A Tale Of Two Sons
11/7/2021 Psalm 14:1-7 Luke 15:1-32
Suppose for a moment that you could write all the rules for your own life. Nobody could tell you what to do. You were in complete control without having to be concerned with what God thinks. Do you think your life would be better a year from now or would it be worse? Deep down inside, we all want to be in control of our future. We want to be able to have certain outcomes in our lives to make us happy. We think, “If Only I was really in charge.”
What if you had a son that was completely honest with you. Let’s call him Kluziah. Kluziah comes to you and says, “Look, I have seen what is in your will that you are leaving to me. I don’t want to bother waiting around until you die.”
“ I’ve got plans for my life, and I’m tired of your rules. Just give me my money now and I’ll be out of here. I’m moving to a distant country because I want to get as far away from this place as possible. I want to be in charge of my life, and I don’t want to have to answer to you or to anybody else for that matter.”
What do you do for this son that you love? You know that he’s about to make a big mistake. You know that he’s been alienated from you for quite some time. You’ve had friends asking you,”Have you seen some of the things he’s posted about you on Facebook. He calls you out of touch, old fashioned, and even a fool.”
“He brags that one day he’s going to have enough money to buy all the prostitutes he wants and he’s going to show the world what a party is. He keeps putting down you and his older brother all over social media.”
Here is Kluziah, who has humiliated you both publicly and privately, basically demanding you give him his inheritance so that he can go out and be his own God, in charge of his own life. Would you give him the inheritance or would you put him out on the street where he rightfully belongs?
Jesus wants us to know how much God loves us, regardless of the path we choose to live in trying to be in control of our future which essentially means trying to play God. He tells the story in first century language of a man with two sons.
The younger son treated his father, exactly the same way that Kluziah treated you. Only the father in the story, hoping to one day be reconciled to his son, gave his son what he asked. The younger son didn’t care about or want a relationship with his father. He only wanted the benefits the father could give him. He wanted his father’s wealth and his property. He wanted the good life, and he didn’t think he would get it at his father’s house. He rejected the love the Father had for him.
He took his Father’s wealth and went off and had the good life with the parties. He moved to a distant country so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered with people checking in on him. He didn’t bother to write home. He thought his money was going to last forever.
He was happy because he brought friends with his money. It’s easy to have friends when you have money. He was writing his own rules and in essence was his own god. He basically worshipped himself. He was the center of his world? Are you the center of your world?
Everything went well until something unexpected happened. A famine hit the land, that caused such high inflation, that his money quickly vanished. For the first time in his life, he was broke with nobody offering to help him out.
Those friends had scattered like roaches when you turn on a light. For the first time in his life he was going to have to get a job. The only job he could get was feeding hogs. He was so desperate he wanted to eat the sloppy, bad looking food he was feeding the hogs. Nobody gave him anything.
Then he came to his senses and remembered his father and what he had left. He said, “even my father’s hired workers are eating better than I am while I am starving to death. I will leave this place, go back to my Father, admit that I was wrong and that I sinned against him and heaven. I’ll admit, I am no longer worthy to be called to be your son, but please make me like a hired servant.”
The younger son is probably thinking, if I’m a hired servant, I could earn enough money to pay my father back and then one day I could be accepted back into the family again. He didn’t know how much he was going to have to pay to get on his Father’s good side, but he was going to do it.
So he made up his mind to go back home. It wasn’t an easy trip. He would have to hear “I told you so” and a whole lot worse. He wasn’t wearing the kind of clothes like he had when he left, he was smelling pretty badly, and there was no entourage with him. It was just him headed home.
There are so many people like this young man, who know their lives are in a mess. They know their lives would be better if they turned back toward God, but they think they have to do a number of good things first for God to accept them. They will earn their way to God’s grace and forgiveness.
When the younger son finally makes it toward home, the first person to spot him is his father. I don’t know how often the father went to a place with a telescope or binoculars or looking in the distance for his son, but I do know he was doing it. Jesus said the father spotted the son when he was a long way off. Love can see things at a distance. The way a person a walks.
When the father saw him, he was immediately filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son and threw his arms around him and kissed him. Can you imagine this scene. This man in his nice clothing, well cut haircut and beard, throwing his arms around a thin gaunt man in raggedy torn out clothes, matted hair, and smelling awful.
