How to be a Son of God

0:33Again, that's Luke chapter 15, verses 25 through 32. Luke 15, verse 25. Now his older son was in the field, and as 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 has received him back safe and sound. But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, Look, these many years I have served you, and I 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 has devoured your property with prostitutes, You killed the fattened calf for him.

1:33And 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. This is God's word. You may be seated. Well, it's very good to be with you all. As Alan said, I was here from 2009 to 2014 and was blessed to see a lot of changes in the church through that time and learned a lot from Alan and being part of that church plant kind of by accident and God's providence. But it's really great to come back. And one of the reasons I am so excited to come back, even though as I come back, the number of people I know keeps getting lower and lower, is because I know that we have a fellowship in the gospel that is more profound than whether we've ever met each other or not. Because we share in the joy that Christ has forgiven us by his work on the cross, and we share a joy in gathering around God's word. So it's always a pleasure to preach to you and to know that you're here to hear from God today.

2:46I wanted to start this sermon on a parable with a little parable of my own that I know will be much worse than Jesus' parable, but indulge me if you will. So I want you to imagine a father who died. And the two sons gather in the lawyer's office for the reading of the will. And we'll put me in this parable. So the father starts off his will. He says, Kyle, my younger son, you'll notice that your portion of the inheritance is quite a bit smaller than your brother's.

3:20And let me tell you why. You remember that time when you were about six on the driveway and you got mad at your older brother and you threw the basketball at his head and you broke the kitchen window? I deducted a few percentage points for that. You remember that time that you were in high school and you wrecked the car and you tried to lie about it? Well, I deducted a few percentage points for that. And remember that it took you a little longer to get your college acceptance letter?

3:49Well, I've deducted a few percentage points for that. And you remember that your brother, he was a national merit scholar, and he got his college paid for. So I added a few percentage points for him. And he went on to be a lawyer. So I added a few more for that. But you had to pay for your seminary. So that was a few less for you. Now, if we heard about a story like that, we would think, what a monster, right?

4:16What a distorted picture of fatherhood and sonship. You know, what a distorted picture when the relationship and the fellowship of a family is based on that kind of tit for tat. Record-keeping and works. We instantly recognize that as wrong. That's not the way it should be. You know, you're hoping he just left me enough to pay for therapy at that point, right? But we see the breakdown in that kind of human relationship. That's not what fatherhood and sonship are supposed to be like. So this morning, I want to talk to you about sonship. How to be a son of God.

5:02And I've chosen that word son intentionally, even though it does seem to exclude half of our audience here. That's because in the Bible, sons were those who could inherit. So when we read in Galatians that we were adopted as sons, that's really good news. It means there's no difference between man or woman in God's economy. All of us become full inheritors of God's blessings in Christ. We're all full participants. So we're talking about adopted as sons. How do you become a son of God? I think in this text, we see two ways of being a son of God. Christ is going to challenge us.

5:45Which way of being a son of God are we operating with? Another kind of preamble point I want to make is that I want to recover for at least the duration of this sermon the word fellowship. So if you're raising, Church, you associate fellowship with lunch or a social, right? Fellowship is just something you do socially. It really doesn't have a big meaning for you. But scripturally speaking, fellowship is really more of a point of unity. You might think of it as communion. You know, maybe you've read the fellowship of the ring, right? That was a fellowship of brothers banded together to accomplish a mission.

6:25They were on a task together. You could think of, you know, if the Society of Engineers at AM, it's a fellowship of engineers. Everyone's gathered there because they're interested in pursuing an engineering career. So when we think of fellowship today, I want us to think of what's the point of unity that binds us together as people. That's what we talk about fellowship. And that becomes especially important when we talk about table fellowship. Who will you eat with? Who will you share the Lord's table with?

6:56These are the kinds of questions we're asking. So to understand this parable, we need to understand who it was aimed at. And this morning I want to propose, and I think this is consistent with what the previous two pastors have spoken, is that this parable is aimed at the Pharisees, these religious leaders of Israel in Jesus' day. Now, if all you know about the Christian story is the Gospels, you probably know the Pharisees. You know that the Pharisees are kind of Jesus' enemies. They're his opponents throughout the Gospel story. But it's easy to... Think of them just as his enemies. You know, kind of like the way you think of bad guys in a John Wayne movie. The bad guys really only exist to be bad guys, to wear black hats, and to get shot by John Wayne, right, or to be run out of town. That's kind of their only purpose. We don't need their characters to be developed. We don't need deep understanding of their motivation. We just need them to get shot and be embarrassed by John Wayne at the end. That's their entire purpose.

