Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
At Faith Presbyterian Church we are seeking to exalt Jesus Christ the King and to exhibit and extend his Kingdom through worship, community, and mission.
Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Luke 15:11-32; A Gospel-Centered Church
Jason Sterling September 1, 2024 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL
Bulletin
The following message is from Faith Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Join us on Sundays for our 8, 15, and 11 am worship services. For more information, visit us online at faith-pcaorg or download the Faith PCA app. Thank you for tuning in to Faith's podcast ministry.
Speaker 2:You have a copy of God's Word. Turn with me to Luke, chapter 15. So go to the New Testament Matthew, mark, luke 15, chapter 15, verses 11 through 32. We'll start next week our fall series, and we are a church. We try to go through books of the Bible and we rotate Old Testament, new Testament, we're moving to the Old Testament and doing the book of Daniel, starting next week.
Speaker 2:In the last couple of weeks we've been and we do this from time to time, but we've taken the last couple of weeks just to refocus us, to remind us of who we are as a church and who God's called us to be. We remember the old saying you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time, and so we want to always keep in front of us our values and priorities and the things that are important for the church to be the church, and so that's what we've been doing over the last couple of weeks. We said the first week we want to be a church of hospitality, a hospitable church. Week, we want to be a church of hospitality, a hospitable church. Last week we said we want to be a place of hope, a place that holds out resurrection, hope to the world, and this morning. We're going to look at and see that we want to be a gospel-centered church and to work out this idea. We're going to look at Luke 15 this morning.
Speaker 2:This is one of the best stories, one of my favorite stories in the Bible, because I believe it so clearly articulates the gospel. Before I read, I want to mention that most of what I'll be sharing with you, most of what I've learned about this story, has come from Tim Keller, particularly his book called Prodigal God. If you haven't read that, you should. It's a great book for people that are in different places spiritually, whether you're a college student or a student or skeptical of Christianity, or whether you've been a Christian your entire life. It is a great book that works out the gospel and it has forever shaped the way I look at this passage, particularly Keller's work on the elder or the older brother. So with that in mind, follow along with me. This is God's holy and inspired word Luke 15, 11 through 32.
Speaker 2:And he said there was a man who had two sons and the younger of them said to his father father, give me the share of property that is coming to me. He divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country and he began to be in need. And so he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into the fields to feed pigs, and he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said how many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger. And I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.
Speaker 2:And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him father, I've sinned against heaven and before you I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate For this. My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost in his founds and they began to celebrate. And now the older son was in the field and he came and drew near to the house. He heard music and dancing and he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he received him back safe and sound. But he, the older brother, was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him and he answered his father, look, these many years I've served you and I've never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. And he said to him son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this. Your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.
Speaker 2:This is God's word. Let me pray, ask the Spirit to attend to the preaching of the Word this morning. Let's pray, father. We do ask that you would come and bring Holy Spirit. We are that needy and helpless. We can't understand this passage. Without you, nothing will happen here unless you show up in power through your spirit, and so that's what I'm asking. I'm asking for you to come, do what I can't do, place this in every heart, give every person in here something we can hold on to. But, more than anything, would you just captivate us with the love of the Father, with your love for us, through the Lord Jesus. It's in his name we pray, amen.
Speaker 2:In 2005, I was the campus minister at Samford University with Reform University Fellowship and, if you know about 2005, august of 2005, this thing called Hurricane Katrina hit and so that fall we took several students along with actually, we partnered with Faith Church Some of you might have been on that trip and we went to Biloxi, mississippi, and I'll never forget driving down the shoreline along the ocean in Biloxi Mississippi and looking at the devastation from the hurricane. I mean it was very. The houses were completely leveled. All there was left standing was the slab, and lots of our work was cleanup. So we did lots of cleanup work and then at some point during the week we went several blocks off of the beach, off of the shoreline, and we did clean. We were supposed to do cleanup at some of the houses, again several blocks back, and I'll never forget pulling up to this one particular house and it was beautiful on the outside and it looked like nothing was wrong, it looked completely normal. And so in my mind I'm thinking what's going on here? They don't really need anything, it doesn't appear. Until I walked in the house and there was a flood line over halfway up and the walls were completely black with black mold, and we started ripping off the sheetrock and behind the walls it was covered with mold, completely black. And what I realized is that, though the outside of the houses further back, several blocks back off the coast though they looked great on the outside, on the inside they were rotting. They were rotting from the inside out. The devastation on the shoreline and the devastation several blocks back looked different, but it was completely the same. They were both in need of healing and in need of help, and we went to Biloxi, mississippi, in order to bring healing and help to those places.
