The Older Brother - Luke 15

08.17.2025 - The Older Brother

Luke 15

A while back there was a fella who had a massive project to do at his house. His wife saw some clever thing on tiktok and now he’s trying to dig a trench around his yard so she can have the garden she wants. He figures he’ll swing down to Home Depot and pick up a couple of day laborers. So he goes out EARLY in the morning and he finds a couple of guys and says, “hey, hundred bucks for a days work - will you help me dig this trench?” Two of the guys jump in the truck and the work begins. They’re making good progress, it’s around about lunchtime but the fella can see they’re going to need more workers - so he swings by again and there’s a couple more day laborers hangin out, so he asks them, “How come you’re just standing there?” And they say, “Nobody has hired us yet.” And he says, “hundred bucks for a days work, deal?” And they hop in. Gets going - the project is really starting to take shape, it looks great, the wife is excited, happy wife, happy life. But they still have a whole other side to do, and it’s getting on towards dinner already. So he swings by the parking lot where the day laborers hang out once again and sees two more fellas, they’re still looking for work and so they hop on in - they do an hour of work, really help finish the project. The trench is dug, the yard is ready, the gardening can begin. So he gets ready to send all the guys home, and they line up to receive payment. The guys who came last still have the most energy, so they jog on up and hold out their hand. The owner puts a hundred dollar bill in their hand. Now the guys at the back of the line, they’ve been working all day, they see the hundred dollar bill and they think - woah, if they’re getting a hundred bucks, what are we going to get? But then they get to the front of the line and the owner hands them a crisp $100. And they sort of look at each other and think, “is that it? That guy got a full day’s wage and we got a full day’s wage and that doesn’t seem very fair.” And so they gripe about it a bit, but the guy responds, “I’m not being unfair - we said $100 for a day, right? Are you really going to get mad because I’m being generous to this other guy?” And that’s the part when you realize that this is not a story about tiktok and home depot - but it’s actually a parable of Jesus, from Matthew chapter 20 and we nod knowingly to one another because we’ve learned something about God’s love and grace and we can go back to being happy little Christians - except NO WE DON’T! Can I give voice to what we’re all thinking? This story makes no sense! It’s NOT fair. How could the guy who worked all day POSSIBLY get the same reward, get the same payment as the guy who worked for just an hour right at the end? Deep in our guts, we know it’s not fair, right? And I want you to take that tension that you feel, that unease - where you know you’re not supposed to disagree with the teachings of Jesus, but down somewhere deep inside you know that ain’t right - and I want you to hold that tension, because we’re going to poke at it as we get into God’s word this morning. 

If you’re just joining us for the very first time this morning - I’m so excited you are here. We are in the middle of a series called Prodigal, and we have been looking at the story of the Prodigal son, one of the most famous stories Jesus ever told, and every week we are exploring the vantage point of one of the characters in the story. So we started out with the Father, and then last week we talked about what it looks like to be the younger son - the one who runs off and squanders his dad’s money. And today, we’re going to dive into the story from the vantage point of the older brother. And if I can just have a moment of transparency with you this morning - I struggled to get going when I was writing this message. I had a bit of writers block, and I think I know why - I AM the older brother. Not just metaphorically, like - Oh, I can see myself in this story. No, no, no - I AM literally the oldest in my family. I have two younger brothers and a little sister. And let me tell you, I, when I was a kid, I was the perfect embodiment of the judgy big brother. I have lived the life of the older brother. I was so good at being the rule following good-two shoes kid. Anybody else good at following rules? Where are my firstborns? See if this sounds familiar - my little brothers had completely different parents than I did. You know how it is with the first kid, you want to do a good job and so you care about stuff. The rules are a little stricter. And as parents get better at parenting, they realize which rules were silly and which rules were helpful and so the boundaries loosen a little bit. Specifically, I want to tell you about my little brother Jonathan. Jon is five years younger than me, and that guy got away with EVERYTHING. The amount of times I came back to my parents and said, “I was told the rule was THIS, that’s what the rules were for me - why isn’t it that way for HIM?” And what happened as we grew up is that I became the rule enforcer. If mom and dad aren’t going to be strict with you, you better believe that I will. Does this sound familiar? Any other big siblings become the rule enforcers? OR any of you younger siblings in the house who had a big sister or brother who really needed to chill out? And what ended up happening is that I became a real bully to my younger brother. I was a terrible big brother - we hated each other back then. It just felt like it wasn’t fair, and I was going to try and force it to be fair - and if I’m being totally honest that relationship took years to heal. We’re in a much better place now, but I’ve had to come back to him multiple times and apologize for stuff I did back then. But the cry of my heart back then, something I think many of us can resonate with, because it’s also the cry of the older brother in this story is “but it’s just not fair”...is it?

