"Resentment: The Sin of Good People"
When you read the story of the Prodigal Son, you read a story that is familiar to you. Everybody knows that story, and wherever the Gospel is preached, that story is told. It's about the young man who goes off and wastes his living and the living of his parents in riotous living. He comes to his father (Luke 15:11) and says, "Father, give me the portion of goods to which I am entitled. Give it to me now while I'm still young and can enjoy it."

The father gives him half of all his possessions. Now if you know anything about Jewish law, you know that as the younger son, he wasn't entitled to half of the possessions. In short, this young man received much, much more than he was entitled to.

I think that can be true for all of us. All of us are the recipients of much more than we rightfully deserve.

He then goes of f and he does his thing. But he runs out of the means to do his thing. He takes a job feeding pigs. It doesn't sound too glamorous. I come close to it, I teach college. The truth of the matter is that he looked at the pigs and he looked at what the pigs were eating, and he would have loved to have had the garbage that the pigs were eating.

You can imagine what this was like. He was a Jewish man. Do you know what the Jewish attitude is towards pigs, towards swine? It's unclean. To be associated with those animals was to not only be in a despicable position but to be labeled as spiritually dead. Then he came to his senses. He said, "I will arise and I will go to my father. And I will say to my father, 'Father, I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me one of your servants.’”

What a switch! At the beginning of the story he is saying, "Father, give me," and at the end of his story, he is praying, "Father, make me." That transition shows the coming of age. That transition shows the achieving of maturity.

I think of my own life. I look at the way in which I prayed and the way in which I pray now, and I see a certain evolution. I think that earlier in my life my prayers were simply a list of non-negotiable demands. I just kind of read them off for the Almighty, "God, give me, give me, give me, give me." It was kind of like my little boy who came in one night just before bedtime, and said, "I'm going to bed and I'm going to be praying. Anybody want anything?"

The attitude of people that just want God to give, give, give, give. We live in an age where we treat God as though he were some kind of transcendental genie. We relate our Christianity to a quality of magic. Magic is when you try to manipulate deities to get what you want.

But there's a transition away from magic, away from trying to get God to do what you want, trying to get God to give you what you want. You reach that point where you no longer want anything from God. Instead you are able to say, "God, I don't want anything from you. Just make me into what you want me to be. Make me into the person you want me to be. Use me to touch other people's lives."

I know that a real transition came into my life when I read a book called “In His Steps” by Sheldon. The theme was simple. To be a Christian was to do whatever Jesus would do if Jesus were in your shoes. I prayed that God would make me into a person that would do what he wanted done. I went to school the next day to West Philadelphia High, to Home Room 48. That does not impress you primarily because you did not go to West Philadelphia High and you did not know that in Home Room 48, all the jocks attended. And behind this frail, bald-headed figure is a person who was once—believe it or not—a jock.

I went into the room and I looked around and there were all the jocks in the last row, the basketball team, the "in" kids. I mean jocks were special people if you don't know what they are. They are not simply athletes. They are people who move. I mean we would walk down the hall, and the girls would line the sides and say, "How great thou art." I would walk into my home room, and I saw the jocks, the "in" kids, and I wanted to sit with them, but also in that room, #48, there were four young men who didn't belong. They were on the chess team. I'm not saying that all chess players are "wimps" but these chess players were "wimps," "nerds". I don't know whether you know what I am talking about. I am talking about the kind of kids who on a rainy day come to school wearing galoshes. He brings his lunch in a brown paper bag, and saves the bag. That kind of kid.

As I looked over that group, I asked myself if Jesus were in my shoes, what would he do? And I knew he would be a friend of a "wimp.” So I went over and sat next to old "wimpo,” and I stayed friends with him that whole year until graduation. I wish this story had a glorious ending. We have the Wheaton Chorale here and they know about Billy Graham. Let me do my imitation of Billy Graham, telling this story, "Because I loved that 'wimp,' because I cared for that 'wimp,' because I was concerned about that 'wimp,' that 'wimp' blossomed, he became a dynamic, forceful person. And today, friends, that ‘wimp' is Ronald Reagan."

This "wimp" stayed a "wimp." I saw him in New York a few months ago. He's still a "wimp.”

The point is, not that everything is going to turn out wonderful, but that God has said, "Become people that I want you to be." Stop asking God to give you things, and start asking God to make you into the kind of person that will do what he would do if he was in your shoes. Ask Jesus to make you into the kind of person who would live a life like he would live if he was in your shoes, every moment of every day.

