Becoming Like Your Dad

To what would it look for you to take a step today toward God? Toward him? Toward the father? We can't get to the second part of the sermon unless you do some of this stuff, this work. Unless you begin to deal with your fear. Because over and over in this parable, we've seen the heart of the father. He means nothing but for good for younger brothers and nothing but for good for older brothers. And whether you're on the younger brother stage or the older brother stage, his invitation is take a step this morning. Take a step out of your fear toward the father.

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We're going to turn our attention to God's word. We are again this week for the last time in Luke chapter 15. I know I told you early on in this series, I've never preached on the prodigal son story and now this is Sunday number five. I promise this is the last one of this series but we're going to be in Luke 15. We're going to read together out loud verses one and two and then skip down to verses 11 through 32. If you'll join your voices with mine.

Now, the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him and the Pharisees and the scribes murmured saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.' And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country. And there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he had come to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish with hunger? I will rise and go to my father and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fatted calf and kill it. For this and be merry. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.' And they began to make merry. Now his elder son was in the field and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has received him safe and sound.' But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him. But he answered his father, 'Lo, these many years I have served you and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a kid that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf.' And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad. For this, your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.'" — Luke 15:1-2, 11-32

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You ever seen the insurance ad that's in a lot of sports events right now featuring Doctor Rick? I have a picture of Doctor Rick. We'll put them up here. Doctor Rick is a self-proclaimed parental life coach who appears to have all these sketches and scenarios trying to help people not to turn into their parents. So the sort of shtick is, he shows up in scenes where young people are beginning to be overly critical of other guests at a party or overly checking how off over and over again the weather forecasts, and he cautions them.

You're turning into your parents—and here's the tagline: our insurance company can't save you from becoming your parents, but we can save you money in Bumble Home and Auto Insurance with us. Now, I love this commercial. I think it's very effective. I love Doctor Rick. And today, as we turn to this story which is maybe the most famous of Jesus's parables, I think that this Doctor Rick actually plays really well because the theme of my sermon for this morning is becoming like your dad. Becoming like the father.

And while becoming like your earthly dad is probably nobody's goal here and maybe your worst fear like mine, becoming like your heavenly father—that's the goal of discipleship. That's the aim of the spiritual journey. That's what we are to desire and long for: that we would become more and more like our heavenly father. This is the goal. This is what we're about.

And there's a passage where Jesus says these words that sound really overwhelming and daunting:

Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

I know for many people that can sound defeating. It can sound way too much. But Jesus is holding this up for us. This is the goal, that you would become more and more like your heavenly father.

Now I know there's a common way that this parable is taught. This parable is understood, where you ask the question: which brother are you? Are you an older brother or a younger brother? We sort of look at them as almost like two personalities or two ways that people get lost. There's a moralistic older brother. There's a hedonistic younger brother. Both of them are invited to come back home. And the way that the story is taught, we also get to choose another option—you're sort of a combination of the two.

But I want to take a different tack with this morning because I don't think the sons are the main point of this parable. I think the father is the main point of this parable.

There's a book by the late Henry Nouwen called Return of the Prodigal Son. He considers the painting by Rembrandt, and as he considers the painting, his book is about looking both at the parable and the painting back and forth. He says if you notice this: Rembrandt is doing something with the light. He's making the main point of the story the brightest figure in the scene. It's the father—and particularly, the light shines on the father's hands. We're going to talk a lot about the father's hands this morning because he's the main point.

And so the main thing I want to give to you this morning is: becoming like your dad. And we're going to look at this in two parts. There are two journeys that I think you need to take if you're going to become like your heavenly father. One is a fear journey and the other is a compassion journey. And both of them have the same stops on the journey: the younger son, the older son, the father. The younger son, the older son, the father.

The Fear Journey

So let's look at this together. First, with the fear journey. Now, if you study the Bible, you'll know that fear of God is used both in a good way and in a bad way. There's a good kind of fear of God. There's a bad kind of fear of God. One theologian describes those as servile fear—that's the bad kind. The other as filial fear. But let me just describe them as good and bad.

So the good kind of fear is a feeling of awe, of respect, of God is holy, holy, holy. Of a sense of profound worship. God is beyond my comprehension, beyond all wisdom, beyond all knowing, beyond all goodness. He is the end of everything. He is the ultimate. And there's this right sense of awe and worship. So Isaiah, when he sees—he's brought into the throne room of God in heaven and he sees even just the bottom of God's robe and he says:

Woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among the people of unclean lips.

