have your Bibles, I'd love for you to join me in Luke chapter 15. There are some moments within Scripture that are culture-defining as far as Christians are looking at the world in which we live and the church in which we serve. There are moments such as we see with Jesus and the woman who was caught red-handed in adultery and Jesus looks at her accusers and says to them, those of you that are without sin, cast the first stone. Of course, there are none that are without sin. Here this morning, my prayer is that you will see yourself in that light. that in the conclusion of the story of the prodigal son or of the loving father, however you may term it, you will be able to gauge whether or not your heart aligns with our heavenly Father God. Whether or not your passion for the mission aligns with the heart, Jesus. Remember in this moment, publicans, those Jewish tax collectors for Rome, traders that nobody likes, and flagrant open sinners, Livers of illicit and immoral lives have gathered around Jesus and Jesus has a pattern of receiving these sinners and even eating with them. The Pharisees and the scribes are on the other end of the religious spectrum. They are the most ardent religious people around. and being ardently religious, they are mad at Jesus for entertaining and accepting and receiving these publicans and sinners. As we have established, the whole tenor of this passage is Jesus responding to their attack in verse 1. Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners, for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners and eats with them. They're amazed at this salacious behavior by Jesus, which is completely and utterly misunderstood on their part. Jesus takes the content of this passage that is before us and he basically answers the question of the Pharisees and scribes. They're in effect asking, what are you doing? And Jesus tells them the story of the lost sheep and the story of the lost coin and the story of the lost son to answer their unasked question. Jesus in effect is saying to them, do you understand Pharisees and scribes? You've got it wrong. You think I don't care about holiness. The truth is, you're wrong. Almost every sermon that I've heard on the Sermon on the Mount, I didn't know where that came from. That was like one of my first senior moments ever. The story of the prodigal son. Here's the thing, I'm already writing series ahead, I'm just. I'm so biblically saturated that the Bible just comes out of me, okay? Forgive me for loving the Word of God. Here Jesus in this story on the prodigal son goes beyond the party and most sermons that I've ever heard kind of end with the party, the celebration of the return of the prodigal. That makes perfect sense, but Jesus doesn't end the story there. He continues on and he includes the account of the older brother. And in the older brother we can see glimpses of ourselves. We can gauge whether or not we share the heart of the Father as we look at the self-righteous older brother who lives a miserable life. It's wrapped up in the story that he's utterly joyless. He's joyless because he has a spiritual superiority complex. And living with a spiritual superiority complex damns us to joylessness and misery. One wrote this, self-righteousness cannot exist without producing an attitude of moral superiority. which will in turn produce a lack of mercy and joyless servitude. Joyless servitude, unfortunately, is a characteristic of many modern day Christians. I do this because I have to. I do this because I want to make God happy. That's right where we are this morning. Turning our attention to the reception of the older son's repentance. viewing very clearly the grace of the father and the hypocrisy of the older brother. It will compel us to answer this question. How do we respond when God extends his grace to others? How do we filter it? When others aren't exactly where we are, please keep in mind, the heart of the older son, as is declared in this story, is directed at the Pharisees and Scribes. Make no mistake, when Jesus gets to this moment in the story, He's drawing to a conclusion His correction of their mindset. Let's pick up the story in verse 25, as Jesus is continuing on at this moment, verse 25. His elder son was in the field. And as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. Already, all good Baptists know this is a bad party. Music and dancing? Now this sticks out to me a little bit. If you hear dancing, they're getting after it in there, right? You can hear the music and the dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he, that is the servant, said unto him, Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. I want you to really hone in on verses 28 and 29. Here is the immediate heart response of the brother in verse 28. And he was angry. and would not go in. Therefore came his father out and entreated him." And in verse 29, the elder brother speaks. Listen to the personal pronouns. Listen to the emphasis of his heart set. And he answered and said to his father, These many years do I serve thee. Neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment, and yet thou never gavest me a kid. In effect, you've killed the fatted calf for my brother. But there's never been a time where you even killed a goat for me. Continuing on, that I might make merry with my friends. Real emphasis on himself. But as soon as this, thy son, he