Christ's Perspective

[00:00:01] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:14] The parable of the prodigal son is a parable about changed perspective. [00:00:23] The son is at home and everything seems to be going okay. But he decides, you know, I think I could do better. [00:00:35] The grass is always greener on the other side. [00:00:40] He's thinking he can do a whole lot better if his father just gives him the share of the inheritance that's coming to him. [00:00:48] Because, well, there are things to be done, things to be enjoyed, things to be pursued. And so he goes off into a far country. I mean, that's kind of bold. He's ready for adventure, ready for exciting things. And then he goes and squanders his money and lands himself feeding pigs and can't even eat what the pigs are eating and starts to realize, well, maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all. [00:01:18] The son who goes off to this far country, who thinks the grass is greener on the other side and goes off to enjoy himself, to pursue what seems to him in the moment like a better option, like a good idea, what seems so desirable. This son finds that what was shiny and exciting and promising, what he thought would make him happy ends up tasteless, unsatisfying, illusory. [00:01:52] It was a dream and nothing more. [00:01:57] So he has a certain perspective at the beginning. And then, well, through suffering and want, he realizes that life of squandering wealth on. On pleasure and fulfilling his own immature desires was not such a great idea. [00:02:17] Instead, now he has a whole different perspective on his father's house and what it would be like to just be part of the family or maybe even just a servant, but just to be there and to belong there and to be provided for. [00:02:33] Now it wasn't all that exciting. When he lived at home, he wasn't excited about just sort of normal life being provided for, having work, but now he's excited to return to it. [00:02:47] He sees the value. [00:02:50] And I think this is the story for, I mean, probably young people throughout history, or at least in the modern age especially, you know, I think every. [00:03:00] I don't know, maybe I'm not speaking for everybody, but there's a certain cycle where you grow up. And as a kid, my father always told me, you know, the most you've ever known, but it's not everything, you know. And I mean, he knew that I had limited perspective and he told me that and that was helpful. I still had limited perspective. And so it did seem exciting to go off, but then there's kind of a movement back, maybe, right? [00:03:35] And an appreciation realization that the things that were hard because my parents imposed difficulties on me or discipline, like, well, those were actually really valuable. And I'm thankful for every bit of it now, looking back, because it held me in check. Or even if I didn't understand at the time, pushing against me and my immature desires and my immature perspective was necessary. I didn't have the perspective to make the right choices anyway. That's just an aside. [00:04:13] So the sun goes off after. After shiny things. Things that seem to him from his immature perspective, worth chasing, worth undergoing a journey for, but it just lands him in suffering. This is the. [00:04:34] Well, this is the pattern of sin, let's say, on like an individual daily scale. You and I are tempted to go after shiny things whether or not they are pleasing to God, whether or not they're God's will, whether or not they're right. [00:04:53] And well, often we learn that was not a good idea and end up suffering for it. So that's the pattern of sin. [00:05:04] But then it's like on a large scale, it's the pattern of sin. It's Adam and Eve who were right there with God who made them. They lived with their Maker and they received every good thing from Him. And then they thought, well, that looks tasty and I'd like wisdom. Well, God was going to give them wisdom. This was like the inheritance that was coming to them anyway. God was going to share everything with them. They were going to grow in knowledge and understanding. They were going to live the good life in their Father's house, let's say. [00:05:34] But the grass was greener on the other side. [00:05:38] And they ended up journeying to a faraway country, out of the Garden of Eden and down into the wilderness, into the desert, deprived of God's spirit and the fruits that he works through His Word in His people. [00:05:59] The journey back Christ has, has initiated by coming. You know, he journeyed into the far country and came to get us back, to change our perspective so that we would look back and say, you know, we really are in a wasteland and we really would benefit from receiving from God the source of life again. [00:06:22] Maybe the desert isn't so great. I didn't think it was a desert. I thought it was a garden. [00:06:28] Now that I'm here, it's not so great. We need