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Brendan's Bytes: Prodigal Son
7 Plays4 months ago
Brendan teaches on the Prodigal Son
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Transcript
Introduction to the Prodigal Son
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi there, friends. how are you today? hope you're doing really, really well. My name is Brendan. We're going to unpack one of the most famous stories and the Bible today. It's a story that Jesus told.
00:00:17
Speaker
It's called the Parable of the Prodigal Son, or that parable the of the Lost Son. You can find it in Luke chapter 15.
00:00:29
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verses 11 to 32. thirty c It's a really beautiful story. It's a world-famous story. Almost everybody knows it, at least to some degree.
00:00:42
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Let's read through it together and then see what the Lord has to say.
The Younger Son's Journey
00:00:48
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Jesus continued. There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, Father, give me my share of the estate.
00:01:01
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Basically, die and just give me what I'm going to get anyway when you croak. So the father divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth in wild living.
00:01:22
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After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs.
00:01:37
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He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
Return and Reconciliation
00:01:45
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When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired men have food to spare?
00:01:51
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And here I am, starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to call your son.
00:02:04
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Make me like one of your hired men. So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.
00:02:17
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He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, Father, have sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.
00:02:31
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But the father said to his servants, Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it.
00:02:42
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Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate.
00:02:53
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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 home, he replied, and your father has killed a fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.
00:03:15
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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.
00:03:31
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Yet you never give me even a young goat so I can celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours, not my brother, the son of yours, total detachment, relationally.
00:03:46
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Yeah, when this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you killed a fattened calf for him. I did become a little bit of a slag.
00:03:58
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I became a total slag. My son, the father said, you're always with me and everything I have is yours.
00:04:10
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But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and alive again. He was lost and is found.
The Younger Son's Realization
00:04:22
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We see a few different things at work in this story. First, we have the younger son. who basically tells his father, listen, just hurry up and die already.
00:04:35
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i want my inheritance. I want my money. i know I'm in the will. And what does he do? He absolutely squanders it on wild living, fast cars, fastcars um fast women.
00:04:49
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And in the end, when famine strikes, when he's suffered a famine of God's word, famine of love. famine of real, genuine intimacy.
00:05:02
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A famine of compassion. A famine of authentic relationships. A famine of purpose. He looks at what the pigs are doing. The gentiles.
00:05:13
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In this case, those who don't know God, don't serve God. Those who are slaves to sin. To their own drives.
00:05:25
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And he looks at what they're ingesting and he's like, you know what, that actually looks pretty darn good. Because right now I'm just empty on the inside. It's a hollow space, there's a vacuum, there's a void.
00:05:38
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And that's where people look for meaningless sex. That's where people look for pornography. That's where people look for drugs.
00:05:50
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Alcohol addiction, gambling addictions, anything to fill the void on the inside, power tripping.
The Older Brother's Struggle
00:05:59
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And then you have the older brother, who on the surface has intimacy with the father. and In fact, there seems to be a closeness of proximity, but he's not happy either.
00:06:12
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He's not content either. He's not like, oh, look at me. I'm about the father's business. No, he describes I'm slaving away for you. He's lost the joy of his salvation. He's lost the joy in the service and servitude and helping others.
00:06:31
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There's no sense of treasuring others as more important than you yourself and going the extra mile to make their lives easier. It's become burden, or at least he perceives it to be.
00:06:45
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He sees this, that he's gotten yoked into this agreement of looking after people and serving people that he had no say in. At least that's his perception.
00:06:57
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There's root of bitterness there. Even if he's doing good work,
00:07:02
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He's livid. Now what happens is, the younger brother reaches a point where he says, i will rise and I will go and go to my father's house.
00:07:14
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Holy Spirit really impressed that on me one morning to look that up. What actually says is, i will be resurrected. I'll rise up.
00:07:24
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Jesus is life and resurrection itself and his resurrection power hits that son like a ton of bricks. And he gets up and says, I'm go back to my father's house.