7:54But the Pharisees were real people. They really lived and breathed. They were human beings. And so they're a much more complicated group than that. So we should try to understand the Pharisees in the best light possible. And so in that sense, I think we should understand them like we would think of the Protestant reformers. We could think of them as the English Puritans of ancient Israel. And what I mean by that is that the Pharisees were religious reformers. They were trying to make Israel great again by moral and spiritual improvement.

8:27And when you see that that was something that Israel desperately needed. They needed moral and spiritual improvement. And to understand why things were so bad in Israel, we really have to remember how the New Testament fits with the Old Testament. So the easiest way to jog your memory about how the New Testament and Old Testament fits together is just look in your Bible as you're looking through the table of contents. Which Old Testament books are closest to the New Testament?

8:52Well, it's the prophets. So we talk about the major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and then the minor prophets, the 12 at the end. So these prophets lived in kind of the last days of Israel's kingdom, and they prophesied about a coming judgment. These are some of the darkest days of Israel's life as a people. They were days in which God judged his people for their corruption and idolatry. And this corruption among Israelites was really bad.

9:21So Israelite kings were worshipers of false gods. They built shrines to them, and every now and then a good king would come and tear them down, but then the next king would be bad and just build them right back up again. I mean, it's so bad that you're kind of shy about reading 2 Kings with your children around. You're worried about what they might ask. So these kings were doing all sorts of terrible things. There were false prophets who were telling the people lies about God and inspiring doubt. There were judges who were taking bribes, and so the innocent orphans and widows were being persecuted, and the strangers weren't being shown hospitality. There was child sacrifice, so that they describe fields of blood. And whatever worship of Yahweh existed in Israel at that time was really kind of used as a superstition. So the Israelites kept using the temple and kept doing Yula rituals, but really sort of as a lucky charm, thinking that as long as we have the temple, God will not destroy us. So again, things were really bad in Israel. And God's judgment was matching the badness. So all the northern tribes of Israel are just wiped out by the Assyrians. The two southern tribes, a little later, are invaded and destroyed by the Babylonians. Jerusalem and the temple. Almost everyone's carried away to exile. Now it's true that some did return and rebuild the walls and rebuild the temple, but we should be clear that it was never as good as it once was. It was never as great and glorious as it was under Kings David and Solomon. And so when we arrive in the New Testament and meet the Pharisees, this is the world we enter. True, centuries have passed since those days of judgment and return from exile, but the situation is largely the same. So Jerusalem and Israel, they're very politically weak. They're occupied by a Roman power. There were some zealous Israelites, but I think there are a lot of Israelites who just don't care. And there's a need for spiritual renewal. And this is where the Pharisees come in. They long to see spiritual renewal. They know that God did promise Israel in exile there was going to be full renewal. A glorious day when Israel would be restored, when the suffering servant of Isaiah would come on the scene, when the nations would stream to Jerusalem. The Pharisees long for this day, but they think that they know how to bring it in. They believe that if they can get the country, their brother Israelites, to take law-keeping and morality seriously, then God will send this restoration they've been waiting for. So there's a lot to admire about these Pharisees. They meant well, they put their fingers in the world. On a real problem, that there's unrighteousness among God's people that shouldn't be there. But they didn't know how to solve this problem. Their solution to the moral and spiritual failures of Israel was essentially do better.