can't even call him his brother, was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots. Man, he's caustic. Thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. The father now speaks. He said unto him, son, thou art ever with me. All that I have is thine. It was meat that we should make merry. It made sense that we should celebrate and be glad. For this thy brother was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. Culturally speaking, the older brother should have been the agent of reconciliation. As heir to the estate, it befell to him the responsibility to go and search out his younger brother who had gone into the far country and plead with him to come home and make peace with dad. At the very least, he should have attempted to stop him from leaving the house and going to dwell in the far country. But we have no evidence that he acted as an agent of reconciliation in any way, shape, or form. He's already revealing to us, he does not align with the heart of the Father. He does not align with the mindset of Dad. Do you understand that this is gospel language? This cultural scene is teaching us something. This is within the Bible. In 2 Corinthians 5.20, Paul said this, now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. It is as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. You and I are agents of reconciliation. Paul said, it's exactly like God himself was pleading with you to reconcile to him by us. And so with the same exact passion and empathy and heart, Paul says, I'm begging you be reconciled to God. I should have been the heart of the older brother. The older brother should have found his wayward brother and begged him on behalf of the father to be reconciled to God, but again we have no evidence that he searched for him. No indication that he tried to stop him. I have wondered, what is the motivation behind that? I don't want to overthink the story, but I do agree with one author who said this, The younger brother's open rebellion allowed him, the older brother, to benefit from it. Because as long as the younger brother was out there sinning as he was, the older brother, who was a sinner himself, could maintain a thin veneer of respectability. People could still pat him on the back. Because after all, he's the brother who stayed home. People could still applaud him because he never ran away. People could still say good job by you because he was out working in the field. He allowed himself to feel better about himself because in the eyes of others, he was quote unquote better, which teaches us something very important. Again, let me read as one commentator stated, the Lord is gonna reveal that it's possible for a prodigal heart to exist in the father's field just as easily as it exists in the far country. It can exist feeding swine in a pig pen, and it can exist while singing songs in the sanctuary. We might summarize it in this way, just because you're in the house, doesn't mean you're on the team. Maybe we could say it this way, just because you're in the house doesn't mean you share his heart. Just because you're busy with your responsibilities and you are maintaining your veneer and your facade, it doesn't mean you actually share in the cause. Maybe unfortunately we'll see some of ourselves in this self-righteous older brother. He had a self-righteous reaction. In verse 25, we noted that he was out in the field working. What a good boy he was. Out on this vast estate in far distant corner, the brother is doing his job. He's fulfilling his responsibility. He's doing what is expected of him. And as the day begins to conclude, he's working himself back to the house, and he arrives right in the middle of the celebration for his prodigal brother. as he nears the house. I can already sense he's in disagreement with what's going on. Because we are told by Jesus that he compels a house servant to come out to where he was. I'd imagine he's already a bit perturbed that he wasn't invited. I'd imagine he's already a bit upset that he wasn't asked for counsel before this party was set up. He hadn't authorized this level of celebration. When the servant comes out to him, he says, in effect, I hear music and dancing. What is this all about? And he states to him, it is the return of your younger brother. Your younger brother is back home. Great news. Right? Isn't it good news that your younger brother is home? Can you imagine how dumb the house servant must have felt? Hey, the celebration is your younger brother has come home. Can you believe it? You're not good? I don't know, let me say it to you this way. A growing church, and extra rows being set out and multiple services and parking in the grass and misery in that regard. That's good news, right? Eh, yeah, ish. Depends on who you ask. Hey, we're getting ready to expand and go over there where more people are gonna come and you're not gonna know as many people by name and you're not gonna know their story as fully. That's good news, right? Not great news, because I've seen some of the ones that are coming in. I've seen the sad, disgruntled masses. They're going to show up and call this their church home. I've seen how they look. They don't look like me, dude. They don't think like I think. I'm not so certain this is great news that they're coming. I mean, look, it began when you put the mullet in the pulpit and you lowered the standards. Look, I didn't put the