All That Is Mine Is Yours

Last week I preached on the first half of Luke chapter 15. And this week we're getting the second half. And so in two weeks we've made it through a whole chapter, which is moving quickly for me. And really this whole chapter, Luke 15, it's two parables that are very closely related. And that's Luke's habit. His gospel is almost topical, where he deals with subjects. And he takes different... times in Jesus' life and ministry where he said something and he kind of pools them together in one place in his gospel. And so Luke 15 has to do with repentance. That's what the whole chapter is about. And so last week we studied the parable of the shepherd with the 99 sheep with the one who strays and how he conducts himself. And also with the woman who's lost one of her 10 coins and how she conducts herself.

How they search out their lost sheep, their lost coin. And when they find it, they rejoice. And they share that joy with everyone. This week we come to the parable of the prodigal son, which is a familiar text, I think, to most of us. And whenever you come to this, as a pastor, when I come to this text, I say, okay, well, what am I going to say that nobody's heard before? How will I make it interesting? Am I going to preach about the father? Am I going to preach about the older brother? Am I going to preach about... the younger brother. And what we're going to do this morning is we're going to work our way through each one of them. And then we're going to end with a warning. Because scripture is meant to caution us and to guard us against sin and to keep us away from it. And so for it to serve that purpose, we have to see what the danger is. And so if I asked you, what is the danger in the parable of the prodigal son, I think we would all recognize that we'd walk away like he did.

And so that's what we're going to be cautioned about. Preaching is not meant to be a mystery. It's not meant to make you wonder where we're going. That's where we're going to end up, is with a caution away from rejecting or refusing the kindness and the mercy of God. To that end, we're going to start with looking at the father and his interaction with his sons. And then we're going to look at the older brother and his interaction and how he plays a part in this whole parable. And then throughout that, we'll be talking about the younger brother and how he's... caused these things. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke chapter 15, verses 11 through 32. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. And he said, a man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me. So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together.

and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into the fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger? I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men. And he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his slaves, quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and bring the fattened calf, kill it and let us eat and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found. And they began to celebrate. Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing, and he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. 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 became angry and was not willing to go in. And his father came out and began pleading with him. But he answered and said to his father, Look!

For many years I have been serving you, and I have never neglected a command of yours, and yet you have never given me a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him. And he said to him, Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has become has begun to live and was lost and has been found. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, I want to start by talking about the father. And I want to compare him to the shepherd from last week. And if you'll remember, the shepherd, when he noticed that his sheep was gone, what did he do? He left everything. And at expense to himself, went to find his sheep.

And when we studied that last week, what we saw was the love of the shepherd as the love of a father for the son. He went after him, and he searched him out until he found him. And when he found his son, he threw a party and invited everybody and shared his joy. The father in this parable throws the party. They're similar in that regard. When they receive back what was lost, they throw a party. They rejoice. But there's a big difference between the shepherd and the sheep. Do any of you know what it is? What's the difference between the shepherd and the sheep and what they do? Anyone want to venture a guess? Say it louder. What did you say? One leads and one follows? Yep, you're in the right direction. Yes. One goes after and one lets go and doesn't follow, doesn't follow, doesn't go after. When the shepherd realizes that his sheep is gone, He stops. He leaves the 99 and he goes after that one. But what does the father do when his son expresses his desire to go away? He lets him go. So are the shepherd and the father similar in their love? I don't think any of us would deny that the shepherd loved the sheep. He went after him at great expense to himself. But the question is, does the father love the son who's going away?

