Beyond The Prodigal

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, have you heard about the prodigal son parable? Well, we hear about it a lot, but the Bible says there’s two sons, not just one. So there’s a secret son I’m going to tell you about on the next More Faith, More Life podcast. You were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life.

0:00:29 – (Steve Gray): I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse. When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more. More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the Word of God and and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish.

0:01:00 – (Steve Gray): That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life. So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth. Every week. It’s time to be and experience more. Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I’m Steve Gray. I’m sitting here with my wife Kathy.

0:01:30 – (Steve Gray): So excited. Every week we’ve been talking about parables in the Bible. Well, in the book of Luke. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And it was your idea to do it. Like you. You’ll notice when I’m talking about the parables, I don’t have any notes. I don’t have anything. You’re reading the scripture and I’m just telling the story of these parables, which I’ve done many, many times and I like because you’ll get to hear the people, our friends will get to hear things that they’ve never heard before.

0:01:59 – (Steve Gray): Now, that doesn’t mean that I know things that nobody else knows. It means that we sometimes just read the parables and we’re so quick to apply them to our world that we never enter into the world of Jesus or 1st century Judaism or what did the people listening to these parables? What did they think when they heard it? So I do my best, as best I can, to study the culture too, so that I can get? What was Jesus up to? What reaction did the people listening?

0:02:28 – (Steve Gray): And what reaction was he hoping to get out of them? Okay, so today we’re going to talk about the parable of the what? Even in this Bible you have, it says what? They have a subtitle before this?

0:02:40 – (Kathy Gray): The Parable of the Lost Son.

0:02:43 – (Steve Gray): Okay, the Parable of the Lost Son. Now, what does that tell you? Okay, I’m ready. But that’s not true. That is not the parable. And the reason is. Because that’s the only part that’s. Let’s just get over that hump. Let’s read verse 11 of chapter 15. Okay, so in my Bible, it says the parable of the Lost Son. And then Jesus tells the parable. And how’s it start out?

0:03:04 – (Kathy Gray): All right, Jesus continued, there was a man who had two sons.

0:03:09 – (Steve Gray): There you go. Why doesn’t my Bible say the parable of the two sons? Because the church never touches the second one. And there’s a reason. There’s a reason because. Well, especially if we get around corrupt religion, there’s a reason. Okay, because in this parable, it’s a shocker at first, because if you remember, last week, we talked about it to shocker, because the man has two sons, and the first son comes and says, I want my inheritance now. Which you should only get if somebody dies. They pass along. They give you your inheritance. So he’s basically saying, I don’t know if it’s as far as saying, I wish you were dead, but I wouldn’t mind if you were so that I could get. But basically, I’m going to treat you.

0:03:50 – (Steve Gray): Let’s treat each other as though you’re dead so I can have my inheritance now. And the father says, okay, you can take it. And he goes off and squanders it. And so we like that, because as a preacher, as a pastor or leader in a church, okay, I’m in church. I’m preaching. I’m not the prodigal. Right? I’m not the prodigal. So now let’s knock it around a little bit, right? So it’s preached all the time. And then as we learned last week, too, the bad thing about it is it’s flipped. So the kid is a son living in his dad’s house.

0:04:24 – (Steve Gray): Theologically, that would be in our theology, Christian theology, that would have to be what we would call a saved person. I mean, we tell them, welcome to the family in my father’s house. So we say, get saved, and now you get to be in the family of God. Okay, well, how are we going to take this kid, he’s in the family, and turn him into an unsaved person? Okay, but now we have. He’s lost. So now we’re going to preach to the lost, but we’re going to flip it. And the lost are now unsaved people.

0:04:55 – (Steve Gray): But that means he has to. He. You can’t be unsaved in the family. Or I just lost my theology. So now I have to make this son something else that he’s not. So that’s why the parable is messed up, because we don’t teach it, because the prodigals are. The people are really in our theology would be people who said the prayer, maybe became a son or daughter, participated in the kingdom of God. And then now you’ve squandered that and now you’re living wildly or riotous or stupid or whatever.

0:05:27 – (Steve Gray): And, and maybe things aren’t going so well for you. So the story of the prodigal is about those who. Things are not going so well for you. Now you need to start approach, come back to come to your senses, come back to the father. And then we learned that the kid did come back to his father. And we get a surprise how the father treats him so well when he was so stupid. And how he almost said, maybe I wish you were dead or I’m going to treat you as dead. So when he says my son who is lost is found, we learned last week, that doesn’t mean the father didn’t know where he was. He just didn’t go get him because he’s waiting for the kid to come to his senses. And his circumstances were going to make him come to his senses because everything went bad for him.

