The Older Son | A Man Had Two Sons | Drew Ritchie

A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, I want my share of your estate now before you die. So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. A few days later, this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land. And there he wasted all his money and wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land and he began to starve. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, At home, even the hired servants have enough food to spare. And here I am, dying of hunger. I will go home to my father and say, Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming, but with love and compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His father said to the servants, Quick, bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found. Your brother is back. The older brother was angry and wouldn't go in. Your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost, but now he is found. Welcome, everyone, to the Hills Church. If we haven't had a chance to meet, my name is Drew. I'm so honored to be with all of you, and I'm so glad that you're here. Whether you're joining us in person at one of our four campuses, soon to be five campuses, shout out Weatherford, all across DFW, or whether you're joining us online, thank you so much. As you heard, we are continuing our series called A Man Had Two Sons, looking at this famous story. What I said last week is the greatest story ever told in Luke chapter 15 that we've traditionally called the parable of the prodigal son. Recently, Catherine and I, we were hanging out with some friends from church. We were at their house. They've got a bunch of kids. We've got a bunch of kids. They've got a pool, and so we're swimming and having dinner together.

And, of course, as you can imagine, all of these kids are seven and under, so it's just kind of controlled mayhem with controlled being questionable. Okay, right? It's just kind of crazy. And we're sitting there having dinner, and one of their children does something kind of crazy, and they just smile and look at each other and laugh, and then they kind of whisper to us. It's just us at the table, and they say, we kind of have an inside joke with that child. We kind of say, Yale or jail? Yale or jail? And, obviously, we got a good laugh out of that. They're joking, you know, but I've been thinking about that story because it's a lot like our parable today. We see that those two extremes of Yale and Ivy League College or jail feel like, well, it could go really good or it could go really bad. And in our story, we have those two extremes in each of these sons. Today, we are going to actually be focusing more on the older son. Last week, we saw that the younger son, he runs away from home. He wastes everything. He's reckless. He's immoral. He's self-destructive. And as you can tell, he's the jail son. But the older son, he's the one that stays home. He's the one that obeys. He does everything right, nothing wrong, and he's our Yale son. And what we're gonna see is this is the surprise that Jesus is trying to get his audience to hear. Without Jesus and without the pursuit of God, and if we don't come to our senses, both of those paths are lost. The younger son is the one that steals our attention. We're captivated by the story of the younger son. But the older son is the one that Jesus is trying to rescue in the crowd. And we're gonna see that it might be something as you're listening where you go, I might look a lot more like the older son than I thought before today. In all my years of hearing this story, the many times I've heard it, whether I've been sharing it or I've been at a Devo or a Bible study, a sermon, if someone has 30 minutes to talk about this parable, typically they spend 27 of those minutes focusing on the younger son, right? And maybe if we have time, oh yeah, by the way, there's another son in the story too. He's in there, but not a lot of attention.

And I'm here to tell you that not only do they both deserve attention, I actually want you to know that Jesus is making the older son the focus of the story. Because he is speaking to a group of Pharisees and he is trying to wake them up and to reach their heart. So let's look. But we're gonna read it again, and we're gonna do an even more in-depth look at this opening to this story. So turn in your Bibles, open it up, or follow along on the screen. Luke chapter 15, starting in verse one. Got a lot of stuff I want you to notice. Now the tax collectors and the sinners, these people, were all gathering around to hear Jesus. Please pay attention to that word, to hear Jesus. And the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, these kind of people, they muttered. Don't forget that word, muttered. This man welcomes sinners and he eats with them. Okay, so both of these words would have crucial significance to the people reading what Luke wrote here. This word, hear, the very last word from the chapter before, the very last thing we read before this verse one of chapter 15 is this. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. Anyone in Bible times who was an Israelite would have grown up their whole life, multiple times a day, saying a prayer called the Shema, where they would start, hear, O Israel.