And we say yes. I say, so when fathers let sons go away, is it always because they love them? No. Too often when fathers let sons go, when parents let children go, it's not because they love them, it's because they hate them. And they don't want anything more to do with their children. If this father loved his son as we believe he did, why did he not go after him? Or this, why did he not refuse to give his son the inheritance? Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. Live there. You're wealthy. You have animals. You have servants. You have wealth. And you have two sons. And one of them comes to you and says, give me everything that's mine. And then a few days later, he leaves. Now you realize that the father would have known that the son's intention. Why else would the son ask for the wealth?

for the inheritance, except to go use it, to go spend it. And so the father would not have been ignorant. He would have known what his son intended to do. And furthermore, he would have known his son's character. We see his son's character. He takes the money. He goes out, squanders it very quickly, gets himself a job feeding pigs, and is starving to death. And any father who has a clue about his children would know. The character of his children. And this father would have known the character of his younger son. That his younger son was intent on satisfying himself. That he was a selfish young man who was willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted. So why would the father not just refuse to give the inheritance, strong arm his son into staying with the hope that he would understand in time? And the only reason I ask that is because If you've been in this situation, if you're old enough to have children that you've dealt with this on, you will do anything you could when you know that they're going to go do something foolish. You do anything you could to stop them. And if they needed your money to go do foolishness, what parent wouldn't have this desire well up inside of them to say, no, I will not give you money to go do that. And that, my refusal to give you this, is my love for you.

And yet in this parable, we have no record of the father putting up any resistance to his son. But when his son comes to him and says, give me the share of the estate that falls to me, he did. He divided the wealth between them. And then not many days later, the son took everything he had and left. So is this father wise? Ian says he's not wise. I think many of us would say this father is not wise. He's foolish. Why would you give money? Why would you give means to someone that you know is going to squander it, that you know is going to destroy themselves with it? Don't you then become party to their corruption? Have you not become the enabler? Have you not given a drunk a drink? And yet we say that this father loved his son. And we say that he clearly was no fool. He was not poor. He had wealth.

And he loved his son, but here he is giving his son what he needs to go and corrupt himself. So are you still convinced that he loves his son? Do you at least feel the tension where you're like, I think that might not be the wisest thing? Well, we need to get to the point where we say, I don't know that that was the right thing to do because Jesus is teaching us something in this parable. So you have to see the conflict first. And you have to ask the natural question, which is, why did he do that? What father who loves his son would do this? I want you to understand what the father did. What the father did was appropriate. And when you think of what this father did, you should think of it in terms of, first, the reach of authority, how far it reaches, what you're able to do, what your responsibilities are. This son is a grown man from what you can understand. He's out. He's working in the fields. He's a grown-up.

He's working on the family farm. And if he and his older brother were to continue to work for their father on the family farm, conducting the family business, when the father passes away, they will have built their father's wealth, their father's influence, their father's place, such that by the time their father dies, there's enough room for two of them. There's a path forward for them. Their father's not taking advantage of them. Their work for him is a provision for their future. And so I said to you that what the father did was appropriate and was correct. And the reason it was appropriate and correct is because he's dealing with an adult son. And there's an extent to the authority that he has. And I said to you guys before, if we move away from a father's authority over his children and we move into the question of church authority, just as an example, one of the things that we get accused of, regularly is being domineering and pushy and controlling. And it's always understood that those things are bad. You shouldn't be that way. And you are, so therefore you're wrong. Now, here's the funny thing. The same person who will accuse you of being controlling, domineering, pushy, and all the rest, when something goes wrong in their life and someone that they're doing

someone that they love is doing something foolish, do you know what they want you to do? They want you to go tie their child to a chair. They want you to go be domineering and they want you to go be controlling and they want you to go be God and control that situation. That's what they expect of you. And I say this from experience on more than one occasion. You guys are pushy. You guys are controlling. You guys do all this. There's no room to breathe. There's no room to move. And I go, no, that's not, that's. It's funny because there's other people who don't think that's true. But then when the problem comes into their life, they actually expect us to go act like that. And we go, we can't act like that. We can't do that. Because our authority doesn't reach that far. We don't have the ability to force people to do anything. And neither does a father have the ability to force his son to do anything. And so when you think of what this father does, you should think of it in terms of church discipline.

