Bible Text: St Luke 15:1-32 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
It’s hard to focus on the older brother, because the father’s love and compassion for the younger one is just so beautiful. But the father loves the older brother too. He leaves the party to find him and plead with him to come and share in the joy. The older brother is the “bad guy.” He’s the reason Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son in the first place. That’s how our Gospel starts. The Pharisees and scribes are grumbling against Jesus because He receives sinners and eats with them. And Jesus tells the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost son to them. He adds what he adds about the older son to address them in particular. And he does it because he loves them.
We usually think of the Pharisees as the bad guys. Jesus loves sinners. But He yells at the Pharisees. He calls them fools. He says, “woe to you, hypocrites.” But he also loves them. He wants them to join the party. He loves sinners. And it doesn’t matter if the sin is the gross kind – sexual immorality, stealing, drunkenness, or the “higher” kind, where all your outward works look good, you work hard, wear nice clothes, don’t get drunk or cuss or cheat, but inside you are filled with pride and self-righteousness. Jesus loves sinners, no matter the brand of sin. And he wants to free them from their sin, forgive it, and bring you into fellowship with the Father by the power of His Spirit.
The Pharisees judge Jesus because he eats and drinks with sinners. Let it be known to everyone here, that what you see at this altar is Jesus eating and drinking with sinners. What you see when we confess our sins and the pastor forgives, is Jesus receiving sinners and eating with them. What you are hearing now is Jesus eating and drinking with sinners.
And here it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. The Law can’t accuse you. All its accusations have to remain silent. Jesus is Lord here, He is master. It doesn’t matter if you’ve gotten drunk or cheated or lost your temper or watched porn or taken the Lord’s name in vain, or gossiped or slandered, or been outrageously selfish and worried about yourself and ignored the needs of your brother. All that matters is that Jesus has found you and brought you here. All that matters is that you have confessed your sin, that you’re sorry that you’ve offended against heaven and against your fellow man, all that matters is that you’ve come to your Lord for mercy and He like that Father in the parable has run to meet you, to embrace you and kiss you and clothe you and claim you as His own.
Here the blood of Christ cleanses from every sin and no one has the right to accuse you. Your conscience least of all. Who will argue with Jesus, the Son of God? He has suffered, he has taken those sins on Himself, He has bled the blood of God to wash them away, He has taken the wrath of God against all sin and swallowed it up in His passion. And He eats and drinks with you. He instructs the angels to rejoice. He throws a feast in your honor, sacrifices the fatted calf, and all heaven and all the church rejoices that a sinner has repented. No one has the right to judge you when Jesus eats and drinks with you.
Don’t mistake the Pharisees or the older brother. They, he, had every right to judge the sins of the tax collectors and sinners and the younger brother. They were evil. They stole, they cheated, they committed adultery, they hurt people, they betrayed, they disobeyed, they dishonored. These are sins. They offend against God and man. That’s what the younger brother confesses. It’s what we confess. And to point them out is to point out what God Himself says.
That’s what the Pharisees wanted to do. It’s what the older brother wanted to do. What he said was true: that son of yours wasted your livelihood on drinking and whores. It’s true, it was wrong, evil.
But you can’t accuse sinners anymore, when they eat and drink with Jesus. You can’t accuse them anymore when they confess their sin and God forgives them. We’re not dealing here with sinners who march in Pride parades and are proud of their sins. We’re not talking here about sinners who shout their abortions. That’s the prodigal staying prodigal, never learning his lesson, never coming back to his Father for mercy. You can imagine the older brother and the dad at supper, as the prodigal is still away, and the older brother saying how horrible it is that he left and wasted all your money on wicked things. And the dad saying, yes, it’s horrible, I pray he comes back, I pray I can save him from all that. So we’re not talking about prodigals who are proud of being sinners. Lord have mercy on them and bring them to repentance. Their works are evil. Let them know it! And find mercy with Jesus. But, we’re talking about sinners who confess their sin and come to eat and drink with Jesus, who hunger and thirst for His righteousness because they can’t claim any of their own. You can’t accuse them. Why not?
Because then you’re accusing God. He’s the one who forgives. Who are you to deny Him that? He bought that right by His own death, by His own blood, He won’t be denied the right to forgive sinners their sin.
But it’s more than that. Much more. In order to worship and know the true God, you have to deal with the One who forgives sinners, who forgives the slanderer and the thief and the homosexual and the abortionist and the adulteress and the porn addict. He’s the only true God. Listen to Micah again, this beautiful description of the only God:
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
19 He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our[a] sins
into the depths of the sea.
That’s simply who God is. If you dream up another god, one who doesn’t have to forgive sins because you think you don’t need it, then you are worshipping an idol, a demon.
Look at the older brother. Look at how he described his father: “All these years I slaved for you (that’s what the Greek says, “slaved for you,”) and you didn’t give me a goat to celebrate with my friends.” He thinks his father is a slavemaster. THAT’S NOT WHO IS FATHER IS. He’s imagined up something else, someone else, but it’s not his father. And his father tells him, he corrects him, look son, all I have is yours, you are always with me. I’m your father. I’m not a slavemaster. You think I haven’t forgiven your sins too? What do you think I’m doing right now, coming to an arrogant, judgmental, entitled boy, who insults his father and calls him a slavemaster and wants to go off and play with his friends. Why do I come to you? To be a father to you. To have mercy on you, forgive you, invite you to the feast. Because I love you.
And that’s what Jesus wanted for those judgmental Pharisees. To make them recognize who the true God is, the forgiving God, and that they need him. That their self-righteous judging is just as offensive to God as the prodigal son’s nasty sins. They need a Father who forgives them.
If you think your relationship with God depends on you obeying and slaving away, then you’re worshipping a false god. The only God who exists, the only God you have to deal with, is the God who has mercy on sinners.
So be a sinner, and I don’t mean engage in sin, you’ve already done that, I mean recognize it, mourn it, confess it, and then come and eat and drink with Jesus.
The way Jesus describes repentance is striking. It is pure joy. Again and again, the words, rejoice, make merry: in heaven the angels are rejoicing, on earth the shepherd, the woman, the father, the servants, everyone rejoices. It is a wonderful, beautiful thing.
Why? It’s not only because your sins are forgiven. It’s because of Who does it and what happens afterward. The boy comes back to his father and intends to be his slave, to work for him, because he doesn’t deserve to be his son. And that’s true. He doesn’t. And you don’t. You don’t deserve to be God’s child. But when you confess that, God cuts you off. He won’t hear it. You are His child. He baptized you. He put His name on you. He joined you to His Son. He gave you His Spirit. And no matter what you did or how far you strayed, He is your Father. You come back to him in repentance, and He embraces you with joy. HE IS HAPPY. Not just the angels. Not just those holy servants in heaven. No, God Himself, the Creator, the holy, the one who dwells in unapproachable light, He rejoices. He clothes you again in the righteousness of your Savior. He feeds you with the feast of salvation.
And what do you do? Run off again? Take a second inheritance and go off into a far off land to waste it again? No. You remain in your Father’s house. And you don’t act as a slave to Him. You don’t obey His commands out of fear of punishment or out of hope of some reward. You do it because He is your Father who cares for you every day, who forgives all your iniquity, who gives you an eternal inheritance. And when other sinners come and your Father embraces them too, then join the feast and rejoice with the angels and God Himself and all the saints. Now and forever. Amen.