“The power of a boring story.”
Passage: Luke 15
Speaker: Kevin Stiles
Bridgewater Montrose’s Podcast
Your Story: Week 5
Well, good morning, and let me also welcome you to Bridgewater, whether you're here in the room, and you can help me with this. Is it Montrose or is it Montrose? It's both. Is what you're saying? Yeah. Now, does it just matter how old you are? Welcome from those of you who are in the Montrose campus. We're glad that you are here, whether you're at our location in Hancock or whether you're online. I just want to thank you for joining us. My name is Kevin Stiles. I get to be one of the pastors here, and I haven't been here very long. So I'm still working on that today. We get to finish up this series entitled "Your Story." What I love about this series is that, excuse me, we all have a story. And just much like in ancient times, people developed their view of God when they saw the God of Abraham, Isaac, and the God of Jacob. You probably developed your view of God because you saw the God of people like Bob and Andrew and Pat. The people will develop their view of God because they watch you and how you act and the things that you say, no pressure. But we have some pressure. But tell your story. Stories are good. If you're anything like me, you love hearing people's stories. I just love hearing about how they grew up, the crazy things that happened, the good, the bad, the ups and downs. I already heard a couple stories this morning that were some great things and some, man, some really hard years. And I love and what I find most fascinating about stories is how Jesus enters the picture. As a matter of where it is, how Jesus led them and pointed them to the point when they wanted to make him leader and forgiver of their lives and even how he continues to work and grow them as they continue in their relationship with him. So I'm excited to be here this morning to share a bit of my story with you. And I wonder, as we get into it, how many of you, just by raising your hand, would say that your part of your story is that you grew up in church, through church. You can feel free to raise your hand no matter where you are, even if you're online or in hand-cocking and raise your hand. That's good. So some of you are my people. Now, I think my family took that up a level and let me explain. My dad was a pastor. I pretty much that's all I have to say to explain it, but the idea was a pastor, which really meant that we were in church all the time. Very conservative church-focused family, of course. From the time I was in the womb, I was in church four times a week. Early in Sunday school, then there was the morning service, there was Wednesday night prayer meet, of course. And then I got old enough where I could go to Awana, which is a program for kids, games and memorizing Bible verses and all that kind of fun stuff. When I was in second grade, by the time second grade, I started attending a Christian school that was started in my church. And so if I could just draw a picture of it, the church kind of sat like an L shape. And my house was right here. My world rolled around this corner of the block, and the truth is, there were 12 steps from my back door to the back door of the church. That was my 12-step program, and I am still in recovery, I think. Sorry. But don't get me wrong, I did enjoy growing up around church. I didn't always like it, I have to be honest there, but I certainly love the heritage that I have now. However, in that, I think I picked up something, and I picked up something that was unintentional, but it definitely distorted or warped my view of God. And as I get into that this morning, when I ask that question, it's going to seem rather random and maybe, you know, unusual, maybe not a question you expect to hear in church, and that's okay. The question really kind of springs me, an illustration of my mind from my story, and it helped me see things differently. And I hope, I hope this morning, that it might help you see things a little bit differently as well. So the question is this, here's the question, are there, and just raise your hand. Are there any Chuck E. Cheese fans in the room? We got one. That's good. A couple of, now listen, for those of you who don't have your hands up, you know what a Chuck E. Cheese is, you're just not a fan. Is that accurate? No, all right. For those of you who don't know what Chuck E. Cheese is, Chuck E. Cheese was a magical pizza place for kids that had larger than life animatronics that would sing and dance, and eight-year-old Kevin loved everything about Chuck E. Cheese. As soon as you walk in the door and the sounds of the lights of the music just begging you to come play. The freedom that little eight-year-old Kevin felt didn't get a lot of freedom in life. The freedom I get to roam around the room with a little plastic cup full of tokens. And certainly as a dad, as a good dad, I enjoyed it so much I wanted to take my kids when they grew up. I have to be honest, the years were not kind to Chuck E. It was pretty clear that not long, they had to let the animatronics repair guy go. I mean, there's just something that the magic loses the magic when the banjo playing dogs in the corner looking straight down while the rest of his body is doing the dance. Or that curtain that was supposed to close when the thing was over that signaled you could go play and you didn't have to eat. That didn't close. And then