And that's the right kind of fear. That's an awe and a reverence of God.

But if I say "a fear of God" or "being afraid of God," that's not what people think of for the most part. They don't think of awe and reverence and worship. They think of being afraid. Servile fear. The fear of somebody who's going to bring you harm. The fear of somebody who's evil, who's going to hurt you. This is the fear of a prisoner about to go to the rack. This is the fear of an evil person about to bring violence upon you. It's a fear of punishment.

Over and over the Bible, God has to tell people not to fear. From Hagar to Moses, the shepherds that come to worship Jesus—all of them over and over again told, "Do not fear." In fact, this command is so repeated in the Bible—there are 365 times that people are told "do not fear."

You could take a study for an entire year if you struggle with fear, and just do a study on every one of those passages. There's a bad kind of fear—being afraid of God. People are invited: do not fear. And then there's a good kind of fear. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Here's the first stage of the journey, the fear journey. This is the younger brother version of this: to move from the bad kind of fear of God to the good kind of fear of God. This is what the younger son does. He grows up in his understanding of who God is. He's afraid that the Father is not good, not for him. He says, "Give me what you can give me now. Give me my inheritance now, and goodbye. I don't want to be around you."

Of course, in the story, he begins to realize there's something different about the Father when the Father runs out to embrace him. Rembrandt's painting is really helpful here because the Father's hands are down upon the son's shoulders. They aren't like this—He's not going to backhand the boy. They're not like this in a fist. His hands don't betray any anger. They show embrace.

This is the journey that everybody has to make in coming to God. Everyone has to make this journey in some way—coming to know God and trust God—moving from fear of God, fear of punishment, to understanding the embrace of God. That God is worthy of your worship.

What's helpful for this, there's a passage in First John 4 where it tells us this:

Perfect love casts out all fear because fear has to do with punishment — 1 John 4

If you're new to church and I talk about fear of God, you're like, "Yes, I know exactly what that is right now." The invitation for you is to make this journey, to meditate on the cross of Jesus. The cross of Jesus is the place where punishment—God's justice for sin—and His great love for sinners come together. This is where justice and mercy meet together at the cross.

By meditating on the cross, we come to understand: we don't need to be afraid of God. We're invited to know Him and experience His embrace in a different way than we've ever experienced before or imagined before—like the younger brother in this passage. Turn to Him and worship. This is the journey every person has to walk through to come to know God.

We sing this song regularly in our church—the song of those who've gone from fear of God, the bad kind, to fear of God, the good kind:

I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean. Oh, how marvelous! Oh, how wonderful! And my song will ever be: Oh, how marvelous! Oh, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me.

That's the journey of fear for younger brothers. But there's another part of that journey, and I think this is where many of us are this morning. There's the journey of fear for older brothers too. Because if your fear journey stops there, you get kind of stuck on the journey.

The Molasses Swamp

Anybody played Candyland? Remember playing Candy Land? We have a picture of this up here. I played Candy Land a lot with little people. Candy Land is that game that has Princess Lolly and Queen Frostine and the journey, and it requires zero skill except perhaps cheating—cheating either to win and get the game over with or cheating because you've got a three-year-old and they have to win. So you've got to figure this out.

But one of the things I've noticed: there's a part of the journey in Candyland called the Molasses Swamp. Now, I understand in newer versions of Candyland, this has been changed. In my day, it was the Molasses Swamp. You got stuck in the Molasses Swamp if you landed there, and you lose a turn.

Well, there's a Christian version of the Molasses Swamp that a lot of Christians end up in. It goes like this: You come to faith. You're a younger brother. You realize how great God's mercy and grace is for you. You move from fear of God—the bad kind—to fear of God—the good kind. You worship. But over time, over time, that awe and reverence loses a little something. It loses a little polish, loses a little excitement. That sense of joy that you had—like, "Yes, this is what it means to follow God"—kind of wanes because you begin to look around. You begin to look around and do the math. You look around at the lives of other people around you and you compare yourself. And you're like, "This isn't working out like I thought it was. This isn't as good as I thought it was. I don't feel God. I thought I was going to feel more. I thought this was going to be really amazing, and I'm kind of bored, and I'm struggling."

And we begin to move to a view of God that's more like karma than it is Jesus. You know what karma is?