12:18Be more righteous. Make extra sure you don't break the law. And so they came up with all these sort of guardrails to keep themselves from breaking the law. But Paul later says that none of these things could get to the heart of the matter. None of these things could change their hearts that were bent away from God. See, Israel's real problem is a worship problem, sometimes with literal idols, but certainly with idols of the heart. Just like every other people group, they had hearts that were turned away from God, just like all of our hearts. But the problem with law-keeping is not only that it doesn't work, I mean, it doesn't work, but it's also deceptive. See, it blinds us to the extent of our sin problem. These Pharisees really believed they could be blameless before God through their own effort. They believed that they could have something to boast about in God's eyes through their obedience. And this is where their view of how to be a son of God comes into direct conflict. With the teaching of Jesus. See, their view is rooted in a kind of self-righteous pride that has no room for repentance. And repentance is what the message of Jesus is all about: repentance and faith in the Son of God. So, Jesus was calling all Israel, even the law-keeping Pharisees, to repent and believe. He was calling them to admit they were spiritually bankrupt, that they were dead in their sin, that they needed forgiveness, and that that forgiveness could only come through him. It couldn't come through the old sacrifices. This was Jesus' message, but the Pharisees didn't want to hear it. They did not want to be told that they needed to repent.

14:18That brings us then to this conflict in Luke chapter 15. It's a conflict between the message of self-righteousness and the message of repentance. But we need to note that this conflict comes out in kind of a weird way. See, the Pharisees' attack on Christ's message isn't at first direct, it's sort of around the way. So, in chapter 15, when you find the Pharisees grumbling, not just because of what Jesus preached, but because of who he ate with. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. The Pharisees didn't like what Jesus' willingness to eat said about what those people are and who they are in the God's economy.

15:00Now, this is something we've talked about, I think, in the previous two messages. As I listened to them, I agreed with everything that was said about what Jesus' heart for the lost means. And we've also touched on what it means to eat with people. But I want to just go back over eating with people again because it's so crucial. It's a crucial part of our passage this morning because the end of our passage is the older brother refusing to go in to this feast. It actually leaves it kind of open-ended. Does he refuse or doesn't he? So we need to understand what eating means. You don't even have to be an expert in first-century Israel to understand what eating means. It's still a big deal for us today. So just think about the people that you most often gather around a table to eat with. I think for most of you, it's your family. It's a big deal to have someone into your home to gather around your table for dinner. You probably get a little nervous about it. Will they like the food? Will they feel at home? What if we don't have anything to talk about? It's a big deal to share a table. There's a sense of intimacy there, of eating with someone in your home. For most of us who are married, you can probably remember the first time your spouse came to dinner at your house and sat around your family's table. These things make a difference to us. They make an impact. So even for us who are kind of individualistic and unhospitable 21st century Westerners, we still see that eating together is a big deal. Now, college students may be the outlier here, because you With anyone, right? But even then, I would bet that most of you who are students, you tend to eat most of the time with close friends. And even when you are kind of with one of those big groups and friends of friends are there, you know, you see it as an opportunity to meet new friends, right? To kind of expand the circle of friendship. I wonder if you've considered that one reason you form such close ties during college because you have so many opportunities to eat with so many people. Eating binds us together. Eating sort of makes us a family. So by eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus was saying, These people are part of God's family.

17:15This was a huge statement. The Pharisees said, No, no, those people are excluded from God's family. These Pharisees didn't like what Jesus was saying by his meals. Now, I think we've made that point in the previous two messages, but I want to just shade it a little further for us because it's not strictly accurate to only say that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. We need to qualify what kind of tax collectors and sinners they were. And we see that qualification, it's a vital qualification in chapter 15, verse 1.

17:50Jesus said, or Luke writes, Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. Especially notable in light of the previous verse, chapter 14, verse 35. Jesus ends his speech there. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Hearing Jesus is crucial in the Gospels. It's those who hear and believe that are saved. Your willingness to hear points to whether you have true faith or not. So these notorious outcasts are drawing near to Jesus to hear him, and they stand in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders, who hadn't really come to hear Jesus. They'd come to grumble about Jesus. So to hear Jesus is hugely significant. It's not just about whether your ears work while you're in his presence. It's a sign of faith. So when we look at these tax collectors and sinners here, I think we need to see them, especially in the context of these parables, as repenting sinners. It's repenting sinners who make up the family of God. To be in the family of God, you must be a repenting sinner. And this is what makes the religious leaders grumble. So here in Luke 15, God's joy and delight in welcoming repentant sinners smashes into the assumptions that Israel's leaders were making because they assumed that they and they alone were in God's inner circle.

