The Older Son (We) Leaves

I would like to clarify something from last week’s sermon. I made a statement that caused some confusion and misunderstanding, namely, “Jesus is the True Prodigal Son.” Within the context of the sermon series, the parable itself, and the sermon, I used prodigal with a different meaning than the commonly understood meaning. First, I used it with its other meaning, also in the dictionary, “lavish, wastefully extravagant.” Secondly, I filled it with new meaning based on the Bible and what Jesus Christ has done for us. Jesus left his Father’s home. He came to earth. He became a human, slave. For our sake, He lavishly gave up, “lost”, everything, including his life on the cross. Resurrected, He returned home to his Father. With lavish, extravagant, prodigal love and grace, Jesus became the prodigal son in order to bring us, the prodigal children home. He became like us, yet He did not sin (Heb 4:15). Charles Spurgeon preached a beautiful sermon about the prodigal love of God for his prodigal children. I filled the word with biblical meaning, and applied it in a different way to link Jesus and what He has done for us with the younger lost son. This is a valid linguistic and rhetorical method. However, I apologize for the misunderstanding and offense this caused for some. Please accept my apologies. Now, let’s continue and look at the elder son.

Luke 15:25-30 — Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

1. Focus on Self

The older son responds with anger because he is focused on self. His self-centeredness is driven by resentment, envy, and self-righteous pride. And so, he leaves his father’s home. He refuses to go in, sit at the table, join, and enjoy the joy of his brother’s coming home. The obedient son has become the disobedient son. The one who remained home is now outside the home and not home. The insider is now the outsider complaining from the outside. What is happening here?

Focused on self the older son responds out of fear. He fears that he will lose some of his wealth because anything spent on his brother will come out of his inheritance. He focuses on himself in opposition to his brother. He separates himself from his brother and does not acknowledge their relationship. Note how he speaks of “this son of yours.” He paints his brother’s life in unflattering terms charging him with devouring his father’s earnings with immorality, echoing the words of Prov 29:3: “A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.” He demands justice. For him, the younger son is the rebellious son of Deut. 21:18-21 who should be disowned and killed, not honored — If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death.

With his feelings and pride hurt, he now turns on his father. He questions the father’s integrity, fairness, and justice. He feels cheated by his father. He accuses his father of being unfair. He doubts his father’s love. He slaved away, and served his father, faithfully and obediently all these years, and he has not been rewarded, not even with a cheap goat. The younger son is “rewarded” and honored with the fattened calf and a feast. The younger son was hoping to be received back as a servant. The older son, it now becomes clear, despises and resents being a servant serving his father. He complains that immorality, and sin, holds more merit with the father than faithfulness. He insulted and embarrassed his father just as surely as the younger son did. He lectures him in public. His refusal to go in is a major insult to the father as it was expected of the older son to host the celebration with his father. In his self-centered anger, he shows that he has no more real respect for his father than his brother had had.

How has it come to this? The words of the older son come from a deeper lying problem. He surrendered his heart to his pride, self-sufficiency, and self-righteousness. He murmured, complained, and wallowed in self-pity. He has left home. He also became lost in an inner lostness deep in his soul.

2. Inner Lostness

Externally and visibly, he did all the things a good son is supposed to do. He stayed home, worked hard, did his duty, and fulfilled all his obligations. He was not a drunkard. He did not sleep around. He did not do drugs. However, internally, in his heart, he wandered away from his father. He became lost in his self-righteous inward focus. Filled with resentment, envy, and anger, he became increasingly unhappy and unfree. His is an inner lostness.

Many times we are also like the elder son. As Christians, we do all the proper things Christians should do. We comply with the agendas set by our church and Christian families. However, I see my friends and others having a good time doing all sorts of things that I am not allowed. They seem to be happy and free “doing their own thing.” Deep in my heart, there is a feeling of envy toward them. Add to that the hard struggle to live the Christian life. There is always this continuous and conscious effort to avoid the pitfalls of sin and the constant fear of giving in to temptation. “All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends” (v29). The obedient and dutiful Christian life I have been living, of which I am proud, for which I am praised feels, sometimes, like a burden. The obedience and duty have become a burden. Service has become slavery. This inner resentment, anger, and envy show our own lostness and our own bondage.

There are many older sons and older daughters who are lost while still at home. This lostness is characterized by judgment and condemnation, anger and resentment, bitterness and jealousy. This inner lostness is harmful to our hearts. It is easy to identify our outer lostness; the sins that are visible and glaringly obvious. We can easily identify with the younger son. There is something very clear-cut about his misbehavior, his sinful life. But, The inner lostness of the older son is much harder to identify. After all, he did all the right things. He was obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, and hardworking. People respected him, admired him, praised him, and likely considered him a model son. However, when he saw the father’s joy at the return of his brother, something happened. A dark power erupted in him and boiled to the surface. Suddenly, there became glaringly visible a resentful, proud, unkind, unloving, ungraceful, and selfish person. One that had remained deeply hidden all this time.