Speaker 2:And the reason why I begin with that story is because if you look at Luke, chapter 15, there are two sons. Notice verse 11. Oftentimes people focus on only one son, the prodigal son. No, this is a story about a man who had two sons, and I tell you the story about our trip to do relief with Hurricane Katrina, because these sons are both lost. It just looks differently. One is righteous, the other one is unrighteous. The younger son, like the devastation on the shoreline, is running from God. It's very external. It's obvious for everyone to see there's devastation in this person's life. The older son, though he looks think about that illustration though he looks great on the outside, he's actually rotting from the inside out. Their heart is the same and they both need the exact same thing. They both need the gospel. They both need the love of the Father to come and save them and heal them. We want to be a church that doesn't look around at other people and doesn't look around in our community or in our schools or in our neighborhood and says, yeah, that person, you can tell they really need Jesus. No, we want to be a church that says, hey, we all need the same thing. We all need the gospel, and so why don't you come with me? Why don't you come with me to Faith Church so we can experience the love of the Father together. Let's go encounter Jesus together.
Speaker 2:Let's look at two things this morning. Really easy outline the younger brother, number one. Secondly, the older brother, our first heading, the younger brother. Have you ever had a moment where you finally got something that you'd always wanted? We've all had those moments and it changes throughout your life. If you're a kid, perhaps it's a toy, perhaps it's a gaming system toy, perhaps it's a gaming system. Perhaps, if you're a teenager, it's a car of some or something like that, or a cell phone. And when you get to be an adult, maybe it's a job. You just have always wanted this job, or to work for this company or this area, or it's to get in a certain grad school or have a certain possession or whatever it might be own a home, possibly. So we've all had those experiences where we've really wanted something deep down in our souls. And then you finally get it and what happens? It's cool for about a week and it doesn't. Maybe it lasts longer, but it doesn't take long. You celebrate, you're excited, but it doesn't take long for you to move on and say next, getting everything we've always wanted, we know, doesn't live up to the hype, never lives up to what we thought it would be or what our expectations would be. That's the younger brother. He has gotten everything he's always wanted and it left him rock bottom and empty.
Speaker 2:Look at verse 12. Father, give me my share of the inheritance. And when you get the inheritance? When do you typically get an inheritance? If you get one after someone dies, after the father dies, not when they're alive. And so for the son to ask the father for his share of the inheritance was basically saying I wish you were dead. That's what the younger son is basically saying. He wanted the father's things, he just didn't want the father. Father, I want your money, but I don't want you. Right, and get this. The father actually gives it to him. When I read this, I don't know if I would have done that. His dad gives it to him.
Speaker 2:Look at verse 13. He gets the inheritance, he takes the inheritance and he goes to Vegas. That's what he does. Look it says he squanders it away at a far-off country through reckless living. And he squanders it and makes himself keep. I mean, it's an amazing story, isn't it? Makes himself a hired hand, takes a job feeding pigs. He's so low, he's so rock bottom that he's actually eating what the pigs are eating. And so let's stop here just for a second and do some application.
Speaker 2:And the first thing I want us to notice is that the father does give him what he's always wanted. The father lets him go. Wanted the father lets him go. He requests the inheritance. He gives him the inheritance. He lets him hit rock bottom. And God does that, doesn't he? I mean, we see that in Genesis, chapter three. God lets Adam and Eve go, doesn't he? He lets them have what they always wanted. He lets them make a bad decision and experience the consequences of that decision.
Speaker 2:And I tell you that because some of you are starting to learn in life that if you do things with your time and your money and your sexuality and your body and you go against the grain of what God says, you are starting to realize that you don't get caught, that sometimes you don't get struck by lightning and that lots of times you're like, hey, I actually got away with that, got away with that. And if you choose to go a different way than what God has laid out in the scriptures. Often God will let you do it and when you do it, you go after the thing you always thought you would want it, and we've experienced this. It doesn't give you the good life that you think it's going to give you. Instead, it gives you ruin and misery.
Speaker 2:And then the question becomes what's the younger son going to do? Well, he comes up with a plan. Look at the plan. It's a crazy plan. This guy wants to go home. He decides to go back home and that's laughable if you're reading the story. After what he's done, he's going to publicly shame himself. If he walks through the doors of his home, he's going to publicly shame his family and his father. Look at what he does. Verse 17 through 19. Here's his line of thinking in his plan. I will tell him that I will pay it back. I'll earn it. Put me to work, put me in the garage apartment, just I'll work my way back into the family.