0:06:06 – (Steve Gray): But then he said, my son who’s dead is now alive. So does that make him an unsaved person, that he’s dead? No. Because what was dead was the relationship. I don’t want my father anymore. I don’t need you, father. I want everything I can have. I want to live my life the way I want to live it. And I don’t need to be Christianity. I don’t need to go to church. I’m not going to. I’m not going to do it anymore. Just going to live for myself.

0:06:30 – (Steve Gray): There’s billions of people in the world like that. Millions in our country just like that who don’t get the parable because that’s not how it’s preached. But anyway, if they listened last week, they got all that and we can move on to the next one. Now you’re going to see why the church only pastors only preach the first son. Cause it’s not them. All right, let’s go on. So a man has two sons.

0:06:53 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:06:53 – (Steve Gray): The second one comes back, they throw a big party for him. They treat him royally. They give him a robe, put the royal robe or the family robe, family ring, and puts the shoes on his feet and cleans him up and has a big, big feast, right?

0:07:10 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:07:10 – (Steve Gray): And this is an undeserving son, Right? An undeserving son. He shouldn’t have been treated. He treated his dad bad. He should be treated badly. But the father didn’t do that. He treated him royally. Okay, so beautiful. So that’s the part we learned last week. Now we’re going to go to the second son. So now there’s another son. That’s why. It’s a parable of two sons. Let’s get. You can read me the first line. Tell me about the second son.

0:07:33 – (Kathy Gray): So meanwhile, the older brother was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. Your brother has come, he replied, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound.

0:07:52 – (Steve Gray): Okay, we can stop there and get it. So the second son then is. He’s the older son. He comes in from the field. He is not helpless because when he wants to find something out, how does he find out? He says, servant, go do this, do that. Servant, do this, do that. Okay. And we have to remember that. That’s important to remember that he has power over the servants and he can tell them what to do if he wants to.

0:08:21 – (Steve Gray): Okay. So he says that. And they come back and say, your brother is back. And now we’re partying and having a great time. Now what happens? I guess I better just stick to the scripture.

0:08:30 – (Kathy Gray): Okay, okay. The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him.

0:08:38 – (Steve Gray): Okay, we’ll stop right there. Is that a surprise? Now, we’ve already heard the first part of the parable where the father was insulted by the first son. And when he sees him afar off, he goes and runs to him and hugs him and puts the. We already know that. So the father went out to him, right?

0:08:53 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:08:54 – (Steve Gray): Same father, same situation. In a way, the father comes out to him. Right again. Now we have. The father’s character has not changed for one son and treated another son differently. He comes out to him because he cares about his other son. Okay. So the other son has been working in the field and he hears it and he gets angry. Okay, now here’s where we’re learning that, well, I don’t want to give it away yet.

0:09:27 – (Steve Gray): He gets angry and the father comes out and pleads with him, I think, to come in and join because your brother is back, okay? Instead of doing the right thing, he stays angry and he starts accusing the father of not being who he is. Cause we know who the father is by this time because we got the first. And the first part of the parable partly is to know identify this kind father. Okay? So now we know what kind of guy this is. He’s a guy that’ll run. When fathers didn’t run, it was undignified. He would do. He ran out to him. We know what kind of father this is. But the second son is angry and out of anger he accuses him and says, this is not right, I didn’t leave.

0:10:11 – (Steve Gray): Your other son is stupid, squandered. I think he doesn’t even accuse him of being with prostitutes or something. Women, I think. I think he does, but probably it’s okay if you can’t. But he’s riotous, living.

0:10:26 – (Kathy Gray): Oh, yeah, Squandered your property with prostitutes.

0:10:29 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. Accuses his brother. Now in this parable, we don’t know. That never happened in the parable, it never says that he was with prostitutes. So this is just an angry, yeah, pigs, but not prostitutes. But this is just anger coming out. This is built up anger. It’s not anger out of one day, in my opinion. This is built up anger over a father that he misunderstands. And he really misunderstands him now because he said, I never lived like that.

