The Older Brother: Grace, Repentance, and the Father's Heart

The older brother was the same result with different actions. His actions were good. He behaved. He did everything his father asked. He slaved over it. He kept all the rules. But his sin was hard to see because it was all on the inside. The older brother disconnected from the father because of his self righteousness. I want to be very clear to you. Rebelliousness and self righteousness gets us in the same exact spot, disconnected from the father. [00:49:42] (34 seconds)  #InsideSinDisconnect

God doesn't need anything from us. What God wants from us is the joy of the relationship. So, as we close out this series and we close out one of the coolest days in one church's history, Amen. I want you to think, are you open to thinking of God as the father? The father of this story that Jesus tells. And, that's why Jesus told it to show us who God really is. And, I want you to ask yourself this question. Am I moving away from or toward the Father? [00:55:23] (36 seconds)  #TowardOrAwayFromFather

The older son says, your son did this And the father flips it back, goes, uh-uh. Your brother is home. He was lost and now he's found. He was dead and now he's alive. And, we struggle to seize when someone who is far from God is meant to be our brother and sister in Christ. And, if we do things to refuse to let them in or gatekeep or convince ourselves they don't deserve what we've gotten, we've missed the point. [00:46:58] (37 seconds)  #WelcomeTheLost

The beauty of baptism is us submitting to the fact that we couldn't do it ourselves. We die to our old life. We're risen again to new life because of the grace that Jesus gives us. If we just make it a transactional thing about behavior, we miss out on it. And, we can't miss grace in the gospel. See, the older son felt like his father owed him for his good behavior and sometimes that mentality can creep in with us. Let me ask you this question. Does God owe you? [00:42:47] (31 seconds)  #BaptismNewLife

Let me ask you this. When you think of other people's sin and to be clear, the sin you think about is not the sin you deal with because we always have empathy for the sin that people deal with that I deal with too. Right? Like, oh yeah. No, I get that. It's cool. I understand. The sin that other people do that you don't do, when you think about them in that sin, do you find yourself being disgusted or do you have compassion? Do you have a desire to see them restored or do you have a desire to keep them out? [00:51:05] (30 seconds)  #CompassionNotCondemnation

The reality is, and this is what the older brother did, you can run away from God with the motives of doing the right thing. You can do all the right stuff, all the religious stuff, all the the things you have to check off the box and still be further and further away from the father. And, we do this a lot when we try to control and manipulate who God is. Or, we try to manipulate God into getting what we think we deserve. And, let me just ask you this. As you're sitting here right now or watching online, is self righteousness creeping into your life? [00:50:16] (39 seconds)  #SpottingSelfRighteousness

Now, notice this. This again shows the heart of the father. He doesn't demand that his older son come to the party. He doesn't go, You know what? You're my son. You listen to what I say. You get in there and you celebrate your younger brother. You're laughing because you've had that tone too before. Did my dad voice come out in that? What the father does instead is he goes and pleads with the older son. Pleads with him. [00:38:28] (33 seconds)  #FatherPresentsLove

In fact, but here's the wild thing. The older brother and the younger brother in the story, they did the same thing to begin with. They just did it with different actions. You see, the younger brother, his actions were bad. He broke all the rules. He wasted his his his inheritance on wild living. He sinned outwardly where everyone saw it and they go, look at him, sinner, broken, messed up. He disconnected from the father because of his rebelliousness. [00:49:15] (27 seconds)  #SameResultDifferentActions