Self-Righteousness: The Subtle Distance from the Father's Heart

In this episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony and Jesse continue their deep dive into the Parable of the Prodigal Son by examining the often-overlooked character of the elder brother. While the younger son's rebellion is obvious, the elder brother's self-righteous moralism represents a more subtle—and perhaps more dangerous—form of lostness. Through careful exegesis of Luke 15:25-32, the hosts explore how religious performance, resentment of grace, and merit-based thinking can keep us far from the Father's heart even while we remain close to the Father's house. This conversation challenges listeners to examine their own hearts for traces of elder brother theology and calls us to celebrate the scandalous grace that restores sinners to sonship.

Key Takeaways

• Two ways to be lost: The parable presents both flagrant rebellion (the younger son) and respectable self-righteousness (the elder son) as forms of spiritual lostness that require God's grace.
• The elder brother's geographic and spiritual position: Though physically near the house and faithful in service, the elder brother was spiritually distant from the father's heart, unable to celebrate grace extended to others.
• Moralism as a subtle distance: Self-righteous religion can be more deceptive than open rebellion because it appears virtuous while actually rejecting the father's character and values.
• The father pursues both sons: God's gracious pursuit extends not only to the openly rebellious but also to the self-righteous, demonstrating that election and grace are sovereign gifts, not earned rewards.
• The unresolved ending: The parable intentionally leaves the elder brother's response unstated, creating narrative tension that challenges the original audience (Pharisees and scribes) and modern readers to examine their own response to grace.
• Adoption as the frame of obedience: True Christian obedience flows from sonship and inheritance ("all that I have is yours"), not from a wage-earning, transactional relationship with God.
• Resentment reveals our theology: When we find ourselves unable to celebrate the restoration of repentant sinners, we expose our own need for repentance—not from scandal, but from envy and pride.

Key Concepts

The Elder Brother's Subtle Lostness

The genius of Jesus' parable is that it exposes a form of lostness that religious people rarely recognize in themselves. The elder brother never left home, never squandered his inheritance, and never violated explicit commands. Yet his response to his brother's restoration reveals a heart fundamentally opposed to the father's character. His complaint—"I have served you all these years and never disobeyed your command"—demonstrates that he viewed his relationship with the father transactionally, as an employer-employee arrangement rather than a father-son bond. This is the essence of legalism: performing religious duties while remaining distant from God's heart. The tragedy is that the elder brother stood within reach of everything the father had to offer yet experienced none of the joy, fellowship, or security of sonship. This form of lostness is particularly dangerous because it wears the mask of righteousness and often goes undetected until grace is extended to someone we deem less deserving.

The Father's Gracious Pursuit of the Self-Righteous

Just as the father ran to meet the returning younger son, he also went out to plead with the elder brother to come into the feast. This detail is theologically significant: God pursues both the openly rebellious and the self-righteous with the same gracious initiative. The father's response to the elder brother's complaint is not harsh correction but tender invitation: "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours." This reveals that the problem was never scarcity or the father's favoritism—the elder brother had always possessed full access to the father's resources and affection. The barrier was entirely on the son's side: his inability to receive sonship as a gift rather than a wage. This mirrors the historical situation of the Pharisees and scribes who grumbled at Jesus for receiving sinners. They stood adjacent to the kingdom, surrounded by the promises and covenant blessings of God, yet remained outside because they could not accept grace as the principle of God's dealing with humanity. The invitation still stood, but it required them to abandon their merit-based system and enter the feast as recipients of unearned favor.

The Unresolved Ending and Its Challenge to Us

Luke deliberately leaves the parable unfinished—we never learn whether the elder brother eventually joined the celebration. This narrative technique places the reader in the position of the elder brother, forcing us to answer for ourselves: will we enter the feast or remain outside in bitter resentment? For the original audience of Pharisees and scribes, this unresolved ending was a direct challenge to their response to Jesus' ministry. Would they continue to grumble at God's grace toward tax collectors and sinners, or would they recognize their own need and join the celebration? For contemporary readers, the question remains equally pressing. When we hear of a notorious sinner coming to faith, do we genuinely rejoice, or do we scrutinize their repentance with suspicion? When churches extend membership to those with broken pasts, do we celebrate restoration or quietly question whether they deserve a place at the table? The parable's open ending is not a literary flaw but a pastoral strategy: it refuses to let us remain passive observers and demands that we examine whether we harbor elder brother theology in our own hearts.

Memorable Quotes

The father's household is a place where grace produces joy, not just merely relief. The elder brother hears the joy before he sees it. That's often how resentment works, isn't it? We're alerted to the happiness of others and somehow there's this visceral response of wanting to be resentful toward that joy, toward that unmerited favor. — Jesse Schwamb

There is a way to be near the house, church adjacent, religiously active, yet to be really far from the father's heart. The elder brother is not portrayed as an atheist, but as a moralist. And moralism can be a more subtle distance than open rebellion. — Jesse Schwamb

God doesn't keep sinners from repenting. The reprobate are not prohibited or prevented by God from coming to faith. They're being kept out by their own stubborn refusal to come in. That's where this punchline hits so hard. — Tony Arsenal

Full Transcript

[00:00:44] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 477 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse. 

[00:00:51] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother. 

[00:00:55] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. 

[00:00:56] Parables and God's Word

[00:00:56] Jesse Schwamb: Speaking of ears to hear, it struck me that this whole thing we've been doing all this parable talk is really after the manner of God's words.

And one of the things I've really grown to appreciate is how God speaks to the condition of those whom he addresses. He considers our ability, our capacity as his hearers to process what he's saying, and that leads into these amazing parables that we've been talking about. He doesn't speak as he is able to speak.

So to speak, but I didn't mean that to happen. But as we were able to hear, and that means he spoke in these lovely parables so that we might better understand him. And today we're gonna get into some of the drama of the best, like the crown jewel as we've been saying, of maybe all the parables. The Parable of the Lost Son.

We spoke a little bit about it in the last episode. Definitely want to hit that up because it's setting you up for this one, which is the definitive episode. But now we're gonna talk about this first, this younger lost son. Get into some of all of these like juicy details about what takes place, and really, again, see if we can find the heart of God.

Spoiler. We can and we'll, 

[00:02:04] Tony Arsenal: yeah, 

[00:02:04] Affirmations and Denials

[00:02:04] Jesse Schwamb: but before we do both of those things, it's of course always time at this moment to do a little affirming with or denying against. Of course, if you haven't heard us before, that's where we take a moment to say, is there something that we think is undervalued that we wanna bring forward that we'd recommend or think is awesome?

Or conversely, is there something that's overvalued that's just, we're over it. The vibe is done. We're gonna deny against that. So I say to you, as I often do, Tony, are you affirming with or deny against? 

[00:02:31] Tony's Nerdy Hobby: Dungeons and Dragons

[00:02:31] Tony Arsenal: I'm affirming tonight. Um, I don't know how much the audience realizes of a giant ridiculous nerd I am, but we're about to go to entirely new giant nerd depths.

[00:02:43] Jesse Schwamb: All right. I 

[00:02:43] Tony Arsenal: think, 

[00:02:44] Jesse Schwamb: let's hear it. 

[00:02:44] Tony Arsenal: So, um, I was a huge fan of Stranger Things. Some, there's some issues with the show, and I understand why some people might not, um, might not feel great about watching it. You know, I think it falls within Christian liberty. But one of the main themes of the show, this is not a spoiler, you learn about this in episode one, is the whole game.

The whole show frames itself around Dungeons and Dragons, right? It's kind of like a storytelling device within the show that the kids play, Dungeons and Dragons, and everything that happens in the Dungeons and Dragons game that they're playing, sort of like, um, foreshadows what's actually gonna happen in the show.

