean, if there was one thing they never did, it was eat with sinners. And so they refused to join the celebration of Jesus in welcoming lost sinners. And you see how closely that connects with the very parable that Jesus was telling. Do you see the point that Jesus was making? Look at the objection the Pharisees made back in verse two: "This man receives sinners and eats with them."

Well, that's exactly the objection that the elder brother is raising. It's exactly what he said on that day when his brother returned. The problem with the father was that he was receiving a sinner. In fact, it's the very language that's used in the comments of the servant. Look in verse 27: "He has received him back safe and sound." And that's exactly the thing that made the elder brother angry, that a sinner had been received in this way, and even worse, because of this feasting that his father was eating with that pig-farmer of a son of his.

What was the reason that the Pharisees sounded so much like the elder brother? What's the point of connection here? I think it's because they were all making the same underlying spiritual mistake. I think Jesus is doing something more here in this parable than simply telling the Pharisees that they had the wrong attitude. He was showing them why. He's doing a kind of analysis of their spiritual condition. Why is it that they don't have any love for the lost?

Why is it that they don't have any joy in their worship, even though they can pride themselves on all the things that they are doing for God? It is because they had never embraced the father's grace for lost sinners, or his love for them as sons. There were men who thought they could be justified by the merits of their own obedience. They could claim, at least in their minds, that they had never broken the law. They could point to all the long years they had of service to God.

What they failed to understand is that people who try to be law-keepers are just as guilty who know that they are law-breakers. It's not just the prodigal sons who need to be forgiven; it is also their elder brothers. I think B.B. Warfield had a wonderful way of putting it in his comments on this parable. He said, "The Father in heaven has no righteous children on earth. His grace is needed for all, and most of all for those who dream they have no need of it."

Well, how often we find ourselves thinking like the elder brother. We ignore the desperate situation of people who are spiritually lost. I say ignore because we're not earnestly concerned about bringing them to Christ. We're not pursuing the relationships that would reconcile them to God. Often we look down on people outside of the church, people who don't meet our spiritual expectations, and they often can sense that, and we're therefore unable to attract them with Christ-like love.

We have an outward reputation for doing the right thing, but inside our hearts are far from God, maybe even angry with them even if nobody else knows it. We cherish secret sins, including many we have never actually committed, but certainly would if we could get away with it. We want more recognition for what we are doing. We resent it when we don't get the praise that we deserve. We get angry when others are elevated and we are overlooked.

Even if we believe that we are saved by grace, we often slip back into a kind of performance-based approach to the Christian life in which our standing with God rises and falls based on the fulfillment of our religious duties. In the end, rather than seeing ourselves as desperately needy sinners, we see ourselves as people who are more or less doing what God wants us to do. We're good people who deserve more of a reward, not bad people who can only be saved by grace.

If we were to look in the mirror, I think many of us would see that even if we came to God in the first instance like the prodigal son, we have gradually been turning into the elder brother. It's evident from our lack of joy in worship. It's evident from the critical remarks we make about people who don't meet our standards. It's evident from the self-righteous assumptions we make about our own spiritual accomplishments.

If only we could see how lost we are, even if we think we are at home with the father. If only we could understand how much damage our self-righteousness does to our relationship with God. If only we knew that we need as much grace as anyone else in the world. Well, there were two lost sons in this family. I think you can see that. But will you also see that the father loved them both? Not just the one who went off to a far country, but also the one who stayed at home.

As lost as this elder brother was, he could not escape his father's love. And when in his anger he refused to come inside the house and rejected the opportunity to celebrate his brother's return, his father came out, we read in verse 28, and entreated him. And here we see another costly demonstration of the father's unexpected love. Once again, a beloved son is lost in sin, not self-indulgence like his younger brother, but self-righteousness.

Once again, the prodigal father is going out to find the lost son. He is not waiting for him to come home. He is leaving the house. He is going out with more of the grace that he kept giving and giving away. And the father does this at the cost of his own humiliation. Because when the elder brother failed to join the party, he was bringing shame on the entire family. Here was a personal and public insult to his father, to his long-lost brother, and to all of their invited guests.

Kenneth Bailey tries to find a cultural comparison that would help us make sense of it in our own culture. Maybe it would be like this: a son starting a shouting match with his father at his sister's wedding reception. It just isn't done. Ordinarily in that culture, a father who received that kind of insult would ignore his son entirely, or else maybe have him restrained so that he could deal with him later.

But here is how Kenneth Bailey describes the father's loving response: once again, he demonstrates a willingness to endure shame in order to reconcile. It is almost impossible to convey the shock that must have reverberated through the banquet hall when the father deliberately left his guests and went out into the courtyard to try to reconcile his older son. Earlier that day, the father paid the price of self-emptying love to reconcile the prodigal. And now he must pay the same price to try to win the older son.

As the father makes this winning entreaty, he does it with great gentleness. Rather than reproaching the elder brother, he entreats him. He tenderly tries to reconcile him to his family. And then when he addresses his son, he calls him son, and he uses a term of endearment that a father would often use with a young boy. He's really saying this: "My dear child." This was not only to remind the elder brother of his proper place in the family, but also to testify to him to his father's love.

The welcoming father is appealing to his son with all of his affection. He's pleading with him to come back to his fatherly heart. Then the father opens wide the storehouse of his grace, and he reminds the elder brother of all the blessings that he has in his father's house. He says, "Son," this is in verse 31, "you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." And what more could any son want than this?