Listen to the Lord your God. The Lord is one, the Lord alone. So this word, hear, is being associated with these people. And what's the verb being associated with the Pharisees and the teachers of the law? The word, muttered. And if you look in the Old Testament, if you read some stories in the time when Israel is in the wilderness, this word is basically code for rebellious complaining. By the way, I'm gonna maybe use that as a parent more often. They're muttering, rebellious complaining. And we see over and over, God, why did you take us out of Egypt? Oh, it was better when we were in slavery. Now we're out here in the wilderness with you, and it's terrible, and they're muttering. Notice, you're supposed to notice, that the immoral people are listening to Jesus and drawing near to him, and the religious elite are muttering and are far away. The people you would expect to be far are close, and the people you would expect to recognize God in the flesh are upset about how he's behaving. You see, Jesus is aiming not so much at the immoral outsiders with this story, but the blindness and the narrowness and the self-righteousness of the moral insiders. So our first big idea that's gonna carry us through this whole thing is that the older son

is who Jesus is focusing on, and many of us relate to the older son. If I had to take a guess, all of you listening to this story, you have had seasons of your life where you're like, I kind of have been a younger child. I've kind of been an older child. But if I had to make you pick one and say, how much of your life have you spent feeling like, I relate more to this character? I believe of all the people listening to my voice right now, if I had to make you pick, over 50% would say, I relate more to the older son. And this story is supposed to convict you. The younger son, we've seen he's just come home. He's come back to the father. The father has run to embrace him. Everyone's shocked at what's happening in the story, and the father says, let's throw a feast for this son of mine who was lost and now he's found. This is where we're gonna pick up reading our story today. In Luke 15, verse 25, the narrator says, 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's going on? I don't know how I'm supposed to read this next line because I feel like I'm not sure whether this servant is saying, your brother has come home, this is great news, or he's expecting what this brother is going,

how he's gonna react, and he says, your brother came back, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound. 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, you're supposed to get the idea that he's basically, he's not even addressing his dad, he's saying, look, you, all these years I've been slaving for you, and I never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him? Can you hear the venom in the older brother's voice? Can you see how upset he is? He's not angry because his brother came back, he's angry because his father let him. Throughout this whole story, as things have been happening, the idea is that people listening to Jesus are going, what on earth is happening? Why is this father letting this son, like, why is he giving him his inheritance? Why is this father running to the son? He should not do that. What's going on? And finally, they meet a character that they think, somebody's thinking rationally.

Somebody's reacting how you oughta react. So they finally have a character that they can relate to themselves. and yet what we see is that the character they finally relate to is outside the party and in rebellion with the father. It is so easy for us to read the story and recognize the rebellion of the younger son. He has left the father physically, literally, and morally. Yet the older son, he doesn't seem lost. He's been home the whole time. But Jesus wants us to see that the older brother is actually even further away in his heart, even if he's closer in person, because he is completely blind. We said last week that you are more lost than you think. This son is more lost than he thinks, because not only does he not know he's lost, he thinks he's very, very in the right about everything. He would have, if you had said to this older brother or to a Pharisee listening to this story, you're lost and you're in rebellion with the father, they would have been furious and offended that you suggested that idea, even though that's exactly where they are. Jesus does an amazing, he's a master storyteller where he frames this story with a pattern expecting you to see what's coming next. Like any good story, I'm thinking of kids' stories I read with my children.

They kind of set up patterns so the children know, okay, this is where we're going. And so we have these three stories from Jesus, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. And every time the pattern is something is lost, something is found, let's throw a party. There's a lost sheep that is lost going away from home and then the sheep is found, let's throw a party. There's the lost coin that's lost in the house and when the woman cleans her house and finds it, she throws a party and invites all her friends. And now we have this third story that's like a two-parter. We've got a younger son who's lost going away, like the sheep, and is found and there's a celebration. Now we've got this fourth part and the whole audience is now going, okay, I see what the pattern. We are now saying this son is lost. That would have offended the audience. We're also saying that what's even more offensive is that Jesus finishes the story and he doesn't tell us if there's a celebration. We're gonna keep reading later, but if you were to keep reading, you would see, we don't know if the older son ever comes into the party. The reason why I believe Jesus structures it like this is the audience would go, what happens to the older son? And Jesus is trying to make a point, this is our next big idea, that both forms of lostness are equally fatal,

