Party On!

Luke 15:25-32 (The Parable of the Prodigal Son)
 ²⁵ “Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷ ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’
   ²⁸ “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹ But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰ But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
   ³¹ “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
 Today we are going to focus on the older son. The older brother is angry and jealous; angry at his father and jealous of his brother. He tells his father that he should be the one who gets the party because he has fully obeyed his fathers commandments. Parables have deeper meanings than what is on the surface so we have to dig for a while till we can fully comprehend what Jesus is getting at. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is about a family; the family of God (and in case you didn't know it we are all a part of the family of God). The father is obviously God and we are the brothers. The question we need to ask ourselves is "which brother are we?" Are we the brother that messes up and comes home or are we the brother that is jealous because we didn't get a party in our honor? After thinking about it for a while I came up with the following answer; everyone is the brother who runs away and many people after being home for a while morph into the second brother. I'm sure you have all seen this happen before. Someone is saved and they start judging everyone who isn't saved and sometimes they even judge the saved because they are different. Many people become saved and then walk away from God and from the Church. Many of these people say that the Church hurt them; well that isn't exactly true. A church is made up of people and people are the ones who do the hurting by being self-righteous. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he says, “The righteousness from God come’s through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.” What Paul is saying is that we are saved by faith and not by our actions and the in God’s eyes we are all the same.
    Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia was about self-righteous Christians. He tells the people that “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were  baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one Christ Jesus.
    In Ephesians we read about how we are to love one another, “Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” In I John we read more about this love that we are to have for one another, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another God lives in us and his love is made complete in us…we love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, he cannot love God who he has seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
    No matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey God loves us all the same; and there is nothing that will ever change that. At some point in our life we all run away and then we  arrive home and are given a party. The question we have to ask our selves is; “After we come home and are working in the fields following our Father’s directions do we go to the party for our brother who has returned or do we stay in the field pouting.”
  
PARTY ON! Go in PEACE! Live PEACE! Be PEACE!