Sermon Cloud

    I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to you again on how the Gospel relates to counseling.  Just a quick update on the ministry: Lately, in addition to regular counseling at the church office for both our church and some referrals from other churches, I've been doing some counseling training with the leaders and some of you, and we hope to do more as God allows.  Also I wanted to put out another plug (and you can see this on our counseling website) that if you have interest in becoming part of a particular support group-such as grief support, struggles with substance abuse,  perhaps post-abortion or  sexual identity issues,  etc., please let me know or send me an e-mail and we'll see what we can do to get one started.  (I say this knowing that in many cases the missional groups will fill many of those needs as well through close, supportive relationships and as we learn and grow in love for one another...)
    Now before we begin today I'd like to ask you a question, and it is this: "What is it in your life that brings you a sense of wonder, of delight, and surprise?"  
    Like many of you, my family loves movies, partly because movies are a great vehicle for surprise, aren't they?  (Unless you happen to be out with my wife, who leaned over to me in the theater about fifteen minutes into The Sixth Sense and whispered, "He's a ghost, he's not really alive..." and I was surprised and whispered back, "Do you think so?"  And of course I didn't need to ask, because I know she's always right-she pretty much guesses the end of every movie we see, usually in the first five minutes (its some kind of unique spiritual gift).  And sure enough,  I could have left for popcorn right there and just sat in the lobby!
    Or how about the movie The Forgotten? To me, that movie was all about surprise, as you see people suddenly yanked out of their shoes up into the clouds (you think its some kind of weird rapture film but its not), cars crashing into you from out of nowhere, and at the end, the surprise which I loved -that the mother in the film (played by Julianne Moore) could not forget the baby in her womb.
    And I couldn't help but think of Isaiah where God asks us that very question - "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast?"  And there God surprises us with this beautiful Gospel picture: "Though she may forget - I will not forget you-see I have engraved you on the palms of my hands!"  Isn't that beautiful and encouraging?
    Or just think of  the range of human emotions in our interpersonal relationships - they often reveal surprising, or as one writer calls them, "apocalyptic moments"  (which, by the way, aren't scenes from the Left Behind books, but rather moments of revealing, where we see something of God breaking through in everyday life.)  Do you ever have any of those?  It may be a friend's laugh that is contagious, or a joke or funniest home video that catches you off guard, or maybe even a tear rolling down a cheek.  Some people's lives have been changed by things as simple yet profound as this.
    The great writer CS Lewis said that it was joy that caught him by surprise, and it awakened his heart to the possibility of love and imagining new worlds.  He went on, as you know, to imagine a world where children enter a land where a Lion rules, and then dies to rescue an enemy, in order to make him a friend.
    Well my main point today as we think of surprising stories is to hopefully show you how Jesus uses "the surprise of grace" to overwhelm our hearts in his love, and further to actually help us become better lovers and counselors of one another in the church.  You may remember that the last time I spoke to you on a vision for Gospel-centered counseling in the church and in the world, I mentioned how God loves to use our brokenness and weakness to shine his grace into each other's lives.  And today I want to continue in the same vein and hopefully get more specific as to how we are called to counsel one another in the family of Christ.  For Scripture calls us to teach and admonish and encourage each other with the Gospel, which is basically what counseling is,  and that we'll not just settle for the goal of peace in our relationships, but pursue the goal that each of us would look more and more like Jesus through having known and truly loved one another.
    By the way, there's actually a truth about the nature of surprise in movies and good story telling, which is that when you know the surprise is coming, you can actually enjoy looking forward to it. So I hope that's true for you this morning, for this will be a familiar passage to a lot of you, but hopefully your heart will be encouraged by God's grace as we read,  and also as we recognize how surprising this must have been to Jesus' hearers.

(Luke15:11-32):

    "To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: ‘A man had two sons.  The younger son told his father, "I want my share of the estate now, instead of waiting until you die."  So His Father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons.  A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living.  About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve.  He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs.  The boy became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him.  But no one gave him anything.  When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, "At home even the hired men have food enough to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger!  I will go home to my father and say, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.  Please take me on as a hired man.'"
    "‘So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long distance away, his Father saw him coming.  Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.  His son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son."  But his father said to the servants, "Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him.  Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening in the pen. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found." So the party began.
    "‘Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working.  When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants what was going on.  "Your brother is back," he was told, "and your father has killed the calf we were fattening and has prepared a great feast.  We are celebrating because of his safe return."
    "‘The older brother was angry and wouldn't go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, "All of these years I've worked for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to.  And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the finest calf we have."  His Father said to him, "Look dear son, you and I are very close, and everything I have is yours.   We had to celebrate this happy day.  For your brother was dead and has come back to life!  He was lost but now he is found!"'"