there's just this lifeless Chuck E. This horrifying image. I have a picture just in case you want to know. That horrifying. Please tell me he's not looking at everyone in the room right now. It doesn't matter what you're sitting. He is looking at you. Yeah, we're going to leave that up for a second just to haunt your nightmares as you go. But when I was a kid, I wasn't going to Chuck E. Cheese for the animatronics or the really quite average pizza. I was going for the games. And my favorite game was the football toss game called the two-minute drill. And about this two-minute is a conveyor belt that would keep feeding you footballs. I mean, the goal was to rack up as many passing arches you could by hitting the various targets. You had to rack up as many passing arches you could as the time ticked down. And there's a point in this game that you had to be paying attention to. You had to watch out because if you got it, those little flaps would come out. And these little flaps would have different point values to them, yard values. And one time for very short time in the game, it would flap out and it would say 99. If you got 99, you were golden. Because that means you had a chance for the high score of the night. And I'm just telling you, you wanted the high score of the night. But it also left you with really the real reason you loved Chuck E. Cheese. And that was these. I mean, there was nothing like, I mean, that's what the games are for, right? They were for these tickets. I mean, you'd go over, you'd play ski ball, you'd play, you know, those games, you'd play the whack-a-mole, or they had that one game with the spinning light, you know, that spun around. But I'm telling you right now, there is nothing like an eight-year-old walking around with a mittful of these, right? And I tell you that story, not because I think it's great, I think the, as all Chuck E. Cheese stories conclude, is that you really were there for the last five minutes of Chuck E. Cheese. Because mom and dad, it would always say, "Hey, there's five minutes left," which means you had to take your tickets and you had to go to the prize thing. And you know that you were going to get something cool because that was the way of the thing, and if you remember, Chuck E. Cheese, the cool prizes were all hanging on the back wall, like the giant squirt gun, the huge stuffed animal, even the state-of-the-art walkman that was both a radio and a tape player. I'm telling you, the cool stuff, you just knew you had it, so you walk up and you saw that the giant squirt one was 100 tickets, and you're like, "I got to have that," and so you'd hand him to the ticket taker, and she would say, "Oh, no, I'm sorry. That's 100,000 tickets." And it didn't matter when, it didn't matter how many times you went, and you still had the realization at that moment that, "Oh, all I have enough tickets for is like a little gummy hamburger, a bouncy ball, and a little mini frisbee with Chuck E.'s face on it." But I can't tell you that story is because I think it sums up something. It sums up the unintended view of who God is. It changed how I thought of God. Much and faith became a game for me, and the game I was good at. I learned how to earn tickets from people, I could look him in the eye and shake their hand on Sunday mornings when they turned around and did that at church. I could raise my hand and participate in and get a high-five from my Sunday school teacher. I could memorize Bible verses and get a fist bump from my Iwana commander and earn tickets. I could stand back by the door, my dad was a pastor, we'd stand, remember the pastors would stand by the back door, and everyone would come by and tell them what a great job he did this morning. We can do it in just a minute if you want. But I would stand there as a little kid, and all the little people would come by, and I don't know why, ladies, you can help me, older ladies, they're all coming by and pinch your cheeks. Why? I don't know. But I could do that, I could play that game, and as if I was collecting tickets. And I wonder, have you ever thought of faith or church that way? Like you came to church today. That has to be worth a couple tickets. You prayed this week, that's got to be worth a couple more tickets. You gave, oh man, it's good. You read your Bible. In fact, you read Leviticus, that's worth a lot of tickets. But if that's the case, if that's who our view of God is, the problem with it is, it just distorts our view of God, as if God says, if I do these things, if I do blank, then God will do blank for me. It becomes a transaction to him. Faith and religion become a transaction, not a relationship. I've got some tickets that I've earned for doing the things that I was supposed to do. And because of that, God's going to give me some sort of favor. And the truth is, God doesn't want something from you. He wants something for you. He wants a relationship with you and with me. And close relationships aren't transactional. Let me think about this, somebody asks you, so tell me about your relationship with your kids. You don't go, oh man, I am just not getting anything out of the relationship right now. You don't think that because you understand that a relationship with your kids is not transactional. And what God wants most for you is a relationship with him and growing up my relationship with God and others was limited really to the transactional. Well, I was doing