Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Uh, I'm gonna speak to you from the sermon title this morning, Two Sons and a Father, and we're gonna be going through some familiar texts. Really what this is going to be is it's gonna be a setup for the next three weeks of sermons that we have here at Westside, uh, where we're gonna share a lot of stories and we're gonna share some really cool, um, opportunities and victories about our community here. From everything from kind of the spiritual elements and aspects to it, to the physical property and how we're gonna use our facility going forward and, uh, share some really, really cool news with you guys. So what I wanted to do before we jump into that, where we really discuss our engagement together as a community is I wanted to take a moment to slow down and to breathe into the truth of the gospel and our view of who God is.
Speaker 1 00:00:54 Uh, I don't know about you, but I've been in church for a really, really long time, and I've had several eras of my life where I think I, I get it now. I understand who God is, and then another thing happens in life changes again, and my perspective in understanding shifts and changes. Uh, and so we're trying to get grounded and rooted in who we believe Jesus is teaching us in Luke chapter 15, uh, exactly who the Father is. So I'm gonna go ahead and pray, and then we'll jump into this prologue for the next couple weeks. So, Lord, we thank you for everything that you're doing here. Thank you for your presence. We believe that you're here and among us. Um, pray that you would shift and move our hearts to you, Lord, that we would get that clear picture of who you are. We'd be inspired by it in Jesus name, and we thank you for the Seattle Mariners.
Speaker 1 00:01:44 Amen. So you're like, Oh, he is being funny. No, I'm very thankful I, to my soul, for those of you don't know, the Seattle Mariners are a baseball team, and they're my favorite baseball team, and they hadn't made the playoffs in 21 years, and they qualified for the playoffs the other night. And, uh, it was a moment for me. Uh, it was two hours of moments for me, and I was, I was watching the game with, uh, with my son and my wife. Uh, my son was laying down on the couch between Rebecca and I, and, uh, he kind of, he was trying to stay up to the end and was kind of falling asleep. And, and then this 25 year old pudgy catcher kid hits a home run and with three balls and two strikes and two outs in the ninth inning, a home run to right field. And I wept
Speaker 3 00:02:36 <laugh> and, and
Speaker 1 00:02:40 I just, I cried softly for like the next two hours and watched him celebrate. And, um, and it's funny, the older I get, the more I'm like, Why do you care about this so much? Like, I get it, I see through it, I see that it's a wooden bat and a leather ball and, um, a kid's game that grownups play and we watch on tv. Like, I get it, and it, it, the utility of baseball is nothing. There's nothing important about it. But I was thinking about this and then I was thinking about this sermon series and, um, we're gonna share, I'm gonna share to you with you from a parable that Jesus tells a story, share shares from a story and the power of each of us being able to find ourselves in story. I don't want to underestimate how important that is, and maybe it's not baseball for you, Right?
Speaker 1 00:03:29 And baseball, I see interactions with my dad and car trips to Montana where we're trying to tune in and get this, the, we're trying to get the game between Twin Falls and, you know, Eastern Montana and dad's doing everything that he can, trying to remember all the call signs and signals where they might have the game. And I'm texting my brother and I'm waking up my son as the balls going over the fence and screaming and yelling and, and we kind of tune into this larger story and community that happens around you. And I think all of us have had this experience to a degree, maybe it's not baseball, maybe it's a band or it's music or it's art, or it's a, it's a project. It's a community that you've tapped into and the utility of it in and of itself might not be worth that much.
Speaker 1 00:04:11 But how we've seen ourselves in the story and then we've viewed life from those places means so much. And what Jesus is trying to do in Luke chapter 15 is he shares a series of stories and he's encouraging his audience, which is made up of religious leaders and religious people, and the people that those religious leaders would consider sinners to be people outside of the way of God. And he identifies this audience and he begins to share a story. And he begins with two stories. One of them is about a woman who loses a coin in her house and she turns the whole thing inside out in order to find that coin. And when she finds the coin, she celebrates and rejoices. And the second is about a shepherd who loses one sheep and he goes everything he can to go and find the one sheep.
Speaker 1 00:04:55 And we finds it. He celebrates and rejoices. And that's Jesus looking at his crowd and he's saying, I bet we can all agree on this even though we have a massive wide spectrum of thoughts and experiences here. I bet we can all agree that it's awesome when you find a coin <laugh> and that it's awesome when you find your sheep and the crowd would look and go, Yeah, okay, no, I get it. I'm tracking, I understand. And then Jesus says, Okay, this story is also just as simple, but it might not come off as simple to you. And he says in Luke chapter 15, verse 11 through 32, We're gonna read all the way through the rest of the story. He says, Jesus continued. There was a man who had two sons, and the younger one said, uh, told his father, I want my share of your estate.