Which funny if, you know Dungeons and Dragons lore, you kind of learn the entire plot of the story like ahead of time. Um, but so I, stranger Things just finished up and I've kind of been like itching to get into Dungeons and Dragons. I used to play a little bit of tabletop when I was in high school, in early college and um, I just really like the idea of sort of this collaborative storytelling game.

Um, whether it's Dungeon Dragons or one of the other systems, um, Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular. It's the most well published. It's the most well established and it's probably the easiest to find a group to play with. Although it is very hard to find a group to play with, especially, uh, kind of out in the middle of nowhere where I live.

So this is where the ultra super nerdy part comes in. 

[00:04:02] Jesse Schwamb: Alright, here we 

[00:04:03] Tony Arsenal: go. I have been painstakingly over the last week teaching Google Gemini. To be a dungeon master for me. So I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons more or less by myself with, uh, with Google Gemini, and I'm just having a lot of fun with it.

Um, you can get a free copy of the rules online if you, I think it's DND, the letter NDND beyond.com. They have a full suite of like tools to create your character. Access to a basic set of the core rules. Um, you can spend a lot of money on Dungeons and Dragons, uh, and if you want to like really get into it, the books are basically textbooks.

Like you're buying $300 or 300 page, $300, 300 page textbooks, um, that are not all that differently costs than like college textbooks. You'll buy a 300 page Dungeon master guide that's like $50 if you want a paper copy. So, but you can get into it for free. You can get the free rolls online, you can use their dungeon, the d and d Beyond app and do all your dice rolls for free.

Um, you, you can get a free dice roller online if you don't want to do their, their app. Um, but it's just a lot of fun. I've just been having a lot of fun and I found that the, I mean. When you play a couple sessions with it, you see that the, the um, the A IDM that I've created, like it follows the same story beats 'cause it's only got so much to work with in its language model.

Um, but I'm finding ways to sort of like break it out of that model by forcing it to refer to certain websites that are like Dungeons and Dragons lore websites and things like build your, build your campaign from this repository of Dungeons and Dragons stuff. So. I think you could do this with just about any sort of narrative storytelling game like this, whether you're playing a different system or d and d Pathfinders.

I mean, there's all sorts of different versions of it, but it's just been a lot of fun to see, see it going. I'm trying to get a group together. 'cause I think I would, I would probably rather play Dungeons and Dragons with people, um, and rather do it in person. But it's hard to do up here. It's hard to get a, get a group going.

So that's my super nerdy affirmation. I'm not just affirming Dungeons and Dragons, which would already be super nerdy. I'm affirming playing it by myself on my phone, on the bus with Google Gemini, AI acting like I'm not. Just this weird antisocial lunatic. So I'm having a lot of fun with it. 

[00:06:20] Jesse Schwamb: So there are so many levels of inception there.

Yeah. Like the inception and everything you just said. I love it. 

[00:06:27] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Well, what I'm learning is, um, you can give an, and, and this is something I didn't realize, what ai, I guess I probably should have, you know, it's not like an infinite thing. Um, you can give an AI instructions and if your chat gets long enough, it actually isn't referring back to the very beginning of the chat most of the time.

Right. There's a, there's like a win context window of about 30 responses. So like if you tell the AI, don't roll the dice for me, like, let me roll dices that are related to my actions, eventually it will forget that. So part of what I've been doing is basically building, I'm using Google Gemini when the AI does something I don't want it to do, I say, you just did something I don't want it to do.

Gimme a diagnostic report of why you did that. It will explain to me why it did what it did. Right. Why it didn't observe the rules. And then I'm feeding that into another. Prompt that is helping me generate better prompts that it refers back to. So it's kind of this weird iterative, um, yeah, I, I don't, I'm like, I maybe I'm gonna create the singularity.

I'm not sure. Maybe this is gonna be possible. We should sit over the edge. It's gonna, it's gonna learn how to cast magic spells and it's gonna fire bolt us in the face or something like that. Right. But, uh, again, high risk. I, I, for one, welcome our AO AI dungeon masters. So check it out. You should try it.

If you could do this with chat GPT, you could do it with any ai. Um, it, it, it is going to get a little, I have the benefit because I have a Google Workspace account. I have access to Google Pro or the Gemini Pro, which is a better model for this kind of thing. But you could do this with, with chat GPT or something like that.

And it's gonna be more or less the same experience, I think. But I'm having a, I'm having a ton of fun with it. Um. Again, I, I, there's something about just this, Dungeons and Dragons at its core is a, it's like a, an exercise in joint storytelling, which is really fascinating and interesting to me. Um, and that's what most tabletop RPGs are like.

I suppose you get into something like War Hammer and it's a little bit more like a board. It's a mixture of that plus a board game. But Dungeons and Dragons, the DM is creating the, I mean, not the entire world, but is creating the narrative. And then you as a player are an actor within that narrative. And then there's a certain element of chance that dice rolls play.

But for the most part, um, you're driving the story along. You're telling the story together. So it's, it's pretty interesting. I've also been watching live recordings of Dungeons and Dragon Sessions on YouTube. Oh, 

[00:08:50] Jesse Schwamb: wow. 

[00:08:51] Tony Arsenal: Like, there's a, there's a channel called Critical Role. Like these sessions are like three and a half hours long.

So, wow. I just kinda have 'em on in the background when I'm, when I'm, uh, working or if I'm, you know, doing something else. Um, but it's really interesting stuff. It's, it's pretty cool. I think it's fun. I'm a super nerd. I'm, I'm no shame in that. Um, I'm just really enjoying it. 

[00:09:09] Jesse Schwamb: Listen, nerdery is great. That's like part of the zeitgeist now.

Listen to culture. It's cool to be a nerd. I don't know much about d and d. I've heard a lot about this idea of this community that forms around. Yeah. The story, correct me if I'm wrong, can't these things go on for like years, decades? 

[00:09:25] Tony Arsenal: Oh yeah, yeah. Like, you can do there. There, some of this has made its way into the official rule books, but basically you could do what's called a one shot, which is like a self-contained story.

Usually a single session, you know, like you get a Dungeon master, game master, whichever you wanna call the person. Three to four, maybe five characters, player characters. And one session is usually about two hours long. So it's not like you sit down for 20 minutes, 30 minutes at a time and play this right.

And you could do a one shot, which is a story that's designed to, to live all within that two hour session. Um, some people will do it where there isn't really any planned like, outcome of the story. The, the DM just kind of makes up things to do as they go. And then you can have campaigns, which is like, sometimes it's like a series of one shots, but more, it is more like a long term serialized period, you know, serialized campaign where you're doing many, um, many, many kinds of, uh, things all in one driving to like a big epic goal or battle at the end, right?

Um, some groups stay together for a really long time and they might do multiple campaigns, so there's a lot to it. Game's been going on for like 50, 60, 70 years, something like that. I don't remember exactly when it started, but 

[00:10:41] Jesse Schwamb: yeah. 

[00:10:41] Tony Arsenal: Um, it's an old game. It's kinda like the doctor who of of poor games and it's like the original tabletop role playing game, I think.

[00:10:47] Jesse Schwamb: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Again, there's something really appealing to me about not just that cooperative storytelling, but cooperative gameplay. Everybody's kind of in it together for the most part. Yeah. Those conquest, as I understand them, are joint in nature. You build solidarity, but if you're meeting with people and having fun together and telling stories and interacting with one another, there's a lot of good that comes out of that stuff there.

A lot of lovely common grace in those kind of building, those long-term interactions, relationships, entertainment built on being together and having good, clean, fun together. 

[00:11:17] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Well, and it's, you know, it's, um. It's an interesting exercise. It's it, in some ways it's very much like improv. Like you, you think of like an improv comedy like show I've been to somewhere.