but they are not equally dangerous. This is a big deal here. As someone who relates more to the older son, I'm terrified that the older son, we don't know if he ends up in the party. And if you were to just glance at stories in the New Testament over and over where Jesus or the author of the gospel letter puts two characters mirroring each other, we've got this religious elite and we've got this person who would be considered an outsider in some way, outsider racially or socially or gender or politically, someone who's outside. Every time those two people encounter Jesus, the one who is the outsider actually builds a relationship with Jesus, actually builds something. And the one who's the religious elite leaves upset, leaves disconnected, leaves not like the outcast. One of the harshest things that Jesus says in the Bible is in Matthew 21, 31, where he says to the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, he says, truly I tell you, the tax collectors who you hate and the prostitutes who you look down on are entering the kingdom of heaven ahead of you. That's painful. Tim Keller, he gives us this quote that summarizes the predicament of the older brother.

He says, if the elder brother had known his own heart, he would have said, I'm just as self-centered and aggrieved to my father in my own way as my brother is in his. I have no right to feel superior. Then he would have had the freedom to give his brother the same forgiveness that his father did. But elder brothers do not see themselves this way. Their anger is a prison of their own making. That's hard for me to hear as someone who relates to the older brother. And it's probably hard for many of you to hear. And I think the thing that I'm wondering is, God, I don't think I'm like this brother. I don't wanna be, but could you reveal my heart? Could you show me the ways in which I maybe do this? And so what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna look at what I'm gonna call three warning signs that you might have this condition. Three ways in which if you're not careful, you may wake up and one day say, oh man, I'm living just like this older brother, lost and not knowing it, lost in a very dangerous way. So we're gonna look. with those. By the way, I thought of this a couple days ago, so I'm gonna use it here. Does anybody remember those jokes that are like, you might be a redneck if? Does anybody remember those, right?

You might be a redneck if you mow your front yard and there's a car there, right? Okay, so this is what I'm calling the, you might be an older brother if, all right? So listen to these three things. Warning sign number one, emptiness. In verse 29, the older brother says, all these years, I've been slaving for you. Some of your translations may have softened that word and put the word serving. Slaving is the better translation. And I've never disobeyed your orders. And I want you to think, if you find yourself living this life of being a Christian, of doing the stuff that we are called to do, and it's just drudgery, if you can't stand it, oh, are we about to pray tonight? Oh my word. Do we seriously have to go serve at Renew Serve again this year? If you feel that way, that is maybe a sign of the joylessness, is maybe a sign that you're only doing it because you feel like you have to in order to fill up your self-righteousness bucket, right? So this is warning sign number one. Check your joy in what you're doing. Warning sign number two is exclusiveness. If you are exclusive about who you want to be around the table of the Lord and who you hope don't come to the table,

you might have a heart problem. In the story, we see that the entire community is having a feast. I wanna point out a word, the fattened calf phrase. Does anybody use that phrase in their everyday language? I know I don't. I don't go to places and go, I'll take the fatted calf, please. You know, I'll have that. But what this means is this word is that literally, people who had cattle would have their cows doing their thing, but they would pick one to pull it to the side and say, this cow, we are raising it up to slaughter it someday for us to have a feast. We are fattening it up, and someday, we're gonna have a party. So every morning, everyone in town who saw that cow would be like, you're gonna taste so good someday. Like, I'm just, I'm waiting for something to happen, and then we're eating you, right? And the people back then, they didn't have freezers or fridges, so it's not like, well, let's kill the cow, let's carve it up, and we'll put 95% of it in the freezer and just have enough for our family to have a party today. You couldn't preserve food like that. So the whole town would be invited, let's come and enjoy this feast.

