Don’t we all know what it is to be held back from doing the right thing on account of our pride? We know that we are in danger of losing out tremendously, but to swallow out pride and do what is right is very hard for us. Let us not hold out of God in this way, for what we stand to lose is beyond calculation. What a sense of relief we have when we finally do the right thing!
Is there somebody who you won't enter in on these terms? The Bible teaches that in order to be blessed by God we must repent and cast ourselves upon the mercy of God and yield up our lives as unworthy people who deserve nothing, and you won't go in that way. What a crazy thing this is! What do you receive when you go in? You receive pardon; you receive light and understanding; you receive life in the Spirit which you haven't got now. You must be honest and look at yourself and acknowledge that although you may have life in your body, physical life, you do not have spiritual life. You can't feel God; you can't pray to him; he doesn't answer your prayers, bless you, deal with you, guide you. You have none of these things. You don't have the peace and the joy that he gives his people, the light and the power. And yet though we speak of all these things, and if necessary do so at great length, you would rather forfeit them all, because you won't come to Christ on these terms. ‘If you say I have got to go in by accepting the fact that I am hopeless and there is no good in me, and I have just got to go to Christ and ask for mercy, I will not go in no matter what I'm going to lose.’ That is literally how many people live and die; they won't hear of it. There is God, waiting to be gracious, waiting to bless them with all manner of blessings, but they won't go in, because pride won't let them accept the terms. Is there anything more tragic than that – that people will sell their lives and their eternity because they are too proud to accept the terms?
There may be somebody and this is just how you think. You think you are all right as you are, and because the preacher says from the word of God that all of us need to be pardoned and forgiven and born again, and because you hear that that is how it happens, you won't come to a church again, and you won't enter into Christianity on these terms. You think you are all right as you are, but you are shutting yourself out of heaven, because you are offended by this message, which insists that you need to be washed, you need to be pardoned. That is what the elder son does; he shuts himself outside as soon as he hears that this is what is needed. He is staying outside, and he won't go into the house to join those who rejoice in the grace of God. He doesn't like this message of grace he doesn't like the idea that the Father forgives unworthy and useless people freely. He doesn't like the teaching that the Son of God came down from heaven to suffer and die, to bear in himself as a substitute the punishment of all who repent, and that the lowest of the low and the simplest of the simple can come in and be forgiven. He doesn't like that: he thinks that he if he is going to have the favour of God, he is going to earn it; he is going to deserve it. He thinks he does deserve it.