Like, you know, you go to the show and it's an improv troupe, but they're like calling people from the crowd up and asking them for like different scenarios they might do. It's kind of like that in that like the GM can plan a whole, can plan a whole thing. But if I as a player character, um. And I've done this to the virtual one just to see what it does, and it's done some interesting things.

One of the campaigns I was playing, I had rescued a merchant from some giant spiders and I was helping, like, I was helping like navigate them through the woods to the next town. And we kept on getting attacked and just outta nowhere. I was like, what if I sort of act as though I'm suspicious of this merchant now because why are we getting attacked all the time?

And so I, I typed in sort of like a little. A mini role play of me accusing this guy. And it was something like, Randall, we get, we're getting attacked a lot for a simple merchant, Randall merchant. What happens if I cast a tech magic? What am I gonna find? And he's like, I don't know what I'm gonna find. I know I don't know anything.

And then I cast a tech magic and it shifted. I mean, I don't know where the campaign was gonna go before that, but it shifted the whole thing now where the person who gave him the package he was carrying had betrayed him. It was, so that happens in real life too in these games, real life in these games.

That happens in real, in-person sessions too, where a player or a group of players may just decide instead of talking to the contact person that is supposed to give them the clue to find the dungeon they're supposed to go to, instead they ambush them and murder them in gold blood. And now the, the dungeon master has to figure out, how do I get them back to this dungeon when this is the only person that was supposed to know where it is?

So it, it does end up really stretching your thinking skills and sort of your improvisational skills. There's an element of, um, you know, like chance with the dice, um, I guess like the dice falls in the lot, but the lot is in the handle. Or like, obviously that's all ordained as well too, but there is this element of chance where even the DM doesn't get to determine everything.

Um, if, if I say I want to, I want to try to sneak into this room, but I'm a giant barbarian who has, you know, is wearing like chain mail, there's still a chance I could do it, but the dice roll determines that. It's not like the, the GM just says you can't do that. Um, so it's, it's a, I, I like it. I'm, I'm really looking forward to trying to, getting into it.

It is hard to start a group and to get going and, um, there's a part of me that's a little bit. Gun shy of maybe like getting too invested with a group of non-Christians for something like this. 'cause it can get a little weird sometimes. But I think that, I think that'll work out. It'll be fun. I know there's actually some people in our telegram chat.

Bing, bing, bing segue. There we go. There's some people in our telegram chat actually, that we're already planning to do a campaign. Um, so we might even do like a virtual reform brotherhood, Dungeons and Dragons group. So that might be a new sub channel in the telegram at some point. 

[00:14:13] Jesse Schwamb: There you go. You could jump right in.

Go to t.me back slash reform brotherhood. 

[00:14:18] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Jesse, what are you affirming since I just spent the last 15 minutes gushing about my nerdy hobby? 

[00:14:23] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, no, that was great. Can I, can I just say two things? One is, so you're basically saying it's a bit like, like a troll shows up and everybody's like, yes. And yeah.

So I love that idea. Second thing, which is follow up question, very brief. What kind of merchant was Randall. 

[00:14:39] Tony Arsenal: Uh, he was a spice trader actually. 

[00:14:42] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. I don't trust that. 

[00:14:43] Tony Arsenal: And, and silk, silk and spices. 

[00:14:45] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. That's double, that's too strict. 

[00:14:47] Tony Arsenal: He was actually good guy in the, in the story that developed out of this campaign.

He actually became part of my family and like, like, like got adopted into the family because he lost everything on his own. Randy we're 

[00:15:00] Jesse Schwamb: talking about Randy. 

[00:15:01] Tony Arsenal: Randy Randall with one L. Yeah. The AI was very specific about 

that. 

[00:15:05] Jesse Schwamb: There's, there's nothing about this guy I trust. I, is this still ongoing? Because I think he's just trying to make his way deeper in, 

[00:15:11] Tony Arsenal: uh, no, no.

It, I'll, I'll wait for next week to tell you how much, even more nerdy this thing gets. But there's a whole thing that ha there was a whole thing out of this That's a tease. Tease. There was a, there was a horse and the horse died and there was lots of tears and there was a wedding and a baby. It was, it's all sorts of stuff going on in this campaign.

[00:15:27] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. And I'm sure. Randy was somewhere near that horse when it happened. Right? 

[00:15:32] Tony Arsenal: It was his horse. 

[00:15:33] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, exactly. That's 

[00:15:35] Tony Arsenal: exactly, he didn't, he didn't kill the horse. He had no power to knock down the bridge The horse was standing on. 

[00:15:40] Jesse Schwamb: Listen, next week, I'm pretty sure that's what we're gonna learn is that it was all him.

[00:15:45] Tony Arsenal: Alright, Jesse, save us from this. Save us from this, please. Uh, 

[00:15:49] Jesse Schwamb: no. 

What 

[00:15:50] Tony Arsenal: you affirming, this is 

[00:15:50] Jesse Schwamb: great. 

[00:15:50] Jesse's Affirmation: Church Community

[00:15:50] Jesse Schwamb: It's possible that there is a crossover between yours and mine if we consider. That the church is like playing a d and d game in the dungeon Masters Christ, and the campaigns, the gospel. So I was thinking maybe is it possible, uh, maybe this is just the, the theology of the cross, but that sometimes, like you need the denial to get to the affirmation.

Have we talked about that kind of truth? Yeah, 

[00:16:14] Tony Arsenal: yeah, 

[00:16:15] Jesse Schwamb: for sure. So here's a little bit of that. I'll be very, very brief and I'm using this not as like just one thing that happened today, but what I know is for sure happening all over the world. And I mean that very literally, not just figuratively when it comes to the body of Christ, the local church.

So it snowed here overnight. This was, this is the Lord's Day. We're hanging out in the Lord's Day, which is always a beautiful day to talk about God. And overnight it snowed. The snow stopped relatively late in the morning around the time that everybody would be saying, Hey, it's time to go and worship the Lord.

So for those in my area, I got up, we did the whole clearing off the Kai thing. I went to church and I was there a little bit early for a practice for music. And when I pulled in, there weren't many there yet, but the whole parking lot unplowed. So there's like three inches of snow, unplowed parking lot. So I guess the denial is like the plow people decided like, not this time I, I don't think so.

They understood they were contracted with the church, but my understanding is that when one of the deacons called, they were like, Ooh, yeah, we're like 35 minutes away right now, so that's gonna be a problem. So when I pulled in, here's what I was. Like surprise to find, but in a totally unexpected way, even though I understand what a surprise is.

And that is that, uh, that first the elders and the deacons, everybody was just decided we're going to shovel an entire parking lot. And at some point big, I was a little bit early there, but at some point then this massive text change just started with everybody, which was, Hey, when you come to church, bring your shovel.

And I, I will tell you like when I got out of the car. I was so like somebody was immediately running to clear a path with me. One of those like snow pushers, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like one, those beastly kind of like blade things. 

[00:17:57] Tony Arsenal: Those things are, those things are the best. 

[00:17:59] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. You just run. And so you have never met a group of people that was more happy to shovel an entire large asphalt area, which normally shouldn't even be required.

And. It just struck me, even in hindsight now thinking about it, it was this lovely confluence of people serving each other and serving God. It was as if they got up that morning and said, do you know what would be the best thing in the world for me to do is to shovel. And so everybody was coming out.

Everybody was shoveling it. It was to protect everyone and to allow one into elaborate, one access. It was just incredible. And so I started this because the affirmation is, I know this happens in, in all of our churches, every God fearing God, loving God serving church, something like this is happening, I think on almost every Lord's day or maybe every day of the week in various capacities.