God to come and show us that because even now we can be deceived by the desert with immature perspective. If our perspective is wrong, then even now, what we ought to recognize as a Desert can seem like paradise. [00:06:55] So, for example, we can still be lulled into thinking that the greatest good is to fill our life with possessions, make our life easier and easier. [00:07:10] Just stepping into the flow of the stream of the modern age. Make everything easier and easier. Cut out work and enjoy ourselves better and better. That's. That's what the good life is. [00:07:25] Raise our standard of living. What kind of standard of living are we talking about? Yeah, we live in a lot more comfort than people of the past, but it's a whole lot less satisfying. Just talk to those who have more experience among us. [00:07:43] And boy, they talk about the good old days. They really were. They had discipline, community. [00:07:50] There were a lot of wonderful things that have happened to have gone out the door, along with an increase in ease and prosperity. [00:08:04] Life isn't always what it appears to be. The shiny things aren't always satisfying. [00:08:12] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They shall be satisfied. But that only becomes apparent with renewed perspective. You only learn that good things come from hard work and discipline. [00:08:29] Well, by going through it, then looking back, you're like, oh, I'm glad I'm where I am. I'm glad I like, I don't see things anymore like that. Why? Because. Because we've been through the difficulties. Because God has taught us through hardship what is truly worth pursuing. Because he's changed our perspective. [00:08:52] So I want to just lay out, like, well, what kind of perspectives are we talking about? And I'll just mention Paul in Second Corinthians 5 in our epistle reading. He's talking about two kinds of perspectives. [00:09:09] From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. [00:09:14] What does that mean? Well, that means with an earthly perspective, let's say. Okay, so it's kind of like, remember when Jesus said he was going to die? I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And Peter said, no, they're not going to do that to you. [00:09:31] And Jesus said, get behind me, Satan. You're not thinking of the things of God, you're thinking of the things of man. [00:09:39] That is to say, you're not looking from heavenly perspective. You're not looking from God's perspective on things. You're looking from man's perspective on things. [00:09:50] That is man's perspective apart from God. Because the ideal situation, what God wants for us is for us to look at things with his perspective, which is to be ruled and governed by his Spirit, to receive his spirit and the mind of Christ, and to see things with his eyes. [00:10:07] So blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. The point of that is to give us divine perspective. Because from our merely human perspective, unenlightened by the spirit of Christ and the mind of Christ, from our own perspective, righteousness doesn't seem like the thing to hunger and thirst for. We're hungry and thirsty for what's going to make our life easy, or for the admiration of those around us, or for any other sort of worldly thing. There are two perspectives, worldly and heavenly. Divine. [00:10:46] And through Christ, God gives us divine perspective and it flips things around. [00:10:52] It takes away our. [00:10:55] Well, let's just say you got the prodigal son in the foreign country and he finds himself longing for the pods that the pigs were being fed with. [00:11:05] But nobody's giving him anything. Like that's where he landed with his worldly perspective, his immature perspective, immature desires, trying to. To please himself to the fullest and finding himself completely unsatisfied. [00:11:24] That's where our worldly perspective leads. But Christ has for us. [00:11:30] Christ gives us ultimate satisfaction, whatever we would want, honor, glory. Well, Jesus gives us that. He gives us his own victory. [00:11:45] In him, we win. [00:11:48] Now it's waiting. It's like the definition of maturity is being able to delay gratification for good things. It's waiting for us in the future. [00:12:01] So you have it by faith now in hope. [00:12:05] Well, that's not very satisfying for the moment if we're trying to satisfy ourselves for the moment. [00:12:09] But it is Christ's perspective and he grants us that and ultimate satisfaction through that. [00:12:19] You want like health, comfort, security? [00:12:24] Well, Christ gives us that. Ultimately you can look for it in other places. You can look for it in doctors or in accumulation of wealth or. Or the kind of security that comes with a big house and a security system and a security team. [00:12:43] Take it to an extreme degree, whatever, safe country. [00:12:49] But in the end, the end of your life, death catches