So literally, this older son, his whole community, everyone he's known his whole life, is over there having one of the biggest parties that they're probably gonna have either that year or for years, and he refuses to go in if a party like that is gonna condone the behavior of his brother. Notice the next line, in the second half of verse 29, he says, yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. Notice his guest list of his ideal party. His guest list is me and my friends. Says nothing about the father, says nothing about his brother, says nothing about the rest of the town. He is saying with his actions, I would rather have a party with me and my buddies and goat meat than have a party with the father and my brother and the whole town with steak. This is an exclusive older brother heart. Here at the Hills, I'm so grateful that this place has a legacy of this phrase where we say mission trumps tradition. This church has a beautiful history of making changes that can be challenging for those of us who are already here in a part of this community, but we make them because we're trying to reach the people who aren't in here yet. This church for years has made decisions to say, we're gonna change our name,

we're gonna change from being one church with one campus to one church with many campuses, we're gonna change what our worship looks like, and I know it's gonna bother some people. I know it's gonna be tough for some folks, but this is one of those things that we're doing because we have to reach the people who aren't here yet. One of my biggest indicators that I've got an older brother heart is that for most of my life, if you had asked me, what percentage of what we do on Sunday should be for the people who are here or the people who are not, and I would have probably in good faith said, I don't know, probably 90% is for what we do here, you know, for us, because this is our family. These are the people we love, and I was blind because we need to make sure so much more of what we're doing is for those who aren't here, and even if it's challenging, and here's the good news, y'all, for the folks like me who think this is gonna be challenging, when we make those changes and when the prodigal sons and daughters come into our house of worship, it makes me better. It makes my worship, my relationship with Jesus even better. The older brother, if I had told him that story about what we do.

who here at the hills, he would have hated it. Because for him, it's been about a smaller table with people that look like him and act like him. And the father wants a bigger table with everyone. And he wants for all the people who have turned their hearts towards him. Hear me say this before I go to the next one. The father's table isn't open because sin doesn't matter. It's open because repentance is always welcome in the house of the Lord. Warning sign number three. And this is the one that I struggle with the most. Entitlement. This is the one where I thought, if I only had time to do one warning sign, this is the one that I would have picked. Older sons believe if I live a good life, then I'm entitled to a good life. Older sons, we struggle when things like this story happen because our paradigm and our worldview are shattered. When the father takes a child who has messed up, who didn't do the right things, has maybe done all the wrong things, when that one comes home and you kill the fatted calf for him, we resent it because we've lived our whole life believing that's ours. We deserved that. We've been doing what we have been doing because someday that party is what we deserve.

I know for a fact, because I've seen it in my own life, that older sons do not always live the good life for the sake of good things or to honor their father, but as a calculated way to control life through our performance, through our earning and our effort. I do this thing, whether I say it out loud subconsciously or not, where I say, God, if you just make sure that I have, my family's taken care of, my job goes well, you know, maybe good health stuff, like I'm not asking for much, God, then I'll do all the things you want me to do. And I won't do all the bad things that you tell me not to do. Not only that, if this is the bad stuff, I won't even do the things that are almost the bad stuff so that I make sure I don't get anywhere close to that. And God, if I do that, we'll just make this deal that you'll hold up your end and I'll hold up mine. In Jesus' name, amen. This is how I operate sometimes. That's the heart of an older brother. He wasn't serving his father because he loved his father. He was serving his father because he thought obedience obligated his father to the life he wanted. His obedience was not worship, it was leverage to get the life that he deserved. Now, hear me say this. I've said a lot, I've done a lot of toe-stepping already today, but I want you to realize that in the heart of this toe-stepping is this.

Jesus and God hate all forms of lostness. Jesus isn't like, oh, I love my younger sons, I'm gonna run to them, but older brothers, you can get out of here, I don't want you. The reason why Jesus tells this story in such a harsh way is he's hoping to do something that can break that hard shell around older brother's hearts because he wants them to come into the house. I'm reading this story, I'm preparing this sermon saying, God, please reveal my heart and please give me an antidote so that I can be, not the older brother, but someone who lets go of all that and says, I wanna come to the feast, I wanna be a part of the father's banquet. So we're gonna look at what is the answer, what is the solution for us to come into the party? And I believe the answer is, well, first, we have to see that both of these sons are a lot more similar than they are different. The younger son, he thought, you know, the way I'm gonna find a good life is I'm gonna leave home and I'm gonna decide for myself, not the father's authority, but myself, what the good life looks like, and where did he end up? He ended up a slave to a citizen of the far country. The older son, he says, I want the good life. And the way I'm gonna get the good life is I'm gonna be extra moral. I'm gonna do everything extra good so that my father owes me my inheritance.