19:30Who they were and what they did. And this way, Jesus confronts us as well. He confronts us by making us ask, what kind of sons of God are we? Are we seeking sonship through self-righteousness or repentance? And how do we tell the difference? So, as we think about those questions in this story of the older brother, what we find is that Jesus exposes self-righteousness for us by describing this older brother in his actions. And so, this morning, for the rest of our time, I want us to look at three warning signs of self-righteousness from this parable as we look at the older brother. I realize that was a very long introduction, but I hope that it gives a good foundation for seeing these three warning signs. I think these signs will be relatively brief as sermon points go. So, the first warning sign we see in this passage about the older brother is that the older brother was angry. The first warning sign of self-righteousness is anger.

20:30Jesus does something remarkable in this story. Throughout the parable, he tells us not just what the characters did, but he tells us how they felt. So, he tells us about the father being moved with compassion when the younger son was still a long way off. And he tells us that the older brother was angry when he came and arrived on the scene. He heard the music and dancing. He talked to the servant. It says in verse 28, he was angry. He was angry that his brother, who'd acted so scandalously and brought so much shame on their family, was angry. Being forgiven and celebrated. He was angry to see his father make an even bigger fool of himself by welcoming the sinner back and slaughtering the fattened calf. And he was angry that his own righteousness and service had gone unnoticed. So in verse 29, he says, Look, these many years I have served you. I've been slaving away and never disobeyed your command. Yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends. So the self-righteousness of the older brother, it's impossible to miss. He never disobeyed. He was firmly convinced of his own righteous standing. He's been faithfully serving for years, and his self-righteousness makes him angry. Now we have to admit that anger isn't always sinful. It's not always purely a sign of self-righteousness. But we also need to admit that even for redeemed sinners, that anger is often sinful. Maybe it's most often sinful. Rarely righteous, is another way to put it. And so I want to submit to you today that almost all sinful anger has connections in self-righteousness. Let me just offer an example for myself. So if I get angry, it's usually with my children, and it's usually because they won't do what I want them to do, they will not be controlled. By me as easily as I would like them to be. And I've noticed this again and again. My feelings of being out of control lead to angry outbursts. I've got a desire for things to be just a certain way, peaceful, quiet, no one yelling or hitting each other. And my children don't seem to share that desire.

22:51And it's the silliest things that can cause some of the biggest anger blow-ups. So just to give you a recent example, this happened, I think, on Wednesday. We had not unloaded the dishwasher, and so my son was given a bowl of cereal at his request with the sugar spoon in it to eat with. In our house, the sugar spoon is like a regular spoon, but it's kind of got a trapezoidal head as opposed to a nice ovular one. And he did not want to eat with the sugar spoon, and he started crying at the breakfast table, crying because he didn't want this spoon. If his brother had been there and been given the spoon, he would have been mad that he didn't have the sugar spoon. But in this case, he was just losing it.

23:40Now, you'd hope that as a gracious, loving, wise father, I would have put my hand on his shoulder and said, it's okay, we'll get you another spoon, or the spoon's okay. But I didn't do that. I really blew up at him. He was really ugly. I tried to force the spoon in his mouth almost, you know, and he was like, you know, got a magnetic. Field around him. It was terrible. It was a real low point as a father and a parent. I mean, he might remember this forever.

24:11Now, that doesn't really sound like self-righteousness on the surface, I don't think. Again, I think it sounds like a desire for control. Just sit there quietly. Let me have my peace. Let me drink my coffee. Use the spoon. But my anger is at least partly rooted in the sense, I think, that I deserve to be treated better than this. I deserve to have a quiet morning with my coffee for my son to quietly eat his cereal without crying about the spoon. I deserve unquestioning obedience.

24:47When we hear all that, I deserve, I deserve, doesn't it sound a lot like the older brother? I'm worthy of better than this. Friends, to make such grand assumptions about ourselves, assumptions that come out in our anger, is a sign that we are not living in repentance. We are not living by grace. Now, in my case, I'm sure like yours, my anger is complicated. It is rooted in this idol of control, for sure. But there is also this self-righteousness that's connected to it. So I think Christ would ask you to consider. What is your anger saying?