It’s amazing that God does not care what we look like or how bad we smell, God just wants us to be in a right relationship with him. God wants us to come home from where we are.
The first words out of the younger son’s mouth are words of repentance, “Father I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” The first step and only step toward reconciliation with God is to admit you have sinned, and that you don’t deserve to be there. The younger son never gets to share his plan about how he will pay his father back.
His Father instantly receives him back as a member of the family. Luke 15:22-24 (NIV2011) 22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.
His Father has a huge banquet prepared. All of the important people have been invited. They show up even at such a short notice. The Father has two seats of honor at the banquet. The first is for the younger son on his left and the second is for his older son on his right. The father has a joy that’s been missing for a long time. He’s about to celebrate with both of his sons.
The older son was away working in the fields at the time the party was beginning. When he got to the house, he could see all the commotion that was going on. At first he probably smiled and said, “Good Lord what is all this. I see am going to have a good time tonight.”
One of the hired servants said, “It’s wonderful, your younger brother has come home and your father has killed the fattest calf for a feast to be served. He’s got a table with you and your brother to be seated at the place of honor. Everybody is waiting for you to get things started.”
Now the last news this older brother had gotten about his younger brother was that he was in a far distant country, going though his Father’s money wasting it on prostitutes and wild parties. This news came from travelers. His brother hadn’t bothered to write home.
He started thinking, all these years I have been doing what’s expected of me. I have lived right. I have gone to church, and I have stayed away from the people my brother has been hanging around with. And now my father wants to put him back in the same place that I am in. What was the use of me living right?
By making him a son again, that would mean the younger brother would be entitled again to inherit from his father, which would mean the older brother would now get less than he would have if his brother had just stayed away. If he had to choose between this no good brother and his Father’s possessions, he would choose his Father’s possessions.
Even though this older son had stayed at home, he too was alienated from his father. He didn’t care how happy his father was to have the younger son back. He was going to post it on Facebook that his father was wrong to let his younger son back into the family. Not only was he going to refuse to have anything to do with his brother, he was going to humiliate his Father by refusing to accept his seat of honor at the banquet.
What would you do with a son, who is upset over the fact that you have been reconciled to your other lost child? A son who is telling the world that you are wrong, and that you must choose either him or the other child but you can’t have them both. What should have been a day of celebration and rejoicing has become filled with anger and division.
Earlier, the father had looked out in search of his younger son. Now he has the same desire for his older son. His older son was a good man and the father knew it. But the older son was letting his goodness get in the way of what his father wanted him to have.
His Father wanted him to have a loving relationship with him and with his brother, but the older son’s pride was not having anything to do with it.
We have a heavenly Father that wants all people to be saved. Even the people we don’t like because of what they have done to us whether real or imagined. People who don’t fit into our definition of who can be a child of God. People who have not tried to keep the laws of God as closely and religiously as we have.
People who need our acceptance before they will believe that God is real. If people come into our lives or our church and we lack compassion for them or move by them as though they do not exist, how can they know what God is truly like.
The Father got word that his older good son, was refusing to come into the celebration and that his son was angry. Without making a scene, he quietly got up from the position of honor, went out the back door to find his older son. He begged and pleaded with his son, “come on in to the feast and give your brother a chance. Let’s become the family that I’ve always wanted us to be.”
But his words fell on tone deaf ears. The older brother said, “No, I am not going to go into that party. I will be in control of my life and you can’t make me go. He then begins to lay out his logical reasons for why he is right and his father is wrong.
First: Look,! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders.”
As Jesus is telling this story, everyone is aware that the Father in this story represents God. The younger son represents the sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. The older son represents the righteous religious people, the Pharisees.
The older son wasn’t at home with his father because he wanted to be there. He defines his relationship to his father as a slave. He’s telling his father, “I haven’t been enjoying what I’ve been doing in working for you and doing what you ask.”
For those of us who know the Lord, is our relationship based on loving and pleasing God or simply fearing hell or other consequences.
The good that we do. Is it motivated by wanting to please our Father so that we can be joyful with him and celebrate His goodness in our lives. Do we volunteer because we see it as an opportunity to please our Father.
When I do something my wife wants me to do and I’m doing it to please her, I don’t focus in on the work I am doing, I focus in on the smile she is going to have when she sees its done. As believers, if we truly love God, we delight in serving him.
Second the older son says “You never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.”
