The Answer of God for Angry Religious People Luke 15

1. The Answer of God for Angry Religious PeopleLuke 15 • 1. The Story of a Religious Son • Luke 15:25-30 • Joy and resentment cannot co-exist • Joy and anger are opposites • A person can be and should be angry against sin, especially one’s own sin! But to be angry with people, even those who have obvious sin, will rob us of joy.

2. True Sonship becomes real when we acknowledge our religion has become duty, and we ­repent of our resentment, our judgment of others, our prejudice and our anger. Repentance is the gateway to joy.

3. 2. The Story of a Repentant Son • Luke 15:11-13 • a. Hurtful Rejection of the Father’s Values • The Son’s leaving is a heartless rejection of the home he was born in, nurtured in, and protected. • His leaving speaks of rejecting a way of living, thinking, and acting that was a sacred legacy from generation to generation • It was a betrayal of treasured values of family and community. • The ‘distant country’ is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded.

4. b. Hurtful Rejection of the Father’s Love • The Father’s voice of love is a soft voice, a voice that speaks through actions. • He provides • He protects • He nurtures • He teaches • He prays • He cares

5. In contrast, the voices of the world are loud voices: • Full of promise and very seductive • Promises success, popularity, power, freedom, but always come up empty • Rejecting the Father for the world is to lose faith in the voice that calls me “son”, or “daughter” • Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonism, and rivalries are all signs that I have left home. I have rejected unconditional love and am on a journey to a far country, or I have become an “older son” who still has the outward signs of Sonship, but inwardly have traded in my “Sonship” for empty religion. There will be no joy.

6. c. Looking for Love in the ­Wrong places. • The world’s love is full of “if’s. It is conditional. • I love you • If you are good looking • If you are slim • If you are wealthy, well educated, have a good job, have good connections • If you produce much, sell much, buy much, etc. Conditional love keeps me on the hook, trying, failing, trying again, and failing again. • Conditional love fosters addictions because it cannot satisfy the deepest cravings of the heart.

7. d. The Son Discovers His Lostness • He Remembered • His Father’s Values • His Father’s Unconditional Love • He Discovered – • The World’s conditional love • A world without love • Loneliness • Lostness

8. e. The Son Discovers Sonship • Every doctrine of salvation and growth is imbedded in the Fatherhood of God, and the Sonshipwe have in Him. • J.I. Packer says that a strong case can be made that a Christian is best described as “anyone who can truly call God his Father.”

9. f. The Son Discovers Repentance and Forgiveness • Each of the three parables in Luke 15, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, underline that repentance is the only way to joy. It is the only way back to wholeness. It is the only way to forgiveness.

10. What keeps us from repentance and forgiveness? • Self righteousness • Resentment • Anger • Judgment – Often we transfer our shortcoming to others by judging ourselves better than them. • Pride • Prejudice • Unforgiveness

11. 3. The Story of an Authentic Father • Luke 15:20b-24, 31,32 • He Re-Affirms His Son’s Sonship • He Displays Unconditional Love in Action • The Father Gives His Best • The Father Invites Joy • The Father Models Compassion • Grief  Forgiveness  Generosity  Joy