That's the closest parallel you're going to find. What he does effectively is excommunicate his son. And what is excommunication in a church except acknowledging publicly the choices that have been made privately? If someone's in a church and they decide to go into sin, and they decide to live in rebellion, and you come to them and you plead with them, And you talk to them. And you warn them. And you admonish them. And you pray with them. And you pray for them. And you do all of this work for the purpose of turning them away from sin because you love them. And if they refuse all of that, what's left to do except to acknowledge what's been done? They refuse to listen. They refuse to repent. They've made their choice. And they've made their choice not in ignorance, but with instruction. And they've said, no.

I'm going to do this. Those are the ones who end up getting excommunicated. And it does not come out of nowhere. To those who are not involved in the circumstance, it often seems like it comes out of nowhere. But to those who are a part of the situation, it's not out of nowhere that these sorts of things happen. And this is what this father does. He acknowledges his son's rebellion, but he acknowledges it in a loving way as opposed to an unloving way. If he had a rebellious son living in his house, and he had no love for his rebellious son, you can imagine what that would look like. And we can suffice it to say that when the son came to repentance, his first thought wouldn't be, I'm going to go back to my dad's house. In 1 Corinthians 5, there's a man in the Corinthian church who has his father's wife. And it's common knowledge, and it's very wicked. And so Paul writes to them, rebuking them for having allowed this.

And he says, I've decided, I've delivered this man over. I've judged him already. And you need to do the same. Here's what he says in 1 Corinthians 5.5. He says, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. So did Paul love the incestuous man? You have to ask this question. Why did he say to do that? Was it because he was just embarrassed? This guy's doing things that even the Gentiles don't do? Did he love him? This isn't the only time you see Paul, or you have accounts in Scripture of this sort of thing happening. Again, in 1 Timothy 1, 18-20, Paul says, And then he says, And then you're kind of uncomfortable.

And it's like, oh, there's people who don't do what we're supposed to do. And then he says, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan so that they will be taught not to blaspheme. This is very personal. He names names. If you ever wonder whether you should name names in conflict, I'm not saying you always should, but you have room in Scripture to name names to say, you are the problem. And you shouldn't just be aghast and offended if someone says to you, you're the problem, Dave. Because scripture names names, it's very personal. Now, did Paul love Hymenaeus and Alexander? Or was he just done with them? No, he loved them. He loved both the incestuous man and Hymenaeus and Alexander. And these were men who were excommunicated, put out. How do we know that he loved them? Well, it says of the incestuous man, he wanted to send him out so that Satan would destroy his flesh. Why? So that his spirit might be saved. He's going to get a new body if his spirit is saved.

And what about Hymenaeus and Alexander? He's going to send them over to Satan. Why? So they'll be taught not to blaspheme. Well, is it bad to blaspheme? Are there consequences for blasphemy? Would it be good to learn not to blaspheme? For this reason, they were handed over to Satan, that they would learn righteousness and they would be saved. So what we find then is that there are times when we ought to give or allow someone to have what they want, even when it's not good for them. even when you know full well that what they want is wicked and terrible and destructive, it's appropriate to say, it's yours to go in half. This is not done from a lack of love. It could be. But you have to see that there's a time to say to someone, go and do it quickly. I couldn't figure out who said this, but there's a quote that often comes to my mind. When you're trying to deal with conflict, it's just miserable. If I asked you, how many of you like conflict?

When you're like, oh, I find myself in the midst of some conflict, and you go, I feel comfortable. I'm happy. I can play it. I can swim in this water. Not many of you would say you like it. I don't know that any of us like it. I don't like it. Some of us are better at handling it than others, but I don't know that any of us like it. I don't know that it's a good thing to like conflict. And yet we all find ourselves in it to some extent or another. And when you find yourself in conflict, one of the things that they're different, there's just a couple of things people do in conflict to try to resolve it. One is they'll get silent. One is they'll get really, really loud, pushy, like they just are going to overwhelm you, overpower you. And the response to that's normally silence. Now, here's the quote that's helpful for you to remember. And I don't know, there's this debate about who said it. I don't know who said it, but it's a helpful quote nonetheless.