So if you want to grab your bible, we’re going to dive into Luke 15, and this morning I’ll be using the NIV translation - that’s the same one as what’s on the back wall if you’d like a physical copy. OR you can just look it up on your phone. Now by now - most of us know the story pretty good, but if it’s your first time joining us, let me catch you up. Jesus is telling a story to teach a very important lesson. And in that story there’s a Father and two sons. The younger son takes his inheritance early, goes off and wastes all his dad’s money. Then there’s a famine in the land, kiddo ends up almost starving to death so he comes to his senses and chooses to come home. He’s expecting judgment from his dad, but instead he is welcomed with open arms. Dad runs out, gives him a big hug and throws a party celebrating the lost son who has finally come home. That gets you caught up to this week, but now we’re starting Act 2, the judgy older brother. Luke 15, verse 25, [read v.25-28]. So the older brother is out working, doing what a good son does, and as he comes closer to the house - he can hear a party going on. So he grabs a servant and asks, “wait, what’s going on?” And the servant tells him, “you know the good for nothing little brother who broke your father’s heart and took half his stuff to go run off and live a life of debauchery in a far away land? We’re throwing him a party!” So the older brother is, uh - furious. And everybody in the room said, “yep - that tracks.” The older brother’s first response is anger, and it’s very relatable for us in the modern world. And it’s the really juicy kind of anger, right? This is our favorite type of anger - righteous indignation. If someone does something mean to you, you can get mad at them because they hurt you - and that’s pretty good anger. But oh man, this is the prime rib of anger - the most delicious and delectable type of anger. Righteous indignation - that’s when we get to be angry on behalf of someone else! So it’s not just anger, but you get to feel like you’re being a good person at the same time! They didn’t even do it to us - but we get to be outraged and demand satisfaction for someone else! Has anybody else noticed how angry Christians have become? And it’s not just Christians, but all over our culture - we’re mad about immigration, we’re mad about LGBT rights, we’re mad about abortion, we’re mad about Taylor Swift’s new album because somehow it’s going to mess up football this year. And so the first thing we see, and I don’t want you to miss this - when our faith is focused on issues instead of people, it becomes in-grown and angry. If we give into that, we become more defined by what we are against than what we are actually for. Think about the political parties for the last 2-3 elections. We are FAR more united by our hatred of the other side, rather than a cohesive platform. Republicans are all over the place, but they are united around hating Democrats. And Democrats cannot get their house in order - because the only thing they can agree on is hating those darn Republicans. The rallying cry of our cultural discourse has been reduced down to screaming, “the other side is worse” at the top of our lungs. And hear me on this - these issues are important, except for the Taylor Swift thing, these are important topics that we can feel passionate about, but Jesus is telling us this story about relationships, not rules. 

So we keep reading and it says, [read v.29-30]. You might remember last week when we were talking about the younger son, and how his big problem was that he wanted the things of the Father, but he didn’t actually want the Father. Dad, I want your money, I want your stuff - but I don’t want you. Here, with the older son, we see the exact same issue on the other side. The younger son wanted the stuff, without the limits. The older son was happy to live inside the limits, but he STILL just wanted the stuff. Neither brother actually wanted just the Father. And we see this ALL the time inside the modern church. It’s actually super common for people to get it all mixed up. The teaching of the gospel has always been - God loves us, God saves us, we don’t earn it, he offers it freely to us because he loves us. We call it grace, and because of that love - we respond with obedience. That’s the actual order of things - God loves first, then we obey in response. But if you’ve been in the church for a minute, if you’ve been living a life of obedience for a bit - it’s really easy to accidentally switch those up. We start to think - I obey, I do the good stuff, and that makes God love me. We slip into an earning mentality. Tim Keller puts it like this, “I go to church, I pray, I tithe, I serve - God you owe me.” Rather than obeying because we are grateful for God’s love, we start to convince ourselves that we have purchased the good things of God with our devotion. Like the older brother who turns to his dad and says, “you owe me a little party with my friends” - we, in our lives, we turn to God and say, “you owe me.” The trap that we fall into - whether we are the older or the younger brother - is wanting the things of the Father, but never actually wanting the Father. But that is not how grace has ever worked, and we’ll talk about that more in a second.