good, I was doing the right things, but I was probably doing it for the wrong reasons. And it limited my view, it warped my view of who God was. And Jesus tells a story that I think points out, kind of puts this on display in a pretty clear way that if you're playing this religious ticket collecting game, then we have a distorted view of who God really is. So, if you will, it turned your Bibles from the Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15, well, if you don't have a Bible, we will put those verses on the screen. And Luke chapter 15 is probably one of the more well-known stories, actually a series of stories that Jesus tells. And we, interestingly enough, tell about 90% of the story. And so maybe this morning we'll focus a little bit harder on that 10%. So I want to read through some of these stories and make some comments as we go. But for context, let's just jump into verse 1 to see why Jesus is saying what he's saying. He says this in verse 1, "Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus' teach." All right, let's just pause right there. Notice the phrase, "often came." Who often came to hear Jesus teach? It's not a trick question, who? Tax collectors and other notorious sinners, which automatically tells you what they thought of tax collectors, but tax collectors and other notorious sinners. And I just want to point this out really fast. Just a side note, maybe this is significant for you to hear as well, is that the people who are nothing like Jesus liked Jesus. The people who had no tickets to offer, they had nothing to give to him, liked being with him. And it wasn't because that he let them live anywhere they wanted. No, no, no. He called them up. He told them to leave their life as sin and to follow him. But they felt welcomed and valued at the same time. And I think that's what we should look like as a church. If we're a place that is welcoming and value sinners and the broken, then I don't think we could look anything more like Jesus. And that frustrates the religious people, though. Let's look what happens in verse two. This made the Pharisees and teachers of the religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people, even eating with them. How dare he? The ticket earners are not happy that Jesus was with the ticketless. Why? Because they earned all of these tickets. He was supposed to be spending time with who? With them. But he wasn't. And Jesus goes on to tell three sets of stories and all have kind of a common theme. He talks about a shepherd who had the sheep and he lost one. And he leaves the rest of the sheep and he goes after them. And as he goes after them, he finds it and he rescues and he didn't go, "Phew!" That was close. No, no, no, no. He brings it back and then he celebrates. He calls everyone together and celebrates because the sheep was lost and now it's found. Then he goes on to talk about a woman who lost a coin, which is much more valuable just the monetary value in that day. The fact is that she stops everything and she cleans her whole house to find it. And when she finds it, again, she doesn't go, "Phew!" Man, that was close. No, no, no. She calls everyone over and throws a party to celebrate. Why? Because the coin was lost and now it's found. And then he goes on to tell a story about two brothers who were lost. And Jesus tells this story, I think, and again, to reflect on the nature of God and to really see and kind of point out what a warped view of God we can easily have if we play this religious ticket taking game. Remember, he's talking and responding to the religious people who can't understand why he's hanging out with the people who have no tickets to offer. Let's jump down to verse 11. It says this, "To illustrate the point further, Jesus tells them this story. A man had two sons. The younger son told the father, 'I want my share of the estate now before you die.' So the father agreed and he divided his wealth between his sons. We have a father having two sons. The younger one is done with the father. He wants out from the father's watch. He wants out from the father's lifestyle and he wants to go now, he wants to be out on his own. Do you ever know anyone like that? Or maybe even feel like that yourself at times. And what does he say to the father? Let me ask you this question. When does somebody get an inheritance? When the father dies, so what is the son saying to his father? As a dad, there could be nothing more hurtful. I wish you were dead or at least dead to me. And the father responds graciously and gives him his inheritance, gives him his half. Let's jump back into verse 13. It says a few days later, the younger son packed all of his belongings and moved to a distant land. And there he wasted all of his money on wild living. About the time the money ran out, a great famine swept over the land and began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him and the man sent him out into the fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding, the pigs looked good to him. No one gave him anything. When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, "At home, even the hired servants have food enough to spare and here I am dying of hunger. I will go home to my father and say, 'Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.'" So he returns home to the father. And while he was still a long way off, the father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, he