Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): God loves you. Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Tim Kelley.

Tim Kelley: The father comes out, but the oldest son won't go in. The father was never supposed to leave the party. The son was supposed to go into the party. So what happened here? He disrespected the father. The older son disrespected the father.

In that culture, respect was more important than obedience. Not that they weren't important, but when you looked at one or the other, disobedience happened, but disrespect didn't. The penalty for disrespect was far greater. When that older brother came out and his older son is there smug, saying, “I can't believe you did this,” the father could have gone “whap” right across the face. The whole village would have said, “He had it coming. You don't do that to your dad.”

The father wouldn't have been looked down upon. They wouldn't have called the government on him or any of those things. It would have been just a normal course of event. He so disrespected his father that he deserved to be cracked across the face. The father humiliated himself again. Just like he did for the younger son, he humiliates himself for the older son. The Pharisees knew what was going on here. They knew they were hearing a crazy story that would never happen in real culture, and they knew that Jesus Christ was being incredibly pinpointed and poignant with them.

This older brother, the Pharisees, did not want a relationship with the father. That is important. Nor did he want his wayward, lost brother. Jesus is looking at the Pharisees and saying, “You don't want to know the father. You want to control him. You want to create him. You want the father to be what you create in your own mind for your own religion. You don't want your younger brother because he's weak, and you don't have anything to give weak people but punishment and criticism. I reject that father and I reject that son because that father doesn't fit my criteria.”

This older brother was about his own righteousness and his own performance. Look at me, I've never failed like that. I've never been that dishonest. I've never taken advantage of people. I never squandered my money. I've never watched that stuff on TV. I never saw that stuff on the computer. I can't believe people do that. Tell me this: why can't people just stop doing what they're doing? Why can't they just stop sinning? I don't sin. You don't see me sinning. Pride doesn't sin.

You don't appreciate grace until you need it. You don't really appreciate it until you really need it. I am not picking on any of the TV evangelists from the past, but the scandals are amazing. With the big scandal of the '80s, a big book comes out: *The Truth of the PTL Scandal*. It was thick. I remember going to a Christian bookstore and thinking, “Christian publishers, really? We're writing a book about this that is talking about the gossip of this thing?”

The people who came out of that fall, that big, public fall, what did they come back teaching? Grace. Another one, one of the most legalistic ones out there, slamming everything and naming every sinner in the place, was found out he was committing them all. He got caught, exposed, and shamed. He came back preaching what? Grace. I am not criticizing them. Until you need it, it's easy to balance it or repudiate it.

The older brother was further from God than his younger brother was. Let me say that again. The older brother was further from God than his younger brother. The younger brother knew he needed help. The older brother didn't. He thought he was fine just the way that he is. I want to give you some symptoms of older-brother-itis, if you never knew that was a condition.

Older brothers are very content with themselves. They're pleased with their spiritual performance, especially in comparison to everyone else. They can't understand why everyone is not like them. They can't understand people with weaknesses. They have no compassion for people with weaknesses. The older brother spirit is found throughout the world in dying churches that disguise themselves in moral righteousness but have no hand to reach out for the weak and no compassion for the hurting. Everything is about them and their own brand of religion that they have decided is the only right way.

Bono wrote a quote I thought was interesting. He said, “I went looking for the spirit and found alcohol. I went looking for soul and bought some style. I wanted to meet God, but they sold me religion.” Older brothers judge a situation without knowing the situation. Their judgment often is based upon what they see, not the heart. They judge without knowing the whole story.

Older brothers can be as miserable as younger brothers for a couple of reasons. Nothing is ever right enough for them, and they are driven batty by all the injustice surrounding their lives. Or, if they're a more sensitive older brother, they live in a form of being self-condemned all the time because they can't live up to their own standards. This is older-brother-itis, too. I can't live up to my own standards. I figure God is fed up with me because I'm fed up with me. God is sick of my inconsistencies because I'm inconsistent. God is fed up with my shallowness because I'm shallow. We beat ourselves up, never really embracing the fact that the father ran to us and seeks us out because he desires this relationship.

Older brothers keep ledger sheets with God. This is a big one. “God, I do it all. I go to church, I do this, and I do that. I've done this for this many years. I'm doing all the things you expect from me. Because I've been performing so well at such a high level for so long, you owe me. You owe me peace, you owe me a healthy family, you owe me no radical diseases, you owe me a good job, and you owe me a good marriage because I've done well for you. I know I've done well for you. I've been with you forever. I've never squandered your riches. I'm the older brother. Because of that, God, don't you owe me?”

When God doesn't reward us, it scrambles our brains. We can't process that. How come you didn't do this? How come you let that happen? It rains on the just and the unjust. There is no one exempt from what life brings. Older brothers get angry with God easily, especially when something undeserved happens. Older brothers say, “It's not fair.” They get mad because people don't get what they think they deserve. That person deserves this, but they didn't get it. It's not fair.

There is nothing fair about God's grace. He gives to those who don't deserve, and he doesn't reward those who we think do deserve. Grace is never fair. To make a few closing points: the moral can be as lost as the immoral. I'm not necessarily even talking about being lost eternally, but lost in their relationship with God. The moral can be so far detached from God just as easily as the immoral.

The same relationship of grace was extended to the older brother. Jesus was not condemning him here. He was showing them their folly and their hypocrisy, but the bigger picture Jesus wanted to bring across in this parable was: I want you to see God for who he really is. I want you to think rightly about him because you have created a God in your mind that does not exist. That is not who he is. He is not the God of self-denial. He is not the God of self-righteousness. He is not the God of punishing the guilty. He is a God of love and forgiveness who deeply desires and yearns to know his children.

Pride kept the younger brother in his condition, and pride kept the older brother in his condition equally. The younger brother was lost in his badness, and the older brother was lost in his goodness. But the key word there is lost. If you don't think that God cares for the broken and the weak, he does. If you don't think that God wants to reach out to those who have been wayward, he does. If you think there is a criteria for coming home to God and knowing him, there isn't.

For the younger brother or the older brother, the self-reliant can get right with the father in a heartbeat, and the wayward prodigal can be with the father in a heartbeat. He's just waiting to receive us. He wants us home. He wants us in the house. He wants us to be part of the family. He doesn't want us out there, and he doesn't want us judging everyone and everything that moves. He wants us home. If you've been an older brother, come home. If you've been the younger brother, come home. If you've been the middle brother, come home. There is no middle brother, but let's pretend like you're just one of those people in between. You just come home.

There is no ending to this story. Jesus didn't end it. You write your own ending. Write your own ending with what happened over time with the younger brother and what happened with the older brother. End this anyway you want, Jesus said. My goal here was not to tell you a nice, compact, precise story. My goal was to paint a picture of God that you don't have, speaking to the Pharisees. The God that I want you to see through this parable is not the God that you worship and think that you're honoring.

We pull this out of this parable: God gets dirty. He's okay to get down and dirty with people. God will never forget any labor of love. He said that to the older brother: “All that I have is thine.” He understood. He won't forget the labor of love. You may think it's unrewarded, you may not get acknowledged, or you may not be patted on the back and encouraged, but he will never forget a labor of love. He will never forget anything you do in his name for love's sake. It may never be recognized on earth, but he will never forget it. Neither will he ever forget the sinner. You can never sin your way too far away that you can't come home.

God breaks all the rules for the lost. He breaks all the rules for the lost sinner, and he breaks all the rules for the lost religious person. He just wants them home.