Speaker 1 00:05:37 And so he, he said, Father, give me my share of the estate. So he divided his property between them. And not long after that, the younger son got together with all he had and set off for a distant country where he squandered his wealth and wild living. And after he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. And so he went and he hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to the fields to feed the pigs. And he long to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. And when he came to his senses, he said, How many of my fathers hired servants have to food despair? And here I am starving to death, I'll set out, go back to my father and say to him, Father, I've sin against heaven and against you.
Speaker 1 00:06:21 I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired service. So he got up and he went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him. He was filled with compassion for him, and he ran to his son, He threw his arms around him and he kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I've syn as heaven and against you. I'm no longer worried he'll be called your son. But the father said to the servants, quick, bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, Bring the fat and calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For the son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and he's found. So they began to celebrate.
Speaker 1 00:07:00 Meanwhile, the older son was in the field, and when he came, he heard the noise. He heard music and dancing. And so he called one of the servants and asked him What was going on? Your brother's come, he replied, And your father has killed the fat and calf because he has set him, he has him back safe and sound. The older brother became angry, refused to go in. So his father went out, pleaded with him, but he answered his father, Look, all these years I've been slaving for you and I've never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a young goat so that I could celebrate with my friends. That's something we all said to our parents growing up, You never gave me a young goat so I could, but when the son of yours who squandered your property with prostitutes, he comes home and you kill the fat and calf for him.
Speaker 1 00:07:46 My son, the father said, You're always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead. He's alive again, he's lost, and now he's found, um, much of this sermon just as a, a side nose inspired by the writings and the teachings of a pastor named Tim Keller. Um, and the notes, 95% of which I took from our pastor here, Dave Daley, who is our community pastor. Um, and so this is, I just want you to understand that this is a, uh, certainly a team and group effort to bring you this word today. But what Jesus is trying to do is he's teaching these people in his final story. Remember, he gets them to agree on two simple things. It's cool when you find a coin. It's cool when you find a sheep. And now he's trying to get them to understand the heart of the Father. And what he's really trying to do at its core is redefine God for these people, redefine sin and redefine salvation for them.
Speaker 1 00:08:50 Now, at the beginning of this story, the son comes to the fathers like we read, and he says, I would like to get my inheritance now so that I can live how I want. But the deeper translation of this is a son coming to his Middle Eastern father at this time and asking for this is a lot more than just, I'd like some money to go ahead and get some drinks with my friends and live out of the country for a little while. What he's saying to the father is he's saying, I wish you were dead. You're not dying fast enough for me. And I want what you have for me right now because I don't want the father, I want the stuff that is available to me. And the audience listening to this story would've, would've heard this owner said, this father needs to kill this son. He needs to escort him from the property violently and remove him from the family. What does this son think he's doing? Who does he think that he is? Would've been outlandish to hear. This is why Jesus brings it up in the middle of the story. But what's even crazier is that Jesus is telling this story, and in it the Father looks at the son and goes, Okay, there's no way this ever would've happened at this time and in this context.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 So the Father lets him go, and then when the son makes the decision to come back, he has this incredible prepared speech. Have you ever had a prepared speech for your parents? I once ripped my brother's three stooges poster off of our wall when I was a kid playing pillows with my friends. And when it ripped, my dad heard the sound and he yelled my name and made, you know how your ears perk up when you know you're in trouble and you gotta walk 200 feet to go talk to somebody? Had that feeling. And in that 200 feet, I had created, uh, such a speech for my father that included. Uh, so dad in early Genesis, there's this thing called the original sin. And, uh, nobody's perfect dad. My dad looked at me like he escorted me violently from the premises, actually. Um, just kidding.
Speaker 1 00:11:01 He's got this prepared speech for him. I'm no longer worried he'd be called your son. But before he can get a word out of his mouth, the father is with him. He sees him from a long way off. So as Jesus is trying to redefine God, he gives a few descriptors here. First of all, for many of the people under the sound of Jesus' voice, they would've thought of God as a disciplinarian that could strike at any moment that was waiting for an opportunity, something akin to his Santa Claus. God, he sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad. Good. So for good, for goodness sake.
Speaker 1 00:11:39 And he begins to paint this different picture, this father who could have completely disassociated himself from the son as a father who's been sitting on the front porch and he's been waiting for this day, all of this time, hoping and praying that the son would come, He ignores the speech and instead of punishment or trying to get him to pay penance for what he has done and how he has embarrassed the family and shamed his father. Instead, he begins to give him all the things that he didn't even deserve when he was a son in the house. He gives him this robe and he gives him his ring.