0:10:59 – (Steve Gray): I’m still here working in the field. And you never did this for me. You never killed the fatted calf for me. And that’s just a short statement of he’s got some pent up anger or misplaced anger of misunderstanding who his father is, but he’s also a son and he didn’t leave. He stayed in the house. Okay. Or he stayed in the family and worked. You never did that for me. Okay? So now the father tries to explain where the misconception is. And I guess it would be worth reading how his father responds.

0:11:38 – (Kathy Gray): My son, the father said, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found, right?

0:11:55 – (Steve Gray): So here’s the key to it. He said, you Never killed a fatted calf for me. And he’s going, like, I didn’t have to. You’re the first son. You own everything anyway. He would have got a double inheritance. The second son gets his inheritance as one portion. The oldest son always got a double portion of the inheritance in their culture. So once the father did die, he would actually be the father role. He would own everything.

0:12:24 – (Steve Gray): And the second son basically would work for him if he had been a servant. Right. He’s still not. I mean, he didn’t treat him as a servant, but he would be second son. Okay, so the first son doesn’t understand anything. You would. So he said, look, everything is yours and you’re the first son. You can kill your own fatted calf. You can go. All you have to do is tell a servant, go here, do this. And they do it. We already know that because he just ordered a servant to go inside and see what’s going on.

0:12:55 – (Steve Gray): So the misconception is strong, right? It’s strong. Misunderstanding the father, misunderstanding. What’s going on is strong. So what do we have? Well, we have a lot here yet. There’s a lot to say yet. But what do we have here? We have a situation where, like I said before last time and today Jesus is preaching, we don’t have a prodigal son showing up and say, hey, oh, I get it. I’m a prodigal son and I’m here and I’ve come to my.

0:13:23 – (Steve Gray): That didn’t happen. Audience is sitting there and they listen to this. They listen to this parable. But while Jesus is speaking all through the Bible, who else is on the scene? A lot of the times, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the teachers of the law. And when Jesus speaks, their reaction is what? Anger. So when Jesus teaches these things, there are people getting angry while he’s teaching lots of times.

0:13:54 – (Steve Gray): And they argue with him. Then they accuse him. They don’t understand him. I was just reading a little bit before, maybe I was in Mark a little while ago. And they accuse him of being of casting out demons by the power of the devil. They say you’re a Beelzebub. Right? Well, that’s kind of what the son didn’t say that. But they have no idea who this father is. And so Jesus, while he’s teaching, this is going on in his life. This is ongoing.

0:14:26 – (Steve Gray): Yes. The first part is the prodigals are coming back. Sinners and tax collectors and all that kind of stuff are coming back and they’re understanding. So that’s the plus side. But what’s going on that is going to change history is the second sons who are still in the house, they didn’t leave, they didn’t squander. They’re in control. This kid’s in control. He can tell people what to do. So the people that are in control of religion are angry in Jesus Day and that anger is around him.

0:14:58 – (Steve Gray): In fact, they’re going to get so angry that they’re going to make history and they’re going to kill him. Anger is going to turn into murder. Right? And so that’s. First of all, that’s the first part of the par. The main part of the parable. There’s two sons. Now, the reason that’s important is the first part of the parable, which we emphasize in religion so much as the first son, the prodigal is coming home. All that is strong, but it’s not as strong because we know what happens.

0:15:32 – (Steve Gray): We know what happened. He came to his senses. He gets the robe. Then they throw a party. My son is back. Yay. Right?

0:15:38 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:15:39 – (Steve Gray): And it’s interesting. The father says, we had to celebrate.

0:15:44 – (Kathy Gray): We had to.

0:15:45 – (Steve Gray): We have to celebrate. We have to what? We have to celebrate. Is the other son going to celebrate? No, he refuses to join the celebration. At least we think so, because he’s angry. Okay. So the reason this is not preached so much is because we have a whole lot of preachers who refuse to celebrate. They’re stuck in their religion. They’re staunch stuck. They refuse to worship, really worship. You know, you can’t go to that church and raise your hands, which, you know, can’t do that. Can’t celebrate like that.

0:16:20 – (Steve Gray): You can’t speak in tongues. You can’t raise your hands. You can’t say anything. It’s just a dry, dead, dull religious service that keeps people in bondage. So they don’t preach this because that’s them. That’s them. They’re angry at people who are celebrating. They’re angry. They’re angry when people. When people in our church, people like to jump up and down, you know that they just. I don’t know how they did it, but they do it and they like to worship and they sing loud and they do it well a lot. There’s hundreds and hundreds of preachers around. If they visited our church, they would hate it.