And guess how he ended up? He ended up a slave in his father's house. Both brothers are living their life thinking more about the father's stuff and what he's gonna give them than about a relationship with the father himself. And so even though their strategy looked different, at the core, they were doing the identical thing. So therefore, if I believe that their core problem is the same, then I believe the core solution is the same for both brothers too. The way to restore a younger son heart and an older son heart is this, the pursuit of our father and coming to our senses. God is gonna pursue you and you've gotta wake up to how lost you are. In both stories, the father leaves where he is to go after each child. In the first one, he runs towards his son, which you wouldn't be, like Jewish men would not do that, and he runs towards. And the second one, the father leaves the party. A good Jewish man who's the master of the feast would not leave the party to go beg someone, hey, please come inside to the greatest thing that's happened in this town in a while. How crazy is that? You're in the midst of, I'm trying to host people, I'm trying to make this special, and I've gotta leave to go convince someone

to come inside for this? And yet the father, he goes to him and notice some of these cool parallels. The younger son, he comes with his speech and the father cuts him off. He says, stop, bring my ring, put my robe around him, this my son is back. With the older son, the father does not interrupt his speech. You almost get the sense that the father's like, all right, I'll take this because I love you. He takes it and finally you can just imagine him saying, are you done yet? Have you said everything? And then the father takes a breath and thinks, what is the thing that I could say to this son that could open up his heart? What is the thing that could maybe take this hard exterior of I've earned it, I deserve this, and say, come to the feast. Look at the father's words, the answer is there. Verse 31, my son. By the way, the younger son, three times in the story says father. The older son never once calls his dad father. And yet the father begins with my son. The father said, you are always with me. The older son twice goes, you've never done this for me. You've never done this for me. And the father responds, you are always with me. And everything I have is yours.

But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours. Earlier in the story, the older son says this son of yours. And now the father responds, this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. The answer is in what the father says to his son. Notice these three things. My child, you are always with me. Everything I have is yours. That's the answer. That's the key. Identity, presence, and inheritance. The father, he doesn't begin by speaking to his son's behavior. He begins by speaking to his identity. Both sons reveal this unbelievable truth, this amazing gospel message, which is, younger son, your unrighteousness doesn't make me love you any less. And older son, your self-righteousness doesn't make me love you anymore. This is unbelievable news, y'all, that Jesus on the cross could look at the thief on the cross next to him and the Pharisee in the crowd and to both of them say, you both have an equal opportunity to hear from the father, you are my son and I love you. Not because of everything you, all the bad you've done or all the good you've done.

Not because of all the good you haven't done and all the bad you haven't done. You are a child of God. When we come to our senses about how lost we are and about who Jesus is, he begins by saying, now this is who I see you as. This is who you really are. The second thing the father says is, you are always with me. God's presence, we can't run from it. Psalm, I think it's Psalm 139. This is off the top of my head. Where can I go from your spirit? Matthew 28, truly I will be with you always, even to the ends of the earth. More than getting the father's stuff, the father's saying, you get me. Is that enough for you? Think about what Jesus says to the thief on the cross. He says, today you will be with me in paradise. And the key word isn't paradise. The key phrase is, today you will be with me. And the third thing the father speaks is to the idea of inheritance. That all this stuff we've been doing this whole time is so that we can get what we deserve. So like, all I care about, God, is whatever this looks like, I just wanna make sure I end up with a great inheritance. And the father is saying, listen,

no matter what happens in life, the riches of the God of the universe are your inheritance. They're my inheritance. And nothing that happens, no person, no thing, will keep you from this inheritance. In 1 Peter 1, it's written, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he gave you a new birth into a hope that won't let you down, a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our Savior couldn't stay dead, so your hope isn't dead. It's alive. And into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. And this inheritance, no matter what happens in your life, it is protected, it is kept in heaven for you. My older son, Voice, hears all this and says, I wanna believe this God, but are you telling me that if I stop doing all the good stuff, if I stop doing all the things that I've heard people from the pulpit say that I'm supposed to do as a Christian, you're telling me that if I stop that, God will still love me? And the answer is yes. And if any of you feel like protesting that, you might have an older brother heart. That no matter if I'm the husband and father