embraced him and kissed him and the son begins his spiel, "Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son, but the father interrupts." He doesn't let him finish. He says this in verse 22, "But the father said to the servants, 'Quick, bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him, get a ring for his finger and sandals to his feet, kill the calf we've been fanning. We must celebrate with a feast for the son of mine was dead and now he's returned to life. He was lost and now he's found so the party began." And if I could just take a time out here and just decide, just a theory that I have, that this story may prove that God is not a vegetarian, my, I don't know, I mean, he's not celebrating with a veggie bean burger, he at least loves barbecue. And if you're a vegetarian, I understand God did make vegetables for us to eat, that's understandable, I get it, and if my theory is too far, you can send your angry emails to me. My email address is bobk@bwater.org. But in this story, Jesus is communicating about the father. And you represent God and Jesus wanted the religious people around him to understand the heart of God and the father is filled with compassion for his son, it was returned home. He ran out to him. He gave him shoes, a ring, I just gave him value, just basically expressing how valuable he was to him. And if this were a movie, the music would crescendo, the credits would roll, the story would come to completion because the lost rebellious son had returned home to the arms of the loving father and all lived happily ever after. But this isn't the end of the story. There are two sons. And so where's the other one? Let's keep reading, verse 25. Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working and he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house and he asked one of the servants, what was going on? "Oh, your brother is back," he was told, "and your father's killed the fatted calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return." Done, done, done. The older brother was angry and he wouldn't go in. His father came out and begged him. The older brother was angry, who was he angry at? He was angry at his father. And the reason he gives reveals his heart, it reveals that playing this religious ticket collecting game can distort our view of the father's love. Look at what he says in verse 29. But he replied, "All these years I have slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing that you told me. And all the time we never gave me even one young goat to feast with my friends, yet when the son of yours comes back from squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fatted calf." What should have been one of the greatest days in this family's life, wasn't? Because the older brother is angry. He's angry because he did everything right. He didn't leave, he didn't do the sinful ways of things his brother did. He stayed home. And you know what he's telling the father? You owe me. You owe me. I stayed. I've done everything right. I've earned tickets. This response reveals something about his heart. He didn't do these things. The older brother didn't stay close and do all the right stuff out of his love for the father. He just wanted the father stuff too. He just went about it in a different way. It was a transaction to him. The story ends with only one son in the house at the party, and it wasn't the one that did all the bad stuff. It was the one who on all the outside appearances was the one who did things right. He just did them for the wrong reason. And those religious leaders that day, they knew why Jesus didn't end the story with the first son, because he was talking to them, and he's talking to any of us. If we fall and even unintentionally into this idea, then we have to earn some sort of tickets in order to get God's favor. There's two ways to be separated from God in this story. One is you can rebel and take your stuff and walk away. The second is you can stay close and just go through all the motions for the wrong reasons. And as I looked at my life, I asked this question, and maybe this is a question that you can ask as you walk through this and think through these things there. Are you doing what is right only because you have to? I was. I was doing the right things for God, but they were just out of obligation. It's because I had to, not out of joy, not out of freedom, not out of love for the Father. It's like doing homework to get a good grade. I didn't go into math class, go into math class just to see the crazy how I could figure out how the numbers all work, and the puzzles just be amazed at how numbers work. I didn't read my English Lit paper or English Lit homework, so I could dive deep into the significance of what the author was trying to say, "No, I didn't do it out of a love for learning. I did it out of obligation. I had to get a good grade." I think that can be us if we just do things out of obligation. This religion, this faith that we have, becomes a checklist of things. I came to church today, "Jack," or in my Bible today, "Jack," I did what I was supposed to. I gave, I checked. I did, and this checklist becomes a thing out of obligation, and it lacks the right heart out of a love for God. And maybe, for some of you, church has become like that, and ultimately, it's become boring, because it isn't a relationship, it's a job, and God wants more from you. Jesus ends this