But first - It finishes up in verse 31, [read v.31-32]. Alright, now there are two super cool things I want to show you. First - I want you to see the shift in language. Look close at verse 30, the older brother is talking and he says, “this son of yours.” The way he’s describing the younger brother - it’s like he’s distancing himself from the guy. That’s YOUR son, that’s who that is. I got nothing to do with him. I’ve got a buddy who has a couple of troublemaker kids, and when he gets home from work he always knows how much trouble the kids are in by how his wife refers to them. He’ll walk in the door and if he hears, “you’ll never guess what YOUR son did today” - he knows somebody’s in trouble. It’s not MY son, or OUR son, it’s YOUR son - the language creates distance. But then, when the Father gets a chance to talk, look at the language he uses, down in verse 32, he says, “this brother of yours.” The brother is trying to separate himself with his language, and the Father is just gluing them right back together. And this shows us the next vital thing I want you guys to learn this morning - with this whole idea of grace, God calls us back into relationship. When we get that Older Brother spirit in our hearts, there is a desire to cut people out, to push them away and create distance caused by judgment. But just like the Father reeling in the older brother, God is constantly reeling us in - back into relationship. Grace prioritizes relationships OVER who is right.

Let me see if I can explain it like this. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it makes my point perfectly - so bear with me. I say this all the time with couples who are going through pre-marital counseling with me. In a relationship, you can be right…in the wrong way. Marriage is an easy example - you can be 100% right, and she is 100% wrong, you can win the fight, decimate your opponent, score all the points - and you’re still wrong. Because marriage isn’t about who wins the most fights. In the first few years of our marriage, my incredible wife Sara and I fought all the time! We were merging two very different households and figuring out how to create this new household that was our own special thing. And here’s the thing - I’m not a brilliant man, but I have a certain base level cleverness. And what I learned pretty quickly is that, when I want to, I can destroy my wife’s arguments. With my nasty statements and hurtful words, I could reduce her down to a puddle of tears on the floor that I would step over into victory if I wanted to. I knew exactly what to say and how to say it - in order to wound her the most. It’s actually pretty easy to WIN, if that’s your goal. But what Jesus is teaching us here is that in marriage, in brotherhood, in all of our connections to other people - winning is not the goal, right-relationship is. You can’t win a fight in your marriage - that’s the dumbest idea ever. Because I won a lot of fights, and she won a lot of fights - but you know who lost? Our marriage! Is this real life, please say yes. You’ve got to move the goal posts and realize that your wife is your teammate, and that made a big difference in our connection. We get to celebrate 14 years together next week. We don’t have a perfect marriage, but it’s a thousand times better than when we were still trying to win fights. The Father turns to the older son and says, “this brother of yours” - emphasizing the relationship over the rules. 

Hear it in verse 31 again, [read v.31-32]. Alright, now I’m just going to name it - this is the most important part of the message this morning. This is the absolute key teaching, and I’m worried I’m not going to be able to explain it very well - because it’s so good and it’s so important, but here we go. The Father says, “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” And what Jesus is trying to explain with this is that the relationship with the Father IS the win. In our lives we have to stop acting like the people who get to sin longer in their life are the lucky ones. But this is the core of the issue for so many of us, isn’t it? Think about this - why is the older brother mad at the younger brother? Is he mad because the younger brother got a chance to play in the pig pen and almost starve to death? No. Is he mad because the younger brother got a chance to break the father’s heart and get his inheritance early? No. He’s mad because the younger brother got to go off and be selfish, and he wants to be selfish too. The debauchery part? Where we get to go off and blow a whole bunch of money on booze and women and fine dining - man that looks like fun. For a lot of us who have an older brother spirit that we wrestle with, if we are honest with ourselves you might realize we are jealous of the younger brother’s sin. We are jealous of the attention he gets, the spotlight he has. Aw man, he got to do the thing I kind of wanted to do. What the older brother has forgotten, and what the Father is trying to remind him of is that the relationship with the Father IS the win. 

Now this is the part where it’s hard to explain. There is a God out there, who created you. And He is truly the only thing that can actually satisfy you. And if you find right relationship with your heavenly Father - truth is, it’s better than all the booze, it’s better than all the sex, it’s better than all the success and fame and money and whatever. To be at peace. To be known and loved by the one who made you - it is indescribable. But some of us still have a heart for the world. You don’t believe a word I just said. God is better than sex, psh - come on! The part that makes you a prodigal is not whether you are a rule follower or a rule breaker. The part that makes you a prodigal is whether you want God or you’re still trying to settle for something less. If you think grace is unfair because you are jealous that he got to do a little sinning and you missed your chance - then you need to shift your prayers. You are still in love with this world. If that’s you today - I have a challenge for you this week I want you to ask God, “Father please give me a heart that wants you more than anything else. Don’t give me a heart for what I want - a heart that desires this world more than anything, no - please give me a heart for what I need. A heart for you.” The relationship with the Father IS the win.