mullet in the pulpit. No one chooses that. Honestly, no one picks that. It's great news, right, that things are changing and moving forward. I'm not so sure it's great news. Depends on who you ask. Because Pastor, there was a day when you would talk to everybody in the lobby, and now you're a big shot. Wait till the new building. It's gonna go crazy. I know it can happen, and this is why I say it's culture-defining in a church. We're getting ready to expand and add a whole lot of space. We got a lot to put up with between here and there. But we're really gonna go into a nice building, little things, like the tile in the bathroom goes all the way up. You say, is that a big deal? It's a huge deal, man. When you're poor like us, the tile's like halfway up. When you get to this status, you get tile all the way to the ceiling, you say, why is it a big deal? You ever released junior boys into a bathroom? You need to be able to wipe that baby from the ceiling to the floor, man, that's a big deal. We're gonna have a lobby 22 feet wide by 100 feet long. It's gonna be very hard to get with everybody. One of the things that I've pointed out is a plus to me is my office is on the extreme end of this building and all of the masses are actually gonna be way out there in that field now. We have even designed it so that behind the stage on the left-hand side, I will have my own personal bathroom. I don't even have to go out with the commoners anymore. I can wash off all of my contact with them behind closed doors. I mean, we're gonna get to a place where we have some nice stuff, and I know what can happen. Oh, sure, I see these people pulling into their parking now that we have asphalt instead of grass. You wouldn't come back when you were in the old park building, and you wouldn't show up when we had to move chairs, but here you come now. I see you coming in here. That's good news, right? Well, it feels a little bit more like lack of control for me. Feels a little bit more like we're gonna spread around some influence, and I'm not so sure how I feel about that. I believe one of the greatest impediments to a growing church is territorialism within the church. We desire people to come, to be exposed to the truth. Now, I'm not saying we arrive where the older brother was, but I want you to notice something in verse 28, what we read. He was angry. That wasn't good news at all. The word angry, as it is used there, refers to somebody becoming visibly enraged. Literally, the visual imagery is like a pot on a stove that is bubbling over. You aren't wondering whether or not it's boiling. You can see it and hear it. In effect, here's what's being conveyed by Jesus. This older brother ain't gonna sit on this anger. He isn't gonna go quietly into the night. Everyone's gonna know that he's unhappy with this. He's immediately suspicious. I love what one pastor said. Legalists are always suspicious, particularly of joyful people. That's a fact, isn't it? You guys seem to enjoy your church. What kind of compromise is going on over there? What kind of rampant sin have you let in over there? I see people like they smile when they come out. What's that all about? You should cry because holiness. You should feel sad because I noted you had happiness. I saw that you had liberty of the Holy Spirit that I don't have and I don't know how I feel about that but to be quite honest with you, I feel a little miserable. I think it is important as one wrote, it's possible to resent what God does for someone else that he hasn't done for you. When you lose touch with the Father's heart, you lose the ability to rejoice with those who rejoice unless he's doing the exact same thing for you. Same liberties. Same responsibilities, same blessings. When you lose touch with the Father's heart, you get off mission. That's exactly what the scribes and the Pharisees are doing here. Finally, in the story, they have someone they can identify with. Amen, they would say. Of course, this older brother refuses to go in. But Jesus is about to talk to these resentful pretenders. Jesus is really hard on the Pharisees. He calls them at times whited sepulchers. You guys are like a grave. You're all painted up nice on the outside, but on the inside, it's just dead men's bones. He outright calls them hypocrites in Matthew over and again. He looks at them and says, you're blind leaders of the blind, but for one moment in time, and it is this moment, Jesus is actually speaking tenderly to the Pharisees. He's speaking kindly to this group of people. The reality is, you're seeing the heart of the father towards the hypocrite. Still loving. And make no mistake about it, this older son is a pretender. He pretends to stay in the house, but his heart is far gone. He pretends to be dutiful, but he only sees it as exaction and service so that he might get approval and affirmation and wealth and land and prestige. He doesn't share his father's heart. His reaction is shameful. His reaction is self-righteous. As I was reading through this, I came across one pastor speaking of the older brother's mentality, and he said, hey, this same attitude can be seen in the church. How? He listed this. Some won't rejoice when sinners are saved, he wrote, because they feel threatened by the acceptance of outsiders. He said, number two, they can't get excited when a church grows because they see their hold on power slipping away and