that I hope to be, I'm still God's son. That no matter if my health fails me, he is always with me to the end of the age. That no matter what happens to my career and if my career amounts to anything, whether my inheritance is in money or in power or in social status, no matter what, I know that everything that is his is mine. And here's what's crazy, that when I say that, some of you might be thinking, well then why are any of us gonna keep doing anything? Like if you're telling me none of this matters, I'm not coming next Sunday. I'm not reading my Bible app tomorrow. I'm not doing that prayer before dinner. If it doesn't mean anything, you're wrong. Because the worshiping you've been doing in this house as a servant and as a slave will pale in comparison to the worship you will do as a child of God. The witnessing you've been doing in your school and in your home and in your community, because we just have to. I just have to pass out these things to invite people to Easter. The witnessing you've been doing will pale in comparison to the witnessing you will do when you believe that Jesus Christ is with you everywhere you go. And the giving and generosity, the check you've been writing, the bank account thing you've been automatically

setting up as an angry Christian, boy do I not wanna do this, but I guess I have to. So I make sure I go where I wanna go. The giving you've been doing as an angry Christian will pale in comparison to the giving and generosity of your life as someone who believes everything that's the Father's is mine. I like to jog in the mornings, that's a gift for me. It's my time with the Lord. I don't bring my phone, I don't bring any headphones or anything, it's just me and God. And it's my chance to be with Him. And at some point in that sermon, every time, or that sermon, at some point in that jog, every time, I have a point where I say, God, here's what's on my heart, here's what's weighing me down. Here's the stuff at work, here's the stuff at home, here's the stuff that's today, here's the stuff that's coming up. And what I do is I try to imagine the Father hearing me say my thing and then responding by going, do you trust me? Do you trust that I'm with you? Then I'll list the next thing and I'll say, do you trust me? And in preparation for this sermon today, I've been using the Father's words. I've been saying, you're my son, I'm always with you. Everything that I have is yours. Is that enough for you, do you trust me?

And here's the amazing thing that happens, is that usually those things that are weighing me down, those things usually haven't changed by the end of my run. The meeting is still on the agenda. The relationship that's complicated is still complicated. The thing that's a health diagnosis in our life, in our family, hasn't changed. But something has happened to me during the jog. I have remembered who I am. I have remembered who is with me. And I have remembered what I have. And when I believe that, I don't have to live like an older brother anymore. I don't have to keep score, I don't have to keep earning. I don't have to keep wondering like, well, do they deserve God's grace? Do they deserve God's grace? It just gets to flow out of me. Everyone doesn't deserve God's grace. It's a free gift for all of us that we couldn't earn. But God loved us so much that he wanted us to be with him. When that happens, I can finally walk into the party. Remember how I said earlier that Jesus purposely leaves the end of this story open-ended? I believe as the master storyteller, what Jesus is doing is he's saying, the end of this story is your decision. Are you gonna stand outside the party with your arms crossed judging the people who are in the party, thinking no good person would go to a party

with someone like that? Or are you gonna hear the Father's words, listen to who you are, that he's with you in your inheritance, and will you walk into the party? Maybe today you're a younger son, and the invitation is for you to come home. But maybe today you're an older son, and the invitation is come inside the grace and the freedom that comes from the Father. The Father is looking and watching and hoping for both his children. Because the celebration has never been about good sons and bad sons. It's always been about the Father and his love for you. There is room at the table of the Lord for everyone who comes their senses and wants the presence of the Father. Let's pray. God, you know my heart, search my heart. I don't wanna be an older brother. I don't wanna be someone who lives like that, and yet God, I say to myself, I trust that I'm your son, I trust that you're with me, I trust that everything that's yours is mine. Help me actually believe that. For the people listening in the crowd, for the people today hearing the sound of my voice who are in the same spot, open their hearts, God. Let the words sink in. God, there are people right now sitting in here

who are kind of upset because they're thinking, if this sermon is true, I don't know why I've been doing what I've been doing. God, help them to see that this is the beginning of the life that you want for them. God, we love you. There's nothing we could ever do or say, no song we could ever sing that expresses our gratefulness, that you pursue us, and that you love us whether we're lost away or whether we're lost at home. And it's in your son's name we pray, amen.