Go for it
Five Lessons from the Elder Son’s Attitude Luke 15
This is one of the most preached texts in the Bible, but I believe God will speak to you today through this narrative as you are reading this. I will not be focusing on the ‘lost son’ or ‘prodigal son’ but on his elder brother. I believe Jesus told this story for two principal reasons: to explain to religious people the true nature of love, grace and forgiveness and to illustrate the danger of being idle. To get a change, you need to make a change. If there are things that need to be changed in your life, you need to make some changes, to get the change you want. Here are the five lessons from the elder son’s attitude in this unfolding drama:
1. You cannot have a full celebration until you go through degradation and destitution
How can you treasure wealth if you haven’t experienced lack? Can you appreciate good health if you have never been sick? Can you understand the meaning of victory if you have never tasted defeat? When healing comes after sickness, you enjoy it more; when you found someone after being lonely for a while you appreciate the goodness of God. However, in your time of celebration, not everyone will be happy to celebrate with you. The younger son asked his father for his share of the inheritance and travelled of out of town enjoying the pleasures of the world, squandered his inheritance, became broke and was struggling to feed himself on the stuff pigs feed on. The Bible says he came to his senses and decided to go back home and the father threw a party for him. But his elder brother was unhappy. There is nothing worse than coming to a time of celebration and you discover that those who you think are for you are not there to support you, especially when you have gone through trauma, when you have made mistakes, when you have fell into the mud, when God has been able to pull you out of the pit, when you are close to the edge, to get to you point of celebration!
There was a woman here in the UK who after considerable struggle was able to secure accommodation. We went to pray with her only to discover that her new apartment was barely fit for living, a few of the windows were broken, the heating was faulty, and a few other things were not right. The apartment was located in an extremely low residential area of the city. But knowing what this woman went through to get the apartment, it would not be proper to start criticising her or the apartment. For several weeks, she had been ejected from where she was sharing an apartment with her friend. So for her at this time, anything will do, so long as her name was on the tenancy agreement. It was time to rejoice with her, not the time to start moaning about how decrepit her apartment was.
The depth of your celebration is often a reflection of your past degradation but even your kin, kith or brethren may not be happy with you or for you. And the pain of knowing that the friends whom you want to celebrate with are not happy to celebrate with you may contaminate your celebration. In other words there is a tendency to be distracted by the absence of those who’re not there instead of celebrating those who are there. The elder son missed his moment of favour and people become cynical when they miss their moment. Saul missed his moment and became envious of David. When people have missed their turn, they don’t want you to have yours because they think minimising you maximises them. They believe they can only be elevated by destroying you, by bringing you down instead of bringing themselves up. That is why you need to be careful about manipulators: they tell you their secret to make you tell them yours; they want you to be sad when they are sad and happy only when they are. For them, friendship is about control.
2. Nil Activity is a Liability
Sitting on the seat of scorners (Ps 1:1) makes you critical of others, it makes you cynical, and it makes you scornful. And critics often make little progress. You become absorbed in what others are doing and you do absolutely nothing to make progress in certain areas. It is extremely unproductive to be inactive. Even buildings love activities. A house that has been empty for a while will not have as much value as a house that is being occupied. Ordinary day to day activities like flushing toilets improves the value of your home, it keeps it in shape. Unfortunately, there are many believers who fold their arms doing nothing, thinking all the responsibility rests on God, so they wait on God passively and do absolutely nothing! We sing songs about waiting, listen to sermons on waiting, we turn the scriptures on its head, we recite Isaiah in 40: those who wait upon the Lord… not taking time to discover that the sort of waiting Prophet Isaiah is talking about is active, not passive waiting, because running and not being weary, walking and not fainting, mounting up with wings certainly is not passive waiting, it is expectant waiting, knowing that doing what the Lord has asked you to do brings reward. God is waiting on you, not other way round. Psalm 1:3 says whatsoever what those who don’t work in the counsel of the ungodly do shall prosper. God is saying he will only bless what we do; not what we do not do.
3. Bitterness sucks goodness out of good people
When the elder son heard about the party being organised for his brother, he became angry. And unchecked anger leads to bitterness. That is why the Bible says do not let the sun set on your anger. The worst thing to do in a battle for the soul is to get bitter because bitter people never get better (See Eph 4:31 and Heb 12:15). There is a propensity to become bitter if you are consistent and obedient, yet ignored. There is a propensity to become frustrated when the wicked seems to be prospering (See Hab 1:2-4) You say Lord, I’ve been here for you, I have been there for you, how come you are giving things to people who just joined our church last month. You helped someone through school; now that he has a flashy job he doesn’t want you anymore. It is painful to train somebody and have him put over you to manage you. But God sometimes gives people what they didn’t work for or deserve. It is difficult to be happy for them if have been grinding away and no doors are opening for you.
