
FREE continued
The elder bother - slaving rather than serving
Luke 15 continues.
The elder brother is often overlooked but is the character that Jesus was specifically addressing. He didn’t throw everything back in his father’s face. He always toed the line and did what was expected of him so was outraged when his brother was welcomed back with a party after behaving so badly.
He didn’t understand that the father’s love and acceptance was as little to do with his good outward behavior as it was as it was with the older son’s bad outward behavior. It is nothing to do with behavior. It’s all about grace.
He had been “slaving away” day after day for the inheritance he would one day receive. But his father says, “Everything I have is yours”. He could have been enjoying everything the father had for years.
Question
Are we like this brother in that we do not know what we already have or who we already are?
The story of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
Jesus tells a parable 1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7 ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ 13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
The workers all received the same no matter how long they had been working.
The owner’s response was Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:15)
What you receive from God is nothing to do with what you do. It’s down to His generosity, His grace.
Are we “slaving” for God?
Both brothers traded in the place of grace and privilege that they had been born into and chose to walk away from their relationship with his father.
The younger brother found himself “in a distant land” with the pigs. Although the elder brother never left home physically, he is out in the fields “slaving away”. He had in effect taken the identity of a hired servant, the identity that the younger son was also expecting to have to take up.
The father’s presence alone wasn’t enough for the elder son. He preferred to strive for what the father could give him and was trying to make his father bless him by seeking to do everything right externally, but internally his heart was far away.
Jesus was showing the religious people that if they thought that outward behavior was enough to earn God’s favor, they were terribly deceived.
Question
If you are demanding to receive your inheritance from your father, even before he dies, what do you communicate to him?
But what we do is still important
What we do is nevertheless important. At the end of the age, there will be a day when what we have done will be specifically tested by God to see if it has any real value for eternity. Through the rapture (2 Thessalonians 4:13-18) we, born-again believers, will be taken into heaven and appear before the judgment seat of Christ. All faithful believers will be rewarded as 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 and 2 Corinthians 5:10 describe. There will be no condemnation (Romans 8:1).
What is important to God is not so much what we do but why we do it.
Now, watch the 19:03 minute video.
PAUSE FOR THOUGHT 2
At the end of Jesus’ story, the younger brother has been received back as a son but the elder brother continues to act like a slave.
How might their attitudes differ towards the work they do for their father?
God wants what we do for Him to be motivated purely by love. What other things can motivate us instead? If you are able, write down in the box below and then share how you have been motivated by these things.
If we realize that we have been motivated by things other than love, how can we change?
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