Luke 15:25-32
Pray
I'm guessing that you've probably heard this story that Jesus is telling to the Pharisees of the day.
We picked up at the very end of it, and only read that part because most of the time after hearing the whole story people start to nod off at this part and really miss the ending.
So let me go over with you real quick what has led up to this.
Here is a parable that Jesus tells.
He says that There are two sons in a family.
Now when the father dies, what he owns goes to them.
But the younger son decides that he doesn’t want to wait for his dad to croak to get what he has coming to him.
And instead he asks for the Dad to give him his part of the inheritance early.
That way he could go out and see the world while he was still young.
The Dad being a nice guy agrees, and gives the son his portion of the inheritance.
The youngest son then proceeds to go out, and “squander his wealth in wild living.”
I’ll let you come up with your own picture of what this wild living looked like.
For me it involves a couple of movies, a huge tub of popcorn with extra butter and shrimpfest at Red Lobster
Now there's some wild living.
Wild living…he wastes all of the money that his dad gave him, and now has to get a job.
So there is a big famine, and the only job that this son can get is feeding the pigs in the fields.
And the poor guy is so hungry that he even wants to eat the food that the pigs are eating.
So he thinks to himself, man the guys that work for my dad have more food then they can eat, and here I am wanting to eat the pig food.
I’ll go home to my dad and tell him that I don’t deserve to be called his son, and hope that he would hire me to work for him.
So he heads home, but while he is still far off his dad spots him…and he thinks “oh, here comes my loser of a son.”
No…the dad is so excited to see him that he runs out to him, and he gives him a huge hug…and throws a big party welcoming him back into the family.
And everything is great and this story shows us how God will love and forgive us no matter what.
And everybody in this story couldn’t be happier.
Hold on a second, it seems that not everybody was happy.
This is why we only read the last couple of verses of the story, because we always seem to forget this part.
When the party starts, the oldest son is nowhere to be found.
When he gets back from work he hears the music, and asks somebody what’s going on.
Well when he hears that his younger brother is back and that his dad is throwing a party for him, he gets ticked off and refuses to go in with everybody else.
So the dad being a good dad decides he’ll go out plead with him to celebrate with them.
And the oldest son start to yell at him…”I been slaving all of these years for you, and I never got a calf.”
“And he goes out and wastes his money and you welcome him home.”
And when you first read this story, you kind of agree with the older brother don't you.
Why should the youngest irresponsible brother get rewarded for being dumb?
The older brother stays at home, does his work, while his brother goes off and wastes all of his money.
And then when the immature brother gets back the dad throws a party for the deadbeat.
Yeah he had reason to complain…that’s not fair.
But hold on for a second.
Let’s think about what the oldest brother had.
He was the oldest brother, so back in this time the oldest was entitled to a 2/3 share of the inheritance.
So he was already guaranteed to get more than his younger brother.
Secondly the father tells him that since he is always there, “everything I have is yours.”
So the son already had access to basically anything he wanted since he was always there.
The son could have had a party with a goat anytime he wanted.
And by that I mean a party where the sacrifice a goat and eat it, although I guess if he wanted to have a party where he invited a goat to it he could have had that too.
So the son didn’t loose any inheritance, he already had everything he needed…yet he was ungrateful and angry about what his brother has.
And that's sad, because he was too obsessed about what his brother had to even notice all of the good stuff around him.
And as always you can sit here today and say…”Well now that you put it that way pastor, you’re right…he was kind of dumb for not being grateful for all that he had.”
But people, I’m here today to tell you that saying this would be like the pot calling the kettle black.
Like a snail calling a turtle slow…like a cat calling a monkey hairy…like me calling Brad Pitt handsome.
Don't tell me that this same things doesn't happen to you, because I know it happens to me.
God is blessing us everyday, in so many different ways.
He’s watching over us, and protecting us, and getting us through difficult times.
He's doing a thousand big things and little things that provide for us all that we need.
But we are so busy focusing on other things, that we miss all that He is doing for us.
We get so caught up in looking all around us to see what everybody else has to ever begin to be happy with what the Lord has given to us.
We get so jealous of what we don't have to see all of the blessings that we do have.
We're like little kids.
A couple of weeks ago we were on vacation, and one of the places that we went to was up to Cook Forrest.
Terri's Mom took the kids up a couple of days before Terri and I were able to get up there.
And her mom told the kids that one of the things that we were going to do when we got up there was to go on a horse ride.
When Terri and I checked it out we realized that we were going to be paying a ton of money for the kids to sit on a horse and have somebody walk it in a circle.
I would have been lucky to pay that for an elephant ride, not a horse ride.
So we told the kids that we weren't doing the horse ride, but that we were going to do a bunch of other fun stuff instead.
We took them to a petting zoo, we took them on bumper boats, and down a big water slide.
We climbed the big fire tower, and climbed all around on these giant rocks.
And at the end of the day when it was getting dark, do you know what they said?
From the back of the car I hear in the whiniest voice you could imagine, “I thought we were going on a horse ride.”
An entire day of fun, and all that they could think about was the one thing that didn't happen.
This is how we live.
We become so greedy, so jealous, so selfish, so blind.
Sometimes we become so focused on the bad in our lives or on that one thing that is missing...that we miss all of the blessing taking place.
We’re so focused on how bad the kids are, we forget to be thankful we have them.
We’re so focused on our bills, we forget to be thankful for all we have.
We're so focused on the faults in our spouse that we forget to be thankful for the good in them.
And like the oldest son in the story, we lose a healthy perspective in our lives because of our inability to be grateful for what we have.
And we go through life with a constant scowl on our face.
Because we are never satisfied with what we have, because all of our time is consumed by thoughts of what we don't have.
The oldest son missed all of the blessings that he was surrounded by.
I'm wondering what blessings you are missing right now as we speak.
We've got to stop looking everywhere else at everyone else, and take a moment to take the blinders off and really take a good look around at all that God has blessed us with.
Thank him for your family, thank him for your kids and for your spouse.
Thank him for your health, thank him for your friends, and for your church, and for His provisions.
Stop looking at what you don't have, and start praising God for what you do have.
Let us not be ungrateful jealous children, but let us be content Christians who praise God for all that they have been given.
