*below are pre-sermon notes not a sermon transcript

Stranger Things | Luke 15:30

 

Have you ever read anything that caught you off guard?

Something that made you stop and say:

“Whoa!”

I had a moment like that 13 days ago. 

This is what I read:

John Piper

What would happen to a congregation if a pastor, with all earnestness and gravity and love and joy, would begin his Easter sermon with all those guests present, not with a joke or a cute story, but with the words of John Donne to his congregation on Easter Sunday morning?

Whose John Donne?

He was an English poet and minister who lived in the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. 

This is what he said to the church one Easter Sunday:

John Donne

What sea could furnish my eyes with tears enough to pour out if I should think that of all this congregation, which looks me in the face now, I should not meet one at the resurrection, at the right hand of God?

What does that sound like in 2018?

What ocean could hold my tears if every single person in the church this morning that is looking at me right now was lost and damned to hell?

Nothing says “Happy Easter!” like that, right?

For about the last 75 years we have become a nation that is fixated on being amused and entertained.

From radio to TV to smartphones, we are a culture that has become addicted to a steady stream of trivial and often completely unnecessary information.

And please know I’m at the head of that table – I’m the crown prince of the Democratic Republic of Unnecessary.

My mind is jammed full of totally useless, yet, uniquely interesting facts (at least that’s what I tell my sister-in-law).

Here’s the problem – that desire for amusement has in some ways always spilled over into the life of the church.

Our love of news and information and entertainment and kitten memes seem to make our hearts hungover with enough worldliness that when we come to church it can take us 30-40 minutes to even start to engage with the danger of hell or long for the beauty and wonder of God.

John Piper

It’s almost impossible to walk into a worship service and suddenly switch off a whole lifestyle of silliness and try to become a reverent person before an all-holy God, when everything else in life has been training us to be glib, trite, and superficial.

It’s not Easter, but with a desire to stir us from glib, I ask:

Are you a stranger to the danger of Hell?

This is what Jesus said:

Mark 9:45-46

If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, [where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.]

Mark 9:47-48

If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

• “That’s why we go to Holland Avenue!”
• “They are so positive and encouraging!”

Listen, if Jesus is that clear about the terror of Hell, then this church would hate you and hate this community if we didn’t at least proclaim what Jesus says about Hell.

So, are you a stranger to the danger of Hell?

If so, we plead with you to repent and come to Jesus today. 

Or maybe, you feel pretty good about the fact that you are not a stranger to the danger of Hell.

But you might be a stranger to something else. 

What?

Let’s find out.

One day, Jesus was telling a story to a crowd of people.

It was a story about a son who went to his dad and demanded his inheritance money.

He took the money and took off and went and lived a rich, wild, immoral life.

He was so wild and so extravagant that he quickly blew through all of his money and was left broke and desperate. 

He looked around at the mess of his life and the only option he had left was to hang his head and go home.

Now, folks back home were not going to be very welcoming.

By demanding his inheritance before his father died, he:

• Dishonored his father
• Dishonored his family
• Dishonored the whole community

The folks back home were more likely to violently strike him on the head with some rocks than strike up the band and cheer his return.

A strange thing happened, though.

As he got close to the village his father ran to welcome him…he ran to him!

The man he disobeyed and dishonored and disowned ran to give him a crazy bear hug and cheer his return.

He hugged him hard and then immediately called for all of his workers to get everything together for a big party. 

There was music and dancing and a barbecue pit and potato salad and banana pudding and everyone was celebrating. 

Well, almost everyone. 

The father had another son…an older son. 

He came in from working out in the field and heard all of the commotion and didn’t know what was going on. 

Then he found out it was a party for his rude, immoral brother. 

He became angry and refused to go in the house. 

His father heard his oldest son was pouting in anger out on the front porch and went out to plead with him to come inside. 

Listen to what he said to his father:

Luke 15:29

“Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours;

 

Luke 15:29

and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends;

 

Luke 15:30

but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.”

He sounds super happy that his brother was home, right?

“Look, old man, I’ve been slaving here for you my whole life and that good-for-nothing son of yours has done nothing but dishonor our family and cause more work on me and blow your money on an extravagant life of wild sin, and now he comes home, and you throw a party?”

“You wouldn’t even let me have a goat when my friends came over to watch the Fighting Camels in the championship game!”

“For that matter, you’ve never thrown me a party at all!”

“All I got for my birthday was a Super Bass-o-Matic!”