But the point of the story is in the last part. The last part of the story is awesome because that's the crux of the matter. The young man comes home, and his father puts a robe on him, and kills the fatted calf, and there's a big party going because he is so thrilled to have his wayward son home again. And while this party is going on, the older brother comes in from the field. Now, people, I'm one of those who is sympathetic to the older brother. I mean, here's a guy who stays home, plows those cotton-pickin' fields, milks those cows, shovels the stuff out of the barn, while, his brother is out there messing around with the women in Babylon, you know. And there he is killing himself. And what does he get for all of this? Nothing!

I want to tell you it just isn't fair! If ever there was a guy who was ripped off at a time in history, it's the older brother. You've got to be sorry for this guy.

They don't even invite him to the party. There's a party going on. He comes home and hears the music, he hears the good time. He calls one of the servants. He says, "What's going on?"

"The wayward brother has come home. They're celebrating."

And he's furious. And he's saying to himself, "It just isn't fair!" And he is filled with the sin of good people. Let me tell you this. The young man who went away was sinful, and the boy who stayed home was good. But the boy who stayed home was a good boy who was guilty of a terrible sin: the sin of resentment.

Can't you just see him, fuming with resentment, fuming with anger? "I don't think it's fair," and it wasn't fair.

People, there isn't a one of us that doesn't experience the sin of good people, the sin of resentment, the sin that says, "It just isn't fair." I know people who have employers, and they don't think their employers are treating them right. After all, they were the ones that felt that they deserved the promotion, and somebody else got the promotion. They have worked hard, they didn't get paid right. They look at their bosses and they say, "He just doesn't treat me fairly." The sin of resentment.

It's not only employers. I know wives who resent their husbands, and well they should. I'm one of those feminists who believes that wives have a right to resent their husbands.

I mean that ad with the woman holding up the shirt with tears running down her cheeks, and she's saying, "Why didn't I use the right detergent?" And the voice in the background saying, "Ring around the collar, ring around the collar," and she's all upset because there is a ring around the collar. She didn't use the right detergent. They never ask the obvious question, "Why doesn't he wash his neck?" Women are tired of putting up with that jazz, man.

The guy comes home from work, and she's been hustling, she's been bustling, she's been cleaning, she's been taking care of the messes, and he walks in and he throws himself down on the chair, and he says, "When's dinner going to be ready? I've had a tough day," as if she had a bed of roses all day.

I know women who chafe because they see themselves exploited by their husbands. And you know what? They are probably right. But people, sometimes even when you are right, you're wrong. Even when you are right, you are wrong. And I know wives who resent their husbands because their husbands don't treat them right, don't treat them with respect, put them down in a subtle way

I was with a friend on a beach. And there he was with his wife and me with my wife, and a young "chick" walked by, you know. And he said, "Hey, Tony, look at that! Now that's really something."

Well, if that's something, what is he indirectly saying about his wife? Isn’t he indirectly saying, "You're nothing."?

Many women feel put down by that sort of thing, and right that they should be. No woman has the necessity to endure that kind of punishment.

When I speak to a group, I always ask a very simple question of some woman in the audience, "Do you feel like you're the most beautiful woman in this room?"

And inevitably she'll say, "No."

And then I'll always look at her husband and say, "It's your fault." Because indeed it is the responsibility of every man to build up his wife, and make her feel special, and if you don't do that, then she has a right to resent you. But she's wrong when she's right.

That's what the sin of resentment is all about: you're wrong when you're right. I know husbands who resent their wives. You know, she's so smooth. She can talk. She has the gift of gab. They go to socials and she's the life of the party, and I see old grumpy standing in the corner mumbling to himself, and he resents her ease at communication.

I know parents who resent their children. I know a mother who resents a child. Indeed, she was going to law school. She was going to have a career. And the next thing you know she was pregnant, and this baby came and interfered with her career plans. She knows better than to say anything about it, but down deep inside the resentment is there. She never expresses it, but scholars point out that children are expert in picking up nonverbal communication, and the resentment that is never articulated is picked up and communicated to the child, and the child feels the resentment of the parent, and the parent may be right, but the parent is wrong when she's right.

I know people who are resentful because they are poor. And they see other people that are rich, and they say, "Why didn't I ever get the breaks?" I guess the system doesn't treat people with fairness, and some people don't get the breaks.

I know people who are rich who resent poor people. They resent paying their taxes. "Oh, I work hard for my money. I resent those people who don't work and are collecting welfare." Have you heard that kind of talk?

Resentment. I see it throughout our society in people in husbands and wives. I see children who resent their parents. I know one boy who said, "I was never my father's favorite. He always liked my older brother better. I was never the favorite one. I was always put down."

I know another boy who says, "My father would always come home drunk and beat us, and I've never forgiven him for that."

I see resentment everywhere, and everywhere I see it, it's justified. Resentment is a sin which is a sin that leaves you feeling right, when you are wrong.

