We're in a series entitled Welcome Home. We're basing it on the prodigal son. Now I just

ask you this. Have you been a little bit surprised at the revelation God's bringing through

this series? You know, when someone says I'm going to preach on the prodigal son, sometimes we might think,

yeah I've heard that. But God has been showing us a lot of new things and we've been talking

about mainly the younger son or the prodigal. We're going to move to the older son now.

Pastor Brady did that last week. He asked me, can I share some on the older son?

I said, absolutely because the next week that's where I'm going. And here's what we're going

to talk about today, the older brother syndrome.

Now, let's not think for a moment about the attitude of the older brother.

We understand that's where we're going.

But just for a moment, let's take two brothers, one of them stays home, one of them leaves home.

Now we're using this as an analogy of believers. In other words one believer leaves church and goes back into the world and another believer stays in church.

Okay? Which one of those do you relate to right now in your life? Which one? Do you

relate to the younger brother who has left the church and who's, and it's characterized by the way the word

prodigals characterized by excessive drinking and sexual promiscuity and the

older brother stayed at home or stayed in church so which one do you relate to right now the most?

Please say the older brother. Right? The older. Now, I'm not talking about the attitude.

We're going to talk about the attitude, all right? But my point is we're in church. We're not the

prodigals. Most of us, we're not leaving, we don't want to go back out in the world, we want to stay

at home. Okay, the reason I'm saying that is then is we need to beware of the older

brother syndrome because we are becoming the older brothers and sisters and the Lord. I've been saved 25 years now. So I'm becoming an older brother. I want

to welcome my younger brothers and sisters and the Lord and I don't want to develop an attitude

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