“All I got for Christmas was that carbon steel slingshot.”

“All I got for Easter was that box of dark chocolate tilapia.”

“But in rolls that wild, wayward, immoral son of yours and bless my soul and la-tee-da, you crank up the brisket and pull out the Duke’s mayonnaise for him!”

Those last two words are where we want to point the attention of our minds.

Luke 15:30

…you killed the fattened calf for him.”

How could you do that for him?

I can’t believe you did that for him!

Have you ever said something like that?

• I can’t believe she won the pageant
• I can’t believe he got to start the game
• I can’t believe he asked her to the dance
• I can’t believe they asked him to be a supervisor
• I can’t believe she got carline mom of the year

Those all sound like classic cases of jealousy, right?

But technically they aren’t. 

You see, jealousy can actually be a good thing. 

Jerry Bridges defined jealousy like this:

Jerry Bridges

Jealousy - intolerance of rivalry

Who should have a very healthy intolerance of rivalry?

A husband and a wife.

Christina Fox

A common reason for jealousy might be if someone were to try and win your spouse’s affections. This type of jealousy is right. A husband and wife ought to protect their marriage from intruders.

Jealousy is kind of connected to something you already have.

The older brother didn’t have the fattened calf.

In his eyes, it was given to his little brother. 

So, this isn’t jealousy, it’s envy.

Envy is when we are mad or angry or unhappy that something good happened to someone else or that someone else has some kind of advantage that we don’t have. 

When the older brother says “for him” he is displaying an attitude of envy. 

Maybe he was envious that his little brother got to go live that wild life.

Maybe he had some longings to do the same thing, but he was too responsible and too moral to give in to those feelings. 

Or maybe he really was just envious over the brisket. 

Maybe he just couldn’t believe that after all the work he had done for his father that he never even got a bologna party.

And yet, after all the sin his little brother had done to his father, he got the best barbecue his father had to offer.

The older brother had envy.

But what’s the big deal?

I mean, jealousy, envy, aren’t they about the same?

And even if they are a little bit different, is envy really that bad?

Proverbs 27:4 (KJV)

Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?

The weight of envy is so strong and so deep that you will not be able to survive its impact. 

Survive?

What does that mean?

Here’s what it doesn’t mean. 

It does not mean that envy will make you die young. 

You might be pathologically envious of everyone at school or work or church or in the neighborhood and stand up all the time and live your life pretty much however you want to and make it well into your 90’s. 

But the impact of unrepentant envy will catch up with you. 

The Apostle Paul wrote to the folks at the church at Galatia and he gave them a list of the kinds of things that mark someone who is not a Christian.

Things like:

• Adultery
• Sexual immorality
• Idolatry
• Witchcraft
• Hatred
• Strife
• Murders
• Drunkenness

And in the middle of that list he also wrote the word “envying”.

And then he wrote this:

Galatians 5:21

…as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Listen, you won’t survive envy.

If the pattern of your life is to be mad or angry or unhappy when good things happen to other people, then you might be in grave danger. 

The kingdom of God may not be in your GPS.

That’s why envy is kind of a big deal. 

Remember, Jesus is telling this story about the father and his two sons to a crowd of people.

In that crowd of people were folks like the older brother. 

• Moral
• Responsible
• Respectable
• Religious

But they also had a habit of not being happy when good things happened to other people. 

Especially if something good happened to sinful people who turned from their sin.

I read a story the other day that I’m going to take a guess probably took place about 40 years ago.

And to my knowledge it more than likely involves a husband and a wife that were in a church right here in South Carolina. 

She was a faithful, Christian wife.

He was an unfaithful husband who was not a Christian.

For about two decades she suffered through his immorality with prayerful, patient faithfulness. 

She was heavily involved in her church and was there all the time and served in a lot of different ways as a volunteer.

Everyone knew what her husband was like and that just made them respect her faith and her endurance all the more.

Then something amazing happened. 

After 20 years, her husband was convicted of his sin and became broken in repentance and was saved.

He truly became a Christian.

He started going to church with his wife and the whole congregation rejoiced because they knew how lost he had been and they saw how found he had become. 

His heart was changed. 

And something happened with his wife’s heart, too.

Her heart got hard – she refused to forgive him.

In a short time, she left him and the church and eventually she completely walked away from God and abandoned Christianity.

What happened?

