Dearest family,
I know you thought we were through with the parable of the prodigal sons a long time ago in this series, but because you are so familiar with it now, it is a good place to start. They are both sons. Their identity as sons has never been reclassified by the father. It’s how he sees them, how he loves them, how he provides for them. But both of them make equally bad choices in their relationship with the father, and both choose a different persona. Though a son, the younger wanted to be a “hired servant”, the very person that Jesus said could not live in intimacy with the father, or be taken into the father’s confidence. The older brother betrays himself in his angry outburst when he describes his life as “slaving for you”. What this does tell us is that though a son, you can in fact end up living as a slave or a servant, and consequently, you will only see the father from a slave’s or servant’s perspective. There are so many who are called and loved as sons and daughters who are “hardly sons” but in fact living as servants and slaves. Fundamental to all healing and deliverance is the recovery of the assurance of our sonship and God’s fatherhood.
But what about this “hired servant” idea? If you remember, there were three levels of enslavement or service and he happened to choose the best of the three, the one that had a little more give and benefit than the bondsmen and the slaves – but whether you eat cake in prison or dirt, you’re in prison! No matter how you dress up or rationalize your bondage, you’re a slave. You can give slavery a good name if you really work at it. You can try all you want to make it sound good, feel normal, but it’s a world away from being in the father’s embrace and living in the father’s house. Being a son is about being both near and dear. Why this hired-servant thing? Because he believes he has forfeited being a son, by killing the heart of the father. He has believed the lie that he is now excluded from that kind of intimate relationship, or that having once sinned against it, it cannot be recovered. Somehow he still thinks he can make a deal with the father that will at least be better than the slavery of the pig-sty but still some kind of servitude that could never be the sonship that once was. The only thing that could possibly change this for him would be a revelation of the true nature both of fatherhood and sonship – the same way there are thousands sitting in pews who need a revelation of the running father, who is unashamed by the tunic up around his waist, unashamed of the way he is revealing his fatherly needs and passions for the son, welcoming them home again to an experience of sonship, sealing their deliverance from the slavery of that pig-sty, and assuring them that they will never be a slave again to fear and bondage. We have not been healed and delivered from the enslavement of Satan, to become a hired hand for the Father.
Being a hired servant was what the son knew best to be, apart from his father’s grace. But hear me: the love of the father will not allow us to be or become what we are not. In any case, his idea that by working he was somehow going to be able to earn to pay back, or save to recover what was lost, was unattainable, plain impossible. It turns out that just as the father was always the father, so the son, despite all that had happened to disfigure his identity or appear to disbar his sonship, was still a son, was always a son. Maybe a dead son, but still a son and not a servant. Maybe a disobedient son, but still a son and not a servant. Maybe a delinquent son, but still a son and not a servant. The father has no other desire or intention but to have a son: he can raise a dead son, he can restore a disobedient son; he can redeem a delinquent son. So how does the father respond to the son who has chosen to be a hired servant, not a son? He reinstates him to every vestige of sonship: the robe, the ring and the roast.
The older brother was no different. In his anger he exposes himself. “I’ve been slaving for you.” Long before Paul wrote to the Romans or to the Galatians about being slaves again to fear, the contrast between a slave and a true son is presented by Jesus. The two sons are equal in their estrangement from the heart of the father, whether through license or whether through legalism. Here is the tragedy of living in the father’s house as a slave. But it also shows us some of the bad fruits of this slavery, the evidences of this bondage.
As I shared on Sunday, pursuant to the last message I preached in this series, Jesus not only said that he would not leave us as orphans, but that he no longer even called us servants. Furthermore, having said that everyone who sins is a slave to sin, and pointing out that a slave has “no permanent place in the family” (Jn. 8:34-36), Jesus said that if He as the Son set us free we would be free indeed, just as He was as a true son of the Father. How amazing is the Spirit of adoption, but how virulently does the enemy of our souls want to deny us living with the rights of sons, and therefore the inheritance of sons and daughters.
Please find attached the summary of the powerpoints I showed on Sunday, that are Jack Frost’s presentation of some of the major differences between the heart of orphanhood and the heart of sonship. I do so hope that this helps you.
Finding Father together with you my brothers and sisters,
Stuart
http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)