 
    Now as we set the scene for this story Jesus tells, and especially if you're reading it for the first time this morning, you need to know a few things about the mindset of the people Jesus was talking to-a mindset that is often not unlike our own.
    This mindset can be summed up in a popular expression used by the rabbis that became well known in Jewish religious circles, and it was this:  "Let not a man associate with the wicked, nor even bring him to the Law."
    This was what was in the heart of the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, and it was basically the idea that to get too close to a "sinner" (or anything considered unclean, such as pigs) would be to defile yourself.   And so it would be surprising to see a religious leader actually associating with anyone with a "bad reputation."
    Mark Driscoll describes this in our day, in his book The Radical Reformission as a "garbage in garbage out theology"-which basically assumes that if Christians see and hear sin up close, they will want to participate in it, and be drawn into it, instead of recognizing that, for example, the closer we get to actually seeing the lifestyle of a junkie, the less inviting that sin becomes, not more.  And that the primary issue about what is defiled is not so much outward, as Jesus said in Matt. 15:17, but actually comes from within, out of our own hearts.  The Pharisees were experts in cleaning up the outside, but Jesus called them "white-washed tombs," full of "dead-men's bones."
    And so Jesus is telling this story in part to expose this wicked tendency toward pride within all of us-as fleshed out by the older brother in the story-and we need to know it because it's a reality that will keep us from entering another's world to counsel and love them with the Gospel.
And so I'd like to explore with you how the Gospel moves us to do this in especially four areas, (and these come from an excellent book by Paul Tripp called Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands):