Everything that his father had belonged also to him. He had it all every day. He had the best robe in the house. He had the ring of inheritance. He had the shoes of sonship. And even that fatted calf was his to enjoy if only he would come in and sit down to dinner. But of course, more than any of that, he had a son's greatest blessing, which was the love of his father.

This is what the father is saying. He's saying, "Son, you're always with me. We always have this father-son relationship. And rather than thinking about what you don't have coming to you, you should be thinking about what you already have in my love. This is something you have every day of your life." And now the father is calling him to share more fully in his fatherly joy by rejoicing in his brother's return.

He says to him, he has to make a kind of argument here, he has to defend his joy. But if that's the situation, he will do it to try to win back his son. He said, "It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found." It's a story of salvation. It's the finding of the lost. It's the resurrection of the dead. And so it is fitting to celebrate, and more than that, it is necessary.

This is something that simply had to be done. Not because the prodigal son deserved it, because he certainly didn't, but because the father's love demanded it. What good news this is for all kinds of sinners. Many of us are like the prodigal son. We are law-breakers who love to wander in the far country of sin. Others of us are more like the elder brother. We pride ourselves on keeping the law, doing what God wants us to do, and yet our hearts are just as far from the father's love.

I have to say, I am both kinds of sinner. Maybe you are too. I think the way to understand this parable is to see yourself in both of these situations: that you are the selfish son who wants to go off and sin, but also the stingy brother who prides yourself on doing your duty. I say this is good news because the parable shows that there is grace for us in the father's love. If you come to him through faith in Christ, everything that he has now belongs to you.

All of the robes of righteousness and the rings of salvation. Everything now is yours in Christ. And you have the promise of the father's presence by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This can be said of you: through faith in Christ, the father is always with you, and you are always with the father. And what joy there is for you, if only you will receive it. Joy in the forgiveness that God offers to prodigal sons. Joy in the grace that he shows to elder brothers. And joy in the mercy that he keeps pouring out and pouring out to other lost sinners.

Now, as we read this parable, we will never know how the elder brother responded to his father's entreaty. It's an interesting question, isn't it? Don't you wish you know what he had done? Did he go inside the house? Did he join the celebration? Or did he stay outside, sullenly insisting on his own superior righteousness? Well, I think Jesus leaves the story unfinished on purpose.

In effect, he is telling the Pharisees an unfinished parable and then giving them the opportunity to write the conclusion in the story of their own lives. That's the real question, not what the elder brother would do, but what the Pharisees would do with Jesus and with his invitation to come and join the father's joy. And more than that, the question is what we will do with the father's welcome.

Will you confess your sin? Will you return from that far country where you have wandered as a prodigal son? And will you confess that you are also the elder brother with all of the cynicism and the self-righteousness? Will you come to the father through faith in the son? And will you then join in his great mission to welcome lost sinners and to bring them home to the father's joy?

After I had preached on the prodigal father, some of you will remember that, our family walked home and we shared our usual simple lunch on Sunday afternoons, although it was a little bit more festive than usual because it was Jack's fifth birthday. During lunch, my oldest son Josh asked what he could have to drink. I said, very magnanimously but without really thinking through the implications, "Anything in the refrigerator."

Josh is the kind of person who likes to know what his options are, and so he rummaged around in there for a little while. And when finally he came back, he came in triumph. He was brandishing an unopened bottle of cold sparkling apple cider. "Can I have this?" he demanded. Everyone laughed about what he had done. And then I said, "Well, I don't know about that. You know, we were saving that for a special occasion." "But Dad! It is a special occasion! It's Jack's birthday!"

Now, by this point, even I could see I was on the losing end of this argument. Josh came through with the clincher: "Come on, Dad. Kill him the fatted calf." I called for the bottle opener. Somebody brought out the little paper birthday cups, and I lined them up on the table, and I carefully poured the drink into each of the cups and then passed them around.

I said, "If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right. I want to propose a toast." So I proposed a toast to James Maxwell Ryken, a favored son in his father's house. We clinked our little paper cups together and we downed our drinks. Then I said, "I want to propose another toast. I want to propose it to the person who's provided the ending to next Sunday's sermon. It's a toast to the father's eldest son who has done what an eldest son should do. He should celebrate the sonship of his brother. He should revel in his father's joy."

Now, admittedly, Josh did this in his own self-interest. I mean, he wanted some of the bubbly for himself. But isn't that exactly the point of the parable? Isn't that what Jesus is saying? Isn't he saying that a party for one is a party for all? Isn't he saying that the elder brother has nothing to lose in welcoming home the prodigal son, and only joy to gain?

My friend, the father is welcoming you into his joy. He's inviting you into his family. He's calling you away from the far country of sin. He's telling you to turn away from all of your self-righteousness and join him in receiving sinners. The parable remains unended, and can only be completed in your own heart as you answer this question: will I taste the banquet of my father's joy?

Our Father in heaven, we give you praise for the grace that you show to sinners of all kinds, for the grace that you show to us. Will you receive us into your fatherly welcome? Will you find us as lost sinners, prodigal sons and elder brothers as we are? And will you work by the Spirit your joy into our hearts so that we may know the full celebration of your fatherly delight in Jesus' name. Amen.

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