Speaker 1 00:12:24 Now, this is crazy and a little bit scandalous to us today, but a Middle Eastern culture listening to this story again, would've heard and said, That's not what a father sounds like. And maybe even for you, you're saying, that's not what a dad sounds like to me either, which is why Father God as evidenced by Jesus is not a part of necessarily a specific part of our experience. We can't quite quantify God with our earthly parents and and Father in those experiences. We can't quite put it together with the Old Testament God that many of these Hebrews are thinking of and their experience. Instead, Jesus is trying to tell them something that is completely off the map and off the scales for anything that they've ever experienced. A God that is waiting for you, desperate to love you, hoping that you come home and receive him again even though you rejected his love in the first place. Jesus even goes to as far as say, this Father ran. Now in this culture, fathers did not run. They would have to pull up the robes, they would have to expose their legs, They would have to show effort and emotion, which was not looked upon the right way at this time. That's something that a mom would do, not a dad.
Speaker 1 00:13:43 And he runs and he throws off all of the cultural precedence and he throws his arms around his son full of compassion and he embraces him. So he redefines God for this group. And then he goes on to redefines sin. Now sin for all of us, especially because we all have at least a little bit of a narcissistic view of the world and us, the world has a tendency to revolve around us in our own minds, right? How you relate to traffic is based on how fast you need to get somewhere and how you were taught to drive.
Speaker 1 00:14:22 But this story goes beyond just the father and the prodigal son who walked away. It enters into the story of the older brother who of course is this son returns. The older son hears the music and the partying and the celebrating. And while the sin and the wild living of the one younger brother who walks away separates him from the Father, separates him geographically, it separates him by form of him saying, Look, I don't want you, I just, your stuff. We find at the end of this story that the older brother is also separated even though he never left.
Speaker 1 00:15:01 And he says, maybe something that you said before, He says, You don't understand what I've done for you. I've slaved away for you. I've never said no to anything that you've asked of me. I have been here and still you give him the things that I believe that I deserve. And what we discover in this conversation with the older brother is that he's not so dissimilar from the younger brother. While the younger brother went away and blew all of his savings on wild living, the older brother still stayed. And his motivation was not to be with the father. It was to receive the father's things. One asked for the things up front. One simply wanted the things on the other side. Neither of them wanted the father.
Speaker 1 00:15:50 And it's difficult because I think all of us who feel like we've ever been owed anything or done anything right, can identify with the older brother and Jesus constantly in the narrative of scripture ruins this I give to get idea over and over and over again. Jesus tells a parable about these workers that show up to a vineyard, and a lot of 'em show up in the morning and they work all day in the heat of the day. And sh, some of them show up 30 minutes before the end of the work day. And when all the employees come outta the vineyard, they get paid the exact same wage Jesus tells us. Or it is not a story, it's something that happened with Jesus where he is meeting with these two women, Mary, Martha, and Martha runs off to the kitchen to prepare food because Jesus has come to her house and this is important. And Mary's just sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to him, talking, asking questions, and Jesus goes, Martha, you're doing this wrong. Come and be with Mary. Come and listen to me. Sit at my feet and I'm looking at Jesus. And I'm like,
Speaker 5 00:16:44 Martha's, right.
Speaker 1 00:16:47 Come on. Somebody's got a cooker around here and you're gonna get stuff done. I showed up at the beginning of the day and it got hot, and I'm doing all this work in the vineyard, and these jokers show up, lazy, hungover, they slept in and they get paid what I'm getting paid.
Speaker 5 00:17:06 You gotta be nuts.
Speaker 1 00:17:08 And we look at 'em in this religious circle and we're like, Hmm, Yes. The story of the vineyard. Hmm, Yeah. And then in our own lives, we're going, Other people are
Speaker 5 00:17:16 Being forgiven deaths that I, nobody gave it to me like that.
Speaker 1 00:17:22 I stayed here. I slaved away. I never said no to anything. And what we've discovered is that while the badness of the younger son is separated and removed him from God, the goodness and the righteousness of the older son has removed him from the presence of the Father all the same. Then notice how the father goes to both of them. He runs to the younger son because he's waiting for him and looking out of his front porch. And when he hears that the older son has not entered into the party, leaves the party to go seek him out as well. The father cares deeply for both of these sides, for both of these perspectives and understandings. And we find ourselves in a really similar dynamic today. Everybody wants to create one side or the other. Why? Because we feel safer when we create an enemy out there, and we have a team of people in here.