Worst of all are those who resent God. And they do resent God. I knew a couple who didn't have any children. They wanted children. They prayed for children. They never had any children. And they look around and they see other people with children that they don't even want. They read in the paper about children who are beaten by parents. The brutality of some parents toward children that they don't want: children abandoned on the street; children not cared for; children not loved. And I see these parents say, "God, why? We would have made such good parents. Instead you gave children to those people who didn't even want them. It just isn't fair."

And you know what? They're right! But wrong when they're right.

I know a single woman. She is forty-three years old now never married. When she was younger, she was dating somebody who wasn't right for her and wasn't of the same spiritual convictions, and her pastor said, "Don't marry him, because you're not supposed to be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever." So she listened to the pastor, and the pastor said, "God will bring somebody better into your life."

I don't know why pastors say stupid things like that because there is no guarantee that somebody better is going to come into your life. My wife understood that. She settled for what was there. The truth of the matter is that nobody did come into her life then, and she's old and she's bitter, and she's saying, "I was faithful to God and it just wasn't fair."

Now here are the things to do if you are feeling resentment, and everybody here is feeling resentment. Some sermons I preach when I condemn the drunks or the alcoholics, or the drug addicts, people say, "I hope they are listening." You better be listening because unless you are a very unusual person, you are somebody who like the older brother is experiencing the sin of resentment.

Here are things to do. First of all, reconsider whether or not it's worth all of that rotten feeling. Because resentment is a rotten feeling. Is it really worth it? Let me put it this way. I was dating this girl, and she was supposed to marry me. And she didn't. She married somebody else, and everybody I knew said that I was better looking. More interesting. A better match. And she married that other guy and it just wasn't fair. And I felt it wasn't fair for a long time. And then a few years ago I was delivering a speech at a school where she was a faculty member, and afterwards we went out and had a cup of coffee and I spoke with her about a half hour. And as I walked out of the school, I found myself singing the Doxology, "Praise God I didn't marry her."

Sometimes what we lost when we look back on it, it wasn't so great after all.

Secondly, we should in fact recognize that every time we are disappointed, we have an opportunity to use that for something good for God. I have a son who plays soccer and the first year in high school he beat out the goalie of a varsity team. This guy was a senior and he had waited f our years to play goalie and he was playing goalie and suddenly was bumped by a freshman. I would have resented that. But not this boy. He was a friend to my son. He continued to visit. He took my boy out to every game and every party. He was my boy's best friend. And he had every right to resent my son. Then one day he came to my house at seven in the morning, picked my son up for a breakfast. It was a Saturday morning. My son didn't get back until about eleven o'clock. When he got back, he came right to my office and said, "Dad, Joel took me out to lunch and he talked to me about Jesus, and Dad, today I gave my life to Jesus and accepted him as the Lord and Savior of my life and I'm going to serve him for the rest of my days." Good news!

A young man who had every right to be filled with resentment but instead of being filled with resentment, took his unpleasant situation and turned it into an opportunity to serve God. And that's what we must do. We must look at the circumstances of situations that give us the right to be filled with resentment and instead of yelling, "It's just not fair," turn that opportunity into an opportunity to do something wonderful for God.

I was in a junior high camp once. Everybody should go to a junior high camp once. The Bible is right. I should say my Roman Catholic friends are right. They should never have gotten rid of that doctrine of purgatory. There is a purgatory. It is junior high camp. I went there and these boys were rotten, just rotten. There was one little boy who suffered from cerebral palsy, and these cruel junior high boys just mocked him. As he walked across the grounds in his disjointed manner with his grotesque movements, they followed this spastic kid and they imitated him and mocked him. They thought that was fun. I saw him one day when he was haltingly trying to ask directions to the craft shop. "Which...way...is...the...craft...shop?" he asked. And the other boy, imitating him, said, "Thaat waay," and he laughed at the boy. He thought that was fun.

But the epitome of that agony reached its crescendo on a Wednesday when it was his turn to give devotions at the morning hour of worship. And all the other boys laughed as little Billy stumbled his way to the platform. And they laughed at this spastic kid as he stood behind the pulpit. And the giggles were there and I watched little Billy take ten minutes to say, "Jesus ...loves...me, ...and...I...love...Jesus."

When he finished, there was dead silence. A revival broke out and fifty young men in that camp are in the mission fields or in the ministry today because little Billy was able to overcome his resentment and serve God and give testimony to the opportunities that he had, opportunities that came out of a situation that he had every right to be resentful about.

Ask God to forgive you of your resentment, to cleanse you of your resentment, and to use the situations with which you were resentful as opportunities to serve him and his kingdom.

Amen and amen.