25:33Can you say that your anger is rooted in a deep sense of God's grace and forgiveness to you? If so, maybe it's righteous anger. But does your anger spring from a repentant heart? The vast majority of the time we have to say no, that's not the case. It's coming from somewhere else. At the very least, our anger is enabled by a self-righteous sense of entitlement. It's worth saying how fruitless our anger is. My angry blow-up didn't do anything to help my son. It just made things worse. Maybe it let off a little steam for a moment. Maybe I felt really good that I got to be big and loud in the room. How pathetic is that? Our anger may sometimes be effective at manipulating people around us to get what we want, but ultimately it leaves us hollow and alone. We experience that relationally on the plane of our human relationships, but Christ wants us to see that the self-righteousness that leads to that kind of anger, it leaves us isolated from God. It drives us away from the gospel of repentance and forgiveness. So, both in the case of the Pharisees and the older brother, they couldn't celebrate God's grace welcoming the lost because of their self-righteous anger. Christ would have us ask, is it the same for us? That's the first warning sign of self-righteousness. Anger. The next warning sign of self-righteousness that the older brother shows us is that he twists the truth. So in his anger, he states his case to his father, but the words reviews that he uses to state the anger are very revealing. Let's just list kind of the claims of his argument in verses 29 and 30. So first in verse 29, we see three claims. First, I have served you for these many years. Second, I never disobeyed your command. Third, you never gave me a young goat. How many of us have said that to our dads, right? Then in verse 30, he goes on, but things get a bit more subtle. He refers to his brother as not my brother, but as this son of yours. And when he recounts the brother's sin, notice how his description is a lot worse and more specific than even Jesus' description. This son of yours devoured your property with prostitutes. Maybe that's true, but he's certainly putting his brother in the worst light possible. And finally, we need to see that when the brother makes his claim, he doesn't say something very significant. He doesn't call his father father. A commentator noted that in the story of the younger son, the word father is all over the place. You see it in the son's kind of rehearsing his speech to himself when he realizes that his father's hired servants are better off than he is, and then when he goes to meet his father, he says father. He can't miss the word father.

28:31But the word father is absent from the older brother's speech. Do you see how much the older brother is twisting the truth? It's not just that he gets a few facts wrong. He's invested in a completely distorted view of reality. In his mind, he's being perfectly obedient, and his father has been completely withholding. He can't bring himself to acknowledge even the most basic realities of this family relationship. His brother has become that son of yours. He's lost the word father. There's a deep irony here in that the younger son wanted just to be a hired servant. The older brother is admitting, I'm just a servant. I've served. I've slaved for you these many years.

29:21And we can see, even within the parable that Jesus tells, the lies. So the brother says, the older brother, you've never given me a young goat. Now, the father responds in the most wonderful way, all that I have is yours. But even before that, Jesus told us that when the younger brother asked for his inheritance in verse 12, the father divided his property between them. So the brother's already been given at least part of his inheritance. So two things stand out about this distortion that the brother is involved in. First is he overvalues his own goodness, his own virtue. He claims To be perfectly obedient. And second, he denigrates his relationship with the Father and the Father's gifts. He downplays the goodness of the Father's relationship with him and what the Father's given him. As a pastor, I hear these distortions all the time. They come out of my own heart, and they come from the people I pastor. In our self-righteousness, we distort our reality.

30:28I often joke with my wife about the YouTube video that was viral a long time ago now about this little boy who's coming out of anesthesia, being the dynasty. I don't know why parents do this to their children, but anyway, he's in the backseat, and he's just saying all these funny things, and he says, like, will it be like this forever? You know? And that's a distortion of reality, right? You know, we take the pain that we're going in and we just absolutize it. It's going to be like this forever. Nothing's ever going to get better. It's never going to change. Whenever you hear yourself using those absolutes, you know you're in the danger zone. You're distorting reality.