And I just think this is God's people coming together because everybody, I think when we sat down for the message was exhausted, but. But there was so much joy in doing this. I think what you normally would find to be a mundane and annoying task, and the fact that it wasn't just, it was redeemed as if like we, we found a greater purpose in it.

But that's, everyone saw this as a way to love each other and to love God, and it became unexpected worship in the parking lot. That's really what it was, and it was fantastic. I really almost hope that we just get rid of the plow company and just do it this way from now on. Yeah, so I'm affirming, recognize people, recognize brothers and sisters that your, your church is doing this stuff all the time and, and be a part of it.

Jump in with the kinda stuff because I love how it brings forward the gospel. 

[00:19:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great story. It's a great, uh, a great example of the body of Christ being, what the body of Christ is and just pulling together to get it done. Um, which, you know, we do on a spiritual level, I think, more often than a physical level these days.

Right, right. But, um, that's great. I'm sitting here going three inches of snow. I would've just pulled into the lot and then pulled out of the lot. But New Hampshire, it hits different in New Hampshire. Like we all d have snow tires and four wheel drive. 

[00:20:02] Jesse Schwamb: It's, it's enough snow where it was like pretty wet and heavy that it, if, you know, you pack that stuff down, it gets slick.

You can't see the people, like you can't have your elderly people just flying in, coming in hot and then trying to get outta the vehicle, like making their way into church. 

[00:20:14] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. 

[00:20:15] Jesse Schwamb: So there was, there was a lot more of that. But I think again, you would, one of the options would've been like, Hey, why don't we shovel out some sp spaces for the, for those who need it, for, you know, those who need to have access in a way that's a little bit less encumbered.

Oh, no, no. These people are like, I see your challenge and I am going to shovel the entire parking lots. 

[00:20:35] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. It used to happen once in a while, uh, at the last church, uh, at, um, your dad's church. We would, where the plow would just not come on a Sunday morning or, or more often than not. Um, you know, what happens a lot of times is the plows don't want to come more than once.

Right. If they don't have to. Or sometimes they won't come if they think it's gonna melt because they don't want to deal with, uh, with like customers who are mad that you plowed and that it all melts. But either way, once in a while. The plow wouldn't come or it wouldn't come in time. And what we would do is instead of trying to shovel an entire driveway thing, we would just went, the first couple people who would get there, the young guys in the church, there was only a couple of us, but the younger guys in the church would just, we would just be making trips, helping people into the, yeah.

Helping people into the building. So, um, it was a pretty, you know, it was a small church, so it was like six trips and we'd have everybody in, but um, we just kind of, that was the way we pulled together. Um, yeah, that's a great, it's a great story. I love, I love stuff like that. Yeah, me too. Whether it's, whether it's, you know, plowing a, a parking lot with shovels instead of a plow, or it's just watching, um, watching the tables and the chairs from the fellowship, you know, all just like disappear because everybody's just, uh, picks up after themselves and cleans and stuff.

That's, that's like the most concrete example of the body of Christ doing what the body of Christ does. Um, it's always nice, you know, we always hear jokes about like, who can carry the most, the most chairs, 

[00:22:04] Jesse Schwamb: most 

[00:22:04] Tony Arsenal: chairs. Uh, I think it's true. Like a lot of times I think like I could do like seven or eight sometimes.

[00:22:10] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, you, that's, so, one more thing I wanna say. I, I wanted to tell you this privately, Tony, 'cause it just cracked me up 'cause I, you'll appreciate this. But now I'm realizing I think the brothers and sisters who listened to us talk for any length of time and in the context of this conversation, but the church will appreciate this too.

On my way out, I, I happened because I was there early and the snow was crazy. I parked way further out, way on the edge of the lot to just allow for greater access because of all the shoveling that was happening. And by the way, I really hope there were a ton of visitors this morning because they were like, wow, this, this church is wild.

They love to shovel their own lot and they're the happiest people doing it. Some sweaty person just ushered me in while they were casting snow. Like, 

[00:22:47] Tony Arsenal: is this some new version of snake handling? You shovel your own lot and your impervious to back injuries. 

[00:22:53] Jesse Schwamb: Uh. So I was walking out and as I walked past, uh, there was a, uh, two young gentlemen who were congregating by this very large lifted pickup truck, which I don't have much experience with, but it looked super cool and it was started, it was warming up, and they were just like casually, like in the way that only like people with large beards wearing flannel and Carhartt kind of do, like casually leaning against the truck, talking in a way that you're like, wow, these guys are rugged.

And they sound, they're super cool, and they're probably like in their twenties. And all I hear as I pass by is one guy going, yeah, well, I mean that's, I was, I said to them too, but I said, listen, I'd rather go to a church with God-fearing women than anywhere else. 

[00:23:36] Tony Arsenal: Nice. 

[00:23:37] Jesse Schwamb: I was just like, yep. On the prowl and I love it.

And they're not wrong. This is the place to be. 

[00:23:42] Tony Arsenal: It is. 

[00:23:43] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. This is the place to be. Yeah. So all kinds of, all kinds of good things I think going on in that in the house of the Lord and where wherever you're at, I would say be happy and be joyful and look for those things and participate in, like you said, whether it's physical or not, but as soon as you said like the, our young men, our youth somehow have this competition of when we need to like pack up the sanctuary.

How many chairs can I take at one time? Yeah. It's like the classic and it just happens. Nobody says like, okay, everybody line up. We're about to embark on the competition now. Like the strong man usher competition. It's just like, it just happens and 

[00:24:17] Tony Arsenal: it's 

[00:24:17] Jesse Schwamb: incredible. 

[00:24:18] Tony Arsenal: I mean, peacocks fan out their tail feathers.

Young Christian guys fan out. All of the table chairs, chairs they can carry. It's uh, it's a real phenomena. So I feel like if you watch after a men's gathering, everybody is like carrying one chair at a time because they don't wanna hurt their backs and their arms. Oh, that's 

[00:24:36] Jesse Schwamb: true. That's 

[00:24:37] Tony Arsenal: what I do. Yeah.

But it's when the women are around, that's when you see guys carrying like 19 chairs. Yeah. Putting themselves in the hospital. 

[00:24:42] Jesse Schwamb: That's what I, listen, it comes for all of us. Like I, you know, I'm certainly not young anymore by almost any definition, but even when I'm in the mix, I'm like, oh, I see you guys.

You wanna play this game? Mm-hmm. Let's do this. And then, you know, I'm stacking chairs until I hurt myself. So it's great. That's, that is what we do for each other. It's 

[00:25:01] Tony Arsenal: just, I hurt my neck getting outta bed the other day. So it happens. It's real. 

[00:25:05] Jesse Schwamb: The struggle. Yeah, the struggle is real. 

[00:25:07] The Parable of the Lost Son

[00:25:07] Jesse Schwamb: Speaking of struggle, speaking of family issues, speaking of all kinds of drama, let's get into Luke 15 and let me read just, I would say the first part of this parable, which as we've agreed to talk about, if we can even get this far, it's just the younger son.

[00:25:24] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. 

[00:25:25] Jesse Schwamb: And again, don't worry, we're gonna get to all of it, but let me read beginning in, uh, verse 11 here. This is Luke chapter 15. Come follow along as you will accept if you're operating heavy machinery. And Jesus said, A man had two sons and the younger of them said to his father, father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.

So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country. And there he squandered his estate living recklessly. Now, when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country and it began to be impoverished.

So he went and hired himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. So he went and as he was desiring to be fed with the pods that the swine were eating because no one was giving anything to him. But when he came to himself, he said, how many of my father's men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger.

I'll rise up and go to my father, and I'll say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men. So he rose up, came to his father, but while he was still a long way off. His father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him.

And the son said to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his slaves, quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and bring the fat in calf and slaughter it and let us celebrate.