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. So if this son had stayed in his father's house because his father had refused him the dignity of being a man and facing the consequences of his actions, he would not have changed his son. He would not have changed his son's mind. He would not have changed his son's heart. He would have invited leaven. and corruption into his home. And this is always the problem when you're dealing with conflict with people. As you think, well, it's not loving to do that. It's not loving to cast them out. And I say, well, it depends on who's supposed to be the one receiving love and what that love looks like. Is it loving to invite a fox into a hen house? No. And if you find that there's a fox in your hen house, what ought you to do? Kill the fox. That's what you ought to do. Put it out.

But that's not loving to the fox. And I say, well, it might not be loving to the fox, but it is loving to the chickens. And they're the ones that you're supposed to be protecting, after all. And so you have to be honest in conflict. If you want to know how to handle conflict, you have to start by being honest and recognizing the lay of the land. This man's son was wicked. And he knew it, and his brother knew it, and everybody in the house knew it. And one day this son got up the nerve to come to his father and say, I want what's mine. And the father, in wisdom and from love, gave him the money and sent him on his way. And it was good for both his household and it was good for that son. Because young men, especially young men, have to be given the dignity of failure. And I mean real failure. I mean hard failure. I mean starving to death failure.

Too often we give our young children the privileges that we ought to afford our older children. Young children get to say and do whatever they want, and then when they get older, they're not allowed to say or do whatever, anything. And what we've done is we've failed to train them when they were young, and now we're reaping the fruit of that later in their life, and we're going to clamp down on them, and it doesn't work. You protect your younger. Your level as parent of influence with your children changes as they get older. You have more influence. And they're more malleable the younger they are. The older they get, the harder it is. The roots are deeper. It's harder to get the weeds out. And sometimes those weeds have to come out by being, stop having the heads just cut off of them. And it's a hard thing to do when you're a parent. You can't think for a minute that this father was happy for his son to go away. And the reason you know that is because of how he responds when his son comes back.

He threw him a party, but it says, while the son was still a long way off. Now, how is it that you see someone a long way off unless you're looking for them, unless you're looking for it, hoping for it? And so this father was willing out of love to excommunicate his son, essentially, from the family to put him out for his good and for the good of the family. But then when his son comes back, he receives him back. Now, is that the natural response? Again, this is not the natural response. If we go back to 1 Corinthians and we watch how they handled the excommunication of the incestuous man, first Paul has to tell them, your boasting's not good. You should have put him out. I've judged him already. Put him out of your midst so that Satan can destroy his flesh, that he might be saved in the day of the Lord. And then they go, oh, and they do it. But then God was merciful and he repented. And what we want to think is, oh, well, all was well in the land then, but it wasn't all well in the land. What did the church want to do with that man?

What? They didn't want to let him back in. In 2 Corinthians 2 verses 4 through 8, he says, Paul writes, For out of much affliction and anguish of heart, I wrote to you with tears, not so that you would be made sorrowful, but that you might know the love which I have especially for you. But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree, in order not to say too much to all of you. And he's talking about the incestuous man. He has caused you guys grief. By his action. And what happens? What do you want to do when someone causes you grief, when someone hurts you? You want to hold it over their head. You want to hold it against them. It's not righteous, but it is natural. And so this is what Paul's saying to them in 2 Corinthians. Here you are, and here this man's done, and he's made a mockery of you guys. Publicly. But if in any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow, not to me, but in some degree, in order not to say too much, to all of you. Sufficient.

For such a one, this man, sufficient as such a one, for such a one is this punishment, which was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary, you should rather forgive and comfort him. Otherwise, such a one might be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow. Wherefore, I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. And so simply what he's saying is he caused you pain by his sin. And it's not fitting. that you would in turn punish him when he repents. But rather, you should receive him back and reaffirm your love for him. And this is exactly what this father does. When he sees his son afar off, he goes to him and he dresses him in a robe and he puts his ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and he kills the calf and they eat it and they celebrate and they're singing and they're dancing. Such that the older son, when he comes back into the...