that all of their preferences are no longer honored. They don't care about God's will being done in the church if it runs counter to their personal agenda. He said they want all the accolades, they want all the opportunity, they want all the pats on the back. He concluded by saying because their service in the church is not about God, it's about them and he concluded ultimately it's about control. The heart of the older brother, no wonder he's miserable. Another said, when you see this kind of attitude on display, either you have a lost person masquerading as a saved person, or you have someone who is out of God's will, but there's no middle ground. How do you respond to God's grace bestowed on others? Is your reaction to it self-righteous? Because what we'll note next is a self-righteous rejection of the entreaty of the Father. Second part of verse 28, the Father comes out of the house and entreated Him. Just like he did with the younger brother, the father leaves the house to go initiate reconciliation. For the second time on the same day, the father has had to leave the house to go after one of his sons. Once an outright, blatant, repentant sinner, this time an unrepentant, hypocritical, judgmental brother. But both times, the father leaves the house to initiate reconciliation. The Bible very specifically says that the dad entreated him. Nobody would imagine that God in heaven would ever beg a sinner to get right, but he does. No one would ever imagine that God has a heart for the hardened hypocrite just as He does for the penitent sinner. But He does. The word for intrigue in verse 28 is a gracious word. The tense in the Greek, the voice behind it tells us the Father kept on repeating it to Him. You could understand it in that way. He kept on appealing to Him to reconcile. Son, come in the house. Son, this is good news. Son, it makes sense that we kill the fatted calf. This is what we've longed for. This is what I've prayed for. This is what we've waited for. Come in the house. Come in the house. Come in the house. But no. Even when he uses the word son in the Greek, it literally conveys this. My little boy. My little son, I love you too. Come in the house, out of here. At this point, the older son will have none of it. I've already addressed what he says, how his emphasis is on himself, how upset he is in the moment. His father is celebrating the younger penitent brother, and he's mad that he's never even had a goat given to him so that he could make Mary with his friends. I'll be honest, if my son ever said, Dad, you've never let me make Mary with my friends, I'd probably punish him. That just sounds weird. But I know what the heart of the younger brother and the heart of the older brother are communicating here. You never did that for me. You never loved me like that. You never celebrated me like that. I want you to grasp what we read in these verses. To some degree, I feel what the older brother is saying, don't you? I'd have been upset. Disobedience now seems to be rewarded and obedience seems to be unrewarded. But remember, grace is never about fairness. Grace is always undeserved. For if we got what we deserved, we'd all go to hell. Nobody should get grace. Everybody who gets any ounce of grace gets it undeserved. Did you hear the language of the young man? I kept all the rules. I've maintained respectability. I've been dependable. I've been industrious. I've been moral. I've been steady. I have been obedient. He's trying to score points again by being better. His motivation is revealed when he says, I served you. It's literally the harsh language of a slave and a master. He has seen his work for his dad as a horrible, grit your teeth, grind your way through these years of service just to stay right. That's not the heart of the Father. He says, in effect, I followed your commands. I did everything you told me to do, and you celebrate this? I've striven, I've left myself out here, I've given up everything. I wanted to do that, but I didn't do that. I obeyed everything you ever asked of me. It's self-satisfaction and pride. He's buried the truth down deep about who He really is. He wasn't motivated by mercy. He wasn't motivated by gratitude. He did it because it made him feel better about himself. Only God knows our motives, but our motives need to be checked. In his self-righteousness, he has no love. In his self-righteousness, he has no joy. In his self-righteousness, he has no mercy. Even when he says to his father, this thy son has returned, he can't even reference him as his own brother. You might wanna look at the older brother and ask him, are you even a member of this family to be reacting in this way? The point of all of it is grace isn't a reward, it's a gift. You don't get more because you've clenched your fists and gritted your teeth and squinted your eyes and done right. all that you've gotten is utterly undeserved. I think it's interesting that the father doesn't stop and point out that at this moment, the older brother's actually defying the command of the father. Dad, I've been obedient. Yeah, but I've told you to come into the house multiple times and you won't do it. It's striking how blind we can be, isn't it? Declaring our obedience We're in the midst of disobedience. The older son easily highlights the sin in his brother's life, but he's blind to his own sinful, prodigal heart. Just because you stay in