story with the Father's response, and it's such good news for us, such good news for us, certainly those who are in that game of collecting tickets. It says this in verse 31 and 32, "His Father said to him, 'Look, dear son, you have always stayed with me,' and everything I have is yours, but we had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead, and he's come back to life. He was lost, but now he's found. The Father still compassion and gracious to the older son, he came out to him too, and he reminds him of something that is true. He reminds him of the relationship, the first words he says to him are, "Dear son." He reminds him that it's a relationship. He didn't say, "Dear sheep herder, dear crop planner, dear stable cleaner." He didn't list the tasks. He started with the relationship, "Dear son." And I needed to be reminded of that, and I remember the day, I remember, you know, certainly can picture like it was yesterday, it was the summer between my freshman year and sophomore year of college. I went to Bible college doing the right things there too. I had an apartment with two other guys in Scranton, Prescott Avenue, second and third floor apartment, and both of my roommates were gone, working. I had the night off for some reason, and not a lot to do, but it was very entertaining. We had a little television that had little things that didn't get any channels, but the more entertaining it was just to look out the window and watch people. The people across the street, also second and third floor apartment, they had like a deck on the second floor, and there was a party every night in the summer. Very entertaining, ultimately the entertainment was to see who was going to get drunk first enough to fall off the deck. That's just the way it was, entertaining. The people next door, they had a domestic dispute pretty much, I think the police were there every other night. I mean, the houses were so close together, we could hear them yowling and throwing stuff at each other. It was crazy, crazy. The people on the other side, the guy on the other side was so focused, the only thing he was focused on was his car. He was always washing, waxing, buffing his car, and his car looked great. And as I sat there, looking out the window, waiting for someone to fall off the deck. It's the best I can be described as maybe it's a whisper from the spirit, whatever. This question, this thought came to my mind, is none of these people know you as Kevin Stiles the pastor's kid, and they don't care, and for the first time in my life, expectations were gone. And I don't know, maybe you felt that the first time you kind of got out on your own, all that kind of stuff, but the next question that came to me was even more significant. It says, "Is this real to you, Kevin, or is this just a game you're playing?" And I remember that was when I put my tickets down and went back into the house. And maybe you hear this morning and you've been in church most of your life and you've always done the right thing, but what's been your motivation is you're just to get God's flavor, because it's his child, you already have it. As a follower of Jesus, you are his dear son, you are his dear daughter. It's about the relationship that you have, not the things that you can do. He wants a relationship with you. I'm going to pray in just a minute, and the band is going to come. It's going to lead us another song. And on your way out, we're going to give you a ticket this morning, just for coming this morning, we're going to give you a ticket. It's not because you came to church, so don't think that, but as a reminder to you, as a reminder that it isn't about earning tickets, that it is about a relationship with God. And we're going to ask you in just a second to stand, and you're going to do it out of obligation. I know you are. You're going to sing, but I'm going to ask you not to sing out of obligation. I'm going to ask you to sing out of your love for the Father, our heavenly Father. And there's going to be people down front and they would love to pray with you and talk to you, even if you don't know, maybe in our story, you're more of the product of that. You don't know and have a relationship with Jesus, and you don't know it. You need to come back home as well. Or maybe you just need to come and put your tickets down this morning. They would love to pray for you as we do it. Let's pray. I've got to do thank you for who you are and what you've done. Lord, I just want to thank you for the fact that you came running out after both sons, that you came running out after the prodigal for sure, but you came running out after me as well. Lord, I pray that that would just make sense to us this morning, that we can put our tickets down, that we don't have to be earning everything your favor, that you love us, that we know we have, that sure you have stuff you want us to do, sure there's things that you want us to connect with. It's a relationship. There's going to be responsibilities, just going to be things that you want us to do, but it's not in order to gain our, your favor and your love. So Lord, I pray that as we stand and we sing that we would do it not, not out of obligation, not out of some way we're going to somehow please you so we get to your blessing of the really big squirt on the hangs on the back wall. Lord, I pray that we would do it out of our love for you and I ask that in Jesus name. Amen.