Speaker 1 00:18:11 This is why the Republicans are ruining the country. This is why the Democrats are ruining the country. This is why the people that are wandering out and finding self-discovery ruining the country, this is why the traditionalists that are bigoted are ruining the country. We try to put these labels in these things on each side. And I have to tell you, the trick to understanding sin in this story is not one of them lived right and one of them lived wrong. Who ends up with the robe at the end of the story is not the one that lived right and made all the right decisions, crossed the Ts and dot the eyes. The one with the robe and the ring out at the end of the story is the one who found themselves humble and wanting to be with the Father. It's so tempting to build a resume that is compelling and say, Because of this, Jesus loves me. But what Jesus is really after at the end of this story is not the one who can show off the greatest me. It's the one who wants to be with dad, which is why this faith is not an obsession with healing. And it's not an obsession with the blessing of the Lord.
Speaker 1 00:19:30 I dunno about you, but I like blessings. I'm a good gift getter. Anytime you wanna get me anything, I will receive it so well. Oh, I'm amazing.
Speaker 6 00:19:41 <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:19:44 When sang this song in the, in the early two thousands of the church, I was kind of starting off as a worship pastor. And this song had a line in it, said, We don't want blessings, We want you. And I got so many angry emails. Oh, what do you mean we don't want the blessings? I'm cool with it. I'm fine with the blessings. In. The blessings is not an experience with salvation or the Father, which is why as we move into another era of West Side Church is being gonna be introduced to all of us in the coming weeks. We are a people that believe in prayer and healing, and we still believe that we're with the Father. Even in times, we don't get what we thought we would receive. We believe deeply in the blessings of God. We believe in trying our best in many situations to find success. But we also understand that success when it comes with this Father is not often defined by the ways of the world around us. The salvation and this goal of life cannot be measured in who checks the boxes, who lives the wildest, who lives the carefulness.
Speaker 1 00:20:59 Instead, what we're seeking out is just a being with
Speaker 6 00:21:03 God.
Speaker 1 00:21:07 Dave Daley says, this says, There may not be a clearer picture in the gospels to describe God's love for us than this encounter. By all rights, the Father could have rejected, punished, perhaps even disowned his son. We would not blame the Father for harboring resentment and deep emotional pain against his wayward son. Perhaps it is the fact that he would be justified in any anger he held in this relationship that makes his response so scandalous. He goes on Jesus' love is scandalous. He throws his arms around those who spit in his face. He runs to the repentant and doesn't wait for them to come in to come to him. And gro, he restores his sons and daughters to their full humanity and dignity regardless of the journey they've taken to return home. We're never too far gone outside of the father's love. We just wanna be with him. I think that's the magic of the parable of me with baseball. You with a musician, you with a family, a moment in time, a trip. What I've found in this ridiculous community in following a ball club is that I've found other people to be with and to share in grief and suffering and silliness and success.
Speaker 1 00:22:39 What if faith is not every moment having every perfect piece of theology dialed out and understood and written down, but instead, it's a constant journey of a group of people, a nation, a family that desperately wants to just be in the presence of the Lord? Let's pray together. Go ahead and bow your head and close your eyes and don't do this often. Wanna always remind everybody there's not like this, this magic that happens when we respond this way, but I do believe that there's something important about responding physically to something that's going on in our souls and spirits. And so I just wanna ask the question, are you someone that feels like you're that younger son? You took the inheritance, you ran away, you made it up as you went, and you found yourself completely and utterly scared and frightened and lost. Are you right there in that moment? Right now, if that's you, I want you to raise your hand in 3, 2, 1. Go ahead. If that's who you feel lost, prodigal, run. Good. Anybody else? You put it up. Put it down. Now, do you identify with the older son? I've been
Speaker 6 00:23:54 Faithful.
Speaker 1 00:23:55 I've been here and I'm disappointed. I feel like I haven't received what is owed to me. If that's you, I want you to raise your hand in 3, 2, 1. Go ahead, put it up. You can put it down. Good. I see those. You put 'em up, put 'em down. Father God, we pray for those who feel far from God. Pray that they would be reminded that the, it's the essence of the gospel is that we have found ourselves separate from you,
Speaker 6 00:24:24 But
Speaker 1 00:24:24 You are the Father that comes running to us. I pray that there would just be that, a misunderstanding of that expression of love that you run to us in these moments. You don't run away from us, you run to us and you kiss us. You love us. You show compassion. You give us clothing that doesn't belong to us, the finest of all of them, Jesus, Because we simply belong to you. And Lord, I pray for those who identify with the older brother in the room today. Your righteousness and your faithfulness has somehow created this separateness because you've discovered, Man, I don't want the Father, I just want this stuff that comes with this idea. Lord, I pray for repentance today. A a, a turning in and of itself, a desire to go into the party with all kinds of different people from all different backgrounds, understanding that we are just as love because we are a son and a daughter as well. And while we want to continue in faithfulness, I pray that our goal and mission wouldn't be some kind of Christian success, but instead it would be time spent at the table with the Father. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