back to the house before he even gets in the house, can hear the party. It's a house party, block party sort of thing. Think loud. Think lots of people, not just the family. You notice when the older brother says, you never gave me a fattened calf so I could do what? Celebrate with my friends. So who else was there? All the younger brother's friends. It was a big party. So his father was wise. And he was godly in the way that he conducted himself. And it doesn't sync up with... worldly wisdom, the way he handled himself. He gives him the money, he sends him away, he receives him back. It's all contrary to what our flesh would tell us to do. So is that always how you should handle it? Well, no, because the shepherd went after the sheep. And so you have to live in the tension of what you're supposed to do in a particular situation. Am I supposed to go after them and leave the 99 so that they'll repent? Or am I supposed to give them money and say, go, because I love them, so that they'll repent, hopefully.

It takes faith to make these sorts of decisions. It's not simple. It's not clear-cut. There's not a formula or a procedure for how to negotiate and navigate these waters. These are the sorts of things that you do, but we have to discern by faith and with counsel. And so the shepherd loved his sheep to go after him and to search until he found him. And the father loved his son to send him away, having given him the money that he would use to corrupt his flesh. So then you come to the older brother, and we don't know much about the older brother. We know that there was an older brother. We know that he was jealous of his younger brother, or at least of the party, of the treatment, the preference given toward his younger brother. And if you had any question about whether this happens in families, you just talk to the oldest sibling of a family and talk to the youngest sibling, and just listen to them talk about the different families they grew up in, the different privileges that they had.

Jealousy just exists between siblings. It doesn't take one of them taking half the estate to cause. But that does exacerbate it. It does make it worse. And so the older brother is jealous. When he finds out that his father has killed the fattened calf, he becomes angry and he refuses to come into the house. He will not participate in this celebration. Now, does he love his younger brother? In a word, no. He's angry at his younger brother. Not only is he angry at his younger brother, now he's angry at his father. He thought this was exceedingly unfair because he had been faithful for so many years, never neglecting a command of his father. He thought it was unjust. His younger brother had caused so much grief to the family, just like the incestuous man had, right? The younger brother caused grief to his family, and he did it knowingly. I said to someone recently in a conversation about conflict and about the way they lived their life, I said, you know what your problem is? You're a bad family member.

You don't know how to be a good brother. You would be willing that all of us would hurt so that you can do what you want, and that's wicked of you because we love you. His younger brother has caused so much grief. Not only that, he's increased his older brother's responsibilities. There were two sons doing the work, and now there's just one. Workload doubles, all so that he can go squander his inheritance. Give me what's mine so I can go do what I want, and the rest of you can pick up the pieces. There's another set of brothers in Scripture that have these kinds of problems. Jacob and Esau have these kinds of problems. Now, in the prodigal son, you have a faithful older brother and an unfaithful younger brother. Well, in Jacob and Esau, you have the opposite. You have an unfaithful older brother and a, I don't know that I'd call Jacob faithful necessarily, but a blessed or a favored younger brother.

And when Jacob takes his mother's counsel and he goes in and he steals his brother's birthright, his blessing, he steals birthright, he stole his blessing. He negotiated for his birthright, but he stole his blessing. And when Esau found out about that, when Isaac was about to die, Jacob has gone in, he's impersonated his brother with his mother's help, steals the blessing. How would you expect Esau? I mean, Esau does exactly what you'd expect any one of us to do. He got angry. It says Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing, which was his father had blessed him. And Esau said to himself, the days of mourning for my father are near. That means his death is imminent. He's about to die. Then I will kill my brother Jacob. Now, in the words of her elder son, Esau were reported to Rebecca. So you realize Esau is talking about how angry he is because other people heard it. He wasn't just thinking it. He was plotting it out loud. I'm going to kill him. Rebecca.

Well, it ends up that Jacob goes away and stays away quite a long while. But when he comes back, he was well aware of the offense that he had given. You remember? He comes with his... with all his people and all his hordes, and he puts the women in the back, and he sends a company with gifts, and then another one, and then all these people. He's trying to plead with his brother not to do what his brother wanted to do, which was kill him. Esau's anger had subsided, and he ends up being glad to see his brother, but that's not what the older brother and the prodigal son is. There hasn't been that time yet. The wounds are still fresh. The party's happening right now. And so he's jealous, because what's happening is unjust.