up with you anyway. [00:12:55] It's temporary. It's ultimately unsatisfying. What Christ gives us is resurrection from the dead and the promise of eternal life. [00:13:04] He gives us. I mean, it's not here yet. First we undergo suffering, maybe even death. Earthly speaking, Jesus calls it sleep. [00:13:14] But suffering and death, the cross, all of that is coming for us now. And so if we're looking to be satisfied in the moment, it's going to be unsatisfying, right? But Christ gives us his own perspective, mature perspective. Coming for us is life, eternal life and ultimate security, the end of all problems. Wiping away of tears but for now, we have it in faith. We have it in hope kept for us in the future as we look to Christ and trust in Him. [00:13:52] So these are the. These are their perspectives. [00:13:56] Now, St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, he's calling them and us to have this perspective, to think with the mind of Christ, to think about things from his perspective and not from a worldly perspective. So he says, from now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. [00:14:19] We regard no one with an earthly perspective. Now, regard is kind of. We don't use that word very often, right? There's a French word that's basically that word and just means, like, to look at or to consider, think about. You know, that's what it means. We regard no one. So when I look at you and I think about you, right? Or when you look at me, when we look at each other, when we. When we consider one another, what are we considering? [00:14:51] Have you done something against the other person? Have they done something against you? Is there a grudge? Is there something between you? If you think about it, what does it mean to regard someone not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit? [00:15:10] Not from an earthly perspective, but from Christ's perspective. [00:15:15] All of a sudden, your wealth or poverty, your socioeconomic status, your job, your honor or dishonor, what you've done to me or not, all that goes behind, you don't even see that anymore. Looking with Christ's perspective instead, what's left is Christ's perspective. Who from the cross says, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. [00:15:43] Christ's perspective that looks at everybody and sees in them. They were made in God's image and he's come to restore them in his image. [00:15:52] When we look at each other, brothers and sisters in Christ, we see those who have been forgiven by Christ and brought into his family. [00:16:03] We see brothers and sisters, children of God. That's what we see. [00:16:09] And when we look at children in our school, we see not customers in a business or something like that, but we see young people ready to be shaped and formed in the right way, ready to be given Christ's perspective, ready to be brought into the family, or they are children of God brought into God's family by faith through baptism. When you go out into your work, same thing. You see not just a boss who's going to give you a salary if you continue to make him happy, however that works, right or wrong, but you see someone who has been redeemed by God, who is made in God's image and Restored in God's image through Christ. Maybe somebody who needs to hear God's word. If you have an opportunity to do it. [00:17:16] Christ's perspective changes everything. [00:17:20] If that's our perspective, that's the thing. Because every day we're tempted to look at our situation, at ourselves, at others, according to the flesh, and to take into account what still bothers us that they did, however long ago, or take into account what we think of them. Whether we admire them, whether we respect whatever it is all these worldly things see, they pop up and they cloud our vision. [00:17:54] So if I look at you and I think about you, if I regard you according to the flesh, it's like these other things are getting in the way. [00:18:05] Repent. [00:18:07] That's the answer. We repent. [00:18:09] And Christ takes those things out of the way, puts them behind us so that we see them. We see one another with Christ's perspective, with the mind of Christ. [00:18:23] You and I, we've been reconciled to God through Christ. [00:18:28] Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God for our sake. He made him to be sin who knew no sin. [00:18:41] He made Jesus to go into a faraway country who didn't belong in a faraway country. You could say so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus Christ has made himself for us the way home to the Father, the road on which we walk. He's the way, the truth and the life hang on to him. [00:19:06] Receive his perspective. Repent, you and I, of our worldly perspective and our inclination to fall into that. Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith, who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of God. [00:19:29] In Jesus name, amen.