31:06So anytime we justify or minimize our sin, we're doing the same thing. We're distorting the truth. Often our reasons why we justify that we keep returning to sin is really we're saying that God and his ways aren't good enough for us. This is a kind of pride, a pride that says, I know better than God. My wisdom trumps God. Wisdom. This is the exact opposite of the humility of repentance. It's the exact opposite of relying on grace. Brothers and sisters, one of the reasons you need each other so desperately is because we are so quick to believe our own distortions of the truth. We are self-deceived. But when you just start talking through things with another Christian, they're usually able to help you see the lies you believe. Sometimes you're able to see them just by saying them out loud in a calm way. So your friends are able to say things like, don't you realize that you're not just a servant and a slave of God, but also a child of God? Your friends are able to help you see that you keep returning to this sin because you think it's going to do this for you, but it's not paying off. They're able to help you see the lies you're believing. So we need others to challenge our self-righteous interpretations of the world. So let me just encourage you: if you're stuck in some sin issue, one small step you can take is just to start talking about it with a godly Christian friend. Maybe it's someone you came with today, maybe you call your life group leader or one of the pastors. Any of these folks would be able to help you kind of hold up your assumptions and examine them by the light of God's grace. We could all ask ourselves, is my vision of reality consistent with somebody who's Humble and repentant? Or does the way I'm describing the world sound like somebody who's proud and self-righteous? That's the second warning sign of self-righteousness, that we distort reality, we twist the truth. The last warning sign of self-righteousness we look at this morning is that self-righteousness leads us to refuse fellowship. Again, this is where it's crucial that we recover what fellowship means. It's not the church social, it's this point of unity. It's a gathering with God's people for the sake of fighting sin and celebrating the gospel. So when the older brother hears the music and dancing of the feast, not only is he angry, verse 28 says, but he refused to go in. He didn't want anything to do with celebrating the return of his younger brother. This is really the big point of the parable. The older brother refused to fellowship with the restored younger brother. And again, we have to think about what eating means. Remember, we said we eat with people that are our family. Eating kind of defines family in a sense. This is the same as it was for Jesus in the ancient world. So what's the older brother really saying by refusing to go into the feast? Well, think about what we've already said. Won't acknowledge his brother as brother, won't acknowledge his father as father, and refuses to go into the feast. He's really saying, I don't want to be part of this family anymore.

34:30I don't want to be your son. I don't want to be his brother. But this isn't just a family squabble. Remember, the theme of this chapter is God rejoicing at repentant sinners. So in the final verse, the father describes the younger son in this way. Your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. Those are theological statements about salvation. So when the older brother rejects his family, what he's rejecting is a family that's defined by repentance and grace. He's happy to be a part of a family that's defined by lawkeeping and righteousness. That kind of family affirms his pride. It encourages his sense of superiority. But if the family is defined by repentance and faith, then that means the older brother has to repent too. To be a part of the family, if he's going to join the celebration, he has to humble himself. He has to admit his need and repent. He has to admit that in some sense he was just as lost as the younger brother.

35:47That's really the key to this parable. If God's family is defined by repentance and grace, if the feasts of God's family are for the repentant, that means that all who would join in must repent. And depend on that grace too. This is why the Pharisees were so mad at Jesus. His meals with repentant sinners were telling them, you need to repent too. He was telling them, you have to renounce your national pride and your attempts to be righteous on your own. He was telling them they needed to see themselves as lost, needing to be found by God. They needed to see themselves as dead, needing to be made alive by God. They needed to see themselves as unclean, as the lepers Jesus healed. They needed to see themselves as dirty, needing to be washed and purified by Christ.

36:45So the Pharisees' refusal to eat with these sinners like Jesus did is not them just being stodgy or condescending. Certainly they were those things. It's denying God's grace. This is where it might be easy to misapply the main point of this parable. We often apply it by saying, Jesus ate with sinners, so we can't be afraid to eat with sinners too. That's very true. We must be friends with sinners if we're going to tell them the gospel. You should build relationships with the unbelievers in your neighborhood or at your workplace or in your classes. It's very important.

37:24But it isn't the main point here. The main point, I think, is more complex than that. See, with this parable, Christ is challenging us not simply about how we relate to sinners, but how we relate to repentant sinners. And when we talk about repentant sinners, we're just talking about the church. That's who we are. We're a group of repentant sinners. So, another way to talk about the point of this parable and the challenge it is to us is: how do you think about your fellowship with the church?