Karma is that belief that if you do good things, good things will happen. If you do bad things, bad things will happen. I talk to Christians regularly here like, "I'm kind of looking over my shoulder all the time. A lot of good things are happening, but I know it's just going to fall apart soon. The shoe's going to drop. It can't keep going like this." Or you look around and you're like, "I've done all the things," and you're like the older brother in the store, and you're like, "God, isn't he giving me the stuff that I thought he would be giving me at this point in my spiritual life? I've done all the things for him. Haven't I slayed for you? Haven't I done all the things for you?" And you're stuck in the molasses swamp of karma.

This is where so many people end up—like the older brother in the story, stuck in the molasses swamp outside the party. He won't come in because he's done the math. "You didn't give me a little baby goat to eat with my friends." I know it's enticing for many of you. You're like, "That's exactly what I've been wanting from God." But we're doing the math and we get stuck in this view of God that's very much like karma. It has nothing to do with what you know of the God of the Bible, but let's be honest, we're doing this. Where is God? What happened?

From Karma to the Potter

There's an invitation for the journey for older brothers, because this is also a hard one. It is to move away from a karma view of God and embrace another image that the Bible has over and over for what God is really up to in your life, and that is the image of a potter. One who's taking clay and molding it and making something out of it.

If you've watched someone work clay, you know that it's not a very comfortable experience for the clay. I remember our son doing this in our house, taking clay and throwing it hard on the floor over and over to get the air bubbles out of it, pounding the clay. Then the potter takes the clay and sets it on a wheel and begins to knead it, and it's violent and it's rough. They turn the wheel on, the wheel begins moving, and it's shaping. Then they pull out instruments of torture and cuts the clay and shapes it with sharp objects. Then sticks it in fire. None of this is pleasant for clay, but clay can't imagine becoming a porcelain vase. But the difference between a lump of clay and a porcelain vase is a world apart.

This is what God is doing in your life. This is the invitation for you, for older brothers who are stuck in the molasses swamp of karma: to embrace that the hands that embraced you when you came to Christ are the same hands that are shaping you. And they're still good hands. And the heart behind them means nothing but for your good and your growth and you becoming more of what God has intended for your life to be.

You're like, "I'd rather stay a lump of clay. Thank you very much." But God's like, "I've got big plans for your life. I'm shaping you into something you can't imagine, and it's going to be long and it's going to be worth it."

But for you to go on this journey means that you have to be willing to give up your view of karma and trust that there's something else going on.

I can tell when they're mature Christians. We have these verses that Christians love to share. Romans 8:28:

He's working out all things for my good. — Romans 8:28

Philippians 1:

He who began a good work, he started the work, he will take it to completion in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 1:6

Mature Christians are like, "Yeah." But I can tell when people are stuck in karma swamp because they laugh. They scoff under their breath. "Really? You have no idea." And it hurts me for them because I'm like, "You're so stuck. You're stuck." And there's an invitation God has for you to something much more profound—to move past being a younger brother, to move past being an older brother, and moving toward the Father and embracing maturity and becoming more like him.

An Honest Question

Honest question for each of you today. Where are you? Where are you on the fear journey with God? Are you a younger brother who needs to take a step this morning from being afraid of God to moving toward awe, to meditating on the cross, to really understanding what this is that we talk about every week as we talk about coming to know him and living for him and discipleship? Are you an older brother who right now is kind of jaded and cynical on the journey? You've been doing this a long time. You're not very impressed. You're looking over your shoulder.

To what would it look for you to take a step today toward God? Toward him, toward the Father?

We can't get to the second part of the sermon unless you do some of this stuff, this work. Unless you begin to deal with your fear because over and over in this parable, we've seen the heart of the Father.

He means nothing but good for younger brothers and nothing but good for older brothers, and whether you're on the younger brother stage or the older brother stage, his invitation is: take a step this morning. Take a step out of your fear toward the father.

A Journey of Compassion

Second part of this is a journey of compassion. A journey of compassion. It's so easy to read this parable and identify with one of the two sons and say, personality-wise or story-wise, I'm more like one or the other. But how does it feel to say this this morning? I want to be like the father. Can we try that out together? Let's say it together: I wanna be like the father. I want to be like the father.

Does that feel weird to you? Do I wanna be like the father? Do I not just wanna be forgiven but to be a forgiver? Not just to be someone who's welcomed home but someone who welcomes other people home? Not just a person who receives compassion but gives compassion to other people. This is the invitation.

One of the most radical statements Jesus ever made:

Be merciful as your father is merciful. — Luke 6

Another translation says, "Be compassionate as your father is compassionate," and we saw that in this parable. The father, filled with compassion, runs. Compassion, no matter what some current preachers say, is a very biblical value for the people of God.