What else do we know about the older brother? Well, you know he was faithful. He was faithful. It's easy to look at the older brother and go, you shouldn't be like the older brother. And I say, actually, there are aspects of the older brother you absolutely ought to be like. He was faithful to his father. He answers his father and he says, look, for so many years, and these are the years his brother was gone, years. For so many years, I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours. What he's saying to his father is, what you've done is not right. I've been faithful. He has not. And he's the one who receives the fattened calf, a blessing that I myself have never received. His father responds to him and he says, son, you've always been with me. And all that is mine is yours. So you've got the older brother who's faithful, who's told by his father that who his father confirms, you've always been with me, you are faithful, you're right in what you say. And then you've got the younger brother who goes off and squanders it, but seemingly ends up with a better blessing than the faithful one. You're tracking? Older brother, faithful, less blessing than wicked younger brother who receives more blessing. That's what it looks like. And so you have to ask the question, which one of these brothers enjoyed a greater blessing? And the reason you have to ask this question is because

You're supposed to emulate one of them. You're supposed to learn things from them. What lessons are you supposed to learn from them? Are you supposed to learn the lesson that going off and slopping pigs as long as you repent later is better than years of faithfulness? That's the question. And we all say, no, no, it's not. No, it's not. But that's what you say by faith. That's not what your flesh says. Your flesh doesn't say, I should just be faithful and trust God to repay me everything that's owed to me in his time. Your flesh says, give me what's mine now. This younger brother went out and satisfied all his desires, and when he returned, he was greeted with incredible warmth and love. There was a season of misery in his life, and all of us know that when you go after sin and you pursue it, it doesn't make you happy. It really doesn't.

I was talking to a guy this last week who had a broken engagement. He's older. Well, it was going to be a second marriage, but it fell apart. And this man's not a Christian. And he's talking about this woman he was dating. I'd heard about her before. I'd never asked him. I said, so what happened? I don't remember her name. What happened with Jenny? Well, we were together for a few years, three years. and we used to travel all over the world. She had more money. He said she couldn't spend the interest on the money that she had, and she lived extravagantly, like rented jets to fly her where she wanted to go. She didn't stand in line at the terminal like you, and she was happy to take other people with her, and she couldn't spend the interest on the money she had. He's engaged to her, and he's not poor to start with. So they buy this monstrosity up on the north side, and they move in there.

Everyone's happy, likes her because she's got a lot of money. Makes life easy. Oh, you want to go somewhere else? Sure, yeah, let's charter a private jet and let's go. And so then I asked him, I said, so why didn't you marry her? Because that's the question we all have, right? She's a multimillionaire. And you can have anything in the world you want. Why didn't you marry her? And graciously, he said, she wasn't the nicest person to be around. I didn't love her, and so I broke up with her and moved out. This is an unbeliever who has some level of understanding that when you give yourself to all the pleasures that this world has, there's still misery, and it doesn't make you happy. And so sin brings about consequences, and they're not pleasant. This woman had everything that she could have wanted, and if this man had married her, he could have not liked her, but he could have had anything he wanted.

And even he as an unbeliever understood that that was a bad negotiation. So he got out of it. Do we share the same level of understanding that sin brings about misery? That if you go off to slop pigs, it'll be awful, even if you've got a bunch of money. It's interesting to note in there that it says that when he's out there, he spends all his money, and now he's broke. And he needs to eat, so he gets a job. And his job is to feed pigs. And he's feeding them some sort of pods. I don't know what they were. And he says that he would be happy to eat the pig's food. And then it says right after that, can you go back? I don't know how many slides back. Back, yeah. Do you notice at the end of verse 16, it says no one was giving anything to him. That's how miserable it was. He was going to eat pig food. That's how miserable it was. That's how bad it had to get before he was able to see the error of his ways. And then it says, when he came to his senses,