the house doesn't mean your heart's not in the far country. That's why we learn. Get that little splinter out of your eye so that you might clearly see to address sin, so poignant as another wrote. It's possible to complain that God owes us something while ignoring what we already have. If we were God, how much complaining would we put up with? But again, this parable is intended to reveal the immeasurable grace of God and the glory of the Father in His invitation to the banquet of salvation, so the young man lives in a self-righteous reality. Seven times in this parable, we read, son, fatherly affection, my dear son, my little boy, I love you so much. That's the tone. That's the heart of God toward the sinning prodigal. That's the heart of God toward the self-righteous hypocrite. The Father pleads with him. He says to him, you are always with me. Everything that I have, it's yours. You are the heir to my fortune. You eat at my table every night. And you're mad because we celebrate with the fatted calf the return of your brother? Everything here is yours. You're already an heir. Every night you eat with me. What is it actually that will make you happy? You can almost hear the Father say. Is it not enough that you live here? Is it not enough that all this land is yours? Is it not enough that you eat at the table with me all the time, that we can't celebrate once the return of your brother? How can I possibly give you more? See, the deepest void in the older brother's heart is that he lived in the house with the father and he found it deeply unsatisfying. He lived with all the privileges of the elder brother, eating with the father, and having the heir to all that was there, and he wasn't happy with it, because to him it was miserable servitude. And so the outlet for that petulant anger is anybody who you perceive to be eating grace, because misery loves company. His father makes one final appeal, my child, it's all here. We had to celebrate this. But the older brother cares more about himself than he does his father's happiness. Let that sink in. He cares more about himself than what makes his father happy. He could have had joy, but he refused. As a student of this passage, if you note within Luke 15, every single person is happy. The shepherd is happy. The shepherd's friends are happy. The woman who found the coin is happy. Her friends are happy. The father is happy. The lost son is happy. The servants in the house are happy. The angels in heaven are happy. Everybody's happy. There's only one person in the whole passage that's miserable, and it's the elder brother. and he's miserable because he refuses to be happy. He's standing outside pouting, complaining about his plight, eyes on himself. I cannot help but think of Jonah, the Old Testament prophet. who saw a revival in Nineveh, saw God's mercy poured down on wicked people who he wished he could see destroyed, and he's sitting under a gourd, enjoying the shade, and God takes the gourd away, and in the heat, he says, I wish I would just die. And God looks at him and says in effect, you're mad about a gourd going, you're mad you're sitting in the sun. Well, yeah, it's hot. Can you celebrate the revival down in Nineveh? If you give me my gourd back, sure. Give me a little shade, I can be happy about what you're doing there, but if you take my shade, I'm not gonna rejoice in that. I'm only gonna be mad about the heat sitting here on the hill. This older brother's no longer the center of attention, and he doesn't get his way, so he's unhappy. Unhappiness is the reality of the self-righteous. Old Spurgeon, I love what he said, he said this, If we do not rejoice, it's our own fault for living below our privileges. For all things are ours. If you're a child of God, think about that. The Lord is your shepherd. If you're a child of God, nothing will separate you from the love of God. There is no condemnation against you. You're heirs, joint heirs with his only begotten son, Jesus. The eternal kingdom and peace of heaven is yours. You can eat at his table every single day, undaunted. That's not enough. If you cannot rejoice, it's our own fault. As I close, I'll simply point out, Jesus doesn't tell us the end of the story. I think at this moment the Lord's looking at the Pharisees and the scribes. Their grumbling started it all. That onomatopoetic word. They murmured. You could hear them grousing. Jesus has identified they have unmoved, uncaring hearts. Now what? He doesn't end it because the ending of the story is kind of theirs to write and it's ours to write. Do you want to live with the culture of heaven and the spirit of Christ in the heart of the Father or is that just asking too much of you? I think this is such a poignant moment for a church that's poised like ours for what lies ahead. Thanks for listening this week to the Graceway Baptist Church podcast. For more information about our church and our ministries, head on over to our website at gracewaycharlotte.org. We are a church located in South Charlotte. We are growing and our ministries are doing big things for Christ. If you're looking for a way to get plugged into what we're doing, email us at info at gracewaycharlotte.org. Also, stay in the loop with everything happening by following us on Facebook and Instagram. Our handle is GracewayCharlotte. Thanks again for listening to the Graceway Charlotte podcast. We'll see you next week.