For the son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and he has been found and they began to celebrate. 

[00:27:09] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. This is such a, um, such a, I don't know, like pivotal seminal parable in the Ministry of Christ. Um, it's one of those parables and we, we mentioned this briefly last week that even most.

It, it hasn't passed out of the cultural zeitgeist yet. A lot of biblical teaching has, I mean, a lot, I think a lot of things that used to be common knowledge where, where you could make a reference to something in the Bible and people would just get it. Um, even if they weren't Christian or weren't believers, they would still know what you were talking about.

There's a lot of things in the Bible that have passed out of that cultural memory. The, the parable of the prodigal son, lost son, however you wanna phrase it, um, that's not one of them. Right. So I think it's really important for us, um, and especially since it is such a beautiful picture of the gospel and it has so many different theological touch points, it's really incumbent on us to spend time thinking about this because I would be willing to bet that if you weave.

Elements of this parable into your conversations with nonbelievers that you are praying for and, and, you know, witnessing to and sharing the gospel with, if you weave this in there, you're gonna help like plant some seeds that when it comes time to try to harvest, are gonna pay dividends. Right. So I think it's a really, it's a really great thing that we're gonna be able to spend, you know, a couple weeks really just digging into this.

[00:28:40] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, and to define the beginning, maybe from the end, just slightly here, I like what you said about this cultural acknowledgement of this. I think one of the correctives we can provide, which is clear in the story, is in the general cultural sense. We speak of this prodigal as something that just returns comes back, was lost, but now is found.

And often maybe there is this component of, in the familial relationship, it's as if they've been restored. Here we're gonna of course find that this coming to one senses is in fact the work of God. That there is, again, a little bit of denial that has to bring forward the affirmation here that is the return.

And so again, from the beginning here, we're just talking about the younger son. We have more than youthful ambition. 

[00:29:19] The Essence of Idolatry and Sin

[00:29:19] Jesse Schwamb: This heart of, give me the stuff now, like so many have said before, is really to say. Give me the gifts and not you, which is, I think, a common fault of all Christians. We think, for instance of heaven, and we think of all the blessings that come with it, but not necessarily of the joy of just being with our savior, being with Christ.

And I think there's something here right from the beginning, there's a little bit of this betrayal in showing idolatry, the ugliness of treating God's gifts as if there's something owed. And then this idea that of course. He receives these things and imme more or less immediately sometime after he goes and takes these things and squanderers them.

And sin and idolatry, I think tends to accelerate in this way. The distance from the father becomes distance from wisdom. We are pulled away from that, which is good. The father here being in his presence and being under his care and his wisdom and in his fear of influence and concern, desiring then to say, I don't want you just give me the gifts that you allegedly owe me.

And then you see how quickly like sin does everything you, we always say like, sin always costs more than you want to pay. And it always takes you further than you want to go. And that's exactly what we see here. Like encapsulated in an actual story of relationship and distance. 

[00:30:33] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think, um.

It's interesting to me. 

[00:30:39] The Greek Words for Property

[00:30:39] Tony Arsenal: You know, I, I, I'm a big fan of saying you don't need to study Greek to understand your Bible, but I'm also a big fan of saying understanding a little bit of Greek is really helpful. And one of the things that I think is really intriguing, and I haven't quite parsed out exactly what I think this means, but the word property in this parable, it actually is two different Greek words that is translated as property, at least in the ESV.

And neither one of them really fit. What our normal understanding of property would be. And there are Greek words that refer to like all of your material possessions, but it says, father, give me the share of property. And he uses the word usia, which those of us who have heard anything about the trinity, which is all of us, um, know that that word means something about existence.

It's the core essence of a person. So it says, father, give me the share of usia that is coming to me. And then it says, and he divided his bias, his, his life between them. Then it says, not many days later, the younger son gathered all that he had took a journey into the far country. There he squandered his usia again.

So this, this parable, Christ is not using the ordinary words to refer to material, uh, material accumulation and property like. I think probably, you know, Christ isn't like randomly using these words. So there probably is an element that these were somehow figuratively used of one's life possessions. But the fact that he's using them in these particular ways, I think is significant.

[00:32:10] The Prodigal Son's Misconception

[00:32:10] Tony Arsenal: And so the, the, the younger son here, and I don't even like calling this the prodigal sun parable because the word prodigal doesn't like the equivalent word in Greek doesn't appear in this passage. And prodigal doesn't mean like the lost in returned, like prodigal is a word that means like the one who spends lavishly, right?

So we call him the prodigal son because he went and he squandered all of his stuff and he spent all of his money. So it doesn't even really describe the main feature or the main point of why this, this parable is here. It's just sort of like a random adjective that gets attached to it. But all of that aside, um.

This parable starts off not just about wasting our property, like wasting our things, but it's a parable that even within the very embedded language of the parable itself is talking about squandering our very life, our very essence, our very existence is squandered and wasted as we depart from the Father.

Right? And this is so like, um, it's almost so on the head, on the on the nose that it's almost a little like, really Jesus. Like this is, this is so like, slap you in the face kind of stuff. This is right outta like Romans, uh, Romans one, like they did not give thanks to God. They did not show gratitude to God or acknowledge him as God.

This is what's happening in this parable. The son doesn't go to his father and say, father, I love you. I'm so happy to stay with you. I'm so happy to be here. He, he basically says like. Give me your very life essence, and I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go spend it on prostitutes. I'm gonna go waste your life, father, I'm gonna waste your life, your existence, your bias.

I'm gonna go take that and I'm gonna squander it on reckless living. And I guess we don't know for sure. He, it doesn't say he spends it on prostitutes. That's something his brother says later and assumes he did. So I, I don't know that we do that. But either way, I'm gonna take what's yours, your very life, your very essence.

And also that my life, my essence, the gift you've given me as my father, you've given me my life. In addition now to your life or a portion of your life. And I'm gonna go squander that on reckless living, right? Like, how much of a picture of sin is that, that we, we take what we've been given by God, our very life, our very essence, we owe him everything, and we squander that on sinful, reckless living.

That that's just a slap in the face in the best way right out of the gate here. 

[00:34:28] Jesse Schwamb: Yes, that, that's a great point because it's, it would be one thing to rebel over disobedience, another thing to use the very life essence that you've been given for destructive, self-destructive purposes. And then to use that very energy, which is not yours to begin with, but has been imbued in yours, external, all of these things.

And then to use that very thing as the force of your rebellion. So it's double insult all the way around. I'm with you in the use of Greek there. Thank you. Locus Bio software. Not a sponsor of the podcast, but could be. And I think that's why sometimes in translations you get the word like a state because it's like the closest thing we can have to understanding that it's property earned through someone's life more or less.

Yeah. And then is passed down, but as representative, not just of like, here's like 20 bucks of cash, but something that I spent all of me trying to earn and. And to your point, also emphasizing in the same way that this son felt it was owed him. So it's like really bad all around and I think we would really be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't think that there's like a little bit of Paul washer saying in this, like I'm talking about you though.

So like just be like, look at how disrespectful the sun is. Yeah. Haven't we all done this? To God and bringing up the idea of prodigal being, so that, that is like the amazing juxtaposition, isn't it? Like Prodigal is, is spent recklessly, parsimonious would be like to, to save recklessly, so to speak. And then you have the love the father demonstrates coming against all of that in the same way with like a totally different kind of force.

So. 

[00:36:02] The Famine and Realization

[00:36:02] Jesse Schwamb: What I find interesting, and I think this is like set up in exactly what you said, is that when you get to verse 14 and this famine comes, it's showing us, I think that like providence exposes what Sin conceals. 

[00:36:16] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. 