In other words “I have been keeping score and you owe me.” Do we serve God in order to control God? Do we believe the lie that if we do everything we’re supposed to do, God is under contract to give us the wonderful happy future that we think we deserve. Jesus did everything He was supposed to do for the Father and yet he was crucified.
What have we wanted from God that we did not get, and we feel as though God owes us a change in our circumstances? When Jesus said come follow me, he did not offer us the chance to control our future. He gave us the privilege of becoming a child of God. We are all tempted to want to be a believer in Christ in a different set of circumstances. God wants us to live holy and faithfully right where we are.
Third he says, “When this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him.”
In other words, “why are you giving him something that not only does he not deserve, but based on how I have lived my life, I should be the one who got that. You are so unfair.”
Not once does this older brother bring himself to admit that this guy that returned home is still his brother. He reminds his father, that this son of his squandered your wealth the first time. Now he is back, and you’re giving him the same opportunity to do it all over again. You shouldn’t have given it to him in the first place.
Have you ever felt like the older brother that God was playing favorites with what God has to give. You look at people who are not even trying to serve God living in nice homes, getting promotions, having big salaries, have children who are behaving themselves and just seems to have blessing after blessing. God ought to know that they do not deserve all that.
And after all the sacrifices you have made serving God, you know it was your time for a blessing ahead of them. Part of our problem is that we think we are doing things for God, when in reality we are only doing them for what we are going to get out of it.
Elizabeth Eliot tells a story about Jesus that’s written in a book that’s not in the bible. It’s an apocryphal writing. I’m only using it to get a point across of why do we do what Jesus asks us to do. One day Jesus said to his disciples: “I’d like you to carry a stone for Me.”
He didn’t give any explanation. So the disciples looked around for a stone to carry, and Peter, being the practical sort, sought out the smallest stone he could possibly find. After all Jesus didn’t give any regulations, for weight and size! So he put the small stone in his pocket.
Jesus then said, “Follow Me.” He led them on a journey. About noontime Jesus had everyone sit down. He waved his hands and all the stones turned to bread. He said, “now it’s time for lunch.”
In a few seconds, Peter’s lunch was over because he had chosen a small stone.. When lunch was done Jesus told them to stand up. He said again, “I’d like you to carry a stone for Me.”
This time Peter said, “Aha! Now I get it.” So he looked around and saw a small boulder. He hoisted it on his back and it was painful, it made him stagger. But he said to himself, “I can’t wait for supper.”
Jesus then said, “Follow Me.” He led then on a journey with Peter barely being able to keep up. Around supper time, Jesus led them to the side of a river. He said, “Now everyone throw your stones into the water.” They did. The he said, “Follow Me”, and began to walk. Peter and the others looked at him dumbfounded. Jesus sighed and said, “Don’t you remember what I asked you to do? Who were you carrying the stone for?”
Can I ask us, who are we being good for in obeying God’s commands? Are we being good like Peter in the story, thinking we are going to get some big reward because of what happened in the past, or are we being a faithful disciple because our goal is please God and glorify God in our lives.
The older brother didn’t really want a relationship with his father, he wanted to use the father to get the wealth that he actually wanted. He really was no different than his younger brother. He only cared about himself. Our being good does not put God in our debt because we can never repay God for the debt we owe him because of our sin.
The father tries one more time to reach his older son. He ignores all the cruel and painful accusations of his older son to try to get him to see what it really at stake. Luke 15:31-32 (NIV2011) 31 “ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ ”
Jesus doesn’t tell us the final fate of the older son in the story. Was he moved to compassion for his brother? Did he accept his father’s explanation and see the big picture? Did he only continue to think about himself?
Jesus is letting us know, that we can be in or around the church all of our lives and still be alienated from God. We can become so proud of being good, that we believe we are our own Savior. We foolishly think that God has to accept us because of the lives we live and God has to do what we want God to do because we have kept his commands.
The tale of these two sons indicate that it is not a matter of how bad we have been or how good we have been. The issue is whether or not we have been reconciled to the Father, and do we do things out of the sheer delight of simply pleasing Him with no other agenda.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross, he shed the most expensive gift the world has ever known and that was his blood. His blood is the only thing that can pay the penalty for our sins so that we can have eternal life. There is nothing we do for God or give to God, that puts God in our debt and under our control. For nothing comes close to the price God has paid on our behalf for us to be adopted into the family of God.