The journey of compassion has two parts, corresponding to younger son and older son, younger brother and older brother.

Compassion Toward Younger Brothers

What does the father do in welcoming the younger son? Notably for our application for today, he celebrates and he clothes the younger son. He celebrates the son's return. He celebrates the younger son's return and he clothes him.

Now, why does he clothe him? Rembrandt's painting doesn't show this, but there are a lot of scholars who think that the younger son returned home practically naked in rags. And as he comes home, the father puts clothes on him because he is unclothed. In doing so, he is covering his shame outwardly. There's shame in the younger son's return. There's shame in what he's done to his family. There's shame at who he has become, and it's public. This is a small village. Everybody sees. Everybody knows. So he is putting the covering over the son, and not only does he cover his shame on the outside, he does it on the inside too.

One of the things that the father tells his servants to bring is a ring. As I went over this a couple Sundays ago, it's not just jewelry. It's the family signet ring. This is the pin code to the family bank accounts, and it's public. He puts buying power back on the son's hand because slaves don't have the family signet ring—only sons do. In doing so, the father is saying in front of all the village: son, beloved son.

For us to be people who will move toward younger brothers in compassion, we have to do those same two things: celebrate and also cover shame. Be people who are willing to cover shame.

How do you do that? People can tell when you are moving toward them in pity or as a project. Have you ever felt that from somebody? You don't really mean good toward me. You're treating me as a pity or a project. The level that people's spidey sense for genuineness is really high in that. So how do we become people who are truly compassionate and not pretend compassionate toward younger brothers—where it's really genuine?

Again, just like with the fear journey for the younger son, we have to become people who meditate on the cross. One of the ways you know that you are maturing as a Christian is that you see your sin goes a lot deeper than you thought it did in years before. You understand that the sinful things that I do just don't come out of nowhere. There's a whole network beneath the ground of all kinds of motivations that I'm not proud of, attitudes I'm not proud of. My heart sin issues go way deeper than I ever thought before.

One of the ways you know that you're growing as a Christian is that you begin to see: I need the blood of Jesus to pay for a lot more than I originally thought. You may even feel like, "Man, am I getting worse? There's just a lot more that needs to be covered for. There's a lot more that needs to be confessed." You begin to understand your heart is like a highly resistant strain of bacteria toward Jesus.

One of the things I've noticed in our church services, and I'm guilty of this—so I'm not calling out Brian this morning—leading in the liturgy, one of the tendencies we all have in leading liturgy is to move too quickly through confession toward assurance. Nobody wants to stay there. Who wants to stay at confession time? Anybody just love confession time?

A lot of us don't like feeling bad about things, and I think there's an unconscious thing in all of us that wants to move past confession to assurance. It's right though for us to stay there, to pause, to really be reflective, to really think about who we are deep down, and not just run quickly to assurance. We're not doing that to beat ourselves up, to self-flagellate, to hate ourselves. We're doing that because we have the greatest savior, and the cross is that big. If you want to become a person who's truly compassionate toward younger brothers—not pitying them, not projecting onto them—you have to become a person who knows the cross intimately and loves confession. You have to understand: yes, Jesus even paid for this. This is how you become a person who, like Jesus, welcomes sinners and eats with them.

Confronting Self-Righteousness

There's another part of that journey—the journey of compassion for older brothers. This one's much harder. It's not covering shame. It's not celebrating a return home. It is confronting self-righteousness and inviting them to the party.

Remember, what was the older brother's problem? It wasn't his badness that kept him outside the party. It was his goodness. It wasn't his rebellion or bad things that he'd done. It was his goodness, his self-righteousness, his smugness. How can you love a boy like that, Dad? That's what kept him outside. It is really hard to confront self-righteousness, but it is so loving for Christians to gently confront one another in our self-righteousness.

This is how I came to faith, incidentally. I was in high school. I was raised in a church where I heard some teaching, but particularly in the youth group, some good teaching about Jesus. But it was a friend of mine—actually, Nick Grebar's aunt, who Nick's here this morning—she shared with me her conversion to Christ. She'd gone to college, gone to Furman, and she'd heard the gospel and come back and shared with me her testimony: that her own goodness wasn't good enough.

I was like her. I was a very good kid. I did all the right things. I obeyed the rules. I looked down on other people. I was very smug. I was quietly judgmental and self-satisfied as a teenager. One guy in our church told me he probably would have beaten me up if we'd met in high school. But it wouldn't have been very effective because my problem was on the inside.