[00:36:16] Jesse Schwamb: And want arrives. Not just because like the money ran out, but because again, like these idols, what he's replaced the father with, they don't satisfy.

And repentance then often begins when God shows the emptiness of light apart life apart from him. That's like the affirmation being born out of the denial. And so I think that this also is evolving for us, this idea that God is going to use hardship, not as mere punishment, but as mercy that wakes us up and that the son here is being woken up, but not, of course, it's not as if he goes into the land, like you said, starts to spend, is like, whoa, hold on a second.

This seems like a bad idea. It's not until all of that sin ever, like the worship of false things collapses under its own weight before it, which is like the precursor of the antecedent, I think, to this grand repentance or this waking up. 

[00:37:05] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I also think it's, um. 

[00:37:08] The Depths of Desperation

[00:37:08] Tony Arsenal: A feature of this that I haven't reflected on too deeply, but is, is worth thinking about is the famine that's described here only occurs in this far country that he's in.

[00:37:17] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. 

[00:37:17] Tony Arsenal: Right. So even that's right. And this is like a multitude of foolish decisions. This is compounding foolish decisions that don't, don't make any sense. Like they don't really actually make any sense. Um. There's not a logic to this, this lost son's decision making. He takes the property. Okay. I guess maybe like you could be anxious to get your inheritance, but then like he takes it to a far country.

Like there's no reason for him to do that. If at any point through this sort of insane process he had stopped short, he would not have been in the situation he was in. Yes. And that, I love that phrase, that providence, you know, reveals, I don't know exactly how you said it, but like providence reveals what our sin can bring to us.

Like he first see sins against his father by sort of like demanding, demanding his inheritance early. Then he takes it and he leaves his country for no reason. He goes to this far country, then he spends everything and then the famine arises. Right? And the famine arises in this other country. 

[00:38:13] Jesse Schwamb: Right. 

[00:38:13] Tony Arsenal: And that's, I think that is still again, like a picture of sin.

Like we. We don't just, we don't just take what the father has and, and like spend it like that would be bad enough if we weren't grateful for what we have and what we've been given, and we just waste it. But on top of that, now we also have taken ourselves to a far country. Like we've gone away from the good, the good land of the Lord, as those who are not regenerate.

We've gone away from the, the Lord into this far country. And it's not until we start to have this famine that we recognize what we've done. And again, this is, this is where I think we get a picture. There's so many theological, like points in this parable particular that it almost feels a little bit like a, like a.

Parable that's intended to teach some systematic theology about for sure, the oral salus, which I think there's probably a lot of like biblical theology people that are ready to just crawl through the screen and strangle me for saying that. But this is such a glorious picture of, of regeneration too.

[00:39:16] The Journey Back to the Father

[00:39:16] Tony Arsenal: Like he comes to himself, there's nothing, there's nothing in the story that's like, oh, and the servant that he was, the other servant he was talking to mentioned that the famine, like there's nothing here that should prompt him to want to go back to his home, to think that his father could or would do anything about it, except that he comes to himself.

He just comes to the realization that his father is a good man and is wise and has resources, and has takes care of his, of his servants on top of how he takes care of his sons. That is a picture of regeneration. There's no, yeah. Logical, like I'm thinking my way into it, he just one day realizes how much, how many of my father's servants have more than enough bread.

Right. But I'm perishing here in this, this foolish other country with nothing. Right. I can't even, and the, the pods that the pigs ate, we can even, we can get into the pods a little bit here, but like. He wants to eat the pods. The pods that he's giving the pigs are not something that's even edible to humans.

He's that destitute, that he's willing to eat these pods that are like, this is the leftover stuff that you throw to the pigs because no, no, nobody and nothing else can actually eat it. And that's the state he's in at the very bottom, in the very end of himself where he realizes my father is good and he loves me, and even if I can never be his son again, surely he'll take care of me.

I mentioned it last week, like he wasn't going back thinking that this was gonna be a failing proposition. He went back because he knew or he, he was confident that his father was going to be able to take care of him and would accept him back. Right. Otherwise, what would be the point of going back? It wasn't like a, it wasn't like a, um, a mission he expected to fail at.

He expected there to be a positive outcome or he wouldn't have done it. Like, it wouldn't make any sense to try that if there wasn't the hope of some sort of realistic option. 

[00:41:09] Jesse Schwamb: And I think his confidence in that option, as you were saying, is in this way where he's constructed a transaction. Yeah. That he's gonna go back and say, if you'll just take me out as a slave, I know you have slaves, I will work for you.

Right. Therefore, I feel confident that you'll accept me under those terms because I'll humble myself. And why would you not want to remunerate? Me for the work that I put forward. So you're right, like it's, it's strange that he basically comes to this, I think, sense that slavery exists in his life and who would he rather be the slave of, 

[00:41:38] Tony Arsenal: right?

[00:41:39] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. And so he says, listen, I'm gonna come to the father and give him this offer. And I'm very confident that given that offer and his behavior, what I know about how he treats his other slaves, that he will hire me back because there's work to do. And therefore, as a result of the work I put forward, he will take care of me.

How much of like contemporary theology is being preached in that very way right now? 

[00:41:58] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. 

[00:41:59] Jesse Schwamb: And that's really like why the minimum wages of sin is all of this stuff. It's death. It's the consequences that we're speaking about here. By the way, the idea about famine is really interesting. I hadn't thought about that.

It is interesting, again, that sin casts him out into this foreign place where the famine occurs. And that famine is the beginning of his realization of the true destruction, really how far he's devolved and degraded in his person and in his relationships and in his current states. And then of course, the Bible is replete with references and God moving through famine.

And whereas in Genesis, we have a local famine, essentially casting Joseph brothers into a foreign land to be freed and to be saved. 

[00:42:39] Tony Arsenal: Right. 

[00:42:40] Jesse Schwamb: We have the exact opposite, which is really kind of interesting. Yeah. So we probably should talk about, you know, verse 15 and the, and the pig stuff. I mean, I think the obvious statement here is that.

It would be scandalous, like a Jewish hero would certainly feel the shame of the pigs. They represent UNC cleanliness and social humiliation. I'm interested again, in, in this idea, like you've started us on that the freedom that this younger brother sought for becomes slavery. It's kind of bondage of the wills style.

Yeah. Stuff. There's like an, an attentiveness in the story to the degrading reversal in his condition. And it is interesting that we get there finally, like the bottom of the pit maybe, or the barrel is like you said, the pods, which it's a bit like looking at Tide pods and being like, these are delicious.

I wish I could just eat these. So I, I think your point isn't lost. Like it's not just that like he looked at something gross and was so his stomach was grumbling so much that he might find something in there that he would find palatable. It, it's more than that. It's like this is just total nonsense. It, this is Romans one.

[00:43:45] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And these pods, like, these aren't, um, you know, I guess I, I don't know exactly what these are. I'm sure somebody has done all of the historical linguistic studies, but the Greek word is related to the, the word for keratin. So like the, the same, the same root word. And we have to be careful not to define a Greek word based on how we use it.

That's a reverse etymology fallacy. Like dunamis doesn't mean dynamite, it's the other direction. But the Greek word is used in other places, in Greek literature to describe like the horns of rhinoc, like, 

[00:44:21] Jesse Schwamb: right, 

[00:44:21] Tony Arsenal: this, these aren't like. These aren't pea pods. I've heard this described like these are like little vegetable pods.

No, this is like they're throwing pieces of bone to the pigs. 

[00:44:31] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. 

[00:44:31] Tony Arsenal: And the pigs, the pigs can manage it. And this is what this also like, reinforces how destitute and how deep the famine is. Like this isn't as though, like this is the normal food you give to pigs. Like usually you feed pigs, like you feed pigs, like the extra scraps from your table and like other kinds of like agricultural waste.