Speaker 2:I love the Jesus Storybook Bible says he practices his I'm so sorry speech all the way home. And we've been there, haven't we? And where we've done things that are awful, things that we said we would never do again, things that we said we would never do again, and our knee-jerk reaction oftentimes is to say God, I'm going to get serious now. I will never do that again. That's what the younger brother's doing. God, I will fix this. I'll start going to church. I'll even go to kingdom communities. I'll get in a grace group. I'll go to student ministries. I'll read my Bible every day. I promise I'll never miss a day. I'll pray. I'm going to get my life and my act together. And what we're doing is we are working our way, just like the younger brother, right back into God's good graces. That's what he's doing and we do it too.
Speaker 2:That plan doesn't work, and it doesn't work because the father will have no part of it. Look at verse 20. Can you imagine? I mean this younger brother's going home completely expecting to be shamed, and instead the father makes a fool of himself and Jesus begins to describe a father that's unlike any other father. His son is coming home completely covered with pig mess and he comes up over the hill. This is the picture, and the father is not waiting on the porch with tapping toes and crossed arms waiting to scold his son. Instead, he sees his son coming and when he's in a distance. He takes off running after the son. He doesn't wait for the son to get to him. He runs to his son and in that day and age that would have been very inappropriate because grown men did not run. It was not noble. But the picture is that this father ran. He hiked up his robes and he took off running as fast as he could. Can you imagine, if you're the son I mean, the shame that this son, the self-hatred that he must have felt as he sees his father running as fast as he can towards him and the father throws himself on the son, throws his arms around him and kisses him. Look at verse 20. He knows exactly how filthy the son is and the son starts in on his speech. But notice, the son never gets to the part where he says make me one of your hired hands. He never gets there why? Because the father won't let him get there, because the father will have no part of it. Look at verse 22 and 23. He says bring the party. My son is home, bring the fattened calf and the shoes and the robe and the rings and put it on him.
Speaker 2:Y'all have heard stories like this, I'm sure, but a few years ago there was a billionaire by the name of Robert Smith. He was the commencement speaker at Morehouse College and he was giving the speech. And at the end of his speech he says I'm going to pay the debts of all the school loans of the entire graduating class 400 students. The payment totaled $40 million and you can imagine there's videos of this. The students are going crazy. They're too good to be true. They're completely falling apart. And they interview one of the students named Aaron Mitchum, who was graduating and who had already accepted a job. And he was accepting this job and a few weeks ago, before graduation, he had developed a spreadsheet and this spreadsheet was basically saying okay, this is how much I'm making, this is how much is going towards my school loans and this is how long it'll take me to pay it off. So he was doing all of this planning and in his plan he had $200,000 in school debt that needed to be paid off and he realized that he was going to have to pay half his salary every month for the next 25 years in order to pay it off. And in one second Robert Smith deleted the spreadsheet and Aaron Mitchum says I no longer have to live off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, that my debt has been paid and the burden has been lifted.
Speaker 2:The debt you owe God because of your sin has been paid by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't know what you've done this morning or where you've been or who you are, but if you know Jesus, you can delete the spreadsheet. You don't have to work your way back into God's good graces. Jesus has done that work for you. God throws you a party. When you turn to him Listen, some of you this morning you say Jason, again, you don't know what I've done. I've gone way too far and you don't know what I've done. This story is telling us that you can say to God I wish you were dead, that you can run away, far away, and blow every blessing that God's ever given you. And if at any point you say God, can I come home, you know what God does. He says bring it, come home. And not only does he say yes, he throws you a party and he runs after you. That's why the gospel is such good news. Some of you this morning. You need to come home and this is really God's invitation to you, saying please come home. You're my child, I love you, let me throw you a party.
Speaker 2:Older brother. Second point Look at verses 25 through 27. He's working in the fields. He's really responsible. He does all the things he's supposed to do. He's worked a long, hard day and he's coming in and he hears the dancing and he hears the music. The music back then was the dinner bell and so it meant that there was a party. And the older brother hears this and thinking and starts must have been thinking some party, why would we throw a party like this? And then one of the servants says well, your brother's come home. He was lost and now he's found. They killed the fattened calf and he's throwing him a party. Look at verse 28.
Speaker 2:Look at the reaction. The older brother's not happy, he's angry and refuses to go into the party. This would have been another slap in the face to the father. This would have been equal to the younger brother saying I wish you were dead, because the older brother was supposed to be the co-host of the party and it would have brought shame on the father for him not to go and be a part of the party. But notice what the father does. What would you have done? The father moves towards the older son. The father loves this son too, and he doesn't scold him, but he actually begs him to come into the party.