4 Elements of a Loving Ministry Relationship 

1. ENTER  the person's world
2. INCARNATE  the love of Christ
3. IDENTIFY  with suffering
4. ACCEPT  with agenda

    And so first, under the point of entering another's life, how does Jesus show us that the father "enters in" to love his child in this story? 
    First note, that entering in to another's life is not about focusing so much on the problem that the person wants to talk about.  Does that sound odd to you?  I mean, if someone comes to you with a problem, isn't the problem the main issue?  The answer-perhaps surprising to some of us-is no.  Although we care about the problem, the problems are God's tool to reveal what is in our hearts.
    Let me explain what I mean.  The younger son in the story, as we've seen, has asked for his inheritance, which was probably about one third of the family estate which he could expect to receive when the father died. Now is this surprising?
    Not really, because kids often long for the money before the proper time, right?  How many of you out there would admit to having had that thought?  "If only I had the inheritance money right now, I could get out of debt, go on vacation, buy some toys," and so on...
And it's really a very selfish thought in terms of our relationship with our parents isn't it, because what is it basically saying about them?  "I'm ready for you to be dead," right?  Now of course some of you would never say that (maybe some others of you would!) but that's what getting the inheritance right now means to the younger son.  He doesn't care really about the rest of the family, he just wants it now.  You see it's a worship issue, and he's basically worshipping himself.  And yet the point I want you to see is not so much that, but how the father deals with him after he has blown it all.
    Now his younger son has basically gone away from home and partied his brains out,  ends up in the pig-pen (an idea that really must have drove the Pharisees crazy), but now he is spent and ready to come home.  And notice, when he does, he is focused on his problem. And not only that, he's already got a solution!  He wants to fix it somehow by working his way back into the father's good graces (notice v.19) "Please treat me as a hired man..."  Essentially he's saying, "let me repay the debt," which was probably quite large and impossible to do in a lifetime.  Yet what is the father's response? 
    Notice, it's as if he completely brushes off his son's request!  It's almost as if his father doesn't even hear the request!  And why is this?  Because he's already focused on celebration-the celebration and surprise of grace!
    And you see while we and the Pharisees might sometimes think that God wants nothing to do with the wicked, (or us, if we think we've blown it one too many times), this story shows us that the son had never really left the father's mind.  And so we can imagine him outside every day, scanning the horizon, yet patiently waiting until the absolute best moment for his grace and truth to sink in to the boy's heart-which He does with each of us. 
    And then the father does something completely surprising and out of character, especially for a father in ancient Jewish culture.  When he sees that cloud of dust in the distance and the familiar gait of his son's walk, that walk he knows so well, he raises his gown high, and as one writer puts it, runs a race of love-even though a man never "girded up his loins" like this in public unless it was in the midst of war.
    And when he arrives at his dirty, pig-sty smelling son, he throws his arms around him and kisses him, and then throws a party with prime rib on the menu.   Does that make sense to you?  Is that not surprising?
    Now most of you have read this story many times,  as we said, but my point about entering is really this: if we are to be about grace for the broken, as Jesus was, our focus will not so much be on the outward problem, but on ministering grace to the person's heart.   You see, too often we become problem-centered, without realizing that the main issue is the heart, which Proverbs says is actually directing our responses.  And in so doing, we attempt to band-aid our own and other's hearts with a superficial, New Year's resolution attempt at change, instead of really looking deeper to see what is ruling our hearts (things like fear, or other's approval, or in the Pharisees' case, self-righteousness and pride.)
    Paul Tripp uses a great example about superficial attempts at change, when he says, "imagine having an apple tree growing in your back-yard that year after year only produces rotten, wormy apples.  Then imagine that you and I grab a couple staple guns and a bushel of nice shiny apples and then staple the nice shiny apples to that tree."
    Now if we're efficient with a staple gun we might succeed, but the question is, "Have we really done anything to change the tree?  Will it now produce healthy apples?"  No, it might look good for awhile, but in time, because we haven't touched the tree at its roots, we only get more worms in our apple sauce, right?  And so what the tree really needs is to be dug up and fertilized deep at the roots, so that it becomes healthy and vibrant, able to produce good fruit-which is really the fruit of the Spirit that Gal. 5 tells us about (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, and self-control).   And so the roots of our lives are our hearts, which is where Jesus goes to work.
    In our story, the father knows the son's brokenness and despair, and he teaches us that whenever you see someone in that place, what they need most is some really good news.  And the surprising news is that God wants to throw a party of grace for failures!  And so if that is you this morning, let that good news sink in: God has extended forgiveness to you, and now invites you to party.   And this is also what we must be about for each other, for none of us deserve His grace.
    Now once we've laid a foundation of grace, how do we enter and understand another's heart, particularly if we don't really know where their heart is?  
    A most practical way that you can begin to do this is by the simple process of learning to ask good questions.  Jesus often did this with His hearers, even though he knew all the answers.  You see it with the rich young ruler:  "Why do you call me good?"  You see it with the paralyzed man: "which is easier to say, you're sins are forgiven, or get up and walk?"  And so on.
    These questions from Jesus, you see, were primarily to help them see their own motives and desires, and what was ruling their hearts. (And you can see a sample list of basic questions below that we can use to do that):

"What is it you most want in this situation?"  (Often reveals their true idol)
 "What are you afraid of right now?"   "What are you feeling?" 
"What questions do you wish you could ask God?" 
"What are you struggling with most right now?"  (Their experience of the problem? Faith or self-trust?)
"Are you feeling angry?  Hopeless?  Regretful?"