He'd been out of his mind. He was nuts. And that's generally what I'd say about people who go into sin and who pursue it. Say, you're crazy. You live and act as a fool. What you're doing doesn't make any sense. And yet you do it. But then he came to his senses, starving. And then he purposes to go back to his father and say, can I be your slave, not your son? So did he have a greater blessing than his older brother? Is it okay or more desirable to endure a season of misery as long as it ends well? As long as I repent at the end of it, the blessings are all still intact. Well, let me ask you this. What did he lose by choosing a season of misery? He lost his inheritance. You realize the teeth in what the father says to the older brother. He doesn't say half of what I have is yours. He says everything that I have is yours.

Because your brother has gone and squandered his part. And so while there's a party and there's rejoicing and it's sincere and it's appropriate, everything is not as it would have been if he would have stayed. He's in a far worse position. We're not told anything more about what life looked like for them going on. We could spend time in conjecture saying, well, I think, and well, maybe, and we could talk about money and growth of interest and all this other kind of stuff. But suffice it to say, he cost himself. a lot by going into sin, things he will never get back in this life. Foolishness has its consequences. It's never free. Going into sin is never free. It will always cost you. It will cause a great deal of grief. It will cause a great deal of guilt. It will cause a great deal of shame. It may cause a great deal of pain, physical or emotional, certainly spiritual, and not just for you but the people you've sinned against.

And then even after you repent, if you talk to people who've been in sin, they talk about the memories. They talk about their past. When couples who haven't been pure either with one another or previous to their relationship, when you talk to them after they're married, they have to deal with their past. It has bearing on their marriage. And I don't just mean like their first year of marriage. I mean, you'd be a decade, two decades into it, and they're still talking about what they did when they were in high school, when they were in college. These memories have to be dealt with. They're there. They're scars. They're wounds. So should we choose that path when we all say no? And I say, well, make sure you do know instead of just say no. The older brother is the one who received the greater blessing. He doesn't have any of the consequences that I've just talked about for the younger brother. That doesn't mean he's not a sinner. He sinned when his brother came home. And I'm sure he sinned in many other ways. He was by no means a perfect man.

But all of the miseries that his brother endured while he was out with prostitutes squandering his inheritance, the older brother doesn't have that stuff. And so he receives the better blessing. So what's the application of this text to us? Two. First, children are blessed when they obey their parents. It's very simple. It's very simple. Children are blessed when they obey their parents. This is what Scripture teaches us. The older brother was blessed. Why? Because he... never neglected a command of his fathers. That was the avenue that he traveled to receive blessing. And you say, well, my father was a sinner. And I say, show me one man who can't say that. Hebrews tells us that we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. In our society, in our day and age, I would say we ought to respect them. But that's not what scripture says. We respected them. Shall we not much?

rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live. For they, speaking of our earthly fathers, they disciplined us as seemed best to them. And what's that mean? Except that they failed sometimes when they disciplined us. Some more than others. And yet we respected them. They disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. But he, speaking of God, he disciplines us for our good. Why? So that we may share his holiness. That's why he disciplines us. And if you were to continue on reading, It talks about discipline. It says all discipline is not joyful but rather sorrowful. But once you've been trained by it, it produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness. And so children are blessed who obey their parents. And children who disobey their parents are not blessed. You say, but he was blessed. He threw him that party. And I say, yeah, but if he was here and you could ask him, was that party worth that life? He would say no. No, it was not.

And if I could go back, I would not do what I did. So if children are blessed when they obey their parents, what's that mean for the parents? Well, it means that you parents have to teach your children to obey you. You have to teach them to do what they should do. You have to expect them to do it. And everything in your heart and in this world militates against children obeying their parents. If you go to a store, there's this inverse correlation. It's very interesting. on the west side of Indianapolis. If you were to go to, say, a grocery store in Plainfield or Avon or Brownsburg, you'll hear bad kids in the candy aisle, in the toy aisle, just throwing a fit. You've all heard it, right? And it's the only thing you hear. If you were to go into Speedway or you were to go down on 10th Street, Rockville Road, and you were going to a grocery store down there, You would hear the kids throwing a fit, just the same. But what else would you hear? You'd hear the parents telling their children to stop it. If you haven't ever heard this, just go on a date and say, what we're going to do is we're going to go to a toy store in Carmel, and we're going to go to a candy store on Washington Street. And just sit there for an hour and just listen.