37:58Do you think the church as a place where you go and hang out with people who are just like you? Is it a place to go and have your lifestyle decisions affirmed? Or do you see the church as a hospital for sinners? Is the church the fellowship of the self-righteous or the fellowship of the repentant? Are you eager to be associated with the people in your church not because they fit your demographic profile, but because you share the same Savior?

38:33It's worth noting, when we see the church as the fellowship of the repentant and we celebrate the grace, we're much better able to make the light of the gospel shine forth. So we need to ask, is there some way in which I'm kind of standoffish toward the church, towards the fellowship of the repentant? Is there some sense where you're like the older brother refusing to go in? It's no mistake that one of the ways God forms us as a church is through a meal, the Lord's Supper. And it's a meal for repentant sinners. It's a meal that symbolizes the fact that we are all united around the grace of Christ. So it's a little preview of the great celebration we'll partake in at the end of history. That final celebration that the lost have been found.

39:31Sinners have received grace. So are you excited by that fellowship? Are you excited to link arms with the men and women of New Life Baptist Church fighting sin together, rejoicing in the grace of Christ together, making the grace and love of God as magnificent as it really is? That's the key question. This last warning sign of self-righteousness is that we might refuse fellowship. So if we're not pursuing vulnerable, gospel-centered relationships in the church, then we're living self-righteous lives. We need to see how stark the alternative is here. If we pursue fellowship surrounding repentance and faith, we are sons of God. We're inside the family of God. We're rejoicing in what God rejoices in. But if we have a self-righteous approach to the church, it's like we've turned our backs on God. We're like the older brother, refusing to go in, refusing to enter into the celebration of repentance and grace. So we need to take this last warning seriously.

40:44Now, the surprise ending of this parable is that Jesus doesn't tell us what the older brother does. I think we all assume that he doesn't come in, right? But we don't know that. Isn't it amazing as we're meditating on God's heart for the lost, that God even has a heart for the self-righteous? One of the biggest evidences of that is that he saves the Apostle Paul. He was one of these Pharisees. And Paul comes to salvation by repenting and believing in Christ. So, brothers and sisters, we need to see that this gospel is for self-righteous people. And we see that most clearly here in the Father's compassion. This Father proves himself to be a much wiser and more godly man than I am. Right? If my son told me what this older brother did, you know, there'd be something to pay, right? I would tell him off. Fine, we don't want you here anyway. That's not what we hear. He just states the case again. Isn't it wonderful that this lost brother has repented? He was dead, but he's alive. He's lost, but he's found. Come celebrate with us. Come celebrate the freedom there is in resting in the grace of Christ.

42:00I think you'll find if you've been on the treadmill of self-righteousness that it makes you weary. There is no rest for your soul when you're trying to earn your salvation. But here at God's feast, when we trust in Christ and admit our sinfulness, when we renounce all of our vain attempts to prove ourselves and rest in what Jesus has done by dying and raising again from the dead, there is true rest. There is true life. And so this story is a challenge, but it's a great invitation to prodigals and to older brothers. Come and see, taste and see that the Lord is good.

42:48Whenever we observe the Lord's Supper, we borrow this phrase from the Book of Common Prayer where I hold up the bread before we take it and I said, Take this bread and feed on Christ by faith with thanksgiving. That's what we're doing every time we take the Lord's Supper. We're feeding on Christ by faith with thanksgiving in our hearts. But, friends, that's the basis of all Christian fellowship. Feeding on Christ through repentance and faith, together with God's people, to make the gospel of God's love gloriously known. That's our calling as a people of God. The way to be a son of God. Is by repenting and believing and exalting the love of God in Christ. Let's pray together.

43:38Father, what a glorious gospel you've shown to us in this parable. Father, you challenge us in our self-righteousness, but you also invite us to come and eat, to feed on Christ by faith with thanksgiving. Father, I pray that we wouldn't just do that when we take the supper, but that we would do this daily. I pray for this church and that, for my church, that you would help us to be involved in this vital work of loving each other by pointing each other to Christ, by encouraging repentance and vulnerability, that we would exalt your grace and not our self-righteousness by our fellowship together. We pray now that as we sing and respond and leave this place, you would encourage us and build us up in Christ. We ask this in His name. Amen.