February 15, 2015
The Parable of the lost sons -
The Older Brother
GRACE
Show the Skit Guys Grace Video (you tube – the skit guys grace
video)
Grace -
getting what you don't deserve.
The opposite of grace is condemned - to declare to be reprehensible, wrong, or evil usually after weighing
evidence and without reservation, to pronounce guilty: to convict: in other words - getting what you deserve.
2 weeks ago I shared that Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord. Moses was another Old Testament
man of God who found grace:
Exodus 33:12 - 17 Moses said to the LORD,
"Look, You have told me, 'Lead this people up,' but You have not let me
know whom You will send with me. You said, 'I know you by name, and you
have also found grace in My sight.'
Now if I have indeed found grace in Your sight, please teach me Your
ways, and I will know You and find grace in Your sight. Now consider that this
nation is Your people."
Then He
replied, "My presence will go with you, and I will
give you rest." "If Your
presence does not go," Moses responded to Him, "don't make us go up
from here. How will it be known that I
and Your people have found grace in Your sight unless You go with us? I and
Your people will be distinguished by this from all the other people on
the face of the earth." The LORD
answered Moses, "I will do this very thing you have asked, for you
have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name."
God knew the heart of Moses and he found grace because of it and
God said I know you by name.
2 weeks
ago we talked about the parable of the 2 sons:
In Luke
15, Jesus is speaking and eating with a group of tax collectors and
sinners.
Remember the Pharisees and scribes came and the scripture says
they were complaining that Jesus welcomes and eats with sinners:
Luke 15:2 And the Pharisees and scribes were
complaining, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them!"
Jesus shared 3 parables - the third one was about a father and his
2 sons:
Luke 15:12a The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the
share of the estate I have coming to me.'
And the father did just that - he gave him his share and the
younger took his inheritance and blew it - the scripture says: he squandered his estate in foolish living. He
finally came to his senses and repented of his sins and returned home where he
found his father waiting for him, forgiving him, and receiving him back -
getting what he did not deserve - grace.
Let's read about the other son, who had a different outlook on his
father – the outlook the Pharisees and scribes had - he believed that being his
father's son not only was based on how he behaved but also on what he did
(works):
Luke 15:25 - 32 "Now his older
son was in the field; as he came near the house, he heard music and
dancing. So
he summoned one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 'Your brother is
here,' he told him, 'and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because
he has him back safe and sound.'
"Then he became angry and didn't want to go in. So his father
came out and pleaded with him.
But he replied to his father, 'Look, I have been slaving
many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet
you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has
devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for
him.' "'Son,'
he said to him, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to
celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive
again; he was lost and is found.'"
As I have been reading and studying The Grace Course by Steve
Goss, Rich Miller, and Jude Graham, they say; Many times when we read this
parable we overlook this brother. But
this is the brother Jesus was revealing to the Pharisees and the scribes that
resembled them. Maybe this is the brother
Jesus is revealing to you that most resembles you.
When you read about this older brother, what do think? Well he definitely was not like his younger
brother - he didn't take his inheritance and leave home, he stayed and worked
hard. He always did what he thought was
expected of him - he toed the line. He
represented the religious people of the day, the ones who thought they could
please God by doing the right things, by behaving the right way, by slaving
rather than serving.
He was unable to get his head around the concept of grace. To him, it was straight forward: You earn the father's favor by what you do.
He didn't understand that the father's love and acceptance was as
little to do with his good outward behavior as it was with the other son's bad
outward behavior. It is nothing to do
with behavior. It's all about grace, you
can't work for it, you can't earn it, God gives it freely.
The older brother is angry because of the way the father treats
the younger brother when he returned - throws him a big party.
The older brother tells his father 'Look, I have been slaving many years for you, in other words the older son tells his father I have been
your slave all these years, I have worked for you, I have earned the right to
be your son. He was working for his
position and inheritance. Remember that
the father had distributed the inheritance to both sons. The older brother couldn’t comprehend that
all his father had was his now. He was
living as though everything was futuristic and that somehow he had to earn it. That's what the Pharisees and scribes believed
and how they lived their lives - slaving to earn their way into heaven. The problem is - you can't earn or slave your
way into heaven, only by the grace of God can we get into heaven.
Remember what the younger son said:
Luke 15:17 – 19 When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's
hired hands have more than enough food, and here I am dying of hunger! I'll get up, go to my
father, and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight.
I'm no longer
worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired hands.'
The older son even though the inheritance was already his lived
the life as one of the hired hands – a slave. This older son lived the life of a slave with
no rights whatsoever who is forced to obey his master wither we like it or
not. The New Testament term for a slave
with no rights was "bond slave".
A person held in bondage by his master.
Despite the fact that he was a son, despite the fact that the
inheritance was already his, the elder brother acted like a bond slave.
So many Christians live like this older son lived - the life of a
slave with no rights whatsoever who is forced to obey his master wither we like
it or not. We don’t understand that we
can’t earn our way into God’s grace. He
offers us grace while we are still sinners.