These are, these are like chunks of bony keratin that are being fed to the pigs. So that's how terrible the famine is that not even the pigs are able to get food. 

[00:45:00] Jesse Schwamb: Right? 

[00:45:00] Tony Arsenal: They're given things that are basically inedible, but the pigs can manage it. And this, this kid is so hungry, he's so destitute that he says, man, I wish I could chew on those bony, those bony pods that I'm feeding them because that's how hungry and starved I am.

You get the picture that this, um. This lost son is actually probably not just metaphorically on the brink of death, but he's in real risk of starvation, real risk of death that he, he can't even steal. He can't even steal from the pigs what they're eating, right? Like he can't even, he can't even glean off of what the pigs are eating just to stay alive.

He, he's literally in a position where he has no hope of actually rescuing himself. The only thing that he can do, and this is the realization he has, the only thing he can do is throw himself back on the mercy of his father. 

[00:45:50] Jesse Schwamb: That's 

[00:45:50] Tony Arsenal: right. And, and hope, again, I think hope with confidence, but hope that his father will show mercy on him and his, his conception.

I wanna be careful in this parable not to, I, I think there's something to what you're getting at or kinda what you're hinting at, that like his conception of mercy is. Not the full picture of the gospel. Yes. His conception of mercy is that he's going to be able to go and work and be rewarded for his laborers in a way that he can survive.

And the gospel is so much broader and so much bigger than that. But at the same time, I think it's, it's actually also a confident hope, a faith-filled hope that his father's mercy is going to rescue him, is going to save him. So it is this picture of what we do. And, and I think, I think sometimes, um, I want to be careful how we say this 'cause I don't wanna, I don't want to get a bunch of angry emails and letters, but I think sometimes we, um, we make salvation too much of a theology test.

And there's probably people that are like, Tony, did you really just say that? I think there are people who trust in the Lord Jesus thinking that that means something akin to what. This lost son thinks 

[00:47:03] Jesse Schwamb: Right. 

[00:47:03] Tony Arsenal: Exactly. They trust. They trust that Jesus is merciful and, and I'm not necessarily thinking of Roman Catholics.

I'm not thinking of Roman Catholic theology for sure. I do think there are a fair number of Roman Catholic individuals that fall into this category where they trust Jesus to save them. Right. They just don't fully understand exactly what Jesus means, what that means for them to be saved. They think that Christ is a savior who will provide a way for them to be saved by His grace that requires them to contribute something to it.

Arminians fall into that category. Right. I actually think, and I, I think there's gonna be if, if there's, if the one Lutheran who listens to our show hears this is gonna be mad, but I actually think Lutheran theology kind of falls into this in a sort of negative fashion in that you have to not resist grace in order to be saved.

So I think. That is something we should grapple with is that there are people who fit into that category, but this is still a faith-filled, hope-filled confidence in the mercy of the father in this parable that he's even willing to make the journey back. Right? This isn't like right, he walks from his house down the street or from the other side of town.

He's wandering back from a far country. He, he went into a far country. He has to come back from a far country. And yes, the father greets him from afar and sees him from afar. But we're not talking about like from a far country. Like he sees him coming down the road, it, he has to travel to him, and this is a picture of.

The hope and the faith that we have to have to return to God, to throw ourselves on the mercy of Christ, trusting that he has our best interest in mind, that he has died for us, and that it is for us. Right? There's the, the knowledge of what Christ has done, and then there's the ascent to the truth of it.

And then the final part of faith is the confidence or the, the faith in trust in the fact that, that is for me as well, right? This, this is a picture of that right here. I, I don't know why we thought we were gonna get through the whole thing in one week, Jesse. We're gonna spend at least two weeks on this lost son, or at least part of the second week here.

But he, this is, this is also like a picture of faith. This is why I say this as like a systematic theology lesson on soteriology all packed into here. Because not only do we have, like what is repentance and or what does regeneration look like? It's coming to himself. What does repentance look like? Yes.

Turning from your sins and coming back. What is, what is the orde solis? Well, there's a whole, there's a whole thing in here. What is the definition of faith? Well, he knows that his father is good. That he has more than enough food for his servants. He, uh, is willing to acknowledge the truth of that, and he's willing to trust in that, in that he's willing to walk back from a far country in order to lay claim to that or to try to lay claim to it.

That's a picture of faith right there, just in all three parts. Right. It's, it's really quite amazing how, how in depth this parable goes on this stuff, 

[00:49:54] Jesse Schwamb: right? Yeah. It's wild to note that as he comes to himself, he's still working. Yeah, in that far off country. So this shows again that sin is this cruel master.

He hits the bottom, he wants the animal food, but he's still unfed. And this is all the while again, he has some kind of arrangement where he is trying to work his way out of that and he sees the desperation. And so I'm with you, you know, before coming to Christ, A person really, I think must come to themselves and that really is like to say they need to have a sober self-knowledge under God, right?

Yeah. Which is, as we said before, like all this talk about, well Jesus is the answer. We better be sure what the question is. And that question is who am I before God? And this is why, of course, you have to have the law and gospel, or you have to have the the bad news before you can have the good news. And really, there's all of this bad news that's delivered here and this repentance, like you've been saying, it's not just mere regret, we know this.

It's a turning, it's a reorientation back to the father. He says, I will arise and go to my father. So yeah, also it demonstrates to me. When we do come to ourselves when there's a sober self-knowledge under God, there is a true working out of salvation that necessarily requires and results in some kind of action, right?

And that is the mortification of sin that is moving toward God again, under his power and direction of the Holy Spirit. But still there is some kind of movement on our part. And so that I think is what leads then in verse 19, as you're saying, the son and I do love this 'cause I think this goes right back to like the true hope that he has, even though it might be slightly corrupted or slightly washed out because it's not like the full, bright colors of the gospel in its entirety.

But he doesn't deny that he's the son. He just ows that he's his worthiness. And so there's like a tender conscience somewhere in there concluding like I must, we can say like, well, I must not really be truly God's own, or God would never take me as I am. And so what we have here, I think is this lesson reminder of God, the difference between identity and harmony with God.

That harmony often gets disrupted because of our own sin, but this son here recognizes that he is still the son. And so I think he, he knows his father, like you're saying. I think he hopes for the best, but what he wants to put forward is, can I just come and be a slave in your house? Which incidentally is what he will become, but under better pretenses of saying, well, you will maintain you sonship because of some kind of meritorious earning, which is where we're all tempted to go because it feels better.

It feels more safe than trusting and embracing and receiving the fathers recklessly spend thrift love, which actually is the thing that keeps us in the identity of being a son or a daughter of God. So you're right, there's so much that's happening. Underneath there that, I mean, I'm sure some Puritan has written about that in probably 50,000 words.

[00:52:36] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. 

[00:52:36] Jesse Schwamb: But there's so much there because I'm with you. I think there is a great hope because of understanding his identity, and yet he knows the harmony is disrupted to such a degree that what he also trusts in is that worst case scenario, I would rather be a slave for my father than I would rather be a slave to sin.

And I think only until you come to that place, only when you understand that you are a slave to something, into someone, that you actually start to ask, well, how good is my master? That there is a coming to yourself, which leads to repentance and God uses in his grand providence, all kinds of past, all kinds of undertakings, all kinds of campaigns, if you will, to bring us to that place.

But he must bring us to that place before we can have true repentance. 

[00:53:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:53:20] The Father's Unconditional Mercy

[00:53:20] Tony Arsenal: And, you know, we'll, we'll get into it more, but just because I, I don't feel great about, uh. Sort of throwing out the law in some ways and not finishing with the gospel. 

[00:53:30] Jesse Schwamb: Let's get to the gospel. 