0:17:00 – (Steve Gray): They would hate it and get angry. They don’t like the singing so loud. They don’t like the music as loud. They don’t like our energy. They wouldn’t like the hands raised some. They might hear people worshiping in tongues, maybe, or not, whatever. They would hate our church and they would get angry. So it’s not preached because there’s a lot of angry Christians who don’t want to see God move.

0:17:24 – (Steve Gray): They don’t want to see the power of God. They don’t believe it’s for today. If you pray for healing, they get angry. If you try to get people free, if you preach prosperity, like God wants to help bless you financially or whatever, they get angry, angry, angry. There’s, I don’t know, thousands and thousands of angry preachers, leaders, denominational leaders. They’re angry and they’re leading their denominations in protected anger.

0:17:50 – (Steve Gray): They won’t let anybody in who doesn’t.

0:17:54 – (Kathy Gray): That’s a powerful term, right?

0:17:55 – (Steve Gray): It’s protected anger. Protected anger, yeah, because they’re too smart to go inside and throw a tantrum. You know, he’s out in the yard throwing a tantrum. So only one knows is the father, because he can go around and act real respectable. Right. But it’s protected anger that his anger. If God starts moving. Listen, we have a. The people that don’t know us. I don’t have time to go into it. We have a huge reputation that’s been written about in a lot of books called. We had revival, we had services.

0:18:26 – (Steve Gray): They were a celebration. People came from all over the world. Five services a week for three and a half years. And they were long, exciting, and we made it in visit with Time magazine and Newsweek and all newspapers and all this attention and everybody. And they were great, great celebrations and people just came all over the world. We did it twice, two times that happened in our lives, okay? That made a lot of people angry.

0:18:51 – (Steve Gray): They hated it. Now, fortunately, people came from all over the world and it touched people in 200 countries and all over the world on TV and such. So it’s good news. Prodigals, people who were dead in their religion, dulled down by religion, became excited and they’re still. We meet them all over the world that were touched by that. Right. But there were also a lot of people got angry and hated it, hated the move of God and refused to come in, right?

0:19:21 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:19:23 – (Steve Gray): The reason this is so important is the prodigals are coming in and Jesus is just free and rejoicing and that. But he doesn’t get to rejoice because there’s people angry at him. They’re second sons, and that’s who he’s fighting spiritually. He’s not fighting the prodigals. They came to their senses. He’s not. Doesn’t have to do. He doesn’t have to stay up all night praying for the prodigals. They’re already coming in. It’s working.

0:19:47 – (Steve Gray): But he has to pray. The power of God against demons and against sickness and disease that has come into Israel because of compromised religion. Because, remember, the Bible says none of these diseases will come on you. Yeah. If you follow the way. But obviously it was compromised. So now everywhere Jesus goes, there’s demonized people. Everywhere he goes, they’re sick. You know, it’s a terrible situation.

0:20:09 – (Steve Gray): And they’re oppressed too, by Rome. And so all of a sudden, now the action, when Jesus tells his parable, the action is not there’s prodigal showing up and saying, I’m here. No, the action is the opposition that is happening right while he’s talking, see? Right while he’s teaching. There’s spiritual opposition, whether it be in the crowd or in the air. Principalities and powers, demonic powers. And that’s so he says, this is what’s going on.

0:20:40 – (Steve Gray): This is what’s happening to me right now.

0:20:42 – (Kathy Gray): And it’s not outside opposition.

0:20:45 – (Steve Gray): It’s inside. Inside a son. It’s in the house.

0:20:51 – (Kathy Gray): It’s very true and very pathetic.

0:20:54 – (Steve Gray): Now, the last part about this is. Remember I told you the first part of a parable? It has a conclusion. Party time. Right?

0:21:04 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:21:04 – (Steve Gray): Kill the fat calf. They’re dancing and they’re having church. They’re dancing, rejoicing, celebrating good things God has done. But we don’t know. This is called open ended. Jesus does not say what happens. We don’t know. What did the second son do after he said, we have to celebrate? Did he come to his senses and say, what? What was I thinking? Okay, I’m going to come in. Or does he stay angry and refuse to come in? Even though he’s his first son, he’s in charge, basically under the father.

0:21:44 – (Steve Gray): But did he stay angry, walk away mad? If he did. If he did, then what does he have?