What the story of the older brother teaches us is that Grace is not fair. What we see with the way the Father comes to the Older Brother is that God’s goal was never fairness, God’s goal is you. Grace was never fair. What Jesus Christ did when he came, and died on the cross for your sin - the absolute core of our faith - none of that was FAIR. He should not have died for my sins if fair was the goal. I should not be forgiven for what I did, but by grace I have been saved through faith. And that is available to you too. We can’t be thankful that God’s goal wasn’t fairness when it comes to our lives, and then be upset that God’s goal isn’t fairness in their lives either. If God’s goal was fairness, everyone getting what they deserve, we’d all be in hell. Grace is not fair - and praise God for that!

God’s grace is not fair, and God’s grace is not limited! I don’t have a lot of time to get into it this morning - but God’s grace is not first come, first served. There’s no “while supplies last’ label on God’s love. My kids did a summer reading program through the library this year and as a reward for the piles and piles of books they read they got free tickets to a Whitecaps game. Now I’m not from West Michigan - so I’d never been to a game over there, and it was super fun. BUT as we all probably know, ballpark food is insanely expensive - but we saw a promo, it was one of the kid’s days - first 1,000 kids eat free. In a family with 5 kids, when it’s 12 bucks a hot dog - let me do the math real quick, it was going to cost roughly a billion dollars to feed my children. So we set a goal - we were going to be one of the first 1,000 kids, for SURE. So we’re rushing over there - and I don’t know if you guys remember last Sunday, but it was BLAZING hot. Like 95 degrees and full sun or something like that. So we get there, and there were PLENTY of extra seats. It was still pretty full, but there was no danger of the limited tickets running out. And I remember we got there, and we were late - but the guy who was handing out the food tickets. And he’s trying to count heads on my little mini herd, and each kid is reaching out and he just puts a bunch in my hand and goes, “whatever.” Because when you have an abundance, it should be easy to live with an open hand - and it’s the same with God’s love in our lives. Grace is not fair, and grace is not limited. It’s not going to run out if you share it with other people.

And so I have a challenge to send you out this morning. The only antidote to living with a spirit of the older brother in your heart, if you are carrying that anger, that jealousy, that pride - the only antidote is to join in the celebration. God gave us the gift of grace with relationship in mind. We were designed to celebrate in the presence of God. For so many of us in the church, we are the starving baker. We’re good at pointing others to grace, but we never enjoy it for ourselves. There are good people in so many churches who are so faithful - they go to church every week, they give, they serve and yet - at the center of their life, they don’t really KNOW the Father. They don’t enjoy God’s presence. There’s an old teaching called the Westminster Catechism and they ask the question, “What is the chief end of man?” And the answer, that the church has been teaching for hundreds of years is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” I want you this morning, to learn how to enjoy God. And if you struggle with that - ask for help: Heavenly Father, help me enjoy you more. That’s it. That’s the prayer. I don’t want my devotions to feel like homework anymore. I don’t want obedience to feel like a cage. Help me to enjoy your presence - to grow inside your grace, and realize how much fun it can be to be a child of God. Ask for help - Father, Help me take my eyes off of jealousy or pride or anger and realize that there’s a party going on in your presence. Jesus help me join the celebration.

And here’s the last thing I’m going to say - the older brother is just the worst advertisement for Christianity. When we are the starving baker. Pointing people to the good stuff without feeding ourselves - pointing people back to obedience without enjoying God’s presence ourselves, people look at our anger, our bitterness, our jealousy and go, “Why would I want to be a part of that?” But if you can learn to enjoy the presence of God, to celebrate when your heart and God’s heart line up - which floods your life with meaning and presence and satisfaction, people will look at your life and want to know more. One of our goals as a church is to see Zero Lost people. And here’s the thing - in our lives, most of us have family or friends or neighbors who tried out the Jesus thing for a while. They went to church as a kid, or even when they first got married or had little kids - and they went to church and they found an army of older brothers who stand outside of God’s party and judged them, it’s no wonder they left. The older brother is the worst advertisement for Christianity, but I wonder - I wonder if together we could create a church that knows how to join in the celebration. To welcome people back into the party of God’s unlimited grace. Who do you know who could be invited back into the presence of God - Zero Lost people?

In a minute we are going to sing the song that has really become sort of the theme song for this sermon series - Run To the Father. And we sang it last week AS the younger son. And we focused on our personal brokenness - and the things that caused us to need grace. But today I want you to sing this song as the older son. I want you to realize that even if you’ve been in the church your whole life - there is a deeper level of enjoying God’s presence available to you. You might have attended church your entire life, you know all about him - but you’ve never joined in the celebration of knowing him. Older brothers all of us - let’s run to the Father. Amen.