    This brings us to our second point, which is incarnating (or en-fleshing) the love of Christ to one another.   Now as the Father in this story incarnates to actually touch the son in his unlovliness-without a focus on the problem or a superficial three-step program for how to manage his money better and become a financial wizard with only three easy payments of $19.99-he almost speaks more with his non-verbal actions than with his words, doesn't he?
    And here is a lesson for us, too.  We sometimes want to fire-hose people with words and quick-fix band-aids, telling them about the latest book we read and the 12 things they should do (which usually have nothing to do with the Gospel), when what they really need from us is first a warm hug,  a tender kiss, and a welcome home.
    I often recall the best piece of parenting advice I got, and it came from a most surprising source. I n my first job out of college I worked as an engineer in an office with a very old, very disheveled looking secretary.  When the news got around the office that my wife Susan was pregnant with our first child, this woman met me in the hall, cornered me and looked me straight in the eye, and simply said these words: "You give that child lots of hugs!"  And then she turned and walked away.
    Now, do you ever think that sometimes you are hearing the voice of God directly?  That's how I felt that day!  And it's something I have to remind myself of often, that most of the time it's more important for me to first shut my mouth, and let my kids know they are loved.  And instead of being problem-focused, become like my heavenly Father, who is grace-focused, and heart-focused.  We often forget that it's true that our actions really do speak louder than our words.  And so this issue is this: Am I about inviting sinners to the feasting table, to see the heart of our God who longs to celebrate with us?   Do I believe that the Gospel of a crucified Savior is what we all need for change?  Or is it my forcefulness, cleverness, or good morals that are most important?  You see, you and I can only incarnate Christ to help others as we are first surprised by God's grace, and then surprised again and again.
    Now thirdly, I mentioned last time I spoke to you that we need to know how God loves to use our weakness and especially areas of past brokenness to bless others.  In terms of inter-personal ministry this can mean, for example, that if you've struggled with particular kinds of abuse in your past, and are seeing the specific comfort God wants to bring to your life in those areas, (especially showing you that He is not an abuser of His children, but loves to shower them with grace and His goodness), then He is fitting you to be an instrument or channel of His comfort in this particular area to others who have struggled with this same thing.   And that's what 2 Cor. Chapter one says, that we "comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received."  And that's a specific comfort that comes to you in your specific troubles.
    That's surprising isn't it?  For example, I have a good friend and brother who happens to be visiting with us today with his family all the way from PA, and he's an expert craftsman and carpenter.  You see, this idea would be like my friend going to his toolbox to do a job, and specifically seeking out a previously broken tool-a tool which he himself is mending-in order to do the job.
    Why would he do that?  More to the point, why would God use us, knowing how broken and weak we are, to help others?  And the answer of course is found as we understand the mysterious and surprising beauty of the Gospel-that Jesus is the God who leaves His splendor in heaven to meet a broken and fallen world (just as the father in our story leaves behind his reputation and the comforts of his estate), because as Jesus said, "I did not come to call the righteous but sinners," and "its not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."  He takes on the weakness and apparent foolishness of the cross bearing our shame and sin-as the Father in this story is willing to bear the shame that the son has brought to the family (another surprising aspect of this story)-in order to make us who were His enemies into His friends.
    And not only does He do that, but His plan is to actually minister comfort to and through us to each other because:  "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God..." (I Cor. 1:29) 
    His primary means of working change is His "hospital for sinners," the Church-which means you and me.  It's a hospital where the patients minister Gospel medicine to each other, because as Jesus said, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
    Now the difficulty with this is, of course, none of us like to feel weak.  None of us really like brokenness.  We like to have it all together, to be right and look good, and really, if we spoke our hearts about it, to have everyone come and bow at the feet of our efficiency and impressiveness-not our weakness.  And we forget that it is when we are weak in our own resources, then we are strong.
    Now let me ask you another question:  How many of you ever had the experience growing up where you felt like you were kept  in a box  (now I don't mean a literal box, like a piece of veal, though if you were,  I would love to hear your story sometime).  But I mean, that when you did something wrong, or frustrating to someone else, you heard words like these, "that's just Sally-she'll never change."
    So you grew up with a certain identity, that maybe you were always the black-sheep, but now you're really tired of it!  Maybe you dread family meetings where you'll hear the same old song which sounds like a broken record, that you're the problem, and not them.  And to be honest, if you could, you would break that record and forget them altogether.
    But then you begin to hear a different song-it's the music of the gospel-and to your surprise, Jesus just begins to literally tear down the walls around you, so you can breathe.  You hear new words from the Father about you: words like "my beloved child," my "loved ones," and so on.  So now, when you attend those family meetings, you go with a different agenda.  The surprise of grace that your family sees is that instead of an agenda of protecting yourself at all costs, or telling your family that "God hates them and has a horrible plan for their life" (sort of the demon version of campus crusade-and if you'll notice, its actually how the older brother in this story feels), you can actually begin to want to know their story, to see them as people and not just problems to be solved or fixed or even figured out (some problems may never be figured out by us, but God knows their heart).  But at least we can begin to ask questions and learn their story, and in this way, begin to show love to them.
    You can do this because the surprise of the Gospel tells you that you have a God who actually knows you perfectly-even at your very worst, and yet makes Himself the tender High Priest who touches your suffering as One who also suffered, and so is able to sympathize with you.  Because He has ultimately identified with sinners like you and me, He helps us identify with others, even those who may hurt us deeply, to bring grace to them even when they are at their very worst, because that's His surprising plan to transform the world!
    Now I want you to notice in this story a final point that is often not focused on, because we're too busy thinking about the younger son and his pig-pen -and that is that the Father also pursues the older son.  He reminds Him that he's accepted, but with an agenda for change because it's the older son in the story-the one who looks like he's the moral one and is outwardly all together, whose heart is swollen with self-righteousness, anger, and pride and who can't identify with anyone else's suffering but his own bruised pride-that the story is primarily about.  If you think about it, those are the kind of people Jesus is actually talking to in this context-the religious ones, and the kind of people we often are.
    You see, when the younger son arrived home, no one went out into the field to get the older brother, did they?  The "order of the patriarch" in this culture would seem to require this, and yet Jesus does not mention it (perhaps to show us how resentment and sin can grow when we feel slighted).  Still, the father moves toward that son as well-not so much with an unbounded joy, as Allender says, but with a relentless pursuit of the real criminal!

