Hello everyone. I hope everyone has had a good week.
Welcome again to Thursday's Child
Continuing on with the book The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, today we're going to look into the personality of the Older Brother and the issues that he had. First though lets understand who Jesus was talking to. The first 2 verses of Luke 15 says "the tax collectors and sinners drew near to Him (Jesus) to hear Him." The Pharisee and Scribes complained saying "This man receives them and eats with them." This means the Pharisees were there as well. The Pharisees were almost always always where Jesus was to try to catch Him doing something wrong. Since Jesus knew His audience He intentionally told this story.
To review, the younger brother came home after blowing all of his inheritance that he received after his father had to sell 1/3 of his land to give him. His father sees him down the road and runs to welcome him home and threw him a lavish party. The older brother gets to the house hears the music, sees the dancing, the feast in the dining room, blows a gasket and won't go inside. I get the image of when a cartoon character gets angry, their face turns red and smoke comes out of their ears. That's how angry you can imagine the older brother is. The father comes out to talk to him to persuade him to come inside but he refuses. He says, still my imagination, I work my butt off around here, do everything I'm suppose to do, barely so much as have a glass of wine or look at a girl, and HE pointing through the window at the party, makes you sell some land so he can get his inheritance early, disowns this family, goes and blows his money doing God knows what, and you welcome him back. NOW, I'll have even less inheritance because he'll get a third of what he left me with.
Without directly saying so, Jesus was letting the pharisees know they were like the older brother. The Pharisees complained about Jesus spending time and even eating with "sinners." The older brother acted all righteous complaining about the sinner younger brother, seeing his moral lifestyle as superior. By rejecting the father's request to come into the party he's portraying himself no better than the younger brother. Both brothers showed their lack of love for the father. The younger for flat out rejecting his family, and the older by rejecting the father thinking he was morally superior.
As we look at this earthly father being in the role of our Heavenly Father, we can see how we sin against God by doing things that would obviously be wrong in the Father's eyes. What isn't as obvious is the holier than thou people thinking they're superior because they're in church every Sunday or every time the doors are open, teaching classes, raising their hands worshipping, yet they're looking down their noses at the girl who has a couple of little kids and no husband, or a full parking lot at a bar on Saturday night. But let them notice a guy walk out of that bar and the same guy come into church Sunday, or the girl with the kids, and see how they treat them, or the whispers they start about them.
Jesus is letting us know that the righteous that don't show love and compassion are no different than the blatant sinner that the righteous love to look down on. There were two other parables that Jesus told before this one that tie into this. We'll talk about these next week.
Have a great week,
Keep Searching,
Paul
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