“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.”
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, pages 16-16
Staci Thomas
This is a great passage. Thank you for posting it. Here’s a shout out to all of your readers who have the time to listen to sermons online…Keller’s Sermon on this passage called “The True Elder Brother” is outstanding. It is one of the free sermons on his website.Lord, show me the multitude of times a day when I am acting like the elder brother. Amen.
Randy Greenwald
I read The Prodigal God straight through this morning. Yup, I’ve got the elder bros. thing down pat, especially that part about God owing me stuff… 🙂