0:21:53 – (Kathy Gray): Nothing.

0:21:54 – (Steve Gray): He’s just as dead and lost as the first. Because he wasn’t lost. The son wasn’t lost in location. He was lost and dead. In relationship.

0:22:03 – (Kathy Gray): In relationship.

0:22:04 – (Steve Gray): The second son comes to his senses and makes the relationship work. The second son, we, pretty well, just from reading our Bibles, feel like he’s not going to come around.

0:22:13 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:22:14 – (Steve Gray): Cause the Pharisees, Sadducees, religious people didn’t. Right. The Jewish people did. They followed him. It was a happy time. Prodigals of coming home. But, but we don’t know what happens. Maybe he came in though, maybe he did come to his senses. But generally it’s open ended where Jesus is saying he’s going to stay mad and we know the story, then they’re going to stay mad until they kill him. Until they kill Jesus and crucify him.

0:22:42 – (Steve Gray): So that’s why it’s not taught properly, is because there’s such protected anger. There is so much anger in Christianity. Mean angry people defending a position that they don’t need to come to their senses. I’ve been going to church my whole life. I don’t need to jump, I don’t need the dancing, I don’t need the, I don’t need the celebration. You know, I’m fine, I’m fine the way I am.

0:23:10 – (Kathy Gray): And I hate those who are celebrating.

0:23:12 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And they’re angry at those that are celebrating for good reason. There’s a good reason to celebrate today. There’s a good reason of the things that God is doing and the things that God’s doing in our country. It’s not all pretty what’s happening in our country all the time, but what’s happening in lives of people in spite of the religion that refuses to come in, refuses to celebrate, refuses to come to your senses and throw yourself completely into the relationship with the father. Completely.

0:23:45 – (Steve Gray): Instead it’s nominal, calm, half-hearted, lukewarm religion everywhere. And they’re defending it. They’re defending it. And rather than coming in and saying, folks, if somebody gets healed or somebody gets delivered or somebody is so happy that they, you know, and they get filled with the spirit and they speak in tongues and their hands go up in the air and it’s. There’s something wrong if you can’t celebrate when somebody gets better.

0:24:16 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, there’s something wrong with religion that people are coming in and getting help and you’re angry because they’re getting help or they’re being found, you’re angry. You don’t like it because you’re protecting your anger and you’re protecting religion that’s got you locked in to lifeless, dull, lukewarm, half-hearted religion. So now you can see what the parable is about. It’s not about the first son. Totally great story. But it ends the second part. It’s about the second son because that’s what Jesus was dealing with every single day of his ministry and he’s exposing it and saying this is the second. Sons are angry and they refuse to come in.

0:24:58 – (Steve Gray): Thank God for the prodigals and the lost sons coming in. But that’s what he’s dealing with. So that’s what it’s really about because that’s happening every day of Jesus ministry. So anyway, parable of the two sons. Now you understand it better. And we understand what we need to overcome. We need to come to our senses and stop misjudging God. Stop misjudging religion, Christianity. Stop misjudging. I’m saying there’s problems. I know there’s problems.

0:25:26 – (Steve Gray): You got a lot of corruption, but you don’t have to live in it.

0:25:29 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:25:30 – (Steve Gray): Don’t misjudge it and stay out and use an excuse like, well, you know, the church is full of hypocrites. Yeah, that’s right. It is. It is. But some of them are coming home. Some of them are coming to their.

0:25:40 – (Kathy Gray): Sins into that relationship.

0:25:42 – (Steve Gray): And if it is full of hypocrites, why don’t you be the first to change that and come in with a true heart. Come and change us. Change us. Let us see your light shine, and then we can do it. That’s what the second Son should have done. But we don’t know what he did. And we know Jesus was fighting that every day. Well, be sure and subscribe and tell your friends about this. You’re going to hear stuff, hopefully that you don’t hear every time, because we’re here in history and theology and we’re bringing it to life to you. Next week we’ll hit another parable. We don’t know which one it is, but be sure and go to stevegrayministries.com and check out all the stuff we have. Subscribe, tell people about it. It. Remember the book Mighty Like Gideon. It’s pretty new, a few months old now, but it’s pretty new. And you can still get it on Amazon or in your bookstore. You can also get it from Steve Gray Ministries, along with a study guide on our website. All right, so next week we’ll hit another one. Till then, bye. Bye.