Speaker 2:Look at verse 29. Look at the older brother's response, remember. The younger brother said give me, this is not much better. The older brother says, look, which is basically like saying, look, listen to me, look you. Let me tell you a thing or two. That's the tone of what's happening here. Why is the older brother so mad? Verse 30. You owe me. I mean, look, you've never given me a goat, even a goat. And now you give him the calf. And so the older brother. And this is what older brothers do, and the story is meant to ask you which one are you? But older brothers are record keepers, like this older brother. They say you know I've done everything right and he's done everything wrong. How dare you throw him a party? You owe me Older brothers.
Speaker 2:You see, again, it's much more internal, bitter and angry and entitled, and they tend to say things like again on the inside Look God, look at how I've been serving you. I've been working hard. I'm going on missions, trips. I'm doing all of this work. I've been serving people. I read my Bible, I'm faithful, I haven't done anything, I haven't gone off the rails. Why am I still single? Or look, I know how that person lives. They don't even care about school. Why can't I get that score on the ACT? I've been a good kid.
Speaker 2:You see, older brothers believe if you live a good life, then you should get a good life. Older brothers, you see, they're living to get things from God rather than just to simply get God, and we'll see that that's actually the common thread between both of them. But I want you to see that God's redefining lostness. He's saying that the older brother is just as lost as the younger brother. Their paths for happiness are just simply different. One went the reckless route and broke all the rules. The older brother simply kept all the rules. Their heart is the same, because they just want the father's things and they don't really want the Father. Neither loved the Father for who he was. They just wanted the Father for what the Father could give them. To say it another way, while their hearts are the same and I think that's important to see there is one difference though who's further away from God, who's the furthest away from the Father? Well, believe it or not, if you read the Scriptures. You see it everywhere.
Speaker 2:The older brother has his face up against the door of the house and he's actually further away from the father than the younger brother in the pig pen in Vegas. And you know why? Because he doesn't know he's lost. And that's the scary part about self-righteousness it's way harder to see. And don't miss this. The older brother isn't faking this Like his goodness is real. He thinks he's a good guy. He is a good guy. We would say. We would want to hang out with him. And if you were to approach him and say, in your goodness, you don't see it, you're actually rebelling against the father. He would look at us and be deeply offended by that. And that's why it's so scary, because self-righteousness actually blinds us. Older brothers think they're strong, well and whole. They don't know they're sick and that's why the moral failures and that's why the moral failures. That's why the younger brother, that's why look in the bible the prostitutes and the tax collectors. They were always on the inside of the party dining with jesus and the know-it-alls and the smug, self-righteous pharisees and older brothers were always on the outside looking in.
Speaker 2:This is a devastating story for religious people Because it says you can be just as lost and in fact in greater danger in the pew on Sunday morning than you can be in a pig pen. You see, the religious mindset is the bad people are out and the good people are in. See, the religious mindset is the bad people are out and the good people are in. Jesus never says that. Jesus says the humble are in and the proud are out. Jesus says God opposes we see this all throughout the Bible Opposes the proud, gives grace to the humble. Another way we say it here is you can actually be too big for Jesus, but you can never be too small, you can never be too low. And lastly, look at verse 31. You're always with me. All that is mine is yours. In other words, he's saying you're my son, just like your brother.
Speaker 2:Come on into the party and notice the story ends and the curtain drops and the older son is on the outside of the feast and we don't know whether or not he goes in. And that's very intentional. But it's an invitation for all of us this morning to ask the question who are we in the story, the younger brother or the older brother? And the next question is are you going to go into the party? That's what it's meant to ask us. The party has started. It's already started and you're in.
Speaker 2:If you want to be, all you need to do is acknowledge your need for the Father and trust Jesus, the true older brother, who has done it all. He was crushed for your sins. He willingly stayed outside the party. He gives you his perfect record of righteousness. Why? So that you could feast with the Father for all eternity. Where are you this morning?
Speaker 2:Wherever you find yourself, we want to be a place, whether you're a younger brother and you feel like you're running away from God, whether you're a self-righteous older brother trusting in your goodness, we want this to be a place where you come, and freely come, because all of us need the exact same thing. We need the love of the Father that is shown to us through Christ Jesus, our Lord gospel-centered. It's the kind of church we always want to be. Amen, let's pray. Father, thank you for spending it all. You gave it all in order to bring us into the party. Thank you, would you forgive us for our unbelief, forgive us for expecting the cold shoulder and the silent treatment when we come home. You are so much better than that and I pray that you would show us that and convince us of that more deeply as we come to your table In Jesus' name amen.