00:07:38
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But he's not much better off than the older brother. He says, I'm going to be his servant. going to ask to one of his hired hands. He doesn't think he's good enough to be a son anymore.
00:07:52
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You know, his worth comes from his birth, comes from his position, comes from the familial relationship. But no, he has this idea in his head that his worth comes from work.
00:08:06
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Oof, that's good, gonna tweet that later.
00:08:10
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But your worth does not come from work, your worth comes from birth. It comes from your proximity to Father God.
Symbolism of Father's Actions
00:08:20
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that you were born from his heart, because he conjured you in his mind, he conceived you his mind first and foremost in his heart, long before you were ever brought to be the natural.
00:08:35
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And as he goes home, the father runs to him, and in Jesus' day, Men being overly in touch with their feelings was definitely not to be commended.
00:08:47
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um So this would have been quite strange to see like a Hebrew man running. Fair hug. It just wouldn't have happened. But the father was saying, listen, I love you so much that I'm okay with being embarrassed.
00:09:00
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I'm okay going against the grain, going against the norm. And the ultimate embarrassment, of course, the ultimate shame that God would ever experience was Jesus on the cross.
00:09:12
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The sinless Christ on the cross for our sake to buy us back. And the son begins his pathetic apology. It's like, oh, I've squandered all your money. I've let you down.
00:09:24
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I'll be your servant and I'll pay you back. And the father just ignores him, pretends he's not even speaking. Says, get this man a coat, get this man a robe. Anyone who's familiar with the story of Joseph in the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat would have known this was a picture of favor.
00:09:43
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He was being robed in Christ.
00:09:47
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You know, in the story of ah Jesus in the Getharines... where he drives the demons of Legion out of the the naked men. We're told that when the villagers came, they found the men robed in new clean clothes and in sound mind.
00:10:05
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That's the Lord does. He brainwashes you. He washes your brain. He cleans you on the inside, gives you a perspective shift, robes you in the righteousness of Christ, the holiness of Christ, the character of Christ.
00:10:23
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He puts a ring on his finger to say, you're my son, you're royalty in my eyes. For the nation of Israel, you're chosen and royal priesthood.
00:10:35
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For us, our sons and daughters of the most high God, citizens of heaven.
00:10:42
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He puts new shoes on his feet to say, I know we walk ah dirty roads you've and you've Come here the long way round.
00:10:56
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But that's irrelevant. That doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that you're on a new journey. We're chart a new course for you.
00:11:11
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And the father beseeches the older brother to come and reconnect to the younger brother. But there's an animosity there. In the end, the prodigal son is actually the one who stayed at home because he had a rotten attitude.
00:11:27
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He didn't see himself as a son or a servant. He saw himself as a slave, which is even worse. so
00:11:37
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We have no reason to believe the father instilled that in him. But the bitterness that got in, the bitter seed, and it grew into absolute wicked, vile resentment
00:11:55
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You know, we can look at the prodigal son as a salvation story, but actually want to look at it now in the context of church life.
Brother Reliable vs. Brother Restless
00:12:05
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Where the older son, I'm going to call him Brother Reliable. He dots every i he crosses every t This guy has Google spreadsheets and Google Forms coming out of his ears.
00:12:22
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He has plans. He is always on the phone. We're hosting this revival event. Can you be there? I've got the Kids Church roster. Put your name down for all the dates you're available.
00:12:34
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We've got worship practice coming up. How many people can make it for this time? How many people can make it for this time? If we change the day, how many people can be there for this time? That's brother reliable.
00:12:47
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And then got the younger brother. brother, restless. This is the guy who's like, oh, um I want the money now. Well, he's dad years or even decades ahead of time.
00:13:03
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This guy is artsy. He's like, you know, why do we have this floral design looking like an African church? How about we hammer pallets into the wall and paint walls black and we take that down and put that up
00:13:19
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This guy is like, why is it the 21st century and we still don't have strobe lights and a smoke machine?