The elder son boycotted the party saying, father, my brother took your money, ran away and all the while I was taking care of your livestock, chasing goats, milking cows. He was sleeping with harlots and now you are throwing a party for him, how dare you father! When you sit on the seat of the scornful you will never be blessed, if you are full of unforgiveness and bitterness, you are saying Lord, don’t bless me, I am happy being bitter. The elder son was a good person, he was faithful and loyal and a better behaved than his brother. But bitterness sucked goodness out of him.
Unfortunately, bitterness sometimes creeps in like a thief in the night; you won’t know when you have put on the garment of bitterness. You will suddenly realise that you have become bitter; you have become acrimonious in your response to people. When they talk to you, you snap back at them, because a fattened calf has not been killed to celebrate you, no party has been put together to honour you. You keep on asking, when am I going to be celebrated? The elder son thinks, if I am docile, I’ll be blessed, and like him we talk about coming seasons and changing times, not knowing that God has already done it and all we have to do is to go for it!
4. Pain can position you in the seat of scorners
The elder son couldn’t accept his father’s act of unconditional forgiveness and unconditional love, thinking passivity brings reward. He thought being nice, being right, being consistent alone will do it. I know it is hard to sit back and watch everyone getting blessed and you keep on crying to God, how long will I remain single, how long will I remain sick and broke. Trusting God will bring showers of blessings upon you.
The elder son allowed understandable pain to position him in the seat of scorners not knowing that seating there blocks his blessing. In verse 29 he mentioned his servitude: I’ve worked for you like a slave father and look where it got me. In other words he saw himself as a servant not a son. He had been serving the father through a relationship of duty and rules rather than a personal relationship of love and commitment. Look at how he described his brother in verse 30: this son of yours. That was the language of a bitter person.
He demanded, like many of us would, an explanation and he expected an apology from the father. If the father had harassed the younger son, made him wait outside the house for a couple of days before allowing him in, made him suffer a little bit, then the elder brother wouldn’t have had any problem joining the party. He just couldn’t come to terms with how his father forgave his brother just like that. He must have been thinking: is father going senile? No, father was perfectly alright, all the father wanted to do was to lavish his love on his children and for this, the elder son was consumed with anger.
Why? Because we have the propensity to tell God who deserves his favour and who doesn’t. That brother is a good believer, it is time for God to bless him, that sister serves faithfully in the house of God…For whatever reason, the elder son believed that love was something he needed to earn, love was something he needed to work for and when you work too hard for love, you eventually become weary, frustrated and angry. Rather than letting the father’s love fill the core of his being, he tried to fill it himself with good works hoping that this would satisfy his inner longings and earn his father’s love. The Bible in Eph 2:9 says not of works, lest any man should boast.
5. Do what you have never done before to get to where you’ve never been before
The father told his elder son, the fattened calf was there for you all the time, you could’ve had it years ago; you suffer because you do nothing. That is why the Bible asks us to ask God for things we want, not assuming that those things will automatically be given to us by our father in heaven. The father says you’ve been with me always, yes, you have been faithful but you should have done what you have never done before, which is to go for those things that are yours. Now you are angry but every calf I have belongs to you, every robe in my wardrobe is yours, every servant I own belongs to you, every food in the refrigerator has always been yours, you didn’t just reach for them but they were there for you all the time.
God is telling you today that you could’ve been free, delivered, had peace, contentment and prospered if you’ve have not sat in the seat of the scornful. We want to fill the emptiness inside us by trying to earn God’s love and slowly but surely we become servants. The elder son knew he needed the father’s love but thought he had to earn it so he wasn’t able to receive it. That is how we end up going from being a son to being a servant and we start living outside of the father’s love. Like the elder son, some of us are unable to receive God’s love because we’re still waiting to earn it rather than finding rest in God’s already abiding love. You’re the object of his affection and God is asking you to return home today.
Conclusion
God is calling you today; it is not all about doing and serving, but love and intimacy. He is saying you are the object of my unending love, there is no need to work for my love, my greatest commandment is to love me, not to slave for me. I called you to abide in me, not only to serve me. The dad didn’t force the younger son to stay at home and he didn’t force the elder son to join the party. God will not force you but he is ready to run out to you like the father did with the younger son, hugging and kissing. He is ready to leave the party and ask you to join the party like the father did with the elder son but it is your choice. It is never up to God, he made everything available and it is up to us to grab them. It is your time to go after what you want; it is the father’s good pleasure to bless you. You can’t possess your possession without pursuing it, can you? Get out of your seat of cynicism, rise from the seat of the scornful. It is your season and you have to take it by force if necessary!