And in the one place, you'll hear kids being naughty and you will hear their parents not teaching them to obey them. And in the other place, you'll hear kids being naughty and you'll hear parents teaching their children to obey them. And it won't sound like it should. Don't hear me saying, you're going to hear lots of screaming and yelling and manipulating and you're going to hear smacking. You're going to hear all kinds of stuff. But you have to ask, which one is worse for the child? Silence is worse for the child. That child will not learn obedience through being given what they want. My wife prefers to shop in stores where the other shoppers will give our kids the stink eye when they're bad. She would rather go shop there where she has the support of the grocery store community saying, put that down, your mother said not to touch it. She goes in a store and, you know, wherever, Plainfield. We compare Plainfield and Mooresville. We get the help in Mooresville and we don't get the help in Plainfield because that's around where we live.

If children are blessed when they obey their parents, then parents have to teach their children to obey, and it does not happen by silence. There's nothing for you to be ashamed of when you're teaching your children and expecting them to obey you. Nothing to be ashamed of, and that's especially important for you mothers. You do your children no good if you feel sorry for them. None. And you husbands, you do your wives no good if you feel sorry for her having a hard time with the children. That doesn't mean you should despise her or you should make fun of her or anything like that. That's not what I'm advocating. What I'm saying is when you feel sorry for the blessing that God's given you and the work that it requires of you, God's not glorified, and the children don't learn to obey. It's a privilege to have children and to be able to teach them to obey, and it's hard work. But we ought to seek a blessing for our children, and the way that they'll receive that blessing is through learning to obey us. The second application is that you children must not cast off the blessings of God. That's what the younger brother did. He lived in a home.

full of blessing, and he threw it away. And time and again, that's what I see Christian children do. And it's especially apparent to me, having grown up in a different environment. I didn't grow up in the church. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. And when I was a youth leader years ago down in Bloomington, I would see the way these kids behaved, these Christian kids, and the neglect of the blessings that they had. It was unfathomable to me. the good things that they had, that they'd been given, that they couldn't care less about. And it was obvious to me because I'd already come out of what they were wanting to go into. I'd had my hand in the cookie jar, and I, by God's grace, have taken it out and said, you guys are fools. But the temptation of those who are privileged to grow up in a Christian home, the temptation is to neglect it.

And you children may not neglect it. You will end up like the prodigal son at best. Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. You children, if you go away and you go slop pigs, the chances of you coming back are very, very low. And so your choice before you now is to choose the path of the older brother, not the younger brother. And you parents, it's your job to expect your children, not to cast off the faith. And you should just tell them that. that they have obligations to God because he, in his mercy, placed them in a Christian family. And while your family's not perfect, and you and mommy or you and daddy have lots of growing to do, you want them to stand on your shoulders with regard to Christian faith. You do not want them to repeat your life. You do not want them to live a less holy life. You want them to expect them to live a more holy life because they have blessings that you didn't have, and your children should know that.

if you want to guard against them becoming the prodigal son or having to at least go away like the prodigal son, then these are the conversations you have to have with them regularly and repeatedly. And children cannot go off the way the younger brother did and expect it to end well. Pursue faithfulness. And I should say, that doesn't just apply to young children. Whether you're young or whether you're an adult, you have the temptation to neglect the blessings that God's given you. And it will not end well for you if you do. This is what the parable teaches us. It doesn't teach us to admire the younger brother. It doesn't teach us that things are going to end well as long as we repent. The testimony of Scripture is that those who give themselves to sin are corrupted by it. And so our place is not to follow him, but to be wise like the father, to be loving like the father, to be faithful like the older brother, and to love the younger brother. Let's pray.