00:13:27
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This guy does not like water baptisms taking place at the beach. He says, disenfranchises those ones who don't drive. This guy wants the church to invest hundreds of euros into a three meter long water baptism swimming pool.
00:13:49
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This guy goes against the grain. He says what no one else will.
00:13:56
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He sees things in a way other people don't.
00:14:01
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He speaks up. And a lot of people think most of the time he speaks no sense, but he says it anyway. And you know what? Sometimes he's right.
00:14:12
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This guy says, but we've never done it that way before, are the eight most famous last words of any church. This guy is like, make it new.
00:14:25
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Keep it edgy. Keep it exciting. This will bring in the rejects, the delinquents, the god haters, the questioners, the doubters.
00:14:38
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And you know what?
00:14:41
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Brother Reliables do not always like Brother Restlesses.
00:14:48
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They find them wild. Uncontrollable. Untameable. Risky.
00:14:58
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And I know many a Brother Restless who looks at a Brother Reliable and says, Oh my goodness, you are boring. you should not be at the top. you should not be in control.
00:15:11
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You're running the place into the ground. You're far too traditional. You need to get a life, put your thinking cap on, and do something different.
00:15:21
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And you know what? The father loves both of them. Because if the father looks at them, he sees a bit of himself in one, and a bit of himself in the other one.
00:15:35
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And yes, there will be clashes. Yes, there will be conflicts. Yes, there will be times when Brother Reliable will have to say we do not have enough money in the church budget for that.
00:15:46
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And yes, there will be times when Brother Restless will say, people are going to stop coming to your church unless you do exactly what I'm telling you. I am reading the room.
00:15:58
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I see where the people are at.
00:16:02
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But iron sharpens iron. And it's the Father's will that Brother Reliable and Brother Restless come together to make something beautiful and amazing.
00:16:13
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But unfortunately, Brother Reliable sometimes looks at Brother Restless and says, you're dangerous. And Brother Restless
00:16:25
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sometimes looks at Brother Reliable and says, you're a stuck-up prude. You're unchanging, you're uncompromising. This is just dead religion, even when it isn't.
00:16:41
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And so they split ways.
00:16:46
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They tear away from one another. And in this story, we see what happens.
Call for Unity
00:16:52
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Brother restless becomes his brother reckless.
00:16:58
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And brother reliable becomes brother resentful.
00:17:05
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God does not need an entire body of Christ full of brother reliables. Yes, God's house should be a house of order, but God himself says, I make all things new.
00:17:21
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And Brother Restless, he likes the newness. He likes the dynamism. He likes when things are dynamic, when things are fresh, upbeat, off the hook.
00:17:36
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But he has no real concept of stability, of creating a sure foundation in which people can get roots and establish the love of God. everything's too restless, too exciting, too different, it's very hard for people to get their feet wet and put down roots, especially when their entire lives have been filled with instability.
00:18:01
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So God looks at both, rather reliable and restless, and says, I want you to work together to make something beautiful. I'm the Father.
00:18:12
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You're made of my image. I can be reliable, i can be restless. I can be traditional, i can be modern. I can be orderly, can just be out and out exciting.
00:18:30
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But the hard part is for Brother Reliable to choose trust what God has put in Brother Restless. And for Brother Restless,
00:18:43
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to choose to trust what God has put in rather reliable.
00:18:48
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Because I think we have too many brother resentful and brother recklaces running around the body of Christ.
00:18:59
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Let's be the generation who end that tradition and instead bring together people of different walks of life, different personality types, different visions, and build something that pushes back the darkness, sees the dead come alive, sees the bound set free, sees the called equipped,
00:19:31
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sees the wayward running the path of destiny,
00:19:37
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sees the sick healed, the hopeless restored, and actually sees God bring in the fullness of the Gentiles and make the nation of Israel jealous for Jesus in our time.
00:19:52
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In Jesus' name. Amen. Peace, love, and unity, brothers.