Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Respond to God's Gifts | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 15.11-32

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Have you ever heard that nothing is free? Even gifts come with expectations—and there's a good reason for that. Understand the value of gifts from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick) as he delves into https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15.11-32&version=NIV (Luke 15.11-32) to continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Interested in more content like this? Listen to our interview with John Drage: https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-the-living-can-learn-from-the-dying-seeing-through-the-eyes-of-a-dying-man-john-drage/ (What the Living Can Learn from the Dying). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're learning what it looks like to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. Have you ever taken advantage of a gift? You know, used it for some purpose that the gift giver never really intended. You know, maybe your mom and dad, they give you a car and you drive it like you're in a demolition derby, which is, of course, the exact opposite of what they ever intended you to do with that vehicle.

Or maybe an art collector. He gives an up-and-coming artist some new brushes and some money to take on a new project. And the painter of the artist, he uses all those gifts to paint something pornographic. Or maybe a new job offers to pay for your move. And you spend some of the money moving, but you actually spend a lot of the money buying yourself a very nice dinner along the way. Or a scholarship fund. It awards a full ride to a student, and the student, when they get to college, barely gets anything above a sea.

In the modern world, we tend to idealize the idea of a gift as being something that should have no strings attached. But like it or not, we all know intuitively at least, that if someone misuses or destroys a gift that we give them, when they do that, when they misuse it, when they destroy it, it not only harms the gift, it not only harms them, but it also harms us. It harms our relationship with them. The ancient world understood this perfectly well. They understood that gifts create relationships and that a gift always requires in some sense reciprocation. And that reciprocation was using the gift as a gift giver intended. And it's not that that reciprocity, the proper response, it never earned the gift because that would make it not a gift at all, but they believed that good gifts produced the desired results that the gift givers intended. So let me ask you a question.

How have you responded to God's gifts in your life? If he's given you the gift of life after all, I mean, just in general, if you are living, you have a gift from God. And not just that, though, God has given you the gift of his son. And if you've given his son your allegiance, he's also even given you the gift of his spirit. So God has given us life, his son, his spirit. So what's God's return on investment for all of these gifts?

Have we crashed the gift? turned it pornographic, wasted it frivolously, taken it for granted. One of Jesus' most famous parables is all about how we respond to the gifts that God's given us. It presents us with three options, and only one of these three options is God's desired outcome. So let's read along in Luke 15. There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, father, give me my share of the estate. So his father divided the property between his two sons.

Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had and set off for a distant country, and there squandered all of his wealth and wild living. After he'd spent everything, there was a severe famine of a food shortage in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating. but no one gave him anything.

So in this story, how does the younger son respond to the gifts of his father? Well, he wastes them. He uses them to do things that his father never imagined. His father would have never approved of. His father would have found incredibly sad and disappointing. And what's the outcome? Living with pigs. Our temptation is to do the exact same thing,

not go off and literally live with pigs, but to take the good gifts that God has given us. and waste them. God's given us a body to use for his purposes, and we use it to feed our basest desires. We give ourselves over to lust, to gluttony, to drunkenness, to self-indulgence. God gives us our mouths to speak and say beautiful, good things, but instead we use them to gossip, deceive, and manipulate. Or God gives us our minds, right, to think, and we focus them on selfish thoughts, on personal gain, on anger, vitriol towards others. How have you used the gifts God's given you in your life? Have they landed your soul in a pigsty?

Jesus wants us to see the proper response to God's gift, repentance over our sins, and thankfulness for his mercy in response to that repentance. That's exactly where the story goes next. Verse 17. When he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have food despair. And here, I'm starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And then the father won't even let him finish. He cuts him off. But the father said to his servants, quick, bring the best robe and put it on him, put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the faddened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was

dead and is alive again, he was lost, and now he's found. So they began to celebrate. When we receive the father's gifts with grateful humility, knowing that we don't deserve anything, that we aren't really owed anything, that we actually deserve something far worse, when we receive his gifts with humility and thankfulness, because we know we don't deserve it, we actually get the greatest gift of all, restored relationship with him. You see, the father in the story receives the son with open forgiving arms. And in the exact same way, God receives you. No matter how you squandered or wasted his gifts in the past, he receives you right now, right here, with open, forgiving arms. Yes, we're called to say words of repentance, and the son

does that, but know that his loving arms are already around you before you can even get the words out. The younger son receives the gift as he should, at least at this point he receives the gift as he should. He's humble. He's grateful. He understands, I'm undeserving. And that makes him entirely joyful because he knows his father's delight in him. This is going to empower, I think, the young son to live a new kind of life afterwards. But of course, there's a second son, right? What about the older son? He also responds to his father's gifts in the wrong way. We pick up the story in verse 25. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he was. He was, he was. He was, he was He heard music and dancing.

So he called to one of the servants and asked him what was going on. Your brother has come, he replied. And your father has killed the fat and calf because he has him back, safe and sound. The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, look, all these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a single goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

But when this son of yours who's squandered your property with prostitutes has come, you kill the faddened calf for him? My son, the father said, you are always with me. And everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours, he was dead and it's alive again. He was lost and is found. How does the older son respond to his father's gifts? Because think about it for a second.

Everything that the older son has is stuff that, is given to him. He's going to receive his father's property, his father's wealth, his father's livestock, his father's land. That's not anything that he earned. He was just born into it. It was just a gift given to him. And so how does he respond to the tremendous gifts which he is going to receive with bitter entitlement? He doesn't think about the fact that if he inherits all that his father has, he's inheriting the fruit of his father's lifelong labor, not even his own. He looks at everything that his dad owns and he says that's mine. I deserve that. I've earned that. He says that he's been slaving away for his dad and all for nothing. He says, dad, you've given me nothing. Dad, you've taken

advantage of me. And notice what he ultimately wants. He doesn't want relationship with his dad. He doesn't want a party with his dad. He says, he doesn't even given me a party with my friends. Because he doesn't care about his dad. He cares about his dad's stuff. His dad hasn't given him squat. At least that's what he thinks. And he thinks, if anything, my dad's in indebted to me. Have you ever responded to God's gifts like this? Like everything we have is just what we deserve? Like everything God has given us is what we've been owed. Like God's gifts aren't really actually gifts at all. They're just payments for us slaving away for him throughout our lives. Do we care very little about the greatest gift that God has to offer? Walking with him, knowing him?

do we just want the good stuff that God can offer look God all I want is health I want prosperity I want friends I want a spouse I want a better job how are you responding to God's gifts in your life right now how are you responding to the gift of life the fact that you're alive the gift of his son the gift of his spirit are you receiving his gifts thankfully and humbly are you using them in the way that he desires abusing his gifts? Are you ignoring his gifts and treating God like he's in your dead? The father wants to welcome you into his forgiving arms no matter where you're at either way. He wants to pour his affection over you and watch the gift of his unmerited love transform you. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this

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