It took a friend coming to me and saying, "Why would you think that you need a savior?"—and my inability to answer that question. I had no answer. I didn't need anything. I was good. And here was the invitation that she gave me: an invitation to the party. Come and taste and see what life is like when you don't have to manufacture righteousness anymore. You can trust in God's goodness and Jesus' righteousness for you.

Our city is filled with older brothers. Man, this city—Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham—filled with older brothers. A lot of people who know a lot of things about God, have a little God sprinkled on top of their life, know all the answers to some of the stories, and yet are in need of gentle confrontation because they don't really know what it means to trust in the goodness that's credited to us by Jesus. They're manufacturing their own.

It is so much harder to see past your goodness than it is to see past your badness to Jesus. But here's how you cultivate compassion for older brothers: you've got to identify the insufficiency of your own righteousness, your own goodness. You've got to recognize that you have the same tendencies in you to being judgey and smug and self-righteous and looking down on other people. You must recognize that your own righteousness, your own goodness doesn't earn you a thing with God. It doesn't make you any better in any way—anything that matters. It's a kind of fudging of the record. It's kind of pretending.

We know that we're growing in this. We begin to grow not in understanding our sinfulness—like with the younger brother—but God's holiness. We begin to see: God is so much bigger than I thought. He is so much more holy. His law is so much more gigantic. What I need from him, what I need to be credited to my account is not just forgiveness for my sin, but I need all of Jesus' righteousness given to me. And that's what the cross gives us.

Jesus both cancels the code of the law against us in his death on the cross, forgiving our sin, and he credits to us all of his goodness—all the ways that he obeyed the Father, all the ways he was right before the Father. All of that is credited to you. And there's nothing you can do to add to that, and there's nothing you can do to take away from that. And it's only by meditating on that that you're going to be something other than self-righteous to self-righteous people.

You ever felt that before? Self-righteous, smug about people who are smug? Judgey about people who are judgey? Self-righteous about people who are self-righteous?

Only when you see this in your own life can you truly love older brother types? And man, we need to be really honest—the city of Raleigh needs people who love older brother types. And it's really hard. But for us to love older brothers means we have to identify the spirit of the older brother in us—our own self-righteousness, our own goodness that gets in the way.

So this morning, who is God calling you to love? In your compassion journey, are you being called right now to people that God's put in your life? Younger brothers? Older brothers? I guarantee God's put people across your path for you to love. He does it all the time. We're surrounded by them. But how will you take a step?

Becoming Like Your Father

This morning, I want to be the anti-Doctor Rick. So going back to Doctor Rick at the beginning—you know, when you were a kid, did you ever hear statements like this? "Must be so-and-so's daughter. You look just like her." Or in my family, we have all six boys, so our boys have regularly heard, "Are you a Bradford?" The Bradfords kind of resemble each other. They begin to look the same over time. "You have your grandma's eyes." There's a family resemblance that other people identify in you.

Now, as a kid, I'll be honest, I hated this. People told me I looked like my mom and I'm like, "I don't wanna look like my mom. I wanna look like a dude." I'm not sure kids actually love being told they look like their family, but the goal of our Christian life is that you would become more and more identified with the family resemblance of your heavenly Father. You would look more and more like God. More and more, you becoming like the Father.

But here's my question: just like I didn't want to look like my mama, do you want that? I mean, let's be honest. Do you want to be more like the Father? Really? Because how you answer that question tells me a lot about you. Do you love Him? Do you know His embrace? Do you trust that the Potter with the wheel and His hands on you is shaping your life into something glorious? Or are you not so sure?

I want to invite you today to take a step on the faith road and on the compassion road. For some of you, on the faith road, that's going to mean moving away from being stuck in karma views of God or thinking that God's out to get you—making steps away from your immature views of who God is to embracing the Father as He was really revealed in the passage. His hands on your shoulders. The hands of the Father.

On the compassion journey, God's putting people in your life to love. How will you move toward them? In pity, in self-righteousness? Today, instead of finishing the sermon with a little pithy story and me closing in prayer, I'm going to invite you to close in prayer.

Would you close your eyes with me? Your Father is inviting you to take a step this morning on the faith journey and on the compassion journey. What's the step that you need to make this morning? Would you talk to Him about that?

Father, would you help us to want to be more like You? In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's respond to God's Word in song together. Would you stand?

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Thank you for listening to today's sermon. If you have questions about our content or if you want to engage more deeply with our church, visit our website at ctkrally.org. This has been Christ the King Sermons, a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church located in Raleigh, North Carolina. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.