Our standing with Him is something He established. When we come to Him, He gives us life:
1John
5:12 The one
who has the Son has life. The one who doesn't have the Son of God does not have
life.
In 1 Peter we find that He has given us His own
nature and all we need to live:
2Peter
1:3 – 4 For His divine power has given
us everything required for life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who
called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He has given us very great and
precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature,
escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.
Galatians
4:1 - 7 Now I say
that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though
he is the owner of everything. Instead,
he is under guardians and stewards until the time set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were
children, were in slavery under the elemental forces of the world.
But when
the completion of the time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under
the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as
sons. And because you are sons, God has
sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father!" So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and
if a son, then an heir through God.
In the New Testament the word "slave" takes on a new
meaning. In the book of Mark, Jesus
tells His disciples:
Mark 10:44 and whoever wants to
be first among you must be a slave to all.
In the early church Paul describes himself as a slave:
Romans 1:1 Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called
as an apostle and singled out for God's good news--
How can being a slave be good?
In New Testament times, it was very common for Roman masters to
free their slaves. Perhaps they had
completed their required service, or their masters were simply being
generous. The slaves then became
fully-fledged Roman citizens and many went on to do very well for themselves.
They were absolutely free to leave - but sometimes of their own
free will they decided to stay and continue to serve in the household simply
because of love for their master. From the outside what they did day-by-day
probably didn't look any different, but there is in fact a world of difference
between doing what you do because you are forced to and doing it simply out of
love because you make a free choice.
Scripture describes it this way:
1John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.
Matthew 10:8b You have received free of charge; give free of
charge.
Luke 6:36 Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
Ephesians 4:32 And be kind and compassionate to one another,
forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.
In John 14:15 Jesus makes
a statement that gives the reason why we are obedient to Him. We will be obedient for one reason and one
reason only - because we simply love Him:
John 14:15 "If you love
Me, you will keep My commandments.
So many Christians are like this older brother, we think that
being a Christian is all about obeying all the rules, about how we behave,
about what we do. We are told to be
obedient, we are told to live like Christ.
But these things are not what will save us. We are saved only by the grace of God and
once we realize this everything else comes not only because He loves us but
because we love Him.
Put yourself in the life of the younger brother - after knowing
and experiencing the love and grace of your father, would you be an obedient
son because you had to, or because you chose to?
The inheritance was already there and available for each son - the
younger received it because of repentance, the older son even rejected it
because he chose to receive it a different way - to earn it.
None of us deserve the inheritance but we all can have it through
the grace of the Father. We can all get
what we do not deserve.
Doing things as the older brother thought that is how he would
gain the inheritance will never work:
Ephesians 2:8 - 9 For by grace you are saved through faith, and
this is not from yourselves; it is God's gift--not from works, so that no one
can boast.
Do you
think Paul, James, and Jude called themselves slaves of Jesus Christ because
they had to or because they knew and experienced the love and grace of the
Father - they chose to?
Romans 1:1 Paul,
a slave of Christ Jesus,
James 1:1 James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus
Christ:
Jude 1:1 Jude, a
slave of Jesus Christ,
We all are or at one time in our life were the younger son - we
needed the forgiveness of the father.
The sad fact is that many are in the same bondage the older son was in -
thinking and living our lives that we can earn our way into the love of the
father, thinking we can earn what we do not deserve.
What are we slaves to this morning? A slave stuck in bondage or a slave of Jesus
Christ?
Before we close let's think about the father:
Luke 15:12 The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the
share of the estate I have coming to me.' So he distributed the assets to them.
The King James says: And he divided unto them his living.
Scripture says that the father distributed his estate to them, all
he had, his living - to both the younger and older brother. The father proved his love for his sons. How did he do that while he was still
living? The first born son always got
the larger portion of the inheritance, since there were 2 sons, the first born
got 2/3's of the inheritance and the youngest got 1/3. To do this the father had to sell all he had
to divide it to the sons.
Our heavenly father did the same for each of us:
Romans 5:8 But God proves His own
love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us!
Do you
realize this morning that He loves you for who you are - you are His creation,
not because of what you have or have not done?
He told
Moses that he found grace and I know you by name.
Exodus 33:17 The
LORD answered Moses, "I will do this very thing you have asked, for you
have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name."
In Mark
16:7 Jesus said:
Mark 16:7 But go, tell His disciples and Peter,
He called
Peter by name. That could have been
anyone of us. We have all failed Him, we
have all denied Him.
Romans 3:24 For all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God
Does He
know you by name this morning or are we trying and living like the older
brother – if I can just do this I can be received by Him, I can be called His
child. If I can just stop this sinful
habit, I can be called His child. So
many try to earn their salvation – they don’t accept by faith the truth in
Romans 3:24:
Romans
3:24 They are
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Grace is
given to us freely – there is nothing we can do to earn it – it is only through
His free gift of salvation – redemption that is in Jesus Christ.
Grace -
getting what you don't deserve. Grace is
Him knowing you by name. Do you know
Him? Have you
accepted His grace this morning?
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