[00:53:31] Tony Arsenal: The, the father's correction of this is again, like this is the systematic theology correction.

The son comes and he says, or he's planning on saying, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. When we get to the father. The father cuts him off as I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. 

[00:53:49] Jesse Schwamb: Right? Right. 

[00:53:49] Tony Arsenal: So he doesn't, he doesn't let him get to the point of, of proposing the meritorious salvation that he thought he was going to get.

He, he lets him acknowledge, right? He, the father, lets him acknowledge that he's no longer worthy of being his son, and then essentially says, but that doesn't matter because I am worthy of being your father, and I will make you my son again. That that's what he does. He brings the robe, he brings the sandal, he brings the ring, he restores and elevates him to a position of sonship that he didn't even before he left, didn't fully have.

We'll talk about that and we'll talk about it again. He, he doesn't come home and come back to being the second son. He comes back home. And this is part of why the older son is so annoyed, is he's actually elevated to the place of the firstborn. 

[00:54:35] Jesse Schwamb: That's right. 

[00:54:36] Tony Arsenal: By, by begin being given all these symbols of inheritance.

And, and this is, you know, this is the other thing, and maybe we'll talk about this more when we get to the, get to what the father gives him. But in Jewish custom and in the Jewish law, the second born son would get, would get one third of the estate. And so he comes back and one third of, I mean, who knows?

We don't know how long this trip is. We don't know how long he's been gone. We don't know how, um, how much the estate has been rebuilt. Obviously, the father is still working. It's not as though like his estate is just like stagnant and neutral, but when he comes back, a third of the estate has been wiped out by his reckless living.

When he comes back, he's 

basically 

given all the symbols to say 

that 

he's now guaranteed to have 

the, 

the two thirds. 

[00:55:22] Jesse Schwamb: Right? 

[00:55:23] Tony Arsenal: So he comes back to this position, 

into this estate 

where the father elevates him 

back to and 

above his previous station 

of sonship. 

That is the gospel of Jesus Christ 

right there.

[00:55:34] Jesse Schwamb: That's right. 

[00:55:34] Tony Arsenal: That's double imputation baked into the pie. 

Amen. It's not, 

it's not just that. He goes, well. 

Yeah, 

you spent all this stuff, but I guess 

like we can, 

we can overlook that. That would be more akin to come back. 

You can 

start at zero, 

I guess. 

Zero is a servant in my house. 

Go ahead and 

work your way back up if you can.

Right. He comes back and the father says like, well, I've been working hard. I mean, I'm kind of like importing this into the text a little bit, but I've been working hard to rebuild the estate while you were gone. You took a third of it and I've been working hard and now I'm granting you at the, at a minimum, like I'm granting you back what you took away, what you squandered.

I'm giving it back to you. I'm restoring you, not just to neutral. I'm restoring you to this place of positive, favorable, gracious, loving communion with me, such that I'm gonna celebrate, I'm gonna give you the best things. I'm gonna kill the animal, and we're gonna have the best feasts, we're gonna have the most fun, we're gonna celebrate because you're alive.

You're back, and you're alive. Right. That's an element that I had never even thought of in this. You know, the, the father is not supposed to be pictured in this parable as omniscient, right? He has to see the son coming back. I, I don't, you know, I'm, I'm my kid's only almost four years old, but I know a lot of people who have teenagers that they go out and like, they don't come back for days at a time.

And that's a terrifying thing for a parent. Now imagine if he was off in a far country and you don't have phones, you don't have a cell phone, you can't track him on your iPhone. This, this father is, so, he probably had counted his son as dead right there. There probably wasn't another conclusion to make that when he disappears like that, this is a, this is a real return and a real resurrection in a sense, in this parable that we, we should not overlook, right?

I think we think about the, the phrasing at the end there that your brother was lost and now he's fine. He was, he was dead and now he's alive. We think of that as like poetic or metaphorical or, or, or some sort of like hyperbolic statement. But in a very real sense in this instance, this son really did come back to life for this family and he was brought back to life and restored back to life by the grace of the father in in restoring him to this place of sonship.

[00:57:45] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, I think that's right. That initial interaction, that requesting, that demanding is like a severing of the relationship. Yeah. It's basically saying, I wish to go away and to disconnect with you completely as if you were dead and I was a different person. 

[00:58:00] Concluding Thoughts and Reflections

[00:58:00] Jesse Schwamb: And so I think a great place to end, like you said, is let's be reminded that God's mercy is not reluctant, like God's mercy comes in hot.

The embrace comes faster than the son's repair attempts. That's exactly how God treats us. He delights to bring that mercy to his children when they come before him in repentance day after day after day. Thank goodness. Praise God that his mercies are new every day. And here there are mercies for this son Yeah. By the way, before we end, I have to ask Tony, what flavor is the double imputation pie? Is that like a, is it a fruit pie or is that like a more of a cold, like custard based pie? 

[00:58:42] Tony Arsenal: Well, you know, we do have a precedent on this podcast of talking about Exactly. Salvation. 

[00:58:46] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly. 

[00:58:46] Tony Arsenal: Being the pie or the cake, right?

So the cake is salvation. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's sweet and delicious. Maybe it's like a meat pie. Maybe it's like a good, like minced meat pie with all the, like, are you 

[00:58:57] Jesse Schwamb: going 

[00:58:57] Tony Arsenal: savory? Good protein? Yeah. Maybe it's a savory pie. Okay. I don't know. 

[00:59:00] Jesse Schwamb: Okay. 

[00:59:00] Tony Arsenal: I've never had a savory pie. 

[00:59:02] Jesse Schwamb: I, I like, I, you know how you say that?

I haven't either, but I would love like, what's it like steak and kidney? Isn't that like a famous. 

[00:59:09] Tony Arsenal: That sounds awful. 

[00:59:11] Jesse Schwamb: Well, isn't that like a, listen, do we have any brothers, sisters who are listening in in any of like the, yeah, the United Kingdom. Where are you guys at? Yeah, Daniel is a steak and kidney.

Daniel, you 

[00:59:19] Tony Arsenal: tell us. Daniel Steak and kidney a real thing. 

[00:59:22] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, we need to know. 

[00:59:24] Tony Arsenal: Okay. 

[00:59:24] Jesse Schwamb: Is it good? Is it delicious? Would you describe it as a pie of double imputation again, steak, kidney? I'm thinking, 

[00:59:34] Tony Arsenal: I don't even 

[00:59:34] Jesse Schwamb: know. Tony's not, not convinced. So look at his face is like, we need to end this episode right 

[00:59:39] Tony Arsenal: now.

Yeah. Well, Jesse, I know how to end the episode. It's funny, it's funny. People, I'm glad people picked up on the little joke from last week, although it wasn't really a joke. 

[00:59:49] Jesse Schwamb: No. 

[00:59:50] Tony Arsenal: And I still have this recurring nightmare than we're gonna forget how to end the podcast. But last week we were trying a, a slightly different recording setup.

[00:59:57] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. 

[00:59:57] Tony Arsenal: And somehow, maybe this is our AI overlords playing some sort of joke on us. Somehow, right after talking about how we were gonna blow the ending, the system magically muted Jesse's microphone. I could see his hands. They were nowhere near the keyboard. There's no possible way 

[01:00:13] Jesse Schwamb: in the air. 

[01:00:14] Tony Arsenal: Just absolutely.

The, the, the phone was like, or the recording software was like, not today boys. So we're on a different platform this time. Hopefully it won't do it. 

[01:00:25] Jesse Schwamb: We're about to find out. 

[01:00:27] Tony Arsenal: We will. When I say until next time, Jesse Honor. Everyone 

[01:00:33] Jesse Schwamb: just kidding. Everybody 

[01:00:34] Tony Arsenal: love the brotherhood.