Lig Duncan

I wonder if all those years when she was the victim and when she was the recipient of the esteem of the congregation who appreciated her longsuffering staying with a husband,

Lig Duncan

(I wonder if) it built in her heart a sense that she had earned God's love and it seemed to her fundamentally unfair that a person like her husband should be forgiven and welcomed home like a prodigal and it was too much for her?

Lig Duncan

I don't know. I don't know her heart, but I do know this – when someone has wronged you deeply, it can be very difficult…

Difficult to what?

Lig Duncan

…difficult to see them repent and be restored and to rejoice with them because in those moments we ourselves feel like they don't deserve the grace that God has shown them…

Ever been there?

Are you there now?

You may not be a stranger to Hell.

You might be Baptist enough or Presbyterian enough or Methodist enough or religious enough to believe in Hell or at least in the concept of Hell.

But you might be a stranger to grace.

Grace is when we get what we don’t deserve.

Grace is when God shows mercy and patience instead of carrying out the just and right penalty we deserve for rebelling against him and his truth.

Just like some of the people in the crowd that day that Jesus was teaching and just like the older brother, that wife was a stranger to grace.

Does that mean that her pain and her hurt didn’t matter?

No.

It just means that like the older brother she didn’t realize that she too was a prodigal. 

You don’t have to live a wild life to be a prodigal.

Last week I rode by the spot where God saved me.

Not everyone can remember the date and the time and the place where they were saved and that’s okay. 

I just happen to remember the road I was walking on and where I stopped dead in my tracks as an 11-year-old and begged God to save me.

I was a pretty good kid who went to church and went to Mission Friends and RA’s and sang in the children’s choirs and my dad had been a deacon and my mom was a Sunday School teacher and my brother-in-law was in seminary and I thought I was a Christian, but I was a stranger to grace. 

And God, in his rich and abundant mercy, helped me see that I was a good, church-going prodigal, dead in my sin, but thinking I was okay. 

After that afternoon, though, I was no longer a stranger to grace.

Why?

Because I no longer had any reason to sit out on the front porch and be angry because I didn’t get my way.

By grace, I was adopted into the family of God and immediately I had a reason to never be envious again. 

Why?

The math of my life had changed forever.

This is what the Apostle Paul wrote to the folks at the church in Philippi:

Philippians 3:8

I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…

If you are a believer, what can anyone have that you truly envy?

• Is a prom date better than Jesus?
• Is a promotion better than Jesus?
• Is a new car better than Jesus?
• Is a new job better than Jesus?
• Is the latest smartphone better than Jesus?
• Is the latest concert tour better than Jesus?
• Is a clean bill of health better than Jesus?
• Is a clean path to retirement better than Jesus?

If you are a believer, you will not get what you deserve!

Why?

Because of Jesus!

That is grace!

Great, amazing, astounding, incredible grace!

If you have the grace of Jesus, there is absolutely nothing in the world that you should ever envy!

You have the greatest treasure in the universe!

The older brother sat out on the porch pouting in anger because his heart was full of envy. 

He was a stranger to grace. 

Philip Yancey writes about a conference that was once held in Britain on comparative religions.

Experts around the world were debating about different religions and they got to Christianity and started asking if there was anything unique about Christianity. 

Incarnation?

No, other religions claimed gods that appeared in human form.

Resurrection?

No, other religions had claims of people returning from death.

At one point during the debate, C.S. Lewis wandered into the room and asked what all of the ruckus about. 

When they told him they were looking for the unique contribution of Christianity among world religions, Lewis responded:

C.S. Lewis

Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.

Philip Yancey

The notion of God's love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity.

Philip Yancey

The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and the Muslim code of law – each of these offers a way to earn approval.

Philip Yancey

Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional.

And that unconditional love comes only in and through Jesus Christ.

I came across a quote from a woman about ten years ago.

I’ve never found out who she was, but this is what she said:

Unknown Woman

Years ago, I stopped looking to anyone but God to satisfy me.  There is no man that can love me enough, no child that can need me enough, no job that can pay me enough, and no experience that can satisfy me enough!  Only Jesus!

Only Jesus!

Dow Welsh | August 19, 2018 © Holland Avenue Baptist Church

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Above are pre-sermon manuscript notes, not sermon transcript

Sermon scriptures NASB unless otherwise noted

Lots of help from many pastors and theologians

Weekly help from Bruce Hurt at http://www.preceptaustin.org/

https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/three-threats-to-the-joy-of-this-generation

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-cure-for-our-envy