    And yet notice, in v.28 that though the father pleads with the son to join the celebration, he does not force the older son to apologize, or shame him, but addresses the fact that he has already been given everything.  Just as God gave Israel so many expressions of special kindness through the centuries, and yet when they too are faced with a suffering son, God's own son Jesus, they purposely spurn the gift and refuse to be aligned with a suffering Savior.
    Now the good news is we have a Savior who comes and identifies with us in the midst of our brokenness and despair, and as Hebrews says, is not ashamed to call us "brothers." But the surprise to the Pharisees is that the older brother's pride cannot allow him to see the broken boy at the feasting table, and say, "my brother." 
    Accepting someone with a love-agenda means that after we have graciously entered their heart, incarnated the love of Christ with our actions, identified and become the arms of Christ to them in their suffering, we can "speak the truth in love," as Eph. 4 says.
    In other words, acceptance with a love agenda means that there is a valuable place in the Christian life for godly confrontation-just as the Father with the older son, and Jesus with the Pharisees.
    Now, when it comes to any talk of confrontation, most of us would have to admit that we're like the nervous green dinosaur "Rex" in toy story, right?  "I hate confrontation!"  
    But what if we actually surprised one another, for example, by not just walking up and dropping a bomb of judgment on a person, maybe a struggling parent about how they or their kids need to change, and then just walking away, but were actually willing to enter in to love and know, and ask questions as we said, and to identify with their suffering. What a difference this would make! 
    Or what if we could learn to confront sin skillfully, using stories, as the prophet Nathan did with David.  David was surprised and caught off guard as his friend Nathan spoke truth into his life with an artful story that drew David's heart in, and then exposed his true self.
    Or what if, as Dan Allender says, we actually approached every conflict in our life as if we had the log sticking out of our eye-as Jesus notes in the Sermon on the Mount?   (Now in this one, we don't like to think like that do we?  There must be something that we can claim is totally the other guy's fault, and that we only have the little speck in our eye!)  But you see the surprise of what Jesus is saying is that when we think like that, we really do have the log!
    Now hearing this, some people might say, "I can never confront anyone because I know I'm a sinner!"  But here we miss what Jesus is saying.  He says "first remove the log, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."  In this way, you see, we are meant to become, as Allender says, "godly opthamologists" to each other, helping each other to see clearly.   And this is what the older brother really needed, wasn't it?  He had a huge log in his eye that blocked his vision of his younger brother, and that kept him from partying with him!  Actually we're not told if he ever did join the party, which in terms of surprises kind of leaves us hanging, and you can almost write your own ending.  (One imaginative writer I read wrote, "What if the older brother actually came back to the party with a sword in his hand and hacked all the family to death?"  (Kind of a Steven King or Wes Craven ending).  I thought this strange until I realized that this was actually what the Pharisees wanted to do with Jesus!
    But you see the point is not really to be content with asking ourselves, "Which brother am I?",  but actually to see that we often vacillate between both extremes, and that the real point of the story is how the Father works His love agenda for change when we do.

    And so maybe you come here this morning, perhaps broken by your sin, and doubting whether you've changed enough for the Father to embrace you.  If so, see that He is already moving to embrace you, in His surprising and lavish grace, and to dress you in the perfect robe of Christ.
    Or perhaps, more like the older brother, you are reluctant to forgive someone, and so are unable to party with them.  I urge you to see the Father moving toward you, imploring you to join the feast, and lay down your pride, so that you may enter into the Father's house and celebrate.