Being honest with ourselves, we must admit that there is much resentment among the just and righteous. There is much judgment, condemnation, and prejudice among the saints. There is much anger and fear among Christians who are so concerned about avoiding sin and demanding justice that they condemn, reject, and marginalize the sinners instead of loving them and eating with them so that their love can proclaim the gospel and present Jesus to them.

The older son’s complaint is the same complaint that we cry out many times, silently in our hearts or loudly to others. It says, “I tried so hard, worked so long, did so much, and still I have not received what others get so easily or what I deserve. Why do people not thank me, not invite me, not play with me, not honor me, not appreciate me? Why do they pay so much attention to those who take life so easily and so casually?” And so we murmur, grumble, and complain. We know we should not do it. But the more we dwell on these matters, the more we analyze them, the worse the situation becomes, and the more reasons I see for my resentment and complaint. Darkness and lostness grow in me. Condemnation of others and self-condemnation, and self-righteousness keep reinforcing each other in an increasingly vicious cycle. And so, I leave my Father’s house. I do not hear his voice saying to me, “You are my beloved.”

When the older son came home from the fields, he hears music and dancing. He knew there was joy in the household. Immediately, he became suspicious. There is the fear that I am excluded again. No one told me what was going on. Self-righteousness, pride, and envy prevent him from joining the joy spontaneously. He called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. The servant, full of excitement and eager to share the good news, explained: “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.” But instead of relief, gratitude, and joy, the elder son “became angry and refused to go in.” The experience of not being able to enter into the joy is the experience of a resentful, self-righteous, proud, and angry heart. It’s amazing how, whenever God works in powerful ways, there are always some muttering and judging that things aren’t that easy, that’s not how God works, and that God has no right to be so gracious and generous to repentant sinners. We forget so easily that God does not always show up and act in the ways we think He should or want Him to.

We leave the Father’s home and become like the older son when like him we cannot love and live out grace. We have been working so hard at being dutiful and obedient children that our understanding of the gospel, love, and grace became warped. We begin to see love as cheap grace, that tolerates, overlooks, and approves of sin. Therefore, we have a hard time welcoming the lost brothers and sisters home. We have place at the table only for those who have gotten their act together, who are like us, the older sons.

3. Only One Way Home

This parable confronts us with one of the hardest spiritual choices  — to trust or not to trust in God’s all-forgiving love. Jesus confronts us here, not only with the return of the lost son but also with the resentful older son. We must examine our own hearts. How will we respond to God’s love for the sinners? Are we willing to join them at the table as Jesus did? This remains a real challenge for us today. It remains a challenge for everyone who is caught in resentment, self-righteousness, pride, judgment, anger, and fear. It is very hard to return home from this position of inner lostness, from being at the house but standing outside the home. Returning home from the distant lands and from lustful escapades seems so much easier than returning home from a cold anger and self-centered pride that has rooted itself in the deepest corners of my heart.

Yes, we are called to be obedient, dutiful, hardworking, and self-sacrificing children of God. However, in me a battle is raging. When I try to live by these praiseworthy attitudes, my self-righteous attitude complains, and judgment sticks out its ugly head. At the very moment I want to speak or act out generosity, I get caught up in anger or resentment. Just as I want to be most selfless, I find myself obsessed with self. Just when I do my utmost to accomplish a task well, I find myself questioning why others do not give themselves as I do. Just when I think I am capable of overcoming my temptations, I feel envy toward those who gave in to theirs. It seems that wherever my virtuous self is, there also is the resentful complainer, there is also the proud, self-righteous judge. Here, we are faced with our own true poverty. When we come to our senses, and acknowledge our poverty, then we become poor in spirit. We realize that we are totally unable to root out these attitudes of self-righteousness, judgment, envy, resentment, and anger. To pull them out seems like self-destruction, and so it is, as we die to self.

Can the older son, can we come home? Can we be found? How can I come home when I am lost in resentment, when I am caught in jealousy? How can I come home when I am imprisoned in obedience and duty lived out as slavery and not as loving service? It is clear that alone, by ourselves, we cannot find ourselves and we cannot come home. Self-redemption is impossible. That’s why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Do not be surprised when I say: ‘You must be born from above.’” We cannot be reborn from below. We cannot be reborn with our own strength or by our own deeds. We cannot be reborn with our own mind, with our own knowledge, with our own theological or psychological insights. We can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down, from where God has come to us in Jesus Christ, to invite us back into his home. What is impossible for us is possible for God. “With God, everything is possible.” Jesus Christ is the only way home.