“Now the elder son was in the field: and as he drew nigh to the house he heard music and dancing... and he was angry and would not go in.”
THE two sons in our parable do not represent those who are sons by faith in Christ Jesus, but sons of God in the sense in which Adam was a son, by creation. Luke 3:3838Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. (Luke 3:38), and as one of the pagan poets, quoted by the Apostle Paul, had said of all men, “We are His offspring.” Acts 17:2828For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (Acts 17:28). Man was created in the image and after the likeness of God and set in the earth as a steward to hold it for Him. From that high honor he departed and fell when he gave his allegiance to the devil instead of to God, and he became what we see him now to be, not God-centered, but self-centered, a prodigal Adam and not an advancing and much to be congratulated ape. The race is a prodigal race, whether Pharisee or publican. Yet the heart of God yearns for men as the heart of a father yearns for a wayward son. It is this that the parable teaches.
I have heard it argued that the majority of men are not like the younger but like the elder son, and to be heartily congratulated on their upright lives and good citizenship. Well, the elder son is a problem and not easily placed. But it must be noticed that it was he who said the good things about himself. It was he who said, “Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment.” Certainly he could blow his own trumpet, and he had a high estimate of his father’s indebtedness to him. But look at him―an angry and jealous man! Consider him well; that which had made his father most wonderfully happy and filled his house with music, had filled him with bitter and hateful feelings. Look at the heart of the man, there is murder in it; we feel that he could have choked this vile son of his father’s, if he could have bemeaned himself enough to lay his hands on him; certainly he would rather he had perished in the swine field than come back to his father’s house. Then he turns on his father and pours his spleen upon him. Why, through these “many years” of which he speaks, he might as well have been a thousand miles away from his father, for he had not a feeling in common with him; he had no sympathy with the compassions that filled his heart; he was morally farther away from his father than his wayward brother.
Hear him talk, “Thou never gavest me a kid.” Not even a kid! what resentment, what scorn is in those words. He charges his father with unfairness, unrighteousness, with a total lack of appreciation of all his honorable service. The only righteous man in the house was himself! Then the utter selfishness that was in him came out, “that I might make merry with my friends.” That was what his brother had been doing in the far country, at heart he was the same.
And he would not go in. A quaint old preacher used to say, “The younger son was too hungry to stay out, and the elder son was too angry to go in.” The prodigal was driven to his father’s house by his need, the Pharisee refused to be drawn by the father’s grace. He may represent the Jew, of whom Paul wrote, “They please not God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway; for wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” 1 Thessalonians 2:1616Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thessalonians 2:16), but he also represents those self-righteous people who will not have the grace of God, and they are many.
I would rather be inside the house with the prodigal than outside with the Pharisee, for inside is the Father’s love, outside is the wrath of God, and what a terrible thing it must be to be out of sympathy with God, to have not a chord in one’s being that thrills to the joy of heaven, to be an alien to the life of the Father’s house, and to choose to be outside of it instead of inside! Such was the elder son, and what will he do? A great blasphemer of God is reported to have said as his life ebbed away, “O thou almighty but most indulgent God, hell will be refuge if it hides me from Thee,” and it seems to me that hell will be preferable to heaven to the man who has the unregenerate heart of the elder son.
But why did the father go out and entreat him, and say, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine”? The father’s heart yearned for the elder son as much as for the younger son, and the grace that was in him when he went out to him ought to have dispelled his anger, and opened his eyes to see what a father he had got; and it may be that the father recognized that he had not wasted his substance as the younger son had. God’s grace puts no premium on vice, and the man who keeps himself from the grosser sins is not so great a sinner outwardly as the profligate. He may be only a fifty pence debtor in contrast to the five hundred pence debtor. Moreover, this man, if we can carry our thoughts back to the days in which the Lord lived, was one of those who never missed the services at the synagogue, he would be careful to keep the fasts and be strict as to all the outward observances of the law, he has his counterpart today in the religionist. The father did not charge him with gross conduct, he recognized the outward respectability and put all that he had within his reach, but he would have none of it, he would not go in. Can we not feel the sob in the father’s words? Here was that that marred the joy; the father might have rejoiced over two sons; one of them refused to give him the opportunity and was a grief to his heart.
As long as the door was open, he refused to enter in, but when the door was shut, ah, what then? In chapter 13 of our Gospel, we read, “When once the Master of the house hath risen up and shut to the door, then ye shall stand without and knock and say, Lord, Lord open to us,” and further they will say, “we have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets.” There they are, the elder sons who would not have the grace of God, outside the closed door. “But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.” Luke 13:27-3027But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. 28There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. 29And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. 30And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last. (Luke 13:27‑30).
And, further God will be angry. “Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant... None of those men that were bidden shall taste of my supper” chapter